I enjoy reading this commentator's columns.
Will consumer advocate Warren run for Senate? - by Darrell Delamaide
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, seems to be the motto in mind for financial consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren as Democrats reportedly are urging her to challenge Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts in the 2012 election. The Harvard professor spearheaded the effort to get a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into the Dodd-Frank financial reform act, and has been tasked by President Obama with helping to set up the new agency, designed to police predatory lending, credit card abuses and other attempts by financial institutions o fleece their customers.
Somehow the Republicans have managed to spin this as an anti-business, heavy-handed government regulatory nightmare, not a consumer protection initiative.
Banks, understandably, don’t like the idea of the new agency and don’t like Warren, and they have persuaded 44 Republican Senators – by means it’s easy to guess at – to block the nomination of Warren or anyone else as first director of the new agency.
Means easy to guess? Can he possibly mean bribery ... er, campaign contributions? {We don't have bribery in the US; we have campaign contributions.}
The seat that Brown won in a special election after Kennedy’s death in 2009 is one of those Senate Democrats would love to capture next year. Brown is trying to walk the tightrope between the tea party’s stringent orthodoxy requirements and a left-leaning Massachusetts electorate, and is seen as exceedingly vulnerable.
Brown has lurched left in some cases, but managing to placate the left and the right is a miracle beyond his power.
Massachusetts’ Brown has already broken with the Ryan proposal, arguing in an op-ed that escalating medical costs might outstrip government voucher subsidies in the plan, leaving seniors uncovered – the crux, by coincidence, of Democratic opposition to the plan.
It is a small wonder how Brown won in 2009.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Republican Party may need sacrificial lamb
Even as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was widely expected to officially announce Wednesday that he is running, it’s a measure of Republican dissatisfaction with the field of likely contenders — Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and so on — that so many politicos are talking up the possibility of a dark horse candidate.
Newt did declare his candidacy: "I believe we can return America to home and opportunity." At least he avoided speaking of morality and family values. “I want your help, because no one person in the Oval Office can get this done,” Gingrich said in a YouTube video after announcing his candidacy on Twitter. “We Americans are going to have to talk together, work together, find solutions together and insist on opposing… those forces that don’t want to change.”
Among those mentioned are New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann. They are considered dark horses at the moment because, with the exception of Bachmann, they have all definitively ruled out a run for president, at least this time around.
DeMint makes Gingrich seem socialist; Ryan makes DeMint look moderate; Bachmann makes Genghis Khan look communist. Christie? Rubio? If that is the best the GOP can do, let' get ready to rumble.
Newt did declare his candidacy: "I believe we can return America to home and opportunity." At least he avoided speaking of morality and family values. “I want your help, because no one person in the Oval Office can get this done,” Gingrich said in a YouTube video after announcing his candidacy on Twitter. “We Americans are going to have to talk together, work together, find solutions together and insist on opposing… those forces that don’t want to change.”
Among those mentioned are New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann. They are considered dark horses at the moment because, with the exception of Bachmann, they have all definitively ruled out a run for president, at least this time around.
DeMint makes Gingrich seem socialist; Ryan makes DeMint look moderate; Bachmann makes Genghis Khan look communist. Christie? Rubio? If that is the best the GOP can do, let' get ready to rumble.
Rubio, who just turns 40 this month, thinks he needs a little more seasoning before running for president. That’s unquestionably true, though a contest pitting the Cuban-American Rubio against President Barack Obama would mark the definitive entry of this country into the 21st century.
True. But it ain't happening any time soon.
Christie has already faded from media stardom as he faces a political backlash in his own state for his bullying tactics, and nobody’s talking about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker any more as a candidate for anything except recall.
How quickly they have become yesterday's news.
This is the bind the Republicans have put themselves in: They’ve been so busy catering to a narrow conservative base, to single-issue voters who blindly vote for gun control or against abortion, while pursuing an ideological agenda that does not command a majority, that they’ve lost any way to appeal to independents, swing Democrats or even many moderate Republicans.
Run, Michelle, run.
Perhaps, as with the Palin phenomenon, the tea party syndrome and the ideological purity of DeMint will play itself out in time for Romney to get the full backing of his party. Then, if the economy tanks again or some other mishap strikes the nation, a Republican ticket might have a chance in 2012. In the meantime, though, the betting seems to be on a dark horse with no name. Understandably, nobody seems to be in a hurry to be the Bob Dole or Walter Mondale of this generation and face a sure loss in the 2012 general election. The Republicans may settle on a dark horse, but whoever they pick is likely to be a sacrificial lamb.
