Memes Colliding
by digby
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"what digby sez..."
Month: May 2011
This could be the start of a beautiful friendship
by digby
The Obama administration is quietly gearing up for a high-profile launch in May or June on what may turn out to be the most heavily lobbied issue of the year: corporate tax reform.
At a time when the two parties can find little common ground legislatively, strategists on both sides tell POLITICO they hope to advance their jobs agenda by finding a way to lower corporate tax rates.
“This would send a reassuring signal to the economy, and is something both parties should support in theory,” a senior administration official said, predicting “a numbers game” in which companies and industries ferociously litigate the fine points.
God knows the economy is sensitive to these “signals” so that’s good. (It’s just been a little distracted by fundamentals these past two years.) And I don’t get the feeling they think this “ferocious litigation” is a bad thing, do you? But then it is election season …
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner plans to ignite the debate by unveiling a white paper that advocates lowering the top corporate tax rate from the current 35 percent to less than 30 percent and as low as 26 percent, according to aides. The proposal is likely to fall between 26 percent and 28 percent.
To pay for that, the proposal will call for closing loopholes and slicing exemptions. The two main ones are a tax deduction for domestic manufacturing and accelerated depreciation for capital equipment.
Aides say Geithner will personally dive into the negotiations. House Speaker John Boehner also sees this as a ripe area for bipartisan cooperation. And House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan included corporate tax reform in his budget, which has been adopted as the GOP’s fiscal blueprint.
Agreeing on how to rework corporate taxes will be tough, and many aides remain privately pessimistic. But the two sides’ willingness to try to find common ground is a notable departure from their stances on most other contentious issues on the Capitol Hill docket.
Why hell, let’s just pass it by acclamation and start collecting the checks. (Just write them out to cash, the politicians might need to borrow a few bucks for their campaigns before it comes back to the treasury.)
Not to rain on this bipartisan love fest but it is probably a good idea to remind ourselves of this. If people don’t smell the scam in “closing corporate loopholes” and then lowering the corporate tax rate to fix the deficit while lobbyists “ferociously litigate” the details then I can’t help them.
Update: Nothing to see here folks, nothing at all:
BREAKING – FORTUNE 500 cover story, “Profits of the 500 Largest U.S. Corporations Soar by 81% ($318 Billion), the Third Largest Percentage Gain in List History … Wal-Mart holds the number one spot for the second year in a row … Exxon Mobil leads profits with $30 billion, for the 8th year in row. …
FORTUNE editors write, ‘We’ve rarely seen such a stark gulf between the fortunes of the 500 and those of ordinary Americans. … The profits derived partly from productivity gains, including workforce reductions. And many 500 companies are growing faster overseas than in the U.S.”
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Hiding Behind His Bullhorn
by digby
Did I say Bush declining the invitation to Ground Zero was more likely due to his usual petulance and jealousy rather than grace and class? Yes I did.
And guess what?
“[Bush] viewed this as an Obama victory lap,” a highly-placed source told the Daily News Wednesday. […] “He doesn’t feel personally snubbed and appreciates the invitation, but Obama’s claiming all the credit and a lot of other people deserve some of it,” the source added. “Obama gave no credit whatsoever to the intelligence infrastructure the Bush administration set up that is being hailed from the left and right as setting in motion the operation that got Bin Laden. It rubbed Bush the wrong way.”
Oh what didn’t rub him the wrong way?
I think it’s understandable. The highest point of his presidency was the day he stood at Ground Zero and became the head cheerleader of America promising that “the people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon!” Going back nearly ten years later and watching a different president get credit for it would be a painful reminder of all of his epic presidential failures. It would take a much bigger man than George W. Bush to emerge from hiding for that particular ceremony.
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Losing their religion
by digby
The Republicans are losing it. This is almost as dumb as going after Medicare:
House Republicans say they have no plans to follow the Senate in passing a resolution honoring the military mission that killed Osama bin Laden.
The decision by GOP leaders follows new rules they enacted in January scrapping the tradition of congratulatory measures, which they complained clogged up the House floor.
