Saturday, February 28, 2009

Jindal Sitting Down To Sup On The Pork (1:21 am)

The Times-Picayune is reporting tonight that Louisiana’s Transportation Department, whose head was appointed by Governor Jindal, will seek federal money to fund a high-speed rail line from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. This despite Governor Jindal’s insistence in his bad children’s theatre monologue GOP response to President Obama’s address Tuesday night that federal funding for high-speed rail service is wasteful. It seems there may be a future for transit in Louisiana after all. H/t TPM.

posted by Jarrett | 1 comment

Friday, February 27, 2009

Union Allies Fight Against GOP “Meltdown Lobby” With IRS Complaint, Grassroots Campaigns (6:28 pm)

Republican leaders and their conservative big business allies, including the Chamber of Commerce, have gone after workers’ rights with a new set of misleading attacks targeting the pro-union Employee Free Choice Act.

There’s no legislative gambit, brazen lie, propaganda campaign or skewed data — all in the service of legal and illegal unionbusting —they’re not willing to try out. This week, these include proposed new legislation promoting the Big Lie that it takes away the secret ballot; a Newt Gingrich-led PR campaign (complete with a free Wii); and spurious “reports” targeting the proposed law seeking to create a level playing field for workers.

The union movement’s leaders and allies have fought back on a few fronts in the last 48 hours. Leaders of a group of 39 of the nation’s top economists released a high-profile statement on why protecting union rights is so vital to restoring the middle-class —and then found their pro-union views welcomed at a meeting with top members of the President’s economic team. Union activists sent out a mass emailing to millions of supporters in the AFL-CIO-allied Working Families organization, urging donations to combat the anti-union ad propaganda blitz. And they brought an aggressive complaint to the IRS against non-profit corporate front groups led by Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus and anti-union flack Rick Berman (a/k/a “Dr. Evil”) for allegedly illegally soliciting donations for political candidates opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act.

(You can read this original story with a few dozen Web links included here at The Huffington Post.

That conference call was organized by Bank of America that got billions in taxpayer bailout funds while lobbying against workers’ rights to organize.

The leaders of the two biggest union organizations — the AFL-CIO and Change to Win — didn’t pull their punches:

“Bernie Marcus and Rick Berman are no-holds-barred leaders of a network of people and organizations that despise worker rights and unions,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. “Now, they are violating their organizations’ tax-exempt status through partisan political appeals. We call on the IRS to call them to account.”

Change to Win Chair Anna Burger said, “America’s working families voted for change in November because of greedy corporate CEOS who will do and say almost anything to deny workers a fair share of the profits created by their hard work. We filed this complaint with the IRS to stop Marcus and Berman from violating the law in...   read more

posted by Art Levine | start the discussion

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Obama Can’t Play Centrist on Immigration Crisis (12:58 pm)

The Obama Administration seems quite capable of centrist positioning on many issues, including immigration reform. While some argue centrist position allows Obama to effectively reach consensus, immigration reform is an issue that he cannot play sides with. While immigration reform advocates cheered the passage of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program bill (SCHIP), there is also considerable upset concerning Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano’s “finessing” of crackdown tactics begun under President Bush.

And more trouble is brewing. While President Obama speaks of improving our approach to immigration, he has yet to call for a moratorium on the ICE raids that are devastating the communities and economies where they take place. And he has yet to address the detention crisis specifically. The first raid of the new administration occured in Bellingham, WA on Feb. 24. As Hatty Lee writes for RaceWire, “In these times of economic hardship, detaining hardworking men and women and dividing families is just perpetuating more fear in our communities. We need to bring the people together not push them further apart.”

One wonders how much supervision ICE is actually operating under, as Secretary Napolitano was surprised to hear about the raid:

Napolitano told lawmakers during a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday that she did not know about the raid before it happened and was briefed on it early Wednesday morning. She has asked U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which conducted the raid, for answers. “I want to get to the bottom of this as well,” she said.
Statements like this do not gel with recent actions that indicate Napolitano’s desire to overhaul U.S. detention practices, such as creating a new advisory position to focus on these issues. Through a more cynical lens, the gap between statement and action can be seen as typical political maneuvering, and specifically, Democratic doublespeak. There are factions on the left that disagree on many issues. Even among immigration advocates there is a rift regarding how to present the issue to the voting public.

