"Trailblazer" was supposed to be waging a listening tour of Illinois. Now, this is something you do if you're running for Senate, right? Well, he cancelled that today, and instead is taking "private meetings" with no press access allowed.
That should come as no surprise. After all, he's taking a beating. It might be a good idea to duck away from the cameras for a while.
Yeah, lay low and maybe this thing starts to go away. As long as no new disclosures hit the airwares, this should all go away.
The names of lobbying clients that Sen. Roland W. Burris declared to a state legislative panel do not match those on records he filed over the last decade with Illinois and Chicago agencies, a CQ analysis of the records has found.
The discovery comes as Burris, an Illinois Democrat, is fending off calls for his resignation for failing to fully explain his dealings with impeached former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who appointed him to succeed President Obama. The Senate Ethics Committee also is looking into discrepancies in his statements to the Illinois House Impeachment Committee.
Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin , a fellow Illinois Democrat, suggested that the Ethics Committee should also probe Burris’ lobbying activities.
“Every day there are more and more revelations about contacts with Blagojevich advisors, efforts at fundraising and omissions from his list of lobbying clients,” Durbin said in a statement from Turkey, where he is on a congressional trip. “These news reports and the public statements by Roland Burris himself are troubling and raise serious questions which need to be looked at very carefully.”
This is the kind of thing that causes a minor bit of somethin' in the press if its revealed about anybody. It's not really a big deal on its own, but couple it with the allegations already hanging over his head, and...
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] - U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) issued the following statement today on the evolving situation regarding Senator Roland Burris (D-IL):
"When we met with Roland Burris in January, we made it clear that in order for him to be seated in the U.S. Senate he needed to meet two requirements - first, that he submit the proper paperwork certifying his appointment, and second, that he appear before the General Assembly's Impeachment Committee to testify openly, honestly and completely about the nature of his relationship with the former governor, his associates and the circumstances surrounding this appointment."
"We asked him to testify in the impeachment proceedings, not to embarrass Roland Burris, but to give him an opportunity to clear the air regarding this appointment from a tainted governor. Our hope was that he would use that opportunity to assure the people of Illinois and the other members of the United States Senate that he was not involved in any wrongdoing."
"Now the accuracy and completeness of his testimony and affidavits have been called into serious question. Every day there are more and more revelations about contacts with Blagojevich advisors, efforts at fundraising and omissions from his list of lobbying clients. This was not the full disclosure under oath that we asked for."
"These news reports and the public statements by Roland Burris himself are troubling and raise serious questions which need to be looked at very carefully."
"The State's Attorney in Sangamon County is reviewing the affidavit and other materials associated with Senator Burris' testimony to see if criminal charges are warranted and the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee has begun a preliminary investigation into this matter."
"This is the appropriate course of action and I await the outcome of those investigations. The people of Illinois deserve nothing less."
The president announced on Tuesday that he was sending two more brigades plus their support personnel to Afghanistan—thus boosting the U.S. military presence there by half—for two basic reasons: to keep that country from falling apart before its presidential elections this August and to provide a modicum of security, so that the elections can take place.
The White House is conducting a "strategic review" of Afghanistan, scheduled to be completed in 60 days. (The Pentagon's Joint Staff has already submitted its own review, and Gen. David Petraeus' U.S. Central Command is writing one, too. At least one section of the White House's paper will be a review of those reviews.) After that, Obama will decide how to deal with this war in the long term. But if he'd waited for the review before deciding whether to send the two brigades, they wouldn't have arrived in time for the elections.
One of the things Scotty McCellan(aka Puffy McMoonface to you Stephanie Miller fans out there), bemoaned in his book "What Happened" is the culture of the so-called "Permanent Campaign" that's seemed to have taken over politics.
Now, Obama is waging full-on, non-stop assault for his Economic Recovery plan, all four phases of it (Stimulus, Homeowners, Banks, and eventually...Health Care). He's been out of Washington more than he's been in it, signing legislation, holding town halls, driving the Congressional Republicans off the front page, and...more importantly...driving everyone's poll numbers up (including Congressional Democrats, no small feat).
And now, we've got outside groups airing campaign ads...all this when there's no campaign going on.
I understand Puffy's point, but we tried it his way. So...tough [BLEEP]. He who tries it your way goes home four years from now.
And it sure as hell wasn't about his grave, either.
When Harry Reid said, that the Senate would not seat him, I cheered. There quickly appeared an article in Slate.com that backed him up, saying that the Powell Case, the precedent most frequently mentioned in relation of the Burris case did not necessarily apply to the Burris case. Oh man, I loved that. I was so happy.
But then, it was just about the only article out there saying the Senate was right to not seat him. All the others, on the other hand, said the opposite.
Even my dead old Dad was against me. (Yeah, I'm talkin' about you, old man.)
Thus, Roland Burris went before the Illinois Senate.
And thus, Roland Burris may have perjured himself.
During his January 8th Impeachment Testimony, Burris was asked this question:
QUESTION: Did you talk to any members of the governor‘s staff or anyone closely related to the governor including family members or any lobbyists connected with him, including, let me throw out some names, John Harris, Rob Blagojevich, Doug Scofield, Bob Greenleaf, Lon Monk, John Wyma? Did you talk to anyone who is associated with the governor about your desire to seek the appointment prior to the governor‘s arrest?
