Category: Congress

Here is a shocker:

Matzzie to Head Democratic Soft Money Effort

Even as the Democratic primary fight enters the final stretch, plans are proceeding apace among party strategists to build an independent money machine that will rival or eclipse what they created in 2004, when donors poured millions into two key outside-the-party organizations — America Coming Together and the Media Fund.

Tom Matzzie has been hired to run a new effort for 2008, which he has described in an e-mail as a $100 million-plus venture organized around “issues and character.” Matzzie is leaving his post as the Washington director of Moveon.org to take the job. . . . The news of Matzzie’s hiring comes roughly two weeks after a group of the largest donors in the Democratic party gathered in Washington to discuss where they’ll put their money during the 2008 race. . . . Those familiar with overall Democratic fundraising plans for 2008 say that everything is still in a very nascent stage, but party heavyweights are clearly on the march — setting up various organizations that may be integrated into a larger uber-fundraising effort, perhaps under Mattzie’s group.

Move On’s political director who wasjoined at the hip with the Democratic Party on Congressional issues now getting a big Dem fundraising gig? Shocking.

Move On and Mattzie have played its members for a while now. You think they’ll figure it out? Me neither.

If you haven’t looked at lordradish’s diary Peter Welch (D-VT) gets an earful about the war. People are pissed., definitely check it out. In it, I gave pause for a moment when I got to this point:

Welch wanted to clarify his voting history on Iraq. I don’t have the specifics on what he said. He laid out his history on the votes on Iraq so far, and why he voted the way he did on them. Two things… he did clarify one point about something that I don’t think many people know. Voting to allow a vote on something is not the same as voting for something. There was a particular vote that Welch voted to allow to the floor, only to vote against the actual measure itself. Some had misconstrued voting to allow a vote as a support of the bill itself.

Emphasis mine.

The point is an excellent one — we need to track the votes, and accurately discern the nature of them, if we are to have any credibility when holding pols responsible.

There’s more…make the jump.

The DOD authorization is HR 1585.  If you wish to read it, it’s there in all of it’s congressional glory, all bloated and striving to allow the military to be used here in the US.

Speaker Pelosi today announced:

House Democrats said Thursday they would send President Bush $50 billion for combat operations on the condition that he begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. The proposal, similar to one Bush vetoed earlier this year, would identify a goal of ending combat entirely by December 2008. It would require that troops spend as much time at home as they do in combat, as well as effectively ban harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding.

In a private caucus meeting, Pelosi told rank-and-file Democrats that the bill was their best shot at challenging Bush on the war. And if Bush rejected it, she said, she did not intend on sending him another war spending bill for the rest of the year.

“This is not a blank check for the president,” she said later at a Capitol Hill news conference. “This is providing funding for the troops limited to a particular purpose, for a short time frame.

As always, we know Bush will veto.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Bush would veto any bill that sets an “artificial timeline” for troop withdrawals.

As always, I applaud the Speaker’s STATED stance today.

As always, the important point here is that the House Dems MUST stick to their guns and tell the President – of he vetoes then he is abandoning the troops in the field. I repeat, the President of the United States will be ABANDONING AMERICAN TROOPS IN THE FIELD!

President Bush is proposing to stab the troops in the back by vetoing funding for them.

A disgraceful man. The worst President in history.

Senator Barack Obama has run a campaign criticizing what he calls the Politics of the Moment all the while campaigning for his moments. Well, if this is true, an Obama Moment can emerge:

Despite their rhetoric about not wanting to hand President Bush another “blank check” for the Iraq War, Democrats appear poised to give him exactly that — enough cash to keep the war going full steam for as long as six months, no strings attached.

