Commentary: Obama’s speech will show government isn’t answer

Darrell Delamaide is an unusual commentator: while he clearly has his own politics, he tries to provide analysis, and not just talking points. Case in point, this column.

The measures being previewed (leaked) — extending payroll tax cuts, business tax credits for hiring, patent reform (huh?) — are just so much small ball, which is all that Obama can play now because of political and budget constraints. He’ll detail the plans in a prime-time speech before Congress on Sept. 7, the White House said Wednesday. So Ronald Reagan and the Republicans are right: Given the current state of play, government is definitely not the solution. Republican obstructionism and Democratic timidity over the past 2 1/2 years have seen to that. 

Not sure what that Reagan reference means, but certainly Republican obstructionism and Democratic timidity over the past 2 ½ years have accomplished nearly nothing.

But here’s the real irony: Private business, without the benefit of significant government help, may step up and give the economy enough lift to get Obama re-elected.

Not exactly without government help: the low level of taxation and the effectiveness of lobbyists in tailoring legislation for the benefit of business are of big help.

Historians can bewail the fact that enlightened policies were available that could have ameliorated the situation. But in a climate where widely accepted scientific theories like evolution and global warming are rejected by willfully ignorant politicians, it’s no surprise that Keynesian management of aggregate demand — one obvious solution to our problems — would also be spurned.

When major political candidates speak of doubting the reality of human causes of global warming to audiences who also do not believe in evolution, mature and effective economic policies are not going to be forthcoming.

So we are left with Adam Smith’s world, with its harsh business cycle and merciless treatment of the working class. Fortunately, some of the shock absorbers, built in by Keynes and other enlightened policy makers before the new Dark Ages of economics descended on us, continue to function and shield us from the worst. 

It is amazing to see middle class voters support ideologues who pander to their fears and ignorance while pushing legislation that enriches the already-rich by taking wealth away from all others – or, perhaps, not so amazing.

Science? Just a theory

Rick Perry calls global warming an unproven, costly theory. The Texas governor says scientists have 'manipulated data' to win research dollars. And maybe the earth is flat, in fact.

Without citing his sources, Perry added that the cost of implementing what he called "anti-carbon programs" is billions of dollars: "I don't think, from my perspective, that I want America to be engaged in spending that much money on what is still a scientific theory that hasn't been proven, and from my perspective is more and more being put into question."

O, it gets better.

One of his questioners was Jim Rubens, a Republican from the village of Etna who works as a consultant for the Union of Concerned Scientists. If both "observed scientific data" and the National Academy of Sciences are wrong on the issue, Rubens asked Perry, "doesn't that call into question the entire science discovery process that is the basis for America's status as an advanced technological society?"

That is, if science is hokum, then what does that make the US?

"You may have a point there," Perry quipped, adding that he believed the issue had become politicized. Without citing any specific examples, the Texas governor charged that "there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects."

So, the Guv'ner politicizes the issue, says it has been politicized (which is bad), and it might all be a bunch of nonsense. First he calls the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank a traitor, then backs off slightly, now he calls global warming (and evolution) unproven theories. These are code words to the right wing fringe: all this liberal crap is nothing more than that: crap, and you can count on this good old boy to throw it out, once he get into office.

But the Guv's battles is not just with lefties; he also has a feud with the Bushes and their Bushies.

Promises, promises

Bachmann: If elected, gas prices would fall to less than $2 per gallon Perhaps she can also get the tooth fairy to up her rewards for lost teeth.

McConnell’s message to Obama: Stop pushing your failed economic policies Those would be the ones that Republicans made sure failed, surely.

Perry: Scientists are manipulating data to prove climate change And they would not get to do so in Texas, coz the Guvner would kick their asses.

How dare he?

Tavis Smiley: Obama Is First President In My Career Not To Invite Me To The White House So?

One-Term Presidency?

It was a year and a half ago when President Obama told Diane Sawyer of ABC News in an interview that he would rather be a good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president. Now, coming off one of his worst weeks since taking office, Mr. Obama is nearing a decision on whether he really meant that. Is he willing to try to administer the disagreeable medicine that could help the economy mend over the long term, even if that means damaging his chances for re-election?

