The Commentariat -- April 5
Tim Kaine, current DNC Chair & former Virginia governor, announces he will run for the Senate in 2012:
The Road Wreck is now relabeled "The Plan for Disparity Prosperity." It's the SOS. ...
... "The Threat Within." Paul Krugman: "The great danger now is that Obama — with the help of a fair number of Senate Democrats — will kill Medicare in the name of civility and outreach. This doesn’t have to happen. Republicans have, in fact, offered Democrats a huge political opportunity — much as Bush did in 2005. But I’m sorry, I have no confidence in the current leadership’s willingness to do the right thing, even when it’s also politically smart."
Brian Beutler of TPM has a pretty good summary of Paul Ryan's new Road Wreck for America budget plan, the details of which are conveniently TBA but the broad outlines of which are radically Gilded Age. ...
... Josh Marshall of TPM on "how political actors use press cowardice to deceive the public. Rep. Paul Ryan's plan, which is now the official Republican plan, phases out Medicare over 10 years. Yet you'll be treated to numerous articles that call this a 'reform' or 'overhaul' or even 'saving' Medicare. But each are no better than straight outright deceptions, whether by design or ignorance." ...
... AND Kevin Drum of Mother Jones remarks on "the courageous, serious. gutsy Paul Ryan.... I imagine that within a few days this will be the consensus view of the entire Beltway punditocracy. A plan dedicated almost entirely to slashing social spending in a country that's already the stingiest spender in the developed world, while simultaneously cutting taxes on the rich in a country with the lowest tax rates in the developed world — well, what could be more serious than that? I think I'm going to be sick." ...
... Which brings to mind David Brooks' dishonest paean to Paul Ryan's "courageous budget reform proposal," I urge you to read some of the comments. The first five are informative; I'm sure many more are, too. Too bad the Times won't let us say what we really think. I came as close as I could within the paper's guidelines, & Gemli inadvertently crossed over the line, but the moderators didn't catch him. His closing sentence is my Quote of the Day:
I don't know what Paul Ryan is grabbing with both hands, but I don't think it's 'reality.' It seems a lot more personal, and I'm already starting to feel the squeeze. -- Gemli of Boston
... Ezra Klein has a much more honest analysis (which does not copy Ryan's talking points as Brooks does, & which I cited in my comment on Brooks) of the Ryan/Republican Road Wreck. ...
... Merrill Goozner of the Fiscal Times, in an article reprinted in Kaiser Health News, backs up Klein. "... just because the government slowed its spending doesn’t mean that old people and the poor wouldn’t have the same health care bills they had before. Health care for these vulnerable populations absent some other force in the marketplace would continue growing at rates significantly faster than the Ryan plan’s GDP+1 formula, just as it has for decades." Who will pay? Why, you will, and at a rate higher than your tax liability would have been under current Medicare & Medicaid laws. ...
... AND Bob Reich explains federal fiscal policy so even a child can understand it: "Here’s the truth: The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich." Any questions?
Monica Davey of the New York Times: a judicial race in Wisconsin turns into a referendum on Gov. Scott Walker & state Republican legislators.
Binyamin Appelbaum & Jo McGinty of the New York Times: "During the frenetic months of the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve stretched the limits of its legal authority by lending money to more than 100 banks that subsequently failed.... Eight owed the Fed money on the day they failed, including Washington Mutual, the largest failed bank in American history."
Neil Irwin of the Washington Post: prices are rising, but wages are not. "In the past three months, consumer prices have been rising at a 5.7 percent annual rate while average weekly wages have barely budged, increasing at an annual rate of only 1.3 percent. And the particular prices that are rising are for products that people ... have the least flexibility to avoid. For the most part, it’s not computers and cars that are getting more expensive, it’s gasoline, which is up 19 percent in the past year, ground beef, up 10 percent, and butter, up 23 percent."
Joe Nocera of the New York Times writes about General Electric's super-duper tax break. Comments are here. ...
... BUT Allan Sloan & Jeff Gerth of Fortune say the Times story (link to the Times story) on which Nocera bases his column was misleading. Sloan & Gerth write what they call "The Truth about GE's Tax Bill" (link to Sloan & Gerth story): "Did GE get a $3.2 billion tax refund? No. ... Will GE ultimately pay U.S. income taxes for 2010? After much to-ing and fro-ing -- the company says it hasn't completed its 2010 tax return -- GE now says that it will pay tax.... Why should you care about this? Because we all have a stake in how this plays out. Thanks to the uproar over GE, we now risk ending up with legislation that targets GE but produces all sorts of unintended consequences. Public rage can make for bad law." CW: I think Allan Sloan is a good financial reporter, but I should tell you that Jeff Gerth is the guy who practically single-handedly dreamed up Whitewater -- the "scandal" that wasn't, but that ultimately led to Bill Clinton's impeachment & cost taxpayers millions.
CW: I linked to a story on this on Saturday, but if you want to read it in the Times, here ya go: Geraldine Fabrikant: "Lawsuits involving David L. Sokol after he joined Berkshire Hathaway suggest that management had some warnings about his rules-pushing nature long before his resignation last week for buying stock in a company shortly before Berkshire acquired it." ...
... AND Andrew Ross Sorkin of the Times wants to know: "... as speculation of insider trading swirls around [financier Warren] Buffett’s onetime heir apparent, David Sokol, it has to be asked: Why hasn’t Mr. Buffett been ruthless?"
Michael Kinsley in Politico: "... the Washington culture of influence peddling is not entirely, or even primarily, the fault of the corporations that hire the lobbyists and pay the bills. It’s a vast protection racket, practiced by politicians and political operatives of both parties."
Jonathan Chait of The New Republic on why Democrats are such wimps: "The reason you see greater levels of partisan discipline and simple will to power in the GOP is that it has a coherent voting base willing to support aggressive, partisan behavior and Democrats don't."
Local News
AP: "If Gov. Paul LePage [R-Maine] does not want to display a mural depicting the state’s labor history, then the federal money used to create it should be returned, the United States Department of Labor says. The department said Monday that when the governor removed the artwork from state offices last month, he violated the terms of federal laws governing money that was used to pay for most of its $60,000 cost. ...
... Susan Sharon of Maine Public Broadcasting Network: "Hundreds of artists, labor activists and others upset over the decision by Governor Paul LePage to remove a labor history mural from the Maine Department of Labor rallied at the State House today to demand its return." ...
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins is depicted in this panel (left). A likeness of former Maine Labor Commissioner Laura Fortman is second from right. ... Ted Homer of WGME: The Maine Republican party, noting that one of the mural's panels includes a likeness of former state Labor Commissioner Laura Fortman, said in a statement: "The real story here is not that Governor LePage decided to move this mural. The real story is that [Democratic former Gov. John] Baldacci's Labor Commissioner wasted $60,000 of taxpayer funds to decorate her office with a painting of herself.... This is an insult to the hard working people of Maine." Homer reports that, "The artist commissioned to paint the mural, Judy Taylor, [said] ... that no one asked her to be in the mural.... Taylor said she used several people in real life to go by when painting the mural."
News Ledes
President Obama speaks at the White House press briefing on the budget impasse:
Here's John Boehner's response:
New York Times: "United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the ."
Politico: "President Barack Obama has chosen Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) as the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, top Democratic sources said Tuesday. Wasserman Schultz, 44, was chosen for her strength as a fund-raiser and as a television messenger, and for her clout in the crucial swing state of Florida, the sources said.
The Plan. New York Times: "House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled a far-reaching budget proposal that cuts $5.8 trillion from anticipated spending levels over the next decade and is likely to provide the framework for both the fiscal and political fights of the next two years. The ambitious plan, drafted principally by Representative ..., proposes not only to limit federal spending and reconfigure major federal health programs, but also to rewrite the tax code, cutting the top tax rate for both individuals and corporations to 25 percent from 35 percent, reducing the number of income tax brackets and eliminating what it calls a “burdensome tangle of loopholes.” Here's the plan, which the Times has annotated.
Washington Post: all sides in the budget battle (and there are at least four) agree that if a deal is not reached by the end of today, the government will shut down Friday when the government "runs out of money." ...
... New York Times Update: "In dueling news conferences just moments apart, and the speaker of the House, , dug in their heels on Tuesday over terms of a budget deal to stave off a partial shutdown of the federal government as early as Saturday." See videos above. ...
... Washington Post Update: "The first federal government shutdown in more than 15 years drew closer Tuesday as President Obama and congressional leaders failed to make progress after back-to-back meetings at the White House and on Capitol Hill. Obama and Congress remained billions of dollars apart and at odds over where to find savings after an 80-minute West Wing meeting that included House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). In the meeting, Boehner floated the possibility that he may seek as much as $40 billion in cuts, $7 billion more than the two sides have been discussing for the past week."
Washington Post: "Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said that even if he uses 'extraordinary measures' to prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations, lawmakers will need to raise the legal limit on government borrowing by July 8. Current projections show the United States will reach its $14.3 trillion cap on borrowing 'no later than May 16,' Geithner wrote in a letter Monday to leaders on Capitol Hill." The letter is here.
** New York Times: "The United Nations and France went on the offensive Monday against Ivory Coast’s strongman, Laurent Gbagbo, striking targets at his residence, his offices and two of his military bases in a significant escalation of the international intervention into the political crisis engulfing the nation." CW: I've brought this story forward from yesterday's ledes. It has been updated: "By early Tuesday, Mr. Gbagbo was in a bunker beneath his residence and was negotiating a possible surrender through the French ambassador, according to Alain Lobognon, a spokesman for the prime minister, Guillaume Soro." ...
... Washington Post Update: "Ivory Coast’s embattled strongman Laurent Gbagbo clung precariously to power Tuesday as his military commanders offered to surrender in the face of attacks by a coalition of French troops, U.N. peacekeepers and fighters loyal to the country’s internationally recognized president-elect."
New York Times: "The Obama administration dropped financial sanctions on Monday against the top Libyan official who fled to Britain last week, saying it hoped the move would encourage other senior aides to abandon Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the country’s embattled leader. But the decision to unfreeze bank accounts and permit business dealings with the official, Moussa Koussa, underscored the predicament his defection poses for American and British authorities, who said on Tuesday that Scottish police and prosecutors planned to interview Mr. Koussa about the 1988 and other issues....”
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