With just two months until the November elections, the White House is seriously weighing a package of business tax breaks – potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars – to spur hiring and combat Republican charges that Democratic tax policies hurt small businesses, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.
Among the options under consideration are a temporary payroll-tax holiday and a permanent extension of the now-expired research-and-development tax credit, which rewards companies that conduct research into new technologies within the United States.
Administration officials have struggled to develop new economic policies and an effective message to blunt expected Republican gains in Congress and defuse complaints from Democrats that President Obama is fumbling the issue most important to voters. Following Obama’s vacation and focus on foreign policy in recent weeks, White House advisers have arranged a series of economic events for the president next week, including two trips to swing states and a news conference.
The economy is struggling mightily. Some 15 million people remain unemployed. The Federal Reserve has been slow to act and still is not doing much. The Senate has been unable to find the 60 votes needed to pass anything but minor bills.
The best hope for a short-term economic plan that can win bipartisan support is a tax cut — and not the permanent extension of George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which have been dominating the debate lately. Such an extension is unlikely to win many Democratic votes. Republicans, meanwhile, are unlikely to support more spending, like the national infrastructure project President Obamahas been mentioning.
A well-devised tax cut could be different. Cutting taxes has been the heart of the Republican economic program for 30 years, and last year’s stimulus bill showed that Mr. Obama was open to tax cuts.
The question, then, is what kind of cut can put people back to work quickly.
The last 30 years offer some pretty good answers. For one thing, a permanent reduction in tax rates focused on the affluent — along the lines of those 2001 Bush tax cuts — does little to lift growth in the short term. An across-the-board, one-time cut — like the one that Mr. Bush signed in 2008 or that Mr. Obama signed last year — does more.
But the most effective tax cut for putting people back to work quickly is one that businesses and households get only if they spend money. Last year’s cash-for-clunkers program was an example. So was a recent bipartisan tax credit for businesses that hired workers who had been unemployed for months. Perhaps the broadest example is a temporary cut in the payroll tax for businesses, which reduces the cost of employing people.
The Post suggests that the bill would be introduced before the midterm elections. The article quotes William Galston of the Brookings Institution explaining that the timing proves that the decision wouldn’t be motivated by fears about the midterms: “Substantively, there is nothing they could do between now and Election Day that would have any measurable effect on the economy. Nothing.”
If the idea is to make it easier for companies to hire new workers in an attempt to revive the weak labor market, a payroll tax cut would be a good first step. The administration, however, is also toying with a few other policies that would undermine the effect of the payroll tax cut. For example, if the Democrats do allow the Bush tax cuts for top individual earners to expire, the burden will fall onto small business owners — counteracting the effect of the payroll tax cuts mere months after they’re implemented.
When all else fails, Democrats throw in the towel on their loopy economic policies and resort to tax cuts — just like the Republicans wanted in February 2009. We learn:
With just two months until the November elections, the White House is seriously weighing a package of business tax breaks — potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars — to spur hiring and combat Republican charges that Democratic tax policies hurt small businesses, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.
Among the options under consideration are a temporary payroll-tax holiday and a permanent extension of the now-expired research-and-development tax credit, which rewards companies that conduct research into new technologies within the United States.
A couple of problems with that. First, it won’t improve the economy before the election. The voice of sanity for the Democrats, William Galston, says: “Substantively, there is nothing they could do between now and Election Day that would have any measurable effect on the economy. Nothing.” Second, this renders the Obama economy policy entirely incoherent. If the economy is worsening and they admit tax cuts are good, why eliminate the Bush tax cuts? What sense does it make to give with one hand and take away with the other?
We’ll see what the Democrats come up with. As Milton Freidman advised, “I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.” But conservatives should insist that in addition to any tax cuts Obama proposes, the Bush tax cuts must be retained. Otherwise, we are merely treading water.
Given the mixed signals of late, it’s worth noting that Politicohas a report similar to the Post‘s, explaining that administration officials are “mulling a raft of emergency fixes to stimulate the economy before the midterms, including an extension of the research and development tax credit and new infrastructure spending.”
It’s hard to evaluate any of these ideas without more details, and for that matter, no matter what the White House recommends, Congress’ inability to function makes progress unlikely for the foreseeable future.
That said, it’s at least somewhat encouraging to see a shift away from “everything’s on track, so just be patient.” Moreover, there’s obviously real political salience to even just having the debate — with two months before the midterms, it’s worth having the two parties fight over how to help the economy grow. If Republicans intend to kill every proposal the White House offers, that should matter to voters, too.
The Post‘s report concluded that President Obama “could roll out additional measures as soon as next week.” Stay tuned.
1) Practically, this isn’t going to do anything before the mid-terms. These sorts of changes take time to roll out, and there’s no way they could get anything into effect soon enough to make an actual difference in peoples’ lives.
2) Whether you think this works as a campaign tactic depends on whether you think people will think that it is going to work. On that question, I have no idea. People do love cash in their pockets, however.
3) Politically, this has one major drawback: it’s going to put huge holes in the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Since I think those trust funds are meaningless accounting devices, I don’t think this has any practical relevance. But as you will be able to see in my comment section about twenty minutes after I hit “post,” people have a very deep emotional attachment to the idea of the trust funds, which politicians cannot easily trifle with.
4) Practically, I think the actual impact will be minimal, at least on employment. It might help people and companies to rebuild their balance sheets (or let struggling companies ride things out a while longer). But the main constraint on business hiring is uncertainty, and a payroll tax isn’t going to change that. Obviously, some workers will get hired at the margin–but if your labor is so marginal that you need a payroll tax holiday to make it economical, then I’d expect that as soon as the payroll tax holiday is over, you’ll probably be fired. Hence, even if you get the job, you’re going to want to save as much of your wages as possible, blunting the multiplier effect we hope to get out of stimulus.
Really? I have a proposal. Suppose the holiday costs the trust fund $400 billion. Just transfer that $400 billion from the general budget to the trust fund.
In fact, we could immediately put $100 trillion gazillion dollars in the trust funds from the general budget, and then they would have enough money to pay Social Security forever. Supposedly.
The trust fund is a measure of what we are promising to pay future Social Security recipients. To me, it is nothing more than that. But what is going to fund Social Security down the road is not the promises that we pour into it today. It is the taxes that people will pay in the future.
I have tried to explain Social Security for a long time. See here, for example. But Megan is probably right. I honestly thought that among trained economists it was understood that the trust fund has no real significance. I thought that anyone who went to a respectable graduate school learned the overlapping generations model, which sometimes gets taught as a model of money but is most evidently a model of Social Security. However, Paul Krugman at least pretends to act as if he never learned that.
There’s something about working in politics which starts making people think everything is about perception rather than reality. I think a full payroll tax holiday would be fine as long as it wasn’t yet another excuse to try to destroy Social Security, but an employer only one would be truly awful on substance, impact, and message. More help for the overlords, no help for you!
But apparently the geniuses in charge think the problem is that “stimulus” and “bailout” have become scary bad words. The problem is that the economy sucks and people don’t have any money.
An oil rig off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico has exploded, sending all 13 oil workers into the Gulf, one of whom remains missing. A search and rescue effort by the U.S. Coast Guard is already underway. The explosion comes shortly after oil finally stopped flowing into the Gulf (for the moment) from another rig that had been severely damaged by a large explosion. Fortunately, early reports say this explosion occurred at an oil rig that is not currently producing, drastically reducing the potential for further environmental damage.
