ThinkProgress Logo

Yglesias

Rasmussen: Voters Want Plebiscite Before Changing Entitlemtns

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 19, 2010 at 4:44 pm

There’s a bit of a dispute between Arnold Kling and Tyler Cowen as to the merits of a populist nationalist movement like the Tea Party as a practical tool for reducing the volume of federal spending. I think this bit of enterprise polling from Rasmussen counts as evidence in favor of Cowen’s anti-populist hypothesis:

Most voters nationwide (53%) believe any changes to Medicare or Social Security should be approved by a vote of the American people. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows 29% do not think such changes require a national vote, while another 17% are not sure. Women are more supportive than men of requiring a vote before making changes to these entitlement programs. Republicans believe far more strongly in the need for a vote than Democrats and voters not affiliated with either party. [...]

Budget documents provided by the Obama administration show that in Fiscal Year 2009 50% of all federal spending went to national defense, Social Security and Medicare. But only 35% of voters believe that the majority of federal spending goes to these areas.

Basically, the federal government spends money on programs that are popular, which makes reductions in spending politically difficult. In practice, populist mistrust of government seems to me to make it more difficult to grapple with the issue. If people were generally inclined to trust government officials, then people saying “reducing the rate of long-term growth in Medicare spending is necessary to prevent the country from going bankrupt” then the public might support reducing the rate of long-term growth in Medicare spending. But insofar as people are convinced that all the money is going to (presumably non-white) moochers while feckless politicians try to steal from deserving seniors, veterans, and soldiers then operationally it’s going to be very hard to persuade people to take specific steps that save non-trivial sums of money.

vp_entitlements.tpl_clip_image002_0000 1

In principle, it should be possible to do a lot of the necessary cutting by essentially taking fat out of the health care system. But any such move is bound to be controversial and people tend to assume that anything which reduces Medicare cost growth must be bad for seniors. Good luck winning a plebiscite campaign on some kind of wonky efficiency-improving proposal dreamed up by OMB.

Politics

Rep. Issa Crusades Against Unpaid White House Internships, While Not Paying Many Of His Own Interns

By Zaid Jilani on Apr 19, 2010 at 4:05 pm

issa5Upset over the news that the Obama administration’s Labor Department may decide to crack down on the proliferation of illegal unpaid internships, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has sent a letter to the White House asking how many unpaid interns it keeps on:

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is questioning the logic behind the White House’s unpaid internships and volunteer positions. As the Obama administration gears up to fight private companies on those jobs, some of which the Department of Labor could soon declare illegal, Issa expressed concern over the weekend that the White House offers those positions without pay too. [...]

“If the government can’t do it, certainly it’s not fair to ask the private sector to do it in this case,” the congressman told Fox News in the article to which his tweet links. His remarks arrive days after he sent a letter to the White House, asking federal officials to list how many unpaid positions they staff each year.

While Issa is complaining about the White House’s unpaid internships, he doesn’t mention that his own office doesn’t pay its own interns. (Unpaid internships are customary for most offices on the Hill). A Spring 2010 listing clearly states that an internship with Issa’s D.C. office is “unpaid”:

Spring Internship – The office of Congressman Darrell Issa is looking for motivated, hard-working interns to begin the week of March 15th in the Washington, DC office. The internship is unpaid and both full and part-time applicants are encouraged to apply. Interns are responsible for assisting the legislative staff with research, attending hearings and briefings, leading visitors on tours of the Capitol and answering phones. Interested applicants should e-mail cover letter, resume and a short writing sample to CA49DCinternship@mail.house.gov.

ThinkProgress attempted to contact Issa’s office for additional confirmation, but we did not receive a response. A Capitol Hill source told us that Issa does, however, have some paid interns on the House Oversight Committee’s Minority Staff.

As Matt Yglesias writes, unpaid internships often lead to the “potential exclusion of students who don’t have rich parents.” Making sure that students receive compensation for their work is admirable, but perhaps Issa should start by looking after all the interns in his own office. (For the record, ThinkProgress and the Center for American Progress do provide compensation to our interns.)

