Month: September 2010

I’m pretty happy about this:

Sen. Ted Kaufman, the outgoing Delaware senator who battled to break up major banks the past year, will replace Elizabeth Warren as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told HuffPost.

Reid initially appointed Warren to run the panel, launching her as a national champion of the middle class. The committee oversees the federal government’s bailout of Wall Street.

Kaufman, a Democrat, was appointed to fill Joe Biden’s remaining two years and will serve until a new senator is sworn in in November, after which he’ll take over duties on the panel.

That new senator should be Chris Coons. I wouldn’t mind if the president found something for Mike Castle to do, too. If the Republicans don’t want him, we can borrow him for a while. Such moves help cement the idea that the Republican Party is not a natural home for anyone even halfway sane.

I like Kaufman a lot, and I think he’s done a great job in his short time in the Senate. He’s a good replacement for Warren.

The Republicans know how to play hardball. The managed to get the Democrats to agree to hold pro forma sessions during the recess so that the president cannot make any recess appointments. As part of the deal, the Democrats did get about half of Obama’s 110 outstanding nominees confirmed last night, but only one of them was a judge.

Democrats agreed to the pro forma sessions to keep Republicans from sending Obama’s most controversial nominees back to him while lawmakers are out of town. Such a move would have forced the president to resubmit the nominees to the Senate and Democrats to start their confirmation processes (including hearings) all over again…

…By scheduling pro forma sessions twice a week, lawmakers can take away Obama’s ability to make recess appointments.

Obama had more than 110 executive- and judicial-branch nominees pending on the Senate’s executive calendar as of Wednesday afternoon.

The Senate approved 54 of Obama’s nominees late Wednesday evening, including a dozen ambassadors, 11 U.S. Marshals and six U.S. attorneys.

The Senate confirmed Sarah Raskin to serve as a member and Janel Yellen to serve as a member and chair of the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve. The chamber also confirmed Maria Raffinan as an associate judge of the D.C. Superior Court, the only judicial nominee on the list.

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had threatened to send Obama’s most controversial nominees back to the president if Democrats did not agree to schedule pro-forma sessions, according to a senior GOP aide.

Senate rules give McConnell this power.

Here’s Ezra Klein’s observation about this.

Now that McConnell has discovered a way to leverage his power over non-controversial appointees to end the president’s ability to make recess appointments, there’s little doubt that he’ll use it again, or that the Democrats will use it when the Republicans are in control. And so the already broken process for nominations becomes that much more broken.

Yup. On another note, I watched John Boehner make remarks and take questions at the American Enterprise Institute today, and he was asked how he expected to repeal ObamaCare since the president has veto power. His answer was that they wouldn’t fund it, and that they would do everything, everything in their power to undermine the bill and make sure it never gets implemented. So, all those workers at McDonald’s and Hope Depot are going to be shit out of luck if the Republicans take over the House.

The Associated Press says Rahm is splitting tomorrow.

CHICAGO — Two people close to Rahm Emanuel said Thursday he will resign as White House chief of staff on Friday, and will begin his campaign for Chicago mayor by meeting with voters in the city on Monday.

The two people familiar with his plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not want to pre-empt Emanuel’s announcement, said he will return to Chicago over the weekend and begin touring neighborhoods on Monday.

“He intends to run for mayor,” one of the people told The Associated Press.

MSNBC reports that Pete Rouse will replace him as chief of staff, most likely on an interim basis.

Since Pete Rouse is not the devil, it is unclear who will now take the blame for everything that progressives don’t like.

Austan Goolsbee, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, explains income tax policy in a way even a moran can understand.

Yeah, more of these please. Keep them at two minutes, and people will actually watch them. I’m waiting for one on immigration policy.

Its so refreshing to see the Republican candidate threaten to “take out” NY Post reporter Fred Dicker about alleged stalking by the Post’s photographers of his out of wedlock daughter.