Despite strong encouragement from many liberals and environmental activists, that crisis did not secure sweeping energy reform legislation or the full Democratic backing of long-sought cap and trade proposals. Even President Obama’s offshore drilling moratorium was initially knocked down by a state court. In the wake of that long and difficult episode, many are greeting this most recent event with deep, almost macabre cynicism about our ability to learn from disaster.
DHS claims that the rig wasn’t producing oil and gas when the explosion hit. Time to breathe easy? Maybe not: CNN’s Ed Henry is hearing from the Coast Guard that the platform wasin production and that it … wasn’t equipped with a standard blowout preventer. (The crew did, however, allegedly start emergency shutdown before bailing out.) As of an hour ago, the rig was still on fire but I’m not sure what the status is now. Jindal is set to speak within an hour or so. Stand by for updates galore.
Update: A tip from a reader who, unlike me, knows what he’s talking about:
If the platform is not a drilling platform then it doesn’t need a traditional blowout preventer. The difference being is that with drilling the oil is being forced out at a high rate, therefor need a blowout preventer that can hold back all that pressure. If this platform is a production platform, all it needs is something to stop the flow in the pipes which is flowing with much lower pressure.
Update: How much oil and gas was the platform churning out? CNN:
“Mariner has notified and is working with regulatory authorities in response to this incident,” the statement said. “The cause is not known, and an investigation will be undertaken. During the last week of August 2010, production from this facility averaged approximately 9.2 million cubic feet of natural gas per day and 1,400 barrels of oil and condensate.”
The Coast Guard is saying that a mile-long oil sheen is spreading from the site off an offshore petroleum platform that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana.
The site of the explosion is west of where BP’s massive spill occurred.
Update: Ah, a comforting explanation for the sheen. It’s not oil bubbling up from the seabed; it’s oil that had already been captured and stored on the rig.
Also, Mariner indicated that the fire — which was first reported to the Coast Guard by workers on a nearby rig around 9:20 a.m. (10:20 a.m. ET) — was not sparked by an explosion. It started at one of the platform’s seven active wells, the company said, though its cause is under investigation…
Jindal said that Mariner has told him that all seven wells have been closed off and that what is burning now is from fuel in storage, and not from an active leak.
The Coast Guard says it has rescued all 13 workers and, so far, it looks like we’re not in for a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, according to New Orleans Times-Picayune. This rig, which is owned by Mariner Energy, was in much shallower waters–340 feet deep rather than a mile.
And while the well was producing oil, Mariner officials say that workers shut down the operation before evacuating. The officials also said they observed no leaking oil during a flyover, conducted while the rig was still burning.
The Times-Picayune reports that the drilling “had nothing to do with the drilling operations that fell under the government’s controversial moratorium after the BP spill.” But oil and gas industry officials remain worried this incident will set back efforts to end the moratorium:
…oil and gas industry insiders, who have fought for months to get the moratorium lifted, are concerned that the accident will be perceived as something that a moratorium would prevent.
“It’s certainly disheartening, and it is going to be yet another challenge for the industry,” said Chris John, president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association.”We were making some progress on the moratorium. This certainly will complicate matters.”
Yes it will. And I can’t say it upsets me. While this incident may not strengthen the case for the existing moratorium, it should certainly remind people that there are hazards inherent in offshore oil operations–and that we should be working harder to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
Update: Coast Guard officials are now saying they did not see an oil slick on the water, following reports suggesting they had.
Aside from snark about the irony that this didn’t happen when oil men Bush and Cheney were at the helm, I’m not sure what to make of this. Clearly, federal regulation of Gulf oil drilling has been spotty — and that certainly extends to the Bush-Cheney tenure, when this well was drilled. And some companies seem to have markedly more violations than others, with no meaningful penalty.
Why should we care? We all know that oil apparently just goes away. Just like Gulf War I prepared us for Gulf War II, so has Gulf Spill I inured me to this latest.
Also I don’t really need to think about the fact that Mariner Energy, which owns the blown-up oil rig, has at least two top executives who worked at Enron, right?
Luckily, it was non-producing and there are no reported deaths. But man, oil companies really shouldn’t have listened to that sinister Explode-O-Rig 5000™ salesman.
Police shot and killed a man armed with several bombs who held three hostages Wednesday at the Discovery Communications building. Authorities said the hostages were safe.
At least one device on the man’s body went off when he was shot inside the building in suburban Washington, D.C., Montgomery County police Chief Thomas Manger said. Police were searching the building for other explosive devices.
Manger said no one was believed to have been injured other than the gunman, whom SWAT officers shot about 4:50 p.m. ET because officials “believed the hostages were in danger.” The building in the close-in suburb of Washington was safely evacuated, including the Discovery Kids Place day care center, police said.
An NBC News producer who called the building to find out what was going on had a brief telephone conversation with the man when he came on the line unexpectedly. He identified himself as James J. Lee and said, “I have a gun and I have a bomb. … I have several bombs strapped to my body ready to go off.”
NBC News informed Montgomery County authorities of the conversation as the producer spoke to the man for about 10 minutes. NBC News did not report the conversation until the hostage situation had been resolved.
There’s been a breaking hostage situation at the Discovery Channel office in Silver Spring, MD all morning. The alleged gunman reportedly has explosives strapped to his body and there have been reports of at least one hostage. The office has been evacuated, including many children at a day care in the building.
WUSA 9, a local TV affiliate, in DC is pointing to this website called “Save the Planet Protest” as the site of the alleged gunman’s unconfirmed demands.
In case the site goes down, here’s the manifesto in full:
The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY:
1. The Discovery Channel and it’s affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s “My Ishmael” pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!
2. All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.
3. All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease. There is no sense in advertising weapons of mass-destruction anymore. Instead, talk about ways to disassemble civilization and concentrate the message in finding SOLUTIONS to solving global military mechanized conflict. Again, solutions solutions instead of just repeating the same old wars with newer weapons. Also, keep out the fraudulent peace movements. They are liars and fakes and had no real intention of ending the wars. ALL OF THEM ARE FAKE! On one hand, they claim they want the wars to end, on the other, they are demanding the human population increase. World War II had 2 Billion humans and after that war, the people decided that tripling the population would assure peace. WTF??? STUPIDITY! MORE HUMANS EQUALS MORE WAR!
4. Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn’t, then get hell off the planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??
5. Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)
6. Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy. Find ways so that people don’t build more housing pollution which destroys the environment to make way for more human filth! Find solutions so that people stop breeding as well as stopping using Oil in order to REVERSE Global warming and the destruction of the planet!
7. Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people’s brains until they get it!!
8. Saving the Planet means saving what’s left of the non-human Wildlife by decreasing the Human population. That means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies! You’re the media, you can reach enough people. It’s your resposibility because you reach so many minds!!!
9. Develop shows that will correct and dismantle the dangerous US world economy. Find solutions for their disasterous Ponzi-Casino economy before they take the world to another nuclear war.
10. Stop all shows glorifying human birthing on all your channels and on TLC. Stop Future Weapons shows or replace the dialogue condemning the people behind these developments so that the shows become exposes rather than advertisements of Arms sales and development!
11. You’re also going to find solutions for unemployment and housing. All these unemployed people makes me think the US is headed toward more war.
Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture.
For every human born, ACRES of wildlife forests must be turned into farmland in order to feed that new addition over the course of 60 to 100 YEARS of that new human’s lifespan! THIS IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FOREST CREATURES!!!! All human procreation and farming must cease!
