Of Governor Andrew Cuomo, Maureen Dowd writes: Andrew calls himself “an aggressive progressive” and thinks liberals have to reorient themselves toward a government with goals and effective service, rather than big government.
Hear, here. I agree.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Debatin' or sloganeerin'?
A debate requires two opposing points of view, yet the seven Republican hopefuls on the stage, mindful that they must reach the lowest common denominator on policy in order to have a chance in the primaries, were in agreement on virtually everything – especially that Barack Obama must become a one-term president. Part of the problem was the format. CNN’s decision to allow participants only a half-minute to answer turned the whole event into a breathless political version of “Jeopardy,” with the difference that the game show is largely based on fact.
Darrell Delamaide has a better feel for politics than most anyone I know of, and he's a liberal. And he does not accept the theory being bandied about by others that Bachman succeeded in presenting herself well.
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, for instance, blithely stated that the Congressional Budget Office determined that Obama’s healthcare reform would destroy 800,000 jobs. Politifact quickly pointed out that the actual finding by the CBO was that 800,000 people might leave the workforce because they no longer needed to have a job to get affordable healthcare – a totally different kind of number – and the fact-checker branded Bachmann’s statement misleading and “barely true.”
She does not let facts stand in her way. Yet media pundits declared that Bachmann had established her “credibility” as a presidential candidate and was one of the winners of the debate. Bill Maher, whom I usually don't have much use for, last night commented, on AC 360, that given her standards, and where she started from, well, yes, maybe she did do well. But, he asked, compared to what?
Is that any way to choose a president?
Perhaps we get what we deserve.
Darrell Delamaide has a better feel for politics than most anyone I know of, and he's a liberal. And he does not accept the theory being bandied about by others that Bachman succeeded in presenting herself well.
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, for instance, blithely stated that the Congressional Budget Office determined that Obama’s healthcare reform would destroy 800,000 jobs. Politifact quickly pointed out that the actual finding by the CBO was that 800,000 people might leave the workforce because they no longer needed to have a job to get affordable healthcare – a totally different kind of number – and the fact-checker branded Bachmann’s statement misleading and “barely true.”
She does not let facts stand in her way. Yet media pundits declared that Bachmann had established her “credibility” as a presidential candidate and was one of the winners of the debate. Bill Maher, whom I usually don't have much use for, last night commented, on AC 360, that given her standards, and where she started from, well, yes, maybe she did do well. But, he asked, compared to what?
The combination of Republican presidential candidates attacking weakness in the economy and congressional Republicans insisting on budget cuts that will further weaken the economy lends credence to the Democratic suspicion that the whole deficit debate is a cynical ploy by GOP politicians to damage Obama’s reelection chances by sabotaging the economy, regardless of the pain that causes the American people.
Is that any way to choose a president?
Perhaps we get what we deserve.
Shuttle’s end leaves NASA a pension bill
This is a perfect example of governmental inefficiency, to say the least.
The nation’s space agency plans to spend about half a billion dollars next year to replenish the pension fund of the contractor that has supplied thousands of workers to the space shuttle program. The shuttle program accounts for a vast majority of the business of United Space Alliance, originally a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. With the demise of the shuttle program, United Space Alliance will be left without a source of revenue to keep its pension plan afloat. So the company wants to terminate its family of pension plans, covering 11,000 workers and retirees, and continue as a smaller, nimbler concern to compete for other contracts.
United Space Alliance hired the workers, so they were not employees of Boeing or L-M. But United Space was a joint venture of the two companies, so, in effect, they were employees of both. Or none. Infinitely fine legerdemain.
Normally, a company that lost a lifeblood contract would have little choice but to declare bankruptcy and ask the federal insurer, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, to take over its pensions. But that insurer limits benefits, meaning not everyone gets as much as they had been promised. United Space Alliance’s plan also allows participants to take their pensions as a single check and includes retiree health benefits, neither of which would be permitted by the pension insurer.
Not everyone gets as much as promised; that is a familiar phrase: private companies screw their workers, and now states are doing the same. But United Space Alliance workers are going to get corporate welfare, courtesy of NASA.
