Republicans in the Senate put their crony and political interests ahead of that of the American people once again on Thursday - by voting in unison to block a small business jobs bill.  Despite a plea from the President (or perhaps because of it, we'll never know) to put partisanship aside and help small businesses, here's what the Republicans blocked:

• A one-year, $30 billion loan program (through purchase of financial institution common stock and other methods) for community banks and credit unions when they make loans to small businesses.  If the treasury makes money from this program (through repayment of the loans), it would go to pay down the debt.
• $12 billion in additional tax breaks tax cuts to help small business.
  
  

This is good news - if you are a Democrat, and especially if you are a Nevada Democrat.  It turns out that Nevada's Republican US Senate candidate Sharon Angle doesn't just think that unemployed people are lazy and that social security ought to be phased out.  She is evidently incompetent in running a campaign in a fiscally responsible manner.  She just shelled out $637,000 to Base Connect, a direct mail fundraising firm that has been known to keep 80% to even 95% of the money raised for themselves.

Wow, good going, Sharon!  I mean, who doesn't want to give 80% of their campaign contributions on commission to a shady firm?  Good for you, Sharon.  And it also turns out that Base Connect is also incredible effective at delivering votes:

The classic Base Connect candidates are people you've never heard of like Charles Morse, a Republican who took on Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) in 2008 but dropped out before the general election after getting just 145 votes in the GOP primary. The Boston Globe reported that his longshot campaign took in a staggering $700,000 with the help of Base Connect (then BMW Direct) -- but the firm was paid 96% of the money. Another no-name congressional candidate, a black Republican named Deborah Honeycutt in Georgia, raised gobs of money with Base Connect in 2008 -- and paid the firm gobs of money in return. She went on to lose by 38 points.

Gotta love the fiscal conservatives who can't handle their own campaign cash!  And Democrats owe a debt of thanks to Base Connect.  Thank you, Base Connect!

Well, this is a pleasant surprise.  If you missed Bill O'Reilly's appearance on the Jay Leno show last night, you missed something important.  O'Reilly came out (no pun intended) against the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy and expressed dismay about the President not signing an executive order halting its implementation.  He went further, calling the policy "just not fair," and calling for us to "stop this nonsense."

Charlie Eisenhood at Think Progress gives us the relevant portion of the conversation:

LENO: I don’t know if you heard the thing I was mentioning, it actually made me angry. That kid, the West Point kid [Dan Choi], what’s your take on that?

O’REILLY: Well I don’t get it. President Obama has the power to stop this Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell business. Just sign an executive order. I don’t know why it’s taking so long.

LENO: And to me, doesn’t it cost like $300,000 to send a kid to West Point? He speaks Arabic…Anybody that’s willing to take a bullet for me is OK in my book.

O’REILLY: Yeah, but $300,000 to the government – that’s like $0.30, you know what I mean? So, they don’t care about cost. But, look, it’s just not fair, we should stop this nonsense.

(Author's note: This is an excerpt of my weekly column in TheLoop21.com. Also, it was cross-posted at Policydiary.com)


Last week in the Wall Street Journal Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) opined that federally sponsored diversity programs should be halted. It seems Webb — senator by day, apparently civil rights historian by night — has surveyed the landscape and come to the perplexing conclusion that the most overlooked barrier to climbing the ladder of success in the U.S. is being white.

“After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers,” Webb says.
He continues, “In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived.”

The fallacy in Webb’s argument is this: his definition of "racial harmony" seems to be a state where "marginalized white workers" feel good about themselves and their prospects for advancement in social status and employment. But that, to me, isn’t the definition of racial harmony; it’s an ego trip that harks back to the day when WASP elites — who contrary to Webb’s "research" still are very much in control of the levers of power in the halls of congress, academia, and private industry — only faced competition among themselves because laws specifically excluded others.

Full Article May Be Read Here: 

National Organization for Marriage - the ultra right wing fundamentalist group that is dedicated to opposing equality for LGBT couples - lately has been on a "Summer for Marriage" tour.  Well, the tours haven't been too successful.  Think Progress published an anecdotal report that in Indianapolis, IN, for example, only 40 supporters showed up, compared to about 250 marriage equality supporters.