This conflict may be what we see playing out before our eyes. The division among liberal...   read more

posted by Nezua | 1 comment

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

David Sirota, Primetime MSNBC Show Host? (4:04 pm)

It seems very possible: Last month the New York Times ran a story about MSNBC looking for a host to fill its open 10 p.m. time-slot. The slot follows “The Rachel Maddow Show” at 9 p.m. and “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” at 8 p.m. (which is currently rebroadcast at 10).

David Sirota wants the job. Join the Facebook group “David Sirota for MSNBC!” Email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and ask the network to ask the man to join its increasingly popular prime-time roster. And don’t be shy about blogging/twittering about his prospects.

Sirota’s Open Left colleague Chris Bowers makes the case for why one of our senior editors would be the right pick here. David makes the case himself – as modestly and politely as one can possibly express interest in hosting a TV show - here.

If you’ve seen Sirota on CNN, “Bill Moyers Journal” or other shows you know that he’s articulate and unabashed in not only offering populist critiques of Washington politics, but presenting a progressive vision of this troubled country’s future. But beyond Sirota’s politics and personality, the clearest reason why he should get the show is simple (as Bowers writes): Don’t get angry about the media, become the media.

As Sirota himself writes:


At this moment of economic crisis, we need as many populist progressive voices in the media as possible. If we make this happen - if you help me in this campaign - we can bring all of those issues we care so much about to the forefront of the national media conversation.

Anything but another Glenn Beck. Sirota would be the opposite of a noise machine.

posted by Jeremy Gantz | 1 comment

Weekly Pulse: Czar 44, Where are You? (12:17 pm)

The Obama administration may be about to pull the plug on the health czar. The position has gone unfilled since Obama’s appointee-apparent, former Sen. Tom Daschle, withdrew his name from consideration for both czar and Secretary of Health and Human Services in early February. Several serious candidates are emerging in the unofficial race to lead HHS, but there’s no corresponding shortlist for health czar.

The czar and his Office of Health Reform were initially touted as proof that Obama was really serious about shepherding a health reform package through Congress. But the Obama team may ultimately decide that the Office of Health Reform is an obstacle instead of an asset without Daschle and ditch it altogether.

As Erza Klein explains in the American Prospect, the position was created especially for Daschle and any other candidate might be worse than nothing as far as passing a healthcare reform package goes. Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly agrees, and says that nixing the health czar doesn’t necessarily indicate that the Obama administration is any less committed to healthcare reform.

The purpose of the health czar was to create a single emissary to represent President Obama’s healthcare agenda to Congress. When the Clintons tried to reform healthcare in 1993, they discovered that various powerful administration officials were claiming to speak for the president.

The health czar was supposed to prevent future confusion by speaking for the president. Lots of senior healthcare officials are already close to Obama and a similar situation could arise. Daschle would have been a credible health czar because he’s closer to the president than any of them, and a former congressional heavyweight to boot. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is a front-runner for HHS secretary and she has a very good relationship with Obama. But Gov. Sebelius is a Washington outsider who has never served in the U.S. Congress, which might make her a less compelling candidate for czar.

Ezra Klein, linked above, argues that if nobody can fill Daschle’s shoes, appointing a less compelling czar might just add to the din of executive branch officials vying for the attention of key...   read more

posted by Lindsay Beyerstein | start the discussion

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

How The Solis Confirmation Boosts Obama’s Economic Recovery (10:51 pm)


Just a few hours before President Obama was set to give his talk to Congress on the economy, former Rep. Hilda Solis was confirmed by a lopsided 80-17 vote as Labor Secretary following weeks of GOP delays. She was targeted, essentially, for being too pro-labor, although her Republican critics used other spurious objections to try to delay her choice, including some minor tax liens her husband already paid for his car repair business.

The delaying tactics were also a forerunner to the upcoming political battle over the Employee Free Choice Act designed to help workers overcome harassment and intimidation.

Now, aided by conservative mastermind Newt Gingrich, the right-wing has adopted a new Orwellian theme to go after workers’ rights as part of their bogus economic stimulus plan (i.e., tax cuts for the wealthy):

“Protect the Rights of American Workers. We must protect a worker’s right to decide by secret ballot whether to join a union, and the worker’s right to freely negotiate. Forced unionism will kill jobs in America at a time when we can’t afford to lose them.”

In truth, unions are needed more than ever now because they boost wages, living standards and consumer demand. That’s shown by a major report by the Center for American Progress and a statement from three dozen of the nation’s leading centrist and progressive economists organized by the Economic Policy Institute, including Harvard’s Richard B. Freeman, scheduled for release on Wednesday. That message was reinforced by the pro-working families themes struck by the President during his economic recovery speech: “That’s what this is about. It’s not about helping banks - it’s about helping people…”

The Solis confirmation is not just a victory for Solis and the Obama administration, but for working families everywhere after eight years of Republicans undermining the Labor Department during the Bush Administration.

