TomCADem
TomCADem's JournalClinton says Obama needs to call the GOP's 'bluff'
Source: CNN
Washington (CNN) - Former President Bill Clinton, who sat in the Oval Office during the last government shutdown, supports President Barack Obama's refusal to negotiate with congressional Republicans and argues he should call their "bluff" as the government nears a possible shutdown and default.
"He could stop it, but the price of - the current price of stopping it is higher than the price of letting the Republicans do it and taking their medicine," he said in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
Clinton went on to say that House Republicans, having realized they have little chance of pushing through legislative items their party wants, have dug in and scrapped any plans of negotiating. "Give us what we want or we're going to shut the government down," Clinton said, describing how he sees the GOP strategy.
"I think under those circumstances, the president has to take the position he's taken," he continued. "Which is 'You - not me - you voted to spend this money.' … You can't negotiate over that. And I think he's right not to."
Read more: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/29/clinton-says-obama-needs-to-call-the-gops-bluff/?hpt=hp_t1
It is also helpful that Bill Clinton points out that even under his watch, Republicans never tried to use the threat of default at leverage.
"A Government Shutdown And Debt Ceiling Guide For Journalists Who Don't Want To Be Complete Idiot"
The Sunday news shows are replete with examples of journalists trying to push a false equivalence narrative suggesting that Democrats are equally at fault for a shut down and that Republicans are doing Democrats a favor by considering an increase in the debt ceiling or funding the federal government. This is not gridlock. This is GOP nihilism at its worse.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/27/government-shutdown-debt-ceiling_n_4004408.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
The only thing I'd add to this is that anyone who suggests in the future that raising the debt ceiling constitutes a "concession" to Democrats is also committing malpractice.
Among the many examples Fallows cites of journalists employing these best practices is the Sept. 27 edition of the Diane Rehm show, in which "panelists Ruth Marcus, Janet Hook, and Todd Purdum all said with a bluntness unusual for a D.C.-based talk show that we are witnessing the effects not of gridlock but of one party's internal crisis." Check it out here.
Naturally, this is a 100 percent accurate take on the matter. This is the GOP's intra-party crisis, not a congressional one. Democrats don't receive any benefit from avoiding a shutdown or a default. Nor do they impose anything on the GOP by calling for a government that continues to run, or a global economy that continues to exist. Republicans are free to stage debates, make arguments, attempt to pass laws, try to strike bargains, and seek redress in the normal cycle of campaigns and elections. At the moment, their party is having a difficult time deciding if it wants to stick with traditional American governance, or swap it out for a series of violent threats on the nation's economic security.
This should be a really easy story to get right.
NY Times - "House Leaves U.S. on Brink of Shutdown"
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/politics/budget-talks-government-shutdown.html
WASHINGTON — The federal government on Saturday barreled toward its first shutdown in 17 years after House Republicans, choosing a hard line, demanded a one-year delay of President Obama’s health care law and the repeal of a tax to pay for the law before approving any funds to keep the government running.
Republicans emerged from a closed-door meeting Saturday unified and confident that they had the votes to delay the health care law and eliminate a tax on medical devices that partly pays for it. But before the House had even voted, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said that when the Senate reconvened on Monday it would strip out both provisions.
The House’s action all but assured that large parts of the government would be shuttered as of 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday. More than 800,000 federal workers deemed nonessential faced furloughs; millions more could be working without paychecks.
A separate House Republican bill would also ensure that military personnel continued to be paid in the event of a government shutdown, an acknowledgment that a shutdown was likely. The health law delay and the troop funding bill were set for House passage Saturday.
The Atlantic - "Your False-Equivalence Guide to the Days Ahead"
Nice discussion of how the mainstream corporate media is enabling Republicans by once again portraying Democrats and Republicans as being equally inflexible and resistant to compromise.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/your-false-equivalence-guide-to-the-days-ahead/280062/
As a matter of journalism, any story that presents the disagreements as a "standoff," a "showdown," a "failure of leadership," a sign of "partisan gridlock," or any of the other usual terms for political disagreement, represents a failure of journalism*** and an inability to see or describe what is going on. For instance: the "dig in their heels" headline you see below, which is from a proprietary newsletter I read this morning, and about which I am leaving off the identifying details.
