People are not going to like what any president does. Many people are not going to like the person, as is the case with Barack Obama and to a greater extent than to George W. Bush. Conservatives revere the Bush presidency, especially its tax cuts and its waging wars. They despise Obama for trying to undo both of those situations as if it’s personal. They seem to hate peace and prosperity.
What’s more, in the middle of that period -- February 4, 2003, to be exact -- White House budget chief Mitch Daniels conceded that the budget would remain in deficit for the next decade. According to Slate, “a Feb. 3 White House fact sheet lays down the Bush line: The budget would be in double digit deficit if had there never been a tax cut in 2001.” Republicans blame run-away spending, now.
The elephant in the living room is the deficit financing of two wars. End the wars and we apply a tourniquet to the deficit spending that requires raising the debt ceiling. Since March 1962, that ceiling has been raised 74 times and ten of those times have occurred since 2001. If President Obama is to be despised for anything, it must be for attempting peace and prosperity. It’s nothing personal.
Article first published as Peace and Prosperity: Nothing Personal on Blogcritics.
Time Magazine used the word “zoom” with respect to the “public debt” in a 1941 article and said, “The President questioned the meaning of a legal debt limit, hinted that there should be no legal limit.” There were only newspapers, magazines, movie theatre newsreels and radio to report that the 1940 Democratic platform “made no mention of that fiscal dodo, that old museum piece: a balanced budget. Franklin Roosevelt held to precedent—he didn't mention it, either.”
Bear in mind that the idea of a federal budget was relatively new. Up until 1921, the president did not have much of anything to do with hashing out budget, other approving or disapproving it as the head of his political party. The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 created the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) as part of the Legislative Branch. Its job was to audit federal books and prevent fraud. In the Executive Branch, the 1921 legislation created the Bureau of Budget to coordinate budget submissions by various departments and agencies.
Former Treasury Department economist Bruce Bartlett wrote in Forbes, “Deficits primarily resulted from wars, and strenuous efforts were always made to pay them off as soon as possible afterward. On those occasions when the Treasury needed to sell bonds, each individual bond issue had to be specifically authorized by Congress.”
The federal budget is actually on automatic pilot, anyway. The reality is that neither Congress nor the presidents have anything so say about it. “If you take all the earmarks, unnecessary weapons systems, waste, fraud and abuse and everything else you can think of that deserves to be cut, it still adds up to drops in the ocean compared to Social Security and Medicare,” Bartlett says. “As long as those programs are off limits the president's budget will continue to decline as a matter of political and economic importance.”
As to the meaning of the debt ceiling that President Roosevelt questioned, since March 1962 the debt ceiling has been raised 74 times. According to the Congressional Research Service, 10 of those times have occurred since 2001. Theoretically, the debt ceiling limit is supposed to help Congress control spending. However, in reality, the debt limit is ineffective in controlling spending and deficits. Politicians and reality continue to be strangers to one another.
Here is where the appearance of a showdown gets legs. “Administration officials say even GOP firebrands won’t risk a national default and an international financial meltdown,” according to Politico. “There is a growing sense among all parties that President Barack Obama won’t be able to extend the credit limit without making significant new concessions to congressional Republicans.”
Democrats have leverage, however. “There are obviously divisions in the GOP among the leaders and the people pursuing their dumb notions of linking [cuts] to the debt vote,” said Representative Barney Frank (D-MA). Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has repeatedly said the limit needs to be raised. Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA), Boehner’s number 2 in the House, is keeping with his alliance with tea party conservatives and taking taken a tougher line. But that’s all it is – a line.
Conservative strategists are warning that the GOP should not push the debt ceiling debate too close to the breaking point. According to the Huffington Post, “If there is a vote on raising the debt ceiling and it fails, there will be a significant market reaction,” said Tony Fratto, a former Treasury and White House official in the Bush administration. “Investors already believe that Congress doesn’t understand the financial markets. A failure to raise the debt ceiling will confirm this to them."
