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.

The Commentariat -- January 7

Lesley Hazleton reads the Koran:

Justin Fox of the Harvard Business Review: "There doesn't have to be a problem with a revolving door between government jobs and non-government jobs. The fact that people in the U.S. can easily pop back and forth between government, academia, and the private sector has for most of the nation's history been more strength than weakness.... The Wall Street connection is something different.... This gap between what ... Wall Street [employees] ... make and the money to be earned in government or other sectors of the economy is huge — and it cannot help but have consequences.... With that kind of pay differential [nearly 3,000 %!], Wall Street inevitably begins to emit a giant sucking sound as it hoovers up smart, self-interested people." ...

... Felix Salmon of Reuters: "Government is perfectly capable, were it so inclined, of shrinking the financial sector and making it much less profitable.... But it’s not going to happen, because the public servants who could enact such a change currently have the ability to earn millions ... when they leave DC....  The real value of a government position, especially in the economic team, is in the marginal net present value of all those juicy future earnings that you’ll be offered.... [Conversely,] people like Hank Paulson or Bill Daley have already made their Wall Street millions.... The problem in these cases is that after so many years on Wall Street these people have internalized the worldview of the financial sector...: what good for Goldman Sachs is good for America."

Ken Terry on B-Net: "Even as congressional Republicans try to repeal the healthcare reform law, and as a federal court in Florida nears a decision on its constitutionality, evidence is emerging that that legislation is benefiting small companies by making health coverage more affordable. Considering that small businesspeople are among the most reliable Republican supporters, this unexpected bonus to small firms is another blow to the GOP’s claim that it has a popular mandate to overturn reform." Terry mentions an underlying Los Angeles Times story by Noam Levey, which is here. ...

... CW: Ezra Klein has better, less dismissive answers to David Brooks' objections to the healthcare bill than I did. ...

... And here's Klein's argument against the irrational Republican Tea Party-bred disdain for public sector workers: "The main argument against the Obama administration is that it hasn't saved enough jobs. But in the public sector, which is obviously where the government has the easiest time savings jobs, the argument is that they've saved too many of them." ...

... Felix Salmon explains the reality behind today's jobs number: "... For those keeping track at home, that’s employment up by 103,000 and unemployment down by a whopping 556,000.... We need to see 150,000 new jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth.... Unemployment is down ... only for those who have been out of work for less than 26 weeks. The ranks of the long-term unemployed are still rising. Meanwhile, the numbers of 'discouraged' people continue to rise very fast." ...

... Michael Powell & Sewell Chan of the New York Times: "The rate of growth — 103,000 jobs in December — is an indication that the unemployment rate will likely remain high through the rest of President Obama’s four-year term."

Constitutional law Prof. David Cole has found a WikeLeaked copy of "The Conservative Constitution of the United States," & has unveiled it to Washington Post readers. The Preamble:

We, the Real Americans, in order to form a more God-Fearing Union, establish Justice as we see it, Defeat Health-Care Reform, and Preserve and Protect our Property, our Guns and our Right Not to Pay Taxes, do ordain and establish this Conservative Constitution for the United States of Real America.

Here's something else that's LOL funny, and it's real. Jonathan Allen of Politico: "In a letter to be distributed Friday night, Reps. Pete Sessions and Mike Fitzpatrick apologize to all 433 of their House colleagues for voting after missing out on taking their official oath of office.... The swearing-in of members of Congress is required by Article 6 of the Constitution, and Republican leaders scrambled to come up with a fix to rectify their invalid votes." ...

... Anthony Weiner has a lot of fun at Republicans' expense. Think Progress reports:

This [Pentagon] budget has basically doubled in the last decade. And my own experience here is in that doubling, we've lost our ability to prioritize, to make hard decisions, to do tough analysis, to make trades. -- Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs ...

... Mark Thompson of Time on Mullen's remark: "Such profound truths are rarely heard on-camera inside the Pentagon." Thompson's take on the Pentagon's proposed budget trims is worth reading. Basically, he says the cuts aren't as big as the headlines suggest.

** "The 'Benjamin Button' Congress." Ron Brownstein of the National Journal: "House Republicans' ... agenda revolves almost entirely around reducing Washington’s role.... Politically, their strategy rests on the assumption that Americans who recoiled from the president’s agenda to expand government will welcome Republican efforts to diminish it.... But ... in several respects, this second round of conflicts could allow Obama and Democrats to frame the choices in ways more favorable to them." ...

... Also, Brownstein on "White Flight": "By any standard, white voters’ rejection of Democrats in November’s elections was daunting and even historic. Fully 60 percent of whites nationwide backed Republican candidates for the House of Representatives; only 37 percent supported Democrats.... These results ... could carry profound implications for 2012. They suggest that economic recovery alone may not solve the president’s problems with many of the white voters...."