BURRIS: I talked to some friends about my desire to be appointed. Yes.
As Keith said last night, this was on its nose truthful, but at the same time a little vague, so he was pressed again.
QUESTION: The point is, I was trying to ask did you speak to anyone on the governor‘s staff prior to the governor‘s arrest or any of those individuals or anybody who was closely related to the governor?
BURRIS: I recall having a meeting with Lon Monk about my partner and I trying to get continued business and I did bring it up, it must have been in September, maybe it was in July of ‘08 that, you know, if you are close to the governor let him know that I am certainly interested in the seat.
So, Burris admits to talking to Lon Monk, one of Blagojevich's hacksabout wanting the Senate Seat in September or July of 2008, nice and specific.
The problem was he forgot to mention that he had talked to Rob Blagojevich about the Senate Seat as well. That would be Rob Blagojevich, Governor Rod's Brother, and apparently Chief of Staff (unindicted). The other Chief of Staff, John Harris was indicted and arrested along with the human hair helmet.
Oh, and Rob (not Rod) Blagojevich may have asked him for a contribution in advance of his getting the Senate seat.
Let me illustrate some of the problems this presents.
One, this affidavit is filed a month after Senator Burris's original testimony before the Illinois Senate, and a week after Governor Blagojevich is impeached. The timing couldn't be worse because it makes it look like Burris wanted the seat so bad that he kept his mouth shut (given the pressure put on him by Harry Reid) during the ImpeachmentTestimony, and once his seat was secure, in his mind, he "legally" covered his ass by filing the affidavit. This is what I think actually happened.
And given the gravity of the situation, how exactly does Senator Burris not remember this [BLEEP] when he's asked that question on January 8th? This is where Burris's Legal jeopardy lies.
And is it a coincidence that this all happened on January 8th, Elvis's birthday? You know the Governor is a devoted fan.
Again, everything is timing. Burris could well be innocent of the charges (I doubt it, but hell, you never know), but the people of Illinois and the Senate Ethics Committee have every right to start asking what did the Senator know and when did he know it.
It doesn't help when Burris gives answers like this went pressed:
No. The inconsistencies are coming from you all. The inconsistencies are coming from the press. There are no inconsistencies in my first voluntary affidavit, my testimony before the impeachment committee and no inconsistencies in the second affidavit that I submitted. None whatsoever. Those are factual. That‘s the truth and God knows we shouldn‘t even be here.
This is the answer of a defensive [BLEEP], with no answers. When you have the Law, pound the law. When you have nothing, pound the table.
Look, alledged Senator Burris, like it or not, there are inconsistencies. They may be explainable, but it's going to take a whole lot more than your word at this point.
This is a supposedly safe Senate seat for 2010. Burris shouldn't be running, but everyone in Illinois is acting like he is. The sooner this gets put down, the better for Democrats.
At the same time, a wise Politician, one holding on to some manner of dignity might spare us all this nonsense and resign right now.
But is there anyone from Illinois Government that has shown that kind of dignity recently?
This is about the best bit I've seen from Paul Krugman. I think he was reasonable without being frantic (like I think he's been in his articles in the New York Times). He acknowledges what works ("all the spending looks like good stimulus"), and lists out what needs to go ("the tax cuts range from eh to really terrible").
In the end, it's not a bad bill. But there's not enough meat for Krugman.
Not only is that fair, it's damn good analysis. I wish I'd seen this more from his Conscience of a Liberal blog, where it seemed like his hair was on fire.
A bit late, I know. But hey, it was Valentine's Day and the President's Day Weekend. Add in the Pan African Film Festival, so you could say that this weekend was shall we say busy.
Again, I still like, respect, and will continue to listen to Paul Krugman, but...it's nice to see a little pushback now and again. This one comes from the admittedly conservative Time Magazine. So read, and consider the source.
Obama has been in office for all of three weeks. In that time he has gotten a stimulus package of a size that would have been pretty much unimaginable (except maybe to Krugman) a couple of months ago almost all the way through the legislative process, filled his cabinet and top advisory ranks at dizzying speed but made a few missteps along the way, and has yet to unveil a definitive plan for fixing a banking system embroiled in a once-in-a-century crisis. So yeah, the guy should probably just admit his utter failure and resign right now. Seriously, has the news cycle really sped up so much that a presidency is to be judged on its first three weeks, against a standard that I really don't think any previous White House would have met?
But more to the point that Krugman makes in the paragraph cited above, is the current approach really "reminiscent of Japan in the 1990s"? Japan didn't even begin to attempt a serious cleanup of its banking system until a decade after its real estate bubble burst. We're about a year-and-a-half or two into our financial meltdown in the U.S. Where did Sweden--now everybody's favorite example of how to tackle a banking crisis right (although you read about it here first)--stand two years into its early 1990s financial debacle? Pretty much where we are now, with the economy in a deep recession and a half-baked financial rescue effort that had averted total meltdown but had come nowhere near resolving the banks' problems.