Yglesias

Ask a Finance Lawyer: Goldman Sachs Edition

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 19, 2010 at 3:57 pm

150px-goldman_sachssvg

I got a query earlier today as to whether I’d want to talk about the SEC’s lawsuit against Goldman Sachs. I averred that I’m always happy to play political pundit (the suit and the revelations it contains highlight the need for strong regulatory reform!) but that I don’t actually know anything about securities law or have any idea as to whether or not the SEC’s case has legal merit. For the record, the guy who writes the Economics of Contempt blog is a lawyer working in the relevant field and thinks the SEC’s case is weak and the only real issue is whether the PR cost of a long, nasty fight is higher than the cost of just settling.

Back with my pundit-hat on, I note simply that when it comes to fraud the real scandal is very often what’s legal. There are all kinds of nonsense non-financial scam products out there (I saw an add for this over the weekend) along with the various quick fix miracle cures and all the rest. A lot of this stuff, along with the tarot card readers and all the rest, is “fraud” in the ordinary-language sense but not necessarily the legal sense.

Alyssa

Switcheroo

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 19, 2010 at 3:57 pm

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy “>Capital M.

I think it’s charming, but not especially surprising, that the role Jane Lynch just murked in The 40-Year-Old Virgin was originally written for a man.  Movies like that, and like Salt, where Angelina Jolie is playing a character initially written for Tom Cruise:

Should really go some way towards making directors, producers and writers assess how gender-determined certain roles actually need to be.  There are some situations where it obviously make sense to have certain characters played by men or women.  If you want to explore a woman’s attitude towards pregnancy, or a man’s attitude towards towards the particular gender roles and expectations foisted on early-21st-century men, you can’t easily make substitutions with the gender of the actor.  But if someone is a spy motivated by concern for their family, the manager of a general-interest retail store, a tough lawyer working a hard case, or any number of other roles where gender is not the key subject the movie is exploring, then there’s no absolute need to cast men and women in certain kinds of roles.

And I think gender-neutralizing certain kinds of roles could also broaden the range of physical appearances folks can have and still make it in the movies.  One of the things I find interesting about Angelina Jolie’s immense physical beauty is that even though she’s quite thin, and while she’s toned, is definitely not ripped, is that her wildly exaggerated femininity doesn’t translate into weakness for most viewers.  She’s turned those looks into the plausible tools of an action hero.  Conversely, someone like Lynch (who is gay) might be stereotyped into plain-lady or lesbian roles because she’s tall, has short hair, is not visibly particularly curvy.  But she gets cast as someone’s heterosexual mom in Post Grad, Julia Child’s surprisingly sexy (and also hetero) sister in Julie & Julia, the fearsome grandma in Talledega Nights, and the sort of omni-manipusexual in Glee.  We need more diversity of all types in movie: of place, of narrative, and of actors.  In their own weird ways, both Jolie and Lynch are pushing that cause forward.  One can only hope the rest of the industry will get in line behind them.

Justice

Gay Groups Pressure Obama Administration To Repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Before The End Of The Year

By Igor Volsky on Apr 19, 2010 at 3:35 pm

3054286362_949e7d822bOpponents of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) have grown increasingly frustrated at the administration’s unwillingness to support including repeal legislation in this year’s defense authorization bill. With unprecedented support within the Pentagon, favorable public opinion within the ranks and the public, repeal legislation introduced in the Senate and House, and the unpleasantness of having to defend the policy in court, one would think that ending the policy would be a no brainer for a White House interested in re-energizing its base and advancing a significant piece of its agenda.

But as AmericaBLOG and Kerry Eleveld of the Advocate have chronicled, the White House has repeatedly avoided taking a strong stance on repeal and may be actively urging some Members of Congress “not to include the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” in the Defense Authorization bill, and not to have a vote on DADT on the House floor, this year.” An unnamed “White House official” denied these reports last week “without stating whether or not the White House did indeed want a vote this year.” In fact, the administration has implied the contrary, suggesting that it would wait for the Pentagon to review the policy and work with Congress to repeal the bill sometime thereafter.

