Latte Republic

State of the Union 2012 | The White House

2012-01-24T20:24:00.000-08:00

Link to State of the Union Address 2012

Newt on Public Housing

2012-01-23T19:30:00.000-08:00

Give McKenna a Wake Up Call

2012-01-23T19:19:00.000-08:00

From Jay Inslee's campaign:

This morning we received news of a settlement deal that falls far short of holding Wall Street banks accountable for their fraudulent mortgage practices. But the deal still has to go to individual state officials for review. That’s why, in 24 hours, we will deliver Jay’s petition urging Rob McKenna to hold Wall Street accountable -- and we haven’t heard from you yet.
Add your name now -- and then forward this message to all of your friends who care about making sure our leaders are holding Wall Street accountable.
Rob McKenna continues to stand by what press reports indicate amounts to a giveaway to the banks. But the work of our online community and others who agree that Wall Street should be held accountable are having an effect.
Two weeks ago, dissatisfied state attorneys general, or their representatives, from about a dozen different states met independently of the big Wall Street bank mortgage settlement negotiations McKenna has been helping to lead. These attorneys general continue to be concerned about the mortgage settlement terms circulated to the states -- with New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman going so far as to say he may reject the deal as doing too little to fully investigate wrongdoing by the banks.

You are receiving this message as someone we think might be interested in Washington politics and Jay Inslee's gubernatorial campaign. If you do not wish to receive email from Jay Inslee or his campaign, please click here to unsubscribe. These attorneys general know what you and I do: The deal on the table isn’t living up to the standards that Jay, more than 50 of his congressional colleagues, a growing group of pro-consumer state attorneys general, and common sense demand:

No criminal or civil immunity for the banks
Full investigations of claims that haven't yet been looked into by the federal government and state attorneys general
Compensation that accurately reflects the extent of harm to all victims

But Rob McKenna has said on the radio that this settlement doesn’t include fully investigating the banks’ wrongdoing. And now the deal is in its final stages of review by the states. This may be the only chance we have to hold Wall Street banks accountable for the damage they caused millions of families and to our economy. McKenna needs to hear from you now, before he agrees to a settlement that lets those banks off the hook.
With less than 24 hours until we deliver the petition, we need you to add your voice now. One in every 1,438 Washington homes have been foreclosed on. Rob McKenna needs to understand that Washingtonians want action, not a get out of jail free card for the banks.
Add your name now, before we deliver the petition tomorrow.

Money, power, and Congress: how lobbyists will determine the fate of SOPA

2012-01-23T05:36:00.000-08:00

From The Verge:

I used to be a lobbyist.

When I first strolled the long halls of the Rayburn House office building, a marble monolith of bureaucracy, I was overcome with a surreal feeling of wonderment. There's a lot of history here, and occasionally I found myself swept up in what felt like the entire span of democratic civilization.

Tourists stand, mouths agape and camera shutters firing, witnessing the same veneer of mythical magnitude. In D.C., romanticism often trumps reality.
This, I thought, this is where everything happens. This is where noble members of the public trust harness enlightened traditions and institutions to advance the common interest.

But then I met the members of Congress. Link to full post on the Verge

SOPA Blackout Today

2012-01-18T05:59:00.000-08:00

from the CSM:

"Well, it's not quite doomsday, but for plenty of Wiki-trawlers worldwide, it's lights out. Today, Wikipedia – that vast, crowd-sourced online encyclopedia – has gone dark, in a protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, two bills currently under consideration in the US House of Representatives and Senate, respectively. In a press release, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales railed against the legislation, which he said threatened the "free and open internet." Link to full post

SB 6199 - An Act Relating to Modifying the Penalty for False Swearing by a Beneficiary

2012-01-17T06:02:00.000-08:00

Link to SB 6199 Better late than never?

RCW 9A.72.040 and 2011 c 336 s 392 are each amended to read as follows:
(1) A person is guilty of false swearing if he or she makes a false statement, which he or she knows to be false, under an oath required or authorized by law.
(2) False swearing is a gross misdemeanor, except for false swearing under RCW 61.24.030(7)(a)(ii) which is a class C felony as provided in RCW 9A.20.020 and 9A.20.021.

Call to Action: Help Defeat U.S. Internet Censorship Bill (SOPA/PIPA)

2012-01-14T11:24:00.000-08:00

Before month's end, the Senate will be voting on creating the first ever internet censorship system in the U.S. Our best chance at stopping the censorship bill (SOPA/PIPA) from becoming law is to make sure the Senate vote fails.

Unfortunately, we're still a ways away from having the votes we need to win.
Senators need to hear from us now, or the censorship bill passes.

Will you call your senators and ask them where they stand on PIPA? just click here.

It's time to force the Senate out into the open. Lobbyists and special interest groups use whip counts to track Congress on their issues and target key members before big votes. Now we're going to do it for the people, and we're going to do it in full public view.

Find your senators' phone numbers on the whip sheet or use our zipcode lookup tool. Making the calls will only take a minute or two, and we've put together some call tips to help you out (although it's pretty straightforward and the staffers you'll be talking to are typically very friendly).

We have 11 days to secure 41 votes against web censorship. There is a groundswell of opposition to the bill across the country, so it's definitely possible for us to win. But we really need you to help out this time if this is an issue you care about.

Factcheck: Gingrich's Baloney - filled Attacks on Romney

2012-01-12T05:26:00.000-08:00

A new ad and Web video make misleading claims about the GOP front-runner.

Posted on January 11, 2012

Summary

Newt Gingrich is out with two new attacks on Mitt Romney: an ad airing in South Carolina that tries to brand Romney as a “pro-abortion” governor, and a nearly three-minute Web video that gauges Romney statements on a “Baloney-O-Meter.” We found a bit of baloney in both.

The ad airing in South Carolina misleadingly says that Romney “expanded access to abortion pills.” The law in question concerned emergency contraception, or “the morning-after pill” (now available over the counter), not the controversial RU-486, known as “the abortion pill.”
The ad also says Romney “put Planned Parenthood on a state medical board but failed to put a pro-life group on the same board.” The Web video makes an even more sweeping claim that Romney “gave Planned Parenthood power over Massachusetts healthcare.” But the president of a right-to-life affiliate told us that the board had nothing to do with abortion and was a “minor” issue. “This isn’t something that we would choose to even bring up,” she said.
It makes the misleading claim that the Massachusetts health care law called for “taxpayer-funded abortions.” But the law said nothing about abortion. It was the state exchange that later said abortions would be covered by subsidized plans, following state Supreme Court rulings on what is required of Medicaid coverage.
Gingrich’s Web video lacks context when it claims that Romney raised taxes and fees “on gun owners and people who are blind.” The fees on the blind never took effect. And Romney did propose increasing firearm fees, but not as high as the fees that the Democratic Legislature later passed.

Analysis

The ad, which began airing in South Carolina on Jan. 10, claims that after Romney switched his position in 2004 from pro-abortion rights to anti-abortion, “he governed pro-abortion.” The Web video, titled “Pious Baloney,” went up on YouTube on Jan. 9 and is part of a new Gingrich campaign site calledwww.stopromneyspiousbaloney.com.

No ‘Abortion Pills’ Here

The Gingrich ad makes the highly misleading claim that Romney “expanded access to abortion pills.” But the law in question had nothing to do with the “abortion pill,” RU-486, the controversial medication that can induce abortion in women who are up to nine weeks pregnant. Instead, the law concerned access to emergency contraception, known as “the morning-after pill,” which even the National Right to Life Committee makes clear is not “the abortion pill.”

The “morning-after pill” can prevent pregnancy, but won’t affect established pregnancies, if taken within a few days of unprotected sex. It is essentially a high dose of birth control pills. It delays ovulation and can prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus. It’s true that some abortion opponents say the pill, along other forms of birth control, is an abortifacient, which is a drug that induces abortion. But it is not known as “the abortion pill,” which is a much more controversial topic. The Gingrich ad does not explain what it means by “abortion pills,” misleading viewers into believing that Romney expanded access to RU-486. That’s not the case.

In fact, “the morning-after pill,” or Plan B, is available without a prescription for women 17 and older. It was the Bush administration that first made the pill available over the counter in 2006 for women 18 and older. (The Obama administration recently overruled a Food and Drug Administration recommendation to make the pill available to teenagers without a prescription.)

