senator Dodd angered by republican desire to screw workers

Senator Christopher Dodd spoke to the press Friday afternoon about last night’s Republican shenanigans and made some very important points:

• Worker salaries make up a tiny fraction of the financial challenge facing the automakers.
• The UAW had already agreed to achieve “compatibility and comparability” by March—a major concession.
• We still have the opportunity to fix this and the obligation to try.
• It is “incredible” that the one demand put above all others by Republicans during this negotiation is that workers, who have already been hurt badly by the declining economy, should take another hit.

Indeed, it is absolutely incredible. As Sen. Dodd told NPR on Friday, there was a part of the minority that was “set on having this deal blow up.”

Dodd’s complexion in this video might be an indication of just how furious he is over this Republican stunt, or it might be the result of bad lighting or a camera that wasn’t white balanced—either way, selfish and cynical Senate Republicans have left us all seeing red.

(cross-posted on Firedoglake)

I like scaring republicans

This is not the first time I’ve heard something like this:


Beyond the politics of demographics—to give it a nice name—I think that the Edwards message on domestic issues is one that is going to be harder to run against for most of the Republican hopefuls. I also think that it is more inspirational to a large group of voters that have felt left out of many recent electoral battles—inspirational as in it will inspire them to go the polls.

By the way, there’s another candidate that scares Republicans—but not in a good way.

fighting for the fighters

Kay Steiger, over at Tapped, alerts me to a pledge by two wealthy alums to my alma mater, Wesleyan University. Frank Sica (’73) and Jonathan Soros (’92) have created a fund to provide scholarships for up to ten military veterans to attend the Middletown, CT, school.

Steiger, however, questions the approach:

While it's admirable that the donors want to see that vets can afford to go to a school which costs roughly $47,000 a year, they might have better spent their resources lobbying for an expansion of the GI Bill. Many veterans benefits are having trouble keeping up with the demand -- an influx of new veterans puts a strain on a system that was intended to pay the way for a vet to go to pretty much any school he wanted. Instead, even with GI benefits, vets have to work jobs or take out loans to make up the difference. Additionally, most vets don't dream of going to schools like Wesleyan. They want to attend a nearby state school or community college.

I can certainly agree with Steiger’s ultimate goal, but I don’t see it to be at odds with the grant by Sica and Soros. While the gift to Wesleyan is substantial, it should not preclude these two wealthy gentlemen, and/or people like them, from also supporting a lobbying effort on behalf of the Bush-era vets.

Further, while I can’t directly contradict Steiger’s assertions, I also can’t blindly embrace them. While our all-volunteer force might draw disproportionately from social strata and locales not prominently represented in the Wesleyan student body, that is not to say that none from this group are without such aspirations. In fact, admissions structures such as they are at America’s elite universities—with alumni networks, feeder schools, and legacy benefits—actively discriminate against many that Steiger assumes would prefer the less competitive educational options.

I expect there are several now serving or recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan that would thrill to and benefit from the type of education I was fortunate enough to receive at Wesleyan. I know that Wesleyan would benefit from admitting the veterans.

However, to Kay Steiger’s important point—it is beyond obvious that we need a new GI Bill. Be it for higher education or vocational training, those that volunteered for service with thoughts of improving their lives have more than earned this level of assistance. But they also deserve more. They deserve access to competent psychiatric care, free of charge. They deserve medical care, funded through the government, for as long as they need—not just care for wounds sustained in battle, but full medical coverage, for themselves and their immediate families, whether or not they continue as active duty or reservists. And they deserve a VA health system that has fully repaired its Bush administered breakdowns.

Additionally, building on the old GI Bill model, current vets should have access to low interest home loans, and government protection from predatory lending practices.

Finally, it is not really up to any one or two rich college grads to promote this program—it is up to our elected representatives. In fact, even without a high-priced lobbying effort, this one should be a no-brainer for the Democrats in Congress. While Republicans wring their hands and rant about supporting the troops while they are doing the president’s bidding in Iraq, what could be a more palpable demonstration of support than passing a package that includes the programs and the money necessary for our veterans and their families to thrive here at home?