. . .Democrats are quietly preparing to give the president enough spending flexibility to keep the war going anyway. . . . Democrats began approving billions in extra funding, starting with the first stopgap spending resolution [I have no idea what Roll Call is talking about here. I kow of no additional funding measrues that have been passed since the Iraq Supplelemental that was passed prior to Petraeus's testimony. Frankly, I think Roll Call is wrong.] Next up will be the regular Defense spending bill, expected to go to conference committee Tuesday. Although the bill is not expected to include funding specifically targeted to Iraq, Democrats plan to allow much of the funding to be diverted from regular Defense accounts to the war. . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) The House can not pass such funding without the Senate. Senator Obama, just say no. Put a hold on such a bill. Lead a filibuster against it. This is your moment. Prove you are more than just pretty words.

Offer expires…Offer good until…Product Sell-By…Born Date…

Timelines.

Markers denoting the beginning, ending (or ongoing) and significant dates pertaining to a series of events denoting a particular topic. Topics covered by timelines could be lives, political movements, catastrophes, the rise and fall of nations, evolutionary periods of biological or geological import, or — in the case of the George W. Bush Administration — any and all of the above.

From the 16th century to the dawn of the 20th, a special choir sang at the pontiff’s pleasure, grown men with the voices of angels and the range of female sopranos.  There was a simple reason for their abilities: each had had his gonads surgically removed prior to achieving puberty.

I don’t know why, but the other day, while pondering the castrati (It., “castrated ones”), I started thinking about the 110th Congress.  Could it be, I wondered, that we are witnessing the political equivalent of a choir of the ball-less pandering to the whims of a theological autocrat? 

Naw, I thought, not our Dems – our guys are descended from the tradition of FDR and “The Buck Stops Here” Harry!  We have a heritage of Massive Brass – New Deals and Great Societies that had to be shoved down the throats of backward-looking Republicans.  There’s no way that folks of such stock could ever be compared to emasculated servants performing at the whim of a king, nor to the haunting voice of the very last castrati, the only one whose voice was ever recorded.

Or could they?

Today, as it has for many many years, The New York Times today slams the sweet deal given to the American sugar industry:

[S]ugar supports cost American consumers — who pay double the average world price — more than $1.5 billion a year. The system also bars farmers in some of the poorest countries of the world from selling their sugar here.

The North American Free Trade Agreement is about to topple this cozy arrangement. Next year, Mexican sugar will be allowed to enter the United States free of any quotas or duties, threatening a flood of imports. Rather than taking the opportunity to untangle the sugar program in this year’s farm bill, Congress has decided to bolster the old system.

Big Sugar is not the only beneficiary of this corporate welfare. The farm bill is larded with subsidies and other rewards for agricultural producers. The eagerness of members of Congress to please their sugar daddies is not surprising. Campaign donations from the sugar industry have topped $3 million in each of the last four political cycles. American consumers and taxpayers, as well as poor farmers overseas, shouldn’t have to pay the price.

This is of course all true, but the sugar industry is not the only egregious manipulator of our political system. But I want to concentrate on a different point, of personal interest to me. It is the fact that this system does not protect industries and jobs – it protects fat wallets. The small Florida town I grew up in lost hundreds of jobs – the excuse?

Sugar mill closes; trade pacts blamed

PAHOKEE, Fla. (AP) – The old sugar mill rises like a rusty tin mirage from endless green fields of freshly cut cane and swaths of rich, black soil. A sweet, musty smell hangs heavy in the air as white steam pours from its smokestacks for the last time.

The Bryant Sugar House has ground more than 90 million tons of cane into about 20 billion pounds of raw sugar since it opened in 1962. On Wednesday, the plant wrapped up its 45th harvest season and prepared to close forever following the industry trend — falling prices and better technology that means fewer jobs as more mills turn to automation and computers.

Faced with growing pressure from foreign sugar, U.S. Sugar Corp., the nation's largest producer of cane sugar, is combining the mill's operations with a high-tech plant 30 miles away. About 200 people will lose their jobs.

'We've had more and more trade agreements that continue to give away more access to our marketplace, creating a very, very competitive environment,' said Robert Coker, the company's vice president.

He said the company was forced to modernize one plant and consolidate operations, 'and unfortunately, when you modernize, it means eliminating jobs.'