"Basically we did all the same mistakes," said Anders Borg, Sweden's current finance minister (whose pony tail Tim Geithner really ought to think about emulating) at Davos a couple of weeks ago. "In the end, the U.S. and U.K. will probably end up as we did." That is, forcing a sweeping writedown of bad assets and fully nationalizing (albeit only temporarily) a few big banks in the process.
Now I'm all for avoiding mistakes, and for speeding things up on the whole stress-testing-and-nationalization front. But to imply that we're currently moving at a pace similar to that of Japan in the 1990s is nonsense.
Even after the Senate scaled down its version to $838 billion, approved 61-37 Tuesday, the centrists continued to demand more reductions. The likely targets are reducing Obama's "Make Work Pay" tax cut, from $500 a year for most individuals and $1,000 a year for most families, down to $400 and $800 respectively. Other reductions are likely in a $15,000 tax credit for all home purchases in the next year as well as a tax credit for the purchase of new cars, both of which were added to the Senate bill after little debate.
House Democrats have objected to wholesale deletions from their original bill during the Senate debate, but they are likely to see some return of aid to states that their plan priced at $79 billion. The Senate reduced that figure to $39 billion, while it also zeroed out a fund that would finance school construction, another priority for which House Democrats are pushing to restore funds.
Not too long ago, in the waning days of that "other" President, things were bad with Russia...and I mean, bad. Hell, we spent pretty much all of August shaking our fist helplessly at them as they invaded theGeorgian Republic.
And then our new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added an interesting litle kicker. "Gee, of course, if we had help with the Iran-going-nuclear-problem, it'd make this whole missile shield thing go away even faster."
I'm sorry, but does Paul Krugman, esteemed Professor of Economics, Nobel Prize Winner, understand how the Constitution works?
Now, I'm not about to dismiss what Paul Krugman generally has to say. Let me acknowledge something that too many writers are afraid to: SOMEONE WHO IS NOT ME KNOWS MORE ABOUT THE FREAKIN' ECONOMY THAN I DO.
Wow. That wasn't hard.
At the same time, I'm not sure Dr. Krugman knows more about Politics than I do. That's what's been scaring me about his last few columns and blogposts.
Then again, he was a Hillary supporter.
(Sorry Hillary Supporters out there, but I've come to notice that some Hillary supporters out there in the Press and Blogosphere are quicker than most to slam the President when he miffs them for whatever reason. Steve Clemons is another example of this.)
Okay, back to Krugman.
He knows more about the Economy than I do. (Duh.)
He knows more about the Economy than you do. (Double Duh.)
He's right about the size of the Stimulus (hint: it's not big enough).
He's right that Obama got nothing for his outreach to Republicans (hint: they gave him nothing for trying to reach across the aisle).
But whether we like it or not, the Senate Republicans had a right to try and derail this thing.
They're going to fail, and fail miserably…but they had a right.
Would that Democrats had shown the same spine during the Patriot Act debate, or when they were hemming and hawing over Bush's Tax Cuts.
Note: Before we all go hand-in-hand into the insanity of repealing the filibuster, let us remember that one day we won't be in the majority, and that throwing away the minority's power isn't exactly thinking-ahead. Plus, how loud were we all --rightly-- howling when they wanted to take away the filibuster with the Nuclear Option not that long ago??
In his article: The Destructive Center, Paul Krugman doesn't spend two pages eviscerating brain-dead "moderates" like Ben Nelson (D-NE), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) (the people who jammed this compromise down our throats). No instead, he spends his time eviscerating President Obama.
All in all, the centrists’ insistence on comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted will, if reflected in the final bill, lead to substantially lower employment and substantially more suffering.
But how did this happen? I blame President Obama’s belief that he can transcend the partisan divide — a belief that warped his economic strategy.
After all, many people expected Mr. Obama to come out with a really strong stimulus plan, reflecting both the economy’s dire straits and his own electoral mandate.
Instead, however, he offered a plan that was clearly both too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts. Why? Because he wanted the plan to have broad bipartisan support, and believed that it would. Not long ago administration strategists were talking about getting 80 or more votes in the Senate.
But wait! There's more:
So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren’t good.
For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. “Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,” he declared on Saturday, and “the scale and scope of this plan is right.”
No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t.
Your confidence is always appreciated, Professor Krugman.
Dr. Krugman does understand that Legislation originates in the Congress, right? I mean, as much as Obama can offer up suggestions, or even make demands, it's going to start in some poor schmuck Congressman's (or Congresswoman's) hands first, and then get exposed to the rotting open air of the Leglistative process, where we've gone from a few egos, to 535 of them.
But the egos aren't just on Capitol Hill. I think a lot of pundits seem to be suffering from some kind of left-wing variant of George Bush syndrome (also known as My-Way-Or-The-Highway Disease). Wherein everyone with a soapbox declares their economic plan as the only way out, and then follow it up by declaring if his (or her) plan "isn't passed exactly as I have written it, the economy will implode and it'll all be Obama's fault for not listening to me."
Obama campaigned on a promise to change Washington and reach across the aisle. Now suddenly, a lot of people on our side of the aisle seem to be saying "You really didn't mean that, did you?"