With the obvious benefits, the ready constituency, and the successful history of the WWII-era GI Bill, I challenge any Republican to oppose a contemporary version. And if they do, I would welcome the fight.

(cross-posted to The Seminal and Daily Kos)

quod erat demonstrandum

I have always liked the P.J. O’Rourke quote about how “The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it.” Sadly, I now see a grotesque corollary unfolding in Iraq.

shocked, shocked. . .

On a day when Halliburton announced a 19% uptick in second quarter profits, is it of any particular amount of surprise to learn that the massive tax-payer-funded cash giveaway also known as the war in Iraq has resulted in massive graft and corruption?

A former officer in the U.S. Army Reserves pleaded guilty Monday to bribery, conspiracy and money laundering charges in connection with a government contracting scheme in Balad, Iraq.

John Allen Rivard, 48, entered the plea before U.S. Magistrate Andrew W. Austin. Rivard pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired with a government contractor and accepted bribes to steer federally funded contracts to the contractor's company from April 2004 through August 2005. At the time, Rivard was deployed for logistical support near Balad.

In exchange for 5 percent of the contracts' values, Rivard awarded multimillion dollar contracts for such items as tractor trailers.

The total value of the contracts awarded was approximately $21 million (€15.19 million), according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Rivard said he received more than $220,000 (€159,178) in bribe payments. Rivard also confessed to conspiring with others in the United States to launder the proceeds of the bribery scheme, sending money to others to purchase, among other things, rent on a West Hollywood, California apartment and a down payment on a new BMW convertible.

From a tent in Balad (home to the massive Camp Anaconda) with a Humvee parked outside to an apartment in West Hollywood and a Beemer—why, it’s the American dream!

(Of course, here in Bush’s opportunity society, some less, shall we say, “enterprising” Iraq veterans have had to resort to a lawsuit in an attempt to pry a few dollars worth of disability pay from the underfunded kakistocracy commonly referred to as the VA.)

I would like to think that some smart presidential aspirant could cut through the “everybody does it” clutter to expose the Bush/Cheney Administration for the giant kleptocracy it really is.

Everybody doesn’t do this. This is something completely different. This is what happens when a unitary, greedy executive operates without oversight for over half a decade. This is what happens when you appoint loyal ideologues and cronies to positions of authority. This is what happens when White House war-making authority is allowed to flourish unchecked by the Congress. This is what happens when you go into war without a clue of how to get out. This is what happens when foreign policy exists only to service domestic electoral concerns. This is what happens when Pentagon auditors are overruled and punished for flagging cost overruns.

Alas, things being what they are, this is what happens when you vote Republican.


(PS Yes, I know I just used this headline in April—this is also what happens when you elect Republicans.)


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)

it’s like looking in a mirror. . .

OK, it’s not really like looking in a mirror—it’s more like listening to myself on tape. . .or, maybe it’s just like reading my own diary. . . except that I don’t keep a diary.

Whatever! When I finally got around to reading the out-of-sight, oh so right, just-for-spite, Saturday night pie fight of a post by Hunter, I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming need to share it with my “community.”

By way of preamble, I have been saying for some unfathomable time now to anyone that dare raise the subject that I have little patience for self-proclaimed political “libertarians.” “Republicans without guts,” I’d call them, meaning not that I don’t find many out-of-the-closet Republicans to be cowards, too, but that those that insist they are not Republicans, but, instead, Libertarians are nothing more than people with all the beliefs of your average, run-of-the-mill Republican, but without the courage of their convictions to actually admit it.

I guess I originally formed this equation before the rise of the Christian Right within the Republican party (god, that seems like a long time ago), so I am sure that there are now those who will use the example of “social conservatives” to differentiate themselves from Republicans. There might be a teeny, tiny bit of something there, but just like I never used to believe those that claimed that they “wore their hearts on the left and their wallets on the right,” I feel that those who believe you can just let the “free market” reign in a well-organized and vocal minority of evangelical bigots—because they (the libertarians) don’t agree but wouldn’t want to impose—are basically consigning the disadvantaged to a tyranny of, by, and for the fanatics.

