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[Oblivion]

There should be a thread on pre-clinton US history. GAF is pretty ignorant (i mean that in the least judgemental way) on it.

And considering US politics is reverting more to the turn of the late 19th early 20th century type politics we should also talk about that.

For the record, I knew that Carter was a de-regulator himself. I just didn't know to what extent he deregulated and to what extent Reagan (apparently) didn't.

 

[benjipwns]

It's also worth noting that Clinton didn't just roll over on issues even though he did wind up signing a lot of it. The Republicans brought welfare reform to him three or four times that he vetoed before he finally signed it. It originally started out as far more conservative legislation. People inside the Clinton Administration DID want to reform a lot of it, even along conservative lines, for those reasons of efficiency, which the new Republican Congress initially viewed as meaning they could start the bidding way to the "right" but Clinton held his ground. He also held his ground a lot better than Obama did during the shutdowns imo and let Dole and Gingrich get to their own squabbles over it.

Clinton supported NAFTA, but everything had basically already been signed by Bush except the last t's being crossed. DADT was actually seen as an extremist left-wing policy at the time. (by conservative media) And there was also like a three month media jerkfest over a woman going to The Citadel which was more evidence of Clinton destroying the military even though he had nothing to do with any of it.

The Administration also had a major fight with the Democratic Congress in its first few years over the budget that raised taxes among other things. Bob Woodward's one book covered it and there was another more academic one. Where basically both the GOP and Democrats in Congress tried to take advantage of a newbie Administration, which figured out things too late and it came down to Bentsen basically telling all the newbies to shut the fuck up so he could tell certain Senate leaders to shut the fuck up as they were holding up the entire deal on like three little pieces within it. The most famous one being I think a home heating fuel tax the Admin wanted but Midwestern Senators were all like "fuck no bro, it gets cold!"

He also did have Dick Morris whispering in his ear that signing any kind of welfare reform would guarantee re-election 1996 because it would destroy the one issue polling showed Clinton could take any hits on. And it would be too early for any effects of the reform to bother him. Somewhat like the Democrats tried to do with phasing in Obamacare or pushing things after 2012. Only more effectively.

 

[kess]

For the record, I knew that Carter was a de-regulator himself. I just didn't know to what extent he deregulated and to what extent Reagan (apparently) didn't.

The Airline industry was deregulated under Carter, but a lot of the subsidies like the so-called "Essential Air Service" that were designed as short term measures are still being funded to this day.

 

[benjipwns]

Subsidies, subsidies never change.

Didn't Congress just get rid of like in 2010 some subsidy for telephone companies that was 80 years obsolete.

Farm subsides are always the best, http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...20d25e-c25b-11e2-97fa-0f57decebbbf_story.html

NEW YORK — The building is one of the finest on Central Park West. Celebrity residents. Park views. Units priced at up to $24 million. It is most definitely not a farm.

But last year, the U.S. government sent $9,070 in farm subsidies to an apartment here.

Even the woman who got that money isn’t exactly sure why.

“I really don’t know,” Lisa Sippel said.

Sippel does own farmland, but it’s in Missouri. Somebody there does the work.

till, Sippel gets the federal payments, which were originally meant to keep small farmers afloat. “I’m kind of an absentee landlord,” she said.

The money, it turns out, comes from one cockeyed farm-aid program that was supposed to end in 2003. It didn’t: Congress kept it alive and now hands out almost $5 billion a year using oddly relaxed rules.

As long as recipients own farmland, they are not required to grow any crops there. Or live on the farm. Or even visit it.

The program is one of Washington’s walking dead — “temporary” giveaway programs that have staggered on years beyond their intended expiration dates. Letting them live is an old and expensive congressional habit, still unbroken in this age of austerity.

...

The Essential Air Service program, a subsidy for flights to small airports, was supposed to expire in 1988. It’s still alive. The widely popular research and development tax credit has been a temporary measure since 1981. It was renewed, along with more than 50 other temporary programs, in January’s “fiscal cliff” deal.

And — buried among the USDA’s array of aid programs for farmers — there is this death-cheating, farming-optional farm subsidy.

It has become a case study in how a temporary giveaway turns permanent, but it began in 1996 as an idea to save the government money.

A penny-pinching Republican Congress wanted to eliminate the complex system of subsidy payments that had begun in the New Deal, but it didn’t want to make farmers quit cold turkey.

So Congress devised a kind of nicotine patch for farm subsidies. The new program would pay out smaller and smaller amounts over seven years. Then it would end.

To make the changes more palatable to farmers, Congress loosened the requirements for getting the payments. They would be calculated based on a farmer’s past harvests. In the future, farmers could grow the same crops. Or different ones.

Or no crops at all. The money would still come.

