Month: October 2010

Blue America Chat — Mary Jo Kilroy, Stalwart Progressive from Ohio

by digby

Blue America is hosting a live chat with Mary Jo Kilroy, stalwart progressive from from Ohio this morning and we’d really like it if you could join us. She’s one of the good ones, and she needs our help. Howie lays it out:

Most readers here have probably heard most recently about Mary Jo because of the letter that she drafted, with the help of Grijalva and Grayson, to prevent the Cat Food Commission from trying to balance the budget on the backs of Social Security recipients. But that kind of legislative attitude is what regularly made Mary Jo Kilroy such a valuable leader for ordinary working families– and, of course, a target for the special interests and their Republican allies. Normally she and Grayson are hard at work inside the House Financial Services Committee looking out for the interests of ordinary middle class families, instead of the bankers and special interests lobbyists who feel so very entitled to be served by that committee. (Her opponent, Steve Stivers, I might add, is not just a close ally of John Boehner’s, he’s also a career-long banking lobbyist eager to repeal Wall Street Reform.)

This week Stivers and Boehner were hysterical over a widely popular bill Mary Jo wrote, the Medical Debt Relief Act, which is meant to prevent credit bureaus from using paid off or settled medical debt against consumers seeking car loans, home mortgages and the like. The problems addressed have affected nearly 72 million working-age adults who have some sort of medical debt listed on their credit reports. The bill passed unanimously through mark up. The bill passed unanimously in the Committee; not even the worst reactionary Wall Street shills dared to vote against it– and it should have passed by a voice vote but Boehner, sensing the House was about to give Mary Jo a big legislative win, decided to cause problems, and placed a hold on the bill requiring Republicans and Democrats to negotiate whether or not a recorded vote would be necessary. The Republican Study Committee then got into the act claiming the bill would have all sorts of false unintended consequences, straight up fabricating a rationale for Republicans to vote against it. Mary Jo swung into action and beat back Boehner’s purely partisan attempts to destroy the much needed legislation. More Republicans voted with Mary Jo (87) than with Boehner (81) and the bill passed with a huge bipartisan majority, 336-82.

Since being elected, Mary Jo Kilroy played a very active role in crafting Wall Street reform regulations. She authored key provisions, including one that would end the credit rating bureau’s ability to stamp AAA ratings on junk mortgage assets by putting serious penalties on them for approving bad assets. She was one of the key players and proponents in ensuring a strong Consumer Financial Protection Board and she was one of two freshmen to serve on the Wall Street Reform Conference Committee where she fought behind the scenes against the Senate for greater consumer protections.

Kilroy is giving the voters of her district a clear choice:

“People in the 15th (district) have a very clear choice,” Kilroy said. “They can vote for someone who spent a career as a banking lobbyist and supported the kinds of policies that led to the recession and ‘too big to fail,’ or they can support someone who has been a watchdog and an advocate for the middle class. I think it makes a difference that people know I’m on their side.”

Nobody knows how much Wall Street and banking money is flowing into the campaign under the new secrecy, but considering how much heartburn Kilroy causes them, I’d guess it’s substantial.

She will be joining Blue America for a live blogging session at 11 AM pdt at Crooks and Liars if you’d like to ask her some questions. And Congressional Progressive Caucus chairman Raúl Grijalva has offered to personally match every donation up to a thousand dollars we can raise for Mary Jo on our Blue America page this afternoon, so if you can help out today you can double your donation.

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Blighted Titles

by digby

If you’ve been following this amazing, unfolding foreclosure fraud story then you probably already know that JP Morgan/Chase, BofA and GMAC have all suspended foreclosure processes around the country now that it’s been revealed they’ve been committing massive fraud. And Attorneys General in a number of states have also stepped in to stop the process, for the same reason.

But if you are just coming into the story, as is most of the national press, Alan Grayson has prepared a valuable primer on the crisis that’s wee worth watching:

He lays out the history from the beginning when mortgage mills failed to properly file documents, instead using shortcut electronic transfer program instead of the documentation required by law. It’s snowballed from there, to the point where nobody really knows who owns what and the crisis atmosphere has given cover to fraudsters, con men and greedy bankers.

