Month: June 2010

Mean Mr Mustard

by digby

Former Senator and current Deficit Commissioner Alan Simpson is an ass. He’s always been an ass. This article is from 1991:

In recent months Alan Simpson, the 60-year-old Republican Senator from Wyoming, has had friends and foes alike wondering when his temper will next take him—and whether it will prove his political undoing. First, there was the Arnett incident: At the height of the Persian Gulf War, Simpson blasted CNN correspondent Peter Arnett for remaining in Baghdad after other journalists had evacuated, calling him an Iraqi “sympathizer” and saying, without foundation, that Arnett’s Vietnamese ex-wife had a brother active in the Vietcong. Next came Simpson’s performance on Nightline during the Clarence Thomas hearings, when he angrily needled National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg for breaking the story of Anita Hill’s sexual harassment charges, questioning both her judgment and her professionalism.

But it was Simpson’s behavior at the Thomas hearings that drew the most flak. He badgered Anita Hill and hinted at, but didn’t produce until after the hearings ended, “stuff coming over the transom about Anita Hill, saying watch out for this woman”—tactics for which he was roundly condemned by women’s groups and in newspaper editorials, including one in the Wyoming Eagle. Says Charles Graves, chairman of the Democratic Party in Simpson’s home state: “It’s all too bad, because I think Alan is really a decent human being inside. He just can’t stand anybody who disagrees with him.”

I remember him in those hearings. Between him and Arlen Specter, it was quite a performance of mean old men. Many people credited that hideous display with being the impetus for 1992s “year of the woman” election. I know I was appalled.

So they’ve dug this mean old creep out of his cushy retirement to help dismantle social security — an appropriate legacy for a curmudgeonly elite like him. And he remains as much a creep as ever, as evidenced by this exchange with Alex Lawson of Social Security Works yesterday:

He’s alarmingly misinformed or simply lying, which means that this commission is both being run by staff and that its preconceived notions are not going to be challenged in any way. But Simpson’s actually done the country a favor by exposing his prejudices and giving us some insight into just how deliberately obtuse they are going to be. It’s a useful heads up.

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Sharon Angle’s Honeymoon In Vegas

by digby

… isn’t going very well:

Overwhelming Feeling Of Creeping Doom

Do yourself a favor and click over to BagNewsNotes and look at Alan Chin’s amazing black and white photos of the Gulf. Be sure to read the commentary.

Here’s one:

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Talking Points Of Many Colors

by digby

Media Matters has been tracking Fox News’ ongoing apologia for BP:

Certainly, you would expect the corporate borg to stick together, so I don’t find that surprising. but there’s more to this. Joe Barton’s infamous apology speech to BP this morning didn’t come out of the blue any more than Bachman’s or Limbaugh’s. Joan Walsh reports that this was an official talking point:

As Alex Pareene just reported in War Room, Barton got the shakedown language from the Republican Study Group, a House GOP conservative caucus that specializes in language demonizing Democrats. Barton may have gone too far by apologizing to Hayward, but these were the Republican talking points for today. Politico reports that RSG chair Tom Price blasted the escrow fund in a statement on Wednesday, saying it was “borne out of this administration’s drive for greater power and control.” He went on: “In an administration that appears not to respect fundamental American principles, it is important to note that there is no legal authority for the president to compel a private company to set up or contribute to an escrow account.”

There is, of course, another dimension to this language and you’d better believe they know it:

Take a look at the Amazon listings with similar themes about black politicians. They all use words like “hustler” “pimp” “scammer” “shakedown artist.” Now you can add the shorthand term “ACORN” to the mix:

Look, the government’s in charge of this. I want to know who’s going to get it. Who’s going to get this money? Union activists? ACORN people? Who’s going to get this money? Let’s keep a sharp eye on who Feinberg gives this money to, because I’m telling you, this is another bailout fund called something else, and we’ll see who gets it. If Obama’s past is prologue — and it is — then this is going to be used as a little miniature slush fund. [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 6/16/10

There are dogwhistle politics involved in this on a number of levels. But when it comes to Obama, you can be sure that the Republicans will sneak race in there somehow. It’s a reflex.

Update: Go here to see many, many examples of how the word “shakedown” has been associated with black politicians and Jesse Jackson in particular. It’s not an accident.

h/t to rp

A Thousand Reasons

by digby

Brad DeLong:

U.S. first-time jobless claims unexpectedly rise, up 12,000 to 472,000 in latest week

I tell you. Writing the history of this episode is going to be next to impossible. “But why didn’t they see?!?” is what the students are all going to ask. And I have no answer…

It is going to be impossible. But I have a feeling it will not be because there is no answer. It will be because there are too many.

I have written before that I’m coming to believe that this must be a function of the time in which we live and a serious systemic dysfunction, rather than any particular issue. The bizarre resemblance to the Iraq war debate in which varying parties in the decision making process offered a variety of unconvincing reasons, some aghast close observers shouted shrilly into the void and the majority of the people got confused and ended up throwing in their lot with whatever group with which they instinctively identified is just too much to chalk up to coincidence. Nobody ever knew the “real” motivations —it all just seemed to happen because certain Very Important and certain Very Serious people decided for varying reasons that it should.

I think the War on the Unemployed (aka the War on the Deficit) is very much like the invasion of Iraq — a senseless, self-destructive, incomprehensible trainwreck that nobody truly understands, but which seems to have a life of its own. It’s tempting to find conspiracies to explain it or seek out some secret motivation behind it all. But I suspect it’s more like a virus that just mutates as necessary as it goes about attacking its host.

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Big Money Boyz Activate Their Robots

by digby

Ohfergawdsake. Really?

The White House is intervening at the last minute to come to the defense of multinational corporations in the unfolding conference committee negotiations over Wall Street reform.

A measure that had been generally agreed to by both the House and Senate, which would have affirmed the SEC’s authority to allow investors to have proxy access to the corporate decision-making process, was stripped by the Senate in conference committee votes on Wednesday and Thursday. Five sources with knowledge of the situation said the White House pushed for the measure to be stripped at the behest of the Business Roundtable. The sources — congressional aides as well as outside advocates — requested anonymity for fear of White House reprisal. A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. [UPDATE: A White House aide tells HuffPost that Jarrett has not contacted anyone on the Hill regarding the proxy issue.]

The White House move pits the administration against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who told Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to stand strong against the effort.

“I met with the Speaker today and she said, ‘Don’t back down. I’ll back you up,'” Frank, the lead House conferee, told HuffPost. “Maxine Waters is very upset, as are CalPERS and others.”

Advocates said that the corporations fought the issue primarily over executive compensation concerns. Given proxy access, investors could rein in executive salaries. The Business Roundtable is a lobby of corporate CEOs.

Valerie Jarrett, a senior White House adviser and Obama confidante, is the administration liaison to the Business Roundtable. Three sources said that Jarrett was behind the effort to strip the provision; the other two were unsure.

Man when the said they’d fix it in conference I guess we know who they were talking to.

Meanwhile, there’s this:

DEM ON DEM VIOLENCE OVER SWIPE FEES – Peter Welch, in a letter to colleagues, does a good ol’ fashioned Fisking of an earlier letter from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, opposing the Durbin-Welch swipe fee amendment that would reduce fees merchants pay on credit cards. The swipe fee fight pits merchants against Wall Street, but the bankers are sending their more popular little cousins to do their lobbying. “They’ve managed, essentially, to enlist our credit unions and our small banks, both of whom I support, to do their bidding. They’re laying low,” Welch tells HuffPost Hill. “And yet the credit unions have been exempted under this legislation, except for three in the whole country, are making the case for the big bank.” Welch found multiple flat-out errors in the Wasserman Schultz letter. With the record corrected, several Democrats have taken the rather unusual action of removing their names from DWS’s original missive. “We have talked to several offices who have been very concerned that they were given something with clear inaccuracies in it, and as a result were getting off the letter,” lobbyist Doug Kantor, who represents the merchants, told HuffPost Hill. “It’s remarkable how you can walk through just about any fact that’s in the letter and it’s demonstrably wrong.” Here’s one of the better ones: Wasserman Schultz: “In the words of Ron Robinson, the convenience store owner who testified at a 2008 House Judiciary Committee hearing, “There isn’t a businessman that does not intend to keep the margin.””

Come on. This is the kind of thing Democrats should be fighting tooth and nail for. The wingnuts have owned the small business constituency for years because these guys face a lot of incomprehensible local regulation and the Republicans act like they feel their pain. Here the Democrats have a chance to be their champions and help them out at a time when they are all struggling and instead they are doing the bidding of a bunch of Big Money Boyz who are far happier when Republicans are in office (although they’re willing to keep the Dems in campaign crack.) What the hell …

Update: And yes, there’s more. Oy vey.