The Senate on Tuesday passed a resolution, 97-0, commending “the men and women of the United States Armed Forces and the United States intelligence community for the tremendous commitment, perseverance, professionalism and sacrifice they displayed in bringing Osama bin Laden to justice.” The measure commended President Obama and reaffirmed the Senate’s commitment “to disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda.” It also recognized former President George W. Bush’s efforts after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The lack of House action drew criticism from some Democrats, who said an exception to the new rules was more than warranted for the killing of America’s No. 1 enemy.
Naturally,the Democrats complained about the process instead of attacking them for their lack of patriotism, which is just weak. This is one of those things they should use to embarrass the GOP and make their own followers feel uncomfortable. They may hate Obama and they may hate Osama but no God fearing, flag waving All American wingnut can possibly endorse disrespecting the US Navy SEALS. The lat ten years have created such a military fetish in our culture that you can’t even ask a soldier or sailor to move his coat without thanking him for his service beforehand.
Regardless, this is one of those things that will be noticed by the brass. It’s just not cool to be partisan when it comes to honoring martial courage in a military empire. This is a mistake.
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Biden to the rescue
by digby
Negotiations over raising the nation’s debt ceiling will hit a heightened, more critical phase on Thursday when a bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers are set to meet with Vice President Joseph Biden at the Blair House….
In addition to raising the debt ceiling from its current limit of $14.3 trillion, lawmakers would include legislative language in the bill that called for caps on government spending in over the next one or two years. The level at which that cap would be set is unclear and is likely to be a major fault line during discussions. In addition, lawmakers will include a debt failsafe “trigger” that would kick in once those caps expire. Such a policy — which would require that the ratio of debt-to-GDP be reduced to a certain level if Congress cannot stabilize it by the end of the decade — could take several forms. Democrats, however, will insist that revenue raisers or adjustments to the tax code be part of the deal. “That’s the ball game,” one top Democratic aide said of ensuring that tax policy be part of the final arrangement to raise the debt ceiling. “[T]hey want to make it a trigger that allows for revenue,” added another Democratic Senate aide. “But this arrangement wouldn’t preclude them from saying they will cap spending for, say, 2012. It would allow them to say here is your spending.” Pulling off such a legislative arrangement will be a challenge for the administration. For starters, the White House has not formally given up its position that there should be a vote on a “clean” debt-ceiling bill. Moderate Senate Democrats, however, are insisting the deficit or debt-reduction measures be added. A top aide for one of those Senators said there was deep concern that a failed party-line vote (House Republicans wouldn’t pass a “clean” bill) would damage both the markets and the White House.
So, the Democrats want to include in the deal an option to raise taxes if deficit targets aren’t met. Odd incentives there, don’t you think? Is anyone seriously going to raise taxes in an election year?
Mitch McConnell weighs in:
“Let’s discuss the art of the possible,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the senate floor Wednesday. “We all know tax increases won’t pass the House because of the damage they’d do to family budgets and businesses — and a bipartisan majority here in the Senate opposes raising taxes on families, energy production and small businesses across America. So let’s set that aside and find common ground.”
There you have it. “Common ground” equals spending cuts. In this scenario I’d say the most you can hope for from Democrats is that they don’t get caught up in the excitement and start slashing indiscriminately. At this point it’s all about limiting the damage.
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Trophy Wife
by digby
That’s what these guys thought too:
According to the AP, the photos, from the print edition of the magazine, show Corporal Jeremy Morlock from Wasilla, Alaska, grinning as he lifts the head of a corpse by the hair. The images are just a handful from a collection of 4,000 images and videos.
There are reasons why releasing the photos might be the right thing to do (the principle of government transparency being the most obvious.) But doing it so that we can demonstrate that we have the biggest swinging dicks on the planet is not one of them. In fact, US soldiers from her own small home town are serving jail terms for doing just that.
Pictures of corpses me sick so I don’t want to look at it. And I would imagine they would be incendiary in some parts of the world. In fact, my preference would have been that if they were determined to assassinate bin Laden (as opposed to bringing him to trial) that they do it secretly and eschew the big victory lap altogether. I realize it’s cathartic for a lot of people, and there are probably good reasons I haven’t considered to think that announcing his death might change the dynamic in some substantial way. But in the end I have to think that what matters for American national security is that he’s no longer able to conduct his evil business, not that everyone knows the mighty USA killed him. (I also recognize that it’s ridiculous to think that could ever happen — what good is “winning” if no one sees you doing it, right?)