Gee Carl, don’t you know the NY Post is an Rupert Murdoch newspaper, a paper known for its support of Republicans? They’re the best friends you’ve got. Of course, maybe you should have just answered Dickers question which had nothing to do with your daughter. What was that question, by the way?

Well, Paladino claimed that the Democratic candidate for Governor, Andrew Cuomo, is having an affair. Such a civil political accusation. When Dickers asked Paladino if he had any proof to back up his allegations of a Cuomo affair Paladinao flew in to a rage, as the video clip from WIVB above demonstrates.

I guess Paladino is like the show Jackass: unfiltered and very, very raw:

The blunt and unvarnished nature of Paladino’s allegations marked a jarring departure from statewide campaign norms, where charges of a highly sensitive or personal nature are rarely leveled by candidates themselves and are instead typically disseminated behind-the-scenes by operatives.

“No buffer, no aides, no filter, nothing. This never happens,” said one Republican strategist of Paladino’s remarks.

Welcome to the new “Tea Party” reality that is your Republican party, Mr. anonymous GOP strategist. Not that I blame you for refusing to allow the reporters to identify you. Paladino might want to “take you out” too if he knew who you were. No ifs ands or buffers.

Cross-posted at WinningProgressive

President Obama on Tuesday held a rally in Madison, Wisconsin that was attended by nearly 30,000 people. The rally showed that, contrary to what the media wants you to believe, many Americans continue to enthusiastically support our President and the progressive change he is working to advance. As expected, the conservative media hardly even covered the event.

That tens of thousands of people would show up at this rally in a college town was not surprising given that President Obama and Democrats in Congress have taken important steps to help people go to college by improving the student loan system and making college more affordable. These achievements include:

• Ending Subsidies to Private Student Loan Companies – For years, the federal government has paid fees to private banks to provide loans to students. President Obama and the Democrats have made the student loan system more efficient by cutting out the middleman and having the federal government loan money directly to students. This change is expected to save approximately $68 billion in fees over the next 10 years.

• Increasing Pell Grants – Under the Democratic student loan reforms, much of the $68 billion in savings will be used to increase Pell Grants, which are needs-based grants provided to students seeking their first undergraduate college degree. The increased funding will allow Pell Grants to increase to nearly $6,000 per year by 2017 (from $4,700 in 2008), and will provide 820,000 more grants per year by 2020.

• Reducing Loan Repayments – A portion of the $68 billion in savings will also go to help reduce the burden of paying off student loans by capping the total repayments at 10% of annual income above a basic living allowance, which is one-third lower than the previous cap of 15%. For graduates who go into public service work, outstanding loans would be forgiven after 10 years of payment.

• Increasing Resources for Community Colleges – The student loan reform legislation include $2 billion in funding over four years for community colleges. In addition, last year’s stimulus legislation included substantial amounts of funding that states could use to support community colleges, and has been credited with helping community colleges survive the Bush Recession.

• Reining in For-Profit Institutions – For-profit institutions – like the University of Phoenix or DeVry Institute – have been growing significantly with 10% of the total college student population and nearly $12 billion in revenue every year. Too often, however, such institutions engage in shady recruiting and tuition practices that are good for the institutions’ bottom lines, but not for their students. As a result, students at for-profit colleges are much more likely to default on student loans than are students at other types of educational institutions. Democrats are seeking to end these shady practices by establishing a “gainful employment” rule, which would cut federal aid that could go to for profit schools if a significant portion of their students do not end up in gainful employment, and a ban on compensation incentives for student recruiters.

President Obama and the Democrats have a strong record of ending subsidies for banks that issue student loans, funneling the resulting $68 billion in savings into expanding student loans, providing aid to community colleges, and seeking to end shady practices at for-profit colleges and universities. If you support these efforts to make college more affordable, volunteer for your local Democratic candidate and write a letter to the editor to let people know about these

It’s almost unbelievable that the Democrats could take their strongest issue, tax-breaks for millionaires and billionaires, and not only fail to use it before they adjourned, but to actually let themselves get hammered for not protecting the middle class tax cuts.

