I love this kid. This might be the best video of the year — already. It is hard to pick my favorite bits, but the You Can Cry About It or You Can Dance About It, works as advice I especially needed recently. Kid President wants you to know that the time to be awesome is now (approx. 3.5 minutes long):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-gQLqv9f4o[/youtube]
This is so much awesome — John Oliver doing the Daily Show investigative report into why investigative reporting is dying in American newsrooms. Once more — The Daily Show commits an act of news that neither the news networks or newspeople could manage (approx. 6 minutes):
Yesterday, the wingnutoverse was on fire about Sunday’s interview by 60 Minutes with President Obama and Hilary Clinton. They thought it was awful, too soft, too cute and in the main tried to use it to frame Hillary as the Worst Secretary of State ever. (Your agenda is showing, Roger Ailes. Besides, I think that history has already written in Condi Rice as the worst Secretary of State in contemporary memory.) In a few liberal circles, this interview is being seen as Obama’s endorsement of Hillary in 2016. What did you think of this interview? (I confess I haven’t seen it yet.) You can watch it here:
Then there’s this:
What interests you today?
This is scheduled for 3PM Eastern. President Obama will be in Las Vegas today to speak on his plan for reforming the immigration system. I imagine this will be covered just everywhere, but right now, you can count on CSPAN and the White House site for live streaming if you are at work. The media preview of this is fairly thin, but here’s the WaPo:
For example, the Senate proposal would let illegal immigrants obtain legal residency quickly. But it would not allow them to seek full citizenship until border security had been improved and a new system was in place for employers to verify the employment status of workers.
Obama will not endorse such a proposal, the administration official said. The president intends to make clear the need for a more straightforward route for undocumented workers and students to obtain citizenship, reflecting fears among advocates that a cumbersome process would create a decades-long wait for some migrants.
“We see the Senate principles as a centrist set of principles, but we expect the administration to be more detailed to the left,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a leading immigration advocacy group. “I don’t think it’ll be an immigration advocate’s dream, but it will be a solid left-of-center proposal.”
The rest of the WaPo article is largely exasperating horserace BS — full of foreboding that the President’s plan might get in the way of the “bipartisan” plan. As for me, I’m looking at where the President’s plan might eliminate some of the speedbumps and veto points of the Senate plan that would provide people who shouldn’t have control of this process an opportunity to just ride the brakes and slow it all down.
Will update this with links of more coverage as I hear of them. Feel free to use this thread to comment on the remarks if you are watching them.
More live streaming:
NBC News
CNN (no link — can’t reach the video)
Awesome rant by this MSNBC commentator (with the cringeworthy name of) Krystal Ball. She reminds us that one of the things not touched on in President Obama’s inaugural speech was the health of unions, and reminds us that the war on unions coincides with the stagnation of American wages. This video is about 1.5 minutes long:
[flickrvideo]http://www.flickr.com/photos/egbertowillies/8414576856/[/flickrvideo]
And just like that, I find Kevin Drum pointing to a Bloomberg piece comparing us to Canada. Be sure to take a good look at the comparison of income inequality between US and Canada:
This week will be very interesting on this front — as a bipartisan group of 8 Senators will release a plan to address issues with illegal immigration today and President Obama will release a plan tomorrow in Las Vegas. This comes after an election where Hispanics decisively voted for Barack Obama and the GOP spent a great deal of time demonizing them. While fixing the undocumented immigrant problem is indeed important, keep in mind that Democrats want to solidify their relationship to Hispanics and the GOP wants to start one. This deal would cover border security, a path to citizenship for approx. 10M people, and work visas for high tech workers. From the LA Times:
….The Senate proposal would allow most of those in the country illegally to obtain probationary legal status immediately by paying a fine and back taxes and passing a background check. That would make them eligible to work and live in the U.S. They could earn a green card — permanent residency — after the government certifies that the U.S.-Mexican border has become secure, but might face a lengthy process before becoming citizens.
….Less-controversial provisions would tighten requirements on employers to check the immigration status of new workers; increase the number of visas for high-skilled jobs; provide green cards automatically to people who earn master’s degrees or PhDs in science, technology or math at U.S. universities; and create an agricultural guest-worker program.
President Obama’s proposal :
Obama is expected to push for a faster citizenship process that would not be conditional on border security standards being met first. The structure of the citizenship process will probably be among the most hotly debated parts of any immigration plan.
The President met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus last week and Rep. Gutierrez remarked that the President’s Plan was in line with the CHC’s principles for immigration reform.
