Category: Politics As Usual

Curious

~ susie ~ 7 Comments

Does anyone else see the Obamacare website as the massive end-of-the-world catastrophe the media paints it? Honestly, I see it as a minor inconvenience (operating on the assumption the law can’t require me to meet a deadline they themselves can’t meet.) My brothers were programmers and developers, there were always problems with big rollouts. (That’s where the term “vaporware” applies.)

Sure, Obama fucked up. No question. If you read that “Locked in the cabinet” post from yesterday, you read the part where the White House political team delayed important implementation decisions until after the election.

But it will all eventually get fixed, we will eventually get insurance coverage and hopefully it will all work out. Then we will vote out as many of the assholes as we can and start pushing for single payer.

Am I crazy?

Ungovernable

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

Charles Pierce:

Which brings me to a question to which I do not have a complete answer — is the country ungovernable right now because the Republicans have made it so, or are the Republicans merely taking advantage of the fact that, through its creaky institutional structures and through an unforgiveable lassitude towards the obligations of self-government on the part of the American people, the country has become ungovernable in and of itself.

The apparent lack of oversight and preparation in the implementation of the ACA is unforgivable, and the president and the Democratic party will (and should) pay something of a political price for it. But the fact is that the country wanted its massively fractured health-care system fixed, and it had wanted that system fixed since before Bill Clinton tried it back in the early 1990’s.

A completely ludicrous percentage of the country also wants criminal background checks on gun purchases. Right now, if you believe the polls, it is massively in favor of raising the minimum wage. And, actually, if you go below the surface of the polling on the ACA and health-care reform, you find a substantial portion of the country that doesn’t like the embattled law because it doesn’t go far enough toward health-care’s being a right, not a privilege and, in any case, the country repeatedly stated throughout the last 20 years that the status quo ante was an unacceptable combination of corporate avarice and personal tragedy. And yet, that is where the debate is right now, no matter how much Fred Upton says otherwise from deep in the pockets of the people who make money off human misery.

It has become remarkable how the people of this country, an ostensibly self-governing republic, fail to get what an overwhelming percentage of them say they want from their government, over and over again. You can argue, and I have, about the power of money, increased by an order of magnitude through the egregious Citizens United decision. You can argue, and I have, about the unforgivable vandalism practiced by the Republican party and the modern conservative movement that has been the prion disease in the party’s higher functions that has driven it mad.

But the fact remains that, dammit, there has to be a political price to pay for actively opposing something 66 percent — or, in the case of the background checks, 91 percent — of the people say they want. And the electorate is the only body of citizens empowered to exact these penalties, and it has been shamefully lax in doing so. Parts of the country have contented themselves with electing morons and crazy people. (How in the name of god does a buffoon like Louie Gohmert ever run unopposed?) Great portions of the country can be duped, or frightened, into voting against their own economic interests. And the great undifferentiated apathy that attends most of our elections is a deadweight on the democratic process that grows heavier by the year.

If our politicians are not responsive to our needs, then it’s time for new politicians, and we’re the only ones who can bring that about. And yet, it’s easier to complain about an inconvenient website, or a scary letter from an insurance company, or bullshit anecdotes that fall apart under the barest scrutiny. The country is ungovernable because we, The People, have decided not to govern it any more. That, to borrow a phrase from the president, is on us.

McClatchy: Chained CPI on the table in budget talks

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Fortunately for us, I guess, the president’s low popularity ratings may make politicians more reluctant to take on senior citizens and vets over the chained CPI — but they’re sure as hell going to try:

WASHINGTON — With congressional budget negotiations moving behind closed doors, one item apparently on the table is changing the way cost-of-living adjustments are calculated for seniors, veterans and other recipients of government benefits.

The consumer price index, or CPI, is the government’s main gauge of inflation and is used to determine cost-of-living adjustments, often shorthanded as COLAs. It’s a formula used for more than four decades.

But President Barack Obama earlier this year proposed a less generous formula called a “chained” consumer price index, in hopes of saving the government $230 billion over 10 years.

In April, Obama’s proposal was viewed as an olive branch to Republicans that was largely rejected. With budget bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate now in a conference committee to narrow differences and a mid-January deadline approaching, the issue is back on the table.

The chairman of the congressional talks, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., identified the issue as an area ripe for compromise.

“Compromise” being politician-speak for “selling out,” of course.
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Occupy sues City of Philadelphia

~ susie

Good:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – November 14, 2013 (WPVI) — More than two dozen Occupy Philadelphia protesters have filed suit against the city and police over their arrests when authorities broke up their encampment two years ago.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court accuses officials of false arrest and violating constitutional rights of free speech and assembly.

Attorney Lawrence Krasner called his clients “American heroes who effectively fought against economic equality for the 99 percent … whose thanks from the government was this bogus arrest.”

Another attorney representing the plaintiffs, Paul Hetznecker, said the arrests struck at the “very heart of our democracy.”
“We live in a dangerous time when the right to gather in protest in a collective voice of dissent is criminalized,” he said.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages as well as injunctive relief involving the city’s handling of the Occupy demonstrators. There are 26 plaintiffs, and the police commissioner and other police officials and officers are named as defendants.

