The Commentariat -- Feb. 28, 2013
Obama 2.0. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "The Senate on Wednesday easily and, for the most part, affably confirmed President Obama's pick for Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew, just one day after the president's nominee for defense secretary narrowly survived a highly politicized confirmation vote." ...
... Martin Crutsinger of the AP: "Jacob Lew is scheduled to be sworn in Thursday as Treasury secretary and will have to hit the ground running. He is taking over the job just a day before huge automatic government spending cuts are set to take effect. He's likely to be involved with any negotiations to reverse the cuts, and also in budget talks next month to continue funding the government." ...
... Mark Felsenthal of Reuters: "President Barack Obama intends to name Edith Ramirez the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, a White House official said on Thursday. Ramirez has been an FTC commissioner since April 2010. She was a Los Angeles lawyer specializing in business litigation before joining the commission."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: A central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 may be in peril, judging from tough questioning on Wednesday from the Supreme Court's more conservative members. Justice Antonin Scalia called the provision, which requires nine states, mostly in the South, to get federal permission before changing voting procedures, a 'perpetuation of racial entitlement.' Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked a skeptical question about whether people in the South are more racist than those in the North. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked how much longer Alabama must live 'under the trusteeship of the United States government.'" ...
... Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court's conservative justices strongly suggested Wednesday that a key portion of the Voting Rights Act is no longer justified and the time had come for Southern states to be freed from special federal oversight." ...
... Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSblog recaps the Justices' remarks in the Voting Rights Act case, Shelby County v. Holder. ...
** Dana Milbank: "For a quarter-century, Antonin Scalia has been the reigning bully of the Supreme Court, but finally a couple of justices are willing to face him down. As it happens, the two manning up to take on Nino the Terrible are women: the court’s newest members, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan." ...
... ** Washington Post Editors: "Congress is empowered to write legislation enforcing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. But if Justice Scalia doubts the purity of lawmakers' motives, then apparently this power is limited. We wonder how the justice is able to discern what lay within the hearts of these 98 senators. We also wonder how many challenged acts of Congress would survive if the court saw fit to strike down any that were enacted by lawmakers considering, in part, their reelection prospects." CW: I thought Scalia's remarks about the intent of the Congress was even more outrageous than his claim that the Voting Rights Act is a "racial entitlement," & that's nearly as outrageous as one can get. His premise is that if he just doesn't like a law, he can change or void it. This is a flagrant violation of the Constitutional separation of powers.
... Racial discrimination is totally over, but state discrimination is horrible. Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: "Scalia worried that Section 5, and its unjustifiable discrimination against states, would continue in 'perpetuity.' But with the bailout provision, it's a relatively simply matter to escape the Section 5. To quote Roberts in a case striking down a school integration program, 'the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.' Maybe instead of trying to gut the Voting Rights Act, Shelby County should try that." ...
... New York Times Editors: "If the Supreme Court substitutes its judgment for Congress’s, it will enable state and local governments to erode nearly half a century of civil rights gains." ...
... Are You Ready for Some Irony? Stephanie Condon of CBS News: "President Obama joined members of Congress today to unveil a new statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. With the full-length statue placed in the Capitol Building's Statuary Hall, Parks takes her 'rightful place among those who shaped this nation's course,' Mr. Obama said." ...
... Here's a brief AP video:
... Here's the whole ceremony, which I found quite moving. Even Mitch McConnell was okay:
Zachary Goldfarb & Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "In a meeting planned for Friday, President Obama will push Republican congressional leaders to accept higher tax revenue in order to avoid deep spending cuts set to take effect on the same day." ...
... Andrew Taylor of the AP: "Across-the-board spending cuts all but certain, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are staging a politically charged showdown designed to avoid public blame for any resulting inconvenience or disruption in government services. The two parties drafted alternative measures to replace the cuts, but officials conceded in advance the rival measures were doomed." ...