House Democratic leaders barely headed off a revolt Wednesday from 39 moderate Democrats who sided with Republicans and voted against a procedural resolution that would let Congress adjourn before the midterm elections.
GOP leaders framed the measure as a de facto vote on agreeing to leave Washington without voting on whether to extend the Bush-era tax cuts due to expire at the end of the year. The Democrats who split with their party face tough re-election battles and didn’t want to give the GOP a political talking point by going on record that they were ready to leave without taking up the issue.

The measure ultimately passed 210-209, allowing Congress to officially leave town after it finishes business likely late Wednesday night. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who rarely votes on these routine resolutions, had to step in and break the tie.

I mean, are you fucking kidding me? And don’t blame the progressives for this one. They were literally begging the Blue Dogs to save themselves and allow a vote to extend the tax cuts for the middle class.

Here you have a bunch of Blue Dogs who are afraid to vote for a bill that would preserve tax cuts for 97% of Americans and probably 99% of their constituents. And what do they get instead? They get blasted for being a member of a party that is letting those tax cuts expire. “No, no,” they’ll say, “I voted against adjourning without addressing that.” Yeah, technically you did, but only after you told Pelosi she couldn’t have your vote if she did try to address it. So, in addition to being cowards, you’ll now be parsing liars. Congratulations. You just pissed off your own base, 99% of your constituents, and lost the chance to be a populist hero in the bargain. You so deserve to lose your job and fall behind on your mortgage payments. These people are unimaginable idiots.

And why do Blue Dogs behave this way? Is it because they need the Chamber of Commerce to go easy on them? Is it because they can’t raise enough cash in their own districts to compete with the Chamber of Commerce, so they have to vote like banksters? You’re a Democrat serving in a socially conservative district. If you give up on taking the side of the people against billionaires, what do you have left? Where’s your appeal? If you are representing hordes of poor white Christian folk who are living on welfare, or check-to-check, how are you going to win their votes by siding with the New Jersey-Connecticut investment banker set?

So, you figure you’ll just build up a large enough war chest from out-of-state corporate cash, neuter the Chamber’s wrath by voting with them, maybe pick-up a NRA endorsement along the way, and the people will keep electing you. Well, not this year. The Blue Dogs are going to get decimated. There may not be more than a small handful of them left in the South when this is all over.

And the crazy thing is that any one with eyes could see that they were tying their own noose. Progressives tried to reason with them and they shot themselves in the face anyway.

It’s just beyond words.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet (www.NourishingthePlanet.com).

In this regular video series, we bring you images, interviews and more in-depth information about different agricultural innovations. Get to know the NtP team and the innovations we are highlighting regularly, and stay tuned for more NtP TV in the coming weeks!

In this week’s episode, Nourishing the Planet research Intern, Janeen Madan, introduces an entertaining way to spread information about agricultural innovations, health, politics, and other important issues: the television soap opera. Broadcast throughout sub-Saharan Africa and with 7.2 million viewers in Kenya alone, Mediae Trust’s “Makutano Junction” is doing just that, proving to be a soap opera that people love to watch and learn from.

Things that piss me off:

A Rutgers University freshman appears to have killed himself by jumping off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate broadcast live images of the 18-year-old having a sexual encounter with another man on the internet, according to campus and law enforcement sources.

Tyler Clementi, 18, of Ridgewood, is presumed dead after his car, cell phone and computer were found near the George Washington Bridge last week, law enforcement sources said. His wallet was found on the walkway adjacent to the New York-bound lanes. In a statement released this afternoon, Clementi’s family confirmed the suicide and said his body has not been found.

Dharun Ravi, 18, of Plainsboro, and Molly Wei, 18, of Princeton, were charged with two counts each of invasion of privacy for setting up a camera in a dorm room on Sept. 19 and using it to view and transmit a live sex scene, said Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan.

They had to pick on the guy. And now he’s dead.