Run, Sarah, run.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Leftie attacks Koch brothers
At the forefront of the movement [to 'out' the Koch Brothers as the bankers of the Tea Party] is the unlikely figure of Hollywood director Robert Greenwald, 65, who brought the world the Olivia Newton-John dance movie Xanadu. Greenwald reinvented himself as a leftwing documentary maker, and has his focus on the Koch brothers. His Brave New Foundation group organised the Lincoln Centre film show.
"The least we can do is ring their doorbell. What they are doing is hurting people's lives. Ideology has consequences."
Their money helped start Americans For Prosperity, a Tea Party-linked organisation that has campaigned vociferously against Barack Obama's healthcare reforms. It admitted helping to organise anti-union moves by the controversial Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, which led to some of the largest protests in recent American history.
The supposed grassroots movement is not that, at all, but an elite-financed political opposition movement aimed at undercutting the working and middle classes for the benefit of the wealthy, ironically using to disaffected working and middle class individuals by appealingto their fears and hates.
The Kochs have also given millions to thinktanks and groups that fight environmental legislation, especially to oppose the scientific consensus on global warming and try to lift regulations on air pollution and potentially dangerous chemicals. They believe in drastically cutting the role of government and slashing benefits such as social security.
And Larry Kudlow and his ilk support the ideology, wrapping it in the mantle of Reaganism, a failed set of political and economic tenets that remain as an ideological lair of the right wing.
The Kochs share the Tea Party view that Obama is a threat to the American way of life. Last week David Koch made a rare comment to a reporter from New York magazine, calling Obama "a hardcore socialist". "He's marvellous at pretending to be something other than that, but that is what I believe he truly is, a hardcore socialist. He's scary to me," he added.
Obama is the same sort of socialist as FDR: a conservative liberal seeking to change capitalism only gradually and in a very limited way, to smooth out a few rough edges.
There is nothing illegal about the Kochs' political activities. Greenwald concedes they have every right to fund whatever organisations they like.
Especially not with the assent of the Roberts Supreme Court.
Some groups have said however that their business practices are sometimes the opposite of their public campaigns. A non-partisan Washington watchdog group, the Centre for Public Integrity, reported last month that Koch Industries' ethanol business enjoys high incomes thanks to government subsidies, despite their disapproval of such policies. Equally, while they oppose a cap-and-trade system in the US to control carbon emissions, the trading arm of Koch Industries makes millions in Europe from such a system.
So much for ideological purity.
"The least we can do is ring their doorbell. What they are doing is hurting people's lives. Ideology has consequences."
Their money helped start Americans For Prosperity, a Tea Party-linked organisation that has campaigned vociferously against Barack Obama's healthcare reforms. It admitted helping to organise anti-union moves by the controversial Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, which led to some of the largest protests in recent American history.
The supposed grassroots movement is not that, at all, but an elite-financed political opposition movement aimed at undercutting the working and middle classes for the benefit of the wealthy, ironically using to disaffected working and middle class individuals by appealingto their fears and hates.
The Kochs have also given millions to thinktanks and groups that fight environmental legislation, especially to oppose the scientific consensus on global warming and try to lift regulations on air pollution and potentially dangerous chemicals. They believe in drastically cutting the role of government and slashing benefits such as social security.
And Larry Kudlow and his ilk support the ideology, wrapping it in the mantle of Reaganism, a failed set of political and economic tenets that remain as an ideological lair of the right wing.
The Kochs share the Tea Party view that Obama is a threat to the American way of life. Last week David Koch made a rare comment to a reporter from New York magazine, calling Obama "a hardcore socialist". "He's marvellous at pretending to be something other than that, but that is what I believe he truly is, a hardcore socialist. He's scary to me," he added.
Obama is the same sort of socialist as FDR: a conservative liberal seeking to change capitalism only gradually and in a very limited way, to smooth out a few rough edges.
There is nothing illegal about the Kochs' political activities. Greenwald concedes they have every right to fund whatever organisations they like.
Especially not with the assent of the Roberts Supreme Court.