Grayson is knee deep in this issue, leading the charge to get to the bottom of it, since ground zero for the foreclosure crisis is in Florida (and which this columnist warns could destroy Florida’s economy.) He’s dealing with some of these situations among his own constituency and among others, has been at the forefront of bringing this to the attention of the nation:

Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson of Orlando recently wrote the Florida Supreme Court, saying, “taking someone’s home should not be done lightly.” He asked the court to halt foreclosure proceedings for flawed paperwork brought by the most active “foreclosure mill” law firms in the state. Four firms are already under investigation by the Florida Attorney General’s office. They are the Law Offices of David J. Stern, the Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson, Shapiro & Freeman and Florida Default Group.

In response to Grayson, the state Supreme Court punted, saying it lacked the authority to get involved. The court referred the official to the Florida Bar to investigate any allegations.

Sadly, the legal system isn’t rapidly stepping up to the plate in most cases to right this, offering up excuses and in some cases, indicating a far great concern for efficiency than justice. Keep in mind that this latest wave of foreclosures isn’t a bunch of high flying speculators or people who bit off more than they could chew in the go-go real estate market of the Bush years. Those people were foreclosed upon already. These are prime mortgages that have gone south because of the unemployment crisis. Many of these are people who are victims of a bad economy, not their own bad judgment and in some cases they are being fraudulently foreclosed upon without just cause.

The New York Times speculates that this freeze on foreclosures is a needed pause, allowing borrowers a little breathing room and giving the market a chance to stabilize a bit. Unfortunately, it would also appear that it’s going to freeze the market since title insurance companies are justifiably gun shy in the wake of all these fraud revelations. It’s a huge mess.

Again, I urge you to watch Grayson’s video, especially if you haven’t been following this story. It’s one of the best illustrations we’ve yet seen of how the the unregulated businesses of the manic Bush years continue to destroy the lives of average Americans. And if you feel like getting his back on this, you can donate to his campaign here.

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Rallies For The Rest Of Us

by digby

Reminder: even if you aren’t in DC for the One Nation March today, you can click here to find a rally near you. They’re all over the country.

One Nation Working Together will chart a bold, pragmatic path toward a more unified, sustainable, prosperous future.

We will build support for the following core principles and policy ideals that taken together will advance an economy that works for everyone:

Working together for the creation, protection, and advancement of good jobs

Create new jobs in every sector, so that everyone in our country who wants to work can find a job. There should be a job in America for everyone who wants to work.

Provide immediate relief for those who are currently unemployed

* Extend the federal unemployment program, COBRA, mortgage assistance, and other targeted initiatives helping those who are currently without a job

* Target help for populations and communities in the greatest need, including youth summer jobs and training initiatives

Provide immediate action to stimulate job growth and retention; and consumer demand

* Provide aid to states and cities—including direct job creation at local levels—especially in education, health care, social services and first responder workforces

* Increase the ability of small businesses to obtain assistance and support, including short term loans, grants and other forms of assistance

* Fund infrastructure investment that spurs higher economic growth, clean energy enterprises, and green jobs

Provide a fair chance for every worker in our country to succeed and advance in the workplace

* Everyone who works in America should have the right to join with their co-workers to have a voice on the job

* Pay all workers a living family wage

* Increase and index the minimum wage

* Close the race-, gender-, and all other unjust pay gaps

* End all forms of workplace discrimination and expand anti-discrimination law to be inclusive of everyone

* Protect, honor, fully apply, and expand equal opportunity and diverse business inclusion practices

* Create employment pathways and training opportunities for workers who want to advance their careers

* Make every job a safe job

* Provide paid sick days and paid family leave for all workers

Rebuild the U.S. economy for the 21st Century

* Reorient our country’s trade and tax policies to tackle job loss and currency manipulation, and promote the creation of good jobs at home

* Create a national industrial policy to transform our economy into a sustainable one that provides good jobs and a good quality of life for America’s families

* Provide greater national investment in new jobs, improved infrastructure, and public education instead of escalating military spending

* Prevent the repeat of the economic crisis by addressing the problem of financial institutions, including those deemed “too big to fail”

* Put an end to the exploitative practices that contributed to the economic crisis; increase watchdog powers of institutions such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and prohibit and punish predatory lending and mortgage scams

Working together for justice and equal opportunity for all

Advance and implement policy principles and practices that prohibit and prevent discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or ability.

