These days the Appalachian Trail is a most unpredictable byway, leading first to sexy South America and now to the coffers of Washington, DC.
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) waged a high-profile war against the economic stimulus package last spring, claiming that accepting the $700 million for which his state was eligible would lead to “a thing called slavery.” Even as his state’s unemployment rate climbed above the national average, Sanford maintained his partisan and politically motivated refusal to take the funds.
But yesterday, Sanford flew to Washington to demand $300 million in stimulus money for education, the State newspaper reports:
Sanford, who spent much of last year fighting parts of the Obama administration’s stimulus plan, now wants S.C. to have a piece of $4 billion in “Race to the Top” education money. […]
Sanford met with [Secretary of Education Arne] Duncan to learn more about a charter school program Duncan started in Chicago, said Ben Fox, the governor’s spokesman. Sanford also took the trip to urge Duncan to support more charter school grants, Fox said. […]
Sanford’s trip — which did not appear on his official calendar — is especially hypocritical because the majority of stimulus money destined for South Carolina was to fund education and save thousands of teachers’ jobs. Yet, in March, Sanford told Fox News host Glenn Beck that taking the money would be akin to “fiscal child abuse.”… [emphasis original]
What a hypocrite!! I would so like to suggest that Arne Duncan tell Sanford to take a long flying #$%& off a short pier. In good conscience, I cannot. To do so would be to suggest that the needy children of South Carolina, already suffering from RSDD, be penalized for Sanford’s GOP hypocrisy. What;s RSDD? It’s Red State Disability Disorder.
On the issue of corporate advertising, Donna Edwards says no.
Maryland Congresswoman Donna Edwards turned to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis for guidance in framing the Constitutional amendment she proposed Tuesday as the right and necessary response to the decision by Chief Justice John Roberts and a high court majority to abandon law and precedent with the purpose of permitting corporations to dominate the political discourse. “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both,” said Brandeis, the lion of law whose defenses of freedom of speech and the right to privacy renewed and extended the American experiment in the 20th century. Brandeis knew that giving corporations monopoly powerover our economic life or our politics would be deadly to democracy. Unfortunately, that truth is lost on the current Supreme Court’s activist majority. Edwards is relying on Brandeis as an intellectual and legal touchstone as she launches the boldest congressional response yet to last month’s Supreme Court decision in the case of Citizens United v. FEC. “The ruling reached by the Roberts’ Court overturned decades of legal precedent by allowing corporations unfettered spending in our political campaigns. Another law will not rectify this disastrous decision,” Edwards said Tuesday. “A Constitutional Amendment is necessary to undo what this Court has done. Justice Brandeis got it right: ‘We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.’ It is time we remove corporate influence from our policies and our politics. We cannot allow corporations to dominate our elections, to do so would be both undemocratic and unfair to ordinary citizens.” Edwards explains the amendment in a powerful video where says: “You don’t amend the Constitution often, but the Supreme Court really has left us with no choice but to change the Constitution and make sure that people own our government and our elections — not the corporations.” Edwards does not stand alone. In addition to an array ofpublic interest groups including Public Citizen, Voter Action, The Center for Corporate Policy and the American Independent Business Alliance,the congresswoman’s proposed amendment is being backed by House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who is the dean of civil libertarians in Congress. Conyers has signed on as an original co-sponsor of the amendment to address the court’s move to allow corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections. “The Supreme Court’s idea that corporate political speech is no different than an individual citizen’s political speech was not the law when the Constitution was written, was not the law before the Supreme Court’s decision two weeks ago, and should not be the law in the future,” says Conyers. “I look forward to working further with Ms. Edwards and my other colleagues to use every tool at our disposal to make sure that elected representatives are accountable to voters, not corporations.”…
Click through to the article for the full text of the amendment. For the long term, I agree with Edwards, but think she should go ever further to address that earlier wrongful decisions that a corporation is a person and that political expenditure equals speech. For the short term, we need a law to serve as a poison pill to corporate spending. Congress maintains the power to tax corporate activity. I propose a 500% tax on all corporate spending for advertising, with the receipts split evenly between reducing the national debt and the funding the campaign committee of the opposing party. Here’s a hypothetical example. Let’s say Goldman Sachs spends $1 million in eleventh hour smear ads against Donna Edwards. The Extreme Court decision makes it impossible to block the ads, Edwards is defeated. Then Goldman Sachs has to pay a $5 million tax assessment. Of that, $2.5 million goes to reduce the national debt, and $2.5 million goes to the DNC. Thus, every time corporations try to buy an election, they provide 2.5 times what they spend on that to fund the campaigns of opponents and, at the same time, help pay down the national debt they created with the help of the GOP. What do you think of both ideas, hers and mine?
Glen Greenwald has written an excellent piece on the assassination of US citizens by executive order.
Last week, I wrote about a revelation buried in a Washington Post article by Dana Priest which described how the Obama administration has adopted the Bush policy of targeting selected American citizens for assassination if they are deemed (by the Executive Branch) to be Terrorists. As The Washington Times‘ Eli Lake reports, Adm. Dennis Blair was asked about this program at a Congressional hearing yesterday and he acknowledged its existence:
The U.S. intelligence community policy on killing American citizens who have joined al Qaeda requires first obtaining high-level government approval, a senior official disclosed to Congress on Wednesday.