There’s a lot to question about this operation from the Pakistan involvement to the ridiculous story told by John Brennan yesterday, but as I’ve written before, I see no reason to doubt that they really killed him. There’s just too much risk in making that claim without knowing absolutely that it’s true. So I don’t really care much about whether these pictures are released. I’m a little bit concerned about human civilization, however.
Palin represents the violent porn fetishists of our species and there are a lot of them. If you watched her breathless, over-stimulated reaction to killing the caribou or as she and her daughter giggled while they clubbed a halibut on her reality show, you saw the by the look on her face right there that she is one of those people. (Real Alaskan hunters are generally respectful and calm.) She probably would have enjoyed watching the Romans torture Jesus and would have easily been one of those people excitedly screaming “hang him!” at public executions. Humans did that for millenia. I think many of us had believed that in this day that sort of thing was only considered acceptable among people like … the Taliban. Now I’m not so sure.
Update: Note: I’m not saying that I believe in secret assassinations. I’m not a big fan of assassinations, period. But running around taking credit for assassinations strikes me as a gratuitous thing for big imperial powers to be doing for any number of practical reasons as well as principled ones. In a perfect world he would have gone to trial. We don’t live in a perfect world. Obviously.
Update II: I’m closing comments for a while to go worship at the alter of my Lord Obama who I’m unable to see is worse than bin Laden and whom I am obligated to bash in every post regardless of the topic. I’ll be back later. Meanwhile, I’m assuming I’m going to get nominated for another one of Andrew Sullivan’s “intemperate liberal” awards for saying Palin would have enjoyed watching the Romans torture Jesus. But hey, plenty of people did. (Tons of them enjoyed watching that violent porno movie “The Passion” just a couple of years ago.) The Romans were “sending a message” too — that’s why they did the whole crucifixion thing in the first place.
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Fungibility
by digby
The House just passed the heinous HR3 on a party line vote (a handful of anti-abortion Democrats voted for it too) but there’s little likelihood of it passing in its current form in the Senate or that President Obama will sign it. But they did manage to get some useful bargaining chips in the language to keep liberals tied up in knots and ensure that Democrats will be able to take credit for “holding out” on something important when they all vote for the rest of the mess:
They’re doing it again: After jettisoning controversial legislative language narrowing the definition of rape for the purposes of abortion law, House Republicans are attempting a backdoor maneuver to ensure that solely victims of “forcible rape” are eligible for federal funding if they seek abortions. In February, Republicans drew widespread condemnation for their “forcible rape” proposal, which legal experts said would have excluded statutory rape victims and others from obtaining abortions through Medicaid. Amidst public outcry and a protest campaign by left-leaning groups, Republicans abandoned the language, which had been included in the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” a bill the GOP leadership numbered H.R. 3 to signify its high priority to the party. But while they’ve amended their legislation, which faces a floor vote in the House on Wednesday, Republicans haven’t stopped trying to narrow the already small exception under which federal funding for abortions is permissible. They’ve used a sly legislative maneuver to make sure that even though the language of the bill is different, the effect remains the same.The backdoor reintroduction of the statutory rape change relies on the use of a committee report, a document that congressional committees produce outlining what they intend a piece of legislation to do. If there’s ever a court fight about the interpretation of a law—and when it comes to a subject as contentious as abortion rights, there almost always is—judges will look to the committee report as evidence of congressional intent, and use it to decide what the law actually means. In this case, the committee report for H.R. 3 says that the bill will “not allow the Federal Government to subsidize abortions in cases of statutory rape.” The bill itself doesn’t say anything like that, but if a court decides that legislators intended to exclude statutory rape-related abortions from eligibility for Medicaid funding, then that will be the effect.
