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Politics

‘Shadow RNC’ chairman Ed Gillespie still owns the deed to the RNC.

By Lee Fang on Jul 9, 2010 at 8:20 pm

Republican insiders and donors have, for months, tried to diminish Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele to a mere figurehead. Afters a series of gaffes and other missteps, Republicans like Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie formulated a plan to establish what has been called a “shadow RNC” of Republican attack groups, policy centers, and state outreach organizations to work around the normal RNC. Facing mounting criticism and a drain of resources to the RNC, Steele has harshly rebuked his detractors, declaring again, “I ain’t going anywhere.” But according to property disclosures filed with the D.C. government, the RNC building is still registered to Gillespie, a former RNC chair. View a screenshot below:

edgillespie

While Steele remains the face of the RNC, he is quickly losing power. Not only does Gillespie command control of the “shadow RNC,” he still technically owns the regular RNC.

Economy

Colorado Ballot Initiative Would Ban State Borrowing, Forcing It To Pay Cash For Schools And Bridges

By Pat Garofalo on Jul 9, 2010 at 6:00 pm

Last November, voters soundly defeated anti-tax, anti-spending ballot initiatives in both Maine and Washington, dealing a setback to conservatives. In the same election, voters in Oregon “handily” approved ballot measures increasing taxes on the wealthy and increasing the minimum corporate tax rate, despite a serious corporation-backed opposition campaign.

But anti-government spending zealots are not done trying to force initiatives through on the ballot. For instance, in the next election Colorado voters will be faced with Amendment 61, which would prevent the state from borrowing money — any money, at all, ever — and limit local governments to borrowing for just ten years and only with voter approval.

It’s easy to see why this would be incredibly problematic. Most states, including Colorado, are prevented from running deficits, but they have to borrow money and carry debt in order to finance infrastructure projects like building schools or bridges. The Denver Post this week ran a scathing editorial pointing out the folly of Amendment 61:

Amendment 61 would stop the state from borrowing, or bonding. That means any structure or piece of infrastructure, from a new prison to replacement of an old bridge, basically would have to be paid for up front — with cash…Think in terms of your own finances. Could you afford to buy your house with cash — without financing? Imagine the prohibitively high monthly payments if you had to buy the house with a 10-year mortgage instead of the traditional 30-year.

Citizens for Tax Justice said that Amendment 61, along with two other anti-tax amendments on the Colorado ballot, “would have a disastrous impact on Coloradans’ way of life. ” In all, the measure would halt about $2 billion per year in publicly financed construction in the state.

“We won’t be able to replace structurally deficient bridges. We won’t be able to replace aging school buildings, and we won’t be able to build modern facilities at our colleges and universities,” said state Treasurer Cary Kennedy. “Do you really want us to pay cash for a school?” asked Glenn Gustafson, chief financial officer for the Colorado Springs school district. “I just think this is crazy.”

Even the state’s Republican lawmakers think Amendment 61 is nuts. “Look at that massive science building that used to be a hole in the ground on the Auraria campus. Look at my alma matter, Mesa State College, which has just exploded with growth,” said state senator Josh Penry (R). “All of those projects were done without raising taxes thanks to the creative financing structures that (Amendment) 61 would ban.”

The measure would also wreak havoc with payrolls at school districts, which “receive property-tax revenue in uneven clumps throughout the year and rely on [state financed] loans to help make ends meet until tax revenues even out in the spring.” It’s clear, then, that those pushing Amendment 61 have based it entirely on an ideology that is completely unworkable in practice.

Media

Chamber Of Commerce Rents Its Roof To Fox News, Fox News Refuses To Critically Report On The Chamber

By Lee Fang on Jul 9, 2010 at 6:00 pm

Glenn Beck at the U.S. Chamber of CommerceIn a profile piece on U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue, the Washington Monthly’s James Verini reveals that, despite spending hundreds of millions on right-wing pro-business lobbying campaigns, attack ads, and executive bonuses for its top lobbyists, the Chamber has continually struggled to finance its own operations, and even posted a net asset loss of over $29 million according to its 2008 IRS filings. Verini notes that the Chamber has alleviated part of its financial problem by earning “extra income” through renting its roof to Fox News for the network’s White House news coverage.

