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The Irrelevance of George W. Bush
Tweet Share on Facebook November 28, 2008 Comment (21)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
President Bush has been rather irrelevant for the better part of the last year. The country is over and done with him and IMHO he will go down as the worst president in American history. Bush and Nero have much in common. They both fiddled as their empires went down. President Bush could have cut spending, he could have avoided launching a useless war, he could have run roughshod over Wall Street so risky mortgages weren't bundled into investment vehicles and sold to investors backed by nonexistent insurance. But he did not. Here we are, and will be paying for his feckless leadership.
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Thanks for the New York Times's Enduring Commitment to Journalism
Tweet Share on Facebook November 28, 2008 Comment (8)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
This is why I love the New York Times.
Last week, as its stock dipped toward the price of a Sunday paper and the company slashed its dividend, it was reported that Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, 28, the son of the publisher, was returning to New York to go to work at the mother ship.
It was noteworthy news. What was especially revealing was where young Sulzberger was returning from.
One might think that, in these days when the newspaper industry is in a crisis, bleeding jobs and folding print editions, the Times would be grooming its future leaders by placing them with Google or Apple or Netflix—you know, some company that knows how to make money online.
Not the Times. Young Sulzberger will be leaving Portland, Ore., where he spent the last two or three years working at the Oregonian, a wonderful, quirky little newspaper known for its belief in the majesty of the lyrically written word.
It was important to the Sulzbergers not that Arthur be grounded in the manipulation of hedge funds or sales of consumer appliances but in journalism: in the hard, sacred work of bringing news to the world in honest and well-crafted dispatches, without fear or favor.
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One Word for New Auto Industry Business Plan: Green
Tweet Share on Facebook November 26, 2008 Comment (9)Congress should not go easy on GM if it does approve a bailout, but Congress has shown no sign of going easy on the auto giant. The idea of setting auto executives scurrying to produce a business plan is nothing short of brilliant. I've got suggestions for what such a plan should include. But first and foremost, it should be focused on one word and one word alone: green.
No more SUVs and gas guzzlers. Even in the truck division, GM could make its heavy-duty vehicles much more fuel efficient and price them so that they could only be purchased by commercial ventures. Private citizens who want to drive guzzlers should be priced out of the market and should instead be forced into low-mileage cars. GM got into this mess because instead of leading the consumer market in the right (read that: green) direction, it catered to America's sick addiction to gas guzzlers. Now's the time to lead, not cave in.
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Barack Obama's Church of Choice
Tweet Share on Facebook November 26, 2008 Comment (6)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
MSNBC is doing a segment right now about where the Obamas should worship, and are reporting that churches around town are angling to host the (sigh) first worshippers. Seriously? "What church?" is like "what school?"—barring a really crazy Obama decision (sending the kids to a Pakistani madrassa in the one case or bringing Jeremiah Wright to town for special Oval Office sermons in the other) people should lay off and let them make what are ultimately personal decisions without the benefit of excessive public scrutiny. As Sam said the other day: Butt out.
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If We Bail out Citicorp, Why Not Bail Out GM, Too?
Tweet Share on Facebook November 26, 2008 Comment (4)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
It will be years before we know whether government bailouts of financial and other institutions were a good idea or not. My Thomas Jefferson Street colleague Michael Barone has some crackling commentary on the topic.
While we're in the midst of bailing out the planet (or so it seems) one question comes to mind. If Citicorp, why not GM? Congress will hear from the big three automakers this coming Tuesday on whether to bail out the auto giants and their executives, meanwhile are devising a business plan to explain to members of the House and Senate how taxpayers' dollars will keep the companies, including GM, alive. But if the U.S. government is going to bail out Citicorp, the once-largest bank in the country, why not do the same for GM, the once-largest automaker in the world?
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has some riveting thoughts on the topic. In a commentary for Marketplace he notes Citicorp has lost a huge chunk of market valuation, which hurts the company's executives, shareholders and creditors. But if it went into Chapter 11, mutual fund shareholders and people holding Citicorp CDs would have their assets protected. If GM tanks, on the other hand:
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The Right Way to Address Charles Rangel's Scandals
Tweet Share on Facebook November 26, 2008 Comment (19)Yesterday's New York Times exposed yet another scandal involving Charles Rangel, the chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, and Republicans are making hay of it.