“There is absolutely no legal basis to this claim,” says George Washington University’s Sara Rosenbaum.“Unfortunately, it is sometimes the practice on Capitol Hill for Members of Congress and their staffs to use [committee] reports…to try to manipulate the meaning of the language passed by Congress,” says Ann O’Leary, a lecturer at the University of California-Berkeley’s law school who served as Hillary Clinton’s legislative director when Clinton was in the Senate. “It is clear here that the committee report tries to narrow the meaning of rape.”
We’ve been through what this is all about before. David Waldman spelled it all out a couple of days ago. Sure, they are setting the stage for a possible court case should this law ever see the light of day down the road. But there a much bigger strategy at play.
While we are busy battling back the redefinition of rape and God knows what else they put in there to keep us busy, this may be the thing that survives:
In H.R. 3, Republicans revive the mid-90s “Istook amendment” theory of the fungibility of money to include under their definition of “taxpayer funding for abortion” all tax deductions, credits or other benefits for the cost of health insurance, when that insurance includes under its plan coverage for abortion.
So if a company provides health care benefits for its employees, and the plan they pay for includes coverage for abortion, the company becomes ineligible for the normal federal tax deductions and credits that are the usual reward for providing benefits. That’s a gigantic tax increase. If you pay for your own coverage directly, no deductions, credits, etc. for you, either, if the plan you select offers abortion coverage. Whether you or someone on your plan ever gets one or not. All deductions associated with your health care costs are disallowed.
That, apparently, will impact approximately 87 percent of private insurance plans on the market today….
[T]he fungibility theory underlying the bill has been in the Republican bag of tricks since at least 1995...
And by the way, there’s no difference or barrier between targeting abortion and doing the same in the future for benefit plans that cover contraception.
Or for that matter, chiropractic or other medical alternatives. Or medicine in general. (Ask a Christian Scientist about that.)
Or, I suppose, prohibiting the use of federal funds granted to local police departments that might be dispatched to respond to emergencies at that company.
Frankly, I’m not sure why, under this theory, individuals should even be eligible for federal tax deductions, credits, etc. if they make private purchases from such a targeted company. After all, all money being fungible, it could well be said that you’re using “federal dollars” that are in your pocket by virtue of any tax deduction you take (whether related to health care or not) when you buy products from such a company, and that those “federal dollars” are going into the coffers of a company that uses them fungibly with the dollars they’re using to pay for their health care plan.
And this theory could, conceivably, be applied to anything that their voters believe the government shouldn’t be funding. And by voters, I mean corporations and wealthy donors as well as religious zealots. On the right it’s impossible to know where one begins and the other ends.
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A Kid and a Bullhorn
by digby
If this keeps up, I think Jebbie might be able to make a late entry into 2012. From Hot Air:
No reason given, but I think we can guess.
President Barack Obama plans to visit New York City on Thursday to mark the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. NBC News reported that Obama invited former President George W. Bush to attend the event but Bush does not plan to attend. NBC said Bush plans to mark the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 at ground zero in September.
Only two possibilities. One: Bush recognizes that this is, more or less, an Obama campaign commercial and would rather not be part of it. Two: Bush doesn’t want to encroach on the singular role that Obama, as president, should rightly have in leading the ceremonies marking Bin Laden’s demise. Given how gracious Dubya has been in retirement, does anyone doubt that the second explanation is correct?
Yes. Actually it’s quite easy to picture a petulant and jealous Junior Bush not wanting to be part of a ceremony that highlights his failure to achieve his most cherished desire.
But it would seem his rehabilitation among the former faithful is well underway:
As a gloss on that latter point, go read Ace’s take on the left’s outrageous outrage over Bush’s seven minutes of stunned silence on 9/11 versus their perfect contentment with Obama for having waited months — plus an additional 16 hours — before deciding to take out Bin Laden. I don’t fault O for thinking long and hard about whether to greenlight a mission whose failure would have cemented his reputation as the new Jimmy Carter, especially when the CIA wasn’t 100 percent sure that Bin Laden was in the compound. Hard choices take time to make. But do understand that that hesitation carried incredible risk: Even though OBL had apparently been at the compound for years, the arrest of one of Al Qaeda’s top operatives in the same town just three months before must have alarmed him. He could have bolted at any time, and still Obama waited. No harm, no foul in hindsight, but had Bush done the same, we’d be buried underneath stories about Dubya’s “dangerous” propensity for hesitation, quite unlike The One’s cool, cerebral insistence on deliberation. What a joy it must be to be liberal, when even your mistakes are evidence of virtue. Exit quotation from two of the kids who were in the classroom with Bush that day: “I think he was trying to keep everybody calm, starting with us… I think he was trying to protect us.”
