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Politics

Brown stands by supporting a tax-subsidized golf course over 9/11 rescue workers.

By Lee Fang on Jan 18, 2010 at 6:04 pm

State Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate special election on Tuesday, voted on Oct. 17, 2001 to deny financial aid to Red Cross rescue workers who had volunteered with 9/11 recovery efforts. As a state representative at the time, Brown was one out of only three legislators who had opposed the overwhelmingly bipartisan measure. As ThinkProgress reported on Saturday, at the same time Brown was voting against the 9/11 rescue workers bill, he sponsored House Bill 4423, a measure to provide a tax-subsidized bond to build a golf course in Newport, a town in his district. Brown, earlier this weekend, told ThinkProgress that he opposed the rescue worker money because of the state’s fiscal condition and because he had his own “priorities.” Given the revelation that Brown fought for a golf course over the rescue worker aid, ThinkProgress again approached Brown for comment today:

TP: Mr. Brown, in 2001 when you voted against financial aid for 9/11 rescue workers, you were pushing a bill for a tax subsidized golf course in your district. Can you explain that?

BROWN: I’m not sure what you’re referring to. [...]

TP: Are you going to explain that vote?

BROWN: Number two, we were in a financial difficulty and we couldn’t afford it unfortunately.

TP: But you could afford a tax-subsidized bond for a golf course?

BROWN: We had to obviously take care of the people of Massachusetts who needed to stay employed.

Watch it:

Brown’s golf course bill passed on November 30, 2001, a few weeks after he voted to kill the 9/11 rescue worker financial aid. While the golf course construction certainly kept people employed, Brown’s self-professed interest in protecting the American homeland doesn’t extend to the rescue workers who rushed to the site of the twin towers after the attacks of 9/11.

Yglesias

Democratic Presidents’ Base Problem

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 18, 2010 at 5:30 pm

Kevin Drum is amazed by the swiftness with which some on the left have come to view Barack Obama as the enemy:

The frustration on the left with Obama — and with healthcare reform specifically — was almost inevitable. During the campaign, a lot of people chose to see in him what they wanted to see, pushing to the back of their minds not just the obvious signs that Obama has always been a cautious, practical politician, but also the obvious compromises and pressures that are forced onto any president. It was a recipe for disappointment. The striking thing to me, though, is how fast the left has turned on him. Conservatives gave Bush five or six years before they really turned on him, and even then they revolted more against the Republican establishment than against Bush himself. But the left? It took about ten months. And the depth of the revolt against Obama has been striking too. As near as I can tell, there’s a small but significant minority who are so enraged that they’d be perfectly happy to see his presidency destroyed as a kind of warning to future Democrats. It’s extraordinarily self-destructive behavior — and typically liberal, unfortunately. Just ask LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. And then ask them whether liberal revolt, in the end, strengthened liberalism or conservatism.

I think that this is one of the very rare instances when the famous ideological self-identification numbers are actually important:

Political Ideology: Annual Trends, 1992-2009 1

This chart is often used to support claims that I don’t think it really does support. But the chart does tell us something important about how people look at themselves. In particular, it tells us that a lot of people look at themselves as conservatives. So a president who says “I look at myself as a conservative, and you should look at me that way too” will still need to do some outreach to build a majority, but he’s working from a strong base. By contrast, a president who says “I look at myself as a liberal, and you should look at me that way too” is going to put himself in some pretty serious trouble.

Consequently, neither Barack Obama nor Bill Clinton nor Jimmy Carter nor LBJ self-identified in this way.

Politics, however, has a large tribal element. People like the people who are “on their side” and want to support politicians who are on their side. Not all Republican presidents do signal to conservatives that they are on the side of conservatives—George HW Bush didn’t, for example—but Ronald Reagan and George W Bush did. This is harder for Democratic presidents to do and they generally don’t do it. In particular, Barack Obama doesn’t do much of it. Nobody governs in an ideologically pure way, and every president who wants to sign bills has to make compromises with congressional squishes. But Reagan and Bush always identified with their bases and thus were forgiven a lot of compromises with congressional squishes. Bush senior didn’t—and Clinton didn’t, and Obama doesn’t—so they are forgiven much less.

Climate Progress

Memo to IPCC: Please reanalyze ALL of your conclusions about melting ice and sea level rise

By Joe Romm on Jan 18, 2010 at 3:58 pm

Good news: The Himalayan glaciers will probably endure past 2035. Bad news: If we don’t reverse our emissions trend soon, their disappearance is likely to become irreversible before then.

Middle Rongbuk GlacierMEMO TO IPCC:  If you are going to review the apparently mistaken claim in your 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 — please review all of the latest scientific literature and observations on that subject AND please update your equally outdated sea level rise projections.