The country is already sour on congress. Gallup reports, “Congress' approval is at 17%, essentially unchanged from last month's 18%, and identical to where it was just after last November's midterm congressional elections. The current rating is just four percentage points above the all-time low of 13% from December.”
Gallup also reports that neither the budget nor unemployment is Americans' top overall concern. “That distinction belongs to the economy, by a significant margin over any other issue. The economy has placed first or second on the list each month since February 2008.” Even so their polling shows that “Independents and Republicans are both twice as likely as Democrats to say the budget is the most important problem. In turn, Republicans are less likely than Democrats and independents to view unemployment as the top problem.”
Pew Research March survey found that 34% of Americans said the economic issue they found most worrisome was “the job situation,” followed by rising prices (28%) and then the budget deficit (24%). The survey also said, “The number citing the deficit as their top economy worry had increased from 19% in December. Concern over rising prices increased even more dramatically -- from 15% in December to 28% in March.”
Pew Research also found that with respect to Obama’s handling of the federal budget deficit, 33% approved and 59% disapproved. However, when asked whether the GOP or President Obama has the better approach on the deficit, “most Americans (52%) say there is not much difference between the two sides -- and Republicans have lost ground on this measure, among their own base, since November.”
Not surprisingly the New York Times/CBS poll finds pretty much the same results. Of Barack Obama’s handling the federal budget deficit, 33% approve and 59% disapprove. Of the way the Republicans in Congress are handling the federal budget deficit, 27% approve and 63% disapprove. As to the way Congress is handling its job, 16% approve and 75% disapprove. Congress beats the president in disapproval.
H.L. Menken said, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” The recent House Republican habit of creating fake debates and backing losing legislation would seem to confirm Menken’s observation. However, its Barney Frank who calls the raising the deficit ceiling debate best. “In the end, the Republicans are not going to be able to withstand the pressure from the business community, the guys who finance their campaigns. … In the end, they have to do this.” Posturing about the debt ceiling is another fake debate.
While everyone’s attention was focused on the potential for a government shutdown, House Republicans passed a bill to repeal federal rules barring Internet service providers from blocking or setting different prices for some uses of their networks. According to the Associated Press, in voting to repeal rules on “network neutrality” set down by the Federal Communications Commission, Republicans claimed that the FCC lacked the authority to impose such rules.
“The FCC power grab would allow it to regulate any interstate communication service on barely more than a whim and without any additional input from Congress,” said Rep. Greg Walden (R, OR), a sponsor of the legislation. The vote along party lines to pass the bill, H.J. Res. 37, was 240-179. This is the same House that voted 228-192 on a bill to defund National Public Radio last month. It is yet another bill unlikely to pass in the Senate and doomed to a presidential veto if it should.
Before the House took up a joint resolution condemning the new Internet access rules, Verizon and MetroPCS brought a lawsuit to court that challenged the FCC’s pending rules to keep Internet service providers from blocking access to certain Web sites or applications. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit rejected the suit as “premature.” Although considered by some as a first-round victory for the F.C.C. and its chairman, Julius Genachowski, the real battle over the commission’s attempt to regulate broadband providers has only just begun.
In a recent meeting with Wall Street Journal reporters and editors, Genachowski said, “I don’t see any circumstances where we’d take steps to regulate the Internet itself.” He added, “I’ve been clear repeatedly that we’re not going to regulate the Internet.” In trying to craft new rules that would require phone and cable companies to treat all legal Internet traffic that flows over their lines equally, the FCC had proposed a draft of “net neutrality” rules last fall. “The communications line piece is something that we have historic responsibility for [in] promoting competition and promoting innovation. So that is the distinction,” Genachowski said.
Internet service providers, of course, say there’s no need for the government to step in, as do other opponents of the FCC.