Virtually Speaking Thursday

~ susie

Virtually Speaking with Jay Ackroyd – 9p ET –

From Jay:
Ian’s been raising a bit of ruckus these days. You can read about his history of the failure of the netroots to influence Democratic politics and therefore US policy makers, which engendered a number of reactions. This week we discuss the issues embodied in three of Ian’s recent posts:

Baseline Predictions for the next sixty years

A New Ideology

How to Create a Viable Ideology

Listen live or later

Locked in the cabinet

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

cabinet

I don’t know what fascinates me more about this long, long Politico piece: That the Obama White House seems to have placed politics over governing, much to their detriment, or that it was done by Politico. It does confirm my initial concerns about Obama’s lack of executive experience. As much of a bubble as the White House is, he made it even smaller by relying completely on his political advisers. This is a mistake often made by liberals; they somehow think good intentions should always override experience, judgment and institutional knowledge. Years ago, I came to the conclusion that the most effective politicians were experienced politicians. (They are frequently the most corrupt politicians, which presents different problems.) They know how to move the levers of power.

And good management is not easy. I always remember this one management seminar that put us through an interesting exercise: You have a staff of ten, and you’re moving into a new office. Who gets which cubicle? (Because everyone wants to sit by the window.) You can’t believe how complicated it got. But I learned an important lesson about balancing competing interests — and in committing to your management decisions. This idea that Obama learned management skills in the chaotic environment of a campaign, which is more like an extended high-stakes poker game fueled by booze and coke, was one of the dumbest fucking arguments I ever heard.

The most serious maelstrom to engulf the Cabinet in years came in October, when it became clear that neither Kathleen Sebelius nor her counterparts in the West Wing had adequately prepared for the staggering technical challenges of launching Obamacare. The health and human services secretary was well-liked—she was especially friendly with Jarrett—but many of Obama’s aides still pined for Tom Daschle, the wily former Senate Democrat whom Obama had originally tapped for the HHS job. Daschle, who withdrew from consideration in 2009 over a tax issue, was canny enough to know the way power flowed in Obama’s circle: As a condition for taking the job, he requested a West Wing office so he could keep close tabs on the executive staff. For years, Daschle privately expressed his concerns that Sebelius, who didn’t have the stature to make the same demands, simply wouldn’t have the power to implement the health care program.

Yet, in the end, it may not have been her lack of power that caused all the headaches, but a breakdown in communication and coordination between the White House and Sebelius’s staff. It started with a slow-walk of critical Obamacare rulemaking, a key part of Plouffe’s do-no-harm election-year strategy of minimizing controversial regulatory action. “The number-one culprit was [that] they deferred rulemaking until after the election,” says Mike Leavitt, the Bush-era HHS chief whose face Bob Gates couldn’t quite place. “When they did that, it threw the entire process off. … They were issuing rules in September for implementation in October.” The secretary herself admitted that Obama had been blindsided by the near-meltdown of the program’s web portal, and several administration officials involved in its creation told me they had been alarmed by pre-launch signs of trouble, even offering to tap outside computer experts to help the agency. Sebelius, they say, demurred. That Obama’s staff didn’t press the issue on the president’s signature policy initiative illustrates a paradox central to understanding his governing style: The president who forcefully pushed through the largest expansion of the federal government in generations has been significantly less zealous in overseeing its operation.
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Kos pretends to know Elizabeth Warren’s mind

~ odd man out ~ 3 Comments

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas has spoken:

Trust me with this. Elizabeth Warren isn’t running. She wasn’t an eager Senate candidate. It took lots of cajoling and begging to get her to make that race. And if you’re hesitant to mount a Senate campaign in a small state where you can go home and sleep in your bed after a day of campaigning, you aren’t going to want to engage in presidential craziness.

You need an immense ego to run for president, a religious-like certainty that you are the best person IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY OF 314 MILLION to run it. That’s not who Elizabeth Warren is. She’s on a mission, make no mistake, to reform the way Wall Street does business. But she already has a platform to make that happen—a perch in the nation’s Most Exclusive Club and a grassroots army of millions amplifying her voice.

What a relief to read that Moulitsas knows what tomorrow will bring. For a while I thought he might be mulling the pros and cons of someone other than Wall Street’s darling, Hillary Clinton, heading the Democratic ticket in 2016. But that’s almost as silly as thinking he’d own up to being a faux-progressive.

Make no mistake, this guy is being disingenuous as well as patronizing. He pretends to know that Warren won’t run — how would he know her mind? — but what he’s really saying is she shouldn’t run. He’s afraid that, in seeking the nomination, she would wreck the love affair between the Democratic establishment and the Wall Street crooks who tanked the economy in 2008, and that this would be a bad thing.

I’m still looking for logic in The Great Kos’s argument. If Warren is indeed “on a mission… to reform the way Wall Street does business,” then why wouldn’t she consider running for president? Why would she be content to be a voice in the wilderness of the Senate, where only Bernie Sanders and a few others appear to genuinely believe the concerns of the poor and middle-class are more important than those of the obscenely wealthy?

“Given [Warren’s] goals, the Senate is a great place to be,” Moulitsas wrote. This is like saying, “That’s a good girl, Lizzy, sit back in your nice little Senate seat and grouse about income equality and let the old pros run the party, even though they’re as corrupt as the old pros who run the GOP.”

But I’m glad Moulitsas, a long-time apologist for Barack Obama’s disastrous presidency, is so sure Warren will stay put. It means those of us who think she might make a good candidate, and in the process help rescue the Democratic Party from total irrelevance, are probably on the right track.

Footnote: Moulitsas, of course, was fiercely anti-Hillary when she ran against Obama in 2007-08, but likes her now because “she has evolved with the times.” I’m not sure how he’s defining “evolved.”