Who is kidding whom? He has a reelection committee. His advisers are leaking all over the place, theorizing about the next election, about possible opponents. C'mon, give us a break.

Obama plan: Destroy Romney

Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early-stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee. The dramatic and unabashedly negative turn is the product of political reality. Obama remains personally popular, but pluralities in recent polling disapprove of his handling of his job, and Americans fear the country is on the wrong track. His aides are increasingly resigned to running for reelection in a glum nation. And so the candidate who ran on “hope” in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent.


This is part of the pattern that has emerged during the Obama presidency: blame the other guy. But this could blow up in their face: the candidate who ran on hope can not be the candidate running on a slash-and-burn platform and hope to retain support. He will lose supporters. And while many of those would not vote for Romney, they might well stay away from the presidential election polls, as a means to vote against Obama.

The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obama’s reelection campaign will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in about a dozen interviews, “weird.”

The Obama campaign might well be careful about portraying the other candidate as inauthentic and unprincipled, as Obama increasingly comes across as, yes, inauthentic and unprincipled. Weird? Is that a code word for Mormon?

I'm responsible ... right?

Obama says he inherited economic problems - President Barack Obama said on Monday he inherited many of the country's problems with high debt and deficits when he entered the White House, sounding a theme likely to dominate his 2012 re-election campaign. Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser, where families paid $15,000 to get a picture with him, Obama defended his economic record and noted that problems in Europe were affecting the United States. "We do have a serious problem in terms of debt and deficit, and much of it I inherited," Obama said. The financial crisis, he said, made the problem worse.

But, I'm in charge now, so it is my responsibility, and it is time to stop blaming someone else for the troubles I should be fixing. He might have said something along those lines, but did not. And that is the crux of the matter: it is somebody else's fault, not his, the preasident maintains. But 2½ years into his term, it is time he accepted responsibility.

87% disapprove

In the wake of the debt-ceiling debate, 82 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is doing its job—the highest ever, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. I'd like to hear what the other 18% think.

Washington swaps magic show for vaudeville

The Gang of Six, breathless reporters told us this week, has found a solution that tons of senators in both parties are willing to go along with. It will cut $3.7 trillion from the deficit over the next 10 years while lowering taxes. Wow! How did this group of Democratic and Republican senators do it? Well, for starters they’re going to save $500 billion just by changing the way inflation is calculated. And the rest will be put out to committee — you know, with six-month deadlines and specific targets and such.

Lower the deficit and cut taxes? Perfect. Except for the details: accounting sleight of hand generates half a trillion dollars, and the other three trillion? Figure that out later, of course.

The Gang of Six plan has now replaced the one proposed last week by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to simply abdicate responsibility for the debt ceiling as the favored way for Republicans to get out of the corner they’d painted themselves into.

I considered that proposal unconstitutional: it would give the president the right to change the debt limit, a congressional constitutional duty, so the Congress could avoid having to vote on it. Why not just get rid of the debt limit? Why, that would take away the opportunity for congressional posturing and media performance.

We all know how important it is to keep cutting taxes, so that we have more of our own money to spend on the resulting higher costs for health care, education, personal security and all those other needs that most countries take care of by, well, paying taxes.

But, we couldn't do that ... that's, that's ... socialism, that's what that is.

This is what passes for news

as tornadoes ravage the land, as flood waters drown Louisiana, Montana and Vermont, as Congress threatens not to pay America’s creditors and as the economy teeters, “Weiner’s Pickle” as The Daily News phrased it on Thursday, dominates. CNN, ABC and CBS lead broadcasts with it. Fox News is nearly beside itself — a liberal Democrat endangered! — and so offers a Weiner extravaganza.

Fair and balanced.

Pants on fire?

Mitt Romney is at it again: lying, obfuscating, parsing, evading the truth. He has declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, and began (or continued) attacking President Obama.

he blamed the president for high unemployment, rising gasoline prices, falling home values and a soaring national debt.

Rising gasoline prices are products that vaunted free market the Republicans like to give so much lip service to; no president has a direct effect on them. Unemployment and falling home values are more the responsibility of that free market and corporations. No president control them. Ditto for the national debt. Yes, economic policies have an effect, but no a pervasive one.

