Looks like President Obama is punting on a campaign promise until after the mid-term elections. If I was completely sure he'd back the repeal, I wouldn't care - but I'm never quite sure with him.
I'm really tired of gay issues being sent to the bottom of the agenda. How can we keep asking gay people to support the Democrats when they get so little in return?
President Obama has endorsed to a "don't ask, don't tell" compromise between lawmakers and the Defense Department, the White House announced Monday, an agreement that may sidestep a key obstacle to repealing the military's policy banning gays and lesbians from serving openly in the armed forces.
The compromise was finalized in meetings Monday at the White House and on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers will now, within days, take a series of votes on amendments that repeal the Clinton-era policy, with a provision ensuring that any change would not take effect until after the Pentagon completes a study about the impact on troops. That study is due to Congress on Dec. 1.
In a letter to lawmakers pushing for a legislative repeal, White House budget director Peter Orszag wrote Monday that Obama's administration "supports the proposed amendment."
"Such an approach recognizes the critical need to allow our military and their families the full opportunity to inform and shape the implementation process through a thorough understanding of their concerns, insights and suggestions," Orszag wrote.
While gay rights advocates hailed the move as a "dramatic breakthrough," it remained uncertain whether the deal would secure enough votes to pass both houses of Congress. Republicans have vowed to maintain "don't ask, don't tell," while conservative Democrats have said they would oppose a repeal unless military leaders made clear that they approved of such a change.
Even if the compromise language passes, a legislative repeal would go into effect only after Obama certifies that the change does not harm the nation's military readiness.
I predict New Jersey will very shortly be the California of the East. The voters' insistence on punishing the Democrats in the last gubernatorial election leaves the heavily populated state in the hands of someone who's very unsympathetic to anyone who isn't white, suburban and Republican. Already he's pulling the same accounting tricks utilized by Christine Todd Whitman - the same tactics that left the state in a massive financial hole.
TRENTON -- On a court known nationally for its judicial activism, state Supreme Court Justice John Wallace’s legacy may be bound to the one ruling that wasn’t his to make: Gov. Chris Christie’s decision to deny him tenure.
Christie’s action, unprecedented since the state revamped its constitution in 1947, fulfilled a campaign promise to reshape the court and drew cheers from the right.
It also brought cries from Democrats that the governor is politicizing the high court, threats that they will stall the nomination of Morris County attorney Anne Patterson and a virtually unheard of rebuke from the state’s chief justice.
The looming fight extends far beyond this one justice and could have an impact on the New Jersey court for decades to come.
"Batting the ball back and forth on political grounds is not going to be good for the independence of the court," Rutgers Law School professor Robert Williams. "If judges have to gauge the perception their cases are going to receive in the political world, they may be a little less assertive in interpreting the constitution."
Justices should look over their shoulders, said Steve Lonegan, a conservative whose Americans for Prosperity group waged a phone and e-mail campaign imploring Christie to keep his promise to change the court — starting with Wallace.
"This is what voters asked for," Lonegan said. "For decades, I’ve watched governors and legislators run in fear from this court. It’s about time ... it’s a great first step."
Ah, yes, our good friends at Americans for Prosperity! Just another in the long list of wingnut front groups funded by right-wing billionaire David Koch! They're the group behind the "grassroots" Tea Party, too. In fact, they front for just about any wingnut cause you can name - including climate change denial.
Christie will have the opportunity to reappoint or dismiss two more justices, and another will reach retirement age.
That could change the nature of the court, which has a national profile for rulings that include the Karen Ann Quinlan right to die case, the Baby M decision that condemned surrogate motherhood and the finding that the Boy Scouts’ ban on homosexuality violated state anti-discrimination laws. The court’s decisions also include school funding and affordable housing rulings criticized by some because of their price tag. "The Supreme Court is the driving force behind New Jersey’s high taxes," Lonegan said.
Alan Tarr, director of the Center for State Constitutional studies at Rutgers, said there’s always been a political element to judicial appointments. More significant, he said, is Christie is "trying to give himself more leeway in school finance."
By "more leeway," he means Christie wants to channel extra funds to the heavily-Republican suburban districts. The court's interpretation of the state constitution calls for equitable distribution -- and we can't have that, can we?
