FatherGarage.com

Senate Banking Committee members, from left, Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., listen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 1, 2011 as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave the Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to Congress. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (Alex Brandon – AP) The letter that Sens. Michael Bennet, Mike Johanns, and 62 of their colleagues sent President Barack Obama asking him to support comprehensive deficit reduction is an odd document. It’s not the letter’s language that caught my eye. In Washington, little could be more standard than “we believe comprehensive deficit reduction measures are imperative.” What’s odd is its theory of legislative action.

”We…ask you to support a broad approach to solving the problem,” write the senators. “With a strong signal of support from you, we believe that we can achieve consensus on these important fiscal issues.” In this letter, 64 senators manage to sound like an interest group begging the White House for support rather than a supermajority of the United States Senate — which is to say, a coalition of men and women who could, on their own, draft and pass the very legislation they’re talking about. Which raises the question: Why are they writing this letter rather than the legislation this letter claims to want?

If vague statements about “a broad approach to solving the problem” could solve the problem, the problem would be solved. It would’ve been done during the president’s post-budget press conference, when he said “we can get Social Security done in the same way that Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill were able to get it done” and agreed that “Medicare and Medicaid are huge problems…that I’m prepared to work with Democrats and Republicans to start dealing with that in a serious way.” That sounds like a “signal of support” to me, and it should be plenty to get the Senate going on a deficit plan — if, indeed, that’s something a supermajority of senators are actually interested in doing.

I have my doubts, though. There are a lot of letters and statements about deficit reduction flying around, but precious little legislation. If the 64 senators who signed this letter wanted to write and vote for a bill, that’d be a pretty “strong signal.” But for 64 senators to instead write letters about how someone else should be making affirmative noises about deficit reduction, well, read closely, that’s a signal of a very different kind. The reality is that the White House can’t write the bill on Congress’s behalf. It can’t pass the bill through Congress. And it can’t kill the bill Congress pases if the bill has a veto-proof majority. Obama could be doing more to move public opinion, but on this issue, the empowered actor is the legislative branch, not the executive branch. And the legislative branch should begin acting like it.

Top Stories

More than 60 Senators want Obama involved in debt talks, reports Lori Montgomery: “More than 60 senators from both parties are calling on President Obama to lead them in developing a comprehensive plan to rein in record budget deficits, a powerful sign of bipartisan willingness to abandon long-held positions on entitlement spending and taxes. In a letter sent Friday to the White House, the 64 senators urge Obama ‘to support a broad approach to solving our current budget problems’ along the lines of recommendations issued last year by a presidentially appointed commission…The letter was drafted by Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Mike Johanns (R-Neb.), who said in a conference call Friday with reporters that it took them only a couple of days to convince a super-majority of their colleagues to sign the letter — 32 Republicans and 32 Democrats.”

Read the letter: http://1.usa.gov/hl5z1V

Senate Democrats are split on changing Social Security, reports Damian Paletta: “The idea of putting Social Security into play has triggered a firestorm of opposition from several corners of the Democratic party. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), two of the Senate’s most powerful lawmakers, have said revisions to Social Security shouldn’t be attached to a deficit-reduction plan. They argue the program’s benefits are covered by giant trust funds that have no impact on the deficit…But changes to Social Security are on the table as three Democratic senators, Mark Warner of Virginia, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Richard Durbin of Illinois, negotiate with three Republicans–together forming the so-called Gang of Six–to craft a deal to cut $4 trillion from the federal budget deficit over 10 years.”

The Congressional Budget Office was not kind to the White House’s budget proposal: “There are two major takeaways from the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the president’s proposed 2012 budget. The first is that the CBO doesn’t believe it will save as much money as the White House says it will. The second is that doing nothing — yes, nothing — would do more to cut the deficit than anything that the Obama White House proposed or than the GOP is likely to propose.”