Anne Fox, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, a National Right to Life affiliate, told us the group’s position is that emergency contraception is “a possible abortifacient.” The issue is whether the drug stops ovulation, similar to the birth control bill – and the group takes “no position on something that’s simply contraception” — or if the drug prevents implantation of a fertilized egg, which would make it an abortifacient in Citizens for Life’s view. What the drug actually did would depend on the person taking it. Ms. Fox said that “it’s a stretch” to call the drug an “abortion pill,” but also said that given the type of language used in political ads, Gingrich “could probably get away with it from our point of view.”

To be sure, some abortion opponents have pushed for a so-called “personhood” law declaring that life begins at the moment a human egg is fertilized, which could make the “morning-after” pill illegal, and arguably an “abortion” pill. But an effort to pass such a law by ballot initiative was recently rejected by more than 55 percent of voters in Mississippi. And of course, it wasn’t the law in Massachusetts.

Our view is that the language in the ad misleads voters into thinking Romney expanded access to RU-486, which – there’s no debate about it – induces abortion.

The ad refers to a law that Romney signed in October 2005, calling for the state to ask for a federal Medicaid waiver to expand eligibility for family-planning services for low-income individuals. Those services would include emergency contraception, as well as a range of family-planning services, such as gynecological exams, screenings for breast and cervical cancer, prenatal care, birth control counseling and testing for sexually transmitted diseases. The Boston Globe reported that anti-abortion groups were upset with Romney, especially since he had vetoed a law earlier that year that called for hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims and for pharmacists to provide it without requiring a prescription. The paper quoted just one anti-abortion advocate who headed a 6,000-member group in Chicago and told the Globe: “Birth control is the kissing cousin of abortion.”

It’s worth noting that many states — 21 of them to be exact — already had these family-planning waivers in 2005. The Boston Globe quoted Eric Fehrnstrom, who was then Romney’s communications director, saying that the state “already provides these health services to low-income women, and we have no objection to the Legislature’s directive that we seek a waiver to expand the eligible population to women with a slightly higher income.”

But the waiver never was granted. (The Medicaid.gov site lists all waivers for all states and the “1115 Family Planning” waiver isn’t among Massachusetts’ waivers.) However, the state did get a waiver to expand eligibility for Medicaid overall. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported in 2009 that at least 26 state Medicaid programs covered emergency contraception.

Romney’s Abortion Record

The Gingrich ad also repeats a few old claims: that Romney “put Planned Parenthood on a state medical board but failed to put a pro-life group on the same board. And Romney signed government mandated health care with taxpayer-funded abortions.”

Both of these claims have to do with the Massachusetts health care overhaul. The law says Planned Parenthood in the state is allowed to appoint one person to a 14-member MassHealth Payment Policy Advisory Board, which reviews rates and payments for Medicaid. The law doesn’t call for an anti-abortion group to appoint a member, but the president of one such group told us the anti-abortion community wasn’t concerned about this at all.

Ms. Fox, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, said this issue was “minor” and didn’t have anything to do with abortion.

“The committee doesn’t decide anything that has anything to do with abortion. It is just a rate-setting thing,” Ms. Fox told us. “It was not something that right to lifers were concerned about at the time. It was a minor thing. It really is Gingrich trying to make something significant [out of nothing]. This isn’t something that we would choose to even bring up.”

The Gingrich “Baloney-O-Meter” video, which we’ll address below, gives the impression that the board appointment was a much bigger deal than it was, saying that Romney “gave Planned Parenthood power over Massachusetts health care.” But the 14-member board is only charged with reviewing Medicaid rates and making recommendations for rates “that provide fair compensation for MassHealth services and promote high-quality, safe, effective, timely, efficient, culturally competent and patient-centered care.” MassHealth is the state Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Romney didn’t veto this provision of the law, as he did several other sections. That point was madeduring the 2008 presidential campaign by GOP candidate Fred Thompson. But, according to Anne Fox, the candidates are making much ado about nothing.

As for the claim that “Romney signed government mandated health care with taxpayer-funded abortions,” that, too, is overblown. The state health care law didn’t say anything about abortion. Instead, the state exchange later decided that subsidized insurance plans would include coverage for abortion. And the exchange may have had little choice but to do so. In 1981, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that women eligible for Medicaid had a state constitutional right to payments for medically necessary abortions. In 1997, the state high court again ruled that Massachusetts must cover medically necessary abortions if it covers other medically necessary care, such as childbirth.

As we’ve said before, some have argued that Romney could have done more to put limits on abortion coverage in the state health care law. But it’s not true that he signed a law that included “taxpayer-funded abortions.”

The Gingrich Web video says that Romney “used taxpayers funds to pay for abortions.” Again, the law didn’t say anything about abortion. Were taxpayer funds ever actually used to cover abortions for those who gained subsidized coverage under the law? We asked the Gingrich campaign if it had any proof for that claim. So far, we have not received a response. But overall, the law didn’t lead to any increase in abortions in the state. In fact, both the number and rate of abortions have declined since the legislation was passed.

The Guttmacher Institute, whose research on abortion has been cited by both political parties, has compiled statistics that show the number of abortions in the state went from 27,270 in 2005, the year before the law was passed, to 24,900 in 2008, the most recent statistic available. And the rate of abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age fell from 19.9 in 2005 to 18.3 in 2008. That’s an 8 percent drop, compared with a small rise of 1 percent nationally.

Finally, the ad makes a truthful claim, saying that Romney “appointed a pro-abortion judge.” It cites a2007 ABCNews.com piece that said Romney had nominated a longtime Democrat to a lifetime position on a district court. The later-confirmed judge, Matthew J. Nestor, once ran for state representative and campaigned as a “pro-choice” candidate. The ABCNews article pointed out that Romney nominated Nestor two months after Romney said he had changed his stance from pro-abortion rights to anti-abortion in November 2004.

ABC reported that Romney aides had said the governor considered a district court appointment to be different from one for appellate court, since the former rules on criminal and civil cases, not constitutional matters. The article also quoted Romney’s deputy campaign manager for his 2008 presidential run as saying: “The two main considerations were experience and having someone who was going to be tough on crime and able to handle the incredibly hectic pace of a busy district court.”

Readers can decide for themselves how much the district court appointment, or the other issues raised in the ad, affect Romney’s anti-abortion credentials, which our fact-checking colleagues at The Washington Post have noted are mixed. He did veto the law requiring the morning-after pill to be dispensed to rape victims at hospitals. His veto was later overridden by the Legislature. Romney thenbacked a state ruling that private hospitals, including religious hospitals, didn’t have to follow the requirement if they had moral objections. But he later flip-flopped on that position, saying that his legal counsel concluded that all hospitals would have to follow the new law. The Boston Globe also quoted Romney as saying: “My personal view, in my heart of hearts, is that people who are subject to rape should have the option of having emergency contraception or emergency contraception information.”

Romney’s evolving position on embryonic stem cell research angered both anti-abortion groups and those who supported such research. He opposed a state Senate bill to support the creation of embryos for research, but he didn’t object to research on embryos from fertility clinics.

Ms. Fox, with Massachusetts Citizens for Life, says this of Romney’s overall record on abortion: “We and National Right to Life are quite comfortable with the fact that he takes a pro-life position, that he governs with it, and that he will continue to have it.”

Introducing the Baloney-O-Meter

The Gingrich campaign created a website, www.stopromneyspiousbaloney.com, that plays off Gingrich’s recent “Meet the Press” debate jab at Romney, “Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney?” The quip came in response to Romney’s claim that “for me, politics, is not a career” and that he “long[ed] for a day where instead of having people to go to Washington for 20 and 30 years who get elected and then when they lose office they stay there and make money as lobbyists or connecting to businesses, I think it stinks.” Gingrich claimed the only reason Romney wasn’t serving in the Senate was because he ran against Democrat Ted Kennedy in 1994 and lost.

The new website from the Gingrich campaign includes a nearly three-minute video featuring a Baloney-O-Meter that tilts wildly when Romney makes statements about being a true and consistent conservative.

But the ad metes out some baloney of its own.