“These are not welfare payments. These are declining market transition payments,” said then-Rep. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the architect of the plan. When those payments finally ended, Roberts promised, Congress would have finally gotten “the dead hand of government out of the business of farming.”

Roberts’ seven-year plan held up. For about two years.

Then, in 1998, farm income fell. A drought crippled harvests. The farm lobby howled for help. Congress complied by adding $2.9 billion in extra payments. The declining transition payments would no longer decline before their end date.

In 2002, Congress got rid of the end date, too.

Farm income was on another downswing then. The budget-cutting fever of the 1990s had passed. Congress renamed these giveaways “direct payments” — no longer a transitional measure but an expected, regular transfer from taxpayer to government to farmer.

Roberts voted “nay” as his temporary payments became permanent.

...

“Direct payments make no sense at all,” said Harwood Schaffer, a professor who analyzes farm policy at the University of Tennessee. “When corn is $2 a bushel or $7 a bushel, they get the same direct payments. So at $7 a bushel it simply increases their profit.”

Recent analyses of the program have found that it subsidizes some people who aren’t really farming: the idle, the urban, and occasionally the dead.

The idle include recipients at 2,300 farms that haven’t grown crops at all for the past five years, and 622 that haven’t grown anything for 10, according to the Government Accountability Office.

In addition, the program has paid hundreds of millions to people who lived more than 300 miles from the farmland they owned. That’s legal, under the program’s rules, but only if the owner shares in the farm’s financial risks and remains “actively engaged” in farm decisions from afar.

But these rules do not seem to be strictly enforced.

“I am not the farmer. But I have a farmer. And I don’t understand the mechanics of the [payment] whatsoever,” Catharine Snowdon said.

Snowdon lives in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood, but a trust at her address receives direct payments tied to a farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Last year, the government sent $1,208, according to Agriculture Department data compiled by the Environmental Working Group.

“I think it’s soybeans every year and corn some other years,” Snowdon said when asked about the farm’s management. She said she had never investigated exactly why the payments came. “It’s not a significant amount of money for me to get excited about it.”

The Environmental Working Group found at least 24 addresses in the District, and at least 21 in Manhattan, that received more than $1,000 in direct payments last year.

The Agriculture Department says it is possible for these urban recipients to turn down these payments.

 

[benjipwns]

Guess it was a tax, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/telecom/2006-05-25-phone-tax_x.htm

A pesky, century-old tax on your phone bill is finally being put to rest.

The Treasury Department said Thursday that it will no longer collect a 3% federal excise tax on long-distance calls and would refund about $15 billion to taxpayers.

The tax was imposed in 1898 to help pay for the Spanish-American War. It was designed as a tax on wealthy Americans, back when phone service was considered a luxury.

"It's not often you get to kill a tax, particularly one that goes back so far in history," Treasury Secretary John Snow said.

Treasury said it was conceding its battle to uphold the tax after five appeals courts declared it illegal because of changes in the way long-distance calls are billed.

lol

And that sugar stuff was a temporary program too lol:

The provisions by which Washington transfers wealth from 316 million American consumers to a few thousand sugar producers are part of a “temporary” commodity support program created during the Great Depression. Not even the New Deal could prolong the Depression forever. It ended. But sugar protectionism is forever. The Senate recently voted 54 to 45 against even mild reforms of the baroque architecture of protections for producers of sugar cane and sugar beets.

The government guarantees up to 85 percent of the U.S. sugar market for U.S.-produced sugar. The remaining portion is allocated for imports from particular countries at a preferential tariff rate. Minimum prices are guaranteed for sugar from cane and beets. Surplus sugar — meaning that which U.S. producers cannot profitably sell — is bought by the government and sold at a loss to producers of ethanol, another program whose irrationalities are ubiquitous.

All this probably means $3.7 billion in higher sugar costs. It also means scores of thousands of lost jobs as manufacturers of candy and products with significant sugar content move jobs to countries where they can pay the much-lower world price for sugar. The big companies like Mars and Hershey can locate plants around the world. The hundreds of family-owned American candy companies cannot. In the last four years, the U.S. sugar price has averaged between 64 percent to 92 percent higher than the world price. The costs are dispersed to hundreds of millions. The benefits accrue primarily to 4,700 sugar beet and sugar cane farms.

 

[thepotatoman]

It's also worth noting that Clinton didn't just roll over on issues even though he did wind up signing a lot of it. The Republicans brought welfare reform to him three or four times that he vetoed before he finally signed it. It originally started out as far more conservative legislation. People inside the Clinton Administration DID want to reform a lot of it, even along conservative lines, for those reasons of efficiency, which the new Republican Congress initially viewed as meaning they could start the bidding way to the "right" but Clinton held his ground. He also held his ground a lot better than Obama did during the shutdowns imo and let Dole and Gingrich get to their own squabbles over it.

