Month: October 2012

I don’t want to beat this to death, but I am from New Jersey and I am just as emotionally traumatized by what happened there during Hurricane Sandy as any New Orleans native was in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Perhaps for this reason, I am getting a little tired of all the remote psychoanalysis of Gov. Chris Christie by cynics who think that he is cuddling up to the president out of some kind of cold political calculation. If you are not from Jersey, maybe you just don’t know. The Jersey shore is as integral to the culture of the state as the automotive industry is to Michigan or Mardi Gras is to The Big Easy. When I saw the aerial footage of the damage to Seaside Heights and Atlantic City and other areas of the shore, I was devastated, just as the governor was devastated. I knew exactly what that footage meant in a way that most people don’t.

Look. I’m not a fan of Chris Christie. I think he was a corrupt U.S. attorney and I think he is a bully who has a destructive ideology and agenda. But he’s Jersey. He’s Jersey, one hundred percent. And he isn’t cozying up to the president because he has some secret agenda. He wants help for his state and he’s getting help, and he’s appropriately grateful. When he says that he doesn’t give a crap about the election, he’s saying that because after seeing the destruction at Long Beach Island and spots further south, he can’t focus on anything else. There are other concerns, like massive power outages in Newark and Jersey City, flooding in Hoboken and other areas near the Hackensack River, and wind damage in various areas. But it’s the Katrina-like destruction at the shore that is driving the governor’s behavior. A way of life is threatened.

Here’s what I am talking about:

Any questions?

With less than a week before Election Day, it’s unclear whether the “Obama Era” will be anything more than a short interlude between the Bush and Romney Eras.  I suspect that if Pres. Obama is re-elected there’s a good chance that later generations will look back on the “Obama Era” as a significant turning point in American politics.  If they do, Michael Grunwald’s new book, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story Of Change In The Obama Era, will likely prove to be one of the first and most important book-length sources for understanding the impact of Barack Obama’s presidency.

The New New Deal is about the stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law by Pres. Obama less than a month after taking office.  Grunwald writes about how it came to be, the legislative battle to pass it, the challenges of implementing it, and why the “liberal mainstream media” missed the real story of what was happening.

   
1. “In constant dollars, it was more than 50 percent bigger than the entire New Deal, twice as big as the Louisiana Purchase and Marshall Plan combined.“

   

2. “It was the biggest and most transformative energy bill in U. S. history….“

   

3. “The stimulus was also the biggest and most transformative education reform bill since the Great Society.“

   

4. “It was a big and transformative health care bill, too, laying the foundation for Obama’s even bigger and more transformative reforms a year later.“

   

5. “It included America’s biggest foray into industrial policy since FDR, biggest expansion of antipoverty initiatives since Lyndon Johnson, biggest middle-class tax cut since Ronald Reagan, and biggest infusion of research money ever.“

   

6. “It authorized a high-speed passenger rail network, the biggest new transportation initiative since the interstate highways, and extended our existing high-speed Internet network to underserved communities….“

   

7. “It updated the New Deal-era unemployment insurance system and launched new approaches to preventing homelessness, financing infrastructure projects, and managing stormwater in eco-friendly ways.“

   

8. And it did so “with unprecedented transparency and oversight“.

All of that’s in addition to its pivotal role in breaking the back of the Great Recession, ending the fearsome 700,000/month job losses Obama inherited and slowly starting the nation’s economy on the road to recovery despite the united and unprecedented opposition of Republicans in Congress.

Barack Obama regularly gets criticized by liberals for being too cautious and too willing to compromise with his opponents.  What often gets missed—and what Grunwald argues convincingly got missed about the Recovery Act—is that the calm, even-tempered “no drama” Obama has successfully created more change than even his allies often recognize.

Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/

I can still remember watching Mary Martin in the 1960 NBC production of Peter Pan, asking me and every other child watching the boob tube to clap to show we believed in fairies, because, if we all clapped enough, by God we could save Tinker Bell!