Mr. Romney made his candidacy official at a family farm, where he invited supporters and media to a “Cookout With Mitt and Ann.” Under clear but windy skies and with tractors and hay bales as a backdrop, Mr. Romney hopes to send the message that he intends to win New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary. The choice of the Bittersweet Farm for his announcement is an interesting one for Mr. Romney, who regularly argues for a smaller federal government that spends less. The rolling green hills of the farm were preserved in recent years in part with $1 million in federal money, according to a recent report in Seacoast Online.

O, Mitt. Republicans love to blame the federal government for almost everything, but never say no to federal money. A smaller federal budget would take away farm subsidies, and losing farm subsidies would make corporate farmers howl in protest.

Mr. Romney made no mention of his potential rivals. Instead, he painted a picture of a country that is in crisis. He said that he “believes in America,” but said it is suffering from the leadership of the current administration. “We look at our country and we know in our hearts that things aren’t right, and they’re not getting better,” he said.

Who doesn't believe in America? Pandering and groveling ain't gonna do it, Mitt.

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?

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.

Conspiracy theories

President Obama released his birth certificate today. However, the move did anything but end the chatter. Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck both said that they think the release today was timed to distract from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s news conference. Beck said, “My theory: this is because Bernanke is speaking today.” And Orly Tatiz, the self-anointed leader of the “birther” movement, says she still has doubts about Obama’s past: “This is not Joe Schmoe. This is a guy sitting in the position of president of the United States…We need to know the answer to all of those questions." Meanwhile, the widow of Dr. David A. Sinclair, the doctor who delivered Obama according to the document, claims to have had no idea that her husband delivered a president. She calls the news “very exciting.”

How 'bout that? Beck and Palin agree.

If he wins ...

The right wing of the Republican Party is jumping all over Trump, scared of his effects and on his popularity. Last night I saw Karl Rove on Greta VanSusteren's show (I was surfing the channels, looking for something to watch, so desperate I even stopped there for a moment), and he was denouncing Trump as a closet liberal. Once, years ago, it seems, Trump wrote a book (wrote it? maybe had it ghost written), in which he called for socialized medicine. So Donald Trump is a Socialist, Canada-style.

Yesterday, a columnist at MarketWatch.com wrote a piece berating the media for giving Doanld Trump too much ink (what is the digital equivalent of newspaper and magazine ink? digits?);  he did entitle it Trump for president? Don’t make me laugh, but his entire column centered on Donald Trump.

Obama eyes entitlements, taxes

In a major fiscal policy address later Wednesday, Obama, to the profound irritation of his critics on the left, is going along with the Republican notion that there have to be further deep cuts in government spending, even though he’s trying to balance it out with revenue increases. A Republican budget put out last week by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan was so radical in its plan to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid that it made the recommendations from Obama’s debt commission — which seemed to have been consigned to the dustbin of history — look mild by comparison. So the president retrieved some of these ideas for his plan to counter the Republicans. Ryan has in all likelihood permanently damaged his credibility — even conservative economists ridiculed his unfounded assumptions, and a Heritage Foundation study used for his rosy economic projections was withdrawn for some remedial work. The bottom line seems to be that economic and fiscal policy that affects the lives and well being of every citizen in this country is being made by people who don’t really know a lot about economics.What we have instead are politicians who seem intent on scoring points.

Perhaps Ryan's Republicans colleagues simply let him walk the plank. Is it too simple to assume politicians are cynical, and will let anything be said, gauge the public reaction, then adjust their position accordingly?

Obama seems less interested in economics than in doing what it takes to win re-election next year. His compromise on the tax cuts at the end of 2010 took the wind out of Republican sails despite their November victories, and whatever gains the GOP wants to notch up from last week’s game of chicken, most people seem to think they blinked first.

Interesting: Ed Schultz, over at msnbc, speaking with Senator Bernie Sanders, charged that the Tea Party  won the first round. And, do we have to wonder that Obama is any different than other politicians in gauging his reelection his top priority?