There isn’t alot of detail yet, but I’m not crazy about the “certification” deal for the border. This President has been aggressive in border enforcement and in deportations — and is sometimes criticized for that — but if this means that there is an expectation that the border will be completely non-porous before the process towards citizenship, then I think we’re looking at a pig in the poke. Still, it is good that this is getting to the front burner.
What do you think of this?
EDIT: The Washington Post has posted up the entire Senate proposal. It is organized around 4 legislative pillars:
1. Create a tough but fair path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants currently living in the United States that is contingent upon securing our borders and tracking whether legal immigrants have left the country when required;
2. Reform our legal immigration system to better recognize the importance of characteristics that will help build the American economy and strengthen American families;
3. Create an effective employment verification system that will prevent identity theft and end the hiring of future unauthorized workers; and,
4. Establish an improved process for admitting future workers to serve our nation’s workforce needs, while simultaneously protecting all workers.
Oh yes, this is hysterical (and about 5 minutes long):
Since we are to be treated to multiple staged crises by the GOP in order to dismantle entitlement programs so that there is more money to funnel to wealthy people, I thought it would be useful to collect some of the better pieces trying to assess where we (and the US Budget) really are. The coming months will be filled with more of the usual he say/she say fake objectivity from the media, who won’t do much to give you any context much less any real numbers. In other words, they’ll be participating in the fear factory that will be generated in order to create a better opportunity to cut back on entitlements. Several of these pieces will be longish and some will be fairly data-rich (we want that), so you might need a little time to read through them. But a good deal of the story is that we’ve gotten in a good deal of deficit cuts and we’re pretty close to the number needed for long term sustainability. This is good ammunition for talking to our Congressional delegation who seem hell bent on helping the GOP to cut Social Security and Medicare. Because what we should be focusing on is fixing these two — not in asking seniors to cut back.
I’m sure there will be other good work coming down the pike and I’ll add that to this list, but am not sure yet how to revive the thread. In the meantime, you can bookmark this as a place to find smarter journalism (or just plain wonkishness) on the budget issues.
The Senate Democrats’ internal budget memo: ‘Revenue Must Be Included’ This is from Ezra Klein and is probably the first of many from him — he is following the money, the policy and the politics. This is key, because he has included a link to the entire budget memo from Democrats, including a great recap of how we got here:
Take a good look at that chart — that chart says that Democrats have already agreed to implement $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction (over 10 years) and if you include the sequester, it becomes more than $3.6 trillion. So this means that there is alot of room to claim that Democrats have already been at the forefront of serious deficit reduction — certainly alot more than GWB and GOP run Congresses did. It also means that Democrats can stop cowering about deficit reduction, because (including the sequester) this amount of deficit reduction isn’t too far off what Simpson-Bowles asks for.
Go read the whole thing and know that the takeaway here is the the tax revenues Democrats will be going after are in cutting tax expenditures — loopholes and subsidies that are pointed at the wealthiest among us and at corporations.
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Assessment of Federal Expenditures Under Obama These charts originated with Kevin Drum, but it is pretty clear that the biggest increase in federal spending in recent history comes from George W. Bush.
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Exit Interview with Tim Geithner with TNR
This is an interesting interview, but I want to pull out two wonky points that you won’t get from the media:
LA: Now you’ve had a pretty full four years as Treasury Secretary. What’s been the hardest and most frustrating part of the job?
TG: I think absolutely the hardest thing was trying to design a response to the crisis that would be effective, that would work over time. That was the most important thing, because nothing was possible without that. I knew with a fair degree of confidence by the summer of ’09 that the cumulative actions we took, on top of what Paulson and Bernanke did, was going to work. I was very confident about that by that time. Even though we still had a long, rough road ahead of us.
The most frustrating part of this work, but in some ways it’s the most consequential, is how effective you can be in relaxing the political constraints that exist on policy. You can see that most compellingly now in the fiscal debate. Paulson before us and the President were very successful during the crisis in getting a very substantial amount of essential authority essential to resolving the crisis. But it has been very hard since then to get out of the American political system more room for maneuver both on near-term support for the economy, as well as reforms that would lock in a sustainable fiscal path. That is the most frustrating thing, to get the political system to embrace better policies for the country.
No matter what you think about Geithner, it is hard to argue with him that the political class has not done much to help support this slowly recovering economy.
LA: Over the last couple of years we’ve had pitched battles over the budget between the administration and the Republicans in Congress. There are really two interpretations of what’s driving the Republicans. One is, there is indeed in this county a fundamental philosophical divide about the role of government and that what we’re seeing is this divide being played out in the political arena. The other is that the Republicans have been willing to do almost anything to hand this President a defeat. Do you have a view?
