Plame Lawsuit Dismissed

by: JimC

Thu Jul 19, 2007 at 16:42:06 PM EDT

http://www.washingto...

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds and said he would not express an opinion on the constitutional arguments. Bates dismissed the case against all defendants: Cheney, White House political adviser Karl Rove, former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

Wow. I can see an argument against CIA operatives suing the government, but once they outed her, didn't they breach the contract?

Is McCain the GOP's Lieberman?

by: JimC

Thu Jul 12, 2007 at 12:54:35 PM EDT

Weaver's negative impact is more difficult to define. He has been a foreboding personality, engaged in a poisonous rivalry with Bush adviser Karl Rove. After the 2000 election, Weaver appeared to change parties -- working for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark. He was back with McCain for the '08 campaign, controlling entree to the candidate and keeping away people with whom Weaver had past grievances. Rick Davis, an experienced political operative, gave up his lobbying practice to work full time for McCain, but he was kept at arm's length by Weaver.

Davis is the new manager. This part at the end really got me:

[McCain] has not been forgiven for apostasy from Republican orthodoxy on campaign finance, global warming and stem cell research.

http://www.washingto...

Look at those three issues! Again, it's Novak, but what an indictment of GOP primary voters if he's right. Three issues no one should argue about, and they won't "forgive" him.

So is McCain his party's Lieberman? I've always operated from the assumption that the GOP would rally to his longstanding rockbottom conservatism, but maybe I'm wrong, and they just hate him too much.

Your ball, Supreme Court

by: JimC

Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 15:47:24 PM EDT

Bush Won't Supply Subpoenaed Documents

By William Branigin and Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 28, 2007; 12:42 PM

The White House said today it would not comply with congressional subpoenas for documents and testimony relating to the firings of federal prosecutors last year, setting up a potential constitutional confrontation over its claim of executive privilege.

In a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees, President Bush's counsel, Fred F. Fielding, said the White House refuses to turn over documents that were subpoenaed by the two committees on June 13. The deadline for handing over most of them was today.

"I write at the direction of the President to advise and inform you that the President has decided to assert executive privilege and therefore the White House will not be making any production in response to these subpoenas for documents," Fielding wrote in the letter to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

http://www.washingto...

Riding the Third Rail

by: JimC

Thu Jun 21, 2007 at 10:52:19 AM EDT

As you know, Bush's efforts to create private accounts failed miserably in the face of unified Democratic opposition. But here's the thing: his solution was wrong, in my view, but he was essentially correct about the problem.

The baby boomers -- who have screwed up so much of our world, but I digress -- are going to start retiring in 2011 or so, and continue retiring at their inflated rate until 2029 (1964 is the last year of the baby boom, by some estimate). That's 18 years in which the single biggest generational group won't be working, but will be alive and collecting benefits. At some point, the number of nonworking people will exceed the number of working people. It doesn't take a mathematician to see the Social Security problem there.

No problem, they all drive BMWs and live in mcmansions, right? No -- their savings rate is abysmal. (Ours is worse.) 

Consider this article from Fortune -- http://money.cnn.com...

So in the mid-1980s Kotlikoff pioneered a new way of accounting that could do the math, and it quickly won the approval of his profession. (Jargon-loving economists call it ?generational accounting.?) Kotlikoff?s work revealed the sheer enormousness of the financial hole the government would face. Back then it all seemed a long way off, but today, with the first boomers reaching retirement age in five years, his message has taken on new urgency. In the intervening years he?s been writing books, testifying before Congress, and doing everything he can to get the message out, but still nothing has been done to resolve the problem. In fact, the way Kotlikoff sees it, we?re making matters worse.

(Snip)

Using the basic principles of Kotlikoff?s generational accounting, they added up everything the government expects to spend--social security benefits, debt-service payments, salaries, and so forth--far into the future and put it in today?s dollars. Then they added up all the income the government expects to earn--taxes, income from government assets--in the future in today?s dollars. To perform the calculations, Smetters and Gokhale had to make certain key assumptions about the rate of growth in government spending, taxes, medical costs, and hundreds of other things. Since they wanted to be as conservative as possible, they took their numbers from the government?s own budget. In one particular case--medical costs--they chose a much more optimistic number, opting for 1% growth above GDP rather than the historical rate of 3%.

The gap between payments and income came in at $44.2 trillion. think about $44 trillion for a moment. It?s probably the biggest thing you?ve never heard of--and certainly the biggest number FORTUNE will publish in its pages this year.

I recommend my friend's blog (http://www.not-old.b...), where he writes about issues like this (and occasionally other things).