This morning, Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, sent a letter to Obama urging him to reconsider and “reaffirm” his commitment to end the policy:

I am very disturbed by multiple reports from Capitol Hill that your Congressional liaison team is urging some Members of Congress to avoid a vote on repeal this year. The upcoming House and Senate votes will be close, and very frankly, Mr. President, we need your help now.

As a veteran, and on behalf of thousands of men and women who have served and want to serve their country openly, I ask you today to stand by your encouraging words to the American people in your State of The Union address: “This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. It’s the right thing to do.”

Mr. President, this is also about the integrity of all service members. I respectfully urge you to continue speaking up for them on Capitol Hill. Under your leadership and with your voice we can have a repeal victory this year.

Indeed, while the administration has taken some important steps towards gay equality — it passed hate-crimes legislation, extended “certain benefits” to same-sex partners of federal employees, appointed openly gay individuals to key positions, began the process of ending the HIV travel ban and required hospitals to grant visitation rights to gay couples — it has been reluctant to loudly push for the more controversial elements of the agenda. In fact, the White House even waited until late afternoon of Thursday April 15th to issue the non-controversial hospital regulations, missing the publishing deadlines for many LGBT papers.

The administration has been operating under the radar on LGBT issues and seems intent on applying the same non-confrontational approach to DADT as it employed for health reform — give a third party time and space to try and forge a compromise without doing too much to shape the debate and then reclaim control of the process just as it’s heading under, orchestrating a last minute all-out push to secure passage. The good news is that this has worked once and so the administration could succeed by waiting for the Pentagon to produce its study, giving both political parties and the military an opportunity to weigh in on the process. The bad news is, passage won’t come as quickly or smoothly as advocates would like and the final bill will be far from perfect.

For those ready to end the policy this year, waiting for the administration to pull yet another rabbit out of its hat is as frustrating as getting the President to weigh in on health reform after the Massachusetts election, and probably far less probable. Several groups including the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network have argued that a drawn out process would actually undermine successful repeal and have outlined responsible proposals for ending the policy the policy before the Pentagon finishes its study. Unfortunately, the administration may now be moving in the opposite direction.

Update

GetEQUAL announced it will protest President Obama today in L.A. over DADT. From the press release:

To demand that President Obama include DADT repeal language in his Defense Authorization budget that is in the process of being sent to Congress, and that he publicly state his support for repeal this year. While the President firmly committed to repeal DADT in his State of the Union this past January, since that time he has gone silent on whether he wants to see the anti-gay law repealed this year. Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) recently said that he is ‘disappointed’ and ‘frustrated’ with the Obama administration’s silence on DADT, and Frank has called on President Obama to publicly state his desire to repeal DADT this year.

Yglesias

The Low Stakes in the Ex-Ante/Ex-Post Resolution Fund Controversy

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 19, 2010 at 3:14 pm

File:US-FDIC-Seal 1

Damian Paletta has an informative account of the legislative history of the idea of a $50 billion fund to finance the resolution of insolvent financial institutions in the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, I think it’s marred by an effort to talk up the importance of this issue beyond what the facts will bear:

The details are confusing and the rhetoric is distracting, but there is no doubt that the stakes are huge. The fund is at the core of one of the most central questions facing the government in the aftermath of the financial crisis—how should the government be armed to protect taxpayers in the future if big banks start to topple?

I recommend almost everything else in the article, but the details aren’t that confusing, the states are not huge, and though the fund is at the core of a central question, the dispute over the fund is not very important.