For example, the video states: “As governor, Mitt used taxpayer funds to pay for abortions and gave Planned Parenthood power over Massachusetts healthcare.” We dealt with that claim above.

The ad also states that “Mitt Romney raised taxes and fees $700 million. After pledging not to.” The video then cuts to a clip of Romney on “Meet the Press” saying, “I’m not trying to hide the fact that we raised fees.” Text in the ad then states, “Including on guns and people who are blind.”

Let’s start with the video’s claim that “Mitt Romney raised taxes and fees $700 million.” The video cleverly groups “taxes and fees” to sidestep the debate about whether they are synonymous. Technically, Romney never raised personal income taxes, but he did increase fees by hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he also closed loopholes on some corporate taxes (a fact we have noted whenever Romney has claimed he did not raise taxes as governor).

When John McCain cited an identical $700 million figure in the 2008 Republican presidential race, we noted that there is disagreement over that amount, with the state Department of Administration and Finance putting the fee total at $260 million a year and the corporate tax change at $174 million a year, and the independent Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation saying both fees and taxes totaled $740 million to $750 million a year.

As for the claim that Gov. Romney raised fees “on gun owners and people who are blind,” it’s true that in 2003 Romney put forth a fiscal year 2004 budget proposal that included fees on both. But some context is in order.

Romney’s proposed budget sought to raise firearm license fees from $25 to $75. However, the Democratic-controlled Legislature decided to raise those fees even higher, to $100 (see Section 34 of Chapter 140). That burden was eased a bit the following year when the term of a license was increased from four to six years.

As for fees on blind people, it’s true that Romney’s budget proposal called for a new $10 fee for a certificate of blindness from the state (used by blind people for tax purposes and to avail themselves of some government services) and another $15 fee for photo identification cards for the blind, which can be used to get free access to public transportation. Together, the fees were projected to bring the state $114,000 in FY 2004. But the Democratic state Legislature rejected those fees, so they never came to pass.

“In Massachusetts, the governor can only propose a budget, the legislature has to appropriate the budget,” explained Bob Hachey, president of Bay State Council of the Blind. “The governor on his own can’t institute something like that.”

“Gingrich is on the right path, but he went a little too far,” Hachey said. “He is correct in the sense that Romney tried to use these fees as a way to say, ‘I did not raise taxes.’ But that one never actually happened.”

Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom has argued that Gov. Romney faced a $3 billion deficit when he took office, and that “he balanced the budget primarily through spending cuts and reforms. Fee increases accounted for approximately 10 percent of the solution, and they were not broad-based by any means.”

At one Republican debate in 2008, Romney said the fees needed to be adjusted for inflation and to cover the cost of services, but Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation President Michael Widmer told us then that the increase “wasn’t tied to any analysis of the cost of delivering those services” and the groupcharacterized those fees as “far in excess of any reasonable measure of the cost of services.”

The Gingrich video also calls out Romney for claiming in the “Meet the Press” debate that he hadn’t seen a pro-Romney super PAC’s ads attacking Gingrich, and then a few seconds later, describing them.

Romney, Jan. 8: And with regards to their ads, I haven’t seen them.

Then a little bit later, he did, in fact, go on to describe one of the ads.

Romney, Jan. 8: But let me tell you this. The– the ad I saw said that– that you’d been forced out of the speakership. That was correct. It said that– that you’d sat down with Nancy Pelosi and– and argued for– for a climate change bill. That was correct. It said that you’d called the– the– Ron Paul– wrong Paul. Paul Ryan’s plan to– to provide– Medicare reform– a right-wing social engineering plan. It said that– that as part of an investigation, an ethics investigation that you had to reimburse some $300,000. Those things are all true.
If there was something related to abortion that it said that was wrong, I hope they pull it out. Anything wrong, I’m opposed to. But, you know, this ain’t– this ain’t a bean bag. We’re gonna come into a campaign. We’re gonna describe the differences between us.

Gingrich claimed The Washington Post Fact Checker had found “virtually nothing accurate” in one of the ads from pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future. Romney, as we highlighted earlier, ticked off a number of statements from the ad that he said were true.

We concluded that Romney was mostly correct about the ad statements he mentioned, and Gingrich was wrong. We noted that in our fact-check of the ad, we found it had a few false and misleading claims, but also many were accurate, as Romney said.

– by Lori Robertson and Robert Farley

Sources

Ebbert, Stephanie. “Romney Signs Bill on Family Planning.” Boston Globe. 15 Oct 2005.

Massachusetts Commonwealth Connector. “About the Connector: Overview.” www.MAHealthConnector.org, 6 Dec. 2007.

Haslmaier, Edmund F. “The Massachusetts Health Reform: Assessing its Significance and Progress.” 21 Sep. 2007.

Hyman, David A. “The Massachusetts Health Plan: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” 28 Jun. 2007.

Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Session Laws, Acts 2003, Chapter 140: An Act Making Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2004.

Gov. Mitt Romney’s Budget Recommendation FY 2004. Executive Office for Health and Human Services. Fees from Certificate of Blindness and Photo ID Cards for Blind Services. Accessed via Internet Archives Wayback Machine.

FactCheck.org interview with Bob Hachey, president of Bay State Council of the Blind. 10 Jan 2012.

FactCheck.org interview with Anne Fox, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life. 11 Jan 2012.

LeBlanc, Steve. “Romney oversaw millions in fee hikes as Massachusetts governor.” Associated Press. 28 Aug 2007.

Moody, Chris. “Gingrich’s latest Romney slam: He taxed the blind.” Yahoo News, The Ticket. 07 Jan 2012.

Kahn, Ric. “State Fees Resemble Taxes to Those Who’ll Pay.” The Boston Globe. 29 May 2003.

Landrigan, Kevin. “Taxing Matter.” Nashua Telegraph. 13 Dec 2007.

VIDEO: Those Two Guys Perform Bellingham Herald LTE...

2012-01-10T16:47:00.001-08:00

Occupy Bellingham Update: Post Eviction

2011-12-31T13:29:00.000-08:00

You didn't think we were just going away, did you?

LA Times: Presidential campaign needs to get real on salvaging middle class

2011-12-30T09:02:00.000-08:00

With the coming U.S. presidential election, 2012 offers voters, business leaders and politicians an opportunity for a joint debate over the fundamentals of capitalism in America. Link to full post

Rader v Whatcom County

2011-12-27T21:04:00.000-08:00

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON

LYLE and SUE RADER, husband and wife v Whatcom County

FILED: December 27, 2011

 Grosse, J. -- Under Whatcom County's critical areas ordinance, clearing and grading land in a wetland is subject to regulation. The hearing examiner did not err in so concluding, and we affirm the superior court's order affirming the hearing examiner's decision. We deny the County's request for an award of attorney fees and costs under RCW 4.84.370. The record does not show that the County has approved the critical areas protection plan or the mitigation plan the Raders submitted and has not identified the process by which the Raders can obtain a clearing and grading permit. According to the County, the parties are still negotiating over what the Raders must do in order to comply with the critical areas ordinance. Accordingly, no "land use approval or decision" has been rendered, and an award of attorney fees and costs to the County under RCW 4.84.370 is not warranted.

Link to full post

Krugman: Don't Forget Wingnut Welfare

2011-12-26T09:10:00.000-08:00

Steve Benen asks "why Congressional Republicans were willing to pursue what looked like a “suicidal” political strategy in the payroll tax fight. But he somehow fails to mention an important factor: reliable conservatives are assured of a safe landing even if they are defeated." Link to full post.

What is Wingnut Welfare?

2011 Congressional Approval Rating: 11%

2011-12-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays everyone,

The U.S. Senate has gone home for the year, and the House looks to have as well, but not without first setting a couple of records :

Congress currently has an approval rating of only 11%, the lowest ever recorded since Gallup started polling in 1974, with a yearly average of only 17% in 2011 (also a new low). That's lower than, for example, communism, or King George III during the American Revolution. [1]

This past session was the most "do-nothing" Congress since 1995, when control of each chamber was similarly split between Democrats & Republicans, enacting the fewest number of bills (66). [2]

But our historically-disliked, gridlocked Congress still introduced thousands of bills over the past year. So what did they do?