What is the relevance to Democrats? Social Security is our party's legacy -- the GOP hates it, and its most extreme members want to eliminate it. We have to fix it before they break it or it breaks itself by going broke.

My suggestion? Raise the retirement age to 70, grandfathering in workers, say, 55 and up. That sucks if you're 54, but it's not so bad if you're 44.

Thoughts?

GOTV

by: JimC

Fri Jun 15, 2007 at 10:34:19 AM EDT

Asked about lower voter turnout, he said:

Social scientists are far from answering this puzzle, but recent experiments suggest some interesting hypotheses.  Here is a bit of background.  Voting in the 19th century was an all-day affair.  People would mill about for hours, socializing with friends, imbibing free booze supplied by the political parties, and watching their neighbors cast what was until the 1880s a public vote.  The advent of secret balloting did not bring about an immediate drop in turnout.  In fact, the effects of the secret ballot were initially fairly modest.  But the same social movement that cleaned up elections by instituting the secret ballot also instituted the rule that said that party workers had to remain a good distance from the place where balloting occurred.  That innovation seems to have undermined parties' incentives to supply booze and food; voting gradually became a sober affair in which voters cast ballots quickly and quietly.

I'm not advocating free beer, other than at victory parties, but this relates to the canvassing I was talking about, and making the big tent a little bigger and safely bigger than theirs. It's about community.

During one of my mother's campaigns (for alderman), I was told on Election Day a voter was at a bar, and that I should call him there. I decided against it, because I worried about rumors about us calling bars looking for votes (which, in retrospect, would have been fine). Fortunately, she won that one, so I don't have to second-guess my decision.

It's About the Middle Class

by: JimC

Thu Jun 14, 2007 at 15:49:28 PM EDT

An important piece of his message was outreach. For example, we tend to write off evangelical voters -- too conservative. But many of them are working people who care about things like health insurance.

I know saying "grassroots" is a bit redundant to NH voters, but his message was quite clear: We need a precinct captain for every precinct in the country, and he had several anecdotes about Democrats getting elected in places like Mississippi and Colorado.

Last year, I was involved in Victory '06, the Massachusetts version of this. I felt a little silly about the prospect of trudging around my pretty conservative town stumping for the Democratic nominee to be named later -- but immediately I shed that notion, because the first few voters I met, unprompted, were trashing Romney to me. Hmm, I thought.

In the end, Deval's overwhelming victory missed only a few towns, mine one of them. But he did win one precinct -- care to guess which one?

The key is -- almost done here -- it has to be someone local. We can't fly to Ohio, we need to find people in Ohio. Howard Dean is committed to this, and Dukakis and others are talking to him about it, so we may see something "official" from the DNC soon. Meanwhile, think about who you know -- even in Wyoming.

Thanks.

"I've never met Mitt Romney"

by: JimC

Thu Jun 14, 2007 at 15:11:51 PM EDT

The article puts slightly too much emphasis on his anti-GOP message, but the headline is accurate on his main message about canvasssing (see separate diary).

The title here refers to a story he told about a state rep., an important committee chair (not Ways and Means, but an important commitee), who (like so many of us) got his start on a Dukakis campaign as a precinct captain.

Dukakis was saying something about Romney, and the chair said, "I've never met Mitt Romney." Dukakis was stunned.

Now, it's somewhat natural for any administration to have some disdain for the legislative branch -- but Romney has something more (or maybe less) than disdain. He was a complete no-show as governor.

Shortly after being elected, he announced he would take no salary. (Message: I'm too rich for this.) Did he refund it to the state? No, he actually reallocated it to some of his top aides. (Message: These people are more important, more worthy of extra money than the previous losers.)

After his only accomplishment, taking out Billy Bulger -- then out of power, seeking redemption at UMass -- Romney spent 2004 campaigning for Bush but also in a very well funded (by him) but disastrous attempt to buid the state GOP. Net result, despite a unified message ("government reform"), some nice websites, and more or less reasonable candidates -- loss of one GOP State Senate seat. Having tried once, Romney abandoned the effort.

Almost immediately after the 2004 election, he began running for president. He muttered things about his "evolving" anti-abortion position. According to the Globe he spent more than 200 days outside Massachusetts in 2006, often cracking jokes about the state. On one memorable day, Romney was in Ohio bashing the Commonwealth while Ohio Gov. Bob Taft was in Boston, courting biotech firms to relocate to Ohio. No takers (yet), but no one failed to notice the contrast.

Watching Dukakis talk about being annoyed by graffiti on the turnpike, I remembered what it's like to have a governor who governs. Dukakis wanted to be governor, he was proud of it. He mentioned that he regrets that state colleges don't have co-op programs (like Northeastern, where he now teaches). He's still thinking about the state.