Enhance, strengthen and preserve voting rights for all Americans

* Enact policies that expand access to the polls for everyone, including former felons

* Preserve policies that established to address systematic voter disenfranchisement, including the elimination of deceptive practices

* Secure voting representation in Congress and full democracy for the residents of the District of Columbia, so that our pledge of “liberty and justice for all” will apply equally to all who live in our nation’s capital

End discriminatory practices within the criminal justice system

* End racial profiling by law enforcement officials

* Eliminate statutes, such as mandatory minimums, which have had a disparately devastating impact on the poor as well as racial and ethnic minorities

* Restore trust between police officers and the communities they serve by establishing competent civilian review boards with real authority to identify and address misconduct

* Establish policies to help ex-felony offenders reintegrate into society, including job training, educational opportunities, and voting rights that reducing recidivism rates

Preserve and honor our history as a nation that is inclusive of immigrants and maintain respect for the rule of law

* Fix our broken immigration system in a way that provides for due process; protects workers and our national security; quickly reunites families, holds employers accountable, and provides a fair path to citizenship.

* Avoid or end ineffective, costly, and dangerous proposals or provisions that seek to round up, detain, and deport 12 million unauthorized workers, split families, encourage racial profiling, and divert scarce resources away from crime fighting.

* Provide for a path to citizenship for individuals who are completing an education and/or serve in their community, or in the military

Working together to protect and strengthen the safety net, and create opportunity for all

* End the foreclosure epidemic and save the homes of America’s families

* Require principal write downs in exchange for government aid for mortgage lenders or services

* Reform bankruptcy laws to protect families, working people, seniors, and students

* Prioritize safe, secure and affordable housing for all

* Provide adequate resources to end all forms of discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing

* Protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare

* Repair private pension systems

* Complete the promise of accessible and affordable health care for all people, including the public option and other effective means to provide coverage for all; and implementation of anti-discrimination provisions

Working together for quality public education for all

* Ensure that all people have equal access to affordable, adequately resourced, high quality public education throughout their lives, from preschool through college

* Provide for quality teaching jobs with training, and support necessary to continuously improve classroom practice and safety, and serve students better

* Increase federal support to institutions of higher education that provide opportunities for underserved communities, including women’s institutions, community colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Hispanic Serving Institutions

* Increase access to higher education by increasing affordability and decreasing dependency on student loans

* End the school-to-prison pipeline by investing in public education systems not prisons, and provide more education opportunities for incarcerated youth

* Create systems and structures which maximize diverse community input to assist in ending all policies and actions that directly or indirectly lead to re-segregation by race or ethnicity of our public schools

Conclusion

As One Nation Working Together we will work for policy principles that restore the inclusion of all communities striving to achieve the American Dream. One Nation Working Together will push for an economy that works for everyone by advocating for policy principles that result in good jobs, and well trained work forces. We will work for quality public education and training for our children, who are tomorrow’s work force. We will work for principles and laws that provide for equal opportunity for everyone, so that all have a chance to achieve the American Dream. Finally, we will support policy principles that create a path toward economic and environmental sustainability for today and for generations to come.