This isn't "gridlock." It is a ferocious struggle within one party, between its traditionalists and its radical factions, with results that unfortunately can harm all the rest of us -- and, should there be a debt default, could harm the rest of the world too.
* * *
** The debt-ceiling vote, of course, is not about future spending decisions. It is about whether to cover expenditures the Congress has already authorized. There is no sane reason for subjecting this to a repeated vote. And there is no precedent for serious threats not to honor federal debt -- as opposed to symbolic anti-Administration protest votes, which both parties have cast over the years. Nor for demanding the reversal of major legislation as a condition for routine government operations.
*** For examples of coverage that plainly states what is going on, here is a small sampling: Greg Sargent, Derek Thompson, John Gilmour (on why Ronald Reagan believed in compromise), Jonathan Rauch, Brian Beutler, Jonathan Chait, Andrew Sullivan (also here), Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas, Dan Froomkin. On today's Diane Rehm show News Roundup, panelists Ruth Marcus, Janet Hook, and Todd Purdum all said with a bluntness unusual for a D.C.-based talk show that we are witnessing the effects not of gridlock but of one party's internal crisis.
Republican hard-liners block strategy to avoid federal government shutdown
Source: Washington Post
Washington stumbled toward a shutdown as the Republican Party’s rebellious right wing on Thursday blocked a strategy by House Speaker John A. Boehner for navigating a series of deadlines to keep the government funded and avoid a first-ever default.
Boehner (R-Ohio) and his leadership team revealed the first step of that plan to rank-and-file lawmakers early Thursday, urging conservatives to shift their assault on President Obama’s health-care law to the coming fight over the federal debt limit.
That would allow lawmakers in the meantime to try to reach an agreement on a plan to fund federal agencies into the new fiscal year, which begins Tuesday, and avoid a shutdown.
But about two dozen hard-liners rejected that approach, saying they will not talk about the debt limit until the battle over government funding is resolved.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/republican-hard-liners-block-strategy-to-avoid-federal-government-shutdown/2013/09/26/ae905f9e-26e4-11e3-b75d-5b7f66349852_story.html
Unfortunately, the corporate media is working overtime in trying to set up a false equivalency between Republicans and Democrats as Republicans threaten to trash the economy unless they get their wish list. Rarely is mention made of prior compromises made by Democrats. Instead, the corporate media lets Republicans push the idea that Democrats are being unreasonable it not yielding to their extortionate demands.
Officials Detail Premium Costs of Health Plan
Source: NY Times
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Tuesday provided the first detailed look at premiums to be charged to consumers for health insurance in 36 states where the federal government will run new insurance markets starting next week, highlighting costs it said were generally lower than previous estimates.
Administration officials released the information, central to their campaign to persuade millions of uninsured Americans to sign up for coverage, even as Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, waged a fierce fight on the Senate floor, risking a government shutdown if necessary to eliminate financing for the expansion of coverage under President Obama’s health care law.
The White House sought to focus attention on what it portrayed as the financial advantages of the health insurance program, which is set to start accepting customers on Oct. 1.
“I can tell you right now that in many states across the country, if you’re, say, a 27-year-old young woman, don’t have health insurance, you get on that exchange, you’re going to be able to purchase high-quality health insurance for less than the cost of your cellphone bill,” Mr. Obama said Tuesday, speaking at a health care forum in New York City with former President Bill Clinton.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/us/politics/officials-detail-premium-costs-of-health-plan.html?_r=0
Conspiracy theorist targets Sandy Hook family
Source: Tampa Bay Times
Jillian Soto remembers the day she stumbled across a website that showed photos of her at her sister's funeral — and was horrified to read accusations that she had faked grief as part of an elaborate government hoax.
Only a month earlier, Victoria Soto, 27, had been shot down while sheltering her first-grade students at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The Dec. 14 massacre in Newtown, Conn., left 20 children and seven adults dead.
* * *
Conspiracy theorists have thrived on the Internet, producing hundreds of such websites that challenge official reports and claim nefarious plots behind emotionally charged events — despite evidence to the contrary. Some are wildly speculative, casting doubt on whether man really took steps on the moon.
Others, like the website Soto discovered, which espouses antigovernment and anti-Semitic opinions, are viewed by some watchdog groups as malicious hate speech.
Read more: http://www.tampabay.com/news/nation/conspiracy-theorist-targets-sandy-hook-family/2123880
Interesting news story that actually tracks down one of these conspiracy theorists and finds, perhaps to no one's surprise, that he is a right wing, anti-semetic, and tax dodge.
New Yorker - "The I.R.S. and the Tea Party: Where Is the Scandal?"
Here is a nice piece from the New Yorker that does some actual reporting, rather than breathlessly reporting Darrell Issa's breathless rants of the day or repeating the latest Fox News narrative.
As far as Obama’s potential involvement and vulnerability goes—and that’s what everybody in Washington really cares about—here is the key passage in the report (“EO” stands for “Exempt Organizations” and the “Determinations Unit” is the office in Cincinnati):
We asked the Acting Commissioner, Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division; the Director, EO; and Determinations Unit personnel if the criteria were influenced by any individual or organization outside the IRS. All of these officials stated that the criteria were not influenced by any individual or organization outside the IRS.
“Come on,” I can hear Maine Senator Susan Collins and others saying. Are you so deep into the tank for Obama that you are seriously suggesting a group of low-level bureaucrats in Ohio came up with the idea of setting aside, for special review, applications from groups whose names contained the words “Tea Party,” “Patriots,” or “9/12 Project”? No, I am not making that suggestion. It comes from an agency that Congress created in 1999 to provide independent oversight of the I.R.S. In organizational terms, the Inspector General for Tax Administration comes under the ambit of the Treasury Department. But it is independent of the Department and all other agencies located therein. Since 2004, it has been headed by J. Russell George, a native of Brooklyn and a former prosecutor in Queens, who was appointed by President George W. Bush. The lead author of the report, Gregory D. Kutz, is a career public servant and forensic auditor who used to work for the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
Here, again, is the report (“BOLO” stands for “Be On the Lookout”):
The Determinations Unit developed and implemented inappropriate criteria in part due to insufficient oversight provided by management. Specifically, only first-line management approved references to the Tea Party in the BOLO listing criteria before it was implemented. As a result, inappropriate criteria remained in place for more than 18 months.
If you are a Republican member of the House Ways and Means Committee, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, or the Senate Finance Committee, all of which are rushing to schedule hearings on this great national scandal, such statements don’t offer much in the way of encouragement.
Never fear! Our intrepid representatives will come up with something. Rather than focussing on the body of the report, today’s Times reports, they are fixing on a single entry in the report’s appendix, which reveals—shock! horror!—that on August 4, 2011, I.R.S. officials in Washington, who by then knew about the Cincinnati office’s targeting of conservative groups, met with the I.R.S.’s chief counsel “so that everyone would have the latest information on the issue.”
House Republicans swiftly announce hearing on IRS targeting conservative groups
Source: Fox News
The IRS acknowledging that it targeted conservative political groups during the 2012 election season has sparked bipartisan calls for investigation -- with House Republicans already saying they will hold a hearing on the issue.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Friday the Republican-led chamber would investigate the tax-collecting agency for flagging the groups for additional review to see whether they were violating their tax-exempt status.
“The IRS cannot target or intimidate any individual or organization based on their political beliefs,” the Virginia Republican said.
Cantor’s comments were followed within minutes by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp saying he would hold a hearing.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/11/house-republicans-swiftly-announce-hearing-on-irs-targeting-conservative-groups/
Here is the latest effort by Republicans and Conservative media to try to spin their efforts to break the law and funnel millions in to Dark Money 501(c)(4) organizations into an conspiracy by Democrats and political watchdogs as the ones breaking the law. To begin with, campaign contributions are NOT tax deductible and only organizations that principally engaged in social welfare should be tax exempt. Yet, many overtly political and right wing groups obtained tax exempt status with the most notable being Karl Rove's group Crossroads GPS.
Now, Republicans are complaining that the IRS flagged groups that had the word "Tea Party" in their applications for tax exempt status as potentially being engaged in political activity, as opposed to social welfare. All, I can say is, I should hope so! I mean if someone sends in an application for a group called, "Win back the White House in 2014," I would hope that the IRS does not just rubber stamp it as a social welfare group. Yet, this is exactly what Republicans are claiming should be one with respect to Tea Party groups, which were engaged in significant political activity such as Rove's Crossroads GPS.
When I contribute to a Democratic candidate, my name gets disclosed. Why should billionaires be able to hide their identities and contributions of dark money to right wing groups pretending to be 501(c)(4) social welfare groups?
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/217987-irs-takes-heat-from-gop-dems-over-tea-party-groups-tax-exempt-status
In recent weeks, GOP lawmakers have followed up with the agency over complaints from Tea Party groups that feel the IRS is unfairly targeting their applications for tax-exempt status.
But on the other end of the spectrum, some Democrats on Capitol Hill have been asserting that the IRS is not looking carefully enough at groups seeking a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) designation, a label given to organizations principally engaged in social welfare.
Doug Shulman, the IRS commissioner, defended his agency’s efforts during congressional hearings last week, stressing that the IRS prides itself on being nonpartisan and that the rules surrounding tax-exempt groups are complex.
Slate - "The Democrats' Exceedingly Timid Budget" - More Protecting The Rich Is Bold Nonsense?
First, Ezra Klein now Slate? What is up with even "liberal" pundits buying into the meme that Republicans are "brave" by attacking programs benefitting the poor and the middle class to pay for tax cuts to the rich? In a post-Citizens United world, I would submit that trying to protect existing entitlements and trying to correct for years of growing income inequality is brave and bold.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/03/dueling_budgets_paul_ryan_s_budget_framework_is_thrilling_patty_murray_s.html
Ryan’s budget is almost frighteningly ambitious. It purports to balance the budget in 10 years. It transforms Medicare into a voucher program over 20 years. It undoes the Affordable Care Act. It removes the federal “floor” from state Medicaid benefits. It cuts food stamps and Pell Grants. It rescinds a key element of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill and would radically alter American housing policy. It initiates a massive transformation of the tax code, cutting the top income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent and making up for the difference with unspecified loophole-closing. Descriptions of Ryan as a “courageous” thinker are overblown. At key moments, his relies on magic asterisks and punts to other committees for clear thinking. It’s a class-war budget on behalf of the rich, keeping their taxes low and making the poor and the middle-class pay. But it certainly reflects the old saw about making no small plans.
Murray’s budget for the Democrats is the reverse. In distributive terms, she taxes the rich to preserve programs for the poor and middle-class. But it’s also the reverse conceptually—a de minimis scheme aimed at addressing the budget challenge with as little change as possible.
It’s conventional to score budget proposals over a 10-year time horizon, and so Murray’s plan is designed to produce a low and stable budget deficit within that window. It doesn’t balance the budget, since the budget doesn’t really need to be balanced. It doesn’t really address the growth of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security outside that 10-year window, because what’s outside the window doesn’t really need to be addressed. It doesn’t transform the tax code. It bites at the lowest-hanging fruit of deductions for the wealthy and big businesses. And it doesn’t transform any programs, nipping and tucking just enough to hit deficit reduction targets while being equally balanced between tax hikes and spending cuts.
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