The President clearly reached across the aisle as promised. The Republicans slapped him in the face for it. Message received. Obama turned around and started firing back in the last couple of days, culminating in tonight's Presser and the Town Hall in Elkhart, Indiana (a safe McCain district rewarded for their loyalty with %15 Unemployment.)
Krugman's take is only valid if you do not accept what the President was doing was part of a larger strategy.
There is the Banking Strategy, Regulatory Reform, and Health Care Reform.
More importantly, there is Stimulus Parts 1 and 2.
The currently Stimulus Package may be too small for what needs to be accomplished, but ripping the President makes sense only if you assume that this is the only Stimulus package we need this year.
Back on January 5th, Richard Wolffe of Newsweek posited that very notion on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
(Richard's part begins about 2:47 into the video, but his part about a second stimulus begins about 5:58 into the video).
But at the same time, believe it or not, there was a warning of the dangers of too much stimulus.
Under current conditions, however, it's much better to err on the side of doing too much than on the side of doing too little. The risk, if the stimulus plan turns out to be more than needed, is that the economy might overheat, leading to inflation…
Now, to be fair, he said more than that, and that certainly wasn't the crux of his argument. He was, and remains, afraid that any Stimulus Shortfall won't be made up by the Fed or anybody else.
Clearly, someone in the Obama Administration is also afraid of the Economy overheating, and leading to inflation (I am SO learning this on the fly), so why not break the Stimulus into two parts?
The overall strategy, I think, was to have a big, broad, bi-partisan bill come out early on, get signed; and then see what happens. With the size of the Stimulus Package we're talking now, the Economy would start to get a little better, but at the same time, not be totally on the road to recovery. Thus, Obama would turn to the Congress and say we need more, and while some bellicose Republicans would throw up their arms in the air (like they just don't care…'cause they don't), but by then they would have already invested too much in the Stimulus to let it fail.
Clearly, that's not going to happen now.
But it's going to be interesting. A second round of stimulus is clearly going to be a harder sell than the first. But there are tricks (of the dirty underhanded partisan kind) that can get around that. Attaching said Stimulus II to the Defense Appropriations Bill comes right to mind.
I'm not 100% sure how Banking Reform and Regulatory Reform fit within the Congress? Does Obama have to do to them, or is he going to make sweeping changes to the way they do business without them?
And then there's Health Care Reform. I really want to see what happens with that one. We've had the Republicans freaking out over the concept of Stimulus. I've long assumed that the Health Care debate was going to be one of the Senate's uglier chapters.
But if you see…night after night…day after day…of Republicans on the T.V., arguing against Health Care the way they've argued against the Stimulus Package?
"Now I'm not going to tell you that this bill is perfect. It isn't. But it is the right size, the right scope, and has the right priorities to create jobs that will jumpstart our economy and transform it for the twenty-first century.
I also can't tell you with one hundred percent certainty that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope. But I can tell you with complete confidence that endless delay or paralysis in Washington in the face of this crisis will bring only deepening disaster.
We've had a good debate. Now it's time to act. That's why I am calling on Congress to pass this bill immediately. Folks here in Elkhart and across America need help right now, and they can't afford to keep on waiting for folks in Washington to get this done."
I want to start by thanking Ed for coming here today and sharing his family's story with all of us.
You know, we tend to take the measure of the economic crisis we face in numbers and statistics. But when we say we've lost 3.6 million jobs since this recession began - nearly 600,000 in the past month alone; when we say that this area has lost jobs faster than anywhere else in America, with an unemployment rate over 15 percent; when we talk about layoffs at companies like Monaco Coach, Keystone RV, and Pilgrim International - companies that have sustained this community for years - we're talking about Ed Neufeldt and people like him all across this country.
We're talking about folks who've lost their livelihood and don't know what will take its place. Parents who've lost their health care and lie awake nights praying the kids don't get sick. Families who've lost the home that was their corner of the American dream. Young people who put that college acceptance letter back in the envelope because they just can't afford it.
That's what those numbers and statistics mean. That is the true measure of this economic crisis. Those are the stories I heard when I came here to Elkhart six months ago and that I have carried with me every day since.
I promised you back then that if elected President, I would do everything I could to help this community recover. And that's why I've come back today - to tell you how I intend to keep that promise.
The situation we face could not be more serious. We have inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression. Economists from across the spectrum have warned that if we don't act immediately, millions more jobs will be lost, and national unemployment rates will approach double digits. More people will lose their homes and their health care. And our nation will sink into a crisis that, at some point, we may be unable to reverse.
So we can no longer afford to wait and see and hope for the best. We can no longer posture and bicker and resort to the same failed ideas that got us into this mess in the first place - and that the American people rejected at the polls this past November. You didn't send us to Washington because you were hoping for more of the same. You sent us there with a mandate for change, and the expectation that we would act quickly and boldly to carry it out - and that is exactly what I intend to do as President of the United States.
That is why I put forth a Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that is now before Congress. At its core is a very simple idea: to put Americans back to work doing the work America needs done.
