Joe Lieberman claims that he 'wish[es] people would come out and debate me on the public option instead of questioning my motives' when asked about the money he's receiving from the insurance industry. That's news to Rachel Maddow Joe. If you're looking for someone to debate you about your motives, I hear she's still looking for a response from your office.

SCHIEFFER: I’m going to ask you this question because I want to give you a chance to respond to it. Some of your critics say that the reason that you are so dead set against the public option is because there are so many insurance companies headquartered in your home state in Connecticut and they’ve been some of your biggest supporters. What have they given you this year, $400,000? Something like that? Has that had anything to do with your position on the public option?

LIEBERMAN: No. I wish people would come out and debate me on the public option instead of questioning my motives. If they look at the record, I have never hesitated to get tough on insurance companies when I thought they were wrong. When I was attorney general of Connecticut, I filed an antitrust action against the Connecticut insurance companies.

A few years ago when there was a patient bill of rights in the Senate which the insurance companies opposed, I supported it. Right now, I’ve said that I will support the removal of the antitrust exemption that insurance companies have. That’s not the reason.

But I will say this. This recommendation of a public option, a government health insurance company, takes our government down a road that we’ve never gone down before.

In other words, we believe in a market economy. It’s what’s created the great American middle class. But it doesn’t have a conscience. When it behaves badly, we regulate it, companies. We sue them. I’ve been angry at oil companies. I never had the idea that the government should go into the oil business to make oil companies behave better. I think this would be a terrible mistake.

Rachel Maddow said this at the end of her interview with Glenn Greenwald the other day:

MADDOW: I also want to tell our viewers that we invited Senator Lieberman to come on the show tonight. His office did not even bother to respond to our requests.

But, Senator Lieberman, you should know you have an open invitation as you long have had to come on the show. I promise you will get a fair shake. Actually, at this point, I promise to not only buy you a shake. I will buy you a cookie if you come on the show.

We won't be seeing that happen any time soon. Lieberman won't get the kind of softball interview he received from Bob Schieffer if he comes on Maddow's show.

TBogg: The beatings will continue until morale improves

skippy the bush kangaroo: How Goldman Sachs bet on America failing

The Bobblespeak Translations: Face the Nation with Joe Lieberman

field negro: Pastor, please don't shoot, you might hit the usher

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: California AG Brown illegally taped reporters...Not a news organization...Jon Stewart breaks it down...Inside Iraq...Media failure compounds the financial failure...NPR gets it wrong...Sometimes, opinion kills...Moonie Times reaches out to Tea Partiers...Shielding reporters and bloggers...Short on facts...Phony AP fact check...Fred Hiatt's strange argument...Early Glenn Beck footage located...Budding journos

I don't agree with Bob Schieffer all that often but I do agree with most of his points on this one. From CBS News' Face the Nation, Nov. 1, 2009--A Class in Nation-Building 101:

SCHIEFFER: Finally today, as the president tries to develop a new strategy in Afghanistan, I wonder if this is the real lesson that we’ve learned in Afghanistan so far, that nation-building, like charity, probably begins at home, at least the way we seem to be going about it in Afghanistan.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Terrorism poses a threat to America’s national security, but is trying to build a Western-style nation in Afghanistan by funneling money to its leaders really the best way to combat terrorism?

I guess what set me off is that story about how we’ve secretly put the president of Afghanistan’s brother on the CIA payroll. He’s the one who is supposed to be mixed up in the drug trade. The idea was that, by doing that, he’ll help us pave the way to building a democracy there. Now, that’s good work if you can get it. But I don’t see how that is making us safer.

Whatever the size of the military force the president decides on for Afghanistan, I think he needs to be paying more attention to where the money is going for the non-military spending there. Incredibly, no one really seems to know. The judge by what we’ve gotten from it so far, we’d be much better off with some nation-building back home. Our infrastructure is already a mess.

We could start at the Oakland Bay Bridge, where a 5,000 pound part of the top fell off into the traffic below. That would certainly make us safer, for sure.

In Afghanistan, we’re having to relearn what we should have already known, that we can help others but we can’t do it for them. And when we have to pay others to help themselves, I don’t see how that helps anyone but the guy getting paid.

Sen. Joe Lieberman says that health care reform is important but not so important that he would vote for a bill that includes the public option. The "independent Democrat" blames those that insist on having the public option for his threat to filibuster health care reform.

"I'd say to the people who are all of a sudden making the public option -- a government health insurance company -- the litmus test here, they're stopping us from getting something done," Lieberman told CBS' Bob Schieffer.

