News Roundup - Hour 1
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-01-28/news-roundup-hour-1
President Obama takes his message of economic competitiveness to the Midwest. The federal budget deficit is predicted to reach a record high. And the first Guantanamo detainee tried as a civilian receives a life sentence. A panel of journalists joins Diane for analysis of the week's top national news stories.
Guests
Chris Cillizza
author of The Fix, a Washington Post politics blog, and managing editor of PostPolitics.com.
Laura Meckler
White House correspondent, The Wall Street Journal.
Clarence Page
a syndicated columnist for the "Chicago Tribune."
Friday News Roundup Video
A caller who works at a community bank talks about the changes he has witnessed in how people handle credit and loans since the financial crisis began several years ago:
Comments
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Every time the President gives a state of the union address he talks about capping discretionary spending. Last year he promised a three-year cap and this year a five-year cap. Who is he kidding? Obviously not the CBO. What happened to the line item by line item review?
Congress and the President moved heaven and earth to save the financial system by undertaking some radical plans to save big and mid-sized banks and financial firms. But nothing meaningful is being done to address unemployment in a systemic and sustainable way. Instead we get platitudes and vague references to Soviet rockets. What gives?
Is your panel aware of CREW's (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) allegations that Department of Energy policy makers had cosy relationships with hedge funds? To me, this is exactly what's wrong with Washington.
Is there real science that supports subsidies for corn-based ethanol when considering the products entire life cycle and environmental cost? Or is this just politics?
Revisionist, or selective, history from politicians is nothing new! Both sides are equally adept at it.
Using Diane's logic, Obama was the first presidential candidate elected by unions and trial lawyers.
Earlier this month Obama announced a general review of regulations, recognizing that some are without value and are preventing companies from hiring and therefore stiffling our recovery. Your panel's bias on this was painfully clear.
Thomas hadn't submitted the data for 13 years and no one brings it up. No one is alleging he didn't pay taxes on it. He has since submittted it all. What's the big deal? Just more political garbage distraction from the media! Seriously this was not worthy of discussion, unless you've got an axe to grind.
Not only do I think that hand-held devices should be banned, I'd go even further. It is so distracting to have applause all the time; it really distracts from the speech itself. I'd love to just hear the SPEECH and hold all the applause until the end.
Even worse are the cameras panning on the audience reactions. Again, that's not what I want to see. Even having the Vice President and the Speaker in the camera shot behind the President is really annoying to me, no matter who they are.
I know this is wishful thinking, but I always end up turning off the TV and just reading the speech the next morning.
Mary in St. Louis
Is this a crazy comment/ more of a desperate imaginative "solution"-- the independents get organized, not to create a party, but to raise money for some kind of non-profit or PAC or whatever but not to run a candidate or even to endorse a candidate. Just to have a large group of Americans dedicated to the truth and getting the facts out. We could have post-debate TV ads or even cable shows explaining the facts and how that debaters stuck to them or not -- and commercials with actual experts not talking heads explaining the facts and what you need to know to form an informed opinion. You get the idea. We would not split the vote of either party by running a third candidate. You get the idea.
...and I remember the brilliant demonstration of Richard Feynman in Congress about the elasticity of O-rings at freezing temperatures. The Challenger tragedy should constitute a constant reminder how existential it is that we assess risk properly.
Read more here:
http://brainmindinst.blogspot.com/2011/01/one-sad-day-for-mankind_28.html
To hainc, writing on January 28, 2011 @ 10:58 am:
PART ONE
More one-sided commentary, sir? The President has given exactly 2 State of the Union addresses, so your “every time” remark seems a bit overstated. How about discussing the fact that for more than 30 years the Republi-Cons have promised to eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse” from the budget, but failed to deliver (million dollar toilets anyone?).
Or how about the biggest fraud of all: “voodoo economics”, which is one of the main reasons we have such huge deficits, and why the Social Security “trust fund” is in jeopardy (since money was ‘stolen’ from it to balance the budge, or rather, to create the illusion of balance). The Tea Bagging Republi-Cons campaigned on eliminating the deficit, yet the first thing they did after the election was eliminate the Bush tax increase (a.k.a. extending his tax cuts). Of course that tax increase was originally needed to sell the cuts (back when Bush first proposed them), otherwise they would blow a hole in the budget. Thus the fiction was created that the cuts would expire, and balance the budget. Well, we’ve seen how well that worked. And what has been the actual effect of extending those cuts? More deficits “on the backs of our children” - just ask the CBO.