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Fallows On The Rich And Shameless

by digby

Mauve Gloves & Madmen, 2010 Version

Self-pity is the great vice. Or entitlement, to give it another name. It’s socially un-useful, in making people grasping and uncharitable. And it’s personally bad too, in focusing attention on what’s not there rather than what is. One of many things I enjoy about modern China is that the average self-pity level there is pretty low. The occasion for this homily is a modern counterpart to Mauve Gloves & Madmen. Thirty-plus years after I first read it, I vividly remember that short story of Tom Wolfe’s. Its set-up was a stylish and popular and liberal-chic writer going through his checkbook and revealing his life through the deposits and the canceled checks. After the jump, a sample passage. Mauve Gloves was in the tradition of great realist or naturalistic fiction that presents character through material circumstances. And now we have an unintentional modern counterpart, a law professor at the University of Chicago who has (unwisely) taken to the internet to explain why, on a household income that must be substantially above $300,000, he is feeling put-upon and strapped…

Read on. And read this, this, this and this too. They;’re all great, all fascinating insights into the bizarroworld of wealthy, elite whining.

As a person who has spent a quarter of a century in and around the entertainment business, which features some of the most superficial, entitled, grasping, materialistic greedheads on the planet, I can tell you that these complaining academics, CEOs and Wall Street Boyz put them to shame for sheer, out of touch, elitism. If anything, people in this business pretend like they are more successful than they rather than whine and moan about how unfair it is that they don’t have more. (They may think it, but they wouldn’t be classless enough to say it out loud — and we’re talking about some very crude people here. )But then it is a business where people who don’t even have a college education mingle in boardrooms with Harvard grads, so maybe that changes the ethos a bit.

Brad DeLong, who collected those great Fallows links, has more on this phenomenon here. Scroll all the way down. It’s great too.

I am so thrilled to see this subject being engaged. It’s been driving me nuts ever since the financial collapse.

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Just Don’t Call Them Theocrats Part XXIV

by digby

Here’s Sharron Angle on Sharia law in the United States.

One of the last questioners asked about “Muslims taking over the U.S.,” including a question about Angle’s stance on the proposed mosque near Ground Zero in New York.
“We’re talking about a militant terrorist situation, which I believe isn’t a widespread thing, but it is enough that we need to address, and we have been addressing it,” Angle said.
“Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas are on American soil, and under Constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don’t know how that happened in the United States. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States.”

First of all, is Sharia law really a foreign system of law? It’s a religious system of law, similar to the law that influences Sharron Angle — Christian Reconstructionism. The Las Vegas Sun reported this a couple of months ago:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle describes her motivation for seeking elected office as a religious calling.Politics, including her bid to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is God’s purpose for her life — one he has long been preparing her for, she says.“When God calls you, he also equips you and he doesn’t just say ‘Well, today you’re going to run against Harry Reid.’ There is a preparation,” she said during a recent interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “Moses had his preparatory time. Paul had his preparatory time. Even Jesus had his preparatory time, and so my preparation began on a school board.”Although those remarks triggered surprise and even outrage last week, people familiar with Angle’s career in public life understood.A Southern Baptist active in her church, Angle’s religious convictions have informed many of her positions throughout her years in politics. She believes abortion is a violation of God’s will and should be banned in all cases. She argued for the religious freedom of private and home schools. And she has said that public policy should support the “traditional” family structure as described in the Bible, in which one parent stays home with the children while the other works.Indeed, although many Americans view the separation of church and state as one of the keys to the nation’s success as a multicultural society, Angle believes that religion has an expansive role to play in government. And, she has repeatedly said anyone who opposes that based on the claim of separation of church and state misunderstands the Constitution’s ban on “establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”In this regard, Angle’s view of religion’s role in government parallels that of a religious political movement — Christian Reconstructionism — seeking to return American civil society to biblical law.[…]

To accomplish that, Reconstructionists interpret the separation of church and state doctrine as a constitutional wall protecting the church from the state. But unlike most interpretations of that doctrine, the Reconstructionists’ envisions a gaping one-way hole in the wall that allows Christian doctrine to infuse government. In other words, government must not interfere with Christians’ efforts to enact God’s law at home or at church and government itself should be run according to biblical law.

Just don’t call them theocrats.

