Little Miss Sunshine Liz Cheney helped make This Week a dreary, dreary show.
I was left with the feeling that we're all going to hell in a handbasket, from terror to the economy to healthcare. End times are now. The Cheneys should do us all a favor and get lost.
Her counterpart on the left Robert Reich has turned out to be a thorn in the side of the administration. Reich is still coming down from the disappointment that Obama isn't a liberal. There's a lot of negative forces out there.
It seems too many are hoping for the nation's failure for their own agendas.
Little Miss Sunshine's agenda is to keep pushing the incompetent narrative. She does a good job.
It was interesting, though, when George Will defended Harry Reid against Miss Sunshine's criticism of Reid.
If Eric Cantor and Robert Reich agree, then this idea could be the best thing since Spam. Or maybe not:
The idea of a tax credit for companies that create new jobs, something the federal government has not tried since the 1970s, is gaining support among economists and Washington officials grappling with the highest unemployment in a generation.
The proposal has some bipartisan appeal among politicians eager both to help their unemployed constituents and to encourage small-business development. Legislators on Capitol Hill and President Obama’s economic team have been quietly researching the policy for several weeks.
“There is a lot of traction for this kind of idea,” said Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican whip. “If the White House will take the lead on this, I’m fairly positive it would be welcomed in a bipartisan fashion.”
In addition to the economists working on the proposal, some heavyweights support the concept, including the Nobel laureate Edmund S. Phelps, Dani Rodrik of Harvard and former Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich. NYT
But of course, there is opposition:
“Some bad ideas never go away,” said Howard Gleckman, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute. “It’s just providing incentives to lots of companies that probably aren’t going to make it in the end anyway.”
Under the proposal from Mr. Bartik and Mr. Bishop, the credit in the first year would equal 15.3 percent of the cost of adding an employee. In the second year, it would fall to about 10.2 percent.
For example, hiring a worker might cost a small business $50,000 annually. But with the tax credit, the cost would fall to $42,350 in the first year, and then be $44,900 the next year. After that, the cost would return to $50,000.
The credit would apply only to the portion of an employee’s salary under $106,800. Lowering the cap further, however, could provide an even greater benefit to low-wage, unskilled workers.
Obama says he hasn't been paying attention to what's going on with ACORN, even though the right has duct taped Obama to ACORN. Obama tells George that ACORN isn't the biggest issue threatening the country. Thank you. I've barely followed ACORN solely because the fringe made it the center of their mad, mad world.
Here’s our FULL exchange: STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the funding for ACORN? OBAMA: You know, if -- frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely. I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money. STEPHANOPOULOS: Both the Senate and the House have voted to cut it off. OBAMA: You know, what I know is, is that what I saw on that video was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated. STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're not committing to -- to cut off the federal funding? OBAMA: George, this is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to. See the full episode here.
After George's interview with Obama, the roundtable discussed whether Obama is overexposed. Peggy Noonan, whom I used to have a certain amount of respect for, called Obama "boorish." Huh? Noonan was full of herself this morning and what was with all those faces she made? The debate over whether Obama is overexposed is stupid and another example of the media falling down on the job. What's the point of that argument. It's just ammunition for the right. The truth is if tomorrow you asked people on the street if they saw Obama over the weekend, some people would say "who's Obama?" "Others would say, no, I don't follow politics." Very few would say "yes." If you asked people if they heard the controversy about Obama being over exposed, they may have heard that. That's what perks people's ears up, controversy. On the CBS Sunday News show, one woman at a tea party explained the hate coming from the right. She said people are fearful that the liberals are taking over. The rightwing, which fears government, convinced their masses, largely through a small handful of people, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, that Obama is a big government liberal and the rightwing took over from there. Some people, of course, take hate to the extreme. On This Week, George Will denied racism. I don't understand why they deny it. It may not be the driving motivator of the rightwing but it certainly is an element and it's a dangerous and ugly element.
Steve Hildebrand, former Obama deputy campaign manager, criticized Obama yesterday and many liberals had turned on Obama. Post speech, Hildebrand seems to be ready to redirect his efforts. Interesting that Obama didn't say much new, but what he sold was the idea that health care reform won't be derailed, lies will be debunked and now is the time to take a giant step forward. And thanks to Joe Wilson, democrats rallied. I'm interested to read what Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, two big advocates for the public option, thought of the speech.