Clinton supported NAFTA, but everything had basically already been signed by Bush except the last t's being crossed. DADT was actually seen as an extremist left-wing policy at the time. (by conservative media) And there was also like a three month media jerkfest over a woman going to The Citadel which was more evidence of Clinton destroying the military even though he had nothing to do with any of it.

The Administration also had a major fight with the Democratic Congress in its first few years over the budget that raised taxes among other things. Bob Woodward's one book covered it and there was another more academic one. Where basically both the GOP and Democrats in Congress tried to take advantage of a newbie Administration, which figured out things too late and it came down to Bentsen basically telling all the newbies to shut the fuck up so he could tell certain Senate leaders to shut the fuck up as they were holding up the entire deal on like three little pieces within it. The most famous one being I think a home heating fuel tax the Admin wanted but Midwestern Senators were all like "fuck no bro, it gets cold!"

He also did have Dick Morris whispering in his ear that signing any kind of welfare reform would guarantee re-election 1996 because it would destroy the one issue polling showed Clinton could take any hits on. And it would be too early for any effects of the reform to bother him. Somewhat like the Democrats tried to do with phasing in Obamacare or pushing things after 2012. Only more effectively.

That's all very interesting. It's hard to get a good sense of political climate through high school cliff noted history and some wikipedia articles. One thing I often forget about learning in that time period was Hillary trying to push something similar to Obamacare in all but how the exchanges worked, which apparently failed in part because some liberals wouldn't accept anything less than a single payer system.

I also never could quite tell how those shutdowns worked from just the wikipedia stuff, but I can believe Clinton held better than Obama if only because it's hard to see how you can do worse than actually creating the sequester cuts yourself, allowing Republicans to run against the very cuts they were asking for.

For DADT, I think most people do kind of understand how that was a different time. I certainly remember the right wanting gays completely out of the military up to the 2004 elections at least. DOMA is a bit worse, but I don't see Hillary taking too much heat about past LGBT rights issues. Not unless she keeps doing those insane leaps of logic to avoid being seen as a flip flopper instead of just owning up to the thing that most people have flip-flopped on in the last 20 years.

And for the tariff issue, it's mostly just surprising that the party that the party that mostly represented confederate states were anti tariffs, since you'd think all that southern production wouldn't want that competition, and honestly you'd think they'd be more anti foreigner. I'm guessing the south really liked importing something I don't know about?

In any case, globalization has really changed how trade works. I don't know if you can really apply race to the bottom type logic to the trade of the past like you can today. Plus, the TPP takes free trade to such an extreme, it's not just avoiding putting blocks in front of trade, but allowing corporations to basically transcend all laws in general.

 

[benjipwns]

One thing I often forget about learning in that time period was Hillary trying to push something similar to Obamacare in all but how the exchanges worked, which apparently failed in part because some liberals wouldn't accept anything less than a single payer system.

http://www.ibiblio.org/darlene/task
http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=706826
Yes, it's Heritage but the article does give you a breakdown of what was on the table: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/1993/11/A-Guide-to-the-Clinton-Health-Plan
Actual bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c103:H.R.3600.IH:

And for the tariff issue, it's mostly just surprising that the party that the party that mostly represented confederate states were anti tariffs, since you'd think all that southern production wouldn't want that competition, and honestly you'd think they'd be more anti foreigner. I'm guessing the south really liked importing something I don't know about?

The northern states were very focused on protecting their industries from foreign competition, the North was much more industrialized than the South. This as a result raised prices on goods not produced in the South. And it also cut down on what they could get back for their cotton.

The other infamous Tariff is one that really battered the South with this problem and led in some views to the eventual succession (the theory that posits than the South viewed the incoming Republicans as yet another in a long line of attacks on Southern economic interests):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_of_Abominations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullification_Crisis

 

[benjipwns]

Here's Hillary's testimony to Congress: http://www.c-span.org/video/?50897-1/presidential-health-care-proposal

SEPTEMBER 28, 1993
Presidential Health Care Proposal
First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton testified to the committee concerning the president’s health care reform proposal. Ms. Clinton led the president’s health care reform task force which designed the current proposal. Following her opening remarks, she took questions from the committee members concerning the details of the president’s proposal.

And a review from Brad DeLong on a book about the whole affair:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/hoisted-from--1.html

I had been avoiding reading The System--Washington reporters Haynes Johnson and David Broder's account of the catastrophic collapse of the Clinton Administration health care reform effort--for a number of years. The worst hours of my life in 1993-1994 were those I spent providing analytical support for health care reform. I watched the catastrophe approach and then saw the crash, the product of a three-fold bankruptcy: moral, intellectual, and political.