All Mitt Romney has ever thought about is himself. He's a brilliant businessman, but he would be an absolute disaster as president.

Dog Eat Blog

by: JimC

Mon Jun 11, 2007 at 12:36:08 PM EDT

1. Blogs are not journals in the journalism sense.

2. This is not a problem per se. However, because blogs so frequently take on the mainstream media and present themselves as superior to it by implication, they force the debate. So here we are.

3. The mainstream media are bad. But, their allegedly monolithic role in shaping our reality and subsequently our lives has been grossly overstated. An argument that was restricted to academia has been half-absorbed and thrown far and wide, irresponsibly. And by irresponsibly, I mean, the so-called monolithic media can be involved to buttress any argument the writer/speaker already believes. Conservatives, for example, actually claim to trust information less if it's in The New York Times.

4. The mainstream media are good -- for the most part. As Hunter Thompson once said, The New York Times lives up to its reputation on nine stories out of ten. The Washington Post is an excellent paper, and from there, you get a pretty mixed bag. TV, of course, blows -- but occasionally you get a good investigative piece, especially from Brian Ross of ABC.

5. Fox and other right-wing outlets are a problem. But much of their success is due to outraged liberals watching incessantly. Whenever I hear about something offensive Jay Severin says (he's a Boston area radio wingnut), it's from a liberal.

6. So where does this leave blogs? Well, where they are -- waging a textbook PR campaign, drawing mainstream media attention by discussing mainstream reporters constantly. Recently, Joe Klein struck back at Salon's in-house blogger Glenn Greenwald, and of course Greenwald fired back. I called it The Circular Journalism Firing Squad and got roundly whacked by Greenwald and his readers. I stand by my point.

7. Further, where does that leave political blogs? Well, not to root for the home team, but I think Blue Hampshire is a good mix -- opinion, yes, but a fair amount of reporting as well. An awful lot of blogs are just someone spouting (I know, I have one).

8. Shouldn't we be out door knocking or phone banking or otherwise campaigning rather than blogging? Yes and no. Party activism tends to omit preaching to the converted, and the converted need to hear it, so I think one benefit of what happens here is the converted holding each other up.

9. Does blogging matter? In my view, yes -- but my view is based somewhat on their massive popularity (which was waning, but I'm not sure where it stands now). I think it's a more complicated question than it's usually portrayed as. For example, if one believes blogs can do good, then one has to concede they can do harm. I would go further -- changing from one to I is deliberate -- I think they HAVE done harm. They have been a factor in the [cliche warning] increasing partisanship. Think about it: you know Kos doesn't necessarily speak for you, but don't you tend to assume right-wing blogs speak for the GOP? It's only natural, I think, and they do the same to us. To be clear, the free speech gain of blogs is a net gain for society, but they can do harm, and in my view, some have.

10. Is this is an arbitrary tenth point to avoid having nine? More or less, but you could say that about any of them. You could also say it's my main point: I prefer blogs that focus on the government to blogs that focus on journalists, for the simple reason that journalists have enough problems without worrying about what some blogger thinks. [Full disclosure: I have a journalism degree from beautiful Keene State College, but my current job is not in journalism.] However, this is inescapable, because bloggers are writers, and writers are always going to focus on what other writers are doing, especially if they're getting paid for it.

Back to work ... any thoughts?

Energy

by: JimC

Tue May 29, 2007 at 16:31:21 PM EDT

1. Every president since Carter has pledged to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. None have succeeded. How will you succeed?

2. Would you support development of alternative energies? Would you support limited tax breaks for consumer adoption of alternative energy sources, such as solar power?

3. What about the SUVs clogging our highways? What actions would you consider now to avoid a crisis later?

4. Regarding nuclear power, the genie is out of the bottle, since 10% to 25% of our power comes from nuclear power plants. Will you revisit nuclear regulation, or would you consider aggressive monitoring of nuclear waste disposal?

5. The cleanest, most efficient coal-burning plants waste two-thirds of coal's potential energy. Why do we continue to burn coal?

6. Doesn't the worldwide energy crisis represent a great opportunity for American ingenuity? How will you make us a net exporter of energy?

"The Uniter" Does It Again

by: JimC

Fri May 25, 2007 at 14:18:45 PM EDT

The Democratic Party has been abused and betrayed for over six years, from the day in 2000 when we WON the presidency (yes, even in Florida) and then didn't get it. Then Bush, quite logically actually for his purposes, consolidated power, listening only to his own party. As recently as 2006, Democrats couldn't call a hearing on Capitol Hill. And I don't mean they couldn't call a hearing on Halliburton -- they couldn't call a hearing on roads and bridges.