Some hard core liberals, however, are still wrongly focused on the public option. In this video, Anna is wrong. Obama also said there could be subsidies for people who couldn't afford insurance. Penalizing poor people is the last thing Obama would do. The idea of reform is to bring costs down so that insurance is more affordable for everyone. Some have wrapped their brains around the public option as being The ONLY Way to do that. But that's not true. The problem with health care is that it's so complex that few people actually know what they're talking about.
Read all about the march here. Tea Partiers are marching on Sept. 12. The Sept. 13 march for reform would ideally have a stronger turnout. List of events here.
Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA) plans to introduce a resolution in support of a national "March for Healthcare" in Washington on September 13 to mobilize the supporters of real healthcare reform with the public option, Fattah announced today.
The Philadelphia Congressman, a strong advocate for comprehensive healthcare reform, said he is calling on colleagues in Congress to endorse the proposal for a march, which was suggested this week by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich to coincide with Grandparents Day.
Fattah said his concurrent resolution, to be introduced when the House convenes September 8, would authorize use of the Capitol grounds for the march.
"The confusion, misinformation and scare tactics about a 'public option' trumpeted by the opponents of real healthcare reform have dominated the national debate long enough," Fattah said. "It is way past time for the vast majority favoring healthcare reform with the public option to show up and speak up at the Capitol's doorstep and make their views known to their elected representatives."
Fattah continued, "Robert Reich is to be commended for his leadership on this proposal for a Grandparents Day march. What better time and place to refute these false claims about how President Obama's healthcare reform would threaten older Americans. Read more
Critics on the left and right aren't giving GM much longer to live, despite the Obama administration's efforts. Economist Robert Reich says the Obama administration is allowing GM to live for only the short term. See the new GM site here. Ralph Nader is complaining too. Everyone's got their agendas and I'm not even going to pretend that I know what will happen to GM but I'm hoping that Fritz Henderson is the kind of guy who likes to prove people wrong: Henderson's CNBC interview: Ralph Nader is mad:
I'm not defending the "buy American" provisions of the stimulus bill. I'm just saying they're not the same as "buy from American companies." And although these provisions skate close to protectionism and risk foreign retaliation, at least a case can be made that if American taxpayers are footing the bill in order to create American jobs, the jobs should be created, well, here in America.
The same confusion haunts the debate over the auto bailout. Advocates of bailing out GM and Chrysler, and most likely Ford, say America can’t afford to lose "its" auto industry. But this argument leaves out the fact that foreign-owned automakers, already producing cars here in the United States, employ – directly or indirectly – hundreds of thousands of Americans. And at the rate the Big Three are shrinking, and plan to shrink even further -- even if they get bailed out --foreign automakers may soon be employing more Americans than the Big Three. Meanwhile, the Big Three themselves are global. A Pontiac G8 shipped by GM from Australia has less American content than a BMW X5 assembled in the United States. General Motors’ European subsidiaries include Opel and Saab; Ford’s include Volvo.
I’m not arguing against an auto bailout. But it ought to be focused on helping American auto workers rather than helping global auto companies headquartered in America. Why pay the Big Three billions of taxpayer dollars to stay afloat when, even after being bailed out, they cut tens of thousands of American jobs, slash wages, and shrink their American operations into small fractions of what they used to be?Read more.
The auto task force is deciding whether to give automakers more bailout money. A decision is expected by March 31.
Before the meeting, Obama said the sour economy didn't happen by chance, rather it's the direct result of an irresponsible Wall Street (or as Bush would say, a drunk Wall Street) and Washington. Here is some of what they discussed.
Here are the participants: The economic leaders who met with Senator Obama today included:
· Jared Bernstein (Senior Economist, Economic Policy Institute)
· Bill Bradley (Former Senator, D-N.J., U.S. Senate 1979-1997)
· Warren Buffet (Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway) - joined the meeting by phone
· Anna Burger (Chair, Change to Win; International Secretary-Treasurer, Service Employees International Union)
· Jon Corzine (Governor, State of New Jersey)
· William Daley (Chairman of the Midwest, JP Morgan Chase; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Commerce, 1997-2000)
· James Dimon (Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase)
· William Donaldson (27th Chairman of the SEC 2003-2005)
· Indra Nooyi (Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo Inc.)