Some groups have said however that their business practices are sometimes the opposite of their public campaigns. A non-partisan Washington watchdog group, the Centre for Public Integrity, reported last month that Koch Industries' ethanol business enjoys high incomes thanks to government subsidies, despite their disapproval of such policies. Equally, while they oppose a cap-and-trade system in the US to control carbon emissions, the trading arm of Koch Industries makes millions in Europe from such a system.
So much for ideological purity.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
White supremacy
Julie Platner for the New York Times - “I want a white society,” said Jeff Hall, at his home April 30, the day before he was shot to death. By his own son, the idiot.
“I want a white society,” Mr. Hall said. “I believe in secession. I believe in giving my life for secession.” What he could never have expected was that his death might come at the hand of his son, whom he was steeping in his beliefs of white supremacy and its obsessions with weapons, racist speech and Nazi regalia.
Lest we get complacent
Concerns are growing on Fox News that despite having managed to eliminate Osama bin Laden, the Obama administration's soft approach to terrorism is endangering America's future.
And Glenn Beck was concerned about the failure of the American education system to teach young people proper values (view clip) – when he learned that upon hearing of Osama bin Laden's death last week, the most searched questions on Google by under-24 year olds were: "who's that?" "why did they kill him?" and "why does it matter?" Beck fears that our schools today are failing young people who are having their heads filled with crazy notions about climate change and how many orangutans are left on the planet, instead of what is really important – like the death of a terrorist.
It's good to know these bozos are keeping their eyes open, making sure the President doesn't fall asleep at the switch.
And Glenn Beck was concerned about the failure of the American education system to teach young people proper values (view clip) – when he learned that upon hearing of Osama bin Laden's death last week, the most searched questions on Google by under-24 year olds were: "who's that?" "why did they kill him?" and "why does it matter?" Beck fears that our schools today are failing young people who are having their heads filled with crazy notions about climate change and how many orangutans are left on the planet, instead of what is really important – like the death of a terrorist.
It's good to know these bozos are keeping their eyes open, making sure the President doesn't fall asleep at the switch.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Newt's hypocrisy
Today, Ms. Bisek is Mrs. Gingrich, married for 11 years, but perhaps best remembered for the six-year affair that contributed to her husband’s political downfall. His critics cast Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, as a hypocrite who sought to impeach a president over infidelity while engaging in it himself with Ms. Bisek, who was a Congressional aide.
Can't wait to hear his first foray into family values.
As he prepares for a Republican presidential primary run — he said Monday that he would formally declare his intentions on Wednesday — Mr. Gingrich is presenting himself as a family man who has embraced Catholicism and found God, with his wife as a kind of character witness. Depending on one’s point of view, she is a reminder of his complicated past, or his secret political weapon.
What is the equivalent for death-bed conversion?
Can't wait to hear his first foray into family values.
As he prepares for a Republican presidential primary run — he said Monday that he would formally declare his intentions on Wednesday — Mr. Gingrich is presenting himself as a family man who has embraced Catholicism and found God, with his wife as a kind of character witness. Depending on one’s point of view, she is a reminder of his complicated past, or his secret political weapon.
What is the equivalent for death-bed conversion?
Saturday, May 7, 2011
The heart and the fist
This book is mentioned in an article that appears today in the Journal.
The men who conducted the assault on bin Laden's compound are part of a proud tradition of service that traces its roots back to the Underwater Demolition Teams that cleared the beaches at Normandy. The SEAL teams themselves were born on Jan. 1, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy commissioned a new force of elite commandos that could operate from the sea, air and land (hence the acronym, SEALs). Though SEALs remain the nation's elite maritime special operations force, part of what Kennedy wanted and needed from them—and what the nation still asks of SEALs—is that they be a flexible force, capable of operating in any environment.
Targets vary, but the objective of the planning is always the same: accomplish the mission and bring everyone home alive.
Over time, our picture of the al Qaeda network grew more complete. More and more terrorists were revealed, and the targets became so numerous that other forces had to be recruited to take them down. I had once imagined—probably based on watching bad movies about cops battling the mafia—that somewhere we would find a hierarchical chart of al Qaeda with bin Laden sitting at the top and pictures of men like this sniper near the bottom of a pyramid. In fact, no such clear picture existed, and every piece of new information seemed to offer a different way of interpreting what we thought we knew.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Curious Donald
My opinion is that Trump is a blowhard, a publicity hound, and pathetic. But one should never underestimate the imbecility of popular opinion (look at Michelle Bachman's fund-raising prowess, and add Sarah Palin).
