[ Posted Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 – 17:48 UTC ]
After we get through this season of passing necessary emergency legislation (in order to yank the American economy back from the cliff Bush led us to), Congress is going to have to turn its attention to the federal budget. They didn't pass one last year, and this year's budget is right around the corner as well. But a little-known rule in the Senate may dramatically change the balance of power between the parties during this process. It's called "reconciliation." And it's a magic bullet to slay Republican opposition to passing a budget with President Obama's priorities and agenda intact.
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 – 18:22 UTC ]
In the normal course of events, I try to avoid writing about California state politics. Our state government is so outrageous in normal times, that it requires an above-average situation of looniness for me to do so (Larry Flynt running for governor, for instance). Speaking of governors, I can tell you that we [...]
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[ Posted Monday, February 16th, 2009 – 16:35 UTC ]
Since it's the random Monday when we celebrate "Presidents' Day," and since it is the year of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, I'd like to take a moment to see whether any lessons can be learned from Lincoln in the Obama age. Lincoln and Obama seem linked together in our minds already (Obama encourages such, it must be noted), so I'd like to look back to Lincoln's First Inaugural Address and see what it has to say to us today.
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[ Posted Friday, February 13th, 2009 – 18:05 UTC ]
About a week ago, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs got off a good line about the progress of the stimulus package: "The sausage race is the beginning of the next inning. So just stay tuned." This was about halfway through the bill's legislative process. Not only did he declare an opening to Baseball Metaphor Season, he also rather ingeniously alluded to Otto von Bismarck's well-known warning that the public should not look too closely at how laws and sausages are made.
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[ Posted Thursday, February 12th, 2009 – 17:51 UTC ]
Because much like the fictional Spinal Tap's famed bad luck in drummers (all of whom have either disappeared or died in mysterious circumstances), President Obama now needs a new Secretary of Commerce.
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 – 17:57 UTC ]
Barack Obama is our first post-baby-boom president. He was supposed to usher in a new era, where we wouldn't have to fight the social battles of the 1960s all over again. Instead, we are now apparently going to fight the battles of the 1930s.
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 – 16:51 UTC ]
The Huffington Post is today reporting that Democratic Representative Bruce Braley will (later this week) be announcing the formation of the Populist Caucus in Congress. The group will initially have 21 members, all House Democrats. From the full article:
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[ Posted Monday, February 9th, 2009 – 18:04 UTC ]
This is an outrage. To put this in perspective, this is more money than the annual budget for the Department of Transportation. It is more than we pay for the Department of Education. It is the size of the Departments of Justice, Energy, State, and the Interior -- combined. It is an amount bigger than the GDP of all but about 60 countries in the world. Even in Washington, this ain't pocket change, in other words. It's a lot of money. And it seems to have vanished.
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[ Posted Friday, February 6th, 2009 – 18:20 UTC ]
But alongside the stimulus debate, there is another issue which needs addressing -- one which I have been avoiding talking about until now. I speak of executive compensation. The reason I have been avoiding it is that (1) the stimulus is a more pressing and immediate concern because it will be passed first, and (2) because every time I sit down to write about it I get so enraged I can barely type. So I've held off. Until now.
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[ Posted Thursday, February 5th, 2009 – 16:20 UTC ]
Obama's problem is twofold. He seems to have fired all his campaign speechwriters, and he's not getting very effective support from his own congressional leadership.
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