United Space Alliance, however, has a rare pledge from a different government agency to pay the bill. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration says in its contract with the company that it will cover its pension costs “to the extent they are otherwise allowable, allocable and reasonable.” NASA interprets this to include the cost of terminating its pension plans outside of bankruptcy. The pension fund now has about half the amount needed. The president’s budget proposal for the 2012 fiscal year requests $547.9 million for NASA to provide the rest. That is nearly 3 percent of the agency’s total budget and just about what the Science Mission Directorate at NASA spent last year on all grants and subsidies to study climate change, planetary systems and the origins of life in the universe.
Welfare, or science? Why, welfare, of course.
Although NASA was reimbursing the contractor for the annual pension contributions, it had no say over how the money was invested. United Space Alliance put most of the money into stocks. The backstop will be unusually costly because of market conditions. While United Space Alliance has made its required contributions every year, the fund lost nearly $200 million in the market turmoil of 2008 and 2009. When interest rates are very low, as they have been, the cost of the promises rises rapidly as well, creating a bigger shortfall.
That is inefficiency bordering on corruption: NASA agreed to pay, and had no further say on tax-payer dollars.
The cash infusion is also being readied at a time when some members of Congress are demanding cuts in spending and threatening to block anything that could be construed as a taxpayer bailout. “It’s unfortunate that it’s coming in this fiscal environment,” said Bill Hill, NASA assistant associate administrator for the space shuttle.
Very unfortunate. So are many other things, including States Lean on Public Workers for Bigger Pension Contributions. Very unfortunate.
He said that he hoped Congress would appropriate the money before the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30. If not, he said, NASA will have to divert funds from space-related activities.
Or maybe lay off some financial wizards it employs, the very bozos that worked out such an agreement with United Space Alliance.
The nation’s space agency plans to spend about half a billion dollars next year to replenish the pension fund of the contractor that has supplied thousands of workers to the space shuttle program. The shuttle program accounts for a vast majority of the business of United Space Alliance, originally a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. With the demise of the shuttle program, United Space Alliance will be left without a source of revenue to keep its pension plan afloat. So the company wants to terminate its family of pension plans, covering 11,000 workers and retirees, and continue as a smaller, nimbler concern to compete for other contracts.
United Space Alliance hired the workers, so they were not employees of Boeing or L-M. But United Space was a joint venture of the two companies, so, in effect, they were employees of both. Or none. Infinitely fine legerdemain.
Normally, a company that lost a lifeblood contract would have little choice but to declare bankruptcy and ask the federal insurer, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, to take over its pensions. But that insurer limits benefits, meaning not everyone gets as much as they had been promised. United Space Alliance’s plan also allows participants to take their pensions as a single check and includes retiree health benefits, neither of which would be permitted by the pension insurer.
Not everyone gets as much as promised; that is a familiar phrase: private companies screw their workers, and now states are doing the same. But United Space Alliance workers are going to get corporate welfare, courtesy of NASA.
United Space Alliance, however, has a rare pledge from a different government agency to pay the bill. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration says in its contract with the company that it will cover its pension costs “to the extent they are otherwise allowable, allocable and reasonable.” NASA interprets this to include the cost of terminating its pension plans outside of bankruptcy. The pension fund now has about half the amount needed. The president’s budget proposal for the 2012 fiscal year requests $547.9 million for NASA to provide the rest. That is nearly 3 percent of the agency’s total budget and just about what the Science Mission Directorate at NASA spent last year on all grants and subsidies to study climate change, planetary systems and the origins of life in the universe.
Welfare, or science? Why, welfare, of course.
Although NASA was reimbursing the contractor for the annual pension contributions, it had no say over how the money was invested. United Space Alliance put most of the money into stocks. The backstop will be unusually costly because of market conditions. While United Space Alliance has made its required contributions every year, the fund lost nearly $200 million in the market turmoil of 2008 and 2009. When interest rates are very low, as they have been, the cost of the promises rises rapidly as well, creating a bigger shortfall.
That is inefficiency bordering on corruption: NASA agreed to pay, and had no further say on tax-payer dollars.
The cash infusion is also being readied at a time when some members of Congress are demanding cuts in spending and threatening to block anything that could be construed as a taxpayer bailout. “It’s unfortunate that it’s coming in this fiscal environment,” said Bill Hill, NASA assistant associate administrator for the space shuttle.
Very unfortunate. So are many other things, including States Lean on Public Workers for Bigger Pension Contributions. Very unfortunate.
He said that he hoped Congress would appropriate the money before the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30. If not, he said, NASA will have to divert funds from space-related activities.
Or maybe lay off some financial wizards it employs, the very bozos that worked out such an agreement with United Space Alliance.