Under Donohue’s leadership, the Chamber has forged a tight relationship with the Republican Party, even adopting a de facto “Waterloo” strategy to kill key proposals of President Obama’s agenda to thwart the momentum of progressive reforms overall. But by quietly bringing Fox News into his business strategy, Donohue and the executives at Fox News are blurring the lines between media and lobbying. While it is unclear exactly how long Fox News has been a business partner to the Chamber, Fox News has aggressively defended the Chamber during the Obama presidency:

MORT KONDRAKE: “Now, they’re attacking what they think are, you know, demons — the insurance companies are unpopular, FOX News is right-wing, allegedly, and now the Chamber of Commerce is a big bad big business lobby, but who is next? They look for any enemy everywhere.” [Fox News, 10/20/09]

BILL O’REILLY: “I didn’t even know this. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, pro-business organization, obviously, Chamber of Commerce wants commerce. And they say, look, the cap and trade stuff is going to lose jobs. You know, higher taxes on business is going to be crazy. Health care, way too expensive. We don’t need government run health care. Private industry can do it better. So the Obama administration says okay, we’re going to get these guys?” [Fox News, 10/21/09]

ANDREW NAPOLITANO: “Let’s see. The Chamber of Commerce represents enough businesses to employ, correct me if I’m wrong, about 115 million Americans, well more than half the workforce. Question: Why were you guys not invited to the White House today?” [12/3/09]

NEIL CAVUTO: “All right, well, better, but still bad, and American business leader still worried that this health-care thing could be the death of them. Now first on FOX, reaction of the guy whose group represents, get this, 3 million American businesses. Tom Donohue is the CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and he joins me right now from the roof of his fine building in Washington, overlooks that thing called the White House.” [9/17/09]

In the last quote, Fox News’ Neil Cavuto introduced Donohue (a frequent guest of his show) by falsely declaring that the Chamber represents 3 million businesses. In reality, about 300,000 businesses have some level of membership to the Chamber.

The main purpose of the Chamber is to launder money from large industries and multinational corporations to affect public policy. For instance, large health insurance companies secretly funneled tens of millions into the Chamber for an aggressive effort to kill health reform in 2009. Big banks and financial services firms — including companies bailed out by taxpayers in 2008 — have quietly funded a campaign through the Chamber to try to block key Wall Street reforms. In a sense, the Chamber already wields an inordinate amount of political power through its stealth lobbying campaigns. By shilling for the Chamber — and refusing to disclose its business partnership — Fox News yet again unethically amplifying the voice of multinational corporations.

Yglesias

Capital Flight From Afghanistan

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 9, 2010 at 5:28 pm

One of the critiques I hear from people most often is that I’m too much of a generalist. Which is a fair point to an extent. But one thing you notice as a generalist is that sometimes people in one field manage to re-discover the mistakes that people in other fields made decades ago. And I think a lot of what’s wrong with counterinsurgency practice in the contemporary U.S. military can be understood as a massive exercise in repeating decades-old mistakes in development economics. For example, what happens when you flood a very poor country with money? If you think the answer is “it becomes rich” you ought to think harder:

Brigadier General Mohammed Asif Jabarkhel sits with folded arms in his office, just a few steps away from the security checkpoint at Kabul International Airport. “Of course I know what’s going on here,” the 59-year-old head of the airport’s customs police grumbles from beneath his thick moustache as a fan whirs in the background. “But, in this country, who’s allowed to speak the truth?”

Jabarkhel is referring to the huge amounts of money regularly being secreted out of Afghanistan by plane in boxes and suitcases. According to some estimates, since 2007, at least $3 billion (2.4 billion) in cash has left the country in this way. The preferred destination for these funds is Dubai, the tax haven in the Persian Gulf. And, given the fact that Afghanistan’s total GDP amounts to the equivalent of $13.5 billion, there is no way that the funds involved in this exodus are merely the proceeds of legal business transactions.

The simplistic account of the problem here is that there’s “too much corruption” in Afghanistan. The more sophisticated account is that the prevailing economic logic of contemporary Afghanistan drives this behavior.

Politics

GOP Rep. Paul Broun wants to repeal the 16th and 17th amendments to reverse ‘socializing’ of America.

By Zaid Jilani on Jul 9, 2010 at 4:47 pm

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) has been touring his northeast Georgia district as part of the Republican Party’s “America Speaking Out” tour, discussing his ideas with his constituents. During a stop in Athens, Georgia, the congressman revealed some of his more radical ideas about where he wants to take the country. At one point, Broun told a constituent that Teddy Roosvelt and Woodrow Wilson “started this process of socializing America” by passing the 16th and 17th amendments and endorsed repealing both of them:

BROUN: Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson started this process of socializing America, and they did it with the, Woodrow Wilson, particularly, pushes the 16th amendment that taxes income directly, and the 17th amendment that allows the direct elect of US senators, because the US senators intially were supposed to represent the states. [...] I’d like to see the 16th amendment and the 17th amendment to be repealed finally, and that’s going to be a long process.

Watch it:

In addition to his endorsements of eliminating the income tax and ending direct election of U.S. senators, Broun also called for ending birthright citizenship, endorsed making English the official language of the country to stop Georgia from being “invaded,” advocated for completely de-funding the Department of Education, and suggested he’s unsure about whether or not Obama purposely inhibited the government’s response to the oil spill so he could push an “energy tax.” (HT: Georgia Liberal)

Yglesias

What Is The Jones Act For?