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt is in the running to become Secretary of Commerce: http://wapo.st/fiAsv1

The president of Brazil criticized Fed policy upon Obama’s visit, report Paulo Prada, Laura Meckler, and Tom Murphy: “At the outset of a three-country tour of Latin America, President Barack Obama heaped huge praise on Brazil’s remarkable economic rise, but received a tongue lashing in return from Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who criticized the U.S. loose monetary policy for contributing to ‘acute’ global imbalances by artificially weakening the U.S. dollar…The statement appeared to be a set back for U.S. officials who have sought to convince Brazil that loose U.S. monetary policy will ultimately benefit the world if it helps jumpstart U.S. growth…Ms. Rousseff also pointed out that negotiating closer trade ties with the U.S. is difficult since the U.S. restricts imports of a range of important Brazilian exports in order to protect U.S. industries – restrictions that are political unlikely to be changed.”

Late night performance interlude: The Hold Steady play “Sequestered in Memphis” on Jools Holland .

Got tips, additions, or comments? E-mail me.

Still to come: The GOP is split on including tax hike in a debt deal; Greensan vs. Krugman; Wisconsin has reversed course on implementing health care reform; a judge has blocked Wisconsin’s anti-union bill; nuclear regulators are conducting a full review of all US facilities; and a basset hound dressed up like Sherlock Holmes.

Economy

The GOP is split on backing tax hikes as part of a debt deal, reports John McKinnon: “A few prominent GOP lawmakers believe they will have to raise some tax revenue if they are to bring Democrats along on a bipartisan compromise to address the U.S.’s long-term fiscal problems. Many Democrats want higher taxes to cover at least part of future budget gaps. That has led to clashes between Republican lawmakers and a Washington advocacy group, Americans for Tax Reform, the self-appointed keeper of the party’s anti-tax flame. Grover Norquist, the group’s president, said he has ‘sent up a flare’ against placing trust in Democrats, given how bipartisan agreements, including the one struck by then-President Bush in 1990, eventually unraveled.”

Alan Greenspan argues [pdf] that the Obama administration has stood in the way of the economic recovery: “The current government activism is hampering what should be a broad- based robust economic recovery, driven in significant part by the positive wealth effect of a buoyant U.S. and global stock market.”

Krugman admires the chutzpah: “Greenspan writes in characteristic form: other people may have their models, but he’s the wise oracle who knows the deep mysteries of human behavior, who can discern patterns based on his ineffable knowledge of economic psychology and history. Sorry, but he doesn’t get to do that any more. 2011 is not 2006. Greenspan is an ex-Maestro; his reputation is pushing up the daisies, it’s gone to meet its maker, it’s joined the choir invisible. He’s no longer the Man Who Knows; he’s the man who presided over an economy careening to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression — and who saw no evil, heard no evil, refused to do anything about subprime, insisted that derivatives made the financial system more stable, denied not only that there was a national housing bubble but that such a bubble was even possible.”

TARP’s inspector general has been uncommonly effective, writes Gretchen Morgensen: “The American taxpayer will lose a rare straight shooter when Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, leaves his post on March 30. In his frequent testimony before Congress and in the nine quarterly reports and 13 audits his office has published, Mr. Barofsky has served taxpayers well by speaking truth to the powers at the Treasury. This has often put him at odds with the Treasury officials whose work he is charged with overseeing — a natural consequence for any watchdog with teeth. Using facts, figures and extensive interviews, Mr. Barofsky has questioned the effectiveness of the administration’s loan modification program and the Treasury’s initial refusal to require institutions that received taxpayer-financed bailouts to account for their use of TARP funds.”

Republicans are scared by Elizabeth Warren’s effectiveness, writes Paul Krugman: “Given Ms. Warren’s prescience and her role in shaping financial reform legislation — not to mention her effective performance running the Congressional panel exercising oversight over federal financial bailouts — it was only natural that she be appointed to get the new consumer protection agency up and running. And it’s hard to think of anyone better qualified to head the agency once it goes into action. The fact that she’s so well qualified is, of course, the reason she’s being attacked so fiercely. Nothing could be worse, from the point of view of bankers and the politicians who serve them, than to have consumers protected by someone who knows what she’s doing and has the personal credibility to stand up to pressure.”