Freedom Works called the FCC rules “job-killing regulations [that] would involve significant new controls on the Internet that would have significant implications for investing in innovation and broadband deployment.” In urging passage of HJR 37, it posted, “The FCC should respect this fact—and the careful separation of power laid out in the US Constitution—and not make such sweeping law where the legislature has not.” Naturally, anything that conservative organizations and Republicans don’t like, out comes the Constitution.
Another organization, Americans for Prosperity went as far to charge that “Chairman Genachowski, a long-time executive at Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp, one of the leading corporate beneficiaries of net neutrality, is currently attempting FCC’s second foray into Internet regulations.” The fact is that no FCC commissioner may have a financial interest in any FCC-related business.
Consumers Union opposed the legislation. “Internet providers should not limit your choices to their preferred sites,” said Parul P. Desai, the organizations policy counsel. “Key stakeholders – from consumers, to small business, to civil rights groups and religious organizations – have overwhelmingly voiced support for Open Internet rules as well as the FCC’s authority to implement and enforce them.” Unfortunately, they did not refer to the Constitution in their opposition.
As I pointed out in Blogcritics two years ago, there is a difference between a regulation and a law. As an independent regulatory agency, the FCC has the power to impose regulations at any time without action by either the executive or legislative branches. The new regulations, which the FCC calls its Open Internet Order, are the rules that House Republicans attacked.
Article first published as Net Neutrality: Message or Medium on Technorati.
Hypocrisy is a pretense of having a virtuous character and principles that one does not really possess. Bare that in mind while I offer an observation that the threat of a government shutdown is just a threat. It is a bully’s threat that is about as credible as the tears of Speaker Boehner. The speaker’s tears demonstrate one of two things, that the shut-down threat is a fake or that the man is emotionally unbalanced. In either case, the threat will last until the very last minute, when it will be averted. Deals have already been cut.
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originally published on Blogcritics, April 6, 2011 as House Crier: Faking a Shutdown
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A couple of notes, April 8, morning of the shutdown threat:
“It’s not realistic to shut down the government on a debate dealing with abortion,” Senator Harry Reid (D, NV) said. “It’s not fair to the American people. We haven’t solved the issue in 40 years. We’re not going to solve it in the next 38 hours. We should not be distracted by ideology. This is a bill that funds the government.” (see ACLU above)
Gallup reports "The American public has clearly and consistently expressed a desire for elected officials in Washington to pass a new fiscal year budget without bringing government operations to a halt."
The New York Times reports that it is “the policy riders that are the real holdup to a deal.” To Republicans it’s all about abortion, environmental protection and health care. The hold up has nothing to do with jobs or the economy. Negotiators at the White House say “the issue of the spending cuts barely even came up. All the talk was about the abortion demands and the other issues.”
The shutdown is a made for TV event. Neither the White House nor the Republican leadership will let it happen and, contrary to Dave’s right intentions, there is already a continuing resolution in the breach ready for the moment of truth.
Tommy
House Republicans held an emergency session on HR 1076, the NPR funding cut. What was the emergency?
A hidden camera captured NPR executive Ron Shiller saying that NPR would be better off without federal funding. But that’s not all. Shiller also ripped into the tea party movement as a bunch of “gun toting racists,” adding “and not just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic.”
Republicans have had NPR on their agenda for years and a phenomenal and bogus tape by James O'Keefe became their next big deal. O'Keefe claims to be acting in the tradition of undercover investigative muckrakers. But the GOP’s new majority seized O'Keefe’s misleading editing, distorted quotes, and untruth and promoted it as gospel. The emergency was on.
Here is an interview with O'Keefe.
As I wrote on Blogcritics, when you can listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity for free, who needs NPR? It reaches 33 million listeners through its member stations, with its 36 bureaus and offices around the world, and local coverage produced by more than 270 independent NPR member public radio stations across the country. Republicans hate that. In the House of Representatives they voted their conscience, and this tells us everything we need to know.
It’s not about the money. It is all about the content. The GOP doesn’t like NPR content because they are focusing on a small percentage of it that they disagree with. I am sure Rush Limbaugh agrees with me.