Perhaps one reason for waning support for NOM is their extremism. This kind of extremism:

Monday, Mort Zuckerman, a business tycoon and the publisher of US News and World Report, appeared on MSNBC's "The Ed Show" to whine about how businesses aren't hiring because the Obama Administration's rhetoric is hurting their feelings.  Whatever happened to the rugged conservative, I do not know.  They have all turned into a bunch of crybabies.  Zuckerman also failed to name a single policy of the Obama Administration that is harmful to business.

But what caught my interest was something Zuckerman said that, if explored in the proper economic context, is essentially an admission that tax cuts - especially tax giveaways for the wealthy - do not help the economy.  He talked about how despite profits being up, the top line for business - that is, revenue - hasn't done as well as their bottom line, thus the increase in profits is mostly credited to cost-cutting measures, which includes shedding jobs.  Here's the part I'm referring to:

Congressional Republicans have been prancing around the capitol making demands that unemployment payment be paid for by reducing federal spending elsewhere, but that tax giveaways for the ultra-wealthy ought to be charged to our national credit card.  Those who are serious about economic policy and the soaring federal deficit, however, must act like adults.  The Obama administration and Democrats in Congress (with the exception of a few) want to eliminate the Bush tax giveaways for individuals making more than $200,000 or families making more than $250,000, while extending the breaks that are enjoyed by middle class and poor Americans.

There are three good and essential reasons why tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans should expire: those tax cuts don't create jobs or spur consumer spending, those tax cuts are burdening the federal deficit, and those tax cuts are keeping us from making essential investments in our future.

Thanks to this diary on Daily Kos, I found out about Gov. Howard Dean's appearance on Fox News Sunday with host Chris Wallace this morning.  Dean appeared alongside Republican disgraced former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and took no prisoners.  Wallace started the segment off with the premature dismissal from the USDA of Shirley Sherrod, who was fired because of a edited, out-of-context video posted by a right wing reactionary, Andrew Breitbart, accusing her of being a racist, accusation that turned out to be false when the full video was released.


(Transcript and video of full FNS available here.)

When Howard Dean got his say on the matter on FNS, he was straightforward, blunt and courageous.  He called out the coverage the clip received on Fox as "absolutely racist."  Acting to defend his employer (and probably his political soulmates), Wallace quickly jumped in with this gem.

The slow but steady stream of good news of the new health reform law being implemented continues.  One of the little-noticed and provisions in the new law strengthened the hands of patients and health care consumers against unjust insurance company decisions to deny care.  The provision, authored by Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, provides for a full and fair internal and external review process of insurance denials and rescissions with teeth.  On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services released new rules enforcing this provision of law.

And the Obama administration is putting money where its mouth is.  They have announced $30 million in grants for state programs to educate and assist people about their new rights, empowering patients.

Today was a great day for advocates of consumer protection and financial reform.  President Obama's signing of the Dodd-Frank bill into law marks the most significant regulatory reform of Wall Street in generations.  But no sooner than the ink had dried started the campaign by over-zealous groups like "Progressive Change Campaign Committee" to discredit Treasury Secretary Geithner, in the form of a petition urging the President to appoint Elizabeth Warren, the Chair of the Congressional oversight panel of the TARP funds, as the head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by the new law.

Let me be absolutely clear: I see Elizabeth Warren as the leading choice for the job.  I back her strongly and unequivocally, and I will be reaching out to my members of Congress and the White House to urge their support.  That is not the point here.

PCCC is going around collecting signatures on its petition on the basis of a charge with no good evidence - that Treasury Secretary Geithner is opposing Warren, and thus they (PCCC) are "help[ing] her fight back."

Investing social security in the market?  That sounds an awful lot like "privatization!"  No?  No.  There's an idea floating around - catching attention from former SEIU President and member of the President's deficit commission (formally the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform) Andy Stern - to gradually invest a portion of the social security trust fund in the stock market.  This investment would be done by the government, not individuals, unlike the private accounts called for by Republicans.

Let me make an argument on the merits.  The argument is three-fold: first, it's very important to understand why the government investing part of the social security trust fund in the market is different from individuals investing portions of their own social security taxes.  Second, over the longer term, the earning potentials are large and can help close the long term structural deficit in social security.  Finally, this is not a new concept.  Canada and other western and Asian countries already utilize the market to invest their public pension funds, and states across the US do the same.