Joe Nocera thinks so, too. “ Ms. Warren is the most logical person to be the agency’s initial director: if the settlement does come to pass, no one will understand its terms better, or have a better feel for how to enforce them. Let’s face it: there isn’t anybody in Washington more fearless about standing up to the big banks. No wonder they don’t like her…Senate Republicans have vowed to block her appointment if President Obama nominates her. Yet even if her nomination goes down in flames, Senate confirmation hearings would be clarifying. Americans would get to hear Ms. Warren explain why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has the potential to help Americans. And they would get to hear Republicans explain why the status quo — including the everyday horror of the foreclosure mess — is just fine.”

Adorable animals with deductive prowess: A basset hound dressed like Sherlock Holmes runs in slow motion.

Health Care

Wisconsin has completely reversed course on implementing health care reform, reports Amy Goldstein: “Two weeks after President Obama signed the nation’s health-care overhaul into law, then-Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle (D) issued an executive order creating an Office of Health Care Reform. Over the next eight months, the Badger State made more headway than virtually anywhere else in the country at preparing to carry the statute out. It designed — and presented at the White House — the country’s only prototype for how people and small businesses could navigate a new health insurance marketplace online…Then, in late January, Doyle’s Republican successor, Scott Walker, issued his own executive order, dissolving the health reform office and replacing it with the Office of Free Market Health Care.”

The health law’s frequent waivers are coming in for criticism, reports Robert Pear: “Obama administration officials say they were expecting praise from critics of the new health care law when they offered to exempt selected employers and labor unions from a requirement to provide at least $750,000 in coverage to each person in their health insurance plans this year. Instead, Republicans have seized on the waivers as just more evidence that the law is fundamentally flawed because, they say, it requires so many exceptions. To date, for example, the administration has relaxed the $750,000 standard for more than 1,000 health plans covering 2.6 million people…Steven B. Larsen, director of the federal Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, which carries out many of the health law’s provisions, said the waivers provided a ‘bridge to 2014,’ when more affordable insurance options should be available. He denied that unions had received ‘special treatment.’ Indeed, he said, the center has granted waivers to 94 percent of all applicants.

Health insurers are moving into less-regulated business areas, reports Christopher Weaver: “Here’s one change few were talking about when the health overhaul law passed: It’s sent insurers — worried the law could stunt profits and growth — looking for new types of business. Where are they investing? In less-regulated companies that could yield strong profits and make the main business — insurance — more lucrative. The purchases also could increase insurers’ control over more parts of the health system. Insurers have moved into technology, health-care delivery, physician management, workplace wellness, financial services and overseas ventures in wide-ranging efforts to mitigate the new rules imposed by the law. Since June 2009, seven of the nation’s largest insurers have made 25 major deals, and only six of those acquisitions run health plans.”

Americans are still evenly split on health care reform a year after its passage: http://bit.ly/e2F2Y4

Domestic Policy

Wisconsin’s anti-union bill is on hold following a judge’s ruling, report Douglas Belkin and Kris Maher: “A Wisconsin circuit court judge put on hold Friday a new law that would curtail collective-bargaining rights for public unions, delaying for now the implementation of bitterly contested legislation that drew thousands of protesters and shut down the legislature. The ruling thrilled Democratic lawmakers, who spent three weeks out of state to prevent the bill’s passage, and stunned Republicans, who vowed to appeal. ‘Dane County always seems to play by its own rules, but this morning we saw a Dane County judge try to rewrite the constitutional separation of powers,’ Republican leaders of the state Senate and Assembly said in a statement.”