(Edward J. Corsi - Assassination by Innuendo)

With America hot in the grips of the Red Scare, it was possible to settle all manner of vendetta by simply implying someone had "Communist Friendly" ties. Such was the case of Edward J. Corsi, who had been appointed in 1954 by John Foster Dulles to oversee the State Department Immigration Program. Corsi, who was a liberal Republican, had apparently run afoul of a Congressman from Pennsylvania who decided Corsi was ill-equipped to handle the position and was rumored to be tied in the past to Communist front organizations. Corsi's boss, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles promptly fired him and it sent shock waves throughout Capitol Hill. The scandal was thought to have political repercussions for the upcoming 1956 elections and his firing set up an outcry that came from many unlikely sectors of the political spectrum, including Eleanor Roosevelt.

While the scandal was fresh, CBS' program Face The Nation on April 17, 1955 sat down with Corsi, and with a panel of journalists, hammered questions at him.

John Madigan (Washington Bureau Chief of Newsweek): “Do you believe you were fired in this instance because an influential Democratic Congressman made some charges concerning your alleged associations previously with Communist front organizations?

Edward Corsi: “ I haven’t the slightest doubt about that Mister Madigan, because the Secretary himself told me that.”

Madigan: “Mister Dulles has told you that he fired you because of charges made by Representative Walter of Pennsylvania?”

Corsi: “Mister Dulles told me that it was essential that he maintained friendly relations with Congress.”

Madigan: “But did he tell you that was the reason you were fired, in order to keep up such relations?”

Corsi: “Well I think that would have had no other meaning for me other than that. What he said he had to maintain friendly relations with Congress and this controversy had embarrassed those relations with Congress and I was to go to South America so that the controversy would end.”

It's interesting that political assassination by innuendo is still very much alive and used today.

In 1955 it was just as nasty.

(Dr. Walter Heller - tried to save Reagan from himself - didn't work)

With word about the latest recession being "over", I was reminded about the last time we had a deep recession in the 1980s and how we all became familiar with the phrases "Reaganomics", Supply-Side and Voodoo-Economics.

Back in the 80s there was 10% unemployment (on paper) and it felt like it lasted forever. Former Kennedy and Johnson Economic adviser Dr. Walter Heller had a few observations to make when he was interviewed on Face The Nation in 1982.

Dr. Walter Heller: “Had the Carter program, and unfortunately it was rather forgettable, but had the Carter program been enacted, we would be in much better shape today. People seem to forget that Carter, in October of the last year of his presidency proposed a tax program that made just excellent sense. It was much smaller than the President’s program, and it concentrated more of its tax cuts, and this is what people forget, on the supply side, so to speak, on true stimulus of government investment. Instead of having enormous deficits that scare the public and Wall Street, we would have had much more moderate deficits, we’d be much better off today.”

Perhaps hindsight is 20/20 but it's interesting to speculate what might have happened had the Carter program been enacted.

But no, The Great Communicator had a better idea . . or so he said.

From Face the Nation, Russ Feingold has to remind Bob Schieffer that the "public option" is not a "liberal" position on health care reform. It's a compromise. What liberals want is single-payer.

SCHIEFFER: Let’s talk a little bit about health care. Where do you think health care reform stands in the Senate right now? I know you want the public option, the government-run insurance program, like Medicare for older people. The majority leader now seems inclined to include that in the bill that he’s going to bring to the floor. Do you think that has any chance at this point of passage? Because for a while now, people have been saying the votes are just not there in the Senate.

FEINGOLD: Well, I want to give my majority leader, Harry Reid credit for seriously considering putting this public option in there. I think it’s very important. It’s a sign of strong leadership on his part that he has the guts to do that. Because the American people are for some alternative that will create some competition for the abuses of the insurance industry. So I believe that there’s a good chance it will be in the bill that comes before us in the Senate. I think we have some chance of prevailing in the Senate on it and if we don't I think there's a chance it will come through the House. So I’m becoming increasingly optomistic that we will have a health care bill that will not frighten the American people, that they'll be able to see as reasonable -- it's not a complete government take over health care, but will provide an option for those that don’t have health care or are unhappy with their health care to do something else and I'm frankly getting excited that we may have some momentum for something very positive.

SCHIEFFER: As I understand it, the liberals want the, want the public option. The conservatives don’t. Do you think there’s a possibility that this thing may just end up in a log jam, that liberals won’t vote for this plan without the public option and the conserves won’t vote for it if it includes the public option, and so we wind up with nothing instead of something?

FEINGOLD: Well, that could happen, but the truth is, what liberals want is a single-payer system. Medicare for everybody. So the idea of a public option is really a very moderate idea. Within the current context of a continuing private system, it’s a tough one to swallow for many people who want a single-payer system. So this is a very reasonable approach that I would think people who are both conservative and liberal and in the middle would say, let’s try this; let’s see if this can control and bring under some reason of measure that the insurance companies could finally improve their act.

That is exactly what -- what this is. It is not a liberal or left-wing concept at all.

Continue reading »

(G-7 London Summit - even the protests were anemic)

With the G-20 Summit fading from view, I ran across a roundtable discussion of the recently ended G-7 Summit from June 10, 1984. Very tame by comparison to recent Economic Summit meetings, certainly the last two.

But back in 1984 it was all about the Cold War, with sprinklings of the state of the world economy kept off to the side.

Reagan was facing an election year and polishing up the Shining City was at the forefront.

During this Face The Nation program, Leslie Stahl asks several European correspondents their take on the meeting just ended.

Peter Jenkins (Political Editor – The Guardian): “There’s a suspicion now isn’t there, that what we’re seeing now is a President running for re-election and when he’s re-elected he may revert to the true Ronald Reagan. Now I don’t happen to think that will be the case, because I think that he will get sort of locked in to the new policy lines that he’s developing. But I think quite a few European people will reserve judgment until they see what Ronald Reagan looks like on his second Inauguration day."

And of course the interview with Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt wasn't going to veer off course, despite hints from Stahl that all was not harmonious among the G-7.

Showing cracks in the facade just wasn't going to happen.

(Union Busting in History - At least today they wear nice suits)

When the famous Patco strike unfolded and President Reagan promptly fired the strikers and crippled the union, it signaled open season on Unions and the beginning of busting, deregulation and a general dismantling of our labor laws and the subsequent fallout that's been reverberating all over our society ever since.

In 1983 we were in the midst of strikes at Continental Airlines and Greyhound Bus. Those strikes made it clear just how damaged our labor laws had become and how the face of Union Busting had changed.

On December 4, 1983 Face The Nation ran a panel that consisted of William Wimpersinger of the International Association of Machinists, Frank Navjot of Greyhound, Studs Terkel, John Nesbitt and Stephen Cabot discussing the state of labor in the midst of Reagan.

Leslie Stahl: “Do you think there is a national management conspiracy to bust or break the unions?”

Studs Terkel: “There doesn’t have to be a conspiracy, I wish it were as simple as that. No, the climate is set and the climate of course is set by the most outrageous anti-labor administration within memory. So we have not, Apple Blossom Time but certainly Union Busting Time”.

Stahl: “Yeah but the public seems to be behind . . .not just the administration . . . .

Terkel: “That’s precisely the point. I think there’s been a lobotomy performed down through the years as Unions and labor are concerned. Ever since World War 2 . .and it’s changed. Big business has become more sophisticated in the person of Mister Cabot say, in contrast to a guy Henry Ford hired in the 30s to fight UAW, Harry Bennett, who would hire thugs and ex-cons with baseball bats to bust the heads of picketers. Today you have smiling three-piece suit guys doing the same job. So much more sophisticated and the result the young members of the workforce have no idea how the minimum wage came to be. They think it came as an apple from the hand of Eve in the garden of Eden. It was bloodied heads that did it, and guys were blacklisted and so minimum wage came to be – that’s under attack today. There’s definitely a union busting climate, no doubt in my mind."

Considering it's 26 years later - the situation hasn't changed. It has only gotten worse, thanks to the Bush Administration. The systematic dismantling of those laws which protected workers from unfair and unethical practices have only become more prevalent with time - and the affects of greed and contempt have only become more entrenched.

It's not going to go away overnight - remember that.

(Note: The broadcast begins with breaking news of U.S. raids on Syrian positions in Lebanon and then goes to the original program)

Here's the person that President Obama has been holding out as an example of a Republican he can work with. Chuck Grassley's latest excuse for his the government is going to "pull the plug on grandma" nonsense. Obama made me do it.

From Think Progress:

Today on CBS’s Face the Nation, Grassley struggled to explain why he made that statement. Clearly uncomfortable with the question, Grassley stumbled over his words and even blamed President Obama for his word choice. He said that even though he knew the House bill “doesn’t intend to” kill senior citizens, he felt that he had a responsibility to nevertheless play to those fears.

[....]

