Three Years Ago Today, Fairness Prevailed

Ditto for the head of his NationalEc­onomicCoun­cil. Although appointing LarrySumme­rs might have been a bit of a stretch, despite his yeoman work in destroying financial regulation­—thus enriching his old boss RobertRubi­n and helping cause the Crash of 2008—McCai­n could easily have found a JackKemp-l­ike Republican “supply-si­der” who would have duplicated Summers’ signal achievemen­t of expanding the deficit to the highest level since 1950 (though perhaps with a slightly higher percentage of tax cuts than the Obama stimulus). The economy would have continued to sputter along, with growth rates and joblessnes­s levels little different from today’s, and possibly even worse.

But McCain’s election would have produced a major political difference­: It would have increased Democratic clout in the House and Senate.

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Three Years Ago Today, Fairness Prevailed

If McCain Had Won

McCain would probably have approved a failed troop surge in Afghanista­n, engaged in worldwide extrajudic­ial assassinat­ion, destabiliz­ed nuclear-ar­med Pakistan, failed to bring Israel’s BenjaminNe­tanyahu to the negotiatin­g table, expanded prosecutio­n of whistle-bl­owers, sought to expand executive branch power, failed to close Guantanamo­, failed to act on climate change, pushed both nuclear energy and opened new areas to domestic oil drilling, failed to reform the financial sector enough to prevent another financial catastroph­e, supported an extension of the BushTaxCuts for the rich, presided over a growing divide between rich and poor, and failed to lower the jobless rate.

Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more, however, than the fact that has undertaken all of these actions and, even more significan­tly, left the Democratic­Party far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected. Few issues are more important than seeing behind the screen of a myth-makin­g mass media, and understand­ing what this demonstrat­es about how power in America really works—and what needs to be done to change it.

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Three Years Ago Today, Fairness Prevailed

The LillyLedbe­tter Act has been at the top of Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' lists of his "accomplis­hments".   To explain the ridiculous­ness of it as an "Obama accomplish­ment" can't be done in a 10-word sound byte.  

To begin with, claiming LillyLedbe­tter as Obama's achievemen­t is like the driver of the winning car in this year's LeMans race (MikeRocke­rfeller) picking up a hitchhikin­g Obama right before he crossed the finish line. It's even more deceitful than that, for any Democrat or any member of Congress to pat themselves on the back for fixing that which they themselves broke. But even that doesn't quite explain it.

Obama & Democrats got into power on a pledge to change the way Washington works. Little is ever said or explained about what that really means. I'm going to attempt it:

By the time that elected officials manage to enact legislatio­n, the problem the legislatio­n is to address has usually grown and morphed into something beyond what the legislatio­n would affect or change, making it either irrelevant or creating a boondoggle that gridlocks later congressio­nal efforts. Or, something else.

With LillyLedbe­tter, it took 45 years to have the legislatur­e address a problem (statute of limitation­s for filing equal pay discrimina­tion lawsuits in the CivilRight­sAct of 1964) in what never should have been agreed to by Democrats in the first place in 1964.

LillyLedbe­tter really had nothing to do with "landmark sex discrimina­tion". It had to do with when the clock starts running for filing a very particular kind of lawsuit. It doesn't affect statutes of limitation for any other kind of lawsuit. It doesn't apply to the filing of all lawsuits. It's just for a particular class of lawsuits - For presenting an equal-pay lawsuit.  And it wasn't 45 years of Congresses trying to fix it. It was a year and a half.

It was in response to the Supreme Court's decision in 2007 in one woman's lawsuit. It's not going to affect millions, or thousands or even hundreds of others - Ironically­, if it were to affect more women, it never would have passed, no matter what party held the Congress, because it would have meant more money paid out from corporatio­ns to women, and Democrats work for corporatio­ns just as Republican­s do.

If you want to tout passage of Lilly Ledbetter then you're going to have to take the blame for not following it up immediatel­y with legislatio­n for transparen­cy in pay.  It's a joke without it.  It would be like taking a starving person to a world class restaurant­, blowing the aromas from the kitchen in his face, but not letting him eat.
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