Hunter finds spectral similarities not so much on the right as the left (libertarianism is “anarchism, but with crappier music”), but otherwise details the problem pretty much exactly as I see it:

There are many political -isms that I am distinctly not a fan of, and I am wary of all of them. . . . But libertarianism I will freely admit I do not understand -- at least, not in any way that libertarians might like -- and I confess I find it hard to credit what I can decipher only as glorified, self-centered apathy as an -ism at all. From my own experiences and conversations, it has always seemed that modern libertarianism is the political philosophy you tie yourself to if you are too lazy and politically uninterested to come up with any concrete justifications for anything better. It wears well on cynics, especially young cynics that are bitter enough to become conservatives but not willing to thereby subject themselves to a lifetime of being isolated and un-hip, and on old, isolated-by-decades-of-choice cynics that don't give a crap anymore.

Libertarians seem deaf to the cries of the individual (assuming that individual is not him or herself) and disinterested in the health of the community. The markets will police themselves, they tend to argue, better than any “big brother,” and people will look after their own interests better than any “nanny state.” These jargon-laden aphorisms are not only ignorant of pretty much the entire history of the industrialized world, they are usually spoken by individuals who have already enjoyed the benefits of an unfairly weighted marketplace. . . or are maybe just pissed off that the marketplace hasn’t yet been unfairly weighted enough to benefit them. . . and, no matter the economic circumstance, individuals who don’t seem to care much about other people.

But, Hunter pretty much says all that, and more, and says it in a pretty lively fashion—so I recommend you take a look. And, take a look at the comments, too (warning: there are over 600), if you are interested in even more discussion on the matter. . . or if you just like pie.

a man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience

What the hell—right? I mean, if the late Mayor John Lindsay could jettison his Republican ties after losing the party primary while running for a second term, why can’t Mayor Mike jump a sinking ship after winning his? In Tuesday’s announcement that he is removing the epithetical (R) from his name, however, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R ?) looks less like to me like Lindsay, and more like Wernher von Braun.

To be certain, I am less upset with Bloomberg’s leaving the GOP than I was when he joined it in the first place. The fact of the matter is that then, as now, the mayor had little in common with the New York or the national Republican Party, either with regards to history or ideology. If anything, Bloomberg became more of a Republican after he was elected mayor back in 2001.

Instead, what Bloomberg saw in the Republican Party back in ’01 was an opportunity. Mike had an ambition, and the New York Republicans—already in rapid decline back then—had a need. Bloomberg had no desire to work his way through the system or wait his turn, so he switched from Democrat to Republican expressly to snag a guaranteed ballot spot he likely could not win on his own in a Democratic primary.

Mike also had money, and in the Republican primary, and most certainly in the general election, he spent it. He blitzed his opponents. By most accounts, Bloomberg spent over $70 for each and every vote he received on his way to defeating Democrat Mark Green. (He actually spent even more—over $110/vote—in his campaign for reelection.)

And so, with his loose change and his convenient change of sides, Mike Bloomberg got to be mayor. And while he has been like a breath of fresh air after the vile and nasty Rudy Giuliani, Mayor Bloomberg has hardly been a progressive’s dream (some very recent proposals for a greener city notwithstanding).

Even looking past the unchecked overdevelopment taking place in New York and Bloomberg’s less than small (or large, for that matter) “d” democratic approach to public education reform, it is hard to celebrate Mike’s run as a Republican mayor because of the support he felt necessary to lend to his new found friends. Bloomberg has given $350,000 of his own fortune to the state party and perhaps more to its candidates, and let us not forget his role as host to the 2004 Republican National Convention.

And let us not forget the preventive detentions, security clampdowns, and the more recently revealed covert infiltration of protest groups that lead up to and surrounded that convention—a style of policing that was not a so much a special case as a case study for the Mayor Bloomberg/Police Commissioner Ray Kelly regime.

Also let us not forget Mike’s not insubstantial campaign help lent to Joe Lieberman (Monomaniacal Party-CT) as the Senator fought successfully to circumvent the will of his constituents and (up till that moment) party.