It is the responsiblity of everyone to preserve the planet they live on by not breeding any more children who will continue their filthy practices. Children represent FUTURE catastrophic pollution whereas their parents are current pollution. NO MORE BABIES! Population growth is a real crisis. Even one child born in the US will use 30 to a thousand times more resources than a Third World child. It’s like a couple are having 30 babies even though it’s just one! If the US goes in this direction maybe other countries will too!
Also, war must be halted. Not because it’s morally wrong, but because of the catastrophic environmental damage modern weapons cause to other creatures. FIND SOLUTIONS JUST LIKE THE BOOK SAYS! Humans are supposed to be inventive. INVENT, DAMN YOU!!
The world needs TV shows that DEVELOP solutions to the problems that humans are causing, not stupify the people into destroying the world. Not encouraging them to breed more environmentally harmful humans.
Saving the environment and the remaning species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.
The humans? The planet does not need humans.
You MUST KNOW the human population is behind all the pollution and problems in the world, and YET you encourage the exact opposite instead of discouraging human growth and procreation. Surely you MUST ALREADY KNOW this!
I want Discovery Communications to broadcast on their channels to the world their new program lineup and I want proof they are doing so. I want the new shows started by asking the public for inventive solution ideas to save the planet and the remaining wildlife on it.
These are the demands and sayings of Lee.
Another D.C. tv news affiliate, WJLA, says that police scanner traffic indicates that the gunman is an “Asian male” and possible ex-employee of Discovery.
This is the kind of thing that sparks a three-part reaction in the opinionoverse.
1) Investigation. Who is this guy? Right and left partisans immediately worry that it’s one of their team (defined loosely — a white liberal might worry that it’s a Muslim radical who’ll prove Frank Gaffney right).
2) Revelation. The identity of the perp is discovered — in this case, we find that it’s an anti-human population activist. Everyone pretends that their previous theories about what might be happening were never really serious.
3) Polarization. The people whose ideology most matches the perp cry loudly that he is crazy and has nothing to do with them. The people whose ideology is antithetical to the perp’s — in this case, conservative skeptics of environmentalism — subtly hint that the perp is too representative of the other team. Oh, sure, they’re not saying that. But every time someone goes crazy on the other side, they get blamed, so it’s only fair.
In 24 hours or so, a few articles will be pitched and sold about the political meaning of the story. Everyone else will forget about it and feel vaguely dirty for having thought so hard about it at all.
It’s not a coincidence that many of these are amongst the same groups that have always supported changing the 14th amendment to deny “anchor babies,” or the American-born children of undocumented immigrants, citizenship — long before the debate entered the political mainstream this summer. Read more about Lee and the anti-immigrant environmental movement at the Wonk Room.
The question is, to what extent will the media note that this violence was spurred by a radical left-wing environmental agenda, or that eco-terrorism is not a new phenomenon and is arguably the America’s biggest domestic terrorist threat?
Then again, maybe the gunman is just angling for a job in the White House. Consider the book Ecoscience, written by Obama’s “science czar,” John Holdren:
Even more troubling: Over the weekend, a blogger at Zombietime.com unearthed a book written over 30 years ago by John Holdren, President Obama’s “science czar.”
The book, Ecoscience, was co-written with neo-Malthusian prophet of doom and scientific laughingstock Paul Ehrlich. In it, Holdren advocates a series of bizarre and horrifying measures to deal with an overpopulation threat that never materialized.
Among the suggestions in the book: Laws requiring the abortion or adoption of illegitimate children; sterilizing women after having two children; legally requiring “reproductive responsibility” to those deemed by pointy-headed eugenicists to “contribute to general social deterioration”; and incredibly, putting sterilizing agents in the drinking water.
Naturally, these population control measures would be enforced by “an armed international organization, a global analogue of a police force.” Very recently, Holdren was still listing the book on his C.V.
His username is also connected to a meet-up group for Daniel Quinn devotees called the “Friends of Ishmael.” A man named Lee, with a misterfifteen e-mail adress seems to have started his own chapter in San Diego in 2006, called “World Guardian Voices.” The site for his group is archived here, with a notice of an upcoming meeting at a Borders book store to talk about global warming and overpopulation.
He even offered his e-mail address for anyone who’d like to “schedule a speech.”
Max Fisher of the Atlantic somehow read this post to mean that I think (a) Lee was a liberal and (b) because liberals relentlessly politicize “lone nut” incidents involving right-wingers, conservatives should do the same to them. (His tagline in summarizing this post at the Atlantic is “Hang This Attack Around Liberals’ Necks.”) On the first point, I don’t know if Lee was a down-the-line doctrinaire liberal or not; my point was simply that the green concerns that motivated him are typically identified with the left and therefore many people will conclude that he’s some species of liberal. By the same token, when someone bombs an abortion clinic, no one waits to find out the bomber’s opinion on, say, Iraq and federal spending before identifying him with the right. It’s the motive that defines the suspect politically in incidents like these. As for the second point — and I’m frankly amazed that anyone might have misunderstood it — what I’m saying is that liberals and environmentalists shouldn’t be blamed for this. Don’t politicize the incident by hanging the actions of a lunatic around their neck. What I meant up top about reminding them of this the next time they politicize something done by a right-wing nut was merely how this proves that there are crazies of all stripes and that I didn’t try to score a cheap political point against them today when the opportunity presented itself. Is this really that complicated?
A House investigative panel has found “substantial reason to believe” that Representative Charles B. Rangel violated a range of ethics rules, dealing a serious blow to Mr. Rangel, a Harlem Democrat, in the twilight of his political career.
The finding means that the 80-year-old congressman must face a public trial before the House ethics committee, the first member to be forced to do so since 2002, when former Representative James A. Traficant Jr. was expelled from Congress after taking bribes.
The investigative panel did not disclose any details about the nature of the violations.
But two Democrats with knowledge of the investigation said the committee found evidence to support accusations that Mr. Rangel wrongly accepted four rent-stabilized apartments in Manhattan and misused his office to preserve a tax loophole worth half a billion dollars for an oil executive who pledged a donation for an educational center being built in Mr. Rangel’s honor.
The committee also found evidence to support a charge that Mr. Rangel failed to report or pay taxes on rental income from his beachfront Dominican villa.
The last time such an open process was used was for former Rep. James Traficant, an Ohio Democrat who was expelled from the House in 2002 for taking bribes, racketeering, filing false tax returns and forcing aides to perform household chores on his Ohio farm and DC houseboat (which was, coincidentally, parked not far from Duke Cunningham’s houseboat). Traficant served seven years in prison and is now a radio host in Ohio. He recently filed papers to make an independent run for his old seat.
Former Majority Leader Tom DeLay skipped such a step when his ethics investigation went right from the exploratory phase to admonishment — a first in ethics committee history.
Rangel first asked the committee two years ago to look into newspaper allegations that he’d failed to report income from a Caribbean rental, that he used Congressional letterhead to solicit donations for a charity in his name and that he broke New York rent subsidy laws. The alleged tax lapses were particularly worrisome as the chairman of the Ways & Means Committee is Congress’s top tax writer. Politico reported that Rangel was seen arguing with ethics committee chair Zoe Lofgren shortly before today’s announcement was made. Zofgren had, reportedly, been encouraging Rangel to follow a DeLay route and skip the adjudicatory process. As of August 2009, Rangel had spent more than $1 million in legal fees defending his actions to the committee. If he’s found in violation of House rules the committee’s evidence could be turned over to prosecutors to pursue a criminal case
In the same way that Republican ethics violations loomed large in the 2006 midterm elections that saw the House of Representatives change hands, Rangel’s ethics misdeeds threaten to undermine Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s pledge to run the “most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in History.”