Unemployment? Yes, things could be better, but they could be worse too. There has been a slow improvement during Obama’s first two years. Compare that with Bush’s first two - unemployment increased, but I don’t recall Republi-Cons demanding he be ousted! (And let’s not forget Bush had low unemployment when he took office, but handed high unemployment to Obama.)
TO BE CONTINUED
As for Bachmann’s idiotic statements: the point isn’t that she was “revisionist” or “selective” - she was dead wrong! Is someone so ignorant of a major part of our history really someone you want as President? (Judging from your dismissal of the issue, I’d say yes, you do.)
Ditto for the discussion about Clarence Thomas. The issue is judicial ethics! Too bad you think that’s “no big deal”.
I sometimes wonder if the bulk of listeners to Diane's show ever listen or read about what they comment on. Here is a link you could use to EDUCATE yourself on our history that is relevant to Ms. Bachmann’s remarks.
http://bigjournalism.com/sright/2011/01/28/enough-chris-matthews-stop-ly....
"Pennsylvania and Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1780; Connecticut and Rhode Island did so in 1784; New Hampshire in 1792; Vermont in 1793; New York in 1799; and New Jersey in 1804. Furthermore, the reason that the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa all prohibited slavery was a federal act authored by Rufus King (signer of the Constitution) and signed into law by President George Washington which prohibited slavery in those territories."
ET,
4 years of Democratic control of Congress and two years of control of both Congress and the White House and all you can talk about is 1980 economic debates. It's true the Democrats have no good ideas, clearly.
Your revisionist history goes far beyond your ignorance of American history (both 200 years ago and less than 2 months ago). Obama and the Democratrically-controlled, lame duck Congress extended the tax cuts. The tax cuts were to expire, but Obama didn't have the guts to keep them in place because he has no convictions and blows with the political winds. The guy is a total politician, slimey to the core.
But apparently all you can say in his defense is that "it could be worse." The guy is obviously not up to the job, completely out of his depth. He's taken two years with total power and mired our country in the deepest recession ever and he's got the printing presses at the mint going overtime, spending like a sailor and still we've got nothing to show for it.
Looks like you are going to have to back up your Bachmann blather!
Ethics, please... Let's see Obama's birth certificate, then we can talk about ethics.
l8mail on January 28, 2011 @ 8:01 pm wrote: “I sometimes wonder if the bulk of listeners to Diane's show ever listen or read about what they comment on.”
PART ONE
I might ask the same of you, sir.
First, and pathetically, in defense of Bachmann you reference an ‘attack piece’ on Andrew Breitbart’s website, that well known purveyor of ‘truthful’ and ‘accurate’ information (just ask Shirley Sherrod, one of many people he’s slandered).
Second, the ‘defense’ consists of playing word games. Oh, she said “forebears”, not “forefathers” - case dismissed? Not quite. According to The American College Dictionary (Random House, 1967), the word forebear is a synonym for ancestor and forefather. In other words, this defense consists of a distinction that makes no difference!
Third, and most importantly the ‘attack piece’ makes light of this part of her speech, the key claim that “The very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.”
This, of course, raises two key questions: which founders and which documents? Unless I’m completely ignorant of American history, when we refer to the founders, and to any relevant documents they wrote, we’re usually talking about the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Constitution (1787). Trouble is: slavery wasn’t abolished until the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1868, eigthy-one years after the Constitution! So, unless the founders in question lived as long as Methuselah (they didn’t), they were all long dead before “slavery was no more in the United States.” (Perhaps that’s why Bachmann cited John Quincy Adams. Except he wasn’t a founder, didn’t “write” either of those documents, and died in 1848 - closer to the abolition date, but still no cigar.)
TO BE CONTINUED
PART TWO
As to your list of states which abolished slavery, I note they were all north of the Mason-Dixon line. What about Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee? Oh, that’s right, they traitorously seceded in order to preserve slavery, which led to all that unpleasantness known as the Civil War! (And, although they didn’t secede, Maryland and Delaware were also “slave states”.)