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said in each case a decision to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen must get special permission. . . .
He also said there are criteria that must be met to authorize the killing of a U.S. citizen that include "whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans. Those are the factors involved."
Although Blair emphasized that it requires "special permission" before an American citizen can be placed on the assassination list, consider from whom that "permission" is obtained: the President, or someone else under his authority within the Executive Branch. There are no outside checks or limits at all on how these "factors" are weighed. In last week’s post, I wrote about all the reasons why it’s so dangerous — as well as both legally and Consitutionally dubious — to allow the President to kill American citizens not on an active battlefield during combat, but while they are sleeping, sitting with their families in their home, walking on the street, etc. That’s basically giving the President the power to impose death sentences on his own citizens without any charges or trial. Who could possibly support that?
But even if you’re someone who does want the President to have the power to order American citizens killed without a trial by decreeing that they are Terrorists (and it’s worth remembering that if you advocate that power, it’s going to be vested in all Presidents, not just the ones who are as Nice, Good, Kind-Hearted and Trustworthy as Barack Obama), shouldn’t there at least be some judicial approval required? Do we really want the President to be able to make this decision unilaterally and without outside checks? Remember when many Democrats were horrified (or at least when they purported to be) at the idea that Bush was merely eavesdropping on American citizens without judicial approval? Shouldn’t we be at least as concerned about the President’s being able to assassinate Americans without judicial oversight? That seems much more Draconian to me.
It would be perverse in the extreme, but wouldn’t it be preferable to at least require the President to demonstrate to a court that probable cause exists to warrant the assassination of an American citizen before the President should be allowed to order it? That would basically mean that courts would issue "assassination warrants" or "murder warrants" — a repugnant idea given that they’re tantamount to imposing the death sentence without a trial — but isn’t that minimal safeguard preferable to allowing the President unchecked authority to do it on his own, the very power he has now claimed for himself? And if the Fifth Amendment’s explicit guarantee — that one shall not be deprived of life without due process — does not prohibit the U.S. Government from assassinating you without any process, what exactly does it prohibit?… [emphasis added]
In my opinion, to allow either the President or the Courts the power to legally authorize assassination, even during time of war, is unconscionable. If a US citizen has joined AQ, he should be tried in US courts. If the government has sufficient knowledge of his whereabouts and activities to assassinate him, they also have sufficient knowledge to kidnap him and render him to the US for trial. This policy must be abandoned and outlawed. Have we forgotten that nobody is immune from assassination by the powerful? Remember JFK, RFK and MLK.
I’m pleased to see a beginning of activity to recover the people’s money from the banksters\, but skeptical.
Democratic Senators Jim Webb and Barbara unveil another proposal aimed at allowing taxpayers to recoup bailout funds from recipients of exorbitant bonuses at firms that received more than $5 billion in TARP funds:
WASHINGTON, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Two Democratic senators on Thursday proposed legislation that would impose a one-time tax on bonuses paid to executives of companies bailed out with taxpayer money.
Senators Barbara Boxer and Jim Webb proposed a 50 percent tax on 2009 bonuses above $400,000 at any firm that has received more than $5 billion in government assistance.
The next question is whether or not this is just another press release or if it actually has a chance of becoming a law.
The senators said they had not yet gathered broad support for the proposal, and neither sits on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, which would likely have to take up the bill. A 35 percent tax on bonuses at bailed-out companies was proposed last year by the leaders of the Finance Committee, Democrat Max Baucus and Republican Charles Grassley, but it has not been acted on.
So you can add this to a list of ideas floating out there to make taxpayers whole after the bailout spree, but the question still remains: will Democrats in Congress actually do anything to make any of those ideas become reality?…
Cousin FatCat thinks this is a terrible idea. He thinks taxpayers exist for the sole purpose of providing him the finest caviar.
I think it’s a good idea, but think that, if it does actually get through the US $enate, it will be challenged. It’s close enough to being a Bill of Attainder that a reasonable court might overturn it, let alone the fascist five Justices of the Extreme Court.
Yesterday I spent all morning and part of the afternoon at ‘pulmonary boot camp’. Other than feeling quite sore, I’m no worse for the wear, but I could not keep up with comments or visit blogs yesterday. I [plan to do both today.
Today’s Jig Zone puzzle took me 5:40. To do it, Click Here. How did you do?
I have a pair of excellent videos for you today. In the first, Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes nail Susan Collins and other GOP Senators for their lies about the handling of the underpants bomber:
What we see here is GOP desperation. For years they have hoodwinked Americans into believing that they are the national security party, even though the second worst national security disaster (after Pearl Harbor) in US history occurred through incompetence on their watch. They insisted that EITs (torture) were necessary to get the intelligence needed to keep America safe, even though most experts on interrogation agree that EITs produce faulty intelligence. They belittled claims by Democrats that following the law is the best way to proceed and called us weak on terrorism. Now that the bomber is singing like a canary, the proof that the Democrats were right is staring them in the face, and they are besides themselves. So they are lying.