... David Dayen, now with Pacific Standard (???): yes, there are things the Obama administration could do to mitigate the cleaver approach the sequester takes, but they aren't gonna do it, at least not in the short term "Because making clear the impact of forced austerity may offer the best hope for discrediting and reversing it." Via Greg Sargent. ...
... In agreement with what we noted here the other day, Willie Herrmann, BuzzFeed's "data scientist," writes, "In terms of total reductions outlined in each report, the states facing the worst cuts skew heavily Republican. As a proportion of federal dollars received by each state (as detailed in a 2007 study), 11 of the 12 hardest-hit states -- and 17 of the top 25 -- went for Romney in last fall's election. Many states in the Southeast and portions of the Midwest will experience the worst damage, in addition to Alaska and Hawaii." ...
... ** Andy Sullivan of Reuters: "On paper, there's ... $85 billion in budget savings at a time when Washington continues to bleed red ink. In reality, the so-called 'sequester' is likely to yield less than half that much in the short term. In part, that has to do with the complex way the government handles its money. But it also reflects the probability that the spending cuts will hurt the economy, which in turn will lower tax revenue and drive up the costs of social safety-net programs like unemployment insurance. On top of that, federal agencies -- especially the Pentagon -- will have to pay penalties to suppliers if the sequester forced them to cancel contracts. Add it up, and the actual savings could be a lot less than budget hawks envision."
... Matt Yglesias States the Obvious. Deficit scolds -- David Brooks, Ron Fournier of the National Journal, etc. -- who seem to think "the president of the United States has ... the ability to pull a Jedi mind trick and force congressional opponents to agree to deals they don't favor.... It is Boehner, not Obama, who must lead and find a way to a solution. It is Boehner, not Obama, who has the ability to move Washington beyond the endless stale debate, and it is Boehner, not Obama, who is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of policymaking in the 113th Congress." ...
... Brendan Nyhan of the Columbia Journalism Review agrees with Yglesias & also prominently mentions what a bunch of dicks Brooks, et al., are. (Probably doesn't use the word "dicks." But that's what he means.) ...
... Paul Krugman has a funny take on the WashPo editorial, which both Yglesias & Nyhan cite. ...
... E. J. Dionne: "The air of establishment Washington is filled with talk that Obama must 'lead.' But Obama cannot force the House Republican majority to act if it doesn't want to. He is (fortunately) not a dictator. What Obama can do is expose the cause of this madness, which is the dysfunction of the Republican Party. Journalists don't like saying this because it sounds partisan. But the truth is the truth, whether it sounds partisan or not." Read his whole column. ...
... BUT forget about Brooks, Fournier, et al. It's All About Bob! Devin Dwyer of ABC News: "Woodward has been making the rounds to cable TV and print outlets accusing a 'very senior person' [probably Gene Sperling] in the administration of threatening him last week ahead of an op-ed he later published in the Washington Post attributing the idea for the automatic spending cuts to President Obama." Here's the "threat":
... CW: I don't usually recommend a story by Mike Allen & Jim VandeHei of Politico, & this one is full of bullshit, but it is a good indication of how right-wing reporters feel about the Obama White House. Reading how they & Woodward think the White House is "thin-skinned" is grounds for a chuckle. I loved the part where Bob says he wears big boy pants but such an ominous threat would cause lesser reporters to "tremble tremble." ...
... Update: Allen has now posted the e-mails between Sperling & Woodward. See if you think a cub reporter would "tremble tremble" upon reading Sperling's e-mail. Do read Woodward's response to Sperling.
... Ben Smith of BuzzFeed, who first IDed Sperling as the "threatening official": "Officials often threaten reporters that they will 'regret' printing something that is untrue, but Woodward took the remark as a threat." CW: For your own safety, Bob, no more midnight meetings in dimly-lit parking lots. Oh, wait. You haven't done that for decades. ...
... Max Read of Gawker: Bob's "reporting" is "now mostly just writing down what important people tell him in his kitchen. 'There is nothing less important about 'the sequester' than the question of whose idea it originally was,' Salon's Alex Pareene wrote yesterday. 'So, naturally, that is the question that much of the political press is obsessed with, to the exclusion of almost everything else.' Not everything else: also the question of the proper tone in which one is allowed to speak to Bob Woodward." ...