Is it war, or not?
War Powers Act Does Not Apply to Libya, Obama Argues - The White House says the act requiring approval by Congress doesn’t apply to the Libya operation because what United States forces are doing there doesn’t amount to “hostilities.”
Than what is it? Is not bombing hostile? It sure ain't a nicety
Than what is it? Is not bombing hostile? It sure ain't a nicety
Republican doves?
Republicans as anti-war candidates challenges belief.
The hawkish consensus on national security that has dominated Republican foreign policy for the last decade is giving way to a more nuanced view, with some presidential candidates expressing a desire to withdraw from Afghanistan as quickly as possible and suggesting that the United States has overreached in Libya. The shift, while incremental so far, appears to mark a separation from a post-Sept. 11 posture in which Republicans were largely united in supporting an aggressive use of American power around the world. A new debate over the costs and benefits of deploying the military reflects the length of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the difficulty of building functional governments and the financial burden at home in a time of extreme fiscal pressure.
The evolution also highlights a renewed streak of isolationism among Republicans, which has been influenced by the rise of the Tea Party movement and a growing sense that the United States can no longer afford to intervene in clashes everywhere.
Not that the Democrats are exempt, but the Republican party has a great tradition of isolationism. Robert Taft a favorite of conservatives in his day was noted for an isolationism so deep-set that he opposed aid to Britain during World War II, and the creation of NATO after the war’s conclusion.” (Justice for all : Earl Warren and the nation he made : Newton, James S., p. 241
The hawkish consensus on national security that has dominated Republican foreign policy for the last decade is giving way to a more nuanced view, with some presidential candidates expressing a desire to withdraw from Afghanistan as quickly as possible and suggesting that the United States has overreached in Libya. The shift, while incremental so far, appears to mark a separation from a post-Sept. 11 posture in which Republicans were largely united in supporting an aggressive use of American power around the world. A new debate over the costs and benefits of deploying the military reflects the length of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the difficulty of building functional governments and the financial burden at home in a time of extreme fiscal pressure.
The evolution also highlights a renewed streak of isolationism among Republicans, which has been influenced by the rise of the Tea Party movement and a growing sense that the United States can no longer afford to intervene in clashes everywhere.
Not that the Democrats are exempt, but the Republican party has a great tradition of isolationism. Robert Taft a favorite of conservatives in his day was noted for an isolationism so deep-set that he opposed aid to Britain during World War II, and the creation of NATO after the war’s conclusion.” (Justice for all : Earl Warren and the nation he made : Newton, James S., p. 241
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
All Nixon crimes now legal
40 years to the date, the full Pentagon Papers are finally being published ... by the Nixon Library. Small irony there. Daniel Ellsberg is still around, of course has a website, and is not short of opinions. SOme of what he has to say is thought-provoking, indeed.
The "declassification" of the Pentagon Papers–exactly forty years late–is basically a non-event. The notion that "only small portions" of the report were released forty years ago is pure hype by the Nixon Library. Nearly all of the study–except for the negotiations volumes, which were mostly declassified over twenty years ago– became available in 1971, between the redacted (censored) Government Printing Office edition and the Senator Gravel edition put out by Beacon Press.
A big tragedy is that the word redacted actually has to be interpreted for readers. It is equivalent to teevee showing subtitles for people who speak English with an accent. How dumb are we getting?
One source of the Papers is the website of a Clemson university history professor, Edwin Moïse.
What that comparison [between the 1971 edition and today's] would newly reveal is the blatant violation of the spirit and letter of the FOIA declassification process by successive administrations (including the present one), in rejecting frequent requests by historians and journalists for complete declassification of the Papers over the years.
Each new President quickly becomes a roadblock for declassification and a fanatic for secrecy.
Our Founders sought to prevent this. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, for the first time in constitutional history, put the decision to go to war (beyond repelling sudden attacks) exclusively in the hands of Congress, not the president. But every president since Harry Truman in Korea–as the Pentagon Papers demonstrated up through LBJ, but beyond them to George W. Bush and Barack Obama–has violated the spirit and even the letter of that section of the Constitution (along with some others) they each swore to preserve, protect and defend.
It certainly is true in Obama's case, as well as the others. US air forces have been involved in offensive military actions for months. Such are otherwise known as war. To pretend they are not is what Truman, Johnson and Bush did.