As Stewart Acuff, the special assistant to the AFL-CIO president, remarks, ” She’ll be a Labor Secretary for workers, unlike Elaine Chao, who was a Labor Secretary for CEOs and corporations. She’ll look for ways to make working life more fair for American workers.” The AFL-CIO President...   read more

posted by Art Levine | start the discussion

Bush’s Irony-Free Terror Regime (6:14 pm)

Barbara Ehrenreich has a deeply disturbing post on her blog about how an article she wrote 20 years ago played a role in the torture of Binyam Mohamed.

Note that I am not inserting the word “alleged” before “torture”: if ever there were a clear case of abuse during the Bush terror regime, Mohamed’s would be it.

Mohamed, who was released from Guantanamo yesterday and transferred to Britain, where he was a resident until 2002, spent a total of seven years in U.S. custody, beginning with his arrest in Pakistan. As if being tortured and held without charge for years were not bad enough, Mohamed’s “rendering” and imprisonment appears to have been in part based on the man’s “confession” about reading an article online that detailed how to build a H-bomb. (Mohamed was charged with war crimes last year, but those charges were later dropped.)

That article, co-written by Barbara Ehrenreich, was satire. U.S. authorities didn’t get the joke, as she notes:

It’s not clear how the news of Mohamed’s H-bomb knowledge was conveyed to Washington - many documents remain classified or have not been released - but Smith speculates that the part about the H-bomb got through, although not the part about the joke. The result, anyhow, was that Mohamed was thrust into a world of unending pain - tortured at the U.S. prison in Baghram, rendered to Morocco for 18 months of further torture, including repeated cutting of his penis with a scalpel, and finally landing in Guantanamo for almost five years of more mundane abuse.

And here’s an excerpt from Ehrenreich’s 1979 article, published in a now-defunct left-wing magazine named Seven Days:

First transform the gas into a liquid by subjecting it to pressure. You can use a bicycle pump for this. Then make a simple home centrifuge. Fill a standard-size bucket one-quarter full of liquid uranium hexafluoride. Attach a six-foot rope to the bucket handle. Now swing the rope (and attached bucket) around your head as fast as possible. Keep this up for about 45 minutes. Slow down gradually, and very gently put the bucket on the...   read more

posted by Jeremy Gantz | start the discussion

As Recession Deepens, the American Left Must Exercise Imagination (6:12 pm)

Consider that the American and world economy are just beginning to work their way into a depression. This is not too farfetched considering that in the blogs and mainstream media, the 1930s are becoming a common theme. It is becoming conventional wisdom that we’re headed for depression. Just as dust bowl winds destroyed our farmlands, this hurricane of financial abuse is deconstructing the modern economy. It is not unreasonable to expect that the federal government cannot manufacture jobs quickly enough to breathe life into a dying consumer economy gasping for breath.

It’s time for the American Left to start exercising some imagination.

Let’s assume that eighteen months from now it will have become clear that Federal interventions displayed only moderate success. Big box and specialty chains will be closing doors. Flea markets and street vendors will spring up like mushrooms around an old tree trunk as the abandoned old structures house numerous spontaneous eruptions of minicommerce. Deep resentments will emerge, focusing on those perceived as wealthy. Demands will be made that resources be redistributed that allow the disadvantaged to have access to health, education and a job.

The American Left has been split for years between those that concentrate on heinous U. S. actions overseas (Palestinian rights, anti-war groups, anarchists, fair trade advocates, global environmentalists) and the moderate Left, which emphasizes what is happening within the confines of the U.S. borders (unions, African-Americans, Left Democrats, church groups, local environmentalists).

Right now, on one side, is the African-American and union population feeling empowered by an Obama Administration, with left-leaning Obama supporters seeking to give the president a chance. On the other side are organizers and activists wanting to make sure an Obama Administration follows through on its promises to serve those most disenfranchised within U.S. borders and overseas. This side uses strategies that exert pressure in the form of protests, letters, actions, campaigns, etc., which will provide clear guidance to policymakers. Right now, the soft Left and hard Left is split even further than is usually the case.

These differences between the soft and hard Left polarities are about to disappear. Three...   read more

posted by Andrew Lehman | start the discussion

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