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Right Wing Falsely Asserts Right Wing Boogeymen Bill Ayers And Jeremiah Wright Visited The White House

By ThinkProgress on Oct 30, 2009 at 6:29 pm

Early this evening, the White House voluntarily released nearly 500 visitor records of “individuals visiting the executive mansion between Inauguration Day and the end of July.” The easily-searchable list includes some famous names like Michael Jordan, Michael Moore, William Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright. Of course, the mere suggestion of Ayers and Wright has sent the right wing into a tizzy.

The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb:

Goldfarb

The Weekly Standard’s Mary Katharine Ham:

MaryK

The Washington Times’ Amanda Carpenter:

CarpenterTweet

Conservative blogger Ed Morrissey:

Morrisey

But as the original post by White House ethics counselor Norm Eisen makes clear, the “William Ayers” and “Jeremiah Wright” on the list are actually different individuals who merely share the same name:

Given this large amount of data, the records we are publishing today include a few “false positives” – names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else. In September, requests were submitted for the names of some famous or controversial figures (for example Michael Jordan, William Ayers, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright, Robert Kelly (“R. Kelly”), and Malik Shabazz). The well-known individuals with those names never actually came to the White House. Nevertheless, we were asked for those names and so we have included records for those individuals who were here and share the same names.

Mainstream news outlets have reported this fact accurately. But for the right wing, the story was simply too good to be fact-checked.

Update

BarbinMD observes “The Weekly No Standards.”

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 30, 2009 at 6:14 pm

He wears the same hat and sweater every day:

— TNR and guilt by association.

— On Saturday, October 31, at 3:30 p.m. EST, GESTURES will be meeting in Dupont Circle to perform ROUTINE EMERGENCY TRAINING. During this exercise, GESTURES will be testing and otherwise handling NO-JAZZ, NEW ORLEANS RHYTHMS, PUNK COMPOSITION and other hazardous materials.

— Tom Zarek was right.

— Ex-insurgent reintegration in Afghanistan.

— NBA salary cap projections.

Halloween weekend so it’s time for “Nightmare on My Street” — DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince.

Yglesias

Did Barack Obama Cause The Collapse in Private Investment

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 30, 2009 at 5:28 pm

One thing’s for sure, the depths of the current recession can be seen in the low level of private investment. And this chart from Chris Edwards certain shows that despite the stimulus-driven return of GDP growth, private investment remains depressed. We won’t have a real recovery until it comes back:

200910_blog_edwards12

That said, his interpretation of this data is ridiculous:

Business investment continues to be in a deep recession. Companies are simply not building factories or buying new machines and equipment.

Why not? I suspect that many firms are scared to death of higher taxes, inflation, health care mandates, increased labor regulation, and other profit-killers coming down the road from Washington. That is speculation, but I haven’t heard a better explanation of the death of private investment in America.

Note that though the steepest cliff-diving happened in 2008 Q4 and 2009 Q1, the decline actually began way back in 2006, so it’s hard to say how fear of Barack Obama could have caused it. As for a better explanation, how about the problems in the financial system that were accumulating during this period and then reached a true crisis point in the fall of 2008? Surely we haven’t forgotten about that already, have we? And since the collapse, we’ve been facing a problem of low aggregate demand and deflationary expectations, both of which discourage investment, combined with massive overcapacity in real estate. The idea that anticipating inflation would cause an investment drought is both illogical and flies in the face of the fact that markets are not anticipating inflation.

tips-spread 1

I would note that not only did the current decline in private investment start fully in the Bush years, but that there was a similar declining private investment phase during 2001. Does Edwards see that as caused by Bush embracing high taxes and health care mandates? Isn’t it more plausible that that was the dot-com bubble bursting just as this is the real estate bubble bursting?

Yglesias

On The Congressional Goldstone Resolution

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 30, 2009 at 4:45 pm

I would associate myself with Spencer Ackerman’s remarks regarding the cynical resolution condemning the Goldstone Report that’s circulating in the congress.

A few additional points:

— Somewhere in hell, Slobodan Milosevic is smiling at the prospect of it becoming official US government policy that Richard Goldstone is biased in favor of Muslim terrorist organizations and his work therefore can and should be dismissed out of hand.

— For that matter, apartheid-era white supremacist militias and Nazis hiding gold in Argentina are going to be happy too.

— The resolution tellingly dwells a great deal on the real anti-Israel biases of the UN Human Rights Commission as a way of avoiding dealing with the actual content of the report.

— Also fans of this action will be authoritarian Arab governments hoping to make any future U.S. criticism of their human rights record look like a politically motivated joke undertaken by a hypocritical superpower.

Last, while I think Goldstone’s work was—despite the accusations in the resolution—clear in looking at human rights violations committed by both sides, it’s really not clear to me what allegations of the form “but he didn’t write about X!” would prove even if they were true. If credible accusations are leveled, an obligation exists to investigate them independently of whether or not accusations leveled against the other side are being investigated.