The plan will save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years. But not just any jobs - jobs that meet the needs we've neglected for far too long and lay the groundwork for long-term economic growth: jobs fixing our schools; computerizing medical records to save costs and save lives; repairing our infrastructure; and investing in renewable energy to help us move toward energy independence. The plan also calls for immediate tax relief for 95 percent of American workers.
Now I know that some of you might be thinking, well that all sounds good, but when are we going to see any of that here in Elkhart? What does all that mean for our families and our community? Those are exactly the kind of questions you should be asking of your President and your government, and today, I want to provide some answers - and I want to be as specific as I can.
First, this plan will provide for extended unemployment insurance, health care and other assistance for workers and families who have lost their jobs in this recession.
That will mean an additional $100 per month in unemployment benefits to more than 450,000 Indiana workers, extended unemployment benefits for another 89,000 folks who've been laid off and can't find work, and job training assistance to help more than 51,000 people here get back on their feet.
That is not only our moral responsibility - to lend a helping hand to our fellow Americans in times of emergency - but it also makes good economic sense. If you don't have money, you can't spend it. And if people don't spend, our economy will continue to decline.
For that same reason, the plan includes badly needed tax relief for middle class workers and families. The middle class is under siege, and we need to give you more of the money you've earned, so you can spend it and pay your bills. Under our plan, individuals get $500 - families, $1,000 - providing relief for nearly 2.5 million workers and their families here in Indiana.
The plan will also provide a partially refundable $2,500 per-student tax credit to help 76,000 Hoosier families send their kids to college. This will benefit your household budgets in the short run, and will benefit America in the long run.
But providing tax relief, and college assistance and help to folks who've lost their jobs is not enough. A real recovery plan helps create more jobs and put people back to work.
That's why, between the investments our plan makes - and the tax relief for small businesses it provides - we'll create or save nearly 80,000 badly needed jobs for Indiana in the next two years. Now, you may have heard some of the critics of our plan saying that it would create mostly government jobs. That's simply not true. More than 90 percent of these jobs will be in the private sector. More than 90 percent.
But it's not just the jobs that will benefit Indiana and the rest of America. It's the work people will be doing: Rebuilding our roads, bridges, dams and levees. Roads like US 31 here in Indiana that Hoosiers count on, and that connect small towns and rural communities to opportunities for economic growth. And I know that a new overpass downtown would make a big difference for businesses and families right here in Elkhart.
We'll also put people to work rebuilding our schools so all our kids can have the world-class classrooms, labs and libraries they need to compete in today's global economy.
Investing in clean alternative sources of energy and the electric grid we need to transport it from coast to coast, helping make Indiana an energy-producing state, not just an energy-consuming state. Weatherizing homes across this state, and installing state of the art equipment to help you control your energy costs.
Building new high-speed broadband lines, reaching schools and small businesses in rural Indiana so they can connect and compete with their counterparts in any city in any country in the world.
And there is much, much more.
Now I'm not going to tell you that this bill is perfect. It isn't. But it is the right size, the right scope, and has the right priorities to create jobs that will jumpstart our economy and transform it for the twenty-first century.
I also can't tell you with one hundred percent certainty that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope. But I can tell you with complete confidence that endless delay or paralysis in Washington in the face of this crisis will bring only deepening disaster.
We've had a good debate. Now it's time to act. That's why I am calling on Congress to pass this bill immediately. Folks here in Elkhart and across America need help right now, and they can't afford to keep on waiting for folks in Washington to get this done.
We know that even with this plan, the road ahead won't be easy. This crisis has been a long time in the making, and we know that we cannot turn it around overnight. Recovery will likely be measured in years, not weeks or months. But we also know that our economy will be stronger for generations to come if we commit ourselves to the work that needs to be done today. And being here in Elkhart, I am more confident than ever before that we will get where we need to be.
Because while I know people are struggling, I also know that folks here are good workers and good neighbors who step up, help each other out, and make sacrifices when times are tough. I know that all folks here are asking for is a chance to work hard - and to have that work translate into a decent life for you and your family.
So I know you all are doing your part out here - and I think it's about time the government did its part too. That's what the recovery plan before Congress is about. And that is why I hope Congress passes it as soon as humanly possible, so we can get to work creating jobs, helping families and turning our economy around.
Thank you, and I'd now like to open this up for questions.
Even though the new President has bent over backwards to be bipartisan, even at the risk of pissing off his own base, he's done so...and you've slapped him in the face for it.
If Stimulus goes down, what incentive is there for the Obama Administration not to declare all out war on the Bush Administration? What's to stop the Justice Department? More importantly (and constitutionally, since its their Stimulus Bill you're pissing on) what's to stop the House?
It's the old Washington saying, the enemy isn't the other party, it's the Senate.
If I were my Republican friends, I'd think long and hard about this.
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT TO DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY STAFF
U.S. Department of Energy Washington, D.C.
12:12 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much. Well, it is a thrill to be here. Thank you, Secretary Chu, for bringing your experience and expertise to this new role. And thanks to all of you who have done so much on behalf of the country each and every day here at the department. You know, your mission is so important, and it's only going to grow as we transform the ways we produce energy and use energy for the sake of our environment, for the sake of our security, and for the sake of our economy.