Last week, a book review in The New York Times praised Prof. Lawrence Lessig's research on systemic corruption: "In the first quarter of 2011 Congress — awash in special interest money from banks attempting to push through a bill allowing them to collect per-transaction debit-card fees — spent more time on that issue than on unemployment, the deficit, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, health care or global warming." [3]

Two fast-tracked bills on top of the agenda when Congress returns, SOPA (H.R. 3261) and PIPA (S. 968), would establish the first-ever China-style internet censorship in America. Corporations & special interest groups supporting these bills have donated more than four times as much money to relevant committee members as opponents. Together, SOPA & PIPA are the least-popular bills in the OC community over the past year, with only 1% user support (38 votes aye, 2,890 votes nay). [4, 5]

This past week, as you likely heard in the news, House Republicans rejected a bipartisan agreement from the Senate to extend payroll tax cuts. The outcome of this failure to compromise will include higher taxes for 160 million Americans, reduced Medicare payments, and an end in January to benefits for 6 million long-term unemployed people. [6]

Well, even though Congress in its current form is massively unpopular, OpenCongress.org remains a highly popular public resource. Our 2011 year-in-review ::

More than 4 million site visits, 10 million pageviews, and tens of millions of automated data requests every week to our unique database of official government info and social wisdom from around the Web.

Over 50,000 emails sent from the public to their members of Congress in the past six months. OC is the only free & open-source & not-for-profit web tool for emailing all your members of Congress, then tracking any response in a transparent public forum, with fully open data for the public benefit.

Over 300 posts written on our OC Blog, explaining what's really happening in Congress in real-world language, with links to the work of our open-gov allies, helpful news & blog coverage, and highlighted comments from over 200,000 "MyOC" members.

Next year we'll release even more free tools for the public to organize their communities and whip Congress around bills and issues. But we're a tiny non-profit project, and we need your help just to keep OpenCongress up and running. Please make a year-end donation to support our work:

http://www.opencongress.org/donate

... donations are tax-exempt, and go directly towards our (considerable) server costs and (free, libre & open-source) site maintenance. OC is used every day by tens of thousands of political bloggers, citizen watchdogs, and first-time visitors in need of a user-friendly interface for Congress. More info on what we've accomplished with our limited resources can be found on our year-in-review blog post. [7]

Please consider for a moment how terribly dysfunctional the U.S. Congress is. And then how important it is that OpenCongress continues to build transparency and accountability in it. We really need your help to keep going.

Thank you,
- David and the OC Team

http://www.opencongress.org/donate

[1] - http://www.gallup.com/poll/151628/Congress-Ends-2011-Record-Low-Approval.aspx

[2] - http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/12/do-nothing-congress-really-did-nothing-year/45774/
[3] -http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/books/republic-lost-campaign-finance-reform-book-review.html?_r=1&pagewanted=al
[4] -http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/2455-Net-Censorship-Bills-On-Top-of-the-Agenda-for-After-the-Holidays
[5] - http://www.opencongress.org/bill/hot?order=desc&page=1&sort=support_count_1&timeframe=1year
[6] - http://www.npr.org/2011/12/21/144087072/hill-standoff-over-payroll-tax-cut-continues
[7]- http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/2454-Worst-Congress-Ever-Support-OpenCongress-with-a-Year-End-Donation-

Merry Christmas from Latte Republic

2011-12-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

Awesome Christmas Lights Display

President Obama Welcomes Home our Troops

2011-12-24T15:12:00.000-08:00

Nerditorial: Free Rezones for Everybody! Woo-HOOOO!!!

2011-12-21T12:10:00.000-08:00

It's a Festivus Miracle!

So, I filed an ethics complaint a few days ago against Sam Crawford. It was covered by The Herald and KGMI.

And now the Ethics Commission has responded.

The Ethics Commission finds Councilor Crawford's actions regarding the Birch Bay rezone to be entirely kosher.

And, the Drayton Harbor rezone, too. Apparently.

The Commission has issued an Order of Deficiency on my complaint. Take a look...

...[the]... Whatcom County Code ... specifically allows any council person as well as other public officials, to make applications for a zoning change and states that "Application fees shall not be required..." As such, this action by the Council member in question does not constitute an ethical violation for it is in conformance with the Code.
...

...the above complaint is deficient in that even if all of the allegations are true, it fails to state an ethical violation.
...

You can read the entire document HERE.. (Don't worry, it's only two pages.)

So, Sam Crawford is indeed a Zoning Santa Claus, with the Ethics Commission serving as his Zoning Elves.

Ho, ho, ho.

I'm currently mulling over my options.

I will announce my course of action in response to the Ethics Commission decision tomorrow... on The Joe Show.

Tune in to 930 AM, KBAI, at noon tomorrow to find out more...

The Whoppers of 2011

2011-12-21T05:34:00.000-08:00

The year's worst political deceptions, from both sides.

Posted on December 20, 2011

Summary

Despite what you may have heard in 2011:

The new health care law won’t cost many jobs (and they’ll be poorly paying jobs at that).
Republicans aren’t proposing to “end” Medicare (and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden has signed onto a modified version of the GOP plan).
Most of the “millionaires” who would pay higher tax rates under a Democratic proposal aren’t job-creating small-business owners.
President Obama’s mother didn’t really fight to get health insurance coverage as she was dying.

And there was plenty more spin and deception in 2011. Obama claimed he pays a lower tax rate than a teacher. Michele Bachmann endorsed a claim that HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. Joe Biden claimed rapes quadrupled in Flint, Mich., after police layoffs. And that’s just some of the nonsense we debunked.

For our full run-down of the worst political whoppers we encountered during the year, please read on to the Analysis section. And get ready for more in the presidential election year that is about to begin.

Analysis

Republican Whopper:
‘Job-Killing’ Health Care Law

The truth first: The best economic analysis of the new health care law points to the loss of a “small” number of low-paid jobs — starting in 2014. That’s when firms with 50 or more workers will be required either to provide health insurance coverage to their employees or pay a penalty.
The Congressional Budget Office also says that the law will lead to fewer people who want to work — or who will want to work as many hours as they normally would — because they’ll be better off financially, or won’t feel the need to stay on a job they don’t like just to keep their coverage.

But you would never know that if all you listened to was the constant repetition of the phrase “job-killing” by Republicans bent on repealing the law before it can take full effect.
We first wrote about this back in January, when we noted that House Republicans were attaching the misleading “job-killing” label to the law, and offering only misrepresentations of the evidence to back up their slogan. But the bogus claim has been repeated over and over all year. On Dec. 10, Rep. Michele Bachmann falsely claimed that a study showed the U.S. will “lose 1.6 million jobs over five years if we keep Obamacare” — referring to a business group’s study that did not examine the new law at all, and showed nothing of the sort. And we also found the worst part of Mitt Romney’s first TV spot wasn’t the out-of-context video editing that caused the Obama campaign to label it “dishonest,” but instead was the more substantive claim that the new law is “killing jobs.”
It may be that the constant repetition of this false claim will make a lot of voters believe it. But repeating a whopper doesn’t make it true, it just makes it a bigger whopper.
A ‘Job-Killing’ Law?
Jan. 7
More Baloney at ABC/Yahoo! Debate
Dec. 11
Romney’s Ad ‘Deceitful & Dishonest’?
Nov. 22

Democratic Whopper:
Republicans Would ‘End Medicare’

First the truth: The budget plan that Republicans pushed through the House in 2011 would have radically changed Medicare in the future — for workers now under age 55. Starting in the year 2022, the GOP plan called for new Medicare beneficiaries to purchase private insurance with the help of federal subsidies.
But the plan would have continued the present Medicare system indefinitely for those now getting benefits, and also for all those who reach age 65 during the next decade.
But the truth didn’t stop Democrats from misrepresenting the proposal shamelessly to scare senior citizens and win election votes. They tested this tactic in a May 26 special House election in New York state, running ads accusing the Republican candidate of endorsing a plan that would “essentially end Medicare” and amount to “cutting benefits for seniors,” claims that were far from the truth.
It worked: Democrat Kathy Hochul won in a district that normally leans Republican. So the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee rolled out even more misleading robotic telephone calls in 13 other House districts to soften up the Republican incumbents for 2012. These calls claimed the GOP House members cast a “vote to end Medicare.”
One independent liberal group even posted a widely seen Internet video of a man pushing a white-haired woman in a wheelchair (apparently well over age 55) to the edge of a scenic cliff and dumping her over it. It ends by asking, “Is America Beautiful without Medicare?” That bogus claim is being satirized by our new sister site, “FlackCheck.org,” which found it to be among the “Worst of the Worst” of 2011.
The truth is that not all Democrats think that changing Medicare in the way Republicans proposed is tantamount to murdering grannie. In fact, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon joined Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin on Dec. 14 to offer a bipartisan plan that is a modified version of the GOP plan Ryan authored earlier. And the New York Times noted Nov. 28 that there is growing support among some Democrats for reining in Medicare costs through a “premium support” system similar to the GOP plan if accompanied by enough safeguards.
But falsely claiming that any such change is an “end” to Medicare has already helped win one election for Democrats. So we suspect this whopper may be making our list again a year from now.
Test Market for Spin
May 19
DCCC Dials Wrong Number
June 13