And we thought we had, all of us little four and five year-olds. But that was not true, of course. Our clapping did nothing, except hurt our hands. I know mine were as red as they had ever been before. Hurt like a Mofo.

That’s sort of the way I feel about polls right now. A week or two ago we – our team – were down in the polls, and now we are up! Clap, clap, clap! Oh how wonderful!

Well clap all you want, but remember this. The only poll that counts is the one in which you walk or drive down to your local polling place, sign in, receive your ballot and vote for Barack Obama and every other Democrat.

Got that? Voting is what counts. Clapping and other self-congratulatory cheering at “good news” – i.e., stupid horse race news such as the incessant and relentless coverage of poll results here, there and everywhere – makes one feel good, but it isn’t worth a damn thing.

So clap all you want, but more importantly next Tuesday, as bright and early as possible, go do the real work that is required of you as a citizen in our “still barely a” democracy – VOTE!

And then chide, harass and/or assist anyone else you know get to their precinct to cast their votes, also.

Do that and then maybe later that night we will have something to clap about.

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PS Video embed failed, see first comment below where two videos are added!

President Obama on Hurricane Sandy: Agencies Should Cut The Red Tape to Provide Resources

Obama gets first-hand look at storm devastation in Atlantic City

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — President Barack Obama jetted to storm-stricken New Jersey for a first-hand look at the devastation, as his aides tried to keep overt politics at bay for one more day.

Still, with Election Day less than a week away, Obama’s visit was layered with political implications. The deadly storm has given Obama an opportunity to project presidential leadership in the final days of the tightly contested White House race. And Obama’s tour guide in New Jersey was the state’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a supporter of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

To the chagrin of some Republicans, Christie has lavished praise on Obama for his efforts in helping states dealing with the storm. Christie was on hand to greet Obama as Air Force One landed on a sunny, breezy day in Atlantic City. The two men, along with FEMA administrator Craig Fugate, boarded Marine One for an hour-long aerial tour of the storm damage.

Obama stopped by FEMA headquarters in Washington before heading to New Jersey.

Any liberal, progressive, or Democrat who is spending the last week before Election Day discussing the merits of a third party, or actually trying to make a case that a Romney presidency will do more to advance progressive causes, should probably be euthanized purely out of mercy. If you are a liberal who wants to sell books or gain page views or higher ratings for your television or radio program, a Romney presidency will help you out. Otherwise, everything you believe in and fight for will be set back, put at risk, or utterly destroyed.

If you don’t understand what is at stake at the Supreme Court, you probably don’t understand much else about American politics, either. But the entire premise of this argument is that the Democrats will learn certain lessons from defeat and that this will lead to a reinvigorated defense of civil liberties and an assertion of economic populism that is sorely lacking on the present-day left.

There is no precedent for believing this will actually happen. The whole New Democrat/Blue Dog phenomenon arose out of the ashes of the Mondale and Dukakis defeats. The only time the Democrats responded to defeat by moving left was in 1972, and we know how that turned out.

A Romney administration would roll back the expansion of Medicaid and access to health care for 30 million people. It would result in a rightward shift in the courts that would make voting much harder and would do severe damage to women’s rights. But even if that were all somehow worth it, we have foreign policy to consider. We have competency to consider, the importance of which the current operations of FEMA compared to their performance under Bush should highlight. And, ultimately, we’d have to win the argument within the Democratic Party about why Obama lost. It couldn’t be because of the weak economy or because of the Citizens United ruling, or because Republican governors and secretaries of state and legislatures suppressed the vote, or because of racism, or because Romney got away with a campaign of lies. No, it would have to be agreed that the president lost because he was too aggressive in the pursuit of terrorists and he didn’t do enough to alleviate the foreclosure crisis, and some other combination of populist and anti-militarist reasoning.

The chances of winning that argument would be hampered by the fact that there is absolutely no evidence to support it. It would be further hampered by the fact that the Democrats would be more finance-challenged than ever and therefore less inclined to embrace economic populism.

If progressives want to change the Democratic Party, they should look across the aisle at the Tea Party. Obviously, the Tea Party should not be emulated in full. But their decision to fight in the primaries is the correct one. You do not further your cause by empowering your enemies.

I don’t usually post about music here at The Pond.  But given the all the Jersey connections here, I thought this might be appropriate for a truly horrifying Halloween in the Garden State….

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

No, not the lyrics of the song, but a description of the ingredients that went into the making of Bruce Springsteen’s “A Night With The Jersey Devil”.

youtube

The “old” is the legend of the Jersey Devil.  “On a stormy night in 1735, Mother Leeds gave birth to her 13th child.  The child was born normal, but transformed into a creature with hooves, a horse’s head, bat wings, and a forked tail.  He inhabits the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey.”

The “new” is Springsteen inserting his own not-inconsiderable ego into the story:  “They gonna know me wherever I go.”

The “borrowed” is the final verse taken from Gene Vincent’s 1958 single “Baby Blue”.

And the “blue” is Muddy Waters’ 1954 classic “Hoochie Coochie Man” (written by Willie Dixon).

Happy Halloween…wherever you go.

Crossposted from: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/

First the disclaimers:  the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race between incumbent Scott Brown and challenger Elizabeth Warren is too close to call.  Some recent polls have Brown with a slim lead, while others have Warren ahead.  Nobody knows what (if any) impact the recovery from Hurricane Sandy will have.  Sen. Brown remains as talented a retail politician as Massachusetts has produced in recent years.  (Here comes the “but”.)

But if Brown loses this election, it will be because he lost it, as Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh pointed out last week.  For those who can’t get beyond the paywall, here are some excerpts:

Brown is “…running a dumb campaign in a smart state.“

Brown’s “...debate and TV attacks have made you seem petty and desperate — and not the likable guy voters once thought you were.“

The template for Mass. Republicans getting elected to statewide or national office is pretty straightforward and well documented:  be fiscally conservative, and socially liberal (or at least, tolerant).  Be a “nice guy”—not like those crude and mean national Republicans (e.g., Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor).  Paint your opponent as beholden to the Democratic establishment:  the state legislature, labor unions, the pointy-headed intellectuals and (this last one delicately) minorities who want “special treatment”.

Instead, Brown spent weeks obsessing about Warren’s ancestry and spent millions running ads trying to paint her a legal-gun-for-hire for big corporations.  Neither charge holds up well in the light of day, and both tarnish Brown’s well-burnished “nice guy” image.

Lehigh also nails the reason that moderate Republicans are a dying species in national politics.  They’ve refused to stand up for themselves.

“Despite your more moderate inclinations, as it stands now, a vote for you is a vote to put a right-wing party in control of the US Senate. And if Republicans win the Senate, that would spell a callithumpian parade of anti-choice, anti-government conservatives in key legislative posts. Men like Mitch McConnell, who as minority leader has made abuse of the filibuster his calling card. And climate-science denier James Inhofe of Oklahoma. And Tea Party favorite Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

If you’d been far-sighted, you would have worked from the day of your arrival in Washington to build a moderate Senate bloc that wielded genuine influence. At very least, you should have announced early on that you wouldn’t be joining reflexive Republican filibusters, but instead would routinely vote to bring measures to the Senate floor for debate on the merits.

If you’d done both, you’d be on much firmer footing today.” (emphasis added)

Moderate Senate Republicans could have been far-sighted.  They could have spent the past four years trying to govern.  They could have spent the past four years working to pass a more conservative version of Obamacare (they’d have succeeded; Obama and the Democrats were desperate for bipartisan support).  They could have negotiated and helped pass a market-friendly cap-and-trade law to reduce greenhouse gases.   They could have taken what Sens. Collins, Snowe and Specter did on the Recovery Act (withhold their votes until they got some of what they wanted—more tax cuts, a smaller bill) as a template for action on a host of legislation.  But they didn’t.