Meanwhile, guess who’s jumped on the Jesus train along with Glenn Beck’s “Black Robed Regiment” mentor, to help Sharron get out the social conservative vote:

Four years ago, Rick Perry cultivated a network of conservative pastors – the Texas Restoration Project – to scare off Kay Bailey Hutchison in the primary and to help win reelection. The project has pretty much fallen off the political radar in Texas since then. This year, the energy on the right is from the tea party – which is focusing on fiscal themes, not the social issues of abortion and gay marriage . Now, the Texas-tinged event has emerged in a most unlikely place – Las Vegas. Next month, Christian historian David Barton of Aledo and the Rev. Laurence White of Houston are headlining a “Nevada Renewal Project” event in Las Vegas. Both were regulars at Texas Restoration events. The keynote speaker will be Newt Gingrich.

The Nevada event is nonpartisan, but appears aimed at helping Republican tea-party favorite Sharon Angle against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in one of the country’s hottest Senate races. Polls indicate the race is close. An email by American Family Association chief Tim Wildmon inviting pastors to the two-day event suggested which side it’s on: “At a time when Congress is buy trying to legislative defeat … the Nevada event is aimed at energizing pastors “to help them and their congregations engage in the battle.”

We know about Newtie and his three wives, but I believe he’s recently “converted” to catholicism so I assume he’s now in good standing among the Values Voters. “Christian historian” David Barton is also one of the leaders of this kooky theocratic fringe:

David Barton, Glenn Beck’s favorite history “professor,” is the creator and purveyor of a revisionist history of race in America that is rapidly gaining traction in conservative and Tea Party circles. That history, drawn in part from the writings of Christian Reconstructionists, recasts modern-day Republicans as the racially inclusive party, and modern-day Democrats as the racists supportive of slavery and post-Emancipation racist policies…

Beck fancies himself a contemporary King “reclaiming the civil rights movement,” exemplified by his pledge not to “sit in the back of the bus.” While he has been widely mocked for drawing this parallel, it’s less recognized, however, how he’s doing it on a foundation laid by David Barton and his revisionist history; which relies in part of the work of Reconstructionist R.J. Rushdoony.

Barton and Beck want to rewrite American history on race and slavery in order to whitewash (pardon the term) the founders’ implication in it and blame it and subsequent racism on the Democrats. But Barton’s rewriting of the history of the founding era and the civil rights movement alone doesn’t quite accomplish that. He has to lower the bar even more and make slavery itself seem like it wasn’t quite as bad as we might think. And for that, he turns to Stephen McDowell of the Reconstructionist-oriented Providence Foundation.

[…]

Barton’s Wallbuilders Web site promotes a collection of “resources on African American History.” Much of the material is written by Barton himself but one of the essays is McDowell’s, drawn almost entirely from Rushdoony’s work in the early 1960s.

McDowell’s discussion of slavery, written in 2003, comes from Rushdoony’s more familiar Institutes of Biblical Law. ..While criticizing American slavery as violating a number of biblical requirements, however, he did not view it as inherently immoral.
By promoting McDowell, and by extension Rushdoony, Barton promotes a “biblical worldview” in which slavery is in some circumstances acceptable. ..

Rather the discussing slavery as a moral issue, McDowell argues it is tightly regulated, though not forbidden in the Bible, and that American Southern slavery was not “biblical” slavery because it was race-based and enforced. However, he also argues that there are two forms of biblically permissible, voluntary slavery: indentured servitude in which “servants were well treated and when released, given generous pay,” and slavery in which, in exchange for being taken care of, one might choose to remain a slave. Moreover, he maintains that the Bible permits two forms of involuntary slavery: “criminals” who could not make restitution for their crimes could be sold into slavery and “pagans,” who can be made permanent slaves. “Pagans,” in this view of the Bible, would be those not in “covenant” with the God of Israel, and by extension today, those who are not Christians (in a narrow, Reconstructionist-defined sense). McDowell is explicit that race-based kidnapping and enforced slavery are unbiblical. In fact, they are punishable by death, again all of this coming directly from the Institutes of Biblical Law.