Republican Whopper:
Job-Killing ‘Small-Business’ Taxes

For years Republicans have been claiming that raising taxes on high-income individuals is equivalent to raising taxes on “small businesses” and thus killing jobs. We first debunked this big exaggeration in 2004, in fact.
This year, House Speaker John Boehner carried the idea to a new extreme with a claim that more than half of those who would be hit by a tax increase on “millionaires” are small-business owners: “the very people that we’re hoping will reinvest in our economy and create jobs.”
That’s rubbish. As we pointed out, only 13 percent of those reporting $1 million or more in income have even one-quarter of their earnings from small-business sources. The truth is that for the vast majority of those making over $1 million a year — a group that includes hedge-fund managers, corporate CEOs, owners of very large businesses and even wealthy coupon-clippers — any small-business income is incidental. Even Boehner’s spokesman admitted later that the speaker had, well, misspoken.
National Public Radio reporter Tamara Keith went searching for business owners who would be affected by the “millionaire” tax, but found that both the House and Senate GOP leadership was “unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.” Undaunted, she asked for help from the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax, but they couldn’t produce any millionaire job creator willing to talk either.
She finally found three who would talk — by cleverly posting a notice on Facebook. But none of them said an increase in the personal tax rate would inhibit them from trying to create jobs, contradicting this GOP whopper. One said, “What my business does is based on the contracts that it wins and the demand for its services,” and not the tax rate the owner pays on profits.
Boehner’s Big Stretch on Small Business
Nov. 9
Keith, Tamara. “GOP Objects To ‘Millionaires Surtax’; Millionaires We Found? Not So Much.” National Public Radio. 9 Dec 2011.

Democratic Whopper:
Obama’s Dying Mother

We also discovered in 2011 that one of President Barack Obama’s favorite personal anecdotes — which he had told any number of times to sell his health-care legislation to the public — was not true.

The president told the story often during the 2008 presidential campaign and the many months before he signed the health care law. He said his mother, as she was dying, nearly was denied health insurance coverage due to the fact that her ovarian cancer was considered a preexisting condition. But in 2011, author Janny Scott published a biography, “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother.” And in it she wrote that Stanley Ann Dunham’s health insurance provider did, in fact, cover most of the medical expenses.
The author had access to Dunham’s letters to her insurance company and reported that her fight was over disability coverage (which is not affected by the new health care law) and not over medical insurance. The White House did not dispute the account.
This is not the first time Obama has been caught using an embellished anecdote to sell the massive new health care law. In 2009 — in a televised health care address to Congress and the nation, no less — he claimed an insurance company delayed covering an Illinois man’s chemotherapy and “he died because of it.” But as reporters later pointed out, the man’s coverage was reinstated. His treatment resumed, and however badly he was treated, he nevertheless survived another four years. In that case, Obama’s speechwriters relied on a mistaken news account and never bothered to check the facts, which had been aired in public hearings before Congress.
Obama’s Untrue Anecdote
July 14
Sweet: Another Stretch By Obama
Sept. 13, 2009
Too Good to Check?
Sept. 19, 2009

Republican Presidential Whoppers:
Bachmann & Cain

We could devote an entire article to the false or misleading claims that Republican presidential candidates are making — about each other, about the president or about liberals in general. But two stand out in our minds as truly memorable whoppers:

Bachmann’s totally groundless claim, based on a story she said a stranger told her, that HPV vaccine somehow causes mental retardation. We found no scientific evidence to support that claim. In fact, 35 million doses of the vaccine have been delivered without a single reported case of mental retardation. Bachmann was taken to task by the American Academy of Pediatrics for her “false statements” about the vaccine.
Herman Cain’s equally groundless claim — which he repeated on national television — that Planned Parenthood’s founder wanted to prevent “black babies from being born,” and that the organization built 75 percent of its clinics in black communities. In fact, Margaret Sanger’s actual words don’t support the twisted interpretation Cain and others have put on them. Furthermore, only 9 percent of abortion clinics are in predominately black neighborhoods.

An Antidote for Bachmann’s Anecdote
Sept. 14
Cain’s False Attack on Planned Parenthood
Nov. 1

Democratic Whopper:
Teachers Pay Higher Tax Rates Than Obama

President Obama went overboard arguing for higher tax rates on high earnings, claiming that he pays a lower tax rate than a teacher making $50,000 a year. That’s not true.

A single taxpayer with $50,000 of income would have paid less than half the effective rate paid by the Obamas in 2008, 2009 or 2010. And if the $50,000-a-year teacher was supporting a spouse and two children — like Obama — he or she would have paid no federal income taxes at all.

Obama’s Teacher Tax Whopper
Sept. 28

Assorted Absurdities

Don’t see your favorite tall tale here? You can mine our archives for rich deposits of political spin from 2011. There you’ll find (among many other items):

An exaggerated Democratic National Committee Web video accusing ex-Gov. Mitt Romney of far more flip-flopping than he really committed. It’s a preview of what the general election campaign will see should Romney win the GOP nomination.
Lots of jobs spin, from all sides. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz wrongly claimed that the U.S. has begun to add “millions of jobs in manufacturing.” And the Senate Republican Policy Committee admitted using a grossly over-inflated number of “potential” jobs that supposedly won’t materialize due to Obama’s oil and gas drilling policies. The Republicans conceded that they had overstated the total by more than half a million.
Vice President Joe Biden’s multiple whoppers about rapes in Flint, Mich., following police layoffs. He claimed variously that they went up 152 percent, tripled and even “quadrupled.” But FBI data show the number of rapes in Flint went down by 11 percent over two years. Michigan State Police figures, which include male victims, show a 9.8 percent reduction. The city supplied rape statistics to both the state and federal agencies.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Web video claiming the U.S. poverty rate is at an “all-time high,” when it’s actually 7.3 percentage points lower than it was in 1959.
And what list of whoppers would be complete without Donald Trump? During his presidential fling, Trump forced Obama to release his long-form birth certificate by making a bushelful of whoppers, including these false statements: The president’s grandmother revealed Obama was born in Kenya; the official “Certification of Live Birth” that Obama released in 2008 is “not a birth certificate,” and there’s no signature or certification number on it; “nobody knew” Obama when he was growing up and “nobody ever comes forward” who knew him as a child; and birth announcements that appeared in Hawaii newspapers in 1961 “probably” were put there fraudulently by his now-deceased American grandparents.

And it wasn’t just the politicians spreading false information: Lies spread like viruses through carelessly forwarded email messages that were also copied and pasted on personal blogs and social media. We wrote in 2008: “That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously.” And that continued to be true in 2011. Check our “Viral Spiral” page for the most current cyber-whoppers.
Our favorite example from all the delusional nonsense that circulated in 2011 was another claim — circulated by gun fanciers – that liberal billionaire George Soros was behind an investment company that has been buying many companies that make guns and ammunition. In fact, Soros has no connection to the company. Even the National Rifle Association weighed in, calling this e-rumor “completely false and baseless” and adding: “The owners and investors involved are strong supporters of the Second Amendment and are avid hunters and shooters.”
Will 2012 bring more honesty and respect for facts? We certainly hope so. But it is an election year after all — so we’ll be ready for whatever that brings.
– by Brooks Jackson

No Debt Growth: Is a Double Dip Recession Looming?