The left politics or right politics argument that is being bandied about is referred to as the False Dichotomy Fallacy, which excludes anything in the middle. The majority of NPR programming is neither left nor right. NPR stations broadcast programs ranging from A Prairie Home Companion and The Thistle & Shamrock to Car Talk and Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me. The news programs Fresh Air and All Things Considered must drive the GOP nuts.
There is nothing like a tempest in a tea party pot, which is what the new House majority seems to be all about. Their emergency meeting on NPR funding is just one of many items on a growing list to stuff that they know is doomed to successful failure. There are health care bills they know they can't pass, abortion bills they know they can't pass, climate bills they know they can't pass, and budget bills they know they can't pass.
The voters that elected them must really be impressed with the amount of time, money and energy their House GOP representatives have spent on defending the Defense of Marriage Act, recklessly accusing Muslim Americans of disloyalty, and pushing culture-war bills related to vouchers, English as the 'official' language, and 'In God We Trust.'
NPR's funding would have been an issue whether or not O'Keefe made that tape. Senator Saxby Chambliss agrees about that, but also says, “You know, an awful lot of conservatives listen to NPR. It provides a very valuable service.” The Georgia Republican also thinks that “total elimination of funding is probably not the wisest thing to do.” He is being politically kind.
Other than NPR stations, radio is owned by the right. Television is owned by the sponsors. That’s why journalism and television have become as oil and water. Television journalism has become an oxymoron. The reason is that television is show business.
“Mack, guys like you [journalists] are like icing on the cake. We don’t really need you,” the Sales Manager of WJCL TV, Savannah, said to me after I got pulled off of a story I was working. “If it doesn't sell beer or cars, it doesn’t go on the air.”
As to news presenters, they are their own little institutions. They are actors playing the rolls of journalists. They are talking hairdos. The scripts they read are becoming more and more shallow, almost vapid. Their script writers are too lazy to use Google.
Incidentally, if you think that one broadcast or cable news organization is any better than another, please think again. Aside from NPR and PBS, all other “self-respecting news organizations” ask themselves two basic questions. Does it sell beer? Does it sell cars?
O’Keefe’s productions sell both.
What did the Republicans expect other than an outdoor media event in Madison?
“I hope I’m inspiration just as much as others are an inspiration to me,” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said last week. He just did not say what he inspires. State Democrats walked out of the legislature, preventing a quorum and thus a vote and people came out to demonstrate, of which Madison has a long tradition.
Walker, “Wisconsin’s new union-busting governor”, as Paul Krugman called him, announced plans to cut the bargaining rights and benefits of public workers. The measures in question would prohibit unions from bargaining over issues other than wages. They would stop unions from having dues deducted from state paychecks and require them to hold annual elections to stay in existence.
It should be noted that Wisconsin’s pension fund is better off than most pension funds in the US. The state does not suffer the large shortfalls that other states face and it has a 7.5 percent unemployment rate, well below the national average.
“Workers’ rights — including the fundamental right to organize and bargain for better pay, benefits and working conditions — are under attack in states from Maine to Ohio, from Wisconsin to Florida,” said Gerald McEntee, president of the main union of Wisconsin state employees.
“It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison,” First District Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) said. Never mind that the Wisconsin protesters, unlike those in Egypt, have jobs, homes, families, plenty of food on their plate, police protection, and are engaging in completely risk-free protests.
Besides, even Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santorum, and Glenn Beck denounced the uprising in Egypt and insisted that President Obama should have helped Mubarak put it down.
Like many Republicans in states like Wisconsin, Walker came to power last November by defeating union-backed Democrats. Now those newly elected Republicans are attacking union wages and union power, as they face budget gaps in those states that were largely created in the first place by Republicans prior to 2008.