Alongside this, right-wing media rose to become mainstream, and the so-called liberal media bashed us as losers at every turn. Bush's numbers went into the 90s and stayed there for a long time.

So we emerge from this, going beyond all predictions and taking back both houses of Congress. But -- the margins remain narrow, and the war -- the easy war, sold on false pretenses, after which we would be "greeted as liberators" -- rages on.

Like his father tried to do with the flag, Bush made the war a PARTISAN issue. How hard must it be for a guy like John Murtha to say "our army is broken?" (That's a paraphrase.) And how does it feel for the entire Democratic caucus, which has a proud tradition of being the party of FDR and Truman, to suddenly be faced with a partisan war?

Of course there's confusion and disagreement. I hear people trotting out generals to buttress our arguments. The immigration bill is a mess, we have 45 million uninsured, Social Security is going to run out -- these are our issues, and we're allowing the war to cloud everything.

So this is why I'm prepared to cut them slack, and I'm also preprared to concede that I occasionally cut them too much slack. But I still trust the small D democratic process to work in the capital D Democratic Party, and I am proud that we don't march lockstep with the leadership the way the OTHER party does.

John, If You Get Out of That Hospital Bed and Walk

by: JimC

Fri May 18, 2007 at 14:05:45 PM EDT

What follows are two excerpts from Salon.com:

Headline: Did Card and Gonzales Break the Law?

"Neil Katyal, the Georgetown law professor who served as a national security advisor in Bill Clinton's Justice Department, tells Time that "executive branch rules require sensitive classified information to be discussed in specialized facilities that are designed to guard against the possibility that officials are being targeted for surveillance outside of the workplace." Is a hospital room at George Washington such a "specialized facility"? Not exactly, Katyal says. "The hospital room of a cabinet official is exactly the type of target ripe for surveillance by a foreign power," he explains."

And this ran yesterday:

A reporter asked Chuck Schumer today whether the Senate Judiciary Committee will be inviting the attorney general to testify about what he remembers of the hospital visit. Schumer's perfectly reasonable response: "Well, that's something that we'll have to consider. But given his past testimony -- [the] `I don't knows,' his evasive answers, to put it even charitably -- it's something we'd have to consider, but I'm not sure it would produce anything more."

On WBUR this morning, Jack Beatty (pride of Hanover) raised an interesting point. Everyone has sort of assumed they wanted Ashcroft to sign off on the wiretaps. But what if it was something else that we don't know about? It could have been something much worse.

Politics Is Contentious

by: JimC

Fri May 18, 2007 at 09:51:07 AM EDT

The blood pressure is definitely up on BlueHampshire this week, and I'm not sure why -- maybe beautiful Tuesdays and Wednesdays followed by rainy weekends, maybe summer impending and winter's work not done -- and yes, I am projecting.

Here is my pledge: I will not bash any other Democrat, other than to disagree with them on an issue. I will reserve all my bashing for the GOP, and even that will be confined to issues as much as possible.

Will you join me, or will you help me amend my pledge so that it suits our purpose, namely the peaceful takeover of the three branches of the federal government? One down, two to go ...

Footnotes

by: JimC

Thu May 10, 2007 at 09:36:00 AM EDT

http://www.boston.co...

Internet and politics an uneasy fit
Campaigns strain to control message

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff  |  May 10, 2007

"After Obama announced his candidacy earlier this year, however, his campaign decided Anthony's page was too valuable to leave to an outsider and got MySpace to hand over the Web address. After initially suggesting it would pay him for his work, Anthony said, the campaign withdrew the offer, and the dispute became so heated that Obama called him last week. The Illinois senator expressed appreciation for the work, Anthony said, but explained that he had to stand by the decision of his aides."

Interestingly, the story says Anthony is "still loyal" to Obama. That was not the case when I read Anthony's MySpace post, but I guess he has come around.

And on an unrelated note, I'm going to disappear for a while. Nothing personal, I just have a project to finish, and this is too distracting (in a good but time-consuming way).

Rock on ...

Getting Beyond the War

by: JimC

Tue May 08, 2007 at 15:32:26 PM EDT

But the day the war ends will come before we know it, so I'm wondering what you think the agenda should focus on.

Here's my short list:

-- Insuring the uninsured

-- Reducing emissions and foreign energy imports (including a nationwide public transportation task force)

-- Infrastructure funding, a Superfund of sorts for problem areas (New Orleans, first and foremost)

-- A "digital divide" task force

And there are others, but I think that is a fair starting point. You'll note the absence of "Education," but that's mainly because I'm tired of "Education Presidents" and "Education Governors" talking about education and doing nothing about it.