Bush froze in the spotlight when told the United States was under attack and that ‘s the equivalent of deliberate decision making in a military operation. But hey, you can’t blame them. When you have to rely on a second grader’s interpretation of events you know you’re reaching — that and a bullhorn is all they’ve got left of their mighty, macho warrior president and it’s got to hurt. They really care about that crap.
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Lessons Learned
by digby
Here’s an interesting round up of the various ways in which the bin Laden operation was the results of different policies:
The first two examples are fairly mundane. But the last is important:
Intel Reform—Better Sharing, Better Use. Steve Coll writes in The New Yorker. Military Command—More Effective Leadership.[Obama was a gusty guy who ordered a gutsy operation etc.)Interrogation Reform—A Different Quality of Partnership. We’ve seen some diehard torture supporters arguing that, because some of the first clues to the identity of bin Laden’s courier came from Bush-era Guantánamo detainees, “torture worked.” There are two problems with this assertion. First, the Bush administration claimed to have barred the most objectionable interrogation practices in 2003 and extended Geneva protections to detainees in 2006—but, as Jane Mayer points out in The New Yorker, the real name of the courier apparently wasn’t obtained until four years ago. And on Monday, former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said, “It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantánamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding.” It’s thus hard to say the torture is what led to this weekend’s mission in Abbottabad. Second, and more important, any tips from Guantánamo had to be supplemented by a flood of on-the-ground work, and presumably more interrogations, and more talk with friendly sources, and more purchased intel—much of which, apparently, came in the last eight months. Not coincidentally, we have seen considerable improvement in cooperation with Pakistani and Western intelligence agencies in the post-Bush years, as confidence in U.S. interrogation practices, and thus in the political safety of admitting cooperation with U.S. intelligence agencies, improved. I’m not arguing that everything is perfect now, just that no one has been sent to Guantánamo lately and global perceptions have improved, the results of which have been increased ability to operate on the ground and receive shared information
Surprise.
That all sounds pretty good. I wonder how all the sabre rattling about (nuclear armed) Pakistan will affect this new found cooperation?
I have no idea if Pakistani leaders knew of bin Laden’s presence. It seems absurd that at least some of them didn’t. But then, there’s nothing new in that suspicion. I’ve been hearing that for years. Just last month there was this:
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Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chairman of the Congress’ Senate Committee said here yesterday that she sees now the CIA-ISI relationship as “something less than whole hearted partnership” because the ISI is “walking both sides of the street”.
Let’s just say that all the shock and dismay this week that members of the Pakistani government may have knows where bin Laden was hiding rings just a little bit hollow.
I certainly have no idea who knew what when. But these problems in the relationship have been there for some time. Considering the stakes, it would be a shame if anyone were to use the bin Laden operation as an excuse to totally blow it up.
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Budget Hawk Stew
by digby
Kent Conrad strikes again. From HuffPost Hill:
“Senate Democrats are furious at their lead budget negotiator, Sen. Kent Conrad, for crafting a blueprint that they think moves their party too far to the right, a leadership source said. Conrad (D-N.D.), who has been negotiating for months in secret with Republicans in the so-called Gang of Six — we prefer Slash Mob, but it ain’t catching on — to craft a plan that might win bipartisan acceptance, abruptly dropped the veil and rolled out his own offering Tuesday for his party colleagues — to brutal reviews. “He’s going to be a man without a country,” the leadership source said, describing a contentious luncheon. The problem for Democrats is that Conrad has adopted a plan that resembles the work he’s done with legislators across the aisle — which was meant to be a compromise position. In bringing it forward himself, it sets the starting point for the Democratic position in a more conservative spot than the President’s budget — which itself was already a compromise and includes a spending freeze for federal workers amid its many concessions to the GOP.”
Oh heck. You don’t think this might not be on the up and up do you? Nah …
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