But for now, the specific nature of charges against Rangel remain unknown — and will likely remain as such until next Thursday when he makes his case to the ethics panel. In the meantime, a list–that is, unfortunately, in no way comprehensive–of the 80-year-old lawmaker’s ethics lapses:
Violating New York state and city zoning laws, Rep. Rangel rented in 2008 several rent-stabilized Harlem apartments and used one for a base of operations for his reelection effort.
Days later it was revealed Rangel had used congressional letterhead to solicit funds for his personal foundation, the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service.
The following month, in August of 2008, the New York Post reported that Rangel had failed to disclose income from renting his beachfront villa on a Dominican Republic resort. In total, Rangel failed to disclose $75,000 in rental income since 1988. Rangel secured a seven-year fixed rate loan at 10.5 % for the property, but two years later the interest on the loan, which was awarded by a company for which the congressman was an early investor, was waived. Rangel paid $10,800 in back-taxes for his 2004, 2005 and 2006 tax returns for the unreported rental income.
Rangel violated House rules and failed to report income to the IRS when he left his 1972 Mercedes in a House parking lot for several years without registering the car. The car, without license plates and covered by a tarp, occupied a space for several years valued a $290 per month.
In November 2008, the Post’s muckrakers discovered that Rangel had improperly received a “homestead” tax exemption on a property he owned in Washington, D.C., while occupying his four rent-stabilized apartments in New York City.
Rangel secured tax benefits for a company whose chief executive he was courting as a donor for his private foundation.
And most recently, a House panel admonished the scandal-plagued congressman for wrongly accepting reimbursements for two Caribbean trips in 2007 and 2008.
This is five months in the making, starting with his admonishment back in February over staff members having accepted free trips to the Caribbean and culminating a week later in his removal from Ways and Means — albeit supposedly only on a temporary basis. Anyone think he’ll be returning to the committee after this, even if he beats the rap?
The next step is a trial by subcommittee. Given that the most ethical Congress ever had a decidedly lackluster reputation on ethics until now, I wonder how much pressure for and against charging Rangel there is on the Democratic side. On the one hand, this is going to push ethics back on the campaign menu. On the other, if they beat up on Rangel, it makes them look forthright. Stand by for updates.
While nothing short of a mobilized Allied army seems capable of forcing Rep. Charlie Rangel out of Congress, the House ethics committee will charge him with official ethics violations, essentially setting up a trial — the first in eight years.The violations have not been officially filed yet, so the specific violations they’re pursuing out of his career’s 10 billion worth aren’t fully clear. Probably related to this stuff, though, which people who’ve followed Rangel’s investigation are quite familiar with:
The committee had been investigating claims that Mr. Rangel improperly rented four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem at a price well below market value, despite rules forbidding House members from accepting gifts worth more than $50.
It also had been investigating allegations that he improperly used his office to provide legislative favors for an oil-drilling company that pledged a $1 million donation for an academic center named for Mr. Rangel and improperly failed to report taxable income received from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic.
Maybe we’ll get something else, though? Something a little more blog-friendly? Sex, maybe?
Katha Pollitt – Hayes’s colleague at the Nation – didn’t disagree on principle, though she did sound weary of the propaganda. “I hear you. but I am really tired of defending the indefensible. The people who attacked Clinton on Monica were prissy and ridiculous, but let me tell you it was no fun, as a feminist and a woman, waving aside as politically irrelevant and part of the vast rightwing conspiracy Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita,” Pollitt said.
“Part of me doesn’t like this shit either,” agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.”
Ackerman went on:
I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.
And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.
Ackerman did allow there were some Republicans who weren’t racists. “We’ll know who doesn’t deserve this treatment — Ross Douthat, for instance — but the others need to get it.” He also said he had begun to implement his plan. “I previewed it a bit on my blog last week after Commentary wildly distorted a comment Joe Cirincione made to make him appear like (what else) an antisemite. So I said: why is it that so many on the right have such a problem with the first viable prospective African-American president?”
Several members of the list disagreed with Ackerman – but only on strategic grounds.
“Spencer, you’re wrong,” wrote Mark Schmitt, now an editor at the American Prospect. “Calling Fred Barnes a racist doesn’t further the argument, and not just because Juan Williams is his new black friend, but because that makes it all about character. The goal is to get to the point where you can contrast some _thing_ — Obama’s substantive agenda — with this crap.”
(In an interview Monday, Schmitt declined to say whether he thought Ackerman’s plan was wrong. “That is not a question I’m going to answer,” he said.)
Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, also disagreed with Ackerman’s strategy. “I think it’s worth keeping in mind that Obama is trying (or says he’s trying) to run a campaign that avoids precisely the kind of thing Spencer is talking about, and turning this into a gutter brawl would probably hurt the Obama brand pretty strongly. After all, why vote for him if it turns out he’s not going change the way politics works?”
But it was Ackerman who had the last word. “Kevin, I’m not saying OBAMA should do this. I’m saying WE should do this.”
American journalism died a long time ago; today Tucker Carlson got around to running the obituary. What The Daily Caller has unearthed proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that most media organizations are either complicit by participation in the treachery that is Journolist, or are guilty of sitting back and watching Alinsky warfare being waged against all that challenged the progressive orthodoxy. The scandal predictably involves journalists posing as professors posing as experts. But dressed down they are nothing but street thugs. They deserve the deepest levels of public consternation. We must demand that they do.
The only way that the media will recover from the horrifying discoveries found in the Journolist is to investigate and investigate until every guilty reporter, professor and institution is laid bare begging America for forgiveness. Will they do it?
If the powers that be don’t comply with this demand, we can always call Jonathan Alter and Eric Alterman racists.*
Ackerman’s characteristically juvenile bravado did draw JournoList rebukes from Mark Schmitt and Kevin Drum, the Daily Caller reported. Read the whole thing here; Reason on JournoList here.
As this whole episode describes a world utterly alien to me–listservs, major-party affiliation, political team identity, desire to help out politicians–I am experiencing this mostly as a consumer of entertainment news (with the caveat that I have met several of the people involved). There is a certain poetry, however, to seeing Joe Conason’s name associated with it all.
Fred Barnes is a devout Christian and a gentleman, a respected writer who has never given any indication of racist views. The fact that Ackerman would recommend this wrathful and baseless attack isn’t surprising. But it does say something about membership in the menagerie of tame conservatives that where Barnes is maligned by the Left, Douthat is exempted.
The best defense is to be offensive. It’s what wriggles when you lift the JournoList rock. Chatter at Memeorandum. Spencer “Call them Racists” Ackerman’s FDL site here. At Wired here. At last check, crickets in response. Maybe because a good character assassination plot, as the DailyCaller’s reporting illustrates, takes planning. It’ll be interesting to see if Wired wants to keep a scribbler who tried to influence a national election by engineering unwarranted venal ad-hominem attacks.
HotAir: The objections weren’t whether it was right or not. They were about whether it would work.
National Review: The well-worn accusation of racism has been losing its punch. But rarely do we see the motivation so baldly stated.