Nothing extreme there.

I sincerely doubt that Sharron Angle is a scholar at the “Institutes of Biblical Law.” (Scholar is not a word I would easily apply to Angle in any context.) But she has been swimming in that tribal pond for a long time and has clearly absorbed the idea that there is basis for the idea that American law is properly guided by a particular form of Christian fundamentalism. He reasons for fearing Sharia law are not based on a reverence for the constitution, but rather a belief that it’s the wrong religion.

And the entire Republican party is (to a far greater degree than people want to admit) dependent on these very people being politically engaged. If you watched the Glenn Beck rally, which featured the Christian Reconstructionist David Barton on the stage with his “Black Robed regiment” of far right pastors, it’s fairly clear that this fully in the Tea Party mainstream. If they manage to elect their candidates, they are going to be influential.

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Winning Over Your Own

by digby

I know it’s old hat to bring this up, but midterms are nearly always base elections. But it certainly doesn’t hurt to remind the Democrats of that:

With Election Day just 32 days away, Democrats face an uphill battle to maintain their majority hold on Congress. But even as polls show serious GOP momentum, there are some small signs of hope that Democrats might still be able to avoid massive losses.

For one thing, as The Upshot has previously reported, voters have an equally poor opinion of Democrats and Republicans, which makes the outcome of this year’s midterms less easy to predict than many polls suggest. The second potential bright spot for Democrats: A new Public Policy Polling analysis finds that most undecided voters in Senate and gubernatorial races around the country are Democrats. According to PPP, an average 17 percent of likely Democratic voters are still on the fence about who to support in November.

That means if Democrats can win over their own base, the party will be far more competitive than expected.

Still, that’s easier said than done. The races that involve the highest quotient of Democrats staying on the fence are also in states where voters are either seriously unhappy with President Obama’s job performance or have soured on the Democratic incumbent in the race.

Obviously, what these people need is a stern talking to.

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They Can’t Admit Error

by digby

This is so frustrating:

With Andrew Breitbart’s protégé back in the news this week for allegedly having no common sense, it’s important that reporters be accurate about James O’Keefe’s most infamous claim to fame and remember that he was not dressed up as a pimp, nor did he ever “pose” as a pimp, when he entered ACORN offices last year and unwittingly taped its employees. That, thanks to the art of deceptive editing, was a con O’Keefe and Breitbart pulled over on the press. But that hoax was exposed and there’s no reason why reporters today should give O’Keefe credit for something he concocted.

I think they believe it doesn’t matter. The truthiness is that silly black ladies at ACORN embarrassed themselves and that’s that.

As someone wryly observed on twitter the other night, O’Keefe’s big t mistake was to stop targeting black people. His boss Breitbart won’t make that mistake.

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The Closet Is Healthy For Gays And Other Living Things

by digby

This speaks for itself:

[I]t was not a juvenile prank that killed the unfortunate Mr. Clementi even though it served as the proximate trigger for his lethal actions. If anyone other than Mr. Clementi should be blamed for his suicide, it is those who repeatedly encouraged him to behave in a way that would fill him with such guilt, remorse, and shame.

And the reason he feels remorse, guilt and shame, of course, is because bigots and bullies torture them for being who they are. But that’s the way God intended it, I guess. Stay in the closet where a gay person can feel good about themselves.

The post is called “gay rights killed Clementi” by the way.

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All Things To All People

by digby

If you haven’t read Ken Silverstein’s heartfelt “exit” post as Harper’s Washington editor, do it. He’s got a point of view with which it’s very hard to quarrel. And I suspect that if I lived in DC, I’d be in the same position. If you have his kind of temperament I think it might be easier to write about politics from afar. There’s less social tension if nothing else and it may be a little bit easier to deal with your indignation at the various injustices you see in that world if you aren’t simultaneously observing the courtiers eating their cake every day.

But I didn’t write this post to highlight yet another disappointed member of the professional left. To be honest, the last thing I care much about right now is navel gazing of that sort and I’m already getting depressed at the prospect of all the finger pointing or credit grabbing in the election post-mortems.