Grover Norquist hates taxes, but what he hates even more is having 95% of the country getting tax cuts on a day where he wants to excoriate Democrats for...taxing. In his appearance on ABC News' new political show "Top Line", he couldn't really criticize taxes the way he wanted, so he accused the President of lying about his campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle class. He had to really reach for examples, pointing to the tobacco tax increase passed 16 days into the Obama administration.
NORQUIST: What he didn't mention were all the tax increases that he passed. I mean, he completely missed all the tax increases in the health care bill. And he misspoke -- said something that was not true about his original promise.
16 days in, his promise not to tax middle-income people was a lie,” Norquist said. “Then he comes back with the health care bill, and we count at least seven -- others that are tougher count as many as 12 or 14 taxes that are directed at people earning less than $250,000. It’s a lie. So he lied about lying, and that's unfortunate.”
I could go on for pages about how cynical it is for the likes of Grover Norquist to point to a tax on cigarettes and call it a tax increase and broken promise, but let's move on to his claims about the health care bill instead.
Here's his idea of "tax increases" in the health care bill (via a blog post on ATR.org):
The penalty beginning in 2014 for not having health insurance, a provision originally introduced by conservatives.
The excise tax on Cadillac plans, which is on insurers, not individuals.
Various taxes and penalties on HSA accounts which aren't really taxes or penalties on lower-income wage earners who do not benefit from HSA accounts and have been penalized deeply from their expansion.
An increase in the Medicare tax for single people earning more than $200,000 and married couples earning more than $250,000. I'm not sure how he justifies this as a broken promise, since the promise was always not to raise taxes on the middle class. That increase only applies to earnings in excess of the limit, not all earnings.
The other tax increases aren't increases at all. They're merely an expiration of the George W. Bush Tax Freedom for the Rich Act of 2002, but that doesn't bother Norquist one bit.
It's a fact that 95% of the country paid less in taxes as a percentage of their income. Norquist can't get around that, so he hammers on Democrats for being spenders. Remarkably, ABC's Rick Klein and David Chalian don't bother to clarify Bush's role in jacking up the debt by letting the richest group in this country off the hook for taxes for the past 8 years, for starting 2 expensive wars halfway around the world with no plan to pay for them, or giving away a Medicare drug benefit to seniors without paying for it either.
Yet, for Norquist, the spenders are Democrats. This isn't about taxes, or about spending or about anything closely resembling intellectual honesty. Norquist is the water carrier for the US Chamber of Commerce, the tobacco industry, and the K Street project. He's nothing more than the mouthpiece for these groups, and any others who oppose Democrats.
Yes. Grover Norquist lied about President Obama lying about lying. And that's definitely unfortunate.
John Amato:
Gorver Norquist is one of the major reasons how movement conservatism destroyed our entire political process in America. He was one of the leaders of the College Republicans with jail bird Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed. He proved to Big Business that he could make money for them if they invested money into politics which would then be targeted at left wing groups that stood for any type of business regulation. Another mantra he lived by was "defunding the left." He, like Karl Rove lives for a one party system.
The chief purpose of these gatherings is to discuss jobs--specifically, the top one or two positions at the biggest and most important industry trade associations and corporate offices centered around Washington's K Street, a canyon of nondescript office buildings a few blocks north of the White House that is to influence-peddling what Wall Street is to finance. In the past, those people were about as likely to be Democrats as Republicans, a practice that ensured K Street firms would have clout no matter which party was in power. But beginning with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, and accelerating in 2001, when George W. Bush became president, the GOP has made a determined effort to undermine the bipartisan complexion of K Street.
If today's GOP leaders put as much energy into shaping K Street as their predecessors did into selecting judges and executive-branch nominees, it's because lobbying jobs have become the foundation of a powerful new force in Washington politics: a Republican political machine. Like the urban Democratic machines of yore, this one is built upon patronage, contracts, and one-party rule. But unlike legendary Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, who rewarded party functionaries with jobs in the municipal bureaucracy, the GOP is building its machine outside government, among Washington's thousands of trade associations and corporate offices, their tens of thousands of employees, and the hundreds of millions of dollars in political money at their disposal...read on
As expected, the healthcare bill will now move ahead. I suspect if Martha Coakley loses the special election, we might be looking at reconciliation again:
Reporting from Washington - The White House and labor leaders agreed Thursday on a formula to tax high-cost insurance plans, removing one of the last obstacles to President Obama's healthcare overhaul, officials said.