As we are meeting, in the halls of Congress just down the street from here, there's a debate going on about the plan I've proposed, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.
This isn't some abstract debate. Last week, we learned that many of America's largest corporations are planning to lay off tens of thousands of workers. Today we learned that last week, the number of new unemployment claims jumped to 626,000. Tomorrow, we're expecting another dismal jobs report on top of the 2.6 million jobs that we lost last year. We've lost half a million jobs each month for the last two months.
Now, I believe that legislation of such magnitude as has been proposed deserves the scrutiny that it has received over the last month. I think that's a good thing. That's the way democracy is supposed to work. But these numbers that we're seeing are sending an unmistakable message -- and so are the American people. The time for talk is over. The time for action is now, because we know that if we do not act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse. Crisis could turn into catastrophe for families and businesses across the country.
And I refuse to let that happen. We can't delay and we can't go back to the same worn-out ideas that led us here in the first place. In the last few days, we've seen proposals arise from some in Congress that you may not have read but you'd be very familiar with because you've been hearing them for the last 10 years, maybe longer. They're rooted in the idea that tax cuts alone can solve all our problems; that government doesn't have a role to play; that half-measures and tinkering are somehow enough; that we can afford to ignore our most fundamental economic challenges -- the crushing cost of health care, the inadequate state of so many of our schools, our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.
So let me be clear: Those ideas have been tested, and they have failed. They've taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars, and they've brought our economy to a halt. And that's precisely what the election we just had was all about. The American people have rendered their judgment. And now is the time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action.
Just as past generations of Americans have done in trying times, we can and we must turn this moment of challenge into one of opportunity. The plan I've proposed has at its core a simple idea: Let's put Americans to work doing the work that America needs to be done.
This plan will save or create over 3 million jobs -- almost all of them in the private sector.
This plan will put people to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, our dangerous -- dangerously deficient dams and levees.
This plan will put people to work modernizing our health care system, not only saving us billions of dollars, but countless lives.
This plan will put people to work renovating more than 10,000 schools, giving millions of children the chance to learn in 21st century classrooms, libraries and labs -- and to all the scientists in the room today, you know what that means for America's future.
This plan will provide sensible tax relief for the struggling middle class, unemployment insurance and continuing health care coverage for those who've lost their jobs, and it will help prevent our states and local communities from laying off firefighters and teachers and police.
And finally, this plan will begin to end the tyranny of oil in our time.
After decades of dragging our feet, this plan will finally spark the creation of a clean energy industry that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next few years, manufacturing wind turbines and solar cells, for example -- millions more after that. These jobs and these investments will double our capacity to generate renewable energy over the next few years.
We'll fund a better, smarter electricity grid and train workers to build it -- a grid that will help us ship wind and solar power from one end of this country to another. Think about it. The grid that powers the tools of modern life -- computers, appliances, even BlackBerrys -- (laughter) -- looks largely the same as it did half a century ago. Just these first steps towards modernizing the way we distribute electricity could reduce consumption by 2 to 4 percent.
We'll also lead a revolution in energy efficiency, modernizing more than 75 percent of federal buildings and improving the efficiency of more than 2 million American homes. This will not only create jobs, it will cut the federal energy bill by a third and save taxpayers $2 billion each year and save Americans billions of dollars more on their utility bills.
In fact, as part of this effort, today I've signed a presidential memorandum requesting that the Department of Energy set new efficiency standards for common household appliances. This will save consumers money, this will spur innovation, and this will conserve tremendous amounts of energy. We'll save through these simple steps over the next 30 years the amount of energy produced over a two-year period by all the coal-fired power plants in America.
And through investments in our mass transit system to boost capacity, in our roads to reduce congestion, and in technologies that will accelerate the development of innovations like plug-in hybrid vehicles, we'll be making a significant down payment on a cleaner and more energy independent future.
Now, I read the other day that critics of this plan ridiculed our notion that we should use part of the money to modernize the entire fleet of federal vehicles to take advantage of state of the art fuel efficiency. This is what they call pork. You know the truth. It will not only save the government significant money over time, it will not only create manufacturing jobs for folks who are making these cars, it will set a standard for private industry to match. And so when you hear these attacks deriding something of such obvious importance as this, you have to ask yourself -- are these folks serious? Is it any wonder that we haven't had a real energy policy in this country?
For the last few years, I've talked about these issues with Americans from one end of this country to another. And Washington may not be ready to get serious about energy independence, but I am. And so are you. And so are the American people.
Inaction is not an option that is acceptable to me and it's certainly not acceptable to the American people -- not on energy, not on the economy, not at this critical moment.
So I am calling on all the members of Congress -- Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate -- to rise to this moment. No plan is perfect. There have been constructive changes made to this one over the last several weeks. I would love to see additional improvements today. But the scale and the scope of this plan is the right one. Our approach to energy is the right one. It's what America needs right now, and we need to move forward today. We can't keep on having the same old arguments over and over again that lead us to the exact same spot -- where we are wasting previous energy, we're not creating jobs, we're failing to compete in the global economy, and we end up bickering at a time when the economy urgently needs action.