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Worst Case

by digby

I keep hearing this, and I wish that some real geologists and oil experts would either debunk it or confirm it because it’s scaring the hell out of people:

What’s the worst case scenario for the BP oil spill? How about the horrifying possibility of leaks in the pipe below the sea floor—leaks that could open up a “gusher… directly into the oil deposit”? A comment from well-regarded energy policy website The Oil Drum has been making the rounds, outlining a scenario as terrifying as it is bleak: That the Deepwater Horizon rig’s problems extend below the sea floor, where one or more leaks are currently weakening the seabed foundation in a way that could cause an inextinguishable “wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more.” The lengthy, extensively sourced and cited post, by commenter “dougr” (who isn’t officially affiliated with The Oil Drum), is located here. It’s the scariest thing you’ll read today. Presenting himself as a “fairly knowledgeable” person, dougr works from BP’s efforts to stem the leak to make a case for, essentially, a coverup of the well’s true problems, perpetrated by BP and the government. Collecting quotations from BP officials and descriptions of their actions, which he says “make no sense,” he comes to “one inescapabale conclusion… The well pipes below the sea floor are broken and leaking.” If that’s true, what would it mean? For starters, that a “cap” won’t work, as it will transfer pressure to the “down hole” (i.e., below the sea floor) leaks. But even worse, writes dougr,

This down hole leak will undermine the foundation of the seabed in and around the well area. It also weakens the only thing holding up the massive Blow Out Preventer’s immense bulk of 450 tons…. When enough is eroded away the casings will buckle and the BOP [blowout preventer] will collapse the well. If and when you begin to see oil and gas coming up around the well area from under the BOP? or the area around the well head connection and casing sinking more and more rapidly? …it won’t be too long after that the entire system fails… All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit…after that, it goes into the realm of “the worst things you can think of”… […] the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more It’s a race now…a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it’s last gasp in a horrific crescendo.

I have to assume it’s Manhattan Project time with the digging of the relief wells and that every possible thing is being done to get them finished ahead of schedule, right? It’s going night and day with no breaks and every single asset brought to bear?

I suppose this worst case scenario may be nonsense, but I’ve been reading this at various places and people have been sending it to me for a while now and it’s disturbing. Is it possible? Probable?

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It’s Not Personal, It’s Strictly Business

by digby

A friend of mine went to an event last night featuring Jonathan Alter and reported this back:

1) I overheard Mickey Kaus talking to his flavor of the month. About… yes, of course, about the Al Gore-Laurie David rumors. Perfect.

2) Alter provided the typical warmed over Village sentiments, particularly as it relates to liberal critics of the President. But this sequence amused me most. During the Q&A, he made an argument that Obama isn’t into making gestures, just into getting things done. It might be cathartic for the left to see him take on Republicans, Alter said, but ultimately he’s about moving things forward.

TEN MINUTES LATER, he is asked why Obama seems so intent on bipartisanship. Alter says, I kid you not, “You have to understand, he has to look bipartisan to improve his image relative to Republicans, he has to make the gesture…” He literally said the phrase “make the gesture” ten minutes after saying Obama doesn’t believe in gestures.

I’m afraid consistency is not required in these hippies vs Real Americans debates. RAs must be coddled, hippies must be punched, everyone knows that. Only small minded moonbats worry about such hobgoblins.

It’s amazing how the political press clings to these outmoded ideas of how Washington works. If it wasn’t clear by the time Obama took office that Republicans saw “gestures” as a sign of weakness then surely it should be by now. And that’s why it makes his rank and file so frustrated. It’s not because we want catharsis — we got plenty of that with Bush’s ignominious last two years and the routs of 2006 and 2008. And we don’t want gestures either. We’re not like the trained dogs of the right wing.

It’s not some emotional need that’s driving criticism of the president at this point. It’s not even politics. It’s a legitimate fear that he is either using the wrong political strategy or adopting the wrong policy prescriptions (or both) in dealing with the very serious problems we face.

I don’t care if he “acts tough” with BP as long as he makes sure the government does all it can to deal with this crisis and ensures there is accountability for it. (The 20b is a good sign.) But I’d also like him to be politically astute enough to use this issue to persuade the public to back real energy and climate change legislation so that we can get off this noxious spigot before it kills us all. I’d like him to stop coddling the financial sector and fight this trumped up deficit crisis rather than enabling it in another Grand Bargain fantasy that will never work politically in the short or long term and protecting those who perpetuate this economic instability. I’d like the administration to be principled on civil liberties period and take a skeptical position with the military.

