Category: Barack Obama

This is not a typical post for me.

Instead of writing a blog post and further destroying my wrists in the process, I figured I’d try something a little different.

Below you’ll find a video that I cobbled together from pictures I found online and designs created by my partner, a talented graphic designer who was kind enough to take a few moments to indulge me. I am not a film director, nor do I desire to be one.  It shows.

The song, however, is one that I think many people here will enjoy.  It’s called “Money Machine”, and it was recorded live at Eddie’s Attic in Atlanta. The album is entitled Jeff’s Last Dance, by Kahler & Mullins. I was at this show. It’s just two guys singing, one of whom plays the hell out of the congas.  I suppose my affinity for this song results from the fact that I do possess an inner hippie (shhh!). The song is all about corporate greed & US militarism, but it actually manages to not sound cheesy.  In fact, it happens to rock.  I hope you enjoy my amateurish iMovie editing, which was intended to convey visually the sentiments expressed in the lyrics (with a bit of snarkiness).  Even if you dislike the editing, I hope you’ll enjoy the tune.  

LANGUAGE WARNING: Today’s story is uncharacteristically blunt, and from this moment forward we will be using lots of inappropriate language in making our points.

Gentle Reader, you have been officially…warned.

With that in mind, if you take offense when confronted with language strong enough to knock a fuckin’ buzzard off a shitwagon, please stop reading now.

It is by now fairly well known that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, had a bit of a blow-up with liberals who were ready to start running ads against “blue dog” Democrats who were working very hard to shut down the health care reform effort.

Now we’re not gonna get in the middle of that argument today; instead, since we’re finally getting a chance to talk, I figured me and Rahm could get a few other things out of the way that have been on everyone’s mind for the past year or so.

The historic Conclave at Blair Castle has finally ended, the illustrious personages in attendance have shared their wisdom with us, and I have humbly transcribed their words, so serfs everywhere will be able to sleep well tonight knowing that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well . . .    

Since tomorrow is the big “virtual march” on Washington, when the so- called Democratic activists (yeah, I mean you, OFA) and interested others are supposed to flood the Congressional switchboards, faxes, and email to their Senators on the Eve of Destruction, er, the Thursday televised “Bipartisan” Health Care Summit Kabuki Theatre, to expedite the passing of the gallstone, er, The Health Insurance Bill,  the Speaker of the House clarified the status of the President’s bill tweak tonight.  The bill tweak was posted online yesterday.

This was posted late in The Hill this evening:

Pelosi: House Dems can support Obama healthcare proposal

http://thehill.com/homenews/ho…

“We’re very pleased with what the president put up on the Internet,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday at a news conference.

Pelosi did not object to the absence of a Public Option in President Obama’s version of the bill, altho she said it would be the preferred method, nor to putting an excise tax on on “high cost health care” plans to pay for it.  (oh, nice message control there by the writer for not using the Reaganite  “Cadillac Plans.”)

The White House bill includes a modified version of the tax that seeks to protect middle-class union members from paying it.

Pelosi endorsed that proposal, stating that “the pay-for in it is something that Democrats in the House can support.”

( If I had to make an educated guess, the unions that they have in mind here are the ones that work on government military contracts and projects such as the electrical, metal sheetworker, aerospace industry, shipbuilding, etc,  and in turn donate to Democratic candidates. )

According to the wonk room think progress, with President Obama’s tweak of the Senate bill,  there is a delay in starting the excise tax.  This is a combination of kick the can down the road to 8 years in the future, and upping the amount of exemption for each policy before the 40% excise tax on policies worth over a certain amount kicks in.  A double barreled kick, as it were.  Because it’s very likely that policies are going to cost lots more in the near future, after we saw Wellpoint’s 39% proposed rate hikes this month. http://www.marketwatch.com/sto…

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress….

Obama’s Version- Excise tax – ‘Labor agreement’ for everyone. Changes effective date of the Senate policy from 2013 to 2018. Raises the amount of premiums that are exempt from the assessment from $8,500 for singles to $10,200 and from $23,000 for families to $27,500 and indexes these amounts for subsequent years at general inflation plus 1 percent.  

There is also a payroll tax increase of zero point nine 0.9% percent on wages or salaries above a certain income, and a two point nine percent 2.9%  assessment on unearned income. (“unearned” income is that which does not come from actual work performed for wages, but is from interest, dividends, investment gains, or things like rent).

According to The Hill story, the House will be voting on Wednesday on a repeal of the health insurance industry’s Anti Trust exemption, which would allow the Federal Trade Commission and Dept of Justice to combat collusion (aka evil cooperation to fix prices) between health insurance companies.  They’ve had the exemption since 1945.    

