The Commentariat -- January 9

President Obama writes a New York Times op-ed urging the Sudanese to allow a peaceful vote & vote count on the Southern Sudan independence referendum.

Art by Barry Blitt for the New York Times.Frank Rich compares & contrasts President Obama with President Reagan, & pops a few myths about Reagan, like these: "The present-day radicals donning Reagan drag, led by Sarah Palin, seem not to know, as [Reagan biographer Lou] Cannon writes, that their hero lurched 'from excessive tax cuts to corrective tax increases disguised as tax reform' and 'submitted eight unbalanced budgets to Congress in succession.' Reagan made no promise whatsoever of a balanced budget in the document that codified Reaganomics.... The historian Gil Troy has calculated that spending on entitlement programs more than doubled on Reagan’s watch."

Shehrbano Taseer, a reporter with Newsweek Pakistan, writes of the murder of her father, Salmaan Taseer, Governor of Punjab province, Pakistan, in a New York Times op-ed.

American Aristocracy. Tamar Lewin of the New York Times: "A new study of admissions at 30 highly selective colleges found that legacy applicants get a big advantage over those with no family connections to the institution — but the benefit is far greater for those with a parent who earned an undergraduate degree at the college than for those with other family connections. According to the study, by Michael Hurwitz...,  applicants to a parent’s alma mater had, on average, seven times the odds of admission of nonlegacy applicants. Those whose parents did graduate work there or who had a grandparent, sibling, uncle or aunt who attended the college were, by comparison, only twice as likely to be admitted."

Alex Pareene of Salon on Hypocrisy Patrol: "Robert Gates would like to cut about $78 billion from our bloated military budget over the next five years.... We spend more on defense than every other nation in the world put together.... But those Republicans who promise austerity have one small problem with Gates' plan: They refuse to cut a single dollar of military spending, even when our Republican defense secretary politely asks them to."

Tara McKelvey, in the Daily Beast, profiles Frank Ruggiero who is taking over as acting special representative to Afghanistan & Pakistan. Richard Holbrooke, who died last year, held the post previously.

The Commentariat -- January 8

Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times profiles William Daley, President Obama's new chief of staff. ...

... Ben Smith of Politico: "The appointment of Bill Daley to the top staff job in the Obama White House has dealt the final blow to a dearly held fantasy of parts of the left: that a truly liberal president has been ill-served and misinterpreted by Rahm Emanuel and other center-right aides." CW: don't blame Glenn Greenwald; he's known all along. ...

... Glenn Greenwald on the Daley appointment: "Shipping in a JP Morgan executive to be White House Chief of Staff isn't a cause of any of this; it's just a nice symbol for what our political culture is.... There's a ... direct causal line between the vast number of Wall Street officials in key administration positions and the full-scale exemption from accountability which financial elites enjoy even for the most egregious lawbreaking.  When you compile all of those appointments in one place, the absolute stranglehold large-scale corporate interests exert over virtually all realms of government policy is quite striking.  But it's nothing more than what the economist Nouriel Roubini meant when he told the makers of the 2010 documentary 'Inside Job' that Wall Street has 'captured the political system' on 'the Democratic and the Republican side' alike, or what Simon Johnson describes as 'The Quiet Coup.'"

Michael Powell of the New York Times interviews economist Robert Reich, who -- along with other noted economists -- criticizes President Obama for his lurch to the right. CW: I don't think Obama lurched; he was there all along; he's just one of the "meritocrats" Reich describes, "whose kids go to private school and whose primary savings are in the stock market rather than in their homes. Their assumptions are different in profound ways from most struggling Americans.”

Igor Volsky of Think Progress: Republicans are calling the Affordable Care Act [CW: and every other Democratic-sponsored law or bill] a "job-killer." But "Harvard economist David Cutler argues in new paper released [Friday] that repealing the health law would reverse [employment] gains and could destroy 250,000 to 400,000 jobs annually over the next decade." Here's a pdf of Cutler's analysis. ...