Hey, if they keep it up, maybe we will end up post-racial. And post-racialist, starting with Ackerman. It would be kind of ironic if the only character that ended up getting assassinated out of all that plotting is his own.
Salon scribbler doesn’t see what the big deal is with liberals plotting to randomly smear Republicans as racist in order to divert attention from a presidential candidate’s distracting racist problem. After all, belief in Republican racism is a liberal given. Which makes it OK.
Moderate Voice: Just because the right-wing is paranoid doesn’t mean the lefty media wasn’t out to get them. (To TMV’s credit, that’s not exactly how they put it.)
I think we’re finally getting to a point where the overuse of the “racism” charge since Barack Obama became president has weakened its sting. This story should weaken it further, as it reveals how comfortable some of our most passionate racism watchdogs are with sowing racial discord for partisan advantage.
I think this is healthy—for those falsely accused, for the political process, for race relations, and for those who suffer real racism of the sort that’s not immediately politically useful to a listserv of mostly white journalists in Washington, D.C.
The federal government filed a lawsuit Tuesday aimed at blocking a controversial Arizona law that instructs local police and sheriffs to question and arrest anyone whom they suspect is in the country illegally.
The Justice Department lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, argues that the new state law violates the U.S. Constitution by usurping federal authority over immigration policy, traditionally the jurisdiction of the federal government.
“Arizonans are understandably frustrated with illegal immigration, and the federal government has a responsibility to comprehensively address those concerns,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement yesterday. “But diverting federal resources away from dangerous aliens such as terrorism suspects and aliens with criminal records will impact the entire country’s safety.
“Setting immigration policy and enforcing immigration laws is a national responsibility,” Holder said. “Seeking to address the issue through a patchwork of state laws will only create more problems than it solves.”
“In our constitutional system, the federal government has preeminent authority to regulate immigration matters. This authority derives from the United States Constitution and numerous acts of Congress,” reads the introduction to the 25-page complaint (PDF).
Lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice filed the complaint today in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. The lawsuit names as defendants the state of Arizona and Gov. Janice Brewer (R), in her official capacity.
Brewer has repeatedly defended the law as a necessary response to the federal government’s failure to control illegal immigration from Mexico, and she continued to draw support from allies nationwide, including in Washington, as the lawsuit was filed.
The lawsuit makes sweeping claims about the federal government’s power to develop immigration policy. It cites the federal government’s power under the Constitution to establish a “uniform Rule of Naturalization” — translating, it says, to the regulation of aliens within U.S. boundaries and to the terms and conditions for entry and continued presence.
With the State Department joining as a plaintiff, the lawsuit also cites the president’s authority over foreign affairs. “Immigration law, policy, and enforcement priorities are affected by and have impacts on U.S. foreign policy, and are themselves the subject of diplomatic arrangements,” it says.
Together with the complaint, the department is filing a 58-page motion (PDF) for a preliminary injunction. The law is scheduled to go into effect July 29.
Here is a copy of the Complaint just filed by the United States against Arizona seeking to invalidate S.B 1070, the Arizona immigration bill. Copies also of the Civil Cover Sheet, Summons to the the State of Arizona, and Summons to Gov. Jan Brewer.
It seems rather clear that the DoJ intended to get state and local law enforcement involved in immigration efforts. Arizona’s law doesn’t set up the state as an adjudicator of the complaints, but merely requires police to check status and refer suspects to ICE when circumstances warrant. It doesn’t violate federal prerogative at all, but instead forces the federal government to act responsibly to enforce the law.
Besides, this issue of pre-emption works the other direction. Does this mean that state and local police have no jurisdiction to enforce federal drug laws if they don’t violate state or local law? Terrorism? Wire fraud? If a court rules that referrals to federal agencies from state and local law enforcement are unconstitutional on the basis of pre-emption, it will make the Gorelick Wall look like a curb.
Furthermore, this is weak tea compared to the Obama administration’s rhetoric on the subject. They have spent the last three months declaring this unconstitutional on the basis of discrimination. If that were true, the government would have made that its primary argument. The fact that they’re going with pre-emption means that they’re conceding that the discrimination argument never held water — and that their accusations of bigotry against Arizonans were nothing more than demagoguery.
Perhaps it’s a better legal argument than a political one, but the federal government does seem to be opening quite the can of worms to argue that a state-level attempt to do what the federal government claims is its sole responsibility is uncalled for while that same government is spending time and energy suing Arizona while it continues to not live up to its responsibility.
It is precisely the federal government’s failure to enforce its own immigration laws — and their incomplete border fencing that has redirected illegal immigrants to Arizona specifically — that would account for such referrals. Federal action would have made the Arizona law unnecessary But the Obama-led feds would rather crack down on Arizona than illegal immigration.
In a move to quell growing public anger and mounting fear over illegal immigration along the Southwest border, President Barack Obama is ordering up to 1,200 additional National Guard troops to the border area and requesting an additional $500 million from Congress to slow the flow of migrants.
In addition to the troops, the funding will be used to increase Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security activities at the border with Mexico “to include increased agents, investigators, and prosecutors, as part of a multi-layered effort to target illicit networks trafficking in people, drugs, illegal weapons, and money,” an administration official said Tuesday.
The announcement seemed designed to blunt an amendment in the Senate by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to provide $250 million for deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops to the border. And the White House move was quickly denounced by Republicans, who criticized it as insufficient, and by immigration reform advocates, who accused the White House of engaging in “political theater.”
“It’s simply not enough. We need 6,000,” complained McCain, who is opposed by immigration foe J.D. Hayworth in a GOP primary.
Regarding the Administration’s decision to send 1,200 National Guard servicemen to the US Southern border, the Government of Mexico trusts that this decision will help to channel additional US resources to enhance efforts to prevent the illegal flows of weapons and bulk cash into Mexico, which provide organized crime with its firepower and its ability to corrupt.
Additionally, the Government of Mexico expects that National Guard personnel will strengthen US operations in the fight against transnational organized crime that operates on both sides of our common border and that it will not, in accordance to its legal obligations, conduct activities directly linked to the enforcement of immigration laws.
Mexico is determined to continue working on its side of the border to enhance the security and well-being of border communities, and to deter and dismantle organized crime and its links to drug trafficking and human smuggling.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D., Ariz.) has said the president will soon announce the deployment of 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, along with $500 million in new spending for extra border security and law enforcement, as part of a new effort to quell violence in the border region.
In a statement announcing the move, Giffords said “[t]he White House is doing the right thing.”
“Arizonans know that more boots on the ground means a safer and more secure border. Washington heard our message.”
The deployment also does not seem to square with remarks by Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano that in recent Congressional testimony that the border is more secure than it has ever been. “I say this again, as someone who has walked that border, ridden it, flown it and driven it,” Napolitano said. “I believe it is as secure as it ever has been.”
A draft amnesty proposal that the White House supports claims it will secure the border and enforce immigration and work place laws first. But there is serious reason to doubt the administration’s resolve including recent efforts demonize Arizona for attempting to deal with massive flooding people unlawfully present in the state.
Hopefully, this deployment is a serious effort to help make the border secure and not just for show. We won’t know until we get more facts.
Even if this deployment makes sense it will not solve the problem of broken borders and a failed immigration system. There is no silver bullet other than policies that make sense.
Protesters should probably get out there and decry the “police state,” “fascist,” “Nazi” proclivities of the Obama administration, and add some vandalism for good measure (all in the name of civil debate, of course).
