Oof, it’s been a bad 24 hours for Casino Jack’s cronies in the House. With the public in an increasingly unforgiving mood towards congressional incumbents, GOP fave and Abramoff flunky Bob Ney drops out of his Ohio House race. And, one day after losing a bid to get his name off the ballot in Sugar Land, Boss DeLay announces he’ll step aside for a write-in candidate. Update: It appears Ney’s leaving will cause some ballot trouble as well for the GOP.
Category: Politics (2005-2006)
No rest for the wicked.
“‘It was a political calculation that his advisers persuaded him that he needed to do, and I think he knew it,’ said one Republican with close ties to Mr. Bush, who would discuss internal White House decisions only if not quoted by name. He added, ‘I don’t think he is resentful or angry or anything; I think he is resigned to it.”‘ Well, shucks. Sometimes it just sucks to be the leader of the free world (which, you may remember, is “hard work!”): Dubya’s vacation gets cut to only ten days.
Hamstrung by Choice.
“This has constrained U.S. foreign policy in many damaging ways…The United States does not have effective diplomatic channels for managing the situation, much less resolving it.” Former members of Bush administrations past and present criticize the Dubya White House for their complete lack of diplomatic avenues with Syria, Iran, the Palestinians, or anyone else that might be able to mitigate the current Middle East crisis. “As unattractive as they are, the Syrians are in a position to affect U.S. interests in Iraq and Lebanon…We should be having a broad-based dialogue with them — not as a favor to them but as a favor to ourselves.“
Glass Joe.
“What [Connecticut] tells us about the fall is something I think we’ve known all along, and that is the status quo in Iraq is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable to Democratic primary voters, it’s unacceptable to independents and it’s unacceptable to a large minority of Republicans. Iraq is the number one issue and the message is exceptionally simple: We cannot abide the status quo.” As Joe Lieberman likely nears the end of his days as a Democrat, Hillary, the DLC, and other centrist Dems prep for the fallout from the Connecticut primary.
Wikiality Bites.
“Colbert stepped farther through the looking glass by editing Wikipedia’s ‘Stephen Colbert’ entry during his show. He railed against the Encyclopedia Britannica’s assertion that George Washington owned slaves. ‘If I want to say he didn’t, that’s my right,’ Colbert said. On Wikipedia’s “George Washington” entry, the following phrase appeared at the end: ‘In conclusion, George Washington did not own slaves.’” The inimitable Stephen Colbert sends his legions against Wikipedia. (Via Now This.)
Dubya Who?
“All these guys are trying to seem like reasonable, moderate guys who are not the scary conservatives who their opponents will make them out to be…But they all have very conservative records and support for the president that will make it difficult for them to duck this.” As November looms closer, the WP finds GOP candidates running scared from Dubya.
Estate of Confusion.
Pathetic…these guys really have no shame. In yet another desperate and disgusting bid to pamper the rich by stealing from the poor, Catkiller Frist and the Senate GOP try to game the Senate Dems into backing a repeal of the estate tax by coupling it with a long-overdue minimum wage hike. To put this ploy in perspective, a recent report “concluded that the estate tax reduction would cut government income by $753 billion in the first 10 years, forcing lower spending for Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment insurance, which help low-wage workers.” Update: Thankfully, the bill failed on a 56-42 cloture vote, three shorts shy of the necessary 60 (Catkiller switched his vote to enable reconsideration later.)
And, in quite related news, new Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson admits the Dubya economy has been leaving people behind: “‘Many aren’t seeing significant increases in their take-home pay. Their increases in wages are being eaten up by high energy prices and rising health care costs, among others.’“
The Sheltering Sky.
“‘The universe of offshore tax cheating has become so large that no one, not even the United States government, could go after all of it.” A new Senate report delves into offshore tax shelter schemes by extremely wealthy individuals, ones which cost the American public billions in federal tax revenues (and which often utilized fronts based in the Isle of Man, once the long-time home of my now-deceased English grandparents.) “‘We need to significantly strengthen the aiding and abetting statutes to get at the lawyers and accountants and other advisers who enable this cheating,’ Senator Levin said, adding that ‘we need major changes in law to stop the use of tax havens’ by tax cheats.”
Government Accounting: The Ken Lay Way.
As reported over the weekend in the NYT, an audit finds that the US Agency for International Development (AID) has been using funny math to hide huge cost overruns for Iraqi reconstruction projects. “The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit…[for one new power station]the project’s overhead, a figure that normally runs to a maximum of 30 percent, was a stunning 418 percent.“
Dream a little Dream.
“‘The Republicans say the economy is great for everyone,’ Clinton said. ‘They’ve done nothing about these costs that are eating away at the paychecks of hard-working Americans. Democrats will work to get health-care costs down, to get college tuitions under control, to address the rising costs of gas prices, to cut middle-class taxes and reward companies that create jobs here at home.‘” With November in the not-too-distant future (and 2008 only a step beyond), Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton announces the American Dream Initiative, a.k.a. the DLC centrists’ stab at a Contract with America-type campaign agenda: “The centerpiece proposal would provide additional support for college costs, with the goal of increasing the number of college graduates by 1 million a year by 2015…Other ideas include requirements for employers to establish retirement accounts for all workers and a refundable tax credit for savers; ‘baby bonds’ that would create a government-funded savings account of $500 for every child born in the United States; a refundable tax credit to help provide the down payment on housing; universal health care for children; and benefits for small businesses to lower the cost of providing health insurance to workers.” This all sounds good, if a bit classically Clintonesque. OK, the name is goofy (as was Hillary’s “It’s the American Dream, stupid.“), and IMHO there needs to be more here regarding both campaign finance and lobbying reform. But, still, there’s very little of the usual protective camouflage-y cruft that usually accompanies anything put out by the DLC, so that’s a good start. Let’s see where it goes.