· Paul O'Neill (Special Advisor, Blackstone Group, Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 2001-2002; Former CEO, Alcoa)
· Federico Peña (Managing Director, Vestar Capital Partners; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Energy, 1997-1998; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Transportation, 1993-1997; Former Mayor, City of Denver 1983-1991)
· Penny Pritzker (CEO, Classic Residence by Hyatt)
· Robert Reich (University of California, Berkeley; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Labor, 1993-1997)
· Robert Rubin (Chairman and Director of the Executive Committee, Citigroup; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1995-1999)
· Eric Schmidt (Chairman and CEO, Google)
· William Spriggs (Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics, Howard University)
· Lawrence Summers (Harvard University; Managing Director, D.E. Shaw; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1999-2001)
· John Sweeney (President, AFL-CIO)
· Laura Tyson (Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley; Former Chairman, National Economic Council, 1995-1996; Former Chairman, President's Council of Economic Advisors, 1993-1995)
· Paul Volcker (Former Chairman, U.S. Federal Reserve 1979-1987)
Fresh off his overseas trip, Obama is meeting with a bunch of economy brains tomorrow to fine tune his economic strategy. Good luck McCain.
Warren Buffett, by the way, favors Obama's tax policy. Buffett says rich people don't need to get more breaks on their taxes:
Bloomberg: Democrat Barack Obama said he is convening a meeting on the economy tomorrow that will include former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and billionaire investor Warren Buffett as he pivots to the U.S. economy after a nine-day trip abroad.
``I expect some further fine-tuning of short-term policies based on what's happened over the last several months,'' Obama said in an interview last night aboard his presidential campaign plane returning to Chicago from London.
The meeting in Washington will also include former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Anna Burger, secretary- treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, said David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist.
Rubin advised New York Senator Hillary Clinton during her primary campaign against Obama. Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., plans to phone in to the meeting, Axelrod said.
Obama also said that he wants the convention to be more inclusive. The Obama camp may give tickets to people who sign up a certain number of voters:
He said he's focusing on making the convention ``more open and inclusive,'' and that he's been thinking ``thematically'' about his acceptance speech at Invesco Field on Aug. 28.
Obama said he has been ``spending a lot of time figuring out how can we refresh the format so it's not only an interesting TV show but also it builds on grassroots organization.''
Reuters: * AUSTAN GOOLSBEE - The University of Chicago economist is an expert on tax policy and has written extensively on the role of the Internet and technology in the economy. Though he is not on staff with the Obama campaign, he has been a major player in shaping the candidate's economic plans. He sparked controversy in March after he met with Canadian officials. A leaked memo suggested Gooslbee played down Obama's opposition to NAFTA. The Obama campaign said the memo was inaccurate.
* JASON FURMAN - Furman is Obama's top campaign staff aide on economic policy. He was hired shortly after Obama clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3. Furman was an aide in the Clinton White House and is a close associate of former Treasury Secretary Rubin through their work together on the Hamilton Project, a centrist research organization that promotes policies like free trade and fiscal discipline. Furman's reputation as a backer of free trade has concerned some of Obama's union supporters.
* DAN TARULLO - A professor at Georgetown University Law school, Tarullo is an expert on trade and international economics. He was a senior White House aide to Clinton and served as a "sherpa" to meetings of the Group of Eight industrialized economy meetings. In a June 9 CNN interview, Tarullo said Obama supports free trade but "he's not for trade policies that don't protect American workers."
* LAURA TYSON - Tyson the former chairwoman of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and also served as his director of the National Economic Council. She is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and has only recently been tapped as a key adviser to Obama.
* PAUL VOLCKER - The former Federal Reserve chairman became a formidable figure in the financial world during the 1980s and is credited with breaking the back of double-digit inflation that marked the early part of the decade. He endorsed Obama in January and attended a March speech the Illinois senator gave in New York in which he called for an overhaul of U.S. financial regulations.
* JARED BERNSTEIN - Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, has written about income inequality and labor markets. His latest book is "Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries)." He has called for increased bargaining power for workers.
* ROBERT REICH - Reich was Labor Secretary under Clinton and was seen as a more liberal counterweight to Robert Rubin. He teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
* PETER HENRY - An expert on emerging markets and the global economy, Henry teaches at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.
clinton could've run a cleaner campaign but it probably wouldn't have mattered. the clintons are up against a movement of people who want to see things changed and obama has simply said, yes, it's possible to change washington and here's how.
when you're up against that momentum, it's tough to fight it back because it looks like we've reached the tipping point. many people in america are living paycheck to paycheck, more than the republicans realize, and the bush administration has been oppressive, so the idea of a clean break from old-fashioned politics is really exciting.
character has proven to be important in this campaign. i know i'm biased, but i've also paid close attention to this campaign, and from what i've seen, the obama camp has tried to stay on the high road, to keep it positive and on point, and hillary's camp keeps tugging on obama to take the low road because that's how the clintons define politics.