I’m not saying Collins, Snowe and Specter’s policies made sense. (They didn’t.  If anything, the Recovery Act should have been larger.)  I’m saying it’s an example of how to build room for a moderate caucus within the Republican Party.  Stare down the extremists within your own party and act like moderates, compromising with Democrats when the result would be moderate policies that benefit the country as a whole and your constituents in particular.  Instead, Specter switched parties, Snowe is retiring, the American Jobs Act (full of policies that had enjoyed bipartisan support in the past) proposed by Pres. Obama last fall has gone nowhere at the cost of at least 1 million jobs, and all across the country Republicans are on the verge of losing races—like Brown’s—that seemed like sure winners a year ago.

Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/

The president is set to arrive in Atlantic City, New Jersey at 1pm today. He is set to leave at 4:30pm. Hopefully, that will provide enough time for a helicopter trip up and down the coast so that he can survey the extent of the damage. Seaside Heights, where I grew up going to the shore, hardly exists anymore. Governor Chris Christie will accompany the president and they can discuss the many ways in which the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) can help the Garden State. Mitt Romney can’t really say anything since he spent the primaries bashing federal agencies like FEMA and taking the position that, in situations like this, Gov. Christie should be on his own with no assistance from the federal government because the Feds can’t help New Jersey without “jeopardizing the future for our kids.”

So, Romney can just plop himself down in a comfy chair and watch how the federal government is supposed to work. Because, remember, Romney said we should defund FEMA in the context of the utterly devastating tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri. Eric Cantor didn’t want to pay to help the people of Joplin unless he could take the money out of little children’s school nutrition programs or your unemployment insurance. That is because Republicans see every disaster as an opportunity to raze public housing and make the 47% of the people who can’t take responsibility for their lives eat a shit sandwich.

Predictably, the Romney campaign is trying to Etch a Sketch his history of opposing federal disaster relief out of existence, just like they’re trying to pretend he didn’t recommend the liquidation of the American automotive industry. Yesterday, Romney ignored more than a dozen questions from reporters about his prior comments about FEMA, and his campaign released a statement saying that he supports how FEMA works and won’t destroy the agency.

As Chris Christie would say, only a numb-nuts ignoramus idiot joker loser would respond to a natural disaster like the Joplin tornado by talking about eliminating FEMA. Romney won’t say the same thing again because this time around he correctly thinks it would cost him votes. So, he should say nothing. Just sit in your comfy chair and watch, Romney.

The lede from Reuters this morning regarding the political impact of super storm Sandy:

Oct 31 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Monday’s mammoth storm that caused severe flooding, damage and fatalities to the eastern U.S. will raise pressure on Congress and the next president to address the impacts of climate change as the price tag for extreme weather disasters escalates. […]

Jennifer Morgan and Kevin Kennedy of the World Resources Institute, wrote in a blog post Tuesday that the silence on climate change on the campaign trail was “extremely troubling” given the recent spate of extreme weather events and their economic impacts.

“We need our elected officials to break their silence on climate change. Whether climate change comes up in the final days of the campaign or not, the next president and Congress will need to step up and do more on this issue,” they wrote.

The staff at Reuters can say whatever they wish, but if Republicans win the election, we will continue to see climate change ignored, dismissed and derided. Remember that the chairman of the House Science committee, Rep. Ralph Hall said this about climate change research:

Hall told National Journal that he’s “pretty close” to the views of his fellow Texan, Governor Rick Perry, in feeling that climate science may be an idea hatched by scientists to garner federal funding for their research. And when NJ pointed to an article saying that nearly all climate researchers think human activity has led to global warming by increasing greenhouse gas emissions, Hall replied, “And they each get $5000 for every report like that they give out.” …

In an interview with National Journal last year, Hall was asked about climate change and said, “I don’t think we can control what God controls.”