Sure, I haven’t really done any research into the call for National Guard troops, the dangers that necessitated the call, or what their function and limitations will be in enforcing the border.
Until politicians with proven integrity and commitment to securing this country against invasion step into the leadership vacuum, Arizona’s DIY policy on border security is the only trustworthy one:
Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) has told his Republican colleagues that he will resign from the House following an affair with an aide.
“I sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff,” said Souder in a statement. “In the poisonous environment of Washington, D.C., any personal failing is seized upon, often twisted, for political gain. I am resigning rather than to put my family through that painful, drawn-out process… by stepping aside, my mistake cannot be used as a political football in a partisan attempt to undermine the cause for which I have labored all my adult life.”
One of the causes Souder is talking about is, of course, abstinence education. As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources when Republicans held the majority in Congress, Souder was a warrior for abstinence-only sex education and a critic of other forms of sex education, and he repeatedly intervened to make sure abstinence advocates were represented — even to the inclusion of other experts — on panels about sexual health. This is an embarrassing moment for the cause Souder spent 16 years advocating for.
Jackson played the role of interviewer for a Souder Web video show on the issues of the day — including one on the value of abstinence.
Dubbed “Congressional Update with Congressman Mark Souder,” the show hit on issues like intelligent design and fencing the border.
In the November 2009 abstinence video, Jackson introduces Souder this way: “You’ve been a longtime advocate for abstinence education and in 2006 you had your staff conduct a report entitled ‘Abstinence and its Critics’ which discredits many claims purveyed by those who oppose abstinence education.”
My dad, at the time “speaking as a proud parent of three teenagers” (I’ve grown up since then!), thought it was important to push a message of delay, but that demanding celibacy was just not going to work. “An
abstinence-only approach which excludes safer sex messages and includes messages that emphasize intercourse only within the context of marriage, is therefore clearly out of touch with the realities and practices of the vast majority of Americans,” he said, complaining that the whole debate was “framed in an absolutist stark context.”
Souder ultimately responded by saying that teen sex needs to be aggressively confronted, like date rape, because out-of-wedlock sex always leads to pregnancy and ruins lives. My dad said well-informed people use condoms. This led to the following exchange:
Zenilman: Teenagers having consensual intercourse or adults having sexual intercourse is not the same as a date rape or sexual harassment. The latter has a lot more of the consequences that you mentioned previously. Souder: I don’t think this data backs that statement up. I believe they are awful and I have worked with them, but you are not going to argue here that out-of-wedlock pregnancy and related things are less damaging overall to a life’s career than somebody who has been sexually harassed, which, by the way, may also occur in the teen pregnancy and the out-of-wedlock or non-married sexual activity.
Zenilman: A consensual adult who is actually having sexual relations and is properly informed will be contracepting.
Souder: This isn’t really a debate, and I am sorry I got us off into that. We have a substantial disagreement.
But then there’s the larger context: those “family-values” Republicans sure do have a lot of sex scandals, don’t they? It’s getting difficult to keep track of them all. Souder is the newest, but his humiliation comes on the heels of Sen. John Ensign’s (R-Nev.) scandal. That came to light around the same time as Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R-S.C.) sex scandal, which came soon after Gov. Jim Gibbons (R-Nev.), which itself followed Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho).
If we look back a little further, we also find disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani. If go back a little more, names like Vito Fossella, Tim Hutchinson, Henry Hyde, Dan Burton, and Bob Livingston also come to mind. And those are just the office-holders.
For the better part of a generation, the Republican Party has demanded higher moral standards of all of us, while failing to meet these standards. It’s far easier for the public to tolerate personal mistakes and human failings than it is to accept shameless hypocrisy.
But here’s why Rep. Souder’s resignation isn’t all that bad for his party, compared to recent congressional sex scandals:
1) He’s resigning from Congress. Any scandal is worsened by a politician who chooses to stick around. Souder’s affair with a part-time staffer is reminiscent of Sen. John Ensign’s (R-NV) staffer affair, and Ensign has remained in the Senate, dogged by an FBI investigation over a nearly $100,000 payment he arranged and help he gave go the staffer’s husband in finding a job. Souder, it seems, has come out with it and will leave, making a relatively clean break, not a messy, protracted, circus. Compare that to the days after Eric Massa’s scandal broke, before he resigned the following Monday. Souder will officially resign from Congress Friday.
2) Eric Massa. There is no way this looks all that bad compared to the utter charade of questionable statements, snorkeling revelations, live Glenn Beck air time, and sniping at the White House and Democratic leaders that Eric Massa delivered to us in his fantastical whirlwind of egomania. After Massa, the first congressman to resign in relative calm order, basically, gets overshadowed.
3) Republicans will keep his seat. Whether a special election is held, or whether Indiana waits until November to replace him, Souder’s third district seat is not competitive. The Cook Political Report rates that district as R+14. There will be no meme about how infidelity has cost Republicans an actual legislative seat.
4) It’s clearly not as juicy as other recent scandals. Yes, an affair with a part-time staffer is pretty good. Taxpayers were paying someone that Rep. Souder was having an affair with. But, so far, it lacks the extravagance of David Vitter’s prostitution scandal, Larry Craig’s wide stance, Mark Sanford’s Argentinian disappearance, Eliot Spitzer’s affair with the since-ubiquitous Ashlee Dupre, and, yes, Massa’s tickle fights. All those scandals have happened in the last few years. Compared to them, Souder’s appears less than memorable, at this point.
A few points: we don’t know the full story on Souder yet. All we have is the breaking news, so perhaps it’s premature to judge impact. Add a dash of blackmail and Souder’s Google hits will spike.
Expect Democrats, if given a reasonable opportunity, to ask what House Republican leaders knew and when they knew it, probing for any inkling of a cover up. When Massa’s scandal broke, Republicans loudly called for the House ethics committee to investigate Democratic leaders. The committee has since interviewed Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, according to Politico. It’s unclear as of yet whether the ethics committee will investigate Souder and his staffer, but it’s a safe bet they will.
At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life.
“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”
There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.
The deferments allowed Mr. Blumenthal to complete his studies at Harvard; pursue a graduate fellowship in England; serve as a special assistant to The Washington Post’s publisher, Katharine Graham; and ultimately take a job in the Nixon White House.
In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. He joined a unit in Washington that conducted drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive.
Many politicians have faced questions over their decisions during the Vietnam War, and Mr. Blumenthal, who is seeking the seat being vacated by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, is not alone in staying out of the war.
But what is striking about Mr. Blumenthal’s record is the contrast between the many steps he took that allowed him to avoid Vietnam, and the misleading way he often speaks about that period of his life now, especially when he is speaking at veterans’ ceremonies or other patriotic events.
Blumenthal has steadfastly refused to directly apologize, stating only his passive “regret” at “misplaced words” and citing this seemingly innocent prepositional inversion as the source of all the controversy surrounding his statements on his military service.
Does anyone buy this? Once maybe, but Blumenthal’s elisions and insinuations about his service are plural, and have taken different forms.
Besides, the move from “during” to “in” is a move from ambiguity to clarity. I, for one, wouldn’t know whether a soldier had been in-country merely from his statement that he served “during Vietnam.” This tells me when he served, but leaves unclear where. A man who says he served “in Vietnam”, on the other hand, answers the second question definitively.