Politics

Kristol Says He Helped Congressional GOP Formulate ‘The Best Arguments Against’ Health Care Reform

By Matt Corley on Oct 30, 2009 at 4:30 pm

Fox News contributor Bill Kristol is advising the GOP on health careIn Dec. 1993, Bill Kristol, a current Fox News contributor and the editor of the Weekly Standard, issued a now-infamous memo to Republican leaders, arguing that they should “defeat” President Clinton’s health care reform plan “outright” instead of negotiating a compromise. In later memos, Kristol counseled that Republicans should oppose reform “sight unseen” because “there is no health care crisis.” Kristol’s advice “animated” Republicans, who concluded “that all-out opposition to the Clinton plan” was “in their best political interest.”

Throughout this year’s debate over health care reform, Kristol has played a similar role, arguing in the media that Republicans should “kill” reform instead of trying to be “constructive.” In an interview on the Washington Times’ America’s Morning News radio show yesterday, Kristol revealed that he had met with some congressional Republicans on Wednesday night to devise strategy for defeating reform:

KRISTOL: Next week will really be a first crescendo in the big health care debate. And this dinner I was at last night was some Republican members, Senate and House, some staffers, some outside people, trying to think about how to, the best arguments against it and where the politics of this lies. She is really going for it. And I think the issue is Medicare. I mean this will be the largest package of Medicare cuts I think the Congress will ever have passed.

Later in the interview, Kristol distilled the conclusions from the strategy session with congressional Republicans, saying that citizens “need to go see their congressman and say ‘do not vote for this until either we have a chance to read it more carefully, but really more importantly just don’t vote for it because it’s going to cut my Medicare and raise my taxes.’” He echoes the same attack line in his Weekly Standard column today: “There will be no Republican votes for the Pelosi Plan of tax hikes and Medicare cuts. Will there be enough Democratic resistors so the bill is either withdrawn or defeated?.” Listen here:

For the past month, Fox has been claiming that it is not actually a “communications arm” for the Republicans. What do they think about one of their regular contributors advising Republicans on strategy behind closed doors? Will they disclose Kristol’s advisory role when he appears on the air?

Media

Barghouti on The Daily Show

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 30, 2009 at 4:01 pm

180px-Mustafa_Barghouti

Moustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian advocate of non-violent resistance and head of the Palestinian National Initiative alternative party to Hamas and Fatah, was on The Daily Show earlier this week. I had the opportunity to have dinner with Dr. Barghouti in a small group some time ago, and to hear him speak at a somewhat larger gathering last night. He’s a very interesting, very compelling person.

One thing that comes to mind thinking about this is how rare it is to see Palestinian perspectives in the American media. There’s not much of a percentage in it. If you present content that offends U.S. political orthodoxies you get in hot water and there’s no real upside. A wise man suggested to me yesterday that it might be helpful to not only watch the interview, but if you enjoy it write a note to The Daily Show telling them you appreciated it.

Might do some good.

Health

ANALYSIS: House Bill More Affordable Than Senate Legislation

By Igor Volsky on Oct 30, 2009 at 4:00 pm

PelosiHouse3A rough analysis of the affordability measures in the House and Senate conducted by Sonia Sekhar at the Center for American Progress Action Fund demonstrates that the House health bill provides more affordable coverage than the latest available version of the Senate legislation. While the chart below does not provide a perfect comparison between the amount an average family of four would spend on coverage within the exchange, it’s the first actual representation of the premium differences under the two bills.

Both measures provide subsidies on a sliding scale. Under the Senate bill, families between 133-300%FPL have to spend between 2 and 12% of their income on premiums, while families between 300-400%FPL, spend 12% on premiums. In the House legislation families between 150 – 400% of the federal poverty line would spend between 1.5 and 12% of income on premiums. Cost sharing amounts also vary.

The chart below estimates what families will pay for coverage (premiums and cost sharing) in the Exchange in year one, 2013:

ChartAfford

The chart relies on the language in the Chairman’s Amendment to the Senate Finance Committee bill and the the text of the House bill (H.R. 3962). It comes with several caveats. First, we took the projected premiums and average out-of-pocket costs of a “silver” plan from the CBO’s analysis of the Baucus bill and deflated both amounts (using the CBO’s CPI projections for premiums and cost sharing) to 2013 dollars. Note that the actuarial value of the silver plan in the Senate Finance bill is 70%, while it’s 75% in the House bill, a difference we did not control for. The premiums and cost-sharing amounts will be slightly different for each bill, though not significantly so.

Read the rough affordability tables HERE.

Politics

Lieberman in 1994: Filibuster is ‘unfair’ and it isn’t ‘right’ to use it to obstruct major legislation.