I suppose there are some people who are disillusioned, but I’m not. I’m not even particularly surprised. Our political system is so skewed to the conservative side after 30+ years of non-stop propaganda that it’s difficult to shift gears. But I do wish the Democrats would join the Republicans in the recognition that the electorate and the political system really are polarized, that we have different philosophies and ideals and that choices have to be made. This quest for transpartisan utopia simply isn’t possible in a society fractured and riven by competing ideas of what we stand for.

It’s not an emotional need to kick Republicans or an egotistical desire for gestures that drives the criticism right now. It’s a disagreement over policy and strategy and it’s a serious one.

And as for Mickey Kaus and gossip about Al and Tipper. Well — he’s still dining out on his crusade against Edwards, so I suppose this is par for the course.

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Shakedown

by digby

It doesn’t get any better than this:

Daily Kos reports:

According to Barton, asking BP to set up an escrow account to compensate victims of BP’s disaster was a criminal action — a “shakedown” as he put it. Barton’s not alone: his comments echo those made by other Republicans in recent days, including Michele Bachmann, Haley Barbour, and Tom Price.Update 1 — GOP Rep. Marcia Blackburn continues the “give BP a break” theme from the Republican Party, saying “the current administration deserves a significant portion of the blame for the oil spill.” I guess BP would have loved an apology from her, but at least she told them that it really wasn’t all their fault. Update 2 — GOP Rep. Phil Gingrey continues the “attack Obama, not BP” message from Republicans, saying he’s looking forward to testimony from the administration. You could feel the GOP love from Hayward, pleased that yet another Republican was taking heat off his company.

Joe Barton knows a little bit about shakedowns. After all he’s taken many millions in campaign cash from the oil industry. But he doesn’t stop at just campaign money:

Wednesday, February 3, 2010 By DAVE MICHAELS / The Dallas Morning News
dmichaels@dallasnews.com WASHINGTON – Rep. Joe Barton has earned nearly $100,000 from an interest in natural gas wells that he purchased from a longtime campaign donor who also advised the congressman on energy policy, according to interviews and records. At a hearing last month of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Barton said he was “a small, small partner in a natural gas well in Johnson County in the Barnett Shale that is probably my 4-year-old son’s college education.” He later told a reporter that he couldn’t remember precisely how he obtained the interest. Land records show that Barton, R-Arlington, purchased his interest from Walter G. Mize, a Cleburne businessman who donated more than $30,000 to Barton’s campaigns. Mize urged Barton to create a federal oil and gas research program that was included in a 2005 energy law. Barton’s ties to Mize, who died in 2008, go back 20 years, according to friends of both men. Barton’s interest could become controversial at a time when Congress is considering sweeping energy legislation that would boost demand for natural gas. Congressional experts say such deals raise ethical questions for lawmakers, who are expected by the public to maintain a firewall between their personal finances and official duties. “If you are elected as a public servant to try to do what is right for the public generally and then you use that position to help bring in material wealth, I think it’s unethical,” said James Thurber, a distinguished professor of government at American University.

Yeah, I would guess most people agree with that.

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Teabag Braintrust

by digby

I honestly couldn’t create a more ridiculous bunch of GOP women if I set out to make a cartoon. Here’s the brilliant Tea party leader Michelle Bachman speaking today at the Heritage Foundation about the 20 billion dollar BP account:

In her address to the group, Bachmann attacked the White House proposal for BP to arrange a $20 billion escrow account to pay for damages from the oil spill:

The president just called for creating a fund that would be administered by outsiders, which would be more of a redistribution-of-wealth fund. And now it appears like we’ll be looking at one more gateway for more government control, more money to government. If there is a disaster, why is it that government is the one who always seems to benefit after a disaster, and that’s of course what cap-and-trade would be.

Full details of how the escrow account would be operated are pending, but early reports describe the account as one run by an independent panel, and it is intended to hold BP liable for all damages accrued due to the oil spill. The account’s funds will go toward paying for both cleanup efforts and damages for individuals such as Gulf Coast fishermen whose livelihoods have been damaged by the sudden toxicity in the ocean and beaches. In effect, the fund will prevent the government (and by extension, American taxpayers) from being fiscally responsible for BP’s actions. Is it a “redistribution-of-wealth fund”? Maybe, but in the same sense that one would be responsible for paying to repair a house he drove a car into.

More quotes at the link from Congresswoman Mensa about not “fleecing” BP and Obama calling all the poor corporations evil so he can turn America into a socialist state. If this is how the “populist” Tea Party movement sees this crisis, they are stooges. But we knew that:

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