Category: Legislation

California Runs Out of Money for Fire Fighting

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Two weeks into the new fiscal year, California has already spent 1/3 of its firefighting budget for the year, and in the home of Proposition 13, the money is not there to cover this.

They are not talking about surcharges on insurance in fire zones and similar methods to cover current and expected shortfalls in the firefighting budgets.

I don’t know how any of this will make it through the state house, where you need a super majority, which requires Republican votes, and they have pretty much pledged to vote against all taxes, and their districts disproportionately benefit from the firefighting efforts.

Harry Reid Prepares to Stick It to Tom Coburn

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Tom Coburn, the Australopithecine Senator from Oklahoma, has repeatedly abused the Senate courtesy known as a “hold”, and has applied it to over 100 bills, and Harry Reid has had enough, so he has repackaged all of these bills into an omnibus legislative package that will hit the floor in August.

Reid in uncharacteristically blunt language, says of Coburn, “For those of you who may not know this, you cannot negotiate with Coburn. It’s something that you learn over the years, that it’s a waste of time.”

Seeing as how this legislation will have earmarks and pork for many pet projects, all Reid has to do is to peel off 9 Republicans limit debate and get it passed.

Of course, they could vote against the bills….two months before election day….

Massachusetts Senate Passes Repeal of 1918 Backdoor Anti-Miscegenation Law

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In 1913, Massachusetts passed a law making it illegal for people to marry their if it was not legal in their home state. It was intended to prevent blacks and whites from other states from conducting an interracial marriage there.

No one paid too much attention to it, until Mitt Romney dusted it off to hinder gay marriage in Massachusetts to further his efforts to appeal to bigots in the ‘Phant base in his race for president.

Well, the Mass. Senate just voted to repeal it, and passage looks likely in the Mass House, and governor Patrick says that he will sign it.

Woot!

Krugman Nails it Again

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Toady, he’s writing about the Medicare vote, and he writes about the underlying issues, not the drama of Kennedy showing up to break a filibuster.

Specifically, he notes that in 2003, Bush and His Evil Minions™ got the so called Medicare Modernization Act though congress, and a big part of it was a very poison pill, large subsidies for the private insurer run Medicare Advantage.

Because these plans are heavily subsidized, they suck money out of the program, making a fiscal crisis even worse.

Because these plans require larger premiums, they also exclude the poor.

So you create a two tiered system, where the rich tier sucks the marrow out of the poor tier.

Basic Republican social programs: Reverse Robin Hood.

Krugman is also far more sanguine about the possibility of real reform next year, because the Dems held together, and the Republicans caved when hit with the full force of the AMA over the July 4th weekend.

Me, I’m more of a pessimist. My goals are less extreme. Just remove the preemption clause from ERISA, and let the states compete, and businesses will migrate to places where they aren’t shafted by the healthcare system.

The Rude Pundit Picks His Battles

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The Rude Pundit notes that he gets a lot of chickensh#@ criticisms of Obama in his email from people who never listed to what Obama said, and so are shocked to find that he is pro gun, pro death penalty, pro “faith based program”, etc. and in his own profane way, says that these people are either clueless, or McCain concern trolls.

That being said, but he does state that there are valid critiques:

Like this one: Barack Obama’s reversal of his position on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was a craven, cowardly bullsh#$ move that ought to haunt him with the left (and libertarian right) for the rest of the campaign. By voting for the bill yesterday (including voting for cloture), Obama made a mistake that is the political equivalent of Hillary Clinton’s Iraq war vote. (They are not morally equivalent, since the dead would probably rather be alive and spied on.) And while there’s no telling how Clinton would have voted had she been the nominee, just as there’s no way to know how Obama would have voted on the war had he been in the Senate in 2002, the New York Senator was unencumbered and able to take the moral high ground and voted against the bill.

I honestly believe that the Rude Pundit cannot believe that he wrote that Hillary Clinton took the high moral ground.

I can’t believe that I’m writing that Hillary Clinton took the high moral ground.

In any case, if Obama loses to the sick old man in November, he did it today, because at its core, much of the power of movement supporting him comes not from the number of supporters, but from the enthusiasm of those supporters, and a whole lot of them are seriously non-enthused.

He just made the same vote that Hillary Clinton did to authorize the war. The only question is whether it will kill his campaign as it did hers.

In any case, go read his post. He’s always insightful and entertaining, if somewhat profane.

US Congress Obstacle to US/India Nuke Deal

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While it looks like the Indian PM Manmohan Singh may find the votes to approve the deal with the US on civilian nuclear power, it appears that it’s unlikely to make it through Congress this year.

The legislation that enabled the negotiations, the 2006 Hyde act, requires that Congress, “be in 30 days of continuous session to consider it”, and there are only 40 days to the August recess, when we are in election season.

While it is possible that this could be finished in a post election lame duck session, that is unlikely, a lame duck session that long would run into the holiday season, and none of the Democrats are even remotely interested in giving Bush time to try last minute hail Mary legislative initiatives.

In the next session, approval may be even more unlikely. In the US, this process has primarily been about political payback to the US nuclear industry, which has supported Republicans.

Here’s hoping, particularly since it appears that India will continue to build nuclear weapons.

Fair’s Fair: Obama Has Been Consistent, and Consistently Right on Bankruptcy Laws

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He is now proposing reversing some of the more draconian portions of the 2005 bankruptcy law.

Specifically, he is talking about specific fast tracking for medically caused bankruptcy, military deployments, predatory lenders, and people over 62.

I think that he should come out in favor of applying bankruptcy law to primary residences too, but it’s a nice first step.

The FISA Vote is Tomorrow

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Contact your Senators, any friends of the Senators, any pets of the Senators, and tell them that a vote for this bill is a betrayal of the basic values of this nation.

Note that in addition to an amendment to strip immunity, there is also an amendment to make immunity contingent on the final Ispector General report as to whether government agencies broke the law, which Mukasey and McConnell say is worth vetoing the whole bill.

Also, please give to the Blue America/FISA fund, which will punish Dems who capitulate on basic American rights and value when no capitulation is necessary.

They are running this full page ad in the WaPo today.

Also help Regina Thomas defeat John Barrow, one the most reactionary Democrat in Congress, and one of the most prominent supporters of the FISA capitulation in the primary a week from today in Georgia’s 12th Congressional district.

The Bush Blue Dogs need to be shown that their votes against America have consequences.

No more Vichy Dems.

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New York Times Slams Senate and Obama Over FISA

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Mostly it’s the Senate, that they condemn, though the distinguished Senator from Illinois is mentioned. It is a remarkably full throated condemnation of Senate, and Democratic cowardice:

Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy, Russ Feingold, Christopher Dodd and Jeff Bingaman plan to offer amendments to do that, but there is little chance they will pass. The Senate should reject this bill and start over with modest legislation that makes the small needed changes and preserves Americans’ fundamental protections.

Senator John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee for president, has supported the weakening of FISA. Senator Barack Obama vowed in January (when he was still fighting for the Democratic nomination) that he would filibuster against immunity. Now he says he will vote for an “imperfect” bill and fix it if he wins. Sound familiar?

Proponents of the FISA deal say companies should not be “punished” for cooperating with the government. That’s Washington-speak for a cover-up. The purpose of withholding immunity is not to punish but to preserve the only chance of unearthing the details of Mr. Bush’s outlaw eavesdropping. Only a few senators, by the way, know just what those companies did.

Restoring some of the protections taken away by an earlier law while creating new loopholes in the Constitution is not a compromise. It is a failure of leadership.

We know that the Times is right about this, because Fred Hiatt, the editor of the end worst OP/ED page in the nation™*, finds flip flopping by Obama, specifically on Iraq, to be laudable, , and believes that the FISA bill is just ducky thank you, which proves the NY times correct.

If you go against the WaPo editorial pages, you will be right an embarrassing amount of the time., and the Times is right this time; there is far more to hate about the bill than telco immunity.

*The undisputed champion of wanktacular OP/ED pages, by a knockout, is still the Wall Street Journal.

Republicans Will Cave on Medicare Funding

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The Republicans are holding up a Medicare funding plan which reduces subsidies to private insurers offering “Medicare Advantage” in order to raise doctors fees in the stand, and the AMA is taking out ads targeting the Republicans opposing this.

You see the Republicans believe that they only way to bring efficiency to the medical market is to bring in private enterprise, but private enterprise is much less efficient than basic Medicare, so they need subsidies to compete.

The reality is that the Medicare advantage program is about two things:

  • Ideology trumping reality.
  • Republithugs getting donations from insurance companies.

Bush is promising a veto, and doctors are already shutting down practices or no longer accepting new Medicare patients, so this will get ugly quickly.

If the Dems have any brains, they will fold their arms, and say, “this is the deal”, and let the Republicans founder.

How Democrats Should Act

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Dan Froomkin notes that when Democrats push back, Bush’s signing statements get withdrawn:

Robert Brodsky writes for Government Executive: ‘The White House and congressional leaders have announced most of the appointees to the long-awaited Commission on Wartime Contracting. The bipartisan team is charged with investigating virtually all war-related contracts, including funds devoted to reconstruction, logistical support for coalition forces, and security and intelligence functions.

‘The commission is the brainchild of Sens. Jim Webb, D-Va., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. The freshmen senators co-wrote the provision creating the panel, which was included in the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act and signed into law in January. . . .

‘The White House’s cooperation with the panel is an about-face from its earlier public stance.

‘Shortly after signing the defense authorization, Bush issued a signing statement that said he did not have to abide by four provisions in the legislation, including the one creating the commission. At the time, Bush said the provisions could inhibit his ‘ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and execute his authority as commander in chief.’

“Webb immediately pushed back, criticizing the statement as an ‘impingement on the rights’ of Congress and said the Senate would ‘march forward in an expeditious manner’ to create the panel. Webb’s office said the White House seems to have dropped its objections and plans to cooperate with the panel. . . .

“The commission is modeled after the Truman committee, which conducted hundreds of hearings and investigations into government waste during and after World War II.”

For more about that signing statement, see my Jan. 30 column, Bush Thumbs Nose at Congress.

I’m not a big fan of Webb. I think that he’s too conservative.

That being said, he has a spine.

Judge: FISA Is Already Exclusive Means of Electronic Surveillance

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Well, this ruling shoots a hole in the claim that Dems are getting something from the current FISA clusterf%$#. The Judge says that the original FISA bill is the exclusive means for wiretap.

That being the case, this means that Bush has been violating the law already, and a felony to boot, and that the bill does not change the legal situation.

So the Dems have nothing, except for proof of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Oh, I forgot:

NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!

Thank you Speaker Pelosi for taking impeachment off the table.