The Commentariat -- Jan, 30, 2014
Internal links removed.
Nielsen: 33.3 million people watched the State of the Union address. CW: As far as I can tell, that's only U.S. teevee viewers. It doesn't count people like me who watched it on the Internets. ...
Jon Stewart reports on the SOTU & the GOP responses.
... CW Update: Sorry, I had to remove these videos as they began playing automatically. You can view them here.
E. J. Dionne: The conservatism built into our Congressional structure "means that initiatives such as an increase in the minimum wage, background checks for gun purchases, expanded pre-kindergarten programs and the extension of unemployment insurance can be foiled even when they enjoy broad national support.... It's natural to contrast Obama's soaring legislative ambitions of a year ago with this week's less adventurous 'I'll do it myself' speech. But he has to deal with the Congress he has, not the Congress he wishes he had. The path forward is a lot more crooked than Obama once imagined it would be, and realism in pursuit of a degree of social justice is no vice."
Tara Bernard of the New York Times: "Making good on a State of the Union address promise, President Obama on Wednesday ordered the creation of new employer-sponsored savings accounts intended to help more people get started saving for retirement.... In a stop in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Mr. Obama signed a presidential memorandum and handed it to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. It instructed him to create the new 'starter' retirement savings program called 'myRA,' a name intended to mimic the I.R.A.'s, or individual retirement accounts, that were first made available to workers in the mid-1970s":
We make fun of the executive orders and that is in fact something that, you know, you never really heard Lincoln and FDR say, 'I'm going to rebuild America on an executive order. You know, it's not something that resonates off the tongue. -- Pultizer Prize-winning fake historian & professional hand-wringing WASP Jon Meacham, on "Morning Joe"
** Meacham ... appears to be badly mistaken. Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued more executive orders than any president in American history -- both in raw numbers and in annual averages -- and relied extensively on the presidential tool to implement New Deal reforms during the Great Depression. As for Lincoln's reluctance to 'rebuild America on an executive order,- let's not forget that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation -- which was an executive order. -- Steve Benen (Thanks to Diane for the link.)
Of course, the Parson's observation was easily shredded, and that's not even to mention that he is a guy who has produced a book on Thomas Jefferson, who bought Louisiana pretty much on his own and who sent the Navy after Mediterranean pirates and didn't tell Congress until it was halfway there, and another book on that noted advocate for limited executive power, Andrew Jackson. -- Charles Pierce
Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "As President Obama traveled the country Wednesday promoting a new and more populist economic agenda, Republicans were racing to prove that they, too, have a plan to alleviate middle-class anxiety.... The challenge for Republicans is convincing voters that their newfound concern is sincere. After three years of budget cuts and fiscal crises that badly damaged the GOP brand, voters not only rejected presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 but also have told pollsters that they view Republicans generally as indifferent to middle-class interests."
Peter Kasperowicz & Erik Wasson of the Hill: "The House on Wednesday approved a mammoth $956 billion farm bill in a bipartisan vote. Members approved the House-Senate agreement on farm policy in a 251-166 vote. A majority of Republicans backed the bill, with only 63 voting 'no.' But a majority of Democrats opposed it, with 103 voting against. Democrats opposed to the bill complained about cuts to federal food stamps, while Republicans focused their ire on the bill's cost and the way GOP leaders rushed it through the chamber.... The Senate is expected to approve the package, and White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One on Wednesday that if the bill 'as it is currently designed' reached President Obama's desk, 'he would sign it.'" ...
... Washington Post Editors: "... what the [farm] bill takes from the ag lobby with one hand, it largely gives back with the other." President Obama should veto it. ...
... New York Times Editors: "On balance, the bill is clearly worthy of support, particularly because it will prevent austerity fanatics in future Congresses from gutting food stamps for the next five years.... As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argues, rejecting the farm bill means rolling the dice that the next Congress will do a better job. In today's environment, that's a tough bet." ...
... Dana Milbank on "a series of losses on key issues for the party's conservative fan base. First, GOP lawmakers ignored complaints from conservative groups when they passed a 2014 appropriations bill this month that raised spending above previously set levels. Then, before leaving town Wednesday morning for their retreat on Maryland's Eastern Shore, they passed a compromise farm bill that abandoned conservatives' effort to make deep cuts in food stamps. Now come reports that the Republicans will abandon plans to fight over the next debt-limit increase. In addition, House GOP leaders will reportedly outline immigration legislation at the retreat that includes a path to legal status for illegal immigrants.... The problem for Republicans is that the people who brought them to power didn't ask for consensus and smooth processes."