The Mid-East comparison trivializes the protest in Madison. That is what a media event is: a shiny bit that attracts attention and rhetoric but no substantive discussion. It is the false analogy that a protest is a protest is a protest to which I object. The whole purpose of a protest is to call attention, foment debate and call for amendment, and it should affect the discussion that emerges when Wisconsin Democrats return.
Governor Scott Walker is one heck of an inspiration, all right, especially for those who are interested only in power and not in consequences. He certainly is not interested in making any concessions or negotiating with anyone. He most certainly is not interested in bargaining with state workers. He wants to terminate their ability to bargain. That appears to be his Republican brand of politics.
Begging the rhetorical question of whether Wisconsin is the Tunisia of collective bargaining rights has a lot of coincidental appeal, but it is off point. The point is what President Obama called “an assault on unions” which is all about politics, especially in center-left Madison, where it is cold.
However, the spring will come, the freeze will thaw and the protests will be what used to be called a Kodak moment. Follow it on Twitter and Facebook.
After the Republican House procedurally failed at their first attempt to have the Patriot Act extended, they succeeded and passed it with little debate. The bill now goes to the Senate and begs a very important question. Where is the oversight on this issue? The answer is, there isn’t any oversight. There is fear mongering, like the claim that our country is facing unprecedented threats both at home and abroad. What threats? Where at home? Where abroad?
The Patriot Act is the post-9/11 law created during the Bush/Cheney administration that violates the 4th Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. Its authorization is so broad that the government does not even have to specify the suspect’s name to get a warrant. It authorizes the following:
1. Examination of library and bookstore records of suspects, along with hard drives, tax documents and gun records, without being required to show probable cause
2. Roving wiretaps on a terror suspect without the government specifying the suspect’s name to get a warrant
3. Surveillance of so-called “lone wolf” suspects, permits secret intelligence surveillance of non-US persons who are not affiliated with a foreign organization. Although it has never been used, the Congress seeks to renew it without debate.
Additionally, National Security Letters (NSLs) permit the government to obtain the communication, financial and credit records of anyone deemed relevant to a terrorism investigation even if that person is not suspected of unlawful behavior.
The ACLU also offers a detailed look at how congress and the public “have yet to receive real information about how these [Patriot Act] powerful tools are being used to collect information on Americans.” The ACLU makes it easy for you to contact your Senator. Reasonable suspicion or probable cause before undertaking an investigation that infringes upon a person's privacy is suspended under the Patriot Act, which needs to expire.
The House vote came in and by a margin of 65, approved the Patriot Act extension. As the NY Times reported, “it is likely that the Senate will approve the House’s bill — putting off a larger debate over the provisions until later in the year.”
Or so we hope.
Some have argued that it is like the tree falling in the woods with no one around and asking if it makes a sound. The tree’s falling creates a disturbance whether anyone is around to hear it or not. Moreover, the use of such a postulation demonstrates a lack of understanding of the issue, if not ignorance.
If you pardon the reference, the issue is clear cut. First, The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,” which the Patriot Act allows, especially whether or not a person knows it. Second, “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,” which the Patriot Act authorizes.
Of course many English colonists, perhaps even a majority, asked the same question, “Why get worked up over things that only theoretically threaten liberty?” No one asked you to concern yourself about the “right of the people” or civil liberties at all. The Constitution takes care of that, whether or not you know it.
While many writers are concerned with pontificating about Egypt, a subject vastly beyond their understanding, concern about their own liberties go ignored. To keep our eye on the ball, compromising our constitution affects us more than current events abroad in Africa. Egypt now has no constitution. Its military accomplished that. It is our Bill of Rights that is threatened here at home by our Congress that demands our concern.
The reason for concern is as the American Civil Liberties Union motto states, “Because Freedom Can’t Protect Itself.”
“I am committed to protecting this constitutional right,” President Obama said in a statement. “I also remain committed to policies, initiatives, and programs that help prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant women and mothers, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption.” Mr. Obama said the 1973 Supreme Court ruling “affirms a fundamental principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters.”
