The Oil Must Flow.

“Using backdoor tactics to destroy America’s last great wild frontier will not solve our nation’s energy problems and will do nothing to lower skyrocketing gas prices.” And yet, by a 51-48 vote, the Senate refused to remove ANWR drilling from an upcoming budget bill (which cannot be filibustered), making it increasingly likely that oil derricks will be populating the Alaskan wilderness in very short order.

Speaking of oil, today the Dubya administration came out against a plan put forth by Republican Charles Grassley “that oil companies donate some of their record profits to a federal fund to help poor Americans pay winter heating bills.” So, yet again, Dubya puts the profit margin of his corporate cronies over the welfare of struggling people…one more reason why America has given up on this president.

War on the Poor.

“It was unfortunate political timing for House Republicans: On Friday, as the Agriculture Committee was drafting budget-cutting legislation that could knock 295,000 people off food stamps, the Agriculture Department released findings that 529,000 more Americans went hungry last year than in 2003.” As is their wont, the House GOP cut food stamps, student loans, Medicaid, and child support enforcement in the name of preserving Dubya’s tax breaks for millionaires. Whatsmore, “[a]ccording to the Congressional Budget Office, neither the House nor the Senate bills will actually trim projected budget deficits, since they will be followed by a package of tax-cut extensions that would cost the Treasury $70 billion over five years.”

Bernanke to the Banke.

So, as of yesterday, Ben Bernanke is replacing Alan Greenspan at the Fed. (“If Miers’s defenders have dismissed her critics as elitists, they showed no reticence yesterday in extolling Bernanke’s elite credentials.”) His conservatism notwithstanding, it sounds as if the choice was a solid one.

Blind…but not stupid.

“‘I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust,’ Frist replied [in January 2003.] ‘So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock.’…Two weeks before that interview, M. Kirk Scobey Jr., a Frist trustee, informed the senator in writing that one of his trusts had received HCA stock valued at between $15,000 and $50,000.” Fifteen trustee letters obtained by the Post, describing sales and purchases of HCA stock, indicate Frist’s been lying about his “blind” trust for years. Poor Catkiller…I bet Iowa suddenly seems a million miles away…

Feet of Clay?

“The blend of businessmen’s aversion to government regulation, down-home cultural populism and Christian moralism that sustains today’s Republican Party is a venerable if loosely knit philosophy of government dating back to long before the right-wing upsurge that prepared the way for Reagan’s presidency…Insofar as perennial themes shape our politics, it is remarkable how so many of contemporary conservatism’s central ideas and slogans renovate old Whig appeals.“

By way of Cliopatria, historian Sean Wilentz compares today’s GOP to the Whig Party of the 1830’s and ’40s. Food for thought, but, as Wilentz himself admits, the general lack of state power back then — and, more importantly, the absence of corporate consolidation in the antebellum era — significantly changes the rules of the game. While laissez-faire policies more likely meant increased competition and economic growth in the 19th century, it means something else entirely in today’s world, when long-standing, fully-formed corporate behemoths are ready and willing to fill any power vacuum left by less government regulation. (That’s why the Gilded Age analogy, I think, still makes more sense — It’s business cronyism, and not economic competition, that drives Dubya republicanism.) Update: Via The Late Adopter, Eric Foner, the centerpiece of a weekend conference around these parts, reviews Wilentz’s new tome in The Nation.

On the Backs of the Struggling.

Has Operation Offset been enacted? “Beginning this week, the House GOP lawmakers will take steps to cut as much as $50 billion from the fiscal 2006 budget for health care for the poor, food stamps and farm supports, as well as considering across-the-board cuts in other programs.” There’s today’s GOP in a nutshell for you. When the going gets tough, their first instinct is to keep the Dubya tax breaks for millionaires and crack down instead on food stamps and Medicaid. Really, who put these assholes in charge of the public purse? You couldn’t find a more detestable gang of bandits and thugs if you tried.

Frist makes a killing.

The Frist SEC probe moves along, with a subpoena forcing the Senate Majority Leader to turn over documents related to his HCA holdings. In addition, it now appears Catkiller made tens of thousands of dollars from HCA stock outside of his “blind” trust, through a partnership controlled by his brother. So much for avoiding a conflict of interest.

A Tale of Two Parties.

“‘We’ve had a stunning reversal in just a few weeks…We’ve gone from a situation in which we might have a long-overdue debate on deep poverty to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that low-income people will be asked to bear the costs. I would find it unimaginable if it wasn’t actually happening.'” As the Republicans fall into further disarray over such matters as Harriet Miers, the slew of indictments, and Katrina spending, it now appears that the GOP is even having trouble lining up candidates for 2006. But can the Dems capitalize on the GOP house divided? If Katrina is any indication, we’re still clearly in deep, deep trouble. For even despite all the current legal and political woes for Dubya and the sheer rapacity of Operation Offset, many on the left see the post-Katrina debate over poverty slipping away…

Making Hay while the Cities Drown.

Looka points the way to a truly horrifying breakdown of Operation Offset, the House Republicans’ disgusting, abhorrent proposal to pay for Katrina reconstruction (without, of course, touching a red cent of Dubya’s millionaire tax breaks) So, guess who foots the bill?

“The Republicans would freeze funding for the Peace Corps, the Global AIDS Initiative, U.N. peacekeeping operations and a wide variety of third-world development programs; eliminate the EnergyStar program, eliminate grants to states and local communities for energy conservation, reduce federal subsidies for Amtrak, eliminate funding for new light-rail programs and cancel the president’s hydrogen fuel initiative; eliminate state grants for safe and drug-free schools because ‘studies show that schools are among the safest places in the country and relatively drug free’; and eliminate the teen funding portion of Title X, which provides ‘free and reduced-price contraceptives, including the IUD, the injection drug Depo-Provera, and the morning-after pill’ to poor teenagers.

Along the way, they’d find a way to punish — or simply eliminate — some of their enemies, real and imagined. They’d cut funding for the District of Columbia, eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, eliminate subsidized student loans for graduate students, terminate the Legal Services Corporation, eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and kill the National Endowment for the Humanities…

[T]he Republican plan also calls for ‘rational reforms to Defense and Homeland Security.’ Does this mean cutting weapons systems at the expense of big defense corporations? Well, no. But it does mean closing schools for the children of soldiers, cutting grants for local responders and offering National Guard members the ‘option’ to purchase a less comprehensive healthcare plan.”

So, just to clarify: Rather than roll back the Dubya tax breaks for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, which almost alone would raise the necessary funds, Boss DeLay and the House GOP want to cut a Grover Norquist-style swath of destruction through our government and foist the clean-up bill on everyone but their fatcat cronies. I must say, I am consistently surprised by the current GOP leadership’s ability to plumb new depths of repugnance.

Up the Bagman Food Chain.

Curiouser and curiouser…Already inexorably tied to Boss DeLay and Grover Norquist, “Casino Jack” Abramoff also boasted of a direct connection to Karl Rove two years ago, while helping Tyco and other corporate conglomerates try to avoid tax penalties for moving their operations overseas. Boy, pull at one brick in this rotten edifice of right-wing cronyism and the whole darned structure threatens to topple.