Alexander Bolton & Vickie Needham of the Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday suggested he will not bring legislation to the floor that would grant President Obama greater trade powers. Reid said he is 'against' trade promotion authority (TPA) legislation -- often called 'fast track' -- that, if passed, would make it easier for Obama to negotiate trade deals by preventing Congress from amending them."
Rebecca Shabad of the Hill: "A few of the senators co-sponsoring an Iran sanctions bill now warn the measure could have serious consequences, a day after President Obama repeated his threat to veto the measure."
Ben Goad of the Hill: "A dozen House Republicans on Tuesday pressed their leadership to move ahead with a federal lawsuit challenging President Obama's use of executive power. Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), who first introduced the Stop This Overreaching Presidency (STOP) Resolution last month, said a formal legal challenge is needed to counter Obama's aggressive use of administrative authority. 'The president doesn't have the power to waive the law,' Rice said Wednesday."
Sarah Wheaton & Marc Santora of the New York Times: "Representative Michael G. Grimm of Staten Island, once considered a rising star in the Republican Party, touched off a political firestorm after delivering unusually vitriolic threats against a reporter inside the United States Capitol building on Tuesday night, just moments after the State of the Union speech.... Initially, Mr. Grimm sought to justify his behavior and did not apologize.... [New York City] Mayor Bill de Blasio, joining a chorus of critics..., called on the House to sanction him. Citing a House rule requiring all members to conduct themselves 'at all times in a manner that reflects creditably on the House,' the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington ... filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against the lawmaker.... He is an avid weight lifter who earned the nickname Mikey Suits for his often flashy style." ...
... Update. This New York Times story, by N. R. Kleinfield, contains much of the same info, but begins with the lede, "Representative Michael G. Grimm is a hothead," & develops that theme late in the piece. And this: "Had [Michael] Scotto[, the NY1 reporter] made the same threat against Mr. Grimm, Mr. Scotto could have been charged with a federal crime." CW: Somehow I don't think its lawful under the First Amendment to threaten to murder a reporter for politely asking a Member of Congress a valid question.
... CW: I hope you people know this never would have happened had Grimm -- a former Marine & FBI agent -- not been forced to sit thru an hour-and-a-half speech by a black Muslim Kenyan imperial communist. (I don't know how someone can be both a commie & a monarchist, as the wingnuts claim, but I'm sure they've worked it out.) ...
... Hadas Gold & Dylan Byers of Politico have more on Grimm's sordid history. The New Yorker story Gold & Byers cite is really chilling. If the story is to be believed, and it seems credible, the guy is a violent nut job who uses his positions of authority to intimidate people to the extent of threatening to kill them while demonstrating he has the means to do so. ...
... The New Yorker story, by Evan Ratliff & published in May 2011, is here. ...
... In a New Yorker blogpost, Ratliff comments on Grimm's latest blow-up.
Sharon Bernstein of Reuters: There is a "disconnect between Washington politics -- particularly the Republican Party's push to kill Obama's Affordable Care Act ... -- and the experiences of at least some rank-and-file party members who are finding practical reasons to sign up. The discrepancy may complicate GOP efforts to use voter dissatisfaction over Obamacare's troubled launch to win control of the Senate in November."
Chris Moody of Yahoo! News: "Ted Cruz would appreciate it very much if you would kindly stop discussing his role in the government shutdown. The Texas senator who burst onto the public scene when he convinced congressional Republicans to adopt a scheme to withhold federal funding unless President Obama's health care law was repealed, defunded or delayed, said Tuesday that talk of the shutdown in 2014 amounts to nothing more than a distraction."
Kate Sheppard & Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post: "The National Security Agency monitored the communications of other governments ahead of and during the 2009 United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, according to the latest document from whistleblower Edward Snowden." ...
... A portion of the interview Edward Snowden gave to German television network ARD:
... Robert Mackey of the New York Times: "In another part of the interview, which was broadcast Sunday night..., Mr. Snowden told the documentary filmmaker Hubert Seipel that President Obama's proposed reforms to the N.S.A.'s vast surveillance programs constituted just 'minor changes to preserve authorities that we don't need.' ... According to the transcript of the interview, Mr. Snowden cited previous testimony from Mr. Clapper, in March of last year, as a prime factor in his decision to leak information to the public about the agency's work. 'I would say sort of the breaking point was seeing the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress,' Mr. Snowden said." CW: You can read the full transcript of the interview beginning here; there's a video, too, but I couldn't get it to load. ...