2011-12-20T17:07:00.000-08:00

With No Debt Growth, Is a Double-Dip Recession Looming? from The Big Picture Conference on FORA.tv

Crossroads GPS Twists Facts in Senate Ads

2011-12-18T08:45:00.000-08:00

Conservative group distorts Warren's bailout role, Nelson's health care demands

Posted on December 13, 2011

Summary

Crossroads GPS distorts the facts in TV ads that attack two Democratic Senate candidates for their roles in the Wall Street bailout and the federal health care law:

The well-heeled conservative group says Elizabeth Warren was appointed to oversee how tax dollars were spent for bank bailouts that “helped pay big bonuses to bank executives.” That’s absurd. Warren chaired a bipartisan watchdog panel that held hearings, reviewed data and wrote reports to Congress on the effectiveness of the program, but had no control over how banks spent their bailout funds. Bonuses fell under a special “pay czar” at the Treasury.
Another ad says Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson “demanded a payoff” for voting for the new health care law and was “accused of selling his vote, cynical what’s-in-it-for-me-type politics.” That insinuation of personal corruption is false. Nelson demanded nothing for himself. He also denied seeking the provision the ad actually refers to, which would have benefited Nebraska over other states.

Analysis

Crossroads GPS — the well-heeled conservative group founded with the help of former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie — already has been very active in key 2012 Senate races. The group released five TV ads last month and, as we wroteat the time, distortions abounded.

On Dec. 8, the group announced it had launched a $1.1 million, two-week TV ad campaign targeting four Democratic Senate candidates. In this article, we’ll look at the ads against Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Again, distortions abound.

Elizabeth Warren’s Bailout Role

Warren, a Harvard Law School professor, is running for the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, challenging Sen. Scott Brown. Crossroads GPS previously targeted Warren in a misleading TV ad on statements she made about Occupy Wall Street in an attempt to tie her to “extreme left protests.” In a 180-degree turn, Crossroads now seeks to portray Warren as a tool for Wall Street banks, ridiculing her promise to be “a voice” for the middle class.

⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full transcript ⬏

The new ad, which is titled “Champion,” begins with a clip of Warren saying she will be “a voice in the room on behalf of middle-class families.” It then cuts to an announcer who mocks her promise.

Announcer: Really? Congress had Warren oversee how your tax dollars were spent bailing out the same banks that helped cause the financial meltdown. Bailouts that helped pay big bonuses to bank executives, while middle-class Americans lost out.

That’s misleading. Yes, Warren served from 2008 to 2010 as chairwoman of the five-memberCongressional Oversight Panel, a bipartisan committee set up by the same legislation that created the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). But so what? Committee members, who were appointed by congressional leaders of both parties, also included two Republicans: Rep. Jeb Hensarling, who voted against the bailout, and Sen. John Sununu, who voted for it.

Did Warren give money to the troubled banks? No, that was done by Treasury — as required by a law passed with bipartisan support and signed by then-President George W. Bush, a Republican.

Likewise, Warren and her committee had nothing to do with giving “big bonuses to bank executives.” That was done by the banks. And oversight of bonuses was the responsibility of the Office of Special Master for TARP Executive Compensation within the Treasury Department. Kenneth Feinberg, known informally as the “pay czar,” headed that office. Feinberg had the power, among other things, to approve compensation structures of top executives of certain TARP recipients and retroactively seek reimbursement for excessive bonuses paid by TARP recipients if he deemed them “contrary to the public interest.” As he explained on page 13 of his final report, Feinberg found $1.7 billion in excessive bonuses paid to top executives after the banks received TARP money; however, he did not seek reimbursement because the payments were made by institutions that already had repaid their TARP funds or changed their compensation structure.

For her part, Warren was critical of executive compensation that relies too heavily on bonuses. In an Oct. 22, 2009, interview on CBS, Warren called it a “problem in American industry” because in some cases it puts short-term gain ahead of long-term health of the company. Warren said, “They have taken taxpayer money, unemployment is now running at almost 10 percent, millions of families are facing foreclosure on their homes, and yet the executives want to say, ‘I take your money when I make mistakes and I still want to compensate myself richly because I’m the one who is in charge of this big company.”

So, what was the role of Warren and her oversight committee? The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office explained it this way in a November 2009 report: “The panel is empowered to hold hearings, review official data, and write reports on actions taken by Treasury and financial institutions and their effect on the economy.” A year later, the GAO said the oversight panel’s monthly reports primarily focused on transparency to help taxpayers better understand how the money was spent.

GAO, November 2010: Many of its recommendations have focused on issues of transparency and what COP views as the need to be clearer on goals and metrics so that taxpayers can better understand whether their monies are being effectively utilized.

Suggesting Warren is responsible for the Wall Street bailout is like blaming your tax accountant for how you spent your paycheck.

How did she perform as chairwoman of the watchdog panel? Warren was appointed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and served for 22 months before resigning in September 2010. In a Nov. 5, 2009, article, the Associated Press said Warren “gained prominence as an early voice questioning whether Treasury was providing enough transparency as it doled out the bailout money.” This particular AP article was about a panel report that criticized the Treasury Department for guaranteeing $4.3 trillion in risky bank assets — putting far more taxpayer money at risk than the law allowed the department to spend buying troubled assets. It quoted Warren as describing the loan guarantees as “a very dangerous tool.”

At a July 21, 2010, Senate hearing, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley commended Warren and two other “TARP watchdogs” for their work. “Each of you has brought more transparency and accountability to the activities of Treasury,” Grassley said. “In short, you have kept Treasury honest, a critical service with so much taxpayer money at stake.”

On the ad’s overarching point — that Warren helped big banks at the expense of the middle class — we point you to an April 22, 2009, Wall Street Journal story. In it, Warren is quoted as confronting Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on the program’s failure to help average families.

Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2009: ‘People are angry because they are paying for programs that haven’t been fully explained and that have no apparent benefit for their families or the economy as a whole,’ Harvard University law professor Elizabeth Warren told Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during a hearing on Capitol Hill.

On the flip side, Warren had been criticized for not being transparent with the panel’s own finances — which is ironic given her criticism of the Treasury Department for the same thing.

One last thing: The ad also says that “Warren went on a ‘charm offensive’ with some of the same banks who got bailed out.” That’s a reference to a speech she gave to the Chamber of Commerce’s annualCapital Markets Summit. Crossroads cites a Politico article that described Warren’s speech as a “charm offensive” because it was part of the White House’s “outreach to business.” We’ll leave that up to you to decide whether Warren’s appearance at a Chamber of Commerce event counters her promise to work for middle-class families.

Ben Nelson’s ‘Payoff’

Crossroads’ ad attacking Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska goes after him for demanding a “payoff,” a false insinuation that he tried to sell his vote for personal gain. The ad actually refers to what critics called the “Cornhusker Kickback,” a deal that was added to a Senate version of the health care bill, and that would have given special help to Nebraska in the form of added federal Medicaid funds. The provision was later removed, and the final legislation boosted federal funding for all states.

⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full transcript ⬏

The announcer in the ad says that Nelson faced a choice: “Pass Obama’s health care takeover or fight for Nebraska.” The ad goes on to say: “He demanded a payoff, accused of selling his vote, cynical what’s-in-it-for-me-type politics.”

But Nelson didn’t get special help for himself in the deal, and the ad neglects to explain what the supposed “payoff” was. The ad claims Nelson didn’t “fight for Nebraska,” and yet the very “payoff” it accuses him of seeking was in fact special federal funding just for his state. As we said, in the end, all states ended up with more federal funds, and they may well have Nelson to thank for it. Nelson has saidthat he didn’t ask for the Nebraska-only deal, and that he wanted all states to get the federal dollars.

The story goes back to December 2009, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was trying to drum up 60 votes to pass that chamber’s health care bill. Nelson was concerned about potential federal funding of abortion, and the pertinent section was rewritten. Plus, Nebraska was given full federal funding beyond 2017 to cover the bill’s expansion of Medicaid, a joint federal-state health insurance program for low-income persons. All states were to receive full funding through 2017, but Nebraska would get funding for years to come. Nelson said on Dec. 19, 2009, that he would vote for the Senate legislation. Politicoreported that the deal “might be the most blatant” of a handful of deals to certain senators to secure their votes. The headline on the story called the arrangements “payoffs,” and the Crossroads ad highlights that word.