Trump’s overweening self-confidence is so towering, if you’ll pardon the pun, that he even makes the ego-driven politicians contemplating a presidential run look humble by comparison. But the ability of a putative billionaire to manipulate the press and lead us all around by the nose tells us a lot about running for president of the United States in the 21st century.
Didn't start with the 1960 televised debates?
It is primarily the ideology-driven Republican Party and its Supreme Court majority that has removed any semblance of fair play in what is supposed to be a democratic process and created a one dollar-one vote environment. Presumably, the GOP will rally around one candidate that all the corporations and banks and hedge fund managers can attempt to catapult into office. Maybe it will be Trump, but it might be Mitt Romney, or Mike Huckabee, or some other candidate willing to represent the moneyed interests in the White House.
Not to extol the purity of the Democratic party.
• Why do we have no meaningful financial reform? Why are the banks and, in many cases, the very same chief executives who created the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, robbed retirees of their savings, drove homeowners out of their homes, and left millions unemployed now bigger and richer than ever?
No one has gone to jail, but plenty have lost jobs and homes.
• Why do consumers, who patently need greater legal protection against the predations of unscrupulous financial institutions, still have no Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
And why do Republicans oppose such a Bureau? They call it anti-competitive, government meddling, even socialist.
• Why does one of our major political parties – the one that is responsible for creating the biggest deficits and debts in our history – pretend it wants to rein in those deficits when all it really wants to do is reduce taxes for the rich, regardless of how high that pushes the deficit?
One can lie to some of the people all of the time.
The influence of money – particularly corporate money – has become so pervasive and brazen in our political system that we would call it rampant corruption if we observed this phenomenon in another country. Here we go by the euphemism of “campaign finance.
Precisely.
Obama and the Democrats are just as much caught up in this web of corruption as the Republicans. Not all of the billion dollars Obama will spend in getting reelected, and probably not even the bulk of it, will come from individual small donors. After all, keeping financial reform so insipid required the active participation of the administration and the Democratic majorities in Congress.
So you’re Donald Trump – you’re smart, you’re rich, you love being in the spotlight. Why not run for president, at least for a little while? You can’t buy advertising that good.
Trump’s overweening self-confidence is so towering, if you’ll pardon the pun, that he even makes the ego-driven politicians contemplating a presidential run look humble by comparison. But the ability of a putative billionaire to manipulate the press and lead us all around by the nose tells us a lot about running for president of the United States in the 21st century.
Didn't start with the 1960 televised debates?
It is primarily the ideology-driven Republican Party and its Supreme Court majority that has removed any semblance of fair play in what is supposed to be a democratic process and created a one dollar-one vote environment. Presumably, the GOP will rally around one candidate that all the corporations and banks and hedge fund managers can attempt to catapult into office. Maybe it will be Trump, but it might be Mitt Romney, or Mike Huckabee, or some other candidate willing to represent the moneyed interests in the White House.
Not to extol the purity of the Democratic party.
• Why do we have no meaningful financial reform? Why are the banks and, in many cases, the very same chief executives who created the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, robbed retirees of their savings, drove homeowners out of their homes, and left millions unemployed now bigger and richer than ever?
No one has gone to jail, but plenty have lost jobs and homes.
• Why do consumers, who patently need greater legal protection against the predations of unscrupulous financial institutions, still have no Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?
And why do Republicans oppose such a Bureau? They call it anti-competitive, government meddling, even socialist.
• Why does one of our major political parties – the one that is responsible for creating the biggest deficits and debts in our history – pretend it wants to rein in those deficits when all it really wants to do is reduce taxes for the rich, regardless of how high that pushes the deficit?
One can lie to some of the people all of the time.
The influence of money – particularly corporate money – has become so pervasive and brazen in our political system that we would call it rampant corruption if we observed this phenomenon in another country. Here we go by the euphemism of “campaign finance.
Precisely.
Obama and the Democrats are just as much caught up in this web of corruption as the Republicans. Not all of the billion dollars Obama will spend in getting reelected, and probably not even the bulk of it, will come from individual small donors. After all, keeping financial reform so insipid required the active participation of the administration and the Democratic majorities in Congress.
So you’re Donald Trump – you’re smart, you’re rich, you love being in the spotlight. Why not run for president, at least for a little while? You can’t buy advertising that good.
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