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Tuesday
Sep132011
The Commentariat -- September 14
New York Times Editors: "The latest figures from the Census Bureau shows the devastating cost of the recession and why putting Americans back to work must be Washington’s top priority.... With 14 million Americans out of work and 46 million living in poverty, the real human cost of more obstruction and inaction is undeniable and inexcusable." ...
... I've put up a comments page on the above editorial and related content on today's Off Times Square.
Jackie Calmes & Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "The possibility of major parts of ’s $447 billion jobs bill becoming law, and of further steps next week by the , have forecasters saying that the decisions Washington makes in the weeks ahead could have a substantial effect on economic growth and unemployment. At a minimum, the stimulus could be insurance against the headwinds blowing from and the impact of the recent government spending cuts in this country.... The economy’s weakness, as well as polls showing low approval ratings for both Mr. Obama and Congressional Republicans, seem to have raised the prospects of a policy response." ...
... Sam Youngman of The Hill: The White House sees President Obama's jobs initiative as a win-win for the President. Even if the bill doesn't pass, it gives him a campaign issue on which most Americans agree with him, not the Republicans in Congress.
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: Because Republicans believe President Obama is likely to win Pennsylvania again in 2012, they plan to change the winner-take-all electoral college vote (which almost all states have) to a plan that would likely give the GOP candidates more electoral college votes than President Obama.
Brian Beutler of TPM: "The Congressional Budget Office would be stepping out of bounds if it endorsed specific legislation or even hazy policy objectives. But it's hard to read CBO chief Doug Elmendorf's testimony to the joint deficit Super Committee Tuesday as anything other than a de facto endorsement of President Obama's broad strategy to boost the economy: legislation that spends money to hire people and reduces payroll taxes in the near-term, and that reduces deficits by even greater amounts in the middle and end of the decade." ...
... Steve Benen: "Taken together, every credible observer with a pulse — the Fed, the CBO, a wide variety of economists, the financial industry, the bond market, business leaders — are all saying more or less the same thing. They all want policymakers to approve short-term stimulus and oppose drastic short-term budget cuts. GOP officials, of course, desperately want to do the opposite. It’s against this backdrop that House Republicans believe 'every economist' agrees the GOP is on the right track. It’s hard to overstate how ridiculous that claim really is."...
... CW Note: here's where Benen gets that "every economist agrees the GOP is on the right track:
As every economist and every rating agency has made clear, getting our deficit under control is the first step to help get our economy growing again and to create jobs. -- Michael Steel, spokesman for Boehner
Dee Dee Myers on the President's sales job on jobs: "Too often, this president comes across like the World’s Most Rational Man. Of course, keeping his head when everyone around him is losing theirs is one of his great strengths. But if he’s going to close the sale —that won’t be enough. If he wants people to buy what he’s selling, he has to appeal to hearts as well as heads. He has to make them feel it."
Jed Lewison of Daily Kos: Once again the President, along with his top economic aide Gene Sperling, muddle the message, this times on the American Jobs Act, when both indicated in interviews they would take half a loaf. "Addressing a hypothetical situation ... risks undercutting his own message ... [and] is one of the easiest ways to step on your own story.... You can simply say a question is hypothetical and you're not going to address it unless the facts change.... If you want to be successful in communicating a consistent message, that's exactly what you have to do." CW: what Lewison doesn't say, perhaps because it's so obvious, that this is Obama once again making his favorite unforced error: we'll call it "The Pre-Game Cave."
The fundamental question, is not how we got here but where you want the country to go. -- Doug Elmendorf, CBO Director ...
... Dana Milbank: the deficit-reduction supercommittee has wasted its first two hearings, the first on speechifying & the second "devoted in large part to trading blame for the deficit.... There are skeptics who say prospects are bleak that the supercommittee will come up with anything resembling a comprehensive solution to the deficit problem. I think those skeptics are too optimistic."
Joe Stephens & Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.... The August 2009 e-mails ... show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators. Solyndra collapsed two weeks ago, leaving taxpayers liable for the $535 million loan." ...
... NEW. Michael Grunwald of Time on the so-called "Solyndra scandal," and how it has little impact on the fact that green technology is booming. And as Grunwald reminds us, facts don't matter once Republicans latch on to an anti-Obama narrative. CW: But we knew that, didn't we?
Ylan Mui of the Washington Post: "Wal-Mart is slated to announce Wednesday that it will spend billions of dollars over the next five years to train female workers around the world and support women-owned businesses.... For years, it was embroiled in a massive sex-discrimination lawsuit that alleged that the company paid women less than their male counterparts and passed them over for promotions. This summer, the Supreme Court blocked the case from receiving class-action status, and attorneys for the women involved said they plan to file individual complaints. [A Wal-Mart executive] said that Wednesday’s initiative has been in the works for about a year and is not related to the suit. The company has launched similar sweeping programs in recent years centered on issues for which it had been vilified."
Nate Silver writes about Congressional special election spin -- what is true & what is hype.
Elizabeth Warren pulls out all the stops in her campaign announcement. It's pretty terrific:
Ezra Klein: "In practice, expect [Elizabeth] Warren to spend the next year or so running against ... Wall Street.... Unlike most Democrats, she’s not tainted by the bailout. Unlike most Republicans, she’s not held back by a mistrust of all regulation. She can run the campaign against Wall Street that many have been hoping to see for the last three years.... And [Scott] Brown’s [R-Mass.] record, which includes opposing the bill’s bank tax, watering down the Volcker rule, and receiving more than $140,000 in contributions from the financial industry, is going to make the question of what exactly he was doing a bit harder to answer." ...
