The Next Hurrah

Parse This Paragraph and Win a Prize!

By DHinMI

The Financial Times has an article about George W. Bush again speaking about the need to limit the US dependency on foreign oil.  Within the article was an odd quote from Bush about elections and the Middle East.  I wasn't quite sure what to make of the excerpt of Bush's speech to the National Association of Governors, so I looked up the text of the full speech.  And it made me even more confused:

It's an interesting debate that's going to take place here in Washington, or is taking place in Washington:  Do elections cause radicalism or empower radicals?  My answer is, the status quo empowered radicals.  This notion that somehow the Middle East was a safe place for the last 30 years -- because we didn't see, kind of, the turmoil that happens with elections meant we were safe.  I just totally disagree with that, kind of the -- beneath the surface that appeared placid, the policymakers, was resentment and hatred and planning and plotting, all of which came home on September the 11th.

I've read that paragraph five times, and I still don't know what he's saying.  I realize that any time Bush invokes September 11th, it's typically to decieve and confuse.  But in this case, I think he's saying something about elections being either good...or bad...or inconsequential...or, well, something.  Is he arguing that the lack of elections are a problem, and that's one of the reasons we should allow the United Arab Emirates to operate terminals in US ports  um, threaten to cut off aid to Egypt unless Mubarak opens up the political system say bad things about Syria as long as it's a repressive regime?  Is he saying that Palestinian democracy is bad when it leads to Hamas taking control of  the Palestinian parliament democratic elections are why everything is all of a sudden so peaceful in Iraq   Or is he saying that elections in repressive states with corrupt governments will often result in strong showings by radical parties, which in the Middle East and North Africa will typically be Islamist parties? Is he saying anything that's coherent? 

If anyone can decipher that paragraph, please post your interpretation in the comments, and you'll earn my gratitude, plus a year's free subscription to The Next Hurrah.

The Other Problem with Port Security

By DHinMI

Unless you've been in steerage on a cross-Atlantic voyage, you've probably heard that the Department of Homeland Security has awarded a contract to a company from the United Arab Emirates to oversee some functions as six major US ports (New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami, and New Orleans). Just about everyone across the political spectrum is outraged that a country that was home to some of the 9-11 hijackers and provided an effective base for terrorist logistics and finance will, if the contract goes through, be in a position to undermine security in our already vulnerable ports. 

Members of the administration, including Attorney General Abu Gonzales, have argued that the port deal will have no effect on port security.  It appears that port security agencies such as police, customs and harbor patrol will not technically be effected by this deal.  It is also true that 24 of the 25 largest  ship terminals are operated by foreign companies, so the US has little direct control of what enters our ports.  However, it's very disingenuous of the administration to portray the United Arab Emirates as “just another country” or OK because their government is an ally in the War on Terra.  It's hard to imagine there wouldn't be an uproar if key function of customs, border security and drug enforcement were turned over to a company based in Columbia. 

But there's another reason to be outraged about port security that has nothing directly to do with whether the companies operating shipping terminals are from the United Arab Emirate or the United States of America: The Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress have not been properly funding port security:

Representatives of the nation’s public seaports oppose President Bush’s proposal to lump a dedicated grant program to improve port security into a larger funding pool.

Under Bush's fiscal 2007 spending plan, the Port Security Grant program, which was established in 2002, would be folded into the Targeted Infrastructure Protection (TIP) program within the Homeland Security Department’s new Preparedness Directorate.

Last year, Bush tried to consolidate the port security program into the larger grant program, but Congress rebuffed him and chose to keep the grant program separate. TIP was created to enhance security at port, railway, mass transit and other critical infrastructure facilities.

However, officials from the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA), which represents 80 U.S. ports, said if the program is consolidated into a larger program, they would have to compete for funds against other transit systems, such as buses or rail...

[Some ports] have had to divert at least 15 percent of their capital budgets to security issues. This is straining their ability to handle ever-increasing cargo loads that are coming through their facilities, [a port official] said.

AAPA officials said the Coast Guard has estimated that port facilities would need to spend at least $5.4 billion in the next decade to improve security. Since 2002, the Port Security Grant program has allocated more than $708 million even though port officials have requested more than $3 billion.

They said there are few other sources they can get money from to help pay for security improvements.

Notice that there are at least two serious problems here.  One, as with our oil refining capacity or the capacity of our electrical grids, our port infrastructure is on the verge of overload.  But the deeper problem is that the Bush administration is more concerned with tax cuts that providing sufficient security to our critical, vulnerable and increasingly insufficient national infrastructure. 