We’ll see how that commitment works.
The phrase that it “ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it” comes to mind whenever I consider landmark Supreme Court decisions, none more so than that of Roe v Wade. Whenever the 38-year-old case comes up, the next words to follow are “that legalized abortion.” Those three words express an often repeated opinion of what the Court ruled when it struck down Texas criminal abortion statutes as “…vague and over broadly infringing the plaintiffs' Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.”
What the ruling says is different than such a “that legalized abortion” modifier. It would be more accurate to say of Roe that “the unborn have never been recognized in the law.” In fact, it is exactly what Justice Harry Blackmun wrote. Roe is not about abortion.
Roe is about the right to privacy which, while not specifically articulated in the Bill of Rights, comes from a previous landmark decision, Griswold v Connecticut. In that 1965 case, the Court identified a constitutionally protected right to privacy, which the Court reasoned prohibited states from denying birth control to married couples. In that case the Court ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
As the Roe decision declares, “State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy.”
It is not a carte blanche for the termination of pregnancy, however, as Justice Blackmun wrote. “We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified, and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.”
The controversial nature of public opinion relating to abortion and to the Roe decision is polarized. The opposing sides try to be careful with their use of language, as in what they call themselves: Abortionists or Pro-Choice on one side and Anti-Abortionists or Pro-Life on the other. Both sides are highly politicized and their confrontations have a history of violence.
The prevailing view of the Pro-Choice side is characterized by organizations such as the National Abortion Federation. As a “professional association of abortion providers in North America,” the NAF says, “We believe that women should be trusted to make private medical decisions in consultation with their health care providers. NAF currently offers quality training and services to abortion providers and unbiased information and referral services to women.”
The more activist Pro-Life side is characterized by organizations such as the Pro-Life Action League, which organizes and participates in marches, such as the recent one in San Francisco. The League says, “We confront the abortionists and abortion promoters wherever they are. We picket and demonstrate outside abortion facilities, pro-abortion events, the offices of abortion organizations like NOW and Planned Parenthood and even abortionists' houses. We infiltrate their meetings and groups.”
Each side of the abortion issue has a different position on when life begins, at conception or later. It is an argument that has its roots in the 19th Century. But the Roe v Wade decision side steps that debate, leaving it outside of the rule of law.
“Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”
If the debate is outside of the rule of law, it is not outside of the legislation of laws. The American Civil Liberties Union cautions that Congress is trying attempting to legislate around the Roe decision, “making access to abortion services harder to obtain for low-income women.” The ACLU says, “No woman plans to have an abortion, but that is the point of health insurance.” It contends, “That’s why the majority of plans currently include coverage for abortion care. Politicians should not be working to take away coverage that already exists for most women.”
While that may or may not be, the question becomes how legislators will respond to their constituencies and to public opinion. The group Priests for Life president, Father Frank Pavone, asserts that even after 38 years the public still does not understand what the ruling in Roe means. “Perhaps it is more accurate to say our nation is beginning to awaken to the fact that Roe’s policy – imposed by a Court rather than voted on by the people’s representatives -- has never represented what the majority of Americans think about abortion.” Perhaps.
So, what is that thinking? Let us turn to Gallup where you too can look at the data. Two years after the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling “gave sweeping constitutional protection to abortion”, Gallup asked Americans to say whether they believe abortion should be "legal under any circumstances," "legal only under certain circumstances," or "illegal in all circumstances."
The survey results said, “In the most recent period, from 2005 to 2009, the majority of all age groups favored the middle "legal only under certain circumstances" position.” Gallup further observed that even though the topic of abortion is a contentious social issue, “in recent years, the generational distinctions have blurred.” Gallup asked about abortion, not about the right to privacy.
Given the mood swing of the country that put a new Republican majority in Congress with its avowed anti-abortion agenda, the President’s right to privacy commitment is either to a Constitutional landmark or to a political landmine.
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Originally published on Blogcritics, January 25, 2011