For the record, Reid said that this was simply business as usual for legislators. “You’ll find a number of states that are treated differently than other states. That’s what legislating is all about. It’s compromise,” he was quoted as saying by Politico.

Republicans expressed outrage, but at least one senator thought that Nelson’s negotiating could open the door for all states to get the additional federal dollars. Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa told Politico: “When you look at it, I thought well God, good, it is going to be the impetus for all the states to stay at 100 percent [federal funding]. So he might have done all of us a favor.”

Indeed, that’s nearly what happened. The states didn’t get 100 percent funding, but they came close. In February 2010, President Obama put forth a new proposal that dropped the controversial Nebraska deal, which House leaders didn’t much care for either, and instead offered increased federal funding to all states. The final health care law (see page 180) ended up giving states 100 percent federal funding for those who are newly eligible for Medicaid under the law from 2014 through 2016. In 2017, they get 95 percent. The percentage decreases slowly until it hits 90 percent for 2020 and beyond.

When the “Cornhusker” deal was first made in December 2009, Nelson told CNN that he “didn’t ask for a special favor.” And he suggested that something would need to be done for all states.

Nelson, CNN, Dec. 20, 2009: I didn’t ask for a special favor here. … What I said is the governor of Nebraska has contacted me, he said publicly he’s having trouble with the budget. This will add to his budget woes. And I said, look, we have to have that fixed. …
If we’re going to mandate these things on a state, then we have to pay for them. … That was my objective, to get that fixed. … But I think in the future, either the mandate goes away or the federal government provides the money, as it should.

Nelson’s staff released a timeline of events to counter the perception that the senator sold his vote. It shows that in early January 2010, Nelson said in a statement that he was “working with Senate leaders” to “treat all states the same” regarding the Medicaid expansion. About a week later, Nelson asked Reid to remove the Nebraska provision from the bill. He said in a letter to the Senate leader that the provision “was intended to serve as a placeholder that would be removed during the conference negotiations and replaced with a mechanism applying to all state governments.”

It’s true that Nelson faced a torrent of criticism when the deal was made public. A Dec. 21, 2009,editorial in Nebraska’s Lincoln Journal Star — highlighted in the Crossroads ad — asked: “Since when has Nebraska become synonymous for cynical ‘what’s in it for me’-type politics?” But the ad leaves the impression that Nelson benefited personally from some kind of corrupt payoff, and that’s not the case.

– by Eugene Kiely and Lori Robertson

Sources

Farley, Robert. “The Fall TV Season’s Senate Air Wars.” FactCheck.org. 15 Nov 2011.

“Crossroads GPS Launches New TV Ads on Economy, Spending in Four States.” Press release. Crossroads GPS. 8 Dec 2011.

“Warren appointed to Congressional panel overseeing Treasury’s economic bailout plan.” Press release. Harvard Law School. 21 Nov 2008.

U.S. House. H.R. 1424, roll call vote #681. 3 Oct 2008.

U.S. Senate. S. Amdt. 5685 to H.R. 1424, roll call vote 212. 1 Oct 2008.

U.S. Government Accountability Office. “Troubled Asset Relief Program.: Continued Stewardship Needed as Treasury Develops Strategies for Monitoring and Divesting Financial Interests in Chrysler and GM.” Nov 2009.

U.S. Government Accountability Office. “Financial Audit: Office of Financial Stability (Troubled Asset Relief Program) Fiscal Years 2010 and 2009 Financial Statements.” Nov 2010.

“Reid And Pelosi Announce Members Of Congressional Oversight Panel.” Press release. Senate Democrats. 14 Nov 2008.

“Warren Steps Down from Congressional Oversight Panel.” Press release. Congressional Oversight Panel. 17 Sep 2010.

Wagner, Daniel. “Taxpayers risked trillions at height of crisis.” Associated Press. 5 Nov 2009.

Crittenden, Michael R. “TARP still falls short on key issues.” Wall Street Journal. 22 April 2009.

Wong, Scott and John Bresnahan. “Warren’s TARP panel under scrutiny.” Politico. 22 Sep 2011.

“Fifth Annual Capital Markets Summit: Ensuring Competitiveness in a Post-Regulatory Reform Environment.” Agenda. U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 30 Mar 2011.

Phillip, Abby. “Elizabeth Warren faces big business at Chamber summit.” Politico. 31 March 2011.

Lincoln Journal Star. “Time to start over on health care.” Editorial. 21 Dec 2009.

FOXNews.com. “Nelson Accused of Selling Vote on Health Bill for Nebraska Pay-Off.” 20 Dec 2009.

CNN. State of the Union. Transcript. 20 Dec 2009.

PBS.org. Sen. Ben Nelson’s Chronology. 13 Apr 2010.

Frates, Chris. “Payoffs for states get Harry Reid to 60 votes.” Politico.com. 19 Dec 2009.

Office of the Legislative Counsel. Compilation of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. May 2010.

Nelson, Ben. Letter to Harry Reid, majority leader, United States Senate. 15 Jan 2010.

Nelson, Ben. Nelson: Health Reform Will Treat All States Equally on Medicaid Expansion. Press release. 7 Jan 2010.

Fabian, Jordan. “Obama healthcare plan nixes Ben Nelson’s ‘Cornhusker Kickback’ deal.” The Hill. 22 Feb 2010.

POSTED BY EUGENE KIELY ON TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2011 AT 1:29 PM FILED UNDER ARTICLES. TAGGED WITHBANK BAILOUT, BEN NELSON, CROSSROADS GPS, ELIZABETH WARREN.

Occupy Defends the Homefront: Rachel Maddow Highlights the Eviction Movement through the Decades

2011-12-12T05:47:00.000-08:00

Homeowners whose primary residence was part of a foreclosure action between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2010, and whose home loan was serviced by a participating servicer, may be eligible for an Independent Foreclosure Review More information can be found at Independent foreclosure review .

Nerditorial: Occupy Movement (December 1, 2011)

2011-12-01T21:12:00.000-08:00

The Occupy Movement just hit bone...

"I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death," said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation's foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. "They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism."

(Link HERE.)

My favorite quote from the linked story, though, from Mr. Lutz is Tip #7 to Republican Governors on how to change the discussion of the Occupy Movement:

7. The three most important words you can say to an Occupier: 'I get it.'
"First off, here are three words for you all: 'I get it.' . . . 'I get that you're angry. I get that you've seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system."

Then, he instructed, offer Republican solutions to the problem.

Oh... you get it?

Really.

Well, I feel better already.

Wait...

I have three words for you...

"No, you don't."

You don't "get it". You don't get the anger. You don't get the inequality. And you don't get that we want to fix the system.

We don't want the system fixed, we want a complete upgrade.

The system sucks. We want something better than the current system offers.

The Republican solutions to every problem is tax cuts, followed by tax cuts, with a side order of... tax cuts.

Republican solutions aren't going to fix the problem. Republican solutions are a fundamental part of the problem.

What Mr. Lutz is demonstrating is that the Occupy Movement is not being fully apprecianted by a big chunk of contemporary conservative political activists at the moment.

Lutz is attempting to "rebrand" the problem to favor Republicans. He has built something of an industry on such attempts. And since he has a long history of success with these Jedi Mind Tricks, it's no surprise at all that he is doing what has historically worked for him in the past.

But I suspect that this is not going to work quite so well today.

Anyone who believes that an Occupier can be mollified by a politician, any politician, with the words "I get it" is borderline delusional. This isn't the TEA Party that you can just give a Binky and say that you agree with American Exceptionalism and then you are fine. This is a different breed of cat altogether.

And Frank Lutz, who is normally much sharper about trends such as this, has just established that even his considerable cultural acumen has its limits.

And the Occupy Movement has just demonstrated that they have exceeded those limits.

Our Reading Guide on Congressional Dysfunction

2011-11-28T05:37:00.000-08:00

by Lois Beckett
ProPublica, Nov. 23, 2011, 12:43 p.m.

Congress’ approval rating is abysmal, and the failure of the congressional “super committee” to find a compromise on reducing the national debt has set off a new round of recriminations.