Let me explain:

Right now, when a bank fails it goes into FDIC receivership. Insured depositors still have access to their money, the shareholders are wiped out, and the management is almost invariably fired as the bank is either sold to another bank or else directly wound-down by the FDIC. In recent decades, a lot of firms that are not banks in the relevant regulatory sense have gotten into banking (or “shadow banking”) which led us to bailouts when some of those firms failed. A key object of financial regulatory reform is to establish a resolution process for these firms comparable to what the FDIC does for traditional banks. This is very important. It’s also the case that making the resolution process work requires some money. This has led to a dispute between two different ideas about financing resolution. Under one scenario, the FDIC would borrow the needed funds from the Treasury and then get the money back later through taxes on big banks. Under another scenario, the FDIC would raise $50 billion through taxes on big banks and then if the $50 billion runs out the FDIC would borrow the needed funds from the Treasury and then get the money back later through taxes on big banks.

Realistically, these two processes are very similar. The main dispute between them is political in nature. Maybe raising the $50 billion in advance signals toughness and seriousness about cracking down on banks. Or maybe raising the $50 billion in advance signals lack of confidence in prudential regulation and can be dishonestly characterized as a “bailout fund.” In practice, the difference is not large. What’s more the incidence of taxes on banks to raise the $50 billion has not, I think, been carefully studied so it’s somewhat difficult to characterize exactly what the small difference would be.

Politics

Bachmann: Bill Clinton Is Trying To ‘Celebrate’ The Oklahoma City Bombing And ‘Take [Me] Out’

By Amanda Terkel on Apr 19, 2010 at 3:10 pm

On Friday, former President Bill Clinton gave a speech commemorating the 15th anniversary of the tragic Oklahoma City bombing, drawing disturbing parallels between that incident and the current atmosphere of right-wing, anti-government hatred. He warned public officials and members of the media to be responsible with their rhetoric, since it could fall on the ears of someone as disturbed as Timothy McVeigh:

But what we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or we should reduce our passion for the positions that we hold, but the words we use really do matter because there are — there’s this vast echo chamber, and they go across space, and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike. And I am not trying to muzzle anybody, but one of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have, and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have.

Yesterday in a speech to the Chicago Tea Party Patriots, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) claimed that Clinton was trying to “take [her] out.” She said that during his speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund — which was a “celebration” of the Oklahoma City bombing — he went after her for her “gangster government” rhetoric:

BACHMANN: They said that Bill Clinton gave a speech yesterday — the former president — at the Center for American Progress, John Podesta’s group. He gave a speech, and he called me out in his speech, and he was talking about the anniversary — Now, only Democrats would do this. The anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing by Tim McVeigh. I mean, we don’t celebrate these things. This is not what we celebrate. So he was at this celebration, supposedly.

So he brought me up, and he was talking about how all of the extremist rhetoric in the early 90s led to Tim McVeigh. See, it had nothing to do with Tim McVeigh; it was the conservatives. That’s what the problem was. So he was making the analogy that Michele Bachmann had made a statement the day before during the Tea Party rally that what Barack Obama is doing is gangster government. And he said because I am using a term like “gangster government,” I’m responsible for creating the kind of climate of hate that could lead to another Tim McVeigh and another Oklahoma City-style bombing. How do you like them apples? So I decided, “Well, this is going to be fun.” I am nothing. I am on the bottom of the food chain. I’m in the minority party, I’m in my second term as a congresswoman, and the former president of the United States decides I’m important enough to take out.

She reiterated that “this is a gangster government, there is no two ways about it.” Watch it:

First of all, Clinton never mentioned Bachmann or “gangster government” in his CAP speech. He did, however, mention the rhetoric in an interview with the New York Times, saying that such blanket demonization of government workers is unacceptable after the Oklahoma City bombing, in which McVeigh was driven by a blind anti-government hatred that targeted innocent public servants. McVeigh said that he was fine killing those victims because they “represent that government.”

Moreover, it’s offensive for Bachmann to claim that the CAP event at which Clinton spoke was a “celebration” of the Oklahoma City tragedy. After all, the man who introduced Clinton at the event was Michael Reyes, a government employee whose father perished in the bombing. In his speech, Clinton repeatedly recounted the profound effect the event had on him, noting, “Three hundred buildings were damaged, 30 children lost both parents, 170 children lost one and 19 children themselves were killed. In the immediate response, there was an amazing set of acts of humanity and heroism.”