Bush tried to deflect the criticism of the port deal by  claiming "I'm trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to the people of the world 'we'll treat you fairly."'  Instead of arguing lamely that he's using the port deal to conduct a fair foreign policy, his first priority should be to keep Americans safe. His budget priorities show that our our safety isn't a Bush priority.

Katrina: Republican Report Contradicts Republican Talking Point

By DHinMI

The WaPo has a draft of the Republican-authored Congressional report on the response to Hurricane Katrina.  Buried in the 21^st paragraph of a 30 paragraph article is this gem:

As the president's principal disaster adviser, Chertoff poorly executed many decisions, including declaring Katrina an "incident of national significance" -- the highest designation under the national emergency response plan and convening an interagency board of experienced strategic advisers on Aug. 30 instead of Aug. 27; designating an untrained Brown to take charge of the disaster; and failing to invoke a federal plan that would have pushed federal help to overwhelmed state and local officials rather than waiting for them to request it. [Emphasis added]

Think back to the days just after Katrina.  The administration was getting some of the worst coverage it's ever gotten, and America and the world watched in horror as people in New Orleans had to fend largely for themselves because the local and state governments were overwhelmed.  And the administration and their conservative media allies were trying to pin the blame for the lack of effective response in New Orleans on the failure of Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco and nominally Democratic N.O. Mayor Ray Nagin (who switched parties to run for mayor and still endorsed Blanco's Republican opponent for governor in 2003) to request federal assistance.  Director of Homeland Security Chertoff “said one reason federal assets were not used more quickly was 'because our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor.'”.  In an example of Karl Rove's reported effort to aggressively pin the responsibility for the poor response in New Orleans on the local (Democratic) officials, Chertoff also claimed

"The way that emergency operations act under the law is the responsibility and the power, the authority, to order an evacuation rests with state and local officials," Mr. Chertoff said in his television interview. "The federal government comes in and supports those officials."

The idea that the White House was itching to help out, but was constrained from doing so until they got an official request from Blanco and/or Nagin was repeated over and over.  Never mind that, contrary to the WH's claims at the time, Blanco had made such a request.  (Look at the correction at the top of this page for proof.)  On the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and on O'Reilly's show, on Fox and across the Republican blogs, the story was repeated that Blanco didn't request federal assistance, and until she did the White House was prevented from helping out.  But as today's WaPo article points out, the idea that the federal government was prevented from assisting in the disaster zone until officially requested by Blanco is clearly false; the federal government could have mobalized all available resources and begun assistance immediately, regardless of whether Blanco had submitted the request.  (And again, it's sort of beside the point, because Blanco in fact did make such a request.)

Keep an eye on this between now and Wednesday.  I would say chances are good that someone at the White House will notice that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is about to undercut an important White House and Republican talking point, and excise or at least significantly edit the section as mentioned in the WaPo article. 

For Boehner, Reform Begins Corruption Continues at Home

By DHinMI

So, the House Republican caucus wanted to present a clean, faux-reformist image to Americans, so today they rejected Roy Blunt and chose as Tom DeLay’s replacement as Majority Leader Ohio Congressman John Boehner.

That’s right, the new ethically pure, reformist, anti-corruption Congressional Republicans will be led by a Republican from Ohio. Boehner is a member of a male-only country club with a $75,000 initiation fee. Maybe that cleaned out his bank account, which is why he had to take almost $14,000 in free trips from the lobbyist-connected Ripon Society. He also has a history as a bag man for the tobacco lobby during his days as a capo for Newt Gingrich, even going so far as to disburse checks from tobacco lobbyists to Republican members on the floor of the United States Congress. So this really made me chuckle:

On Tuesday, majority Republicans in the U.S. House sought to contain the damage from the Abramoff scandal by proposing their own package of reforms, including banning travel paid for by outside groups, restricting gifts and denying pensions to lawmakers convicted of felonies related to official duties.

"An honorable majority responds to its stumbles with contrition, reform, and an effort to fix that which is broken," said Republican U.S. Rep. John Boehner, of West Chester.

Boehner’s association with corrupt majorities isn’t limited to being a Republican in the United States Congress, either. It also includes his position as a prominent Republican in the state of Ohio. As you surely know, the Ohio Republican party has so-far made the Abramoff crooks look like a bunch of pikers. There’s still time for the Abramoff scandal to morph into something much, much bigger—and it probably will—but what we know in Ohio is that the Ohio Republicans’ La Cosa Noe-stra centered around GOP fundraiser Timothy Noe has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Republicans running for both state and federal office, including George W. Bush’s Presidential campaign. Noe broke laws in raising money for Bush, and he stole the pension money of Ohio workers by investing it in shady deals with his coin business.