In a post on Salon today, Glenn Greenwald reveals to readers the essential tactic of the Democratic Party leadership.  It’s not trying to get Republican support, it’s not filibuster reform, it’s not registering people to vote.  It’s much more manipulative than that.

It is an explanation for the “lack of spine” that Democrats are often said to have – which, we can now see, is merely a convenient illusion for prominent Democrats.  It is a scapegoat that they can use so that progressives will continue voting for them even though we get nothing that we ask for, and instead have to take whatever crumbs are given to us.

So what is it?

This is what the Democratic Party does; it’s who they are.  They’re willing to feign support for anything their voters want just as long as there’s no chance that they can pass it.  

Robert Pollin is Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and is a founding co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI).  His research centers on macroeconomics, conditions for low-wage workers in the U.S. and globally, the analysis of financial markets, and the economics of building a clean-energy economy in the U.S. His books include A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the US and Contours of Descent: US Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity.

Here Pollin talks with Paul Jay of The Real News Network and outlines a careful combination of job-generating public investments, incentives to mobilize private investment, and policies that protect economically vulnerable populations that can create the economic and policy environment that Obama could use to create 18 million jobs and lower the unemployment rate to only 4 percent by 2012.

Transcript here, and there is also a companion article to this by Pollin in the March 08, 2010 edition of The Nation.

Cross-posted at Progressive Blue.

It’s the same old story. Another slap in the face to both organized labor and the entire middle class as both Craig Becker and the National Labor Relations Board are in limbo. Harry Reid called for recess appointments, The AFL-CIO sprang into action and the president’s response is limbo continued. There is nothing this Democratic president can do for such close allies? As workers are wondering if a functioning NLRB is being saved for October of 2012 this all seems so 1994. But top that off with Obama’s lust for the HCR excise tax and it gets so much worse.

In the debate over the finance of health insurance expansion it would be worth noting that the wealthy who voted for Barack Obama and supported the Democratic party fully expected that healthcare reform would be financed by a roll back the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year. The union members who voted for, stuffed envelopes, reached into their pockets an organized fundraisers, were under the impression that they would see some much needed advancement from a Democratic president after eight years of Bush.

By now most progressive bloggers have moved way beyond these workers who have been losing ground since the 1970’s. It has been rationalized to death so everyone could move on to the next action, followed by the next capitulation, followed by the next wild goose chase towards progress. Come November blue collar workers, like Massachusetts voters recently, might end up being framed as stupid for protecting themselves from harm.

Distrust for government seems to work for Republicans, not for Democrats. As the public option is being presented once again, probably another carrot on a string, a deeper look at this excise tax that will live in the memories of workers for many years is in order. How much trust will be left between the workers and Democratic leadership once this excise tax becomes law and in years to come?

Yesterday, I wrote about why it is a mistake for the Democrats to cling to the Senate Finance Committee’s funding mechanism for their health insurance “reform” bill, which is a punitive, regressive excise tax on the working class’s health insurance benefits themselves, which the White House persists in calling the “Cadillac tax.”

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

Since Friday afternoon is always good for a newsdump, according to Chris Bowers at Open Left, Jillian Rayfield at TPMDC, and Greg Sargent at The Plum Line, we have the usual Democratic anonymous WH sources/leadership aides

 telling us that the President intends to offer the excise tax and no Public Option to the “Bipartisan” health care bill summit next Thursday Feb 25 th.

Sargent:

Okay, I’ve got some more info for you on what the health care compromise proposal that Obama will bring to the summit next week is going to look like.

Bottom line: It’s all but certain to have the Cadillac tax in it, even though House Dems oppose it, and no public option, aides say.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov….

Oh, goody.

Now, last night at Open Left, we had the breathless BREAKING! applied to this little nugget:

Obama will support the public option if Reid will.  

http://www.openleft.com/diary/…

Based on HHS Sec Kathleen Sebelius answering an interview question put to her by Rachel Maddow.

Check out this Research 2000 polling done in Nevada, this month 2/9 – 2/10/10 :  http://act.boldprogressives.or…

88% of Nevada Democrats and 61% of Independents favor a govt. admin health insurance plan “like Medicare” for younger people to be able to obtain as a choice to compete with private plans

89% of Nevada Democrats and 56% of Independents would prefer passing health insurance reform that includes a public option, and that would make them more likely to vote for Democrats in the 2010 elections, even if this meant the bill didn’t get Republican votes.

88% of Democrats and 58% of Independents think Harry Reid should include a Public Option in Reconciliation.

Today, Friday, President Obama did a joint appearance with Senate Majority Leader Reid at a town hall in a high school gym in Henderson, Nevada.  They hugged, they praised each other, they made boxing allegories.  

 “Health care has been knocking me around pretty good,” Obama said. “It’s been knocking Harry around pretty good.”