MEMO TO MEDIA:  It isn’t news that the 2007 projections by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are not accurate.  The real news is that the 99% of their “mistakes” are UNDERestimates of likely impacts.   Indeed, they lowballed the sea level rise projections so badly that even the Bush administration rejected them within a year (see “US Geological Survey stunner: Sea-level rise in 2100 will likely “substantially exceed” IPCC projections).

Back to the news of the day.  Predictably, the anti-science crowd is crowing about what looks to be an inconsequential mistake in the 2007 IPCC report.  In a piece absurdly headlined, “World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown,” the UK’s Times online writes:

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Note to Times Online, you might want to read your own story from two months ago, “Vanishing glaciers jolt smokestack China” (discussed below), the source of the above photo.

The UK Express screed, “The New Climate Change Scandal,” claims “FRESH doubts were cast over controversial global warming theories yesterday after a major climate change argument was discredited.”

It does look like the IPCC used some out-of-date projections for a pretty minor piece of the report, but of course the IPCC basically froze all scientific inputs to its Fourth Assessment Report around 2005, so they missed the dramatic acceleration in melting of the Arctic sea ice, the inland glaciers, and the great ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland.  Thus it is absolutely crucial that — if the IPCC re-examines the issue of glacial melt in the Himalayans — that it re-examine the entire issue based on the staggering new observational data in the scientific literature:

Read more

Yglesias

Obama and Reagan

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 18, 2010 at 3:58 pm

Paul Krugman manages to pack an awful lot of ideas into this column. One of which I disagree with him about. He says that Obama should have embarked on a Reaganesque campaign of predecessor-blaming:

But he didn’t. Maybe he still dreams of bridging the partisan divide; maybe he fears the ire of pundits who consider blaming your predecessor for current problems uncouth — if you’re a Democrat. (It’s O.K. if you’re a Republican.) Whatever the reason, Mr. Obama has allowed the public to forget, with remarkable speed, that the economy’s troubles didn’t start on his watch.

I appreciate that a lot of people don’t like Obama’s political style. But look at this chart from ABC News:

obamareagan 1

Similar economic circumstances = similar results.

I’m with Krugman on the other points. The too-small stimulus looks like a huge error. And the administration’s thinking on this was partly political (and possibly correct) but also partly substantive. The economic team straight-up misestimated how bad the recession would be, and no effort was made to articulate any kind of logic about an insurance policy against worse-than-expected results. Policy toward the banks has been substantively and politically problematic:

At this point Mr. Obama probably can’t do much about job creation. He can, however, push hard on financial reform, and seek to put himself back on the right side of public anger by portraying Republicans as the enemies of reform — which they are.

As I’ve said before, the key to this is to accept the possibility of losing in congress. You try to win in the court of public opinion. That may create pressure on congress to go along with you, or it may not. I think the chances that it won’t bend congress’ will are actually really large. But on this issue, that’s fine. On health care, it was (and is) crucially to get something major done ASAP. On financial reform, I don’t think it’s super-urgent to reach a short-term compromise.

Politics

Scott Brown Denies Asserting That Obama Was Born Out Of Wedlock, Refuses To Apologize

By Lee Fang on Jan 18, 2010 at 3:26 pm

Earlier this weekend, David Kravitz of the blog BlueMassGroup uncovered a 2008 video of State Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Tuesday’s special election, speculating that then-candidate Barack Obama was born out of wedlock. Today, ThinkProgress caught up with Brown to explain his comments, and asked if he would apologize for the accusation:

TP: You said that he, his mother wasn’t married when [Obama] was born. You’re not apologizing for that video?

BROWN: Excuse me, now I wanna answer this question. I was asked whether the president’s parents were married. I said I didn’t know. That was the extent of the question.

But Brown was never asked about the marital status of Obama’s parents. During the 2008 video, Brown volunteered the assertion that Obama was born out of wedlock:

BROWN: Barack’s mom had him when she was what, 18 years old?

GUEST: And married!

BROWN: Well, I don’t know about that. [laughing]

Watch it:

The unfounded smear that Obama was born out of wedlock emerged from the far-right birther movement, which claims that Obama was also born in Kenya, rather than Hawaii. Instead of backtracking and apologizing for his smear, Brown lied and said he was merely responding to a question about Obama’s parents.

Brown has postured as a moderate — telling the public on Saturday, “He’s my President and I agree with him I think on more issues than Martha Coakley.” But the truth is, Brown has courted the far-right tea party movement, gaining support from anti-immigrant hate groups and nativist political organizations. Brown doubts the science of global warming, and opposes health reform, energy reform, and financial reform. So far as ThinkProgress has learned, Coakley supports Obama’s agenda of reform, and has never questioned the marital status of the president’s parents.

Related Posts

Yglesias

System-Building

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 18, 2010 at 2:28 pm

A bon mot from John Quiggin on the state of macroeconomics:

The prevailing emphasis on logical rigor has given economics an internal consistency that is missing in other social science. But there is little value in being consistently wrong.