... Greg Sargent: so why aren't Democrats pushing back against the "jobs-killing" malarkey with punchy lines about "deficit busting" repeal. "Dems simply have to get better at this game." ...

... Adam Chandler & Luke Norris in Slate: "When Judge Henry Hudson ruled last month that ... part of ... the health care law [was] unconstitutional because it requires people to purchase private insurance..., the law's opponents could unwittingly resurrect another alternative they won't like — the 'public option.' If the part of the health care law that's unconstitutional is the part telling people to buy private insurance, an obvious solution is to pass a health care law including a public health plan, which would operate like Social Security and Medicare. In other words, the public option." ...

... This is a point Rep. Dennis Kucinich has made repeatedly. Here he is talking to Bill O'Reilly just a couple of days ago. He makes the healthcare point about 2:20 min. in:

     ... BTW, I love Kucinich for going on Fox "News" & having relatively calm conversations with blowhards like O'Reilly. This is one thing Democrats need to do.

New House Homeland Security chair has a long history of supporting & consorting with terrorists. Justin Elliott of Salon. Rep. Peter King, (R-NY) a decades-long supporter of the IRA, an Irish terrorist group, broke with them in 2005 when they condemned the U.S.'s involvement in Iraq & Afghanistan, but he still maintains ties to some members. ...

... Elliott links to this Huffington Post column by IRA victim an Amnesty International Policy Director Tom Parker. Parker writes,

There is no way to varnish the fact that for twenty years Congressman King consistently supported a violent armed group that murdered men, women and children in pursuit of its political goals. It is also worth noting that those victims were citizens of America's closest ally in the struggle against Al Qaeda.

Lunatics on Parade, Brought to You by Our Republican Friends. Ezra Klein: "In the Wyoming state legislature, 10 congressmen and three senators have co-sponsored" a bill "to make it a felony to implement the health-care reform law -- which is ... the official law of the land." Never mind that "the Wyoming legislature ... has sworn to protect and defend the" Constitution; these members have decided to defy it. That's because Congressional Republicans have frightened the public and these dumb Wyoming legislators by taking "a bill that echoes past legislation Republicans have introduced and called it, as Sen. Jon Kyl did, 'a stunning threat to liberty.'"

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling "that U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo erred when they seized two troubled borrowers’ properties in 2007, putting the nation’s banks on notice that foreclosures cannot be based on improper or incomplete paperwork."

CW: I'll give Dahlia Lithwick what I hope is (but probably won't be) the last word on the Repubican reading of a sloppily-expurgated version of the Constitution. Read her whole post, which concludes,

For Republicans who want to restore this country to the sanctity of the Constitution as written, and to show reverence for the men who wrote it, today's exercise in putting forward an official 'new and improved!' version was a truly baffling first step.

Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times: "A three-year investigation into financial improprieties at six Christian ministries whose television preaching bankrolled leaders’ lavish lifestyles has concluded with the formation of an independent commission to look into the lack of accountability by tax-exempt religious groups. Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican and the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, issued a report saying that self-correction' by churches and religious groups is preferable to legislative or regulatory solutions.... Mr. Grassley recommended repealing or modifying I.R.S. rules that prohibit churches from endorsing political candidates.... The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said of this proposal, 'It’s a sign that this investigation has gone seriously off course.'" CW: no kidding.

Campbell Robertson of the New York Times: "... state and local officials ferried a group of reporters to ... [Bay Jimmy, Louisiana], one of the hardest-hit areas on the Gulf Coast, and criticized BP and federal agencies for not mounting a sufficiently aggressive [oil spill cleanup] operation.... [At a press availability here,] Billy Nungesser, the pugnacious president of Plaquemine Parish ... told the commander to do something that cannot be printed here."