Thirty-three mills across the country have closed in the last decade as producers try to remain competitive in a market becoming flush with excess foreign sugar, according to the American Sugar Alliance.

The $10-billion-a-year industry employs 146,000 people in the U.S. But trade agreements with other nations threaten even more American jobs as producers streamline their facilities to cut costs, the industry claims.

How convenient, trade pacts justified firing hundreds of people, a great many of them black and Latino, while the fat wallets still get to pad their pockets by virtue of a government giveaway.

Is it too difficult for Congress to insist that these fat cats use some of the money Congress gives them to keep Americans working?

Our government is broken. And small towns, populated with people who do not have millions for lobbyists, suffer:

Some of the 202 employees will go to work at U.S. Sugar's other plant. Some will retire. Many will simply move on. The company held a job fair.
'It's a sad day,' said 65-year-old mill manager Jacques Albert-Thenet. 'Some of these people have worked here an entire generation.'

Secretary Linda Stanley, 63, is one of only two employees who have worked at the plant since it opened in 1962. She has seen generations working side-by-side: 'Husbands, wives, sisters, children, brothers, nieces and nephews.'

Mill mechanic Jessie Brown Jr., 50, works alongside his two sons. He's been here 31 years and will soon head to the other mill for work.

'I'm going to have to do little adjusting. This is home,' Brown said. 'You gotta start all over again in a new place. Most of the people who are here now are your family.'

Not to worry. The fat cats will still get theirs -on the dole. The 1.5 billion dollar sugar fat cat dole.

Brian Beutler has a terrific run down of what went wrong tactically with the Democratic Congress last week (S-CHIP, FISA, etc.) But Beutler still is looking at the tactical picture and looking at a Congress that he wants to do something. The problem is that, and this is true, they do not have the votes to do something in contested areas like S-CHIP, Iraq funding and FISA. This mistaken focus is exemplified here:

There is no hypothetical package of enticements the Democrats can offer a Republican that outweigh the price that that Republican will pay within his own party. He'll only be treated leniently when his party bosses realize that, if they don't let him vote with the opposition, he might lose his seat. At some point the Republicans realized something crucial: That, for now anyhow, upholding the veto is politically neutral. . . .

What does this mean? It means that even on issues as politically popular as S-CHIP, Bush can stop all Democratic initiatives. The question is then what can the Democrats do? Simply this, END all the Bush travesties. Iraq, FISA, etc. By using the power of the purse and NOT funding them. More.

is the reality that Democrats can end the Debacle by not funding it. The power of doing nothing is lost on them. Instead, we see the Republican Party responding to its base (h/t Josh Marshall):

Despite months of pressure, no more than eight Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have backed any measure that mandates a troop withdrawal. And GOP strategists predict that is unlikely to change.

“Republicans have to be cognizant of where their base is,” said pollster Bob Wickers, whose company has worked with Republican candidates in a dozen states in recent years.

Here's my question, why don't Democrats have to be cognizant of where THE COUNTRY is? Josh's post is really missing this point – that Democrats won in 2006 on Iraq. That THEIR base and the country want out of Iraq. And that they have the power to stop the war. By doing nothing. It is the central insight and is missing from much of the Iraq coverage, Media and blogs alike.

And rightly so:

With Democrats Like These …
 

Every now and then, we are tempted to double-check that the Democrats actually won control of Congress last year. It was particularly hard to tell this week. Democratic leaders were cowed, once again, by propaganda from the White House and failed, once again, to modernize the law on electronic spying in a way that permits robust intelligence gathering on terrorists without undermining the Constitution.

. . . There were bright spots in the week. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon managed to attach an amendment requiring a warrant to eavesdrop on American citizens abroad. That merely requires the government to show why it believes the American is in league with terrorists, but Mr. Bush threatened to veto the bill over that issue.

Senator Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat, said he would put a personal hold on the compromise cooked up by Senator Rockefeller and the White House.

Otherwise, it was a very frustrating week in Washington. It was bad enough having a one-party government when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues.