Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

When Obama Obama first openly put cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits on the table during the debt ceiling negotiations many of his defenders went into full "he's playing 11th dimensional chess"-mode. They claimed Obama wasn’t so much putting these on the table because he wanted them cut right now, but to prove he was the more sensible adult in the room when Republicans rejected this grand bargain. On this one point I agree with David Brooks and think we all just need to take Obama at his word. From David Brooks:

According to widespread reports, White House officials talked about raising the Medicare eligibility age, cutting Social Security by changing the inflation index, freezing domestic discretionary spending and offering to pre-empt the end of the Bush tax cuts in exchange for a broad tax-reform process.

The Democratic offers were slippery, and President Obama didn’t put them in writing. But John Boehner, the House speaker, thought they were serious. The liberal activists thought they were alarmingly serious. I can tell you from my reporting that White House officials took them seriously.

There is no super secret plan to trick Republicans or play the media. The administration has been totally honest when it has repeatedly stated that Obama wants the large austerity package possible.
Obama put cuts to these programs on the table because he wants to sign a package with cuts to these programs. His stated goal is a large deficit reduction package that is mostly spend cuts with very few tax increases. The only way he can get that without making major cuts to the Pentagon is by cutting the social safety net. If Obama actually wanted an equally large deficit reductions package that was mostly tax increases, he could easily already gotten that by vetoing any extension of the Bush tax cuts. He only wants to reduce the deficit if it is mostly through cuts.

The truly historic importance of what is happen right now can’t be repeated enough. It is a Democratic President who is the driving force now behind cutting Medicare and Social Security. It is a Democratic President who feels that deficit reduction during a recession and keeping tax rates near historic laws are both much more important policy goals than protecting Social Security and Medicare Benefits.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Child Labor Farm Rules Scrapped By White House Under Political Pressure

Obama caved...again.

===========================

Of course he did.  Because he's a Blue Dog ("Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat"), which means he might as well re-register as a Republican.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

Talk of Democratic politicians having no spines are greatly exaggerated, just like Obama's timidity is myth:  He's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base. 

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-controlled DemocraticParty gives lip service to all populist issues (like jobs, civil rights protections, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare, WallStreet reform, environmental and energy issues, etc.). 

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks,  don't take 'no' for an answer, never back away, you'll wear the opposition down.

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish Clinton's machine (to get the nomination) and the oldest, most experienced politicians in US history (including the RoveMachine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching BushCheney off the table, have us still reelecting them, not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks?

Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it. 

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

Time and time again, Obama has been able to cut deals with Republicans because Pelosi delivered the votes he needed, over the objections of her own caucus. The war supplemental that included the $108 billion in IMF funding, the healthcare bill with the anti-choice language and no public option, the deal to extend the Bush tax cut and the Libya war defunding vote are just a few prominent examples.

The pattern is so well-established that Obama can correctly assume that when the time comes, he can count on Pelosi to make sure her caucus walks the plank, no matter what he gives away to Republicans.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Nancy Pelosi Says She'd Back Simpson-Bowles Plan (VIDEO)

Pelosi has done the same.  Many times.  Here's one of them.  Here's another.  

Obama has been able to cut deals with Boehner because Pelosi has  delivered the votes he needed, over the objections of her own caucus. The war supplemental that included the $108 billion in IMF funding, the healthcare bill with the anti-choice language and no public option, the deal to extend the Bush tax cut and the Libya war defunding vote are just a few prominent examples.

The latest union- and job-killing free trade bills, SKoreaAFTA and CAFTA - Pelosi voted yea.  

And H.R.347: Goodbye, First Amendment: ‘Trespass Bill’ will make protest illegal, outlaws protests in instances where some government officials are nearby, whether or not you even know it, anywhere in the country.- Pelosi voted yea.

And look who voted for NDAA - Pelosi!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Bradley Manning Hearing: Judge Refuses To Dismiss 'Aiding The Enemy' Charge

Selective bin Laden leaking - The White House tells a court the bin Laden raid is top secret, as it keeps leaking snippets to glorify the President.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Bradley Manning Hearing: Judge Refuses To Dismiss 'Aiding The Enemy' Charge

Some of the promises Obama made as a candidate—televising healthcare negotiations on C-Span, making White House contacts with lobbyists more open—and compared them with reality. The administration promised in 2009 to release visitor logs to the White House. According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, to date only 1% of 500,000 meetings from the president's first eight months have been released, and thousands of known visitors (including lobbyists) are missing from the lists.
Sterns also cited news stories that explain how administration officials purposely met with lobbyists at a nearby coffee shop to avoid official records of meetings. The C-Span recordings never happened, of course, and the White House has also hid much of its work behind its "czars."


Equally damning criticism came from some of the outside groups called to testify. Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton, a frequent critic of Bush administration policies (it pushed for Bush visitor logs related to convicted felon Jack Abramoff), said the Obama administration had been even worse.


"To be clear, the Obama administration is less transparent than the Bush administration," he said, noting that his group had filed more than 325 Freedom of Information Act requests, and some 45 FOIA lawsuits in federal court. Even Anne Weismann of the Center for Responsibility for Ethics in Washington—a left-leaning group that tends to assault Republicans while ignoring ethics-tarred Democrats—was forced to acknowledge that the White House hasn't kept its word. "The policies for disclosure are in place, but the applications of the policies do not exist," she said.


Democrats groused that this hearing was unfair since no one from the White House testified. Mr. Stearns noted that the administration had been invited but refused to send anyone, leading him to quip: "The failure to send any witness to a hearing about White House transparency . . . is revealing in its own way about the administration's true attitudes."

Critics, no matter which side of the aisle they're on, have a point.  We didn't like it under Bush-Cheney and put Democrats into power to disinfect with sunlight.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...