Arizona is easing up on immigration enforcement, reports Richard Oppel: “Arizona established itself over the past year as the most aggressive state in cracking down on illegal immigrants, gaining so much momentum with its efforts that several other states vowed to follow suit. But now the harsh realities of economics appear to have intruded, and Arizona may be looking to shed the image of hard-line anti-immigration pioneer. In an abrupt change of course, Arizona lawmakers rejected new anti-immigration measures on Thursday, in what was widely seen as capitulation to pressure from business executives and an admission that the state’s tough stance had resulted in a chilling of the normally robust tourism and convention industry.”

It’s easy to make state pension programs solvent, writes Robert Shiller: http://nyti.ms/ftweHu

Talk of widespread municipal defaults is exaggerated, writes Iris Lav: “Municipal bond default is actually quite rare: no state has defaulted on a bond since the Depression, and only four cities or counties have defaulted on a guaranteed bond in the last 40 years. A few minor bond defaults do occur each year, usually on debt issued by quasi-governmental entities for projects that didn’t pan out, like sewers for housing developments that never were occupied…The leading rating agencies estimate the default rate on rated municipal bonds of any kind at less than one-third of 1 percent; in contrast, the default rate on corporate bonds reached nearly 14 percent during the recession and hovers around 3 percent in good times.”

Animated lecture interlude: Evgeny Morozov on how the Internet can help, not undermine, dictators.

Energy

Nuclear regulators are launching a major review of US plants, report Stephen Power and Alan Zibel: “Energy officials on Sunday said a top-to-bottom examination of procedures at U.S. nuclear-energy facilities was under way in the wake of Japan’s earthquake-triggered nuclear-plant crisis. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Greg Jaczko, in an interview, said the U.S. had already instituted procedures to reduce the risk of mishaps like those that have bedeviled Japanese authorities…U.S. Energy Department Secretary Stephen Chu, speaking on Sunday television news shows, meanwhile sought to reassure Americans about the safety of U.S. reactors, 23 of which have a similar design to the troubled Japanese facilities.”

Closing credits: Wonkbook is compiled and produced with help from Dylan Matthews and Michelle Williams.

???initialComments:true! pubdate:03/21/2011 07:27 EDT! commentPeriod:3! commentEndDate:3/24/11 7:27 EDT! currentDate:3/22/11 1:30 EDT! allowComments:true! displayComments:false!

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

In his 2005 book, They Think You’re Stupid: Why Democrats Lost Your Vote and What Republicans Must Do to Keep It, Herman Cain commiserates with voters who have grown weary of Washington politics. Now he’s petitioning that same electorate to support his (potential) bid to become the second black president.

So, who is he? The self-described ABC — that’s American Black Conservative — is a former CEO of the Godfather’s Pizza chain. He has also served stints as an Atlanta radio talk show host, a mathematician for the Department of the Navy and chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. So far Cain, 65, is the only prospective GOP candidate to form a presidential exploratory committee.

While he’s far from a household name, Cain’s advocacy of smaller government, steep reductions in corporate taxes and the so-called FairTax plan, which would replace the federal tax code with a national consumption tax on retail sales, has made him a Tea Party favorite. He’s gotten additional buzz over his penchant for making provocative, sometimes outrageous, statements, particularly where President Obama is concerned.

Although Cain has no political experience aside from a failed 2004 run for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, he is confident that his strong business background makes up for it. His experience rescuing Godfather’s Pizza from bankruptcy, for example, has informed his plan for America’s economic growth. And he says that his slow but steady grassroots ground game just might leave mainstream candidates eating his dust.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Root, Cain talks about race, policy and why he thinks you shouldn’t rule out his chances of going head-to-head with Obama.

The Root: You made headlines this week with your comments about President Obama potentially hurting your chances of being elected: “Don’t condemn me because the first black [president] was bad.” In which ways do you think Obama is a bad president?