Alex Lawson of Social Security Works met up with the Republican Co-Chair of the President's deficit commission, former US Sen. Alan Simpson on June 19 outside the meeting places of the commission's working groups.  In this post, I will only post the video and the transcript - there will be no editorializing.  For now, I just want you to watch the video and read. If you need a little refresher course on how social security exactly works (the inlays and the outlays), see my post from earlier today.

There is absolute hysteria in parts of the blogosphere and its most zealous ideologues about the President's deficit commission that is working on a way to reduce the federal deficit.  Those who deride it as the "cat food commission" are under the impression that the commission is out to gut social security.  The people generating most of this euphoria, I'm afraid, are dangerously misinformed on how the social security trust fund works, as well as what the deficit commission is supposed to do.

How the Social Security Trust Fund Actually Works

We know that the federal government, in order to finance deficit spending, borrows money.  Most of that money is borrowed from entities outside the federal government - called the public debt.  About a third of our national debt, however, is financed by the government's own trust funds, including social security.  Here's a graphic depiction of the total gross debt vs the public debt, followed by an actual estimate, as of July 20, 2010, 1 am Pacific time.

Getting things done matters, including electorally.  A just-released Gallup poll now gives Democrats a 6-point lead among registered voters in the generic Congressional ballot.  With Wall Street reform awaiting the signature of the President, the American people are beginning to pay attention, and they are starting to realize that this election is a choice: A choice between a party that wants to move forward and make progress - however imperfectly - and a party that has made a political decision to obstruct everything.

The Democrats' six-point advantage in Gallup Daily interviewing from July 12-18 represents the first statistically significant lead for that party's candidates since Gallup began weekly tracking of this measure in March. [MOE +/- 3 percentage points.  Copyright © 2010 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.]

Democrats now hold a 49-43 advantage over Republicans on the generic ballot.  Tracking closely, President Obama's job approval rating stands at 48%, compared to 44% disapproving.

The recent financial crisis that drove this country to the precipice of a second great depression cost us 8 million jobs, more than $4 trillion in residential real estate value alone, and wiped out the nest egg of countless millions.  All through this time though, titans on Wall Street got richer and richer, thanks to a deregulated financial sector.  Sub-prime mortgages, near-zero consumer protection, financial executive compensation structures with no real connection to performance, and collusion between credit ratings agencies and financial firms.

After a long wait, Congress has now passed a financial reform bill that the President is poised to sign this week.  Before we discuss some of the provisions I believe are most important, I'd like you to watch the President's speech on the passage of this bill.

While the Tea Party has so far succeeded in purifying the GOP just enough to put a Democrat in office from New York's 23rd Congressional District for the first time in 100 years, as well as in producing luminaries such as famous BP defender Dr. Rand I-created-the-board-that-certified-me Paul and Sharon I-will-sue-you-for-exposing-my-own-positions Angle as Republican Senate nominees, a rift has been slowly forming.  The rift is not so much between the conservatives and moderates in the GOP - the Tea Party movement and the neocons prior to them have successfully purged the GOP of any moderate voices.  The rift, instead, is between the non-thinking, anti-intellectual, knee-jerk, no-on-everything Tea Party and thoughtful, intellectual conservatives.

He has done it before.  So it's no surprise that he'd do it again.  After calling the Obama Administration's efforts to hold BP accountable for the worst oil spill in American history "un-American", the Board certified Dr. Paul is now back at it, saying that the President's criticisms of BP could - you guessed it - hurt BP's business.  Oh, the humanity!

Paul said Thursday that BP should pay for the Gulf cleanup, but that Obama administration's sharp rhetoric could help imperil the company.

"I don't want them to go out of business when they can't pay for the mess, and that's what that kind of rhetoric could do," he said. "I want BP to be in business so it can afford to pay for the mess."

In other words, in order to make sure BP is held accountable, according to Ron Paul, the President must not hold BP accountable.  At least not rhetorically.  Hmm, I could be wrong about this, but wasn't it BP being in business that caused the spill?  It is ridiculous to claim that criticism from the Obama Administration will make BP go under.  You go argue that in a civil lawsuit.  "Your honor, yes my client stole money, but if opposing counsel keeps criticizing him, my client will go out of business and won't be able to pay up!"

