This rant from Rep. Michelle Bachman on Hardball that starts out criticizing Barack Obama and winds up claiming that there’s a vast nest of anti-American activity in the congress (I half expected her to start claiming to be in possession of a list of Communists) that the press needs to investigate really needs to be seen to be believed:
I think this is the “second time as farce” repetition of the Joe McCarthy era. Alternatively, maybe she’s auditioning for a spot as a Corner blogger.
In 2007, the median household income in the United States was about $50,000. John McCain earned more than that in pensions alone that year and he hasn’t even started collecting the Senate pension to which he’ll be entitled when and if he retires. No wonder he doesn’t see the need for Social Security. The $23,157 he pulled in in benefits is like small change to him. But not everyone has two pension to draw on, our annual household servant expenditures that run over $200,000.
Marc Ambinder reports:
Republican party insiders say that operatives close to Sen. John McCain’s campaign are pushing Alec Poitevint, the former state party chairman of Georgia and a member of the Republican National Committee, to run for the RNC chairman’s position.
But if McCain loses, is anyone going to care what operatives close to McCain’s campaign think? McCain wasn’t exactly a hugely popular figure among conservative activists twelve months ago, and political figures rarely make themselves look better by losing.
A new campaign ad from Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) titled “Solutions” says that Coleman’s “plan” to tackle the economic crisis includes a proposal to “balance the budget in 5 years.” Watch it:
With his balanced budget pledge, which would require the most severe spending cuts, Coleman has adopted the neo-Hooverism agenda. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explained today, “What we need right now is more government spending,” including investment in unemployment benefits, mortgage restructuring, emergency aid to states, and infrastructure.
In the ad, Coleman says he supports “freezing congressional pay,” But last month, he “said public servants, including members of Congress, deserve a reasonable pay raise but not special treatment.”
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would cut $1.3 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid over the next ten years to finance his health care plan.
In response to this story, the Center for American Progress Action Fund conducted an analysis of the senator’s proposed cuts and concluded that to plug the funding gap in his health care plan, McCain would have to slash both Medicare and Medicaid by 13 percent (cutting Medicare by $882 billion) over 10 years, limit benefits and eligibility and force those with private insurance plans to pay more for health coverage.
Today, during a conference call for the McCain campaign, Holtz-Eakin attacked CAPAF’s analysis:
The method of doing this analysis is just stunning. It says, let’s assert that the McCain plan has a $1.2 trillion cost, something that is false. And then divide that proportionately between Medicare and Medicaid to assert that we will lose $882 billion from Medicare and the remainder from Medicaid.
But our claim that McCain’s plan would leave a $1.3 trillion funding gap is supported by independent analysts and the McCain campaign. Read more
Sen. McCain has said that he would cut Medicare spending without reducing benefits or enrollment. Again today, Sen. McCain’s campaign talked about policies like reducing health care payments, promoting IT, and taking other cost containment steps. Despite his assertions, Sen. McCain has not put forward a serious health care cost-containment policy. Moreover, it would take restraining Medicare spending to below the rate of medical inflation and population growth achieve $882 billion in savings. Translation: funding would be inadequate to provide Medicare beneficiaries with the same services they receive today. Massive premium increases or benefit cuts would be required.
But let’s consider Sen. McCain’s cost-containment policy. Over the summer, CAP-AF released a 50-page analysis of presidential cost-containment plans. After that review, there was only possible conclusion: Sen. McCain’s cost-containment plan is ineffective. Others have found that the McCain plan could raise costs, including Emory Professor Ken Thorpe in a new report. Read more
Appearing on MSNBC’s Hardball today, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) attacked the patriotism of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), based on his alleged relationship to former Weather Underground member William Ayers and the values of Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “I’m very concerned that he may have anti-American views,” said Bachmann. “That’s what the American people are concerned about.”
She then went further, suggesting that all liberal views — held by people such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, professors, and all Americans who identify themselves as “liberals” — are “anti-American.” When host Chris Matthews, stunned by her remarks, asked Bachmann how many people in Congress hold anti-American views, she responded, “You’ll have to ask them.”
Bachmann called on the media to conduct investigations into the anti-American activities of members of Congress, similar to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s discredited House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in the 1950s. “I think people would love to see an exposé like that,” she claimed. Watch it:
Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) made similar comments at a fundraiser yesterday, saying that she loved to visit “pro-America” areas of the country — “small towns” where “hard working” people are “very patriotic.”
The Nation’s Katrina Vanden Heuvel, responding to Bachmann’s attacks, said, “Chris, I fear for my country.” Watch it here.