Has John Boehner done anything to clean up corruption in his own party in his own home state? He certainly didn’t distance himself from Jean Schmidt, to whose campaign in 2005 he donated $10,000, despite her connections to Noe. He doesn’t appear to have called for any sweeping reforms of the Ohio Republican party, or publicly urged Republicans to renounce the money they received from Noe.

Why should we expect John Boehner to be a sincere advocate of Congressional lobbying reform, when he’s done nothing to advocate or implement reform among his fellow Ohio Republicans, possibly the most corrupt bunch of Republicans in the country?

 

Impeachment: Let's Get Weird.

by Kagro X

Ooh! It's my first use of the State and Local Government category!

So I was cruising around Daily Kos the other day, and came across this diary, raising a point of parliamentary arcana. I just had to look into it.

NOTE: Sec. 603. Inception of impeachment proceedings in the House. This refers to Jefferson's Manual-the House uses it as a supplement to its standing rules.>>
In the  House there are various methods of setting an impeachment in motion:
[...] by charges transmitted from the legislature of a State (III, 2469)

Whaaaaaaa? (TM)

TNH Book Club: The Republican War Against Science

by DemFromCT

In the last few weeks, we've been chatting in the open threads about a book club. We tossed some ideas around, and our first entry will be Chris Mooney's The Republican War Against Science.

IN THE SUMMER OF 2001, long before his reelection and even before he became a "wartime president," George W. Bush found himself in a political tight spot. He responded with a morsel of scientific misinformation so stunning, so certain to be exposed by enterprising journalists (as indeed it was), that one can only wonder what Bush and his handlers were thinking, or whether they were thinking at all. The issue was embryonic stem cell research, and Bush's nationally televised claim—that "more than sixty genetically diverse" embryonic stem cell lines existed at the time of his statement—counts as one of the most flagrant purely scientific deceptions ever perpetrated by a U.S. president on an unsuspecting public.

If you haven't read it, you can sample some Mooney essays (and an interview or two) here and here.

From the Rockefeller University interview:

Mooney’s thesis is that the Republican Party is addicted to the misuse and abuse of science, and the party’s domination by the modern conservative movement drives this addiction. Corporate interests and religious conservatives oppose the scientific community’s norms and products. The corporate sector resists any effort to restrict profits (e.g. the tobacco, pharmaceutical, and energy industries), and religious conservatives flatly reject the scientific worldview (e.g. intelligent design). This opposition has led to the systematic misuse of scientific information. The response of the Republican Party includes President Bush’s statements regarding human embryonic stem cell lines, the elimination of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and attacks on climate scientists who present ‘inconvenient’ analyses of global warming. Mooney points out that such malfeasance obstructs the ability of the government to make informed policy decisions, and will result in negative consequences for the American public.

Check the science link at TNH and control F search for stem cells, just to see some recent examples from Missouri and otherwise, or look at the Intelligent Design posts for a more dramatic example (one can argue which is the more important of the two, but they're both key). The important thing is that the policy set by both local and federal Republicans is deliberate, insidious and hurtful to Americans, especially in a long term sense.

More from Missouri and Stem Cells

by DemFromCT

Back in April, we wrote about Missouri's difficulty grappling with the stem cell issue. While some republicans want it because it's good for biotech business, other R's see it as the great Satan to be faught tooth and nail in the courts and otherwise. And now what's up for discussion is a state amendment allowing stem cell work to proceed.

To many socially conservative Republicans and religious leaders in Missouri, however, a new political campaign to legalize and protect such research is an evil to be fought in courtrooms, churches and polling stations.

Lawrence Weber, executive director of the Missouri Catholic Conference, called it "morally reprehensible science." Bishops instructed priests to deliver pointed homilies.

Voters may be asked to decide. After the courts weigh in, that is.

At issue is an amendment to the Missouri constitution proposed for the November 2006 ballot by a well-funded coalition of research institutions and patient advocacy groups frustrated by legislative attempts to ban early stem cell work in a state with a significant stake in biomedical research.

If voters support the amendment, Missouri would be the first state to formally recognize a right for scientists to conduct federally approved embryonic stem cell research, and for patients to receive treatment, backers say.