Yesterday, Ed Schultz on MSNBC's The Ed Show did a segment on the condition of Colorado Springs, Colorado - a city that is now forced to turn off street lights, lay off police officers and fire fighters, forgo the investigations of felonies, and cut back on other essential city services, thanks to a feel-good but disastrous law called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR).

Just to give you some idea of what the city of Colorado Springs is dealing with before we get to the video, the Denver Post paints a picture:

The buses stop running at 6:15 p.m. now, and most streetlights stay dark throughout the night. Three city pools have shut down, and turf is withering in more than 100 parks.

What's a city to do when its museums are struggling to stay open and there aren't enough police officers to investigate crimes?

What should be done to ensure the solvency of the social security system has been the subject of much debate - some of it substantial, much of it political.  With an aging population and with the baby boomers ready to retire, the portion of our elderly population is set to rise beyond any levels known historically, and that puts a particular strain on social security.

There have been some policy proposals to seriously consider: conservatives, and some Democrats, have come on board the idea of increasing the age of retirement.  Others have suggested raising or eliminating the cap on taxable social security income, and yet others have suggested a combination of both.  I will try to explore both, but we will also see that actuarial numbers say that eliminating the cap alone (without increasing benefits) will make social security solvent for 75 years and beyond.

I will never cease to be amused at some of the silly season that goes on debates when ideological battle lines are drawn on the sand.  From today's Daily Kos, comes such a piece.

Why is [72.4 and 76.8 percent top marginal income rate]s insane? In the 1950's, a time of prosperity, the top rate was 90%. Were Eisenhower and Nixon insane? No Ms. Marcus, you do have to be a Grover Norquist to find 70+ rates insane. There is nothing insane about it at all. The government needs money. Rich people have plenty of it. Why rob banks? Because that's where the money is. This isn't insanity. In fact, it's sanity.

Aside from the fact that the question "Was Nixon insane?" could easily be answered with a "Yes" under a different context, I'm taken aback a little by the impracticality and selective reasoning of this suggestion.

The European Union is moving to provide some global leadership on reining in cash bonuses for bank executives to try to curtail excessive risk taking that has lead to a global financial disaster until any in recent memory.  The European Parliament, the New York Times reports, has approved a measure capping most bonuses to 30% in cash, and for larger bonuses, to 20%.  The rest of the amount has to be in forms other than cash, and held over for up to three years.  That amount can be reduced or forfeited if the performance of the bank falters.

This is a good step, considering that the financial calamity was primarily caused by the rewarding of excessive risk-taking regardless of long term performance, as well as bonuses with no relation to performance whatsoever for executives.  The United States is not looking at legislative remedies of bonuses, however, regulatory agencies are making compensation structure part of the decision to assess fees.  The Obama Administration's Pay Czar is preparing to release a comprehensive pay review of high earners at the top financial institutions.  The President also imposed a cap on institutions that received federal bailout money last year until it was paid back.

Rep. Alan Grayson, a champion for health reform, has introduced in the House HR 4789, the "Medicare You Can Buy Into Act."  The concept behind this act is to let anyone buy into Medicare "at-cost."  I think that is a brilliant idea to present competition to the private health insurance industry - and to incentivize them not to treat their customers like cattle, lest they all start migrating to Medicare.

Some, however, has latched onto this bill as the holy grail of health reform.  Some have even suggested it as the solution to the high costs of the the high-risk pools currently being implemented under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  Is it?  While I am always in favor of expanding any public health insurance program, we ought to be careful about over-promising what a Medicare buy-in bill could really deliver.  This post is an attempt to compare the costs on an individual of a Medicare buy-in vs. that of the high-risk pools.

I have often gotten into trouble with people generally on my side of the political spectrum for being a staunch and unapologetic supporter of Israel (please note that unapologetic support does not mean 'apologist').  I generally have not posted my thoughts on the Israeli-Palestinian issue on this blog both because I am not a middle east expert and because it is the most divisive of issues - those who are outspoken tend to be on one side or the other, and tend not to ever listen to anything - including facts - contrary to their view.  The "liberate Palestine" side of the debate excuses and often ignores the existential threat that Israel faces from terrorist organizations and hostile states.  Super-partisan supporters of Israel are often oblivious to the plight of the Palestinian people and the need for a truly free, two-state solution.