In an apparent quid pro quo last year, Rangel killed a tax bill that would punish U.S. companies for relocating to lower-tax countries after a CEO pledged $1 million for the future "Charles B. Rangel School of Public Service" at the City College of New York. Previously, Rangel had supported the bill.
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Remembering the Troops This Thanksgiving
Tweet Share on Facebook November 26, 2008 Comment (2)There will be turkey tomorrow, brought in under fire by helicopter, if necessary, and served with sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and gravy. The military does Thanksgiving well.
There will be phone calls home; a lot of messages sent on the Internet; much loneliness, some fear.
Back here in the states, in the neighborhoods that surround the big military bases in Texas or California or Georgia—or anyplace where a guard unit has been deployed—there will be parents showing kids a photograph of a foreign landscape, with mom or dad, in uniform, maybe in Kevlar, maybe with a weapon.
In other homes, it will be a holiday of piercing sadness. The empty space at dinner will belong to one of the 5,000 who never made it home.
They have been at it for seven years now, and there is no immediate end in sight. And, so far, we have not forgotten their bravery. They are beloved, and honored, by the folks they protect, and serve.
And if our efforts to welcome them home, to heal their wounds and comfort them, are yet imperfect, let's resolve, tomorrow, that we will keep on trying to make it better. And never to take their sacrifice for granted.
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Barack Obama’s Fundraising and the Small Donor Myth
Tweet Share on Facebook November 25, 2008 Comment (96)Barack Obama got his campaign money through tapping a huge small-donor network, right? Mmm, maybe not.
The Campaign Finance Institute released a new study that tallied "small donors," whose repeated contributions made them medium- or large-size donors. And the study—partially—punctures the myth of the small Obama donor. And it leaves a couple of questions unanswered.
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Democrats Seem Unwilling to Deploy President-Elect Obama in Georgia Runoff
Tweet Share on Facebook November 25, 2008 Comment (3)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
Polls in the Georgia runoff continue to show incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss with about the same small lead over Democrat Jim Martin that he had in the November 4 election. The realclearpolitics.com average, rounded off, is Chambliss 51 percent to 46 percent. By way of perspective, Chambliss beat incumbent Democrat Max Cleland in the considerably more Republican year of 2002 by a 53 percent-46 percent margin. Democrats hope for a disproportionately large turnout of young and black voters, but Barack Obama, busy building an administration with an eye to bipartisan acceptability, seems so far unwilling to deploy the one political asset—personal campaigning by the president-elect—that seems most likely to spark such turnout. I imagine there's some behind-the-scenes arguments among Democrats about whether Obama should (pardon the expression) march through Georgia. Bill Clinton's campaigning for incumbent Wyche Fowler in the 1992 runoff didn't help Clinton's prestige but rather signaled something in the way of political weakness, because Republican challenger Paul Coverdell won. I'm guessing that Obama wants to avoid a repeat of this outcome. And I'm guessing, with some basis, that at least some incumbent Democratic senators would rather not have 59 Democratic colleagues, lest they be put on the record for imposing policies like the abolition of secret ballots in union recognition elections.
- Click here to read more by Michael Barone.
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Barack O-Boring. Where Has Sarah Palin Gone?
Tweet Share on Facebook November 25, 2008 Comment (16)Geez. Who would have thought that the first black president of the United States was going to be so...boring.
A sensible cost-effective way. Budget reform is not an option; it's a necessity. This isn't about big government or small government; it's about building a smarter government.
And today's typically excellent, well-qualified, smart-as-a-whip appointee: Peter Orszag of Brookings, Princeton, and the London School of Economics to be the White House budget director.
It looks like the president-elect knows what he's doing. He has certainly got the presidential podium thing down. He had some moments today, and it was great, earlier in the month, when he called himself a mutt. That was pretty funny.
And I suppose, in these troubled times, that smart and boring can be good.
It's not like I miss Sarah Palin.
Well, OK, maybe a little.
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