Obama did use the phrase “pull the plug on grandma.” But he used it as an example of the lies his opponents were pushing around to scare the American public. Despite Grassley’s claim, he did not respond in “exactly the same way.” Obama said the right-wing myth was completely baseless; Grassley said that it was definitely something to be feared.

Grassley can't even stop the fear mongering while acknowledging there's no basis for it. Stay classy there Chuck.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

Ah, you've got to love these war mongering Republicans like Lindsey Graham, huh? Never found a war they didn't like. Not that I can say much better about way too many Democrats. Domestic spending to fix health care...the horror! We can't afford that. Money to go blow up some brown people on the other side of the world, hey, let those money coffers flow. We've got to stay safe from those turrists don't you know.

As The Political Carnival noted, Lindsey Graham just turned Don Rumsfeld's name into a verb. It's always so nice to see them admit screw ups after they've allowed America to go blow up both Iraq and Afghanistan. We didn't have any business invading either country IMO.

Schieffer: Sen. Graham, what about that? What about when we put our eye back on that area along the border? What's going to need to be done there, and how far do you think Congress is going to be willing to go?

Graham: Well, your question was what would you, what would Congress do if the President said we need more troops in Afghanistan. I'm one Republican that would support more troops in Afghanistan. I do believe, quite Frankly, I'll be shocked if more troops are not requested by our commanders. Afghanistan has deteriorated . In July of last year the President said, when he was a candidate for office that Afghanistan, not Iraq was the central battle in the war on terror.

I disagreed then because Iraq was hanging in the balance. Iraq is more stable. The President is right. Afghanistan is now the central battle front on the war on terror. That means more of everything. More troops, more political engagement, more economic engagement. Carl is right, our NATO allies need to send more troops. The Afghan army being doubled would be a $20 billion appropriation over five years.

America is now paying 90% of the Afghan army. NATO contributed $100 million when Gates passed the hat to help pay for the Afghan army, so I would urge our NATO allies to submit more troops, more funding and I'll be shocked if more troops are not needed. We must secure Afghanistan, and it is not secure now because we don't have enough troops.

Continue reading »

(Senator Kenneth Keating, 1962 - Politics with a civil tongue)

I don't think it's any surprise that Sunday Morning talk shows have changed dramatically over the years. Formats are no longer the same. Programs like Meet The Press and Face The Nation were only two of the almost dozen programs on most weekends. Usually a panel of three interviewers fielding questions to a single guest. The questions ran the gamut but they were always on point and they always dealt with real issues and real concerns to most people.

The days of news as info-tainment were a long ways off.

One of the more popular shows was a radio-only series run on CBS called "Capitol Cloakroom". This show, typical of their format, featuring George Herman, Wells Church and Nancy Dickerson was from May 6, 1962 featuring newly elected Senator Kenneth Keating (R-New York). The questions were regarding legislation introduced by the Kennedy Administration, including the Medicare Bill (which died the first time in 1962).

Keating gives his assessment of the first year of the JFK administration.

Wells Church(CBS News):

“It would appear to the casual viewer that things are in trouble. What’s the situation, really?”

Senator Keating:

“Well, not only a casual observer but I would think anyone intimately associated with the entire program would realize that the Administration program is in trouble. You could go right down through the list. The Medical Care for the Aged is opposed by the Democratic Chairman, both in the house and in the Senate of the committees that deal with that matter. The tax bill passed the House, but as Senator Byrd, the Chairman of the Finance committee in the Senate has said it doesn’t seem to have the support of anyone – I don’t know of anybody that’s for the tax bill, if the House bill were before the Senate today I’d vote against it."

No drama. No screaming. Nothing shrill. Just solid information about the goings on in Capitol Hill.

Kind of refreshing. Makes you wonder when did it all go wrong.

(h/t Heather)
Orrin Hatch was whining about bipartisanship on Face The Nation Sunday. Are you ready for another David Broder article criticizing the Democrats for not including the teabaggers? Rangel slaps little Orrin for lying about the parameters of the House bill. It's of course the House of Lords that is mucking up the works. The House has delivered a bill the the CBO likes.

HATCH: But it’s become so political. The House bill’s a total partisan bill. The health committee in the Senate, the Senate bill, is a total partisan bill. And our only hope, maybe, is to have Senator Baucus be able to put something together on the Finance Committee in the Senate.