... Glen Johnson of the Boston Globe: "Should Elizabeth Warren be fortunate enough to win the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s US Senate nomination next year, state voters could see an election contest that rivals the concurrent presidential campaign."
AP: "A 101-year-old woman was evicted from the southwest Detroit home where she lived for nearly six decades after her 65-year-old son failed to pay the mortgage. Texana Hollis was evicted Monday and her belongings were placed outside the home. Her son, Warren Hollis, said he didn't pay the bill for several years and disregarded eviction notices.... Wayne County Chief Deputy Treasurer David Szymanski told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the Hollises took out an adjustable-rate mortgage in 2002. A default and foreclosure notice was filed in November." CW: Okay, the son is an irresponsible idiot. I'd still like to know what bank granted a 92-year-old woman an adjustable-rate mortgage. ...
... A Detroit Free Press story indicates that the evicting agency was the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development, which purchased the property at auction in December 2010. The story does not report who the original lender was.
Right Wing World *
Liar, Liar. Dan Eggen of the Washington Post: As evidence that he couldn't't be bought, Rick Perry said in Monday's Republican debate that he had taken only $5,000 from Merck, the manufacturer of the HPV vaccine which Perry executive-ordered Texas girls to have. "But campaign disclosure records portray a much deeper financial connection with Merck than Perry’s remarks suggest. His gubernatorial campaigns ... have received nearly $30,000 from the drugmaker since 2000, most of that before he issued his vaccine mandate, which was overturned by the Texas legislature. Merck and its subsidiaries have also given more than $380,000 to the Republican Governors Association (RGA) since 2006, the year that Perry began to play a prominent role in the Washington-based group, The [RGA gave] his campaign at least $4 million over the past five years...." ...
... Right Wing Hunter has a clip of the Bachmann-Perry exchange in which Perry claims the Merck contribution was $5,000. The producter won't allow me to embed the clip here.
A "Willfully Ignorant Allegation":
... Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post: "... raising the debt ceiling is not — I repeat, IS NOT — like giving the president a blank check or adding more to the national credit card.... It is imperative that ‘blank check’ gibberish from a top-tier presidential candidate be corrected."
* Where facts are irrelevant & stupid lies are applause lines.
News Ledes
At North Carolina State University in Raleigh, President Obama urges Congress to pass the American Jobs Act:
New York Times: "The United States faced increasing pressure on Tuesday as the quest for statehood gained support from Turkey and other countries, even as the Obama administration sought an 11th-hour compromise that would avoid a confrontation at the next week."
New York Times: A little-known Republican businessman from Queens, channeling voter discontent with President Obama into an upset, won election to Congress on Tuesday from the heavily Democratic district in New York City last represented by . The Republican, Bob Turner, a retired cable television executive, defeated Assemblyman David I. Weprin, the scion of a prominent Democratic family in Queens, in a nationally watched special election."
AP: "Harvard Law professor and consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren officially launched her Democratic campaign for U.S. Senate on Wednesday by greeting commuters at a rail station in Boston before embarking on a tour of the state."
AP: "A key federal report into what caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history was being readied for release as early as Wednesday amid revelations that BP made critical mistakes on the well and failed to tell its partners and the U.S. government when it realized it."
NEW. Los Angeles Times: "The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Tuesday approved a rule requiring the nation's largest banks to submit 'living wills' to help regulators shut them down in an orderly way if they are seized on the brink of failure. The requirement was a key component of last year's sweeping overhaul of financial regulations and is designed to avoid the chaos that took place during the 2008 financial crisis. Under the law, the largest banks and financial firms would be required to have plans in place for their liquidation...."
New York Times: "The American ambassador to Afghanistan said on Wednesday that the Pakistan-based Haqqani network appeared to be responsible for an hours-long assault against the United States Embassy in Kabul and nearby NATO bases. But he downplayed the attack as 'harassment' rather than a significant military assault." ...
... AP: "NATO warplanes pounded targets in a number of strongholds of support for fugitive dictator Moammar Gadhafi, the alliance said Tuesday, as an offensive by revolutionary forces on a key loyalist town stalled."
Reuters: "Muammar Gaddafi is still in Libya and in good spirits, with a powerful army behind him, the ousted leader's spokesman said on Wednesday. Gaddafi's whereabouts have been unknown for months and most of his entourage have fled or gone into hiding...."
New York Times: "The Iranian judiciary on Wednesday contradicted an assurance by Iran‘s president that two Americans arrested two years ago while hiking the Iran-Iraq frontier and imprisoned on espionage charges would be freed within two days as a humanitarian gesture, state media reported.... The apparent conflict over the Americans’ legal status could reflect a worsening rift between [President] Ahmadinejad [who announced the Americans' imminent release] and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s spiritual leader and highest authority, who is closely allied to the court."
New York Times: "France brushed off concerns about its biggest banks Wednesday, insisting that it had no plans to any of them despite a credit rating downgrade linked to their exposure to the limping Greek economy. The reassurance, which helped lift European markets, came as the leaders of France and Germany prepared to speak with their Greek counterpart amid worries that Athens may default on its heavy debt load."
AP: "The leaders of Greece, France and Germany will seek ways to contain the spiraling debt crisis and prevent it from further roiling global financial markets in a teleconference on Wednesday evening."
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