So now Obama is taking on the debt ceiling and the budget for the next fiscal year, which starts in October. He is giving in on some more spending cuts and envisages some entitlement reform, earning more opprobrium from the left but less resistance from the right, despite all their loud protests. And in the meantime, the line of those Republicans willing to run against him in 2012 seems to be getting shorter and shorter.

Yeah, but Michelle Bachman is in the wings.

Democrats pessimistic about avoiding shutdown

Let the Republicans force a shutdown. If they haven't read the history of what their party did, and suffered for doing, 17 years ago, go ahead, shut 'er down.


“Right now, they look a bit dismal,” Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) said when asked about the prospects of keeping the government running beyond the April 8 deadline. Across Capitol Hill, expectations grew Tuesday that — given the procedural and political obstacles ahead — the parties will fail to reach an agreement, which would prompt a massive government disruption in just a matter of days. And while both sides are already engaged in a sort of blame game in advance of a potential shutdown, they are also bracing for the political blowback.

Who, besides the right wing zealots, are gonna like this?

America is going ...

This item from New York magazine caught my eye; how could it not?

Here is something Newt Gingrich said recently, out loud, in public:

"I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9," Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. "I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

We're absolutely certain that Gingrich will come up with a convoluted explanation for why this all makes perfect sense to anyone with the intellectual capacity of Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich Reductio Ad Absurdum [New Republic]

Oy vay. Secular, atheist and Islamist. We'd better  get to temple, or church, and get working on ... what, exactly?

Left breast? Right?

Perhaps it was inevitable that when Michelle Obama proposed something, Michele Bachmann would be the one to criticize her. The surprise is how many of the reactions crossed the usual political boundaries. On blogs and in interviews, some liberal Democrats found themselves agreeing with Representative Bachmann, a Tea Party celebrity from Minnesota, when she criticized the first lady for a campaign to promote breast-feeding. Some conservatives, meanwhile, stood up for Mrs. Obama for promoting what they said was a healthier choice.

What self-respecting liberal would deign to agree with this wingnut?


Mrs. Obama told reporters this month that she would promote breast-feeding, particularly among black women, as part of her campaign to reduce childhood obesity. The Internal Revenue Service then announced that breast pumps, which can cost several hundred dollars, would be eligible for tax breaks.

Ms. Bachmann lashed out at the campaign on Tuesday on Laura Ingraham’s radio show, saying that it reflected a “hard left” position that “government is the answer to everything.” While noting that she had breast-fed the five children she gave birth to, Ms. Bachmann said, “To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump — You want to talk about nanny state, I think we just got a new definition.”

What about mortgage tax deduction, farm subsidies and  other tax loopholes?

Ms. Bachmann was wrong that Mrs. Obama wants the government to pay for breast pumps; the I.R.S. would simply allow people to deduct breast-feeding expenses if they itemize, or use the pre-tax dollars in their medical savings accounts to pay for pumps. And the federal government is now one of the biggest buyers of baby formula, through its nutritional programs for women and infant children. So giving a tax break for breast-feeding might actually help reduce government spending, as Ms. Bachmann advocates.

But why let facts get in the way?

By Thursday — perhaps, again, inevitably — Sarah Palin had weighed in. “No wonder Michelle Obama is telling everybody, ‘You better breast-feed your baby,’ ” she said at a speech on Long Island. “Yeah, you’d better, because the price of milk is so high right now.”

 Another right wing jerk weighs in: what does the President, or the First Lady, have to do with the price of milk? Price supports are legislated by Congress.

A new chief, an old constitution

Two stories illustrate today's politics: a new Presidential chief of staff changes the tenor of the White House, and the new Republican majority plays games.

Daley to Become Next White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley will bring an outsider’s voice and a business background as the president continues an overhaul of his staff. Commerce Secretary under Bill Clinton, high-ranking JP Morgan executive, brother of retiring Chicago mayor, this is a well-conected individual that gets some plaudits.

Before Preamble, a Textual Dispute Things did not begin auspiciously for the reading of the Constitution from the floor of the House. Exactly why the Constitution needs to be read in the House is unclear, other, that is, than as political theater.

An Annotated Guide to the Constitution