UPDATE: I don’t think there is any reason at all to believe Blumenthal “misspoke.” I think he lied, full stop. But to see why Blumenthal’s prepositional slip story doesn’t quite fit, allow me to keep on my grammarian’s hat and semanticist’s monocle for just a minute longer. Let’s take a look at Blumenthal’s alleged “misplaced” words:
“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam.”
Simply subbing in “in” for “during” here makes the sentence sound a bit off. That’s because “in” is usually a spatial preposition, but both “during” and “since” are temporal prepositions. If he really meant to say “during Vietnam”, which fixes Blumenthal’s service temporally, then “since the days” would be redundant or vice versa. In other words, if he really meant “during Vietnam” and only “during Vietnam”, the whole sentence would have looked different. He would have said something like “We have learned something important since the Vietnam era, when I served.”
Connecticut’s Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal’s news conference in which he attempted to defuse the scandal over his lies about his military service provided a new version of the “suffering wife” who routinely stands by her husband as he owns up to misdeeds.
But instead of having his spouse stand painfully by him as he walked back what he now describes as “a few misplaced words,” Blumenthal had a chorus line of veterans behind him at the press conference that took place at the West Hartford Veterans of Foreign Wars hall. And rather than keep silent as he at first spoke at length touting his record and then briefly owned up to the problem, the veterans in attendance cheered Blumenthal’s statement and frequently punctuated it with applause and Marine chants.
The brief press conference that Blumenthal ended abruptly was mostly devoted to praise of his own actions in which he claimed that his military service was voluntary. His statement admitting guilt was as follows: “On a few occasions I have misspoken about my service and I take full responsibility. I will not let anyone take a few misplaced words and impugn my record of service to our country.” He gave no reason for his lies about having been in Vietnam and offered no apology. And his friends behind him — who might otherwise be expected to take a dim view of those who falsely claim war-veteran status — demanded none. But the proposition that this group of veterans is representative of others around the state is yet to be proved.
This performance shows that Blumenthal’s intention is to stay in the Senate race and that he hopes the storm will blow over. However, as the New York Times story that blew the lid off of his lies shows, this one item may be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Blumenthal’s record. As the Times reported, Blumenthal appears to have misled journalists about other aspects of his biography.
This isn’t complicated. He’s an ambitious pol and he knew he could squeeze a few more votes out of the electorate by creating the impression that he served in ‘Nam. Evidently he’s been playing this game of hinting that he did without clearly saying so for years and years, with only occasional slip-ups of the in/during variety. That is to say, it sounds like he intended to deceive people all along, but chose his words carefully in all but a few instances to preserve plausible deniability in case he was ever called on this. He’s a seedy liar, but a clever one.
Now that the in/during mix-up is in vogue, I assume it’s also okay for people who went to college in Boston to say they went to school at Harvard. Because you know how easy it is to confuse “at” and “near.” Exit quotation from a Twitter pal: “Dick Blumenthal’s favorite Village People song is ‘During the Navy.’
Blumenthal is correct that no one can control the articles that are printed about him. But surely this is a misdirection. Ambitious politicians have teams of communications professionals devoted to shaping, manipulating and repairing their public images. It is undoubtedly clear that Blumenthal sought out the identity of a Vietnam veteran, wrapped himself in that cloak, and used it to perpetuate his power. Even if he did not intend to mislead voters about his service, it is incumbent upon him to make sure that he did not use his position to perpetuate a myth that enhanced said power. To me, that DOES make him responsible for being accurate about his service record and going out of his way to correct the perceptional. Military service is threshold-honorable. But after that threshold is crossed, people judge you differently if they know you actively sought a position in a service that put your life in harm’s way. Blumenthal did not.
A tactical aside: Linda McMahon’s campaign planted the story with the New York Times and then bragged about it. Basic political gamesmanship: “If you land a hit like that on opponent you don’t brag about it an hour after. It undermines the story, the reporter, and no matter what the facts are, it lets the target of the hit say “This is Republican hit job. I’m not saying it. There campaign is bragging about it.” A complete rookie unforced error, one that might help Blumenthal keep his position in the race.
The great mystery surrounding the historic health care bill is how the corporations that provide coverage for most Americans — coverage they know and prize — will react to the new law’s radically different regime of subsidies, penalties, and taxes. Now, we’re getting a remarkable inside look at the options AT&T, Deere, and other big companies are weighing to deal with the new legislation.
Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill’s critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.
That would dismantle the employer-based system that has reigned since World War II. It would also seem to contradict President Obama’s statements that Americans who like their current plans could keep them. And as we’ll see, it would hugely magnify the projected costs for the bill, which controls deficits only by assuming that America’s employers would remain the backbone of the nation’s health care system.
Hence, health-care reform risks becoming a victim of unintended consequences. Amazingly, the corporate documents that prove this point became public because of a different set of unintended consequences: they told a story far different than the one the politicians who demanded them expected.
Democrats canceled hearings after learning companies’ plans would make health insurance bill look bad
House Democrats abruptly canceled hearings into major US companies’ responses to their massive health care overhaul after receiving documents revealing that companies were considering dropping all of their employees’ health benefits in response to the healthcare bill.
The documents in issue had been subpoenaed by Waxman and Stupak in response to the chargeoffs taken by these companies as a result of the enactment of Obamacare. Waxman and Stupak had planned to produce a bit of political theater, scheduling a hearing on the chargeoffs at which the companies’ executives were to testify.
The production was canceled when Waxman and Stupak were apprised of the obvious consequences of the bill they and their Democratic buddies had just voted for. Waxman and Stupak had been oblivious to them when they voted on the bill. We noted a few weeks ago that Robert Pear did a good job covering this story for the New York Times.
I would not have wanted to be one of the majority committee staffers who had to advise Waxman that the elimination of a big corporate tax deduction results in a big corporate tax expense that has to be recognized under applicable accounting standards. It can’t have been pleasant duty. Indeed, majority committee staffers sugarcoated the bitter pill.
It’s not just the calculus of mandates and penalties that has employers considering the option of dumping health care and paying more in salaries instead. The mandate to keep “children” on plans until the age of 26 has employers seeing a steep cost curve. For Caterpillar alone, the 26-year-old mandate will cost over $20 million a year. Under those conditions, the penalties look pretty good. Add on the “Cadillac tax” on some health plans and the expected jump in medical costs from providers dealing with their own set of mandates, and health insurance looks like a very bad risk.
What will it cost the government to provide subsidies for tens of millions of Americans who used to get health insurance through their employers? No one really knows for sure, but Fortune takes a stab at it:
What does it mean for health care reform if the employer-sponsored regime collapses? By Fortune’s reckoning, each person who’s dropped would cost the government an average of around $2,100 after deducting the extra taxes collected on their additional pay. So if 50% of people covered by company plans get dumped, federal health care costs will rise by $160 billion a year in 2016, in addition to the $93 billion in subsidies already forecast by the CBO. Of course, as we’ve seen throughout the health care reform process, it’s impossible to know for certain what the unintended consequences of these actions will be.
But some of us predicted that the numbers used by Democrats pushing ObamaCare bore little connection to reality — and that it would incentivize employers to destroy the net of employer-based health insurance. It looks like that day is fast approaching, and that’s no myth. It’s a reality that Henry Waxman tried hard to hide from the American public.
This is one reason I was so surprised when PPACA advocates proved so sanguine about the prospect of firms dropping coverage. All this would mean, many argued, is that we’d have something more like the Wyden-Bennett model. And that might be true. But the long-term budgetary impact of the legislation was central to the debate. The political case for PPACA rested on the notion — the dubious notion, in the view of many critics — that the revenue-raising measures were enough to pay for the coverage expansion, and indeed that the legislation would meaningfully improve the broader fiscal picture. We now have even more reason to believe that this happy outcome will not come to pass.