TG: There’s something strange about the debate today. The magnitude of additional deficit reduction – revenue increases or spending cuts – that you need to lock in in order to achieve fiscal sustainability is pretty modest. By most accounting, because of what we’ve already done on the spending side and tax side, we have to find another ¾ of 1 percent of GDP of policy measures. And if we did that, that would achieve the economist test of sustainability, meaning it would get the deficit down to a modest primary surplus so the debt would start falling as a share of GDP.
Get that? We’re close to the needed deficit reduction that gets us to fiscal sustainability.
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Tim Geithner is Wrong This is Krugman weighing in on this interview — noting that Geithner is quite correct in the amount of deficit reduction needed, but that he is really wrong on the politics of bipartisanship to achieve that — noting that the GOP doesn’t really care about deficit reduction:
To say what should be obvious: Republicans don’t care about the deficit. They care about exploiting the deficit to pursue their goal of dismantling the social insurance system. They want a fiscal crisis; they need it; they’re enjoying it. I mean, how is “starve the beast” supposed to work? Precisely by creating a fiscal crisis, giving you an excuse to slash Social Security and Medicare.
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This is more of a think piece, but it also gets to the idea that the long term deficit reduction problem isn’t as big as it is being sold. How to Fix the Long Run Deficit in 6 Easy Steps.
I’d forgotten to include this one in the original list — a concise piece by James Kwak defining social insurance and its purpose. What Is Social Insurance?
In the inaugural address, I think the president got it basically right. They are risk-spreading programs. You don’t get back exactly what you put in: they have a certain degree of progressivity (although less for Social Security than is commonly imagined). Their main function is to protect people against extreme outcomes by pooling a limited share of our resources.
Very funny, but I would buy one — seriously. About 2 minutes long:
Senator Coons and others filed this bill last November, after we saw one more US election marked with long lines to vote, registration questions and issues and other problems that got in the way of very many Americans to exercise their franchise. He has reintroduced this bill, with Senators Mark Warner (D-Va.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to help states to improve their election capabilities and make it easier for Americans to vote. From the website:
This bill authorizes a federal program that would award grants based on how well applicant states are able to improve access to the polls in at least nine specified ways, including:
- Providing flexible registration opportunities, including same-day registration;
- Providing early voting, at a minimum of 9 of the 10 calendar days preceding an election;
- Providing absentee voting, including no-excuse absentee voting;
- Providing assistance to voters who do not speak English as a primary language;
- Providing assistance to voters with disabilities, including visual impairment;
- Providing effective access to voting for members of the armed services;
- Providing formal training of election officials, including State and county administrators and volunteers;
- Auditing and reducing waiting times at polling stations; and
- Creating contingency plans for voting in the event of a natural or other disaster.
There’s video of Senator Coons’ floor speech reintroducing this bill and calling for his colleagues to help states’ get their voting houses in order:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbOUc_CDwNc&feature=share&list=UU2lOVbsddn1HIkcDnmCw6tA[/youtube]
I’m a fan of all of these measures, but it strikes me that the Republican states have a vested interest in a broken voting system so I wonder how far this will get.
El Som will likely provide more insights into this tomorrow, but this press release announcing an amendment to SB3 that will be voted on tomorrow came to my inbox a little while ago:
AMENDMENT: BOND BILL COMMITTEE WOULD SERVE AS REVIEW PANEL FOR PORT OF WILMINGTON PROPOSAL
Schwartzkopf proposal would amend Senate Bill 3, still allow full legislative vote on final proposal
DOVER – Seeking to reach a compromise on legislation regarding the Diamond State Port Corporation, House Speaker Rep. Pete Schwartzkopf announced an amendment to the bill Wednesday that could ensure its passage before the General Assembly recesses this week.
Senate Bill 3, which was released from a House committee Wednesday, passed the Senate last week with a bare majority. It would require the Diamond State Port Corporation to obtain the approval of the General Assembly and the Governor before it could enter into an agreement to transfer, privatize or lease all or substantially all of the Port of Wilmington. The issue has gained a great deal of attention in recent weeks due to reported discussions about the state possibly privatizing and leasing the port.
Rep. Schwartzkopf’s amendment would modify the General Assembly approval process by having any final proposal that the Diamond State Port Corporation approves come before the Joint Bond Bill Committee for review. The Bond Bill Committee is comprised of 12 legislators from the House and Senate, with members of both parties on the joint panel. The committee would then brief the full General Assembly, which would take an up-or-down vote on the proposal as presented.
