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Barack Obama, John Lewis, John McCain, and Despicable Relationships
Tweet Share on Facebook October 14, 2008 Comment (68)On Saturday, Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and icon of the civil rights era, lashed out at John McCain for "sowing seeds of hatred" and compared the GOP candidate to a racist.
"During another period, in the not-too-distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate," Lewis said. He added:
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Barney Frank's Fannie and Freddie Racism Regarding the Financial Crisis
Tweet Share on Facebook October 8, 2008 Comment (50)Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is doing his best to outshine Joe Biden in the silly comments department. As the Associated Press reports:
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Thomas Friedman's McCarthyite Tax Attack on Sarah Palin
Tweet Share on Facebook October 8, 2008 Comment (29)In today's New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman takes Sarah Palin to the woodshed for her rebuttal in last Thursday's veep debate to one of Joe Biden's sillier comments. "You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic," Palin told Biden. "In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that's not patriotic."
After thinking about it for a week, here is Friedman's considered reaction:
What an awful statement. Palin defended the government's $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.
What a pernicious twisting of Palin's statement. The Alaska governor never said that paying one's "fair" share of taxes is unpatriotic—that was Friedman's subjective word. Given her opposition to the Obama-Biden plan to raise taxes on all U.S. businesses and wealthier Americans, no doubt Palin holds different ideas on what is "fair."
What Palin did do, however, was call out a politician who, like some relic of the church indulgences scheme, would put a price on patriotism. And just like Biden, Friedman, too, reaches the facile conclusion that the only expression of patriotism is for (other) Americans to pay more taxes.
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Labor Union Bosses’ Secret Slush Funds to Be Laid Bare
Tweet Share on Facebook October 7, 2008 Comment (3)Amid the finger-pointing over accountability and transparency on Wall Street, virtually unnoticed is a new disclosure rule issued last week by the Labor Department that forces unions to make public huge slush funds hidden for half a century.
At issue are T-1 trusts—rainy-day funds initially designed to retrain union workers in the event of workplace changes. The trusts were originally known as “nickel funds” because companies would contribute 5 cents for every hour worked by a union member, but current contributions can run as high as $10.
So how much money are we talking about? Aside from Big Labor bosses, no one rightly knows.
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Congress Demands a Blank Check for Bailout
Tweet Share on Facebook October 2, 2008 Comment (8)When talk of the bailout first began last week, lawmakers insisted they wouldn't simply hand a "blank check" to the Treasury Department. But now that's what Congress wants from Treasury.
To win enough votes for passage, negotiators for the $700 billion bailout are now adding $120 billion more in "sweeteners." Some of these—like ensuring mental health problems receive better coverage from insurance companies—have absolutely nothing to do with market priming. Others are only tangentially related. Among the latter are hurricane tax relief, modest alternative minimum tax reform, more subsidies for renewable energies, and tax exemptions for businesses.
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In Financial Crisis, Pelosi Chose Politics Over Statesmanship, Killing Bailout
Tweet Share on Facebook September 30, 2008 Comment (74)My colleague Rob Schlesinger takes exception to my earlier post criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's speech ahead of yesterday's bailout vote. Against expectations, the vote failed, and the California Democrat's unnecessary partisanship appears to have played a role in that. Rob chides late-switching Republicans for sacrificing the nation's interest to playground retaliation for Pelosi's remarks.
As I noted, a good many House members on both the right and the left had already noted their opposition to the bill prior to Pelosi's speech. Even with those "no" votes, the bill was ready to pass. One way or another, the speaker—whose job is to lead the House—managed to tip the balance the other way.
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Nancy Pelosi's Financial Crisis Bailout Partisan Train Wreck
Tweet Share on Facebook September 29, 2008 Comment (92)So the $700 billion bailout is off the table for now, as 95 Democrats and 135 Republicans in the House surprised everyone and defied what looked like a fait accompli. The bill wasn't a perfect beast, and plenty of lawmakers on the right and left had signaled their substantive opposition before the vote. Still, its passage seemed manageable. So what happened? A lot of fingers are pointing at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose prevote speech was a galling display of partisan taunts rather than serious urgency.
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Mexico, Colombia, and Why Afghanistan Should Follow Their Lead Dealing With Drugs
Tweet Share on Facebook September 25, 2008 Comment (3)Yesterday, a New York jury convicted a major Afghan drug lord on two counts of heroin distribution. Nearly six years after the invasion of Afghanistan, the verdicts against Bashir Noorzai represent the first high-level convictions of an Afghan opium lord. And while the case is an individual success, it is also a reminder of how ineffective U.S. counternarcotics policy is in Afghanistan.
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Barney Frank 'Fesses Up on Financial Crisis
Tweet Share on Facebook September 23, 2008 Comment (80)Over the past few weeks I've been skeptical of claims by Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, that he's been a consistent and leading voice for reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored home-lending giants whose fall is the immediate cause of the current financial turmoil. The Massachusetts Democrat and I went at it here and here and here. Now, finally, Frank acknowledges that he dismissed ample warnings about Fannie and Freddie shenanigans five years ago.
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Sorry, Charlie—Rangel Makes More Excuses for His Failure to Pay Taxes
Tweet Share on Facebook September 15, 2008 Comment (66)The list of excuses offered by Rep. Charles Rangel for failing to pay taxes on at least $75,000 in rental income from his luxury beachfront villa in the Caribbean grows longer. Now the Associated Press takes the Harlem Democrat, who is chairman of the powerful tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, to task for inaccuracies in his personal financial disclosures to Congress.
There's nothing new that's overly juicy—although the sloppy form-filling only reinforces the perception that Rangel is a financial scofflaw. But his excuse is priceless: "While over the years I delegated to my staff the completion of my annual House financial disclosure statements, I had the ultimate responsibility."