In fact, it is maybe in Lieberman that we have the best object lesson for understanding Bloomberg’s de-partification (if you will). Both of these men like to brag about how their worldview extends beyond ideology or party, and, in a way, they are right. Neither man is about party because both are all about themselves.

As with Beltway Joe mouthing off almost every week on the Sunday talk shows, many of Mayor Mike’s moves can be seen as grand attempts by a lame duck to remain relevant. Or, if not relevant, at least visible—it is hard, after all, to relinquish the spot light, the bully pulpit, or even the rope line.

But, beyond the attention, what does Michael Bloomberg want? Von Braun was easier to understand—he wanted to make rockets. If he had to join the Nazi party and build V-2s to do it, so be it; if he had to become a naturalized American and make ICBMs, all the better. In the end, he was eulogized as the man who got mankind to the moon.

Bloomberg has recently aimed for the moon himself, making many ambitious and sweeping proposals for changes that will almost all theoretically come to fruition long after he is out of office—his current office. I, for one, still question whether his heart is really in it.

That remains to be seen—as does whether Mike really wants (as he currently claims) to be mayor for another 900-odd days. If not, I fear what we learn about Michael Bloomberg and what he wants will, in reality, be less about what he wants for others, and more about what he wants for himself.

(hat tip: Tom Lehrer)


(cross-posted to capitoilette and Daily Kos)

adding a little color this summer?

Yesterday’s LA Times featured a story about how Democrats (and the activists that love them) are planning on making this summer the Summer of Iraq (cue music).

WASHINGTON — Democratic congressional leaders, whose efforts to force a withdrawal from Iraq were stymied last month, plan a summer of repeated Iraq-related votes designed to force Republican lawmakers to abandon the White House before the fall.

. . . .

"The debate on Iraq will continue," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said last week. Pelosi, who in March helped push Democrats to embrace a withdrawal of American combat forces, has pledged that the House will vote on numerous measures aimed at ending the war.

My first thought was, “Wouldn’t it have just been better to continue full-bore with the spring offensive to shut down this war?” My second thought was, “Gosh, for Iraqis, and the troops over there, and for all of us here that have been paying attention, every day of every season has been ‘of Iraq’ for the past four years.” But then I settled on another thought. . . .

If the Democrats goal is to split Republicans away from the Bush Administration on the Iraq issue, well, I admire the effort, but, as recent votes show us, it’s a heavy lift. However, the issue where congressional Republicans seem to have no problem standing up to and against the White House is immigration. I mean, honestly, nothing dries up a rubberstamper’s inkpad like the threat of adding a little color to the American envelope.

So, what if Democrats made one of their front-and-center “all Iraq, all the time” bills a piece of legislation designed to, on an emergency basis, quickly allow for, and even facilitate, a massive up tick in the numbers of Iraqi refuges allowed into the United States? What if the Democrats say the mayhem necessitates that a humane nation take care of the people whose lives we’ve disrupted? What if they propose a resettlement to the US of, say, 20,000, or 50,000, or even 100,000 Iraqis?

Granted, even 100,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to the million Iraqis that will be displaced this year because of this conflict, but even 20,000 is a massive improvement over the 68—yes, sixty-eight—that have been relocated to the US this year. It is possible that 4 million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes since the start of Bush’s war, surely Bush’s country can make room for a small fraction of those poor people.

That would be the argument, anyway (one I actually believe).

Now, I understand that both President Bush and his rubberstamp Republicans are both opposed to the idea of increased Iraqi resettlement for their own selfish reasons, so you won’t necessarily get a divided vote out of the GOP caucus—but imagine the floor speeches! Who wouldn’t like to hear a variety of Republicans try to gracefully meld immigration reform with Iraq war policy? Whose heart doesn’t quicken at the prospect of seeing the odd elephant chase its own tail in an attempt to find just the right way to stand on being helpful to our Iraqi brethren while safeguarding our white race, oh, I mean, our nation’s borders?

And how about the pickle in which this would put Senator and presidential wannabe John (asshole) McCain? He’s pro immigration reform and pro-escalation. . . and now, pro-fifty-years-war.