GOP Debate: One Nation Under Reagan

by: JimC

Fri May 04, 2007 at 10:26:28 AM EDT

"..." indicates an omission.

MR. MATTHEWS: Mayor Giuliani, how do we get back to Ronald Reagan's "morning in America"?

MR. GIULIANI: ? So we should solve our immigration issue, including illegal immigration, from our strengths not our weaknesses. We're a country that has the greatest health-care system in the world.

(Actually we are 37th, according to the people who study such things.)

MR. MATTHEWS: Mayor Giuliani, on that point. [Dealing with Iran.]

MR. GIULIANI:  ? Ahmadinejad is clearly irrational. He has to understand it's not an option. He cannot have nuclear weapons. And he has to look at an American president, and he has to see Ronald Reagan. Remember the -- they looked in Ronald Reagan's eyes, and two minutes they released the hostages.

MR. VANDEHEI: Governor Romney, Daniel Dukovnic (sp) from Walnut Creek, California, wants to know: What do you dislike most about America?

MR. ROMNEY: Gosh. I love America. I'm afraid I'm going to be at a loss for words, because America for me is not just our rolling mountains and hills and streams and great cities, it's the American people. And the American people are the greatest people in the world. What makes America the greatest nation in the world is the heart of the American people -- hard-working, innovative, risk-taking, God- loving, family-oriented American people.

It's that optimism we thank Ronald Reagan for. Thank you, Mrs. Reagan, for opening up this place in his memory for us. It is that optimism about this great people that makes us the greatest nation on Earth.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay. Congressman, Bill Clinton back home.

REP. HUNTER: You know, Bill Clinton cut the U.S. Army by almost 50 percent. In this war against terror, he's the wrong guy to have in there.

And incidentally, on the Schiavo case, you know Ronald Reagan said on the question of life, when there's a question, error on the side of life. I think Congress did the right thing.

("Despite these problems, which put a drag on military readiness, statistical measures of combat preparedness-the condition of equipment, training standards met by pilots and troops, aptitude scores and experience levels of personnel-compared relatively favorably with those in the Reagan years. And by the end of Mr. Clinton's second term, increases in pay and innovations in the force structure helped to resolve some of the morale, recruiting and retention problems that had been serious in the mid-'90s". -- Michael E. O'Hanlon, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, in a January 2002 article titled "Winning With the Military Clinton Left Behind")

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay. I got to go. Senator McCain? [Question was for closing thoughts.]

SEN. MCCAIN: I would not have mismanaged the war. It was badly mismanaged for four years. Now we have a new strategy that I think and pray every night will succeed. And I would have vetoed spending bill after spending bill after pork-barrel project after pork-barrel project in the tradition of President Reagan.

(Reagan increased federal spending)

MR. VANDEHEI: Congressman Paul, Carrie (sp) from Connecticut asks, do you trust the mainstream media?

REP. PAUL: (Laughs.) Some of them. (Laughter.) But I trust the Internet a lot more.

GOP Debate

by: JimC

Thu May 03, 2007 at 11:19:22 AM EDT

Democrats and Guns

by: JimC

Wed May 02, 2007 at 09:24:48 AM EDT

Richardson and Guns

by: JimC

Tue May 01, 2007 at 11:24:40 AM EDT

But I read considerable coverage of it, and a lot of it made only passing mention of Richardson's warning against gun control.

Putting aside Virginia Tech for the moment, would someone care to defend Richardson's stance? The regional argument -- as residents of a state where the average family owns 2.5 guns (that figure may be slightly dated) will surely agree -- is crap.

But that said, his comment re: Gonzales, in which he admitted he wasn't attacking him because he's Hispanic, was a winner. It was the sort of candor that I think people appreciate, even if the sentiment isn't exactly PC.

Who Do You Want to Nuke?

by: JimC

Fri Apr 27, 2007 at 13:25:53 PM EDT

From the NYT:

While most of his fellow candidates were content to chuckle at Mr. Gravel's meanderings and not engage him, he could be relentless to a point where his stagemates could not resist. For instance, what was the poor Senator Barack Obama to do when Mr. Gravel keep poking at him, saying, "Tell me, Barack. Who - Barack, who's - who do you want to nuke?"

"I'm not planning to nuke anyone right now, Mike; I promise you," Mr. Obama reassured him.

"Good, good," Mr. Gravel replied, satisfied, for now. "We're safe then for a while."

Full story at http://www.nytimes.c...

Debate Poll, Fixed

by: JimC

Wed Apr 25, 2007 at 16:38:21 PM EDT