i'd like to see a woman president but i'd like the first one to be someone who isn't married to a former president. i'd like to see a woman who truly rises on her own and of her own merits. hillary has relied so much on bill during this campaign, using him especially in places like rural and suburban pennslyvania, where some people are reluctant to vote for a woman candidate, and counting his experience as her experience.
it also seems many women see this election as hillary's revenge for bill's affairs. bill really sullied the office of president with his shenanigans. i do think that the president has a big responsibility not just to run the nation but also to serve as a role model. if not the president, then who? i don't think obama will use his power to get the attention of interns. he seems above that and he seems to be a decent man who truly cares about his family.
but if women are concerned about women's rights, i believe that obama will do more for women than hillary because he has the power to move people and to get them mobilized into action. obama is clearly a better leader, whereas hillary is weak on that point. more than anything else, we need a leader, someone who can get ordinary americans involved.
so here are the clintons feeling that they are owed:
nyt: Nancy Larson’s most difficult conversation was, by far, the one with Chelsea Clinton.
“It was just heartbreaking,” said Mrs. Larson, a Democratic National Committee member from Minnesota and more to the point, a superdelegate who had initially pledged herself to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. This was last Saturday, after the former first daughter learned that Mrs. Larson would be shifting her allegiance to Senator Barack Obama.
“She is a delightful young woman who loves her mother very much,” Mrs. Larson said. “She was really pushing me. She kept asking me why I was doing this. She just kept asking, ‘Why? Why?’ ”
It is a question many in the Clinton camp are asking these days, sometimes in conversations far less civil than that one. After nearly two decades building relationships with a generation of Democrats, Mrs. Clinton has recently suffered a steady erosion of support for her presidential campaign from the party stalwarts that once formed the basis of her perceived juggernaut of “inevitability.”
more
But one person’s “disloyalty” is, to another set of eyes, well-deserved “comeuppance.” And there is no shortage of powerful Democrats who are quick to accuse the Clintons of defining loyalty as a one-way street, with little regard for the sacrifices they have made for a couple whose own political needs seem to their critics always to come first.
This tension was neatly distilled in a heated conversation in January between a prominent Clinton supporter and Cameron Kerry, the younger brother of Senator John Kerry, who had just endorsed Mr. Obama.
In the telling of two Democrats familiar with the discussion, one from each camp, the Clinton supporter, a Democratic fund-raiser with close ties to both Mrs. Clinton and John Kerry, noted that Mr. Clinton campaigned for Mr. Kerry in 2004, even though the former president had just undergone bypass surgery.
To which Cameron Kerry parried that his brother had agreed to fly with Mr. Clinton on Air Force One after the impeachment vote “when no one wanted to be seen with him.”
more
By the same token, “There is clearly a high frustration level among campaign types and from the Clintons themselves,” said Leon Panetta, a White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, who is backing Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
It is partly reserved for former Clinton administration aides who are now with Mr. Obama: Greg Craig, who served as special counsel to Bill Clinton during his impeachment saga, former National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, and Mr. Reich, who even before his formal endorsement Friday had spoken approvingly of Mr. Obama and critically of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
“These are people that the Clintons gave an opportunity to serve,” said Mr. Panetta, speaking generally. “They helped give them the titles they now have, and made them a lot of money. I think the Clintons probably feel they are owed something.”
The formal act of endorsing a candidate is generally (and properly)limited to editorial pages and elected officials whose constituents might be influenced by their choice. The rest of us shouldn't assume anyone cares. My avoidance of offering a formal endorsement until now has also been affected by the pull of old friendships and my reluctance as a teacher and commentator to be openly partisan. But my conscience won't let me be silent any longer.
I believe that Barack Obama should be elected President of the United States.
Although Hillary Clinton has offered solid and sensible policy proposals, Obama's strike me as even more so. His plans for reforming Social Security and health care have a better chance of succeeding. His approaches to the housing crisis and the failures of our financial markets are sounder than hers. His ideas for improving our public schools and confronting the problems of poverty and inequality are more coherent and compelling. He has put forward the more enlightened foreign policy and the more thoughtful plan for controlling global warming.
He also presents the best chance of creating a new politics in which citizens become active participants rather than cynical spectators. He has energized many who had given up on politics. He has engaged young people to an extent not seen in decades. He has spoken about the most difficult problems our society faces, such as race, without spinning or simplifying. He has rightly identified the armies of lawyers and lobbyists that have commandeered our democracy, and pointed the way toward taking it back.more at his blog