I know that the Democratic leadership has a lot to do to get back on offense this summer, but I can think of few better ways than to take two issues that have the backing of two-thirds (or more) of Americans (ending the Iraqi occupation and liberalizing our immigration policy), and hold them up to show whose on the side of the voters. . . and who is on the other—the Republican—side.

mission not accomplished

It is easy—really easy—to look at the beady-eyed maniac who vetoed the Iraq supplemental (now! with timelines!) and laugh at the folly of his flyboy stunt and photo-op speech of four years prior. Since then, over 3,200 more dead Americans, 360 billion more dollars down the sinkhole, the number of Sunni insurgents increased 14-fold, the number of attacks up by a factor of 17—mission so not accomplished.

It is easy, too, to laugh at the rationale President Bush used when issuing only the second veto of his administration: timelines are a “prescription for chaos and confusion; an early American exit would turn Iraq into a “cauldron of chaos”—as if Iraq today is a model of warm, fuzzy order rivaled only by Build-a-Bear Workshop.

But, it is because of the additional dollars and the additional dead, because of the inflating number of terrorists and the inflamed global tensions, and because of the current carnage and chaos that I cannot laugh.

Republicans and reporters might want to frame the debate over the future of the occupation as a game, pissing match, or staring contest between Bush and the Democratic leadership, but what is truly at stake is not just bragging rights or a stack of play money. Everyday the US stays the course and continues to splurge on the “surge,” the numbers of dead and wounded Americans, the numbers of dead and wounded Iraqis, the numbers of radicalized Moslems, and the numbers of dollars that could have been spent on something better will continue to increase—and the power that we as a nation have to do anything about it all will continue to decrease.

The clearly deteriorating situation in Iraq—with violence of all kinds as high as ever, the Iraqi parliament in disarray and now on hiatus, the al Maliki government using the US to kill Sunnis and arm their own Shiite militias—coupled with the contempt held by the White House for the feelings and wisdom of the majority here at home, makes this no time for easy jokes. . . or expedient compromises.

And that is why when I say “Mission not accomplished,” I am not looking at the president—not this time—I am looking at the Democrats. George W. Bush has vetoed one strategy to end the occupation—and more the visible fool he for doing so—but that is not an invitation to the Democrats to find their own USS Abraham Lincoln and declare major combat over. Democrats may have won the day, but they have not accomplished their mission.

Voters made it clear last November—America wants its troops out of Iraq. And while this round has done much to tie the Bush Administration and its Republican enablers to a fiasco of historic proportions, it has not stopped the architects of our misfortune from perpetuating, and exacerbating, the nightmare. If Democrats take this moment to feel satisfied with the political points gained, victory will be beyond pyrrhic, and voters will all too soon come to mock them as much as they now do the calcified commander-in-chief.

Any talk of compromise that does not include real and binding restrictions on the President’s long war is not so much compromise as capitulation. Any discussion of drafting a bill that Bush might sign must keep the Democrats’ mission—emphasizing political and diplomatic solutions over military force—in mind, and the final goal—effectively withdrawing all US combat forces from Iraq—in plain sight. Returning to the status quo ante, voting for another supplemental funding bill while paying aggressive lip service to the president’s problems, will not end the carnage nor calm the chaos, and thus, it will not do.

Over four years in, Bush’s original mission—however you frame it—lies in blood-soaked ruin. It is not accomplished, but it needs to be over. The occupation must end. American troops must come home.

President Bush has now made it his mission to prevent that from happening—it is the Democrats’ mission to see that this time, this Bush mission is (also) not accomplished.


(photo: Doug Mills/NYT)

(cross-posted to capitoilette and Daily Kos)

fill in the blanks

As Alberto Gonzales is to Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Washington press corps.

Well, if you answered “David Broder,” give yourself an A:

The Democrats' Gonzales

By David S. Broder
Thursday, April 26, 2007; A29

Here's a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats -- a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance.

If you answered " Harry Reid," give yourself an A. And join the long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end.

I’ve got much, much more over at capitoilette.