I’ve been criticizing Ruth Marcus a lot since she published her column “When Life Hands You Deficits…” but now I see Marcus has specifically addressed these points in a Wednesday Post chat:
Prescott, Ariz.: I read your ” When Life Hands You Deficits…” article, and I think you fall into a common (at least to Washington) trap, which is assuming that a recession is a time for the government to tighten its belt and stop thinking big. [...]
Ruth Marcus: I’m sure I should have been clearer on this in the column, but I was not arguing for mid-recession belt-tightening. We’re all Keynesians now and I am open to stimulative action in the short term. What I am hoping for is that the moment could be used as a way to forge a more responsible, more productivity-enhancing budget in the longer term, that could fund investments in important things like health care, and free the next president from some of his more unaffordable promises.
We could quibble all day about what Marcus’ original column really said, but suffice it to say that I think this is the correct position and I hereby foreswear further criticizing her on this point. Let’s hope she’ll dedicate her next column to the need for a Keynsian stimulus package, taking the form of aid to state governments and investments in the kind of green infrastructure projects that can lay the groundwork for future ecologically sustainable economic growth.
This week, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Barack Obama (D-IL), and Joe Biden (D-DE) all were contacted by Defense Secretary Robert Gates or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice regarding the Iraq security agreement.
In today’s White House press briefing, spokesman Dana Perino explained that the adminstration contacted the candidates “to keep them equitably informed.” “One of them is going to win the election, and they will be taking over and having to deal with these issues,” Perino explained. But nobody called Gov. Sarah Palin. In today’s State Department briefing, reporters got a chuckle out of Palin being left out:
Q: You called Senator Biden, you called McCain. Did you also call Governor Palin?
McCORMACK: No. If you hadn’t noticed, she’s a governor. Not a senator or a congressman.
Q: She’s a vice presidential candidate.
McCORMACK: Right.
Q: She also has extensive foreign affairs experience. (LAUGHTER)
McCORMACK: Right. I explained to you the reasoning behind the phone call.
Q: Maybe if this has to do with Russia, you would have called her.
Watch it:
While Sean McCormack insisted the apparent snub was not intentional, it’s puzzling that Palin was left out of the administration’s effort to build support for the agreement. As the AP noted, “presumably Palin is an important political figure too. And, like Biden, she has a son currently serving in Iraq who would be directly affected by the so-called Status of Forces, or SOFA, agreement.”
Is it because of Palin’s lack of foreign policy potential? In a September interview with CNN, Rice was reluctant to say Palin has “enough experience” on foreign policy. “Well, obviously — Of course she doesn’t have that,” said First Lady Laura Bush last month regarding Palin’s foreign affairs experience.
There’s been some talk in the blogosphere lately about DC’s building height limit and the potential benefits for lifting it. That’s important, but at the moment there’s no more important issue for the future of urbanism in DC than the Office of Planning’s proposal to change the parking requirements for new development in the city. At the moment, the main reason large swathes of DC are very nice places to live is that most of the city’s buildings were built before the current rules were put in place. Another important contributing factor is that it’s possible to get the requirements waived. But the existing requirements, as applied to small buildings, destroy the urban character of the city while, as applied to large buildings, unduly hamper redevelopment of large underutilized parcels.
Today comes the news that reform got a big boost as the Zoning Commission offered largely favorable remarks on the proposal to mostly scrap the parking minimum requirements.
This issue, it should be said, really hits hard in rowhousey areas that became afflicted by blight in decades past and now are making a comeback. Some of that comeback simply manifests itself in existing structures being renovated. And so far so good. But part of the legacy of blight is a lot of “missing” buildings, vacant lots, or underutilized open-air parking areas. As neighborhoods like that become more desirable, what one wants to see is new infill development filling those gaps. That adds vitality to the neighborhoods, makes neighborhood retail more viable, and helps keep the price of housing from spiraling out of control. But current parking requirements typically make it illegal to build a new building that’s just like the old buildings in the neighborhood — instead you need to build much more parking, in a way that’s often just impractical on a small lot. This becomes a major burden on the neighborhood as a whole, with vacant spaces simultaneously degrading quality of life and artificially pushing up housing costs.
But beyond that specific case, mandatory minimums for parking are just generally undesirable. They promote economically inefficient use of space which brings down everyone’s material standard of living. They involving richer-than-average car owners getting, in effective, subsidies from poorer-than-average non-owners, which is stupid. They promote excessive levels of traffic which is annoying for people who drive. And they fail to internalize the full costs of car ownership, which encourages higher-than-optimal levels of driving, which is bad for public health and the environment. Most of all, though incumbent residents naturally worry about the potentially deleterious impact on their existing parking arrangements, this can be resolved through “performance parking” programs. What can’t be resolved is that fact that with existing minimums in place, new development risks destroying the city rather than providing it with new vitality as it ought to.
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