“‘It’s a bill that’s going to significantly harm small consumers who want to hold large companies accountable for defrauding them,’ said Frank Clemente, director of the Congress Watch division of the consumer group Public Citizen.” So guess which side Dubya and the GOP were on? In the name of “tort reform” (and at the behest of their corporate overlords), the Senate GOP pass the Class Action Fairness Act, which moves state class action suits into the (less favorably disposed) federal court system. They did so after gunning down a series of Democratic amendments that tried to strike a more stable balance between private power and public accountability. Or would it have been too litigious to exempt cases brought by state attorneys general? We wouldn’t want some aspiring Mr. Smith cutting in to Old Man Potter’s profit margin, now, would we?
Category: Political Economy
Hard Times.
With the Dubya deficit looming over the second term agenda (and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon) and the proposed Social Insecurity PSAs now costing trillions (per Vice-President Cheney), the administration releases a $2.57 trillion budget which “eliminates dozens of politically sensitive domestic programs, including funding for education, environmental protection and business development” and doubles the prescription drug copay for veterans. (America’s children and Armed Forces — our nation’s richest 1% thank you again for your sacrifice.)
Causing Deprivation.
I was at the movies during Dubya’s State of the Union address — I tried to watch it online this evening after my Radicalism sections, but Quicktime died in mid-sentence, so I just ended up reading it. And, while I thought it was very well-written as per the norm, my thoughts on the address have been colored even more than usual by the punditocracy. So, with that in mind, I’ll avoid being derivative and just direct y’all to the following:
- Fred Kaplan: “Some of the president’s statements on national security were simply puzzling. Again on Iran, he said, ‘We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium-enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing.’ This is just false.“
- Chris Suellentrop: “You could call Bush’s idea the Screw Your Grandchildren Act…This was the Greatest Love of All speech, in which Bush asserted that The Children Are Our Future. But before you sign on to Bush’s proposal, be aware that what he’s offering is pretty tough love.“
- Will Saletan: “Tonight’s State of the Union Address demonstrated again that President Bush is a man of very clear principles. He’s just flexible about when to apply them.“
- Joe Conason: “Although George W. Bush and the White House aides who craft these public spectacles become increasingly adept at manipulating the feelings of his audience every year, their underlying method remains the same: to shade inconvenient realities with rhetorical vagueness and outright deception.“
- E.J. Dionne: “Our country could profit from an honest debate about the future of Social Security. Judging from President Bush’s State of the Union address, that is not the kind of debate we are about to have.“
Send back the blood-stained money.
“‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said to me. ‘I’m sorry for what she’s done.” As pointed out in lecture this afternoon, today’s NY Times includes an editorial on the corporate divulging of ties to Antebellum slavery, spurred by this recent letter of apology at JP Morgan-Chase: “We all know slavery existed in our country, but it is quite different to see how our history and the institution of slavery were intertwined. Slavery was tragically ingrained in American society, but that is no excuse. We apologize to the American public, and particularly to African-Americans, for the role that Citizens Bank and Canal Bank played during that period.” Interesting…research projects into corporate complicity such as this one will hopefully add further impetus for the creation of a National Slavery Museum in the relatively near future — As a whole, we Americans should do a better job in recognizing and remembering our national Original Sin, and I think such a museum would be a great step in that direction. (In fact, the museum really should be on the Mall, not in Fredericksburg, VA.)
Nothing More to C.
Uh-oh. My subway line of choice — the A/C — is taken out by a control room fire…and the C may be down for several years(!) Looks like I’ll be whispering of escapades on the D train for some time to come. Update: The MTA revises their prognosis…looks like it’ll take months to fix, not years. Update 2: Make that days — the C is already up and running again…false alarm.
Snowe drifts.
With the Congressional battle lines forming over Dubya’s coming Social Security overhaul, Senate Finance Committee member and GOP moderate Olympia Snowe voices her doubts on CNN, which could greatly benefit Dems in defeating the plan (if we get our act together.) “Raising broad objections to the substance and presentation of the White House case, Snowe made it clear she is not convinced that a Social Security crisis has arrived, as Bush maintains…And Snowe said she is ‘certainly not going to support diverting $2 trillion from Social Security into creating personal savings accounts'” (although she is not averse to the principle of PSAs in general).
Bush II, Powells 0.
In something of a surprise move (at least in regards to timing), Michael Powell announces his resignation as FCC Chairman. From the media ownership fiasco to Powell’s knee-jerk overreliance on deregulation as a general fix-all, Powell’s brief tenure probably isn’t going to go down as much other than an experiment gone awry, and further testament to the fact that deregulating markets doesn’t necessarily lead to increased competition — in fact, sometimes quite the opposite. Update: Stephen Labaton previews the post-Powell FCC.
The Other Shoe Drops.
Surprise, surprise. “The Bush administration has signaled that it will propose changing the formula that sets initial Social Security benefit levels, cutting promised benefits by nearly a third in the coming decades, according to several Republicans close to the White House.” Administration officials claim the deficit caused by this “price-indexing” change — pegging first-year benefits to inflation rather than the rise in wages — will be made up by, you guessed it, “personal investment accounts,” a.k.a. the Bush privatization plan. Funny how Dubya neglected to mention this cut only a few weeks ago…I doubt the plan was formulated over Christmas.
Preying on (Social) Insecurity.
Dubya starts the hard sell on his plan for privatizing Social Security, claiming such a move will reassure financial markets. “Mr. Bush never mentioned the near certainty that without raising taxes, which he has ruled out, any plan to add personal investment accounts to Social Security and improve its financial condition would include a reduction in the guaranteed retirement benefit.” Hmmm…that doesn’t sound very reassuring.
Blame the Children.
Just as Tom Ridge did in his own resignation a few weeks ago, NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe steps down by citing his need to make more money to put his kids through college. “‘It is this [the president’s] very commitment to family that draws me to conclude that I must depart public service,’ O’Keefe wrote. ‘The first of three children will begin college next fall…I owe them the same opportunity my parents provided for me to pursue higher education without the crushing burden of debt thereafter.’” Am I missing something? I know tuition costs have skyrocketed, but is $158,000-a-year really too little money to send a child to college these days? C’mon, now.