... Steve Benen: Woodward "repeated the claim on CNN, insisting, 'It was said very clearly, you will ''regret'' doing this.' And at it was this very moment when Bob Woodward put his credibility as a journalist on the line -- and lost.... He took a few words out of context in order to look like a victim of heavy-handed White House pressure, but now that the email itself is available, it's clear there was nothing threatening about Sperling's message and Woodward's efforts to suggest otherwise were deliberately deceptive. Indeed, in case facts still matter, what Sperling argued happened to be true -- Woodward had several key facts wrong."
Paul Krugman notes that in his testimony before Congress, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke agreed with Krugman's assessment of the impact of federal spending cuts in a weak economy. "... these remarks should give pause to all the people who imagine that 'nobody' except me and a couple of other crazies think that we're paying far too much attention to short-term deficits." CW: hate to tell you, Paul, but Joe Scarborough does not follow Fed Chair Congressional testimony.
Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "The A.F.L.-C.I.O. ... has issued an apparent endorsement of the Keystone XL pipeline -- apparent because it enthusiastically called for expanding the nation's pipeline system, without specifically mentioning Keystone.... The labor federation's embrace of the pipeline, even with some ambiguity, will give President Obama some political cover as he weighs whether to approve the pipeline...."
Thomas Edsell takes another look at racial prejudice in the U.S. Some studies show that the "Obama Effect" was to dramatically reduced white prejudice against blacks, but it appears the effect may last only as long as a campaign does.
Congressional Race
Katharine Seelye of the New York Times: Massachusetts "Republicans and Democrats are bracing for bruising primaries over the next few weeks as five candidates begin to campaign in earnest to fill the United States Senate seat left vacant by John Kerry's departure to become secretary of state."
Marin Cogan of The New Republic on "the psycho-sexual ordeal of [women] reporting in Washington." No, female reporters usually are not anxious to "date" their sources, & when they express interest in their subjects during interviews it's because during interviews the reporters ask questions. Via Greg Sargent.
News Ledes
New York Times: "A meticulous new analysis of Antarctic ice suggests that the sharp warming that ended the last ice age "occurred in lock step with increases of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the latest of many indications that the gas is a powerful influence on the earth's climate." Not meticulous enough for Jim Inhofe. They drive cars in D.C. & it still snows there.
AP: "A self-described pimp was arrested Thursday in Los Angeles, ending a manhunt that began after a vehicle-to-vehicle shooting and spectacular, fiery crash that killed three people on the Las Vegas Strip a week ago, police said. Ammar Harris, 26, surrendered to a team of police and federal agents who found him inside a North Hollywood apartment after a woman answered the door, authorities said."
Reuters: "Pope Benedict left the Vatican on Thursday and headed to the papal summer residence where he will become the first pontiff in six centuries to resign instead of ruling for life."
fell more than expected last week, suggesting some traction in the labor market recovery. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 344,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday." ...
... BUT Reuters: "The U.S. economy barely grew in the fourth quarter although a slightly better performance in exports and fewer imports led the government to scratch an earlier estimate that showed an economic contraction. Gross domestic product expanded at a 0.1 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said on Thursday, missing the 0.5 percent gain forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll."
AP: "The Obama administration said Thursday that it will provide the Syrian opposition with an additional $60 million in assistance and -- in a significant policy shift -- will for the first time provide nonlethal aid like food and medical supplies to aid rebels battling to oust President Bashar Assad."
Reuters: "Two major Chinese military websites, including that of the Defense Ministry, were subject to about 144,000 hacking attacks a month last year, almost two-thirds of which came from the United States, the ministry said on Thursday."
AP: "Pope Benedict XVI promised his 'unconditional reverence and obedience' to his successor in his final words to cardinals Thursday, a poignant and powerful farewell delivered hours before he becomes the first pope in 600 years to resign."