Finally, let’s turn to the Constitution itself. Among the “tireless” efforts of the founders was a provision which mandated that the slave trade could continue until at least 1808 (Art. 1, Section 9, Paragraph 1), and another which required “free states” to return slaves to their masters (Art. 4, Section 1, Paragraph 3). Yup, just another “tireless” effort by Washington, Jefferson, and other founders who were also slave owners.
Make no mistake, I revere the Founders, but I do not regard them as “demi-gods”. They were imperfect as the rest of us, and certainly not “all powerful”. Many (Washington and Jefferson) were troubled by slavery, but they could not abolish it because of the strenuous opposition of the South. In the end they had to compromise with this evil, or the nation would have died still-born. It was left to another generation, decades later, to pay the price in blood for what the Founders failed to do. Ms. Bachmann demeans their sacrifice with her shredding of history, and so do you!
To hainc writing on January 28, 2011 @ 9:30 pm:
PART ONE
Funny, isn’t it, how the Republi-Cons are the “responsibility party” except when they have to take responsibility! So, there’s a “statute of limitations” on political policy? Gee, when does it run out? As I recall “your side” was blaming Clinton for everything during the past decade, when you weren’t busy blaming poor old Carter. But I can’t even raise the fact that for the past thirty years our politics has been dominated by Reganomics, and the knee-jerk view that tax cuts are always good? (Remember who said “the era of big government was over”, and when? And that was a Democrat!)
Revisionist history? I leave that to you, sir. For two years (2007 and 2008) the Democrats had only 49 Senate seats, the same as the Republicans. (Two independents caucused with the Democrats, making a 51 seat majority). At the same time they had only a narrow majority in the House (a margin of 29 seats). Leaving aside the fact that there are conservative Democrats who cut into those margins, are you claiming there was no method of blocking Democratic “control”? (Ever heard of the Senatorial “hold”, the filibuster, or the Presidential veto?) I guess President Bush was just powerless for those years - NOT!
TO BE CONTINUED
PART TWO
Obama and the Democratically-controlled, lame duck Congress extended the tax cuts? Yup, and the Republi-Cons had nothing to do with that. They didn’t filibuster everything until they got their way. (Including blocking extension of unemployment insurance for those who couldn’t find work, or benefits for the 9/11 rescue workers suffering from the dust they inhaled during their heroism). Nope, they didn’t engage in such legislative extortion. I’m sure you remember how they screamed that extending the tax cuts would increase the deficit, and that they couldn’t support it. (Oh, sorry, that was the Republi-Cons on the Bizarro world.)
Obama's taken two years with “total power” and mired our country in the deepest recession ever? Again, total power only if one ignores the Republi-Con filibusters. And I note you forget the recession started under Bush, was caused (in part) by the mindless deregulation policies of Bush, and that much of the spending (such as TARP) came from Bush.
Again, sir, you may ignore the facts, but there has been a slow improvement during Obama’s first two years. While in Bush’s first two unemployment increased, but clearly that doesn’t matter to you! Nor does the fact that Bush had low unemployment when he took office, but handed high unemployment to Obama. No, Obama’s record of modest success (so far) proves he’s “not up to the job”, but Bush’s far worse record proves . . . .? I’d call your double standard hypocrisy, but that would be an insult to hypocrites!
No good ideas? You mean like the current Republi-Con proposals to privatize Social Security? Gee, let’s put all our faith in the stock market - I mean it worked so well for the past few years!
TO BE CONTINUED
PART THREE
As for Bachmann, I’d say I’ve responded to her “blather” (and that of l8mail) pretty well. Ignorance of history is their expertise, and clearly yours too!
Obama’s birth certificate? We’ve seen it, the Republican Governor of Hawaii has confirmed it, the Hawaiian newspapers have contemporaneous birth announcements confirming it too. What has you side produced? Nothing but a succession of phony arguments and obviously forged documents.
(And what the heck does any of that have to do with Clarence Thomas’s failure to obey the ethics laws? May I remind you that even if everyone jumps off the Empire State Building, that’s no reason or justification for you to do so! Nice try at evading the issue.)