I thank all of you for being here, and I'm eager to work with Secretary Chu and all of you as we stand up to meet the challenges of this new century. That's what the American people are looking for. That's what I expect out of Congress. That's what I believe we can deliver to our children and our grandchildren in their future.
Thank you so much, everybody. I appreciate it. Thank you. (Applause.)
President Barack Obama's choice to head the CIA said on Thursday he would support "limited" prosecution of any agents who deliberately violated the law in interrogating terrorism suspects.
Former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta, in Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination, broke with outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden to support a congressional inquiry into the agency's detention and interrogation program launched after the September 11 attacks.
He said the Senate Intelligence Committee would be an appropriate place for an inquiry "to learn lessons from what happened" in the program, and said he would do everything he could to cooperate.
Ahhh, wonderful to hear.
But wait a minute Reuters is European. (Damn you, old Europe!!) Time Magazine, a fine American publication, on the other hand, has a different take entirely called: Panetta: Don't Punish Waterboarding.
CIA Director nominee Leon Panetta says the CIA interrogators who used waterboarding or other harsh techniques against prisoners on the authority of the White House should not be prosecuted.
Panetta told a Senate panel on Thursday that those individuals should not be prosecuted or investigated if they acted pursuant to the law as presented by the attorney general.
See, America the trick is...you gotta keep reading, because Time Magazine eventually says the same thing, despite its headline; which as you know is written by someone else.
However, Panetta says that if interrogators went beyond the methods that they were told were legal, they should be investigated and prosecuted.
The Bush White House approved CIA waterboarding of three prisoners in 2002 and 2003. The CIA banned the practice internally in 2006.
President Barack Obama has prohibited harsh interrogation techniques.
For the record, that's whole Time article.
But before we go cheering Reuters, they loop back as well:
Panetta said he considered "waterboarding" to be torture, but did not support prosecuting agents who relied on high-level legal guidance allowing such techniques.
But at the same time...
However, "if there were those who deliberately violated the law, and deliberately took actions which were above and beyond the standards presented to them, then obviously in those limited cases there should be prosecution," he said.
This is all good, but the truth of what's going to happen probably lies somewhere in between Reuters and Time. I bet Panetta wouldn't mind prosecuting some of his guys, if for no other reason than to get them to squeal on the big fish: Rummy, Cheney and the unemployable Gonzalez. But remember, he's not a prosecutor. He also doesn't want to start a rebellion on his first day at Langley.
The best strategy is to punt the thing to Congress, and let them do the dirty (and constitutionally mandated) work.
But if there's one thing to bear in mind, that did put me in a bit of a cold sweat, it's this paragraph from the Reuters article:
Panetta said he would if necessary ask Obama to allow harsher interrogations than those covered by the Army Field Manual, which the president last month set as the government standard. The manual bans techniques such as waterboarding.
"I would not hesitate," to seek broader interrogation authority, Panetta said, adding "I think that this president would do nothing that would violate the laws that are in place."
He promised to tell Congress if Obama were to authorize a departure from standards the president imposed last month.
So...the President might go back to torture, but he'll warn us first?
I don't see how that stands with "this president would do nothing that would violate the laws that are in place." Methinks (mehopes) this is a way to placate the Republicans on the panel.
From the Washington Post. There's more, but this the good stuff...
In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.
I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. They know that we have tried it those ways for too long. And because we have, our health-care costs still rise faster than inflation. Our dependence on foreign oil still threatens our economy and our security. Our children still study in schools that put them at a disadvantage. We've seen the tragic consequences when our bridges crumble and our levees fail.
Every day, our economy gets sicker -- and the time for a remedy that puts Americans back to work, jump-starts our economy and invests in lasting growth is now.
Now is the time to protect health insurance for the more than 8 million Americans at risk of losing their coverage and to computerize the health-care records of every American within five years, saving billions of dollars and countless lives in the process.
Now is the time to save billions by making 2 million homes and 75 percent of federal buildings more energy-efficient, and to double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy within three years.
Now is the time to give our children every advantage they need to compete by upgrading 10,000 schools with state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries and labs; by training our teachers in math and science; and by bringing the dream of a college education within reach for millions of Americans.
And now is the time to create the jobs that remake America for the 21st century by rebuilding aging roads, bridges and levees; designing a smart electrical grid; and connecting every corner of the country to the information superhighway.
These are the actions Americans expect us to take without delay. They're patient enough to know that our economic recovery will be measured in years, not months. But they have no patience for the same old partisan gridlock that stands in the way of action while our economy continues to slide.
So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. We can place good ideas ahead of old ideological battles, and a sense of purpose above the same narrow partisanship. We can act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity and, together, write the next great chapter in our history and meet the test of our time.
President Obama mounted a staunch defense today of the economic stimulus plan now before Congress, chiding critics who want it to focus primarily on tax cuts and asserting that Americans rejected their theories in the November elections.
In an appearance at the White House with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, Obama urged Congress to act quickly on the stimulus package, which has come under attack from Senate Republicans and some Democrats alarmed by its roughly $900 billion price tag.
"We know that even if we do everything we should, this crisis was years in the making, and it will take more than weeks or months to turn things around," Obama said. "But make no mistake: A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession, a less robust recovery, and a more uncertain future. Millions more jobs will be lost. More businesses will be shuttered. More dreams will be deferred."