The goal was to shift the emphasis from the unpopularity of some of Reid’s votes to, in Obama’s view, the courage it took to take expensive steps to save the economy. “Sometimes he takes his licks,” Obama said of Reid. “But he gets back up. Harry Reid has never stopped fighting.”  

Yup. Harry’s never stopped fighting.  Fighting for what, we’re not sure, and in what decade, we don’t know, but he’s still in there, swingin’ away.   Harry’s sagging in the polls in his Nevada re election race.  Nevada, with the highest percentage of veterans and retirees in the nation (think living on fixed incomes), and an economy that depends on tourism and entertainment, has been battered brutally in this recession, as it also has a 13% unemployment rate, and the 2nd highest foreclosure rates in the nation.  Harry needs a Big Las Vegas Finale to pull this one off.  

Original article, by Patrick Martin and subtitled Behind Obama’s overtures to Republican right, via World Socialist Web Site:

The Obama administration is announcing Thursday a new initiative for joint action by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party against American working people, when the leaders of a new bipartisan commission to slash the federal deficit are introduced at the White House.

Yesterday, I reported on the incredulous national reaction fellow Democrats had to Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D, CA) proposed amendment to the upcoming Jobs Bill, the one where she wanted to suspend the Endangered Species Act protections to migrating baby salmon and Delta smelt in the Sacramento & San Joaquin River Delta, with the excuse that increased water pumping out of the Delta to her billionaire water broker donors would “increase jobs.”

This ignored the fact that the salmon fishing season has been suspended the past 2 years on the CA coast and may be heading for a 3rd year of cancelation because of the collapse and crash of the salmon population.

Story here:

DiFi Does a Pombo on Salmon, Jobs Bill Amend Guts EndSpecAct

I found a letter from CA Assemblyperson, Chair of the “Water, Parks, & Wildlife Committee,” Jared Huffman, to Mark Corwin, Director of the CA Dept of Water Resources (DWR) from 1 week ago, Feb 10th.  In it, Chairman Huffman asks why the CA Dept of Water Resources (DWR)  is flouting the CA Endangered Species Act (CESA) with regards to Judge Oliver Wanger’s opinion Feb 5, 2010, that Delta water pumping extraction must decrease to protect Delta Smelt and migrating salmon.  In 2008 and 2009, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service said that if water agencies such as CVP + SWP pumped high amounts of water out of the Delta at certain times, it was going to drive Federally listed endangered fish in the Delta to extinction. (state rules need to comply with Federal listings)  In the summer of 2009 the Dept of Water Resources requested rules clarification, then turned around and started attacking the new rules in court.  

 

Huffman  to DWR:

{{{   On August 3, 2009, (the CA)  Dept Water Resources (DWR) filed legal papers in support of a motion

by its water contractors seeking to invalidate the biological opinion – even though the effect would

be to invalidate DWR’s own CA Endangered Species Act coverage for the SWP pumps.

Then DWR took aim at the salmon biological opinion.  Last week, detection of salmon triggered an

obligation under the salmon biological opinion for the SWP/CVP pumps to reduce reverse flows in Middle

and Old Rivers.  State and federal water contractors went to court seeking to overturn the heavily peer

reviewed salmon biological opinion and replace it with a previously invalidated Bush-era opinion.  

Now, detection of smelt has triggered protections under the delta smelt biological opinion. As you know, a limitation on reverse flow to protect delta smelt would also meet your requirements to protect salmon and longfin smelt.  Monday, Central Valley Project contractors filed for a Temporary Restraining Order on the delta smelt protections.  And Dept of Water Resources, fully informed as to the deference the court gave its last letter, filed another “non-opposition” letter yesterday.

Having actively worked to create these problems, please explain how DWR intends to fix them.  }}}

 

______________

a pdf download of Huffman’s letter to the DWR is here:  

http://www.lloydgcarter.com/fi…

I expanded some of the acronyms above, so it would read more easily

I’m quoting this to to help illustrate the breadth of the problem Senator Feinstein created with so many levels of both state and Federal water and fisheries law, when she decided to play Top Water Distributress of the SacJoaquin Delta. The state of CA was trying to work this out with the Federal government, and she meddled to make a favor to Kerns County water brokers, and Westlake Mutual Water Company and billionaire donor Stewart Resnik, so they could sell a bigger water allotment to the highest bidder in Southern CA.  And this is going to be tacked on to a JOBS Bill.

Congress has had this week off because of President’s day. They had the previous week off because of 2 massive snowstorms.  So they’ve had plenty of time to interact people who are either mad at them or wish to purchase their influence.

Today, The Hill is reporting that Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid doesn’t have the cloture votes to even begin debate on the jobs bill.