New York Times Editors: "To keep the Defense Department running, President Obama was forced to sign a spending bill on Friday with a particularly harmful provision that bars spending to transfer detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States for trial. As wrongheaded as this prohibition is, the president was right not to declare his intention to defy it in an accompanying statement.... In the signing statement, Mr. Obama called the ban 'a dangerous and unprecedented challenge' to the executive branch’s authority to decide when and where to prosecute detainees." You can read the President's statement here.

Local News

Marc Lacey of the New York Times: "The state declared the Tucson schools' Mexican-American program illegal, even while similar programs for other students were left untouched." CW: read the whole article; it seems to me both sides are wrong.

Now, here's a stupid scandal I can get into. Radar Online: "Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack has been caught on camera in a lurid scandal where another woman is apparently licking her breast.... The woman apparently licking Bono's breast is Edra Blixseth, a disgraced former billionaire who is at the center of a criminal investigation probing whether she made fraudulent representations about her financial worth to a number of banks." CW: and why do I care? Because Bono Mack's husband is Connie Mack IV, my stupid Congressman, who is preparing for a run for the Senate against Florida's Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson. Anything to derail Connie Mack can't be all bad -- even something this ridiculous.

If Congress Doesn't Raise the Debt Ceiling

In a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid, dated January 6, 2011, Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner explained the consequences of defaulting on the national debt. Here are the key paragraphs of Geithner's letter:

Reaching the debt limit would mean the Treasury would be prevented by law from borrowing in order to pay obligations the Nation is legally required to pay, an event that has no precedent in American history. Such a default should be understood as distinct from a temporary government shutdown resulting from failure to enact appropriations bills, which occurred in late 1995 and early 1996. Those government shutdowns, which were unwise and highly disruptive, did not have the same long-term negative impact on U.S. creditworthiness as a default would, because there was headroom available under the debt limit at that time.

I am certain you will agree that it is strongly in our national interest for Congress to act well before the debt limit is reached. However, if Congress were to fail to act, the specific consequences would be as follows:

The Treasury would be forced to default on legal obligations of the United States, causing catastrophic damage to the economy, potentially much more harmful than the effects of the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.

A default would impose a substantial tax on all Americans. Because Treasuries represent the benchmark borrowing rate for all other sectors, default would raise all borrowing costs. Interest rates for state and local government, corporate and consumer borrowing, including home mortgage interest, would all rise sharply. Equity prices and home values would decline, reducing retirement savings and hurting the economic security of all Americans, leading to reductions in spending and investment, which would cause job losses and business failures on a significant scale.

Default would have prolonged and far-reaching negative consequences on the safe-haven status of Treasuries and the dollar’s dominant role in the international financial system, causing further increases in interest rates and reducing the willingness of investors here and around the world to invest in the United States.

Payments on a broad range of benefits and other U.S. obligations would be discontinued, limited, or adversely affected, including:

U.S. military salaries and retirement benefits;

Social Security and Medicare benefits;

federal civil service salaries and retirement benefits;

individual and corporate tax refunds;

unemployment benefits to states;

defense vendor payments;

interest and principal payments on Treasury bonds and other securities;

student loan payments;

Medicaid payments to states; and

payments necessary to keep government facilities open.

For these reasons, any default on the legal debt obligations of the United States is unthinkable and must be avoided. It is critically important that Congress act before the debt limit is reached so that the full faith and credit of the United States is not called into question. The confidence of citizens and investors here and around the world that the United States stands fully behind its legal obligations is a unique national asset. Throughout our history, that confidence has made U.S. government bonds among the best and safest investments available and has allowed us to borrow at very low rates.

Failure to increase the debt limit in a timely manner would threaten this position and compromise America’s creditworthiness in the eyes of the world.  Every Secretary of the Treasury in the modern era, regardless of party, has strongly held this view. Given the gravity of the challenges facing the U.S. and world economies, the world’s confidence in our creditworthiness is even more critical today.

You can read Secretary's Geithner's full letter here.