Here’s a rundown on the views of current Republicans on the Science Committee (via Facing South:

Rep. Paul Broun, MD, (R-Ga):

“God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell.

Broun has also said, regarding climate change:

[T]hat climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.”

Vice Chairman Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.),:

Sensenbrenner is another climate science contrarian. In a 2009 interview with a conservative talk radio host, he claimed that science on global warming is “inconclusive.” He also asserted that “temperatures peaked out globally in 1998,” when in fact nine of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred since 2000, according to NASA. Sensenbrenner has said he believes solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles that anything humans do, even though scientists have found changes in solar brightness are too weak to explain changes in the earth’s climate.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.):

Rohrabacher has made a number of scientifically questionable statements, including the idea that an earlier period of global warming may have been caused by “dinosaur flatulence.” Last year, after coming under fire for seeming to suggest that if global warming is real it could be addressed by cutting down trees (when in fact forests reduce global warming by absorbing atmospheric carbon), he issued a statement saying, “I do not believe that CO2 is a cause of global warming.”

These are the men in charge of deciding what bills related to Science funding gets out of the Science committee. Do you think devastating wildfires, heatwaves and drought the last decade, much less the mammoth (pun intended) super storm Sandy are going to change their views, particularly if a Republican is in the White House? No, until Republicans such as these (and do you know of many who do not profess similar view getting elected?) are no longer in office, our Congress will only act to weaken or eliminate laws and regulations regarding mitigation of climate change. So long as they are in power, at best a Democratic President and/or Senate can keep the harm they can do to a minimum, but no real legislation dealing with the devastating consequences of continuing to dump gigatons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will come out of Congress.

Global carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011, according to preliminary estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA). This represents an increase of 1.0 Gt on 2010, or 3.2%. Coal accounted for 45% of total energy-related CO2 emissions in 2011, followed by oil (35%) and natural gas (20%).

Instead, we will continue to see a Noah’s ark of anti-environmental legislation to eliminate regulations related to air and water pollution, including any action by the EPA on carbon emissions, much like last year.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Rep. Edward J. Markey, and Rep. Howard L. Berman released a new report that provides a detailed analysis of the anti-environment record of the House in the 112th Congress. In the first session, the House Republicans voted 191 times to weaken environmental protections.

“The House Republican assault on the environment has been reckless and relentless,” said Rep. Waxman. “In bill after bill, for one industry after another, the House has been voting to roll back environmental laws and endanger public health. The Republican anti-environment agenda is completely out-of-touch with what the American public wants.”

“House Republicans didn’t wait until Christmas to hand out gifts to polluting industries. They’ve been doing it all year long, amassing the worst environmental record of any Congress in history,” said Rep. Markey. “These votes are just a preview of coming attractions if the fossil fuel industries get their way and place more Republicans in Congress and the White House. With that kind of cast, anti-environmental blockbusters will be the norm, sending more mercury into our kids, more air pollution into our lungs, and more carbon pollution into our atmosphere.”

So with all due respect to the author of the Reuters article that Congress and the President, Romney or Obama, will be forced to deal with climate change next year, the chances of that happening, despite all the evidence, despite the massive damage of climate related events such as Sandy, are zilch. As long as Republicans like Ralph Hall, Paul Broun, James Sensenbrenner, Dana Rohrabacher and the current Republican leadership who put these men on the House Science committee control Congress nothing will be done. And if Romney is elected and the Senate flips, expect all those anti-environmental bills House Republicans voted on last year to be re-introduced in Congress and signed into law by Romney.

As noted Fox News commentator Sarah Palin would say, “You Betcha!”

I’m sorry about the lack of writing recently. I had to prepare for a sustained power outage which fortunately did not materialize for us, although it did for millions of people in the tri-state area. And when I saw what happened to the Jersey Shore, well…this Jersey Boy didn’t feel like doing much more than just mourning. I may live in Pennsylvania, but Jersey is where my heart is. Maybe tomorrow I will feel like being a partisan again.