As I said, I am a supporter of Israel's.  But I am not hyperpartisan.  I acknowledge on the outset that violence has been fueled on both sides - and politically exploited on both sides.  But let's turn to the specific incident that has the attention of the International community now: the Flotilla incident, in which, if all you heard was TV reports and main stream media reports, Israeli commandos boarded a supply ship bound for Gaza and shot 9 activists dead.

In March of this year, the House Appropriations Committee announced a ban on earmarks spending directed at for-profit entities.  Building on the disclosure rules put into effect by Democrats when they took over Congress in 2007, the new rule from the Appropriations Committee was intended to restrict the earmarking process.

But if you think about it, it's a dumb idea, and our lawmakers know better.  In the corporate world, the line between non-profit and for-profit is often blurred to the point of non-existence.  For-profit corporations have non-profit subsidiaries or affiliates all the time (and sometimes the other way around).  Just look at the health insurance industry.  Of course, it turns out that lawmakers did know better - especially some Democrats who are unashamedly pushing the newly formed non-profit subsidiaries of their corporate benefactors.  The New York Times reports that companies have found their way around the ban, and lawmakers are only too happy to push for pork.

Happy 4th of July, everyone!  Today is America's 234th birthday, and I hope everyone has a safe, fun holiday.  As we celebrate our country with BBQs and fireworks, let us always keep in our hearts those who are serving in America's uniform overseas, and those who have paid the ultimate price of patriotism.

On this 4th, let us all vow to be better citizens - better informed and better involved.  Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a contact event.  Let us pledge to engage our fellow citizens, work hard for the common good, and build that more perfect union.

I'm a couple of days short in reporting this story, and give credit to The Gavel, Speaker Pelosi's blog for turning me onto this news.  A recent poll has shown that the support for health reform passed earlier this reform has risen seven points in a single month.

The Numbers: The Kaiser Family Foundation has released a new poll, showing the favorability of health care reform has risen dramatically over June, now standing at 48%, compared to 41% who have an unfavorable view of health reform.  What's more, about 12 of that 41% (that's 30% of those who have an unfavorable view) believe that the law should not be repealed but given a chance to work, with Congress making fixes along the way.  This number makes me think very much that a good deal of this 12% (of those surveyed) are those who wanted stronger, not weaker, reforms.  Only a quarter of Americans think that the law should be repealed.  Of those who want to repeal the bill, only 15% see health care as the most important issue in November, whereas among those who have a favorable opinion of health care, 19% view health care as the most important issue.

Today brought some sobering news on the jobs front - mainly due to the layoff of temporary Census workers, non-farm employment declined by 125,000 in June, although private sector employment grew (albeit at a lower-than-expected rate) by 83,000.  The unemployment rate dipped a little and now stands at 9.5%.

In the middle of this, on Wednesday, Republicans once again blocked an unemployment extension bill on that would have extended unemployment benefits.  Their excuse?  The bill costs $34 billion and adds to the deficit.  They have suddenly discovered an interest in the deficit.  Never mind that they put two wars on the national credit card.  Never mind that they put a giveaway to the health insurance industry (Medicare Part D) on the backs of future taxpayers.  Never mind that their hero Dick Cheney thinks that deficits don't matter.

Never mind that every dollar spent in unemployment checks generates $1.63 in economic activity.  I mean, who would want that kind of return on investment?  Feh!  It's much better to put your social security money in the capable hands of Wall Street instead.

The effects of health reform in the lives of real people are already here.  Today, the high-risk pool to cover Americans with pre-existing conditions goes into effect.  The Department of Health and Human Services today unveiled the program on its website, officially naming it the Pre-exiting Condition Insurance Plan or PCIP.

There is not a one-size fit all program.  21 states have chosen to have the HHS run their programs, and 29 states and DC have chosen to run their own with guidance and funding from the HHS.  HealthCare.gov provides this map demonstrating whether the program is administered by the HHS or by your state:


For an interactive map, click here.