Herman Cain: Let’s make sure we say his policies are bad. First, his economic policies have failed. We can’t spend our way to prosperity. We have spent nearly a trillion dollars, and this economy has not been stimulated. He has promoted programs like Cash for Clunkers, which was a dismal failure, yet he tries to pretend now like it didn’t happen. Second, he has broken a lot of promises that he made about transparency, for example, and about unemployment coming down.

The biggest failure, in my opinion, is the forced passage of the health care reform legislation. It was supposed to bring down costs, but it will not because it is not well-structured to begin with. It was supposed to increase accessibility, but it has not. When you have 1,000 companies ask for special exception waivers before it’s fully rolled out, and they get those waivers, then something is terribly wrong with this legislation. I call that bad policy and bad leadership.

TR: At the Tea Party Patriots summit in Phoenix last month, you won the presidential live straw poll. Some critics have dismissed that as tokenism, claiming that Tea Party members only picked you as a foil for racism accusations, or that the Tea Party just wants its own version of a black candidate. What do you make of your support from the Tea Party and the skepticism surrounding it?

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi is embracing his insider role as a former lobbyist and Republican Party chairman, seeing it as a reassuring presence.

Tim Pawlenty, a former Minnesota governor, became the first candidate in the Republican field. Mr. Pawlenty announced an exploratory committee through a video on his Facebook page.

The president said his role as commander in chief gave him the constitutional authority to authorize the military to join in coalition strikes against Libyan targets.

President Obama, on a five-day trip to Latin America, talked of Chile’s difficult past and its progress in the aftermath of a dictatorship.

An appeals court ruled that a lawsuit over the reach of government eavesdropping, regarding the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, may go forward.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Doug Mills/The New York Times President Obama on ESPN revealing his N.C.A.A. mens’s basketball bracket on Wednesday.

Being president is an ego trip. So you would have thought President Obama wouldn’t need to add to his bragging rights. But Mr. Obama’s N.C.A.A. men’s basketball bracket stands — for the moment, anyway — as one of the best out there.

Out of 32 games, Mr. Obama has accurately predicted all but three. As of Saturday morning, he ranks at No. 16 on The Times’s bracket site, tied with many others. Mr. Obama has a total of 166 out of 195 points possible.

The success of the president’s picks may bring him attention that White House aides would rather do without. Critics of the president chastised him for spending time on college basketball — and announcing his bracket on ESPN — even as the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan and violence spread in the Middle East and north Africa.

“Millions of Americans will be filling out a bracket this week, but only one of them is responsible for signing a federal budget, monitoring the crisis in the Middle East and assisting with a major humanitarian effort in Japan,” said Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

“With all of those pressing issues on the President’s plate, we would be happy to hear the White House explain why filming an ESPN special on the N.C.A.A. tournament should be a priority on his public schedule,” Ms. Kurkowski said.

White House aides dismissed the criticism and noted that Mr. Obama used the ESPN interview to urge people to donate to relief efforts in Japan. And in sports, Americans love nothing more than a winner, so the criticism is likely to fade as the basketball tournament proceeds.

Mr. Obama has accurately predicted the winners of some of the closest games, including ones between George Mason University and Villanova, Kentucky and Princeton, and Temple and Penn State.

He stumbled just a bit, picking Georgetown over Virginia Commonwealth, perhaps going with the alma mater of his communication’s director, Dan Pfeiffer.

Mr. Obama also erroneously picked Louisville over Morehead State and Michigan State over UCLA. Both of his picks lost by a hair to the other team.

Mr. Obama has picked Kansas to win the championship final over Ohio State. His picks for the final eight teams are all still alive, giving him a shot at a near-perfect bracket.

All of which proves one thing: Mr. Obama knows his hoops.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Today’s Times

– The attack on Libya has  brought increased pressure for a more clearly defined end goal for the massive military intervention.  The Times’s Helene Cooper and David E. Sanger examine this question: Is the military action merely to protect the Libyan population from their government or to press the attack until, as President Obama declared two weeks ago, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi “must leave”?