It’s striking to consider the extent to which public policy in the developed world from 1980-2010 has clearly been in better alignment with mainstream thinking about macroeconomic policy than was policy in the 1945-75 era. Either, it seems, this should have brought some clear benefits in terms of improved economic outcomes or it should say something very bad about the basis of these prescriptions. And it seemingly hasn’t led to better outcomes—growth in per capita income has not been faster, and the economy hasn’t actually gotten more stable.

Politics

GOP Claims It’s Upholding The Legacy Of MLK, A Fighter Against The ‘Injustice’ In Health Care Inequality

By Amanda Terkel on Jan 18, 2010 at 1:19 pm

Martin Luther King, Jr. In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the Republican National Committee (RNC) put out a statement from chairman Michael Steele today honoring Dr. King’s “epic and historic fight for civil rights.” Yesterday, Sarah Palin also put up a Facebook message celebrating his “efforts against racial discrimination.” Both the RNC and Palin also tried to tie the conservative movement to King’s work:

RNC: “Though close to 50 years have come and gone since Dr. King delivered his ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, the principles by which he lived and worked remain as true as the day he began his epic and historic fight for civil rights. The principles of freedom, faith, and opportunity for all people are truly timeless and will continue to influence America and the world for generations to come. As we celebrate his legacy, I’m reminded that his message is rooted in ideals and principles that the Republican Party has advocated since its inception. Today, our Party and the nation honors Dr. King’s dream by continuing his fight — the fight for all Americans to have an equal chance at the American Dream.”

Palin: “Please take a moment to tell your children about this great man. He fought for liberty and equality because he knew they were God-given and he knew that no government should be empowered to thwart our freedom. King summarized his mission when stating that no one should be judged based on skin color, but by the content of one’s character.”

King is best remembered for his work fighting racial discrimination. But King’s vision for equality extended beyond integrated schools and businesses. He was also a fierce champion for the labor movement and living wage laws. Additionally, King believed that universal health care was essential to ensuring true equality in America. In a speech to the Medical Committee for Human Rights in 1966, King famously said:

Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.

As the Kaiser Family Foundation has noted, the health reform bills being considered by Congress — which conservatives are opposing — would significantly benefit persons of color, who make up more than 50 percent of the uninsured (even though they comprise just one third of the U.S. population).

In September, Steele claimed that “Dr. King would be disappointed in the political leadership of this country for failing to address the least of us.” But as Richard Payne wrote in an April 2, 2006 op-ed in the Charlotte News and Observer, “Is there any doubt that King would have been on the forefront of arguments for payment of a living wage to the working poor, and that he would have advocated for universal health care?” Today in a speech at the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church in remembrance of King, Obama said of health reform legislation, “[U]nder the legislation I will sign into law, insurance companies won’t be able to drop you when you get sick, and more than 30 million people — our fellow Americans — will finally have insurance. … This will be a victory not for Democrats; this will be a victory for dignity and decency, for our common humanity. This will be a victory for the United States of America. “

Media

NYT Going Paid: What Does It Mean for Me?

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 18, 2010 at 1:01 pm

It looks like The New York Times is going to implement some kind of system where you have to pay to read the website. For my part, unless they’re charging some really absurd fee, I’ll happy pony up the money. I think that if newspaper publishers think that people in general “should pay to read our content” they’re insane—there are just way too many newspapers. But the Financial Times is very good and I pay for it already, the New York Times is also very good and I’ll pay for it too. I’m not sure there’s any other paper I’d pay for, though.

But this raises the question from a blogger’s point of view of how I should react to a paid model for the Times. Obviously if there’s some really unique piece of reporting that it’s the NYT and not anyplace else, I’ll link to it. But a lot of news stories are slightly routine—everyone has a writeup of major political and foreign developments. So will I owe it to the readers to find Washington Post or AP or Reuters or BBC or Politico versions of those stories to link to? Or should I try to send a clear message to everyone that they ought to suck it up and pay to read the best newspaper in the world? Personally, I’d find it regrettable if the result of this decision was that I wound up spending more time publicizing inferior news sources but I’d also find it regrettable if the result was that I’m linking to more stuff that people can’t click through.

Climate Progress

So it’s in the 50s in DC again — and the global temperature is still breaking records for January!

By Joe Romm on Jan 18, 2010 at 12:37 pm

I’m just saying (see “Paging Neil Cavuto: UAH global satellite data has record WARMEST day for January“).

Yes, the UAH satellite data just keeps going up (click to enlarge):

UAH2 small

This shouldn’t be terribly surprising:  Long-term global warming trend + moderate El Ni±o = record temperatures, as predicted by NASA climate scientists, among others.

But it has the anti-science crowd scrambling for alternative explanations, since it just seemed so friggin’ cold out for a few days, which everybody knows is the best way to figure out climate trends.  Anyway, here’s everyone’s favorite Czech anti-science guy:

Read more

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