... CW: Snowden's claim that Clapper's March 2013 false testimony was "the breaking point" that caused him to become a principled, patriotic whistleblower is pure bullshit. As Janet Reitman reported in Rolling Stone last month, "In April 2012, while working for Dell, Snowden reportedly began to download documents, many pertaining to the eavesdropping programs run by the NSA and its British equivalent, the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. Eleven months later, he quit his job and accepted another, with Booz Allen, which he said he'd sought specifically for the broader access he'd have to the wealth of information pertaining to U.S. cyberspying." According to Glenn Greenwald, Snowden first contacted him December 1, 2012. So months Snowden began implementing his elaborate plan nearly a year before Clapper testified, & he contacted Greenwald three months before his supposed "breaking point." ...
... Mark Mazzetti & David Sanger of the New York Times: "The nation's top intelligence official on Wednesday delivered a scorching attack on Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, and called on him and his 'accomplices' to return the trove of classified documents he took from the N.S.A. James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told lawmakers that Mr. Snowden's disclosures had done grave damage to the country's security and had led terrorist groups to change their behavior to elude American surveillance. Mr. Clapper did not give specific examples to bolster his assessment about the damage Mr. Snowden had done. He also did not say whom he believed Mr. Snowden's accomplices to be.... For the second year in a row, Mr. Clapper listed cyberattacks as the most significant threat facing the United States." ...
... Brian Fung of the Washington Post: "... a pair of Norwegian politicians have nominated [Edward Snowden] for a Nobel Peace Prize. In their nomination letter, Baard Vegar Solhjell and Snorre Valen, who hail from the Socialist Left party, said Snowden's revelations 'contributed to a more stable and peaceful world order.'"
Gail Collins: "How much of the new enthusiasm for early childhood education is real, and how much is just an attempt to dodge the whole inequality debate? Maybe we could agree that no politician is allowed to mention pre-k without showing us the money."
** Jamelle Bouie of the Daily Beast: "The Rich Really are as Selfish as You Think. According to a new study, the wealthiest Americans have no interest in policies that boost the incomes of ordinary people.... What the rich do support, however, are policies that would shift burdens to individuals, or introduce some nebulous 'competition' into public goods. That includes charter schools (90 percent support), vouchers (55 percent), Social Security privatization (55 percent), and merit pay for teachers (93 percent). If this agenda looks familiar, it's because it's basically identical to the one pushed by 'centrist' deficit hawks in Washington, who have devoted themselves to the consensus positions of business and other economic elites." ...
... Ben White of Politico: "The co-founder of one the nation's oldest venture capital firms fears a possible genocide against the wealthy. Residents of Manhattan's tony Upper East Side say the progressive mayor didn't plow their streets as a form of frosty revenge. And the co-founder of Home Depot recently warned the Pope to pipe down about economic inequality. The nation's wealthiest, denizens of the loftiest slice of the 1 percent, appear to be having a collective meltdown. Economists, advisers to the wealthy and the wealthy themselves describe a deep-seated anxiety that the national -- and even global -- mood is turning against the super-rich in ways that ultimately could prove dangerous and hard to control." ...
... Jason Sanchez of CNN Money: "Tom Perkins boasted that his Richard Mille watch was worth 'a six-pack of Rolexes', but a comparable model is actually worth 69 Rolex Air-King watches." Thanks to contributor Patrick for the link. See also Patrick's comment below.
... "Perkinsnacht." The Wall Street Journal Editors are incensed that liberals -- and Perkins' own corporation, in an "ungallant rebuke" -- are picking on Tom Perkins: "The liberals aren't encouraging violence, but they are promoting personal vilification and the abuse of government power to punish political opponents." Paul Krugman wrote the other day that he suspected the Journal's editors thought Perkins "was making a useful point." Krugman was right. ...
... Laura Clawson of Daily Kos: "... the simple act of observing that inequality is staggeringly high and is endangering our economy, or that a few billionaires exert enormous power over our political process is simply too much for these crybaby defenders of plutocracy."
Corruption, Inc.
Patrick McGeehan & Charles Bagli of the New York Times: "... whatever the outcome of the inquiries [into Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer's charges that the Christie administration held back federal Sandy relief funds], the emails and interviews [obtained by the Times] make clear that the development-wary mayor was coming under increasing and repeated pressure from politically connected lawyers working for Rockefeller Group and from the Christie administration." CW: The New York Times is on the story. If you missed it, see also this longish Times piece on the Christie political operation linked in yesterday's Commentariat. ...
... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "The New York Times is pretty clearly expending a lot of resources on the various Chris Christie scandals. So far they haven't produced any smoking guns, but they're sure digging up some stuff that doesn't look good for Team Christie.... It's pretty obvious that stories like these are going to keep dripping out. The Times has several reporters assigned to bird dog this story, and once the New Jersey legislature starts subpoenaing people, there's going to be continuing grist for an endless succession of lurid headlines."
CW: It's hardly surprising that relatives and cronies of political bosses use their connections to gain favors. But this Bergen Record story by Shawn Boburg & Jean Rimbach demonstrates how brazenly Gov. Christie's brother Todd Christie plans to profit from a PATH project funded by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. AND this Record story by Boburg demonstrates that "Port Authority Chairman David Samson voted for a $256 million reconstruction of the rundown PATH station in Harrison three months after a builder represented by his law firm proposed converting a nearby warehouse into hundreds of luxury apartments, according to records and interviews." Samson is a Christie appointee. ...
... AND this from Matt Friedman of the Star-Ledger: " Gov. Chris Christie helped channel $6 million in federal Hurricane Sandy recovery dollars to a project conceived years before the storm struck, in an Essex County town that was not particularly hard hit, records show. The funding, pushed for personally by the Republican governor, was announced less than two weeks before the town's Democratic mayor formally endorsed him for reelection.... Statements from the governor and officials from Essex County and Belleville at the project's unveiling barely mentioned storm recovery, focusing almost exclusively on how the 137-unit housing project would help keep Belleville's seniors in town."
Aliyah Fruman of NBC News: "Meanwhile, Democratic Reps. Frank Pallone and Bill Pascrell Jr. –both of New Jersey – are calling for a federal probe into the state's dealing with a New Orleans-based firm that was hired to oversee the divvying up of approximately $600 million in federal homeowner relief following Hurricane Sandy. The $68 million deal, made in May with Hammerman & Gainer Inc., was 'suddenly' cancelled Dec. 6 without any reason, the two congressman said in a letter to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan. The two congressmen also want an independent monitor to look into the state's usage of disaster recovery fund, concerned it was being 'recklessly mismanaged.'"
Gubernatorial Race
Manny Fernandez of the New York Times: "Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator and Democratic candidate for governor under attack for blurring and misstating details of her experience as a single mother, accused critics late Tuesday of distorting her past and vowed in a tough-talking speech not to let anyone 'take my family's truth away from me.' But it was clear that her long-shot campaign had already taken a turn deep into the thicket of gender politics ... and culturally charged questions about women's balancing work, ambition and parenthood."
Senate Race
Georgia GOP U.S. Senate candidates on extending unemployment benefits. Via Daniel Strauss of TPM:
... Maybe that helps explain this. Public Policy Polling: "PPP's first look at the Georgia Senate race since Michelle Nunn (D) jumped in shows a potentially competitive general and primary. Nunn is tied with or leads all of her potential opponents, but a lot of voters are undecided, and they lean Republican. Phil Gingrey could be her stiffest competition, and also leads a stocked primary field."
Presidential Race 2016
Tom Kludt of TPM: Mike "Huckabee Is Now The GOP's Top Choice For 2016.... Uncle Sugar has apparently provided Mike Huckabee with a polling bounce. The latest survey from Democratic PPP released Wednesday showed the former Arkansas governor surging among Republican voters nationwide in the wake of his head-scratching comment about the female libido."
CBS Miami: "Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has been rumored to be a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2016 and Wednesday he did nothing to end the speculation when asked about a possible run. 'I'm going to think about it later (a run for president),' Bush said during a school tour Wednesday. 'I don't wake up each day saying, "what am I going to do today to make this decision?"' ... There is one person who Bush would have to convince who recently threw cold water on another Bush presidency. Former first lady Barbara Bush, Jeb's mom, said she hopes he won't run, even though 'Jeb is the best qualified person to run.'" ...
It is a big job to do, to run for president. It would take traveling around the country, it would mean I'd be home less time, get to see my kids [for] less time. And the people in the media, they get meaner and meaner when you run for president because they pick you apart and say your clothes don't look good, your hair looks bad, you need a haircut. You get all that kind of grief from the media when you run for president. -- Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Ky.), explaining to a 4th-grade reporter what a sacrifice he will make if he runs for president. Thanks to Akhilleus for the link.
News Ledes
Boston Globe: "US Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has authorized federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the young man accused in the Boston Marathon terror bombings in April that killed three people, injured more than 260 others, and sent a wave of shock and fear through the region."
New York Times: "The United States informed its NATO allies this month that Russia had tested a new ground-launched cruise missile, raising concerns about Moscow's compliance with a landmark arms control accord."
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