RANGEL: We’ve been dealing with this bill for -- for over six months. And we’ve had hours of hearings. And the fact that it’s not bipartisan is not because we Democrats don’t want to have a bipartisan bill. We don’t have any Republican answers. It’s easy to say what you don’t like about this bill. But it would be far more constructive if we had something to work on. So I’m depending on my friend Orrin Hatch to... (LAUGHTER) ... at least in the Senate, to try to see, is there a Republican bill in the Senate? There certainly isn’t in the House. And it’s just wrong to say that this is a tax on small businesses. We exempt small business from a lot of the penalties. We give tax credits so that they’re able to hire and get people health care in small businesses. This is a tax on less than 1 percent of the wealthiest people in the United States of America. And so to say that this is a penalty on small business just isn’t so. Sure, we wish we had more time.

Hatch is lying again since Sen. Grassley has said he's been working with Baucus on a bill. Maybe he should confer with his own party in the Senate instead of going on TV and crying about being left out. He's a Senator, for the love of God. Maybe he could write another song for us?

Continue reading »

(PATCO - After this, Union Busting became trendy)

Today's episode puts us in August 2, 1981, literally hours before the members of PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) voted to go on strike. It features a Face The Nation interview with Senate Majority leader Howard Baker, brought out to do spin and denial that the Reagan administration had anything other than killing off this union in mind.

George Herman (CBS News): "Does this kind of government pressure historically play a successful role in ending strikes amicably and getting us back to work?"

Howard Baker: "No, they don’t. There’s a very poor record of judicial . . . maximum judicial effort to end strikes. But there’s also a precedent involved here that we’ve not dealt with before and that is, an avowed purpose of striking by Federal employees, who in this case are forbidden to strike by statute. And the reason for that is not capricious, the reason is the public safety, and to a remarkable extent the social welfare of t his country and its economic health depends on the air traffic controller. It depends on the ability of the air traffic network in this country to function. I would not favor frankly, arresting and jailing people who do not abide by the requirement of the law. But with the same token, short of that, I think the government should do everything that is necessary to make clear that we will not stand by and see the law violated, that we will not stand by and see the economy disrupted; the social fabric of this country rent, because the air traffic controllers will not go back to work, or will not stay at work. Now, they have grievances, they’ve got problems and I’m sympathetic. But they are holding a club of enormous weight and proportion over the head of America and they simply mustn’t do that."

The Air Traffic controllers had a legitimate beef - they wanted a 32 hour work week, rather than 40 because the pressure of maintaining a level of alertness essential to doing the job was crucial. And a full 40 hours took its toll and created a lot of unsafe scenarios.

In hindsight, it would almost seem the Reagan Administration had used this as a test case in their Union Busting campaign. Unions, along with regulations were a hindrance to the Reagan Administration. Over the next 8 years there would be a dismantling of just about every regulation that stood in the way of unbridled greed and corruption. It's important to realize the state our country and economy are now in are not the exclusive property of the Bush Administration - the roots and fundamentals go back to the 1980's, and most likely well before to the Nixon Administration. But it was The Reagan Years that created ultimately the most damage. PATCO was the first of many episodes. And of course, the outcome was not successful. But that's our next installment.

In addition to Face The Nation, I also tacked on The World This Week from CBS News, covering the events of the week of August 2, 1981. It appears to have been a rather busy week!

Sen. Jeff Sessions attacked People for the American Way on Face the Nation Sunday morning because they are exposing the right wing attacks on Judge Sonia Sotomayor by calling into question Frank Ricci's litigious nature.

SCHIEFFER: Let me just bring up something about the firefighters'case. This was the case where she ruled against the firefighters who claimed they were discriminated against because they didn't get a
promotion up here in Connecticut because minorities did not score high enough on the same test and the whole test was thrown out. Now the Supreme Court reversed her on that case. But People For The American Way, which is a liberal group that supports Sonia Sotomayor, is calling attention to what they call Frank Ricci. He's the central character in this, his litigious and background. And they say, they point out that that he has been fired from another fire department,that he claimed discrimination because he was dyslexic. Did they have a point here?

SESSIONS: No. That's just typical of the personal attacks of People For The American Way and the hard left that is supporting this nomination. These were 18 firefighters who filed this lawsuit, not just Frank Ricci, his name was the first one on the case but 18 of
them.

And when you show empathy for one party, Bob, you unnecessarily show a bias against another group. And this is the thing -- I just want to say I think Pat and I would agree on this. We need to think through how we handle these cases today. And do it in a way that is effective legally and her opinion was rejected by the Supreme Court. It was a very important opinion.

Exposing pertinent information about a man that is going in front of Congress to testify against Sonia is not a personal attack. It's called due diligence. Maybe he should read Dahlia Lithwick's piece on Mr. Ricci: The New Haven firefighter is no stranger to employment disputes.