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post: "Republicans these days can't get through a sentence without tossing in their new favorite adjective, 'job-killing.' ... What's so curious is that it's hard to find almost any Republican concern about employment homicide during 2008, when George W. Bush was president and the economy was shedding 4.4 million jobs.' ... There is an unmistakable redbaiting quality to the 'job-killing' rhetoric." What's so ironic about the tactic is that it is Republicans who are proposing job-killing legislation.

** Matt Yglesias likes Gene Sperling, and here's why.

Matt Bai of the New York Times: "... if anything, this week’s appointments [of Bill Daley & the anticipated appointment of Gene Sperling] would seem to represent a continuation of the ideological course Mr. Obama has been following since before he took the oath of office, rather than any substantive shift in his worldview." CW: Obama was never a liberal, kids. ...

... Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "... in tapping Daley, Obama has begun to reach outside his comfort zone." ...

... Think Daley is a good choice? Well there's this from David Drucker of Roll Call: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell praised President Barack Obama on Thursday for choosing business executive William Daley to serve as White House chief of staff." ...

... On the other hand, there's this:

With Wall Street reporting record profits while middle class Americans continue to struggle in a deep recession, the announcement that William Daley, who has close ties to Big Banks and Big Business, will now lead the White House staff is troubling and sends the wrong message to the American people. -- Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org

... Royal Court Gossip. Toby Harnden of the Telegraph: "It’s being reported by John King on CNN right now that [Robert] Gibbs wanted to be a presidential counsellor ... but William Daley, the new chief of staff, nixed this.... So that’s why Gibbs is out. Additionally, King reports that Valerie Jarrett, whose sole qualification to being a senior counsellor seems to be that she’s a long-time Chicago buddy of Barack and Michelle Obama, will have her wings clipped. Daley, not Jarrett, will be the person speaking to the business community." ...

     ... Sam Stein: both Gibbs & Daley deny the story about Gibbs. CW: neither man says anything about Jarrett's "demotion." ...

... This story by Elizabeth Williamson of the Wall Street Journal is receiving a lot of attention today; headline -- "President Revs up Campaign to Make Peace with Business." Very reassuring. Because he was always so anti-business till now.

Oh, here's a surprise. Speaker Boehner can't think of a single military or homeland security program to cut:

Mark Landler & Scott Shane of the New York Times: "The State Department is warning hundreds of human rights activists, foreign government officials and businesspeople identified in leaked diplomatic cables of potential threats to their safety and has moved a handful of them to safer locations, administration officials said Thursday. The operation ... reflects the administration’s fear that the disclosure of cables obtained by the organization WikiLeaks has damaged American interests by exposing foreigners who supply valuable information to the United States." ...

... Intrigue! Kim Severson & Robbie Brown of the New York Times: "Odyssey Marine Exploration, a Tampa, Fla., deep-sea treasure hunting company, is using classified cables from the State Department [released by WikiLeaks] in its legal battle with Spain over who owns $500 million of gold and silver retrieved in 2007 from the wreckage of a Spanish galleon off the coast of Portugal.... Odyssey says [the cables] show that the [American] ambassador [to Spain] offered to assist Spain in the fight over the sunken treasure." A stolen Pissarro figures in! Nazis! Eric Holder is implicated! Congressmen are blaming Hillary Clinton!

Jon Stewart seems to disapprove of the Goldman Sachs-Facebook deal:

Bill Vlasic of the New York Times: "The Big Three automakers have made strides in fuel economy but still rely on light trucks and S.U.V.’s for profits."

State of the States

Paul Krugman: the conservative governor and legislators in Texas have left the state in a fiscal mess even after Gov. Rick Perry boasted/lied about the state's having a huge surplus. Oh, and they're not of a mind to make things right. Krugman sees Texas as an omen of what to expect in every state where conservatives reign. ...

... Kim Severson of the New York Times: A Georgia state Hope program, "the largest merit-based college scholarship program in the United States..., offers any Georgia high school student with a B-average four years of free college tuition. But the Hope scholarship program is about to be cut by a new governor and Legislature facing staggering financial troubles."

Aflockalypse. Seth Borenstein of the AP: "First, the blackbirds fell out of the sky on New Year's Eve in Arkansas. In recent days, wildlife have mysteriously died in big numbers: 2 million fish in the Chesapeake Bay, 150 tons of red tilapia in Vietnam, 40,000 crabs in Britain and other places across the world. Blogs connected the deadly dots, joking about the "aflockalypse" while others saw real signs of something sinister, either biblical or environmental. The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated."

Update on Ted Williams. JoAnne Viviano of the AP: "A homeless man whose silky announcing voice has catapulted him to national fame reunited Thursday with his mother, recorded a commercial for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and agreed to do voiceover work for MSNBC." CW: I sure hope this guy is getting some high-quality help.