In the second, Keith exposes the Frank Luntz memo, instructing Republicans to lie about finance reform.
Why do Republicans lie so much? I was thinking about that as I commented on another blog yesterday, and the answer came to me. It’s simple. If Republicans told the truth, nobody in their right mind would vote for them.
Although the Republicans think HCR is dead, Nancy Pelosi is determined to get it done.
In a call with progressive media yesterday afternoon, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reiterated her determination, in no uncertain terms, to keep pushing to pass comprehensive healthcare reform. (Crooks and Liars has the audio.) Pelosi referred to healthcare reform as "first among equals" in Democratic initiatives to create jobs, stressing that it’s a major competiveness issue for the United States, and that our current system hampers job growth and entrepreneurship.
She reiterated that the Senate will have to move the reconciliation sidecar to the bill first, that she has heard from the majority of her caucus that they are "not going to vote for that [the Senate] bill" unless the Senate acts on the reconciliation fix first. She stressed how many of the House caucus came to Congress on the issue of healthcare reform, and how long they have worked on it, and said that until basic issues of fairness, state equity, and affordability for the middle class were addressed, the House won’t vote on the Senate bill.
Don’t even ask us to consider passing the Senate bill until the other legislation has passed both houses so that we’re sure that it has happened, and that we know that what we would be voting for would be as effected by a reconciliation bill or whatever parliamentary initiative they have at their disposable.
Beyond the issues of affordabilty and state equity (getting rid of the Nebraska deal), fixing the excise tax, and closing the “donut hole” in Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage for seniorsm [sic] Pelosi wouldn’t detail the issues that would likely be included under reconciliation, deferring basicaly [sic] to what Senate leadership thought it could do. When asked whether the public option would be included, she reiterated her support for it, as well as the House’s, but again deferred to what the Senate would be able to pass. She did say that she had heard from more than one Senator that wanted the House to include either a single payer or public option, but was not optimistic.
There was talk that there would be 51 votes for it, but it never passed on the floor of the Senate. It did pass in the House and, of course, I think it would be the way to go. But it isn’t the way that the Senate went. And so I think that what you might see coming out of some reconciliation would be those areas of agreement that all three–the White House, the Senate and the House–had already agreed to…more than two weeks ago.
Despite that assessement, Daily Kos readers got a hint that there might even be life left in the public option on the Senate side in reconciliation from Chuck Schumer yesterday. In a comment responding to a question from nyceve in his diary, Schumer said he has "always believed that there are 51 votes for the public option. Getting to 60 was the real challenge. We’re now reviewing all of our options and reconciliation is certainly one of them." With now more than 100 House Dems urging Reid to include the public option in that package, there might still be life in it.
The "new" news in the call was that the House "will pass" a repeal of insurance companies anti-trust exemption next week. Whether that certainy is coming from an actual whip count or her optimism is unclear, but it’s pretty unlikely more than a few House Dems would actually vote against this popular political step. The Senate prospects for taking up this bill are unclear, given how long it takes them to do anything, but pressure from the House moving pieces of this reform forward could help ease that logjam… [emphasis added]
I can’t blame Pelosi for hesitating. All the while that the House has been legislating, the Nevada Leg Hound, Harry Reid, was humping GOP and Blue Dog legs and producing a thoroughly flawed product.
Obama supports this approach as well.
White House aides have privately told Dem Congressional aides that the White House supports the House passing the Senate health reform bill with a reconciliation fix, something that could give a bit more momentum to that approach, according to two Congressional staffers familiar with the discussions.
The private communications will lend a bit of cheer to those who had hoped the White House would use its heft to help Congress break its logjam by endorsing a specific route to getting reform done.
Obama and the White House have not publicly stated a preference on how they’d like Congressional Dems to proceed. But White House aides have privately made it clear to the Dem leadership that they support the approach many Dems are coalescing behind: The House passing the Senate bill, with fixes made by the Senate via reconciliation, the sources say.
“In staff level discussions, the White House has made it clear that it supports making changes to the Senate bill through reconciliation because that is the only way to pass comprehensive health care reform,” one of the Dem Congressional aides familiar with ongoing talks tells me.
“They support this strategy,” a second Democratic aide familiar with the talks says, referring to the White House. “The alternatives are so bad they’re not worth asking about.”
It’s unclear whether Obama himself has privately communicated support for this option directly to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. And White House aides have not inserted themselves directly into discussions about the procedural obstacles to doing it, one of the aides says… [emphasis added]
They should have taken this tack in the beginning, because they never had 60 votes. Several in the Senate Democratic caucus are Blue Dogs, and one is a Republican.
At this point, we can only hope. I’ll close with Keith Olbermann and Sherrod Brown.
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) waged a high-profile war against the economic stimulus package last spring, claiming that accepting the $700 million for which his state was eligible would lead to “a thing called slavery.” Even as his state’s unemployment rate climbed above the national average, Sanford maintained his partisan and politically motivated refusal to take the funds.