The reason for this post is to draw your attention to a prescient piece of writing from Silverstein which I had completely forgotten I’d read at the time and which may have formed some of my early impressions of Obama. It’s called Barack Obama, Inc, the birth of a Washington machine and it’s from 2006. It’s fascinating to read it again four years later, knowing what we know now.

Since coming to Washington, Obama has advocated for the poor, most notably in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and has emerged as a champion of clean government. He has fought for restrictions on lobbying, even as most of his fellow Democrats postured on the issue while quietly seeking to gut real reform initiatives. In mid-September, Congress approved a bill he co-authored with Oklahoma’s arch-conservative senator, Tom Coburn, requiring all federal contracts and earmarks to be published in an Internet database, a step that will better allow citizens to track the way the government spends their money.

Yet it is also startling to see how quickly Obama’s senatorship has been woven into the web of institutionalized influence-trading that afflicts official Washington. He quickly established a political machine funded and run by a standard Beltway group of lobbyists, P.R. consultants, and hangers-on. For the staff post of policy director he hired Karen Kornbluh, a senior aide to Robert Rubin when the latter, as head of the Treasury Department under Bill Clinton, was a chief advocate for NAFTA and other free-trade policies that decimated the nation’s manufacturing sector (and the organized labor wing of the Democratic Party). Obama’s top contributors are corporate law and lobbying firms (Kirkland & Ellis and Skadden, Arps, where four attorneys are fund-raisers for Obama as well as donors), Wall Street financial houses (Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase), and big Chicago interests (Henry Crown and Company, an investment firm that has stakes in industries ranging from telecommunications to defense). Obama immediately established a “leadership PAC,” a vehicle through which a member of Congress can contribute to other politicians’ campaigns—and one that political reform groups generally view as a slush fund through which congressional leaders can evade campaign-finance rules while raising their own political profiles.

Already considered a potential vice-presidential nominee in 2008, Obama clearly has abundant political ambitions. Hence he is playing not only to voters in Illinois—a reliably Democratic and generally liberal state—but to the broader national audience, as well as to the Democratic Party establishment, the Washington media, and large political donors. Perhaps for this reason, Obama has taken an approach to his policymaking that is notably cautious and nonconfrontational. “Since the founding, the American political tradition has been reformist, not revolutionary,” he told me during an interview at his office on Capitol Hill this summer. “What that means is that for a political leader to get things done, he or she ideally should be ahead of the curve, but not too far ahead. I want to push the envelope but make sure I have enough folks with me that I’m not rendered politically impotent.”

The question, though, is just how effective—let alone reformist—Obama’s approach can be in a Washington grown hostile to reform and those who advocate it. After a quarter century when the Democratic Party to which he belongs has moved steadily to the right, and the political system in general has become thoroughly dominated by the corporate perspective, the first requirement of electoral success is now the ability to raise staggering sums of money. For Barack Obama, this means that mounting a successful career, especially one that may include a run for the presidency, cannot even be attempted without the kind of compromising and horse trading that may, in fact, render him impotent.

There was an alternate vision available, (see Ari Berman’s article “Herding Donkey’s” in The Nation, but I for one never believed it was going to become a useful governing tool because it was way too dependent on a personal attachment to Obama, and according to article, the administration never particularly wanted it to be. So, Silverstein’s piece really captured the essential contradictions in the “idea” of Obama and how he actually practices politics long before he was even considered a potential 2008 candidate.

What this really indicates is that Obama had all these predilections before Rahm ever came on the scene, which makes his departure even more interesting. The question now is whether or not Obama can learn from experience.

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He Is The One They’ve Been Waiting For

by digby

It looks like the Republicans may have found their perfect Tea Party candidate for 2012. He has a “very conservative policy” and an “unapologetic commitment to our borders, our language and our culture.”

Tom Tancredo? Newt Gingrich? Jim DeMint? No, this is a political newcomer. And he is the whole package.

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