Oh yeah...
Proof, once again, that the man's read The Defining Moment. Action, and action now.
But my favorite moment, one reflective of the campaign, is his turning toward the Conversative talking point, and finally…finally…counterpunching.
Apparently referring to Republican foes of the stimulus plan, Obama said recent criticisms of it "echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place: the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems, that we can ignore fundamental challenges like energy independence and the high cost of health care, that we can somehow deal with this in a piecemeal fashion and still expect our economy and our country to thrive."
Obama added: "I reject those theories. And so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change."
Translation. I won. Get over it. Lead. Follow...or prepare to get rolled over.
I think the man's scum, but Blago made his best case for going on TV as much as he did during the run up to his Impeachment Trial. He said he had young daughters, and didn't want them to believe he was guilty (about 3:15 in). Okay, even though I think he is guilty, I can live with that. I understand that.
At the same time, he lied about being allowed to call witnesses. As I recall, he wanted to pull down every member of the Obama Administration to embarass them during his trial. The Illinois Senate said no, only witnesses germane to the case would be allowed, and Blagojevich threw a hissy fit, going on all those aforementioned Talk Shows, claiming he wasn't allowed any witnesses at all.
The rules do prohibit both House impeachment prosecutors and the governor’s lawyers from subpoenaing people who “could compromise the U.S. Attorney’s criminal investigation of Rod R. Blagojevich.” But none of the rules prohibit Blagojevich from presenting his side of the story, said Sen. Matt Murphy (R-Palatine), one of the people who drafted them.
"This will be the first time on this blog that I am going to wholeheartedly disagree with Barack Obama. He wants to appoint Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican as Commerce Secretary, theoretically giving the Democrats a 60 seat majority after the Democratic New Hampshire Governor, John Lynch, appoints his replacement. But...
"Senator [Judd] Gregg [R-NH] has said he would not resign his seat in the U.S. Senate if it changed the balance in the Senate," Governor John Lynch said in a statement given to the Union Leader. "Based on my discussions, it is clear the White House and Senate leadership understand this as well."
Hey, I got an idea. Maybe Judd Gregg shoudn't be Commerce Secretary.
This is not a guy or a position that I'm losing a lot of sleep over. Personally, I would have stuck with Richardson, despite his troubles, especially after seeing this.
Added to that, let's face facts, Judd Gregg was about to get his ass kicked in the upcoming Senate Elections in 2010. Why help him or his party out? If he wants the job, then these are the conditions. You take it, I appoint who I want (a Democrat). If that's too much for you, fine. Stay in the Senate, and get removed via the ballot box. Works for me either way.
Blue Hampshire has more about this. (They're a progressive site dealing exclusively with New Hampshire Politics. And no, it's not one I regularly visit.)
But if the Republicans filibuster just one bill out of the Senate after today, I think John Lynch should pay a political price for his decision. While I'm sure there's been pressure from Harry Reid and Barack Obama, the final decision rests with John Lynch, and he should have said hell no...
[Y]ou might think that a loyal opposition would want to pitch in and play a serious role at a time of national peril. Not by singing “Kumbaya” but by collaborating on possible solutions and advancing a policy debate that many Americans’ lives depend on. As Raymond Moley, of F.D.R.’s brain trust, said of the cross-party effort at the harrowing start of that presidency in March 1933, Hoover and Roosevelt acolytes “had forgotten to be Republicans or Democrats” as they urgently tried to rescue their country.
The current G.O.P. acts as if it — and we — have all the time in the world. It kept hoping in vain that the fast-waning Blago sideshow would somehow impale Obama or Rahm Emanuel. It has come perilously close to wishing aloud that a terrorist attack will materialize to discredit Obama’s reversals of Bush policy on torture, military tribunals and Gitmo. The party’s sole consistent ambition is to play petty politics to gum up the works.
If anything, the Republican Congressional leadership seems to be emulating John McCain’s September stunt of “suspending” his campaign to “fix” the Wall Street meltdown. For all his bluster, McCain in the end had no fixes to offer and sat like a pet rock at the White House meeting on the crisis before capitulating to the bailout. His imitators likewise posture in public about their determination to take action, then do nothing while more and more Americans cry for help.
The problem is not that House Republicans gave the stimulus bill zero votes last week. That’s transitory political symbolism, and it had no effect on the outcome. Some of the naysayers will vote for the revised final bill anyway (and claim, Kerry-style, that they were against it before they were for it). The more disturbing problem is that the party has zero leaders and zero ideas. It is as AWOL in this disaster as the Bush administration was during Katrina.
...
The Republicans do have one idea, of course, but it’s hardly fresh: more and bigger tax cuts, particularly for business and the well-off. That’s the sum of their “alternative” stimulus plan. Obama has tried to accommodate this panacea, perhaps to a fault. Mainstream economists in both parties believe that tax cuts in the stimulus package will deliver far less bang for the buck than, say, infrastructure spending. The tax-cut stimulus embraced a year ago by the G.O.P. induced next-to-no consumer spending as Americans merely banked the savings or paid down debt.