One senator on the super committee, Democrat Max Baucus of Montana, told The Washington Post, “We’re at a time in American history where everybody's afraid — afraid of losing their job — to move toward the center. A deadline is insufficient. You’ve got to have people who are willing to move.

Decrying partisanship is almost as old as the republic itself. But longtime observers say Congress has actually taken a turn for the worse — with more gridlock, more grandstanding, less compromise to get things done. Congress’ approval rating is abysmal, and the failure of the congressional “super committee” to find a compromise on reducing the national debt has set off a new round of recriminations.

Old rules are being used in newly aggressive, partisan ways, and routine Congressional activities have become politicized — most notably, the vote to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. Once a nonissue, it brought the nation to the brink of default.

As former Republican Congressman Mickey Edwards points out, “Leaders of both chambers have embraced the strategy of precluding minority amendments, out of fear that even members of the majority party might vote for them.” This means, Edwards argues, that “to be in the minority is essentially to be made a nonfactor in the legislative process.”

The use of filibusters to block votes in the Senate used to be a last-ditch tactic, but in 2010, Republicans were filibustering even routine Democratic initiatives, effectively paralyzing the Senate. Democrats had previously ramped up the use of filibusters to oppose George W. Bush’s agenda, but Republicans “appeared to be taking the filibuster to a new level,” McClatchy Newspapers reported, even filibustering “15 nominees to mid-level jobs that formerly got routine approval.” Here is a helpful bar graph from McClatchy showing the trend. (Efforts to overhaul the filibuster earlier this year failed.)

The confirmation process of many of President Obama’s nominees has also lagged, creating gaps in the Treasury and Federal Reserve, leaving regulatory agencies without leaders. It has also resulted in prolonged judicial vacancies, which has sparked criticism from Chief Justice John G. Roberts, who said the delays are impairing the judicial system.

How exactly did it get so bad? Here’s our reading guide to a few smart, in-depth explanations of how Congress became so dysfunctional.

There’s a bigger partisan divide between voters — and members of Congress

Norman Ornstein’s Foreign Policy article — “Worst. Congress. Ever.” — provides a helpful overview of what’s the matter, from a man who’s been a Congressional expert for decades. (Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann co-wrote a 2006 book, "The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track.")

Ornstein explains that the nation's partisan makeup has changed dramatically since the late 1960s, when the country was less divided between red and blue states. Conservative Democrats from the South and liberal Republicans from the North regularly crossed party lines on different policy issues.

Since then, both parties have consolidated geographically — and become more homogenous and more partisan.

Looking at Congressional voting records in 2010, the National Journal’s Ron Brownstein found that the most left-leaning Republican senator still voted more to the right than the most conservative Democrat. The House, too, had an unprecedented level of polarization, with most politicians voting in lockstep with their parties.

This makes life easier for party leaders, Republican Trent Lott, the former Senate majority leader from Mississippi, said, but “in terms of getting things done for the country, that’s not the case.” (Brownstein is the author of a helpful book on polarization,"The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America.")

And the partisan divide isn’t just in Congress. As Bill Bishop documented in his book "The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart," voters are likelier to live in politically homogenous counties. “In 1976, only about a quarter of America's voters lived in a county a presidential candidate won by a landslide margin. By 2004, it was nearly half,” Bishop found.

Members of Congress are raising money instead of building working relationships in D.C.

In the Boston Review’s "Fixing Congress" issue, Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper of Tennessee (recently named the House’s “last moderate” by New York Times columnist Joe Nocera) wrote a detailed chronology of how fundraising has changed Congress.

In the 1980s, Cooper argues, most members of Congress lived in Washington with their families and socialized with each other across party lines. Hotly contested campaigns cost only a few hundred thousand dollars, and political parties did not expect that politicians would make donations to their colleagues.

Cooper blames former House Majority Leader and current presidential candidate Newt Gingrich for changing this restrained culture.

“Gingrich ordered freshman Republicans not to move their families to Washington, D.C., because he thought they needed to campaign full-time at home,” Cooper wrote. “Soon everyone belonged to the Tuesday–Thursday Club. Members became strangers, the easier for them to fight.”

Cooper isn’t the only one to emphasize Gingrich’s role. Edwards, the former Congressman, told the Associated Press that Gingrich “greatly increased the party-versus-party polarization.” According to Edwards, Gingrich pushed his fellow Republicans to focus less on actually making laws and more on being “a champion of the Republican cause, constantly at war, defeating Democrats."

Cooper notes that campaigns now cost millions of dollars, and that members of Congress are expected to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in party dues, as well as to make large donations to other candidates in their party.

George Packer’s New Yorker story on Senate dysfunction — perhaps the most vivid and comprehensive take on this issue — also elaborates on the impact that fundraising pressure has on senators.

“Of any free time you have, I would say 50 percent, maybe even more,” is spent on fundraising, one senator told Packer. “It sucks up time that a senator ought to be spending getting to know other senators, working on issues,” another said.

Congress’ culture is also more combative because it’s more competitive

In his Boston Review article, “Ending the Permanent Campaign,” Ornstein notes that this hyper-focus on fundraising and campaigning is related to the new competitiveness of Congress. Democrats had a “stranglehold” on the House of Representatives for four decades. After Republicans seized control of the House in 1994, each election “now provides a plausible scenario for a power shift.” Campaigning has grown in importance because the stakes are higher.

Writing in response to Cooper in the Boston Review, Dana Houle, the former chief of staff to former Democratic Congressman Paul Hodes, argued that comparing Congress today with Congress in the 1980s, as Cooper does, isn’t quite fair. It was because a single party reliably dominated the House that Congress members could “spend more time in Washington, D.C., focus on legislating, and build relationships with fellow members. Serving in Congress is easier and probably more rewarding when one does not face a strong possibility of defeat in every election.”

24/7 media scrutiny of Congressional drama has intensified while local news coverage has declined

Packer’s New Yorker article on the Senate also highlighted how good, old C-SPAN may have made things worse. “After C-SPAN went on the air, in 1979, the cozy atmosphere that encouraged both deliberation and back-room deals began to yield to transparency and, with it, posturing,” Packer wrote.

(One 2003 study, looking at the years 1959-98, found that the presence of television cameras on the legislative floor correlated with an increase in Senate filibusters.)

Financial shakeups in the media business, including the decline and even bankruptcy of regional newspapers, also have changed political coverage. In 2010, while he was still in office, former Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut told Packer, “I used to have 11 Connecticut newspaper reporters who covered me on a daily basis. I don’t have one today, and haven’t had one in a number of years. Instead, D.C. publications only see me through the prism of conflict.”

Dysfunction’s potential silver lining

Of course, a stalled Congress might not be such a bad thing, depending on your perspective. William J. Bennett argues that gridlock is a side effect of an ideological divide on policy issues. “We are in the midst of a serious philosophical battle over the future of this country — a battle between a small, limited government system and a big government entitlement state,” Bennett wrote as part of a CNN series called “Why is our government so broken?" He concluded: “Don't mistake broken government for the growing pains of a democratic republic.”

City of Bellingham EWG's Drinking Water Report

2011-11-21T07:28:00.000-08:00

This drinking water quality report shows results of tests conducted by the City of Bellingham water utility and provided to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) by the Washington State Department of Health.

It is part of EWG's national database that includes 47,667 drinking water utilities and 20 million test results. Water utilities nationwide detected more than 300 pollutants between 2004 and 2009. More than half of these chemicals are unregulated, legal in any amount.

Despite this widespread contamination, the federal government invests few resources to protecting rivers, reservoirs, and groundwater from pollution in the first place. The information below summarizes test results for this utility and lists potential health concerns. Click here for link to Report

Reported EPA violations: Failure to report information to the public or state agency in the Consumer Confidence Report 07/01/2006 - 08/22/2006

Today's Burning Question for Policy Wonks

2011-11-21T06:29:00.000-08:00

Can the political framework of the United States and other developed industrial nations withstand the strain that further widening of income inequality is likely to generate?

Potential Research resources for your perusal:

Link to Economic Growth and Income Equality paper by Simon Kuznet. Published in the American Economic Review (1955).

Link to Global Trends - A Transformed World 2025 . Published in 2008.

Link to It's the Inequality, Stupid Published in April of 2011 in Mother Jones

I look forward to reading your responses!