“Since taking ownership of the Port of Wilmington in the 1990s, the state has invested more than $150 million into the port, so we have a huge financial stake in making sure it is successful. We also have thousands of Delawareans who earn a living through direct or indirect jobs, so we have a personal stake in its success as well,” said Rep. Schwartzkopf, D-Rehoboth Beach.
“I absolutely think the General Assembly needs to have a say in any final decision involving the port. This compromise will hopefully satisfy all sides and put a process in place that accomplishes our goal without hurting the future of the port.”
SB 3 was released from the House Economic Development, Banking, Insurance & Commerce Committee and has been placed on the House agenda for Thursday. If the amendment is approved, the bill would return to the Senate for consideration.
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So this makes the Port Bill into an opportunity for the legislature to be briefed on the deal, then vote on the deal — do I have that right? I presume that the briefing of the Bond Committee is a public one, but what I don’t see is any opportunity for input or modifications by legislators. So we don’t have legislative oversight — the opportunity seems to be to rubber stamp the thing. El Som will tell me if I’m wrong here. Or you guys will. What do you think?
And can I ask why this bill *needed* a compromise just to perform basic legislative oversight?
This is great news — NPR is reporting that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta will lift the ban on women serving in combat roles with an announcement probably tomorrow. This ban has been a longstanding source of contention, especially since contemporary warfare doesn’t provide a bright line between combat and non-combat roles anymore.
Not every job will be open starting tomorrow, though:
But the officials caution that “not every position will open all at once on Thursday.” Once the policy is changed, the Department of Defense will enter what is being called an “assessment phase,” in which each branch of service will examine all of its jobs and units not currently integrated and then produce a timetable in which it can integrate them.
The Army and Marine Corps, especially, will be examining physical standards and gender-neutral accommodations within combat units. Every 90 days, the service chiefs will have to report back on their progress.
And they’ve given themselves a way to exempt some positions if they choose. Still, you’ll remember that the ACLU is supporting four servicewomen in a lawsuit against the Pentagon for their discriminatory practices. This is a good note for Panetta to leave the Pentagon on.
These events don’t seem to be on Representative Carney’s website yet (or I just bypassed them), but he is holding two Town Meetings to talk about the deficit. From his Facebook page:
Want to discuss ways of reducing the federal deficit? I’m hosting two town hall meetings, in coordination with the Concord Coalition, on January 31st to get your thoughts and ideas. We’ll be at Wesley College in Dover from 1 – 2:30 and at Delaware Tech’s Stanton campus from 6:30 – 8:00. These meetings are open to the public, but seating is limited, so please RSVP by calling (302) 691-7333 or (877) 899-7872.
First, I’m stunned that he isn’t holding a Town Meeting about boosting employment. ONCE AGAIN we see Representative Carney getting focused on something that still isn’t the first priority of Americans. Second, this Concord Coalition does claim to be nonpartisan, but keep in mind that one of its founders is none other than Pete Peterson, the man who has spent almost a half of a billion dollars of his own money to destroy Social Security and Medicare. Of course, Peterson and his groups (including the sham that is Fix the Debt) never quite see their way past cutting back on New Deal commitments to get to deficit (or debt — I never understand which they are trying to get to) as their preferred solutions to the US money problems. I haven’t seen them advocating cutting back on the DOD, or maybe cutting back on the funds available to local law enforcement for arming themselves to the teeth. I certainly never see any of them talk about making sure that corporations actually pay their fair share of taxes — eliminating their loopholes and even their subsidies. Or how about growing the economy as a way to reduce deficits?
But hey, I don’t know what is on the agenda of Carney’s meeting, other than it it being supported by a Pete Peterson stalking horse. It is (according to the poster on Facebook) an “interactive exercise, developed by the non-partisan Concord Coalition, that lets you make decisions about the priorities and challenges of the Federal budget.” Which means that it could be a live exercise of something like this book tries to accomplish (and the group that supported this book has Pete Peterson as an Honorary Board Member). If it is, it could be a useful exercise in demonstrating just how difficult the budget problem is.
Still, it would be worth it to go in order to challenge the idea that in order to solve the budget problem, everyone has to give up something. Even the people who have spent their lives paying into Social Security and Medicare. And I’d like to know what Carney plans to tell the seniors he speaks to why they need to live with more cutbacks than Lockheed Martin will.
Let us know if you go. And if you can’t go, let us know what you’d ask Representative Carney in this Town Meeting in the comments.