Shrdlrupt:
Your logic is flawed. It was 1966 that Johnson took money from the SS Trust to pay for the Vietman War which was a total disaster. We did not even capture Hanoi.
Johnson took money for the Great Society which was this massive expense for all these anti-poverty programs. It was suppose to be the mother of all programs to eliminate poverty.
Guess What. We have more poverty now than in 1966. Under the "Messiah's" leadership we have one million more people living below the poverty line.
This guy in office telling us that if the "Recovery Act" was not passed it would go over 8%. Guess what, it is near 10% officially under this guy. And this guy in office has no idea how to create jobs. Has no understanding how the private sector works because he has never had a job in the private sector.
By the way unemployment in 2006 was 4.7%.
Shadrupt: Keep living in Never Never Land. Your the person who has been conned.
Shrdlrupt:
Got a question for you? Why is the present Democratic governor wanting to make public the birth certificate along with four members of the legislator this past week? I thought the former Republican governor confirmed that it would remain private?
Diane read a quotation from Prof. Stephen Gillers that Justice Thomas did not make a miscalculation but omitted his wife's earnings from 6 tax returns, & that it could not have been an oversight. Now, we don't know why he claimed this, but presumably he has some evidence (perhaps the tax forms require you to intentionally check a box to state you have nothing else to declare). Gillers, presumably, has some expertise--he holds a chair in Legal Ethics at NYU. Nevertheless, Laura Meckler felt comfortable waving off his comment, as if it was merely said by a media pundit. This strikes me as fairly irresponsible of Meckler, who should have at least acknowledged that she didn't know why Gillers made his claim. Nevertheless, though she had no actual facts to the contrary, Meckler felt free to speculate that this was an issue we could *never* know the answer to because we cannot know what was in Justice Thomas's head. She then brought up Treasury Secy. Geithner as an example of "both sides do it" as if his survival of scrutiny somehow exonerates Thomas. Meckler is operating in a typical journalist mode here, namely the "both sides do it" mode. But this implies a false equivalence between Thomas& Geithner & implies that two overlooked wrongs make a right. These are both mistakes. First, there's a huge difference between Thomas & Geithner, which Meckler glides over. One is a justice in the highest court in the land who we must hold to the highest legalðical standards. He is qualitatively different than Geithner in that respect. Many people are prosecuted for such omissions by the IRS. Time&time again, the public sees politicians escape significant wrongdoing with either no penalty or a slap on the wrist. Or a pardon. Meckler's comments play an enabling role for such a lawless environment. Final question: how much did Thomas save himself by not reporting his wife's income? That would shed some light on the question of motivation&intention.
To meangreen, writing on January 29, 2011 @ 9:54 am:
PART ONE
1) Still can’t be bothered to get my name right, eh. Great way to prove how ready you are for an honest and adult debate.
2) For the sake of any readers, they should know that you aren’t responding to anything I wrote in connection with this episode of the Diane Rehm show, but rather you are continuing a debate we had on the show for January 14th! Which itself demonstrates how faulty your grasp of fact is (you can’t even post in the right place).
3) As long as you’re distorting history, could you please try to be consistent? First (during that debate on the other webpage) you claimed borrowing from Social Security began “to create all these government program to end poverty in 1966”. Now you tell us Johnson took the money to pay for the Vietnam War. Well, which is it? (Oh, and how did Nixon pay for the War?)
More importantly, why do you keep ignoring the facts that both parties are guilty of raiding the “trust fund”, that one of the main ‘raids’ took place in the 1980’s (to help pay for Reagan’s tax cuts, which mostly benefited the wealthiest - people who don’t need Social Security), and that it was a Democrat (Gore) who proposed to stop this with a “lock box”. (Whether he could deliver on that idea is something we’ll never know.)
4) As for ‘flawed logic’, since you start from erroneous and incomplete premises, yours is non-existent!
5) You blame Obama for the current poverty level - gee, are you telling me that poverty disappeared under Reagan, the two Bushes, Clinton, and only returned in the past two years? Are you seriously claiming the high unemployment levels (a legacy of Bush II) had nothing to do with it? Golly, it must be nice to live in a world where you can just ignore any facts that contradict your opinion.