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 9, 2010 at 4:44 pm

The right-wing has been on a tear lately ripping the Obama administration for its mythical failure to grant waivers of the Jones Act and allow foreign ships to help out with the Gulf oil spill. McClatchy debunked this meme decisively recently, and Pat Garofalo points to a CNBC host calling out Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute for pushing this nonsense:

Still, even though the Jones Act has played no role in the spill, the question still remains: What is the Jones Act for? If there’s some genuine problem with foreign ships operating in US coastal waters, then why would we waive the Act when faced with a bad spill? Alternatively, if there’s no problem then why not repeal it?

Climate Progress

Lubchenco: ‘Highly Toxic’ Undersea Cloud Of Oil ‘Is Undoubtedly Poisonous’

By Brad Johnson on Jul 9, 2010 at 4:28 pm

The undersea cloud of “highly toxic” oil emanating from BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster “is undoubtedly poisonous,” according to President Obama’s federal oceans chief. Marine scientist Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) director, described the threat posed by the “hidden” plumes of oil and dispersants diffusing into the Gulf of Mexico to its valuable ecosystem at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Tuesday. She told interviewer Andrea Mitchell that NOAA and independent scientists have identified “not a lake of black ooze” but a “cloud of very fine droplets spread over an area in the general vicinity of the well,” a prime spawning ground for bluefin tuna. This oil cloud “is undoubtedly poisonous” to the marine life in the Gulf:

As that oil, which is highly toxic, comes into contact with small larvae, with eggs, fish for example, or other creatures, it is undoubtedly poisonous to them.

Watch it:

“This truly is an environmental disaster but more a human tragedy,” Lubchenco said in her opening remarks. “Its impact is likely to be considerable,” she said of the oil hidden undersea, “but we don’t yet know what it will be.”

Related Posts

Yglesias

Catch-Up Growth

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 9, 2010 at 3:57 pm

My view is that we’re not going to have an economy that looks and feels healthy until (nominal) GDP catches up with the long-term trend. What trend? Well, that’s a bit hard to say. But I think if we take the trend that extended from the NBER-defined peaks Q1 of 2001 to Q4 of 2007 we’re looking at a period of time that I don’t think qualified as unrealistically fabulous prosperity. And the situation looks like this:

trends

To catch-up by the end of 2012, you need GDP (i.e., output times the price level) to grow at almost 8.7 percent per years starting in Q2 of 2010. Even to achieve the catchup by the end of 2016, you need it to grow at over 6.7 percent. The pre-crisis trend was more like 5.2 percent. Realistically, I think the Powers That Be aren’t going to do this. Unemployment of around 7-8 percent will be declared “the new normal” and the cause will be said to be hazily defined “structural problems” that can only be solved by cutting Social Security.

Health

Can Republicans Simply Defund Health Reform in November?

By Igor Volsky on Jul 9, 2010 at 3:50 pm

Earlier this year, several prominent Republicans including House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Newt Gingrich suggested that they could repeal the new health care reform law by defunding it if they regain Congressional majorities in November. “I can’t imagine a Republican Congress is going to give this President the money to begin this process,” Boehner told Fox News in March. “It’s perfectly legitimate for the Congress to say, I can’t as a matter of good faith to the very people who elected me, give you money to do something they elected me not to do,” Gingrich added in April.

But this afternoon, during an event organized by the Alliance for Health Reform, Gail Wilensky, administrator of CMS under George H. W. Bush, explained why this strategy is unlikely to stop reform:

WILENSKY: It has been very difficult historically to do this type of a starving unless you have a very large majority behind you…So you could technically see this as a way to go after all those thing that are not mandatory funding. But a lot of the activity in this early period is, I think not at risk. So I think the real question is going to be what happens in November? What happens in 2012? And whether or not there is significant change in the mood of the country about where we are with regard to this amount of increased spending and the benefits that are associated or not. I would find it that, there are some technical possibilities for those provisions. But I would find it surprising if that had a big effect.

Watch it:

Indeed, mandatory spending, such as Medicare and Medicaid, continues from year to year unless Congress passes new legislation to reduce it; discretionary spending, which covers most of the day-to-day operations of federal agencies, is appropriated every year in annual appropriations bills. It’s far easier for Congress to adjust an appropriations mark than muster the political support to pass new legislation to defund the new Medicaid expansion or affordability credits to middle class Americans.

The CBO has identified “at least $50 billion in specified and estimated authorizations of discretionary spending that might be involved in implementing that legislation,” with most the costs associated with implementing the new policies established under the legislation and “a variety of grant and other programs.” You can read the entire breakdown here, but I suspect that the GOP’s effort to defund the bill will be just as politically popular as their short lived campaign to repeal the entire legislation, including protections against pre-existing condition exclusions. McCain has had to backtrack from that and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’ll reverse himself here as well.

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