However, as has been pointed out repeatedly by Glenn Greenwald, and Bruce Ackerman , David Swanson and others, no president has so blatantly violated the constitutional division of war powers as President Obama in his ongoing attack on Libya, without a nod even to the statutory War Powers Act, that post-Pentagon Papers effort by Congress to recapture something of the role assigned exclusively to it by the Constitution.
When Kucinich and others introduced and gained support for a bill to end US military action in Lybia without Congressional sanction, Speaker Boehner covered his flank.
Boehner's amendment -- demanding that Obama more fully brief Congress -- ultimately passed, also with substantial bipartisan support, but most media reports ultimately recognized it for what it was: a joint effort by the leadership of both parties and the White House to sabotage the anti-war efforts of its most liberal and most conservative members.
Some call it bipartisanship; others might call it collusion.
Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.
War on terror? Or on what? Whom? Obama continues the same policies, and deepens them, that prevailed under Bush. Whether he has been coopted, or has chosen to be as conservative (or more) than his predecessor, the fact is that he has and is. Consequently, he has betrayed the trust he asked for and was given by those hoping for change from the prior administration. Yet the fault lies as much with us, who believed, as with him who lied.
The "declassification" of the Pentagon Papers–exactly forty years late–is basically a non-event. The notion that "only small portions" of the report were released forty years ago is pure hype by the Nixon Library. Nearly all of the study–except for the negotiations volumes, which were mostly declassified over twenty years ago– became available in 1971, between the redacted (censored) Government Printing Office edition and the Senator Gravel edition put out by Beacon Press.
A big tragedy is that the word redacted actually has to be interpreted for readers. It is equivalent to teevee showing subtitles for people who speak English with an accent. How dumb are we getting?
One source of the Papers is the website of a Clemson university history professor, Edwin Moïse.
What that comparison [between the 1971 edition and today's] would newly reveal is the blatant violation of the spirit and letter of the FOIA declassification process by successive administrations (including the present one), in rejecting frequent requests by historians and journalists for complete declassification of the Papers over the years.
Each new President quickly becomes a roadblock for declassification and a fanatic for secrecy.
Our Founders sought to prevent this. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, for the first time in constitutional history, put the decision to go to war (beyond repelling sudden attacks) exclusively in the hands of Congress, not the president. But every president since Harry Truman in Korea–as the Pentagon Papers demonstrated up through LBJ, but beyond them to George W. Bush and Barack Obama–has violated the spirit and even the letter of that section of the Constitution (along with some others) they each swore to preserve, protect and defend.
It certainly is true in Obama's case, as well as the others. US air forces have been involved in offensive military actions for months. Such are otherwise known as war. To pretend they are not is what Truman, Johnson and Bush did.
However, as has been pointed out repeatedly by Glenn Greenwald, and Bruce Ackerman , David Swanson and others, no president has so blatantly violated the constitutional division of war powers as President Obama in his ongoing attack on Libya, without a nod even to the statutory War Powers Act, that post-Pentagon Papers effort by Congress to recapture something of the role assigned exclusively to it by the Constitution.
When Kucinich and others introduced and gained support for a bill to end US military action in Lybia without Congressional sanction, Speaker Boehner covered his flank.
Boehner's amendment -- demanding that Obama more fully brief Congress -- ultimately passed, also with substantial bipartisan support, but most media reports ultimately recognized it for what it was: a joint effort by the leadership of both parties and the White House to sabotage the anti-war efforts of its most liberal and most conservative members.
Some call it bipartisanship; others might call it collusion.
Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.
War on terror? Or on what? Whom? Obama continues the same policies, and deepens them, that prevailed under Bush. Whether he has been coopted, or has chosen to be as conservative (or more) than his predecessor, the fact is that he has and is. Consequently, he has betrayed the trust he asked for and was given by those hoping for change from the prior administration. Yet the fault lies as much with us, who believed, as with him who lied.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Don't publish THAT
The government has issued warnings that formaldehyde can cause cancer and that styrene might as well. Formaldehyde, the report says, is found in worrisome quantities in plywood, particle board, mortuaries, and hair salons, while high levels of styrene are found in boats, bathtubs, and plastic cups and plates. The government's Report on Carcinogens said consumers should avoid contact with the materials, but that they probably don't pose a serious risk to most people. The workers who make formaldehyde and styrene products, however, are at greater risk. The report was delayed for several years because of intense lobbying from the chemical industry.
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