"We're not trying to fund stem cell research," said Donn Rubin, chairman of the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, which has collected $2.9 million for the ballot drive. "All we're trying to do is to ensure the freedom in our state to pursue cutting-edge medical research and to ensure that when cures and treatments are found, Missourians have the same access as any other American would have."

This intersection with politics and science in a Republican midwestern state might be the perfect test between the faith-based and reality-based communities. Imagine if Republican Missouri votes reality. it might even restore one's faith in politics.

Merry Christmas, all!

CT Experiments With Honesty

by DemFromCT

While the Republicans in DC wallow in sleaze and corruption, the state labs soldier on. CT has passed a decent campaign reform bill, thanks the the corruption of John Rowland (R-prison). Jody Rell, leading the SUSA Governor's 50 state poll, promises to sign it.

The General Assembly approved the nation's most sweeping campaign finance reforms early today, transforming Connecticut into a political laboratory.

The House voted 82-65 to give final approval at 2:44 a.m. and sent the bill to Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who set aside minor reservations about the Democratic measure and promised to sign it into law.

"This legislation makes Connecticut a national leader on campaign finance reform," said Rell, who called for limits on so-called special interest money in January. "It can't happen soon enough."

The legislation bans contributions by lobbyists, their spouses, and state contractors, limits political action committees, closes a loophole that permits corporate donations and creates a voluntary system of public financing.

By overhauling campaign laws crafted 30 years ago after the Watergate scandal, the bill upends long-established relationships between power and money, though few would predict precisely what might rise in their place.

What does the bill do, you ask?

We'll Know the REAL News Today

By DHinMI   

Congratulations to new governors elect Tim Kaine and John Corzine.  Much will be spun on potentential national implications, with Dems saying these were referendums on Bush and the Republicans, Republicans saying they hinged on local concerns in VA or that Forrester ran a bad campaign in NJ.  And both sides are right. 

But for a "purer" indication of what today's elections mean, we'll probably need to wait until later Wednesday, when we can get a full accounting for what happened in the legislative races.  In 2004 Democrats posted a national net gain of 64 legislative seats, and flipped control of more chambers than the Republicans.  When you compensate for the Texas redistricting, the Congressional outcome was a net zero.  We lost Seats in the Senate, but in places where Dems haven't done well in Presidential years, primarily in the South.  And an incumbent President barely topped 50%.  Hardly a transforming election in terms of the message from the electorate.

But we're probably coming up on a major, landmark election.  It won't be a transforming election like we had in the period of 1932-36.  But it could certainly be an election that breaks the back of the majority party's momentum, like 1966 when the backlash against LBJ cut short the Great Society reforms, or 1938 when FDR's court packing ended the Second New Deal.  But unlike those elections, when Dems lost dozens of Congressional seats but still easily held control (because their majorities were over 100 seats), this would be a backlash against a narrow majority that acted like they had a 100 seat majority when in fact it's majority was only 30 seats. 

An early indicator of whether we're on pace for a landmark election will be the legislative races.  Dems hold both chambers of the NJ legislature, Repubs both chambers of the VA legislature.  There's almost no way the VA House of Delegates will flip; the Republican held a 61-37 majority.  But Kagro X's whack-job delegate lost in previously solidly Republican Loudoun County, and he lost big, so it's possible the Republican majority could be dramatically cut.  And if we see significant losses--like a Dem gain of more than 6-8 seats--it would be safe to say the Republican troubles went beyond a bad campaign or weak candidate at the top of the ticket.  In New Jersey, where Dem troubles with corruption charges stemming back to the McGreevey administration administration were supposed to hurt Corzine, any gains would probably hold significant meaning.

So, celebrate a nice pair of top-of-the-ticket wins in the gubernatorial races, and a very heartening win for gay rights in Maine.  But if you want to know if there was any significant national meaning in Tuesday's results, look for those legislative results.

Hurrahpertif Tuesday – L.A. Labor, New Orleans, Posse Comitatus

By Meteor Blades

Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t have to make enemies of everybody in a labor union in the state of California, but it seems that he has, and they’re hoping for some payback in November. Alternet has the story, Labor Plays Hardball:

The executive secretary-treasurer of the L.A. County Fed is engaged in an animated discussion with a colleague. He reaches for a cell phone, then shakes a visitor's hand and points the way to his office. On his desk there, amid neatly stacked piles of paper, sits a replica of a baseball with a base inscribed with the words: Sometimes You Have to Play Hardball.