Under the agreement, reached after an intense round of negotiations this week, union leaders dropped their opposition to the so-called "Cadillac tax" in exchange for concessions to limit its scope. Organized labor had bitterly opposed the healthcare tax, arguing that union members had negotiated generous benefits in lieu of pay increases.
The compromise would raise the value of family plans subject to the tax from $23,000 to $24,000 and exempt the cost of dental and vision plans.
It also would postpone the tax's application to healthcare plans negotiated under union contracts.
"This is a milestone," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who helped lead the negotiations.
Senior Democrats must now take the proposed financing package to rank-and-file lawmakers in the House and Senate -- and find revenue sources to offset reductions in the Cadillac tax. Late Thursday night, Democratic leaders returned to the White House to try to reconcile differences between the House and Senate healthcare bills.
Labor leaders also will have to convince their members that the watered-down Cadillac tax is not a betrayal of Obama's campaign promise to oppose new taxes on their benefits.
Addressing the House Democratic Caucus at the Capitol on Thursday, Obama candidly acknowledged the political challenges the healthcare overhaul would pose for lawmakers ahead of November's midterm elections.
"Believe me, I know how big a lift this is; I read the polls," Obama said. But he reassured party lawmakers that the climate would shift once voters learned more about the bill's impact.
"If Republicans want to campaign against what we've done by standing up for the status quo and . . . for insurance companies over American families, that is a fight I want to have," Obama said.
Republicans immediately criticized the Cadillac-tax compromise, especially the provision postponing its application to union health plans until 2018. Labor leaders said that transition time was needed to accommodate unions and employers with multi-year agreements.
Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for House Republican leader John A. Boehner of Ohio, said: "This union kickback is the latest in a long line of backroom payoffs and sweetheart deals on a healthcare bill that the American people overwhelmingly do not support. A lot of people across the country will be angry, and who can blame them."
I'll take this as a win, although once again Obama simply splits the difference on something that requires bold action. And this isn't just a matter of propping up an "ailing" American tire industry - Chinese tires are quite heavily subsidized, and China has been flooding the market with below-cost tires in an attempt to drive American tire companies out of business.
Still, positive news for American workers!
In one of his first major decisions on trade policy, President Obama opted Friday to impose a tariff on tires from China, a move that fulfills his campaign promise to "crack down" on imports that unfairly undermine American workers but risks angering the nation's second-largest trading partner.
The decision is intended to bolster the ailing U.S. tire industry, in which more than 5,000 jobs have been lost over the past five years as the volume of Chinese tires in the market has tripled.
It comes at a sensitive time, however. Leaders from the world's largest economies are preparing to gather in Pittsburgh in less than two weeks to discuss more cooperation amid tensions over trade.
The tire tariff will amount to 35 percent the first year, 30 percent the second and 25 percent the third.
Although a federal trade panel had recommended higher levies -- of 55, 45 and 35 percent, respectively -- the decision is considered a victory for the United Steelworkers union, which filed the trade complaint.
"The president sent the message that we expect others to live by the rules, just as we do," Leo W. Gerard, president of the union, said Friday night.
China's government and its tire manufacturers, as well as tire importers and some U.S. tire makers with plants overseas, had strenuously objected to the measure.
"The President decided to remedy the clear disruption to the U.S. tire industry based on the facts and the law in this case," the White House said in a statement released Friday night.
CNN is reporting: Libby is charged with perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements.
5 counts:
2 Perjury
2 Making false statements
1 Obstruction of Justice
Wonkette: Fox is reporting that Scooter Libby has submitted his resignation. Does this mean that someone has the paperwork somewhere?
First time in a 130 years a White House official has been indicted. Reddhedd is live blogging...So much for Bush's 2000 campaign promises. Something about bringing integrity back to the White House.