By Zaid Jilani on Oct 30, 2009 at 3:19 pm

reddIn recent days, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has raised the ire of health care advocates by threatening to filibuster Senate health care legislation unless the public option is removed from it, a move that was a boon to the stock prices of major health insurance companies. Lieberman was singing a different tune in 1994, however. At that time Lieberman, a freshman senator, was working with Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) to introduce legislation that would drastically weaken the power of the filiibuster. HuffPost’s Sam Stein recalls that the Connecticut senator said it was “unfair” to use the filibuster to threaten major legislation and argued it isn’t “right” to use it to obstruct progress:

“The whole process of individual senators being able to hold up legislation, which in a sense is an extension of the filibuster because the hold has been understood in one way to be a threat to filibuster — it’s just unfair.”

“I’m very proud to be standing here with Tom [Harkin] as two Democrats saying that we’re going to begin this fight, because we’ve just been stung by the filibuster for a period of years, and even though the tables have now turned, it doesn’t make it right for us to use this instrument that we so vilified.”

Climate Progress

Energy and Global Warming News for October 30: Coal industry knew of fraudulent letters; Senate GOP may try to stall climate bill

By Climate Guest Blogger on Oct 30, 2009 at 3:18 pm

Coal industry knew of fraudulent letters

A coal industry association waited until several weeks after a major House vote on climate legislation to let lawmakers know that letters sent to them opposing the bill were fraudulent, according to a congressional investigation.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal knew before the June cap and trade vote that these letters “” purported to be from minority and senior citizen groups concerned about the legislation “” were fraudulent. The letters were sent to several politically vulnerable House lawmakers in the days before the vote. The bill barely passed the House in late June, approved by just a seven vote margin.

But the association and its contractor, The Hawthorn Group, did not inform lawmakers that the letters were fake until weeks later, according to an investigation by the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

“Some here today will claim these letters can be attributed to a temporary employee, when, in fact, this fraud chiefly resulted form a systemic lack of oversight and quality control, mixed with a substantial disregard for the facts,” said Chairman Ed Markey, select committee, in a Thursday hearing about the letters.

The letters were sent out by Bonner & Associates, a subcontractor hired by Hawthorn for their expertise in grassroots campaigns.

The coal association spent nearly $10 million over the past 18 months on lobbying efforts supervised by Hawthorn and Bonner. In the three months before the vote, ACCCE paid Hawthorn $975,000 for activities related to the climate bill.

Critics say the campaign is a classic example of astroturfing, or using fake grassroots campaigns to influence policymakers, in this case pushing them to modify or kill the legislation.

Officials at the coal association say they never communicated with Bonner & Associates directly. But, the senior account official at Hawthorn charged with managing grassroots advocacy efforts for the coal group is married to Paul Bailey, the senior vice president for federal affairs at ACCCE.

Bailey joined the association in February and was given a “specific directive” to assure that he “he would not have authority to authorize or evaluate Hawthorn’s activities,” according to the documents.

Jack Bonner, the president of Bonner and Associates, said the letters were the result of “one rogue temporary employee” who acted without the knowledge of anyone at the firm. The employee worked at the firm for seven and a half business days, said Bonner, and was immediately fired upon discovery of the forged letters.

“While we take full responsibility for what happened and recognize that there were quality control and human resources improvements that needed to be made, we have learned that it is difficult to defend against a person bent on committing fraud,” said Bonner.

Read more

Yglesias

The Public Wants Partisan Health Care; But Will They Get It?

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 30, 2009 at 3:15 pm

225px-Olympia_Snowe,_official_photo_2

Public opinion is in support of harsh measures to secure a public option:

“Which of these would you prefer – (a plan that includes some form of government-sponsored health insurance for people who can’t get affordable private insurance, but is approved without support from Republicans in Congress); or (a plan that is approved with support from Republicans in Congress, but does not include any form of government-sponsored health insurance for people who can’t get affordable private insurance)?”

Fifty one percent said they preferred the public option; 37 percent said they preferred a bill with some support from Republicans in Congress. Six percent said neither and seven percent expressed no opinion.

“Who will tell President Snowe and the rest of the Villagers” jokes Atrios.

I think it’s important, however, to remember that legislative outcomes are ultimately determined by raw vote counts and political power, not by semiotics and control of the media narrative. There are three ways to pass a health care bill:

One: Olympia Snowe votes for cloture.
Two: Ben Nelson votes for cloture.
Three: Fifty Democrats agree to try reconciliation.

Clearly Olympia Snowe doesn’t favor the “ignore Olympia Snowe” approach.

It’s pretty clear that there are fifty Democrats who favor a public option, and if they’re really willing to play procedural hardball there’s not much the parliamentarian or David Broder can do to stop them from enacting a bill with 50 votes. But we’ve seen very little enthusiasm for that approach, probably for reasons that have less to do with public opinion than with the fact that the 60 vote senate serves the interests of individual senators qua senators.

So you’re left with Ben Nelson—and everyone else. What does he want? Will joining with the Republicans to filibuster a health bill imperil his re-election?

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