But under the new rules, if a freelance designer buys a new iMac from the Apple Store, they’ll have to send Apple a 1099. A laundromat that buys soap each week from a local distributor will have to send the supplier a 1099 at the end of the year tallying up their purchases.
As if the federal government didn’t already make being self-employed hard enough. So, how does the new law make this ridiculousness necessary?
The bill makes two key changes to how 1099s are used. First, it expands their scope by using them to track payments not only for services but also for tangible goods. Plus, it requires that 1099s be issued not just to individuals, but also to corporations…Eliminating the goods exemption could launch an avalanche of paperwork, he says Bill Rys, tax counsel for the National Federation of Independent Business: “If you cater a lunch for other businesses every Wednesday, say, that’s a lot of information to keep track of throughout the year.”
Why’d they go and do that? You know why:
The idea seems to be that using 1099 forms to capture unreported income will generate more government revenue and help offset the cost of the health bill.
A Democratic aide goes on to defend the move, in this article, lauding the clever way the government is extracting more money from small businesses without actually raising their taxes.
Consider two items that have emerged in just the past two days. First, it turns out that several major corporations are drawing up plans to end their employee health benefits once Obamacare gets up and running. They’ve done the math and figured out that the penalty they would have to pay for dropping their workers would be much lower than the costs of continuing to insure them, and now there will be a new taxpayer-subsidized option for those workers to turn to in state exchanges, so why not cut them off? Of course, as Fortune’s Shawn Tully points out, that will mean far higher costs to the public than those projected by the Congressional Budget Office and far more disruption and instability than voters were promised: Remember “if you like your plan you can keep it”? Well, not if your employer is given a strong incentive to end it.
It turns out the many critics who argued that exactly this would happen weren’t just pumping out fog after all. And in an extra bit of irony, the corporate memos outlining all this became public because Henry Waxman ordered the companies to turn over their internal health-care memos in preparation for a hearing at which he was going to berate them for reporting the added costs that Obamacare would impose on them. Once his staff actually saw the memos, the hearing was cancelled.
Second, it turns out that the massive bill contained a hidden change in the tax law that will require companies to submit IRS 1099 forms not only for contract workers (as is the case now) but also for any individual or company from which they purchase more than $600 in goods or services in a year. That’s millions of new forms to file and send to vendors and the IRS, and lots of work and expense gathering names and taxpayer ID numbers from every vendor and store a business deals with.
As the fog clears, the case for repeal gets stronger and stronger.
A crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks was discovered in a smoking Nissan Pathfinder in the heart of Times Square on Saturday evening, prompting the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers on a warm and busy night. Although the device had apparently started to detonate, there was no explosion, and early on Sunday the authorities were still seeking a suspect and motive.
“We are very lucky,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a 2:15 a.m. press conference. “We avoided what could have been a very deadly event.”
A large swath of Midtown — from 43rd Street to 48th Street, and from Sixth to Eighth Avenues — was closed for much of the evening after the Pathfinder was discovered just off Broadway on 45th Street. Several theaters and stores, as well as the South Tower of the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel, were evacuated.
Mr. Bloomberg was joined by Gov. David A. Paterson, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and other officials at the early morning press conference to give a chronology of the vehicle’s discovery, its disarming, and the investigation that has been launched. The mayor and police commissioner had returned early from the annual White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington.
At 6:28 p.m., Mr. Kelly said, a video surveillance camera recorded what was believed to be the dark green Nissan S.U.V. driving west on 45th Street.
Moments later, a T-shirt vendor on the sidewalk saw smoke coming out of vents near the back seat of the S.U.V., which was now parked awkwardly at the curb with its engine running and its hazard lights on. The vendor called to a mounted police officer, the mayor said, who smelled gunpowder when he approached the S.U.V. and called for assistance. The police began evacuating Times Square, starting with businesses along Seventh Avenue, including a Foot Locker store and a McDonald’s.
According to officials, around 6:30 p.m. (ET), a dark green Pathfinder parked awkwardly at a curb. A T-shirt vendor noticed smoke coming from the truck — which had its hazard lights on and its engine still running — and alerted a mounted police officer. The officer approached the vehicle, smelled gunpowder, called for backup, and the police began evacuating Times Square.
The Nissan’s windows were broken by a robot, which also removed explosives. Inside, officials found three propane tanks, consumer-grade fireworks, two filled 5-gallon gasoline containers, and two clocks with batteries, electrical wire and other components. The mayor described the device as “amateurish.”
Paul Browne, the NYPD’s chief spokesman, added that the bomb apparently “malfunctioned.”
Specific details about the device are, not surprisingly, still coming together, but a former supervisor for the NYPD bomb squad said that had the device functioned as intended, “it would be more of an incendiary event” than an explosion.
At this point, there is no information about possible suspects or motives, and the effort to collect video surveillance was still underway.
President Obama, of course, was briefed on developments last night, and told NYC officials that the administration was prepared to help in the investigation.
Buildings in the vicinity were quickly evacuated, which tells you how seriously they were taking this and how much explosive power they feared the bomb might have. Said Bloomberg, putting it mildly, “We are very lucky.” As for possible culprits, trying to set off a bomb with fireworks doesn’t sound like the work of master jihadis, but then the 2007 London plot was a jihad operation too and that didn’t come off either. The basic ingredients in both plots are the same — propane and gasoline, a.k.a. a fuel-air device. Read this Time magazine piece from five years ago about Al Qaeda capo Dhiren Barot’s “Gas Limo Plot,” which involved packing limousines with tanks of compressed gas, driving them into underground garages, and detonating them to create a fuel-air concussion that would bring down the building. As I understand it, an enclosed place is ideal for maximum damage from a bomb like that, but obviously not essential. In fact, the cars found in the London plot three years ago were discovered parked on the street, just like the one found last night.
Police are reviewing security videotapes. However, the SUV’s windows were tinted, which could make it hard to see anyone inside on the tapes. On “Meet the Press” this morning, Janet Napolitano said fingerprints and other forensic evidence were recovered.
Apparently stolen, the SUV had Connecticut license plates from another car, a Ford F-150. Police interviewed the owner of that car but said he was not a suspect; they’re investigating the junkyard where the Ford was left.
Broadway shows were canceled or delayed. The area between West 43rd to 47th Streets along Broadway and Seventh Avenue was blocked with metal railings last night, and parts of West 48th Street were also closed. Times Square is now reopen.
Everyone agrees the NYPD did a fantastic job.
At least one tourist managed to make light of the situation: “It’s a whole different kind of show,” Tay Heniser of Seattle told the Times, adding, “It’s almost the equivalent of a $150 show.”
The dark green Nissan Pathfinder with tinted windows was parked near the junction of 45th Street and Broadway.
The location is also adjacent to the Viacom building, fuelling speculation that it might be linked to the company’s controversial South Park cartoon which recently depicted Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit.
Around The Sphere 
Holiday, Celebrate!
Lori Montgomery and Anne Kornblut at WaPo:
David Leonhardt at NYT:
Tyler Cowen
Joseph Lawler at The American Spectator:
Mary Katherine Ham at The Weekly Standard
Jennifer Rubin at Commentary:
Steve Benen:
Megan McArdle:
Atrios:
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