– In a country where many are still lauding the election of their first female president, some in Brazil are disappointed by President Obama’s seeming to play down the racial element in his own historic victory.  Onlookers in one of the most racially diverse countries in the Americas were hoping for a message of inspiration from the United States’ first African-American president, The Times’s Alexei Barrionuevo and Jackie Calmes report.

Around the Web

– Where in the world is Sarah Palin? Saturday: delivering a speech to India’s business crowd at the India Today Conclave. Sunday:  Israel, touring holy sites in Jerusalem.

Happenings in Washington

– A posse of former United States presidents will gather at the Kennedy Center for the Points of Light Gala. Former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter will help honor former President George H.W. Bush for leadership in the American volunteer service movement.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

President Obama’s trip to multiracial Brazil is providing a case study in how America’s first African-American president approaches the matter of his race: Let the symbolism speak for itself.

At each joint appearance on Saturday with Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, Ms. Rousseff explicitly boasted of the historic nature of hers and Mr. Obama’s elections – she is Brazil’s first woman president — and lauded what it said about the progress and tolerance of their respective countries.

Facing Brazilian and American reporters after the presidents’ first private meeting, Ms. Rousseff told Mr. Obama, “Your visit to my country makes me very happy.”

“It bears also a very strong symbolic value,” she added, citing voters who “dared to take at the highest level” an African-American and a woman, which she said proved that democracies could “overcome the largest barriers to build societies that will be more generous and live more in harmony.”

Ms. Rousseff was effusive again in her toast at a luncheon attended by officials and business leaders from both nations:  “We should celebrate that the first woman President of Brazil will receive today and host the first President of Afro descent of the United States of America,” Ms. Rousseff said to applause.

She noted that the United States and Brazil have the largest black populations outside Africa and “­­a long track record of the struggle of the minorities.” Lifting her glass, she said, “I propose that we should raise a toast to you and to the dream of Martin Luther King, the same dream of Brazilians and Americans, the dream of freedom, the dream of hope.”

In contrast to Ms. Rousseff, Mr. Obama, characteristically, did not overtly address his race or race generally in his appearances with her on Saturday.

The closest he came was in a short address­­ to a gathering of business executives from American and Brazilian corporations, and then he spoke indirectly, more in terms of social and economic status than race. He hailed “the American dream” as appropriate for both the United States and Latin America, defining it as “the idea that no matter who you are, or where you come from, or how you start out, you can overcome the greatest obstacles and fulfill the greatest hopes.”

“I’m a testament to that dream,” he said.

Through his long presidential campaign and since, Mr. Obama often has seemed to address the issue of race only when forced to by outside events — like the campaign controversy over racially divisive sermons by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, or a 2009 furor over the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., a black Harvard professor and Obama friend, as Mr. Gates tried to enter his own home. Advisers in the past have suggested that Mr. Obama does not want to be defined in racial terms, but as president for all Americans.

That is not to say that his White House does not take advantage of Mr. Obama’s racial background and its symbolism in its stagecraft.

The president’s activities on Sunday in Rio de Janeiro – a visit first to a sprawling favela, or slum, where he and daughters Malia and Sasha played soccer with young residents, followed by a speech to “the Brazilian people” at a historic theater – were a clear attempt to exploit Mr. Obama’s unique appeal to the heavily mixed-race Brazilian public.

To administration officials’ disappointment, the Secret Service’s security concerns forced the speech indoors, scrapping White House plans for Mr. Obama to speak outside the theater before an expansive plaza. An American embassy official said a minimum 20,000 people had been expected on the plaza, while the maximum capacity in the theater is 1,800.

And the scene indoors had little of the feel of an address to the masses, given the theater’s small capacity, gilt-trimmed woodwork and red-velvet drapes and the Sunday-best dress of the men and women in the audience.

Mostly white V.I.P.’s sat at orchestra level; average Brazilians, including some African-American community activists, sat in upper balconies. For a time, however, an “Afroreggae” band performed to warm things up for the American president.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.