TO BE CONTINUED
PART TWO
6) “We have more poverty now than in 1966.” Really? I asked you before to provide your source for that claim. I note you didn’t comply. So, let’s take a look at what The World Almanac for 2010 (page 53) says. Oops - in the 1960 22.2% were in poverty, in 2008 it was 13.8%, in total amounts it was 39.9 million versus 39.8 million. Boy, that looks like a decrease to me!
And please bear in mind this was with a change in the poverty standard (the cut-off was much lower in 1960, income below $3,022 made you poor then, income below $22,025 now).
By the way, the number in poverty was 25.4 million in 1970, and 29.3 million in 1980, but by 1990 (after ten years of Reaganomics) it increased to 33.6 million. I can understand an increase during the ‘stagflation’ of the ‘70’s, but please explain the greater increase during the (supposedly) ‘boom years’ of Reagan?
One more interesting fact: the number in poverty declined from 1994 to 2000, but rose pretty steadily from 2001 to 2008! Hmm, I don’t recall either Obama or the Democrats being “in charge” all that time.
7) The only people I hear calling Obama “Messiah” are Republi-Con partisans like yourself. I certainly don’t think Democrats (or liberals) are perfect - apparently you believe Republi-Cons are!
8) “By the way unemployment in 2006 was 4.7%.” Yeah, higher than it was when Bush took office. Furthermore, you ignore the fact that it started rising again the next year, as part of the “Great Recession” caused (in part) by Bush’s policies, and the “all government is bad” philosophy of Republi-Cons. In short, our economic problems didn’t start with Obama!
TO BE CONTINUED
PART THREE
More importantly, if we compare Bush’s first two years with Obama’s we find similar evidence that Bush had “no idea how to create jobs”. Why? Because in his first two years unemployment rose (and continued to rise until the middle of his 3rd year). But I don’t recall Republi-Cons screaming about his failure to immediately solve the problem. (In fact, during his entire eight years unemployment never got back to where it was when he took office.)
So why the double-standard, sir? Bush begins with low unemployment, it grows during his first two years, and Republi-Cons cheer. Obama begins with an economic crisis that started before he took office, and two years later you scream he’s incompetent! I’d call that hypocrisy, but that would insult hypocrites!
9) Oh, and if anyone is interested in facts, look at the chart which accompanies a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/the-urgent-need-for-job-crea...). It shows that job loss peaked in January of 2009 (you know, before Obama took office) and has been declining ever since! (Not fast enough to overcome the damage done since the Recession began, but still a modest improvement. Again, contrast Bush’s first two years, when job loss kept rising.)
10) I’m not sure what you mean about people being “conned”. If it’s a reference to my term “Republi-Cons”, you should know it’s simply short for “Republican-Conservative”. Interesting that you think it means something else. I wonder why?
meangreen on January 29, 2011 @ 10:03 am wrote: “Why is the present Democratic governor wanting to make public the birth certificate along with four members of the legislator this past week? I thought the former Republican governor confirmed that it would remain private?”
Unlike you, sir, I don’t claim the ability to read minds (nor, like Bush, the power to see into people’s souls). But let’s turn your question around: if it’s so easy to release the long-form certificate (the short-form being available for years), why didn’t the Republican governor do so? Could it be that new legislation was required to change the law (to allow release), and she saw no need?
On the other hand, if she was trying to “cover up” something, are you saying a Republican lied? And here I thought they were perfect!
To hilde, writing on January 29, 2011 @ 2:03 pm:
I may be mistaken, but as I remember it the issue was Thomas’ failure to include his wife’s assets, income, and property on an ethical disclosure form. The purpose of such forms is to guard against conflicts of interests (such as Thomas participating in a decision that might affect his wife’s investments).
It’s thus not the same thing as the tax forms. I believe they entered the picture only because the wife’s income was included on them (the Thomas’s probably file jointly), thus demonstrating Thomas knew of the assets in question.
That being said, I agree with what you wrote. A Supreme Court Justice should be held to the highest ethical standards, and because of the importance of conflict of interests I’d say this lapse is more serious than non-disclosure on a tax return.
P.S. - For any defenders of Thomas out there, I’m not saying this calls for any sanctions against him, or impeachment, merely that the matter shouldn’t be dismissed so casually.