Finally, it’s completely inaccurate to say that Clinton wasn’t putting any blame on McVeigh himself. His point was that McVeigh was very troubled and “profoundly alienated,” and therefore “highly vulnerable to the suggestions and implications of the most militant rhetoric at the time.” That type of anti-government rhetoric is indeed increasingly prevalent, and as Clinton said, “the more responsibility you have, you have to think about the echo chamber in which your words resonate.”

Climate Progress

Energy and Climate Change News for April 19th; Obama Wants Senate to Tackle Climate Bill; East Asia and China can halt CO2 emissions growth; Global warming reduces grain output in India

By Climate Guest Blogger on Apr 19, 2010 at 2:42 pm

Obama Wants Senate to Tackle Climate Bill After Wall St. Reforms

President Obama expects the Senate to move on to comprehensive energy and climate change legislation once it finishes work over the next few weeks on Wall Street regulatory reform.

“This is one of these foundational priorities from my perspective that has to be done soon,” Obama said of the climate bill Friday during a White House meeting of outside experts helping the administration on economic recovery plans.

Read more

Security

On SB 1070, Arizona Governor Says She Will Do The ‘Right Thing So That Everyone Is Treated Fairly’

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Apr 19, 2010 at 2:40 pm

janbrewerSince the Arizona legislature passed the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” a bill which will probably end up establishing the harshest set of state immigration laws in the country, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s phone has been reportedly ringing off the hook with residents encouraging her to either sign or veto Senate Bill 1070. Though Brewer has refused to comment on which action she plans on taking, she did assure attendees of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s Black and White Ball this Saturday that she will do what is fair. The Phoenix New Times reports:

Speaking to attendees of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s Black and White Ball Saturday night at the downtown Phoenix Sheraton, Governor Jan Brewer refused to say whether or not she would sign state Senator Russell Pearce’s police state/anti-immigrant bill SB 1070. But she assured the crowd that she understood its opposition to the measure.

“In regards to Senate Bill 1070,” she stated, “I will tell you that I never make comment, like most governor’s throughout our country, before a bill reaches my desk. But I hear you, and I will assure you that I will do what I believe is the right thing so that everyone is treated fairly.”

Her statement prompted a quip from the following speaker, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, who asked the mostly Latino crowd, “I think what I just heard was a commitment to veto that bill, whatdya think?”

If Brewer is really committed to making sure “everyone is treated fairly,” signing off on SB 1070 would certainly require compromising her stated principles. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona has already predicted that the bill will “exacerbate the problem of racial profiling” which “raises concerns about the prolonged detention of citizens and legal residents.” Given the fact that police officers could arrest anyone who cannot immediately prove they are legally present in the U.S., the New York Times concludes that it “means if you are brown-skinned and leave home without a wallet, you are in trouble.” Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles has called the new Arizona statute “the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law.”

Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times points out that a recent Rasmussen poll shows Brewer “ahead of a wide field of contenders in the GOP gubernatorial primary” with 26 percent support. Given that two-thirds (67%) of Arizona’s GOP primary voters say that a candidate’s position on immigration is “very important” in determining how they will vote, Brewer’s decision on SB 1070 will certainly affect her comfortable lead. While many conservatives may support the bill, Latino republicans have already drawn a thick line in the sand. Somos Republicans, an Arizona Latino Republican group, issued a press statement explicitly stating that “if Jan Brewer signs SB 1070 next week, members of Somos Republicans and several Arizona Hispanic Republicans will not vote for her in 2010.”

Wonk Room reported last week that former Arizona governor and current Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano recently pointed out that she vetoed at least two similar bills during her time in office because such laws would interfere with public safety and not “allow law enforcement to focus on where law enforcement needs to focus.”

Update

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told reporters today that the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” is “a very important step forward.” “I can fully understand why the legislature would want to act,” said McCain.

Older

Newer

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up