Clay Shirky on the gulf between planning and reality.
Category: Politics As Usual
‘This time, Charlie Brown really will kick the football’
http://youtu.be/n-LJ9qLbNJI
Greg Sargent reports that Harry Reid really is ready to use the nuclear option to free up Obama nominees now in limbo. Well, we’ve been here before. It really does sound urgent this time — but then, it usually does. Maybe this time it will actually happen:
Senator Harry Reid appears set to go nuclear — before Thanksgiving.
With Senate Republicans blocking a third Obama nomination to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, a senior Senate Democratic leadership aide tells me Reid is now all but certain to move to change the Senate rules by simple majority — doing away with the filibuster on executive and judicial nominations, with the exception of the Supreme Court – as early as this week.
At a presser today, Reid told reporters he was taking another look at rules reform, but didn’t give a timeline. The senior leadership aide goes further, saying it’s hard to envision circumstances under which Reid doesn’t act.
“Reid has become personally invested in the idea that Dems have no choice other than to change the rules if the Senate is going to remain a viable and functioning institution,” the aide says. That’s a long journey from where Reid was only 10 months ago, when he agreed to a toothless filibuster reform deal out of a real reluctance to change the rules by simple majority. Asked to explain the evolution, the aide said: “It’s been a long process. But this is the only thing we can do to keep the Senate performing its basic duties.”
Asked if Reid would drop the threat to go nuclear if Republicans green-lighted one or two of Obama’s judicial nominations, the aide said: “I don’t think that’s going to fly.”
Continue reading “‘This time, Charlie Brown really will kick the football’”
Reversal
The PA House has passed the transportation bill.
Growth at all costs
Even the Chinese Communist party has realized ruining the environment isn’t such a great idea.
Pennsylvania, land of giants
More short-sighted idiocy from our state house gang. The public transit system is in really bad shape, but of course the Pennsyltucky Repugs don’t want to pay for it:
HARRISBURG – After months of debate, the state House failed to pass legislation Monday night that would have provided $2.3 billion to complete long-overdue repairs to the state’s aging transportation infrastructure.
In a stunning 103-98 vote that teetered between passage and defeat until the last moment of the roll call, lawmakers shot down an amendment to fix thousands of substandard bridges, repave hundreds of miles of crumbling roads, and pump hundreds of millions into modernizing mass transit systems across the state.
To pay for the improvements, the bill would have lifted the cap on the oil-franchise tax – which could increase prices at the gas pump by roughly 27 cents a gallon. The measure also would have increased driver’s-license and vehicle-registration fees beginning in 2015, and put a surcharge on speeders and others who violate traffic laws.
Pentagon doctored ledgers to conceal waste
Isn’t it nice that we have one government agency that still gets to spend at will, depriving other agencies of greatly needed funds? I’m sure all those fat contributions to congressmen have nothing to do with it:
At the DFAS offices that handle accounting for the Army, Navy, Air Force and other defense agencies, fudging the accounts with false entries is standard operating procedure, Reuters has found. And plugging isn’t confined to DFAS (pronounced DEE-fass). Former military service officials say record-keeping at the operational level throughout the services is rife with made-up numbers to cover lost or missing information.
A review of multiple reports from oversight agencies in recent years shows that the Pentagon also has systematically ignored warnings about its accounting practices. “These types of adjustments, made without supporting documentation … can mask much larger problems in the original accounting data,” the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said in a December 2011 report.
Plugs also are symptomatic of one very large problem: the Pentagon’s chronic failure to keep track of its money – how much it has, how much it pays out and how much is wasted or stolen.
Continue reading “Pentagon doctored ledgers to conceal waste”
Liz Warren throws down the gauntlet today
And calls for the expansion of Social Security.
Is your state ready?
To deal with climate change disasters? Probably not.
Pa. students ban ‘Redskins,’ get sent to principal
I have a dear friend who’s an Indian, and she was the person who first explained to me just how offensive the word “redskin” is, and why. Props to these kids for taking the initiative on this, and boo to the principal:
PHILADELPHIA — When a high school newspaper at a suburban Philadelphia football powerhouse decided the word “Redskins” had no place in its pages, the paper’s student editors found themselves called to the principal’s office.
The dispute between Neshaminy High School’s paper, the Playwickian, and school administrators is a strange twist on the fight over what students can and can’t say: this time it’s the students urging restraint.
The Playwickian editors started getting heat from school officials after an Oct. 27 editorial that barred the use of the word “Redskins” — the nickname of the teams at Neshaminy, a school named for the creek where the Lenape Indians once lived.
“Detractors will argue that the word is used with all due respect. But the offensiveness of a word cannot be judged by its intended meaning, but by how it is received,” read the editorial backed by 14 of 21 staff members. (An equally well-written op-ed voiced the dissenting group’s opinion.)
The ban comes as Native American activists and a few media outlets, along with President Barack Obama, challenge the moniker of Washington’s NFL team, which visits Philadelphia on Sunday.
Related: Native American leaders applaud Obama for stance on Redskins’ name
At Neshaminy — where the welcome sign sometimes reads: “Everybody do the Redskin Rumble” and the football team is 11-1 with a shot at its second state title— news editors had pledged to stop using the term “Redskins” as far back as 2001, but sometimes wavered. This year’s staff decided to take it on full-force.
“You are not afraid to write about the hard and sensitive issues. You take risks on editorial pages — bravo!” judges wrote last month in a student journalism contest, when the Playwickian earned a top award.
Nonetheless, Principal Robert McGee ordered the editors to put the “Redskins” ban on hold, and summoned them to a meeting after school Tuesday, according to junior Gillian McGoldrick, the editor-in-chief.
“People are [saying], ‘Just give in. It doesn’t really matter.’ But it’s a huge deal, that we’re being forced to say something that we don’t want to,” said McGoldrick, a 16-year-old junior.
McGee called the editors’ motives “valiant,” but said the dispute pits the rights of one group of students against another.
His approximately 2,600 students must each publish an article in the Playwickian for course credit. He doesn’t think anyone should be barred from writing about the Neshaminy Redskins, especially, he said, when the harm alleged is open to debate.
“I don’t think that’s been decided at the national level, whether that word is or is not [offensive]. It’s our school mascot,” said McGee, who said he’s consulted with the school solicitor and others. “I see it as a First Amendment issue running into another First Amendment issue.”
US believes Iran deal is ‘possible’ at next talks
Sure would like to see this settled peaceably:
US believes Iran deal is ‘possible’ at next talks (via AFP)
A nuclear deal with Iran is possible at the next round of talks in Geneva, a US official said Friday, but warned tough issues still had to be hammered out. “We are going to work very hard next week. I don’t know if we’ll reach an agreement. I think…