DeLong's is kinda the consensus view on Ira Magaziner:

It is hard to tell how much power Hillary Rodham Clinton had. Certainly she did not effectively manage the process. But I did see Ira Magaziner in action. And it seems to me that the process was impossible to manage as long as Ira Magaziner was involved, and perhaps she did not have the power to fire him.

Magaziner, you see, had two major flaws. His first was that his instinct was always to make things more complicated. Faced with a choice between doing 90% of a job with an organization that has 10% of the present complexity and doing 100% of a job with 200% of the present complexity, he would always choose the second. He had no sense that complicated organizations tend to break, to exhibit bizarre and unplanned behaviors, and are hard to explain--but he had never run and had spent little time working in large human organizations, and when he got his chance to do so during health-care reform he rapidly proved to be incompetent at marshalling resources and using his people's time effectively.

His second flaw was that he thought like a management consultant. A management consultant's principal goal is to win a debate in front of his employer, the senior decision maker, the "Principal." You win a debate by making intellectual arguments, controlling the flow of information to the senior decision maker, walling-off potential adversaries from the process, and winning the confidence of the Principal by telling him things that he likes to hear: that he is smart, that his goals can be achieved, that the nay-sayers just don't grasp the issues. But that's not how you develop a policy.

...

--no, three major flaws: his judgment was also very poor. Remember: this is a guy who, without knowing anything about nuclear physics, testifies before congress that America has no choice but to pour lots of money into research into Cold Fusion. This is a man who thinks at the end of the 1970s--a time of record high energy prices and rapidly-growing competition from new producing nations like Brazil and Korea--that what America really needs to do is to invest in more brand-new integrated steel factories. Combine Magaziner's flaws with the sense at the start of 1993 that possibilities were unbounded--that, as one (anonymous) senior White House aide put it, no one in the White House "...was thinking about the fact that Bill Clinton got only 43 percent of the votes. He was on top of the world. He was young, he was good-looking, he gave a good speech. The world was full of hope"--and you have the setting for a policy-planning disaster.

And the policy-planning disaster duly took place, for Magaziner set up a process that was the antithesis of the coalition-forming, doubt-resolving, opposition-coopting process needed to construct a viable legislative proposal.

 

[thepotatoman]

http://www.ibiblio.org/darlene/task
http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=706826
Yes, it's Heritage but the article does give you a breakdown of what was on the table: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/1993/11/A-Guide-to-the-Clinton-Health-Plan
Actual bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c103:H.R.3600.IH:

Ah, I appeared to miss the part about the capped premiums based on the region's cpi increase. I'm no free market libertarian but price caps like that is something that still makes me feel a bit uneasy. Al Franken's 15%-20% cap on administration spending that the ACA uses seems like a much better way to go.

As for the complexity complaints, it's hard to take conservative recounts of Hillary's health plan as "too complicated" when they used the same complaints on Obamacare which really isn't that complicated at all, though I don't really care to dig deep into the details of a plan that is long dead.

 

[Metaphoreus]

The House of Representatives has found a lawyer for its lawsuit against the president:

As many on this blog are aware, I have previously testified, written, and litigated in opposition to the rise of executive power and the countervailing decline in congressional power in our tripartite system. I have also spent years encouraging Congress, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, to more actively defend its authority, including seeking judicial review in separation of powers conflicts. For that reason, it may come as little surprise this morning that I have agreed to represent the United States House of Representatives in its challenge of unilateral, unconstitutional actions taken by the Obama Administration with respect to implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It is an honor to represent the institution in this historic lawsuit and to work with the talented staff of the House General Counsel’s Office. As in the past, this posting is meant to be transparent about my representation as well as my need to be circumspect about my comments in the future on related stories. . . .

As many on this blog know, I support national health care and voted for President Obama in his first presidential campaign. However, as I have often stressed before Congress, in the Madisonian system it is as important how you do something as what you do. And, the Executive is barred from usurping the Legislative Branch’s Article I powers, no matter how politically attractive or expedient it is to do so. Unilateral, unchecked Executive action is precisely the danger that the Framers sought to avoid in our constitutional system. This case represents a long-overdue effort by Congress to resolve fundamental Separation of Powers issues. In that sense, it has more to do with constitutional law than health care law. Without judicial review of unconstitutional actions by the Executive, the trend toward a dominant presidential model of government will continue in this country in direct conflict with the original design and guarantees of our Constitution. Our constitutional system as a whole (as well as our political system) would benefit greatly by courts reinforcing the lines of separation between the respective branches.

 

[RedTurbo]

The irony was that the Great Liberal Lion Ted Kennedy played a key role in a lot of this deregulation, especially trucking, he and Carter were basically inventing "neo-liberalism" or Clinton's DLC or Tony Blair's "Third Way" before anyone cared enough to label it.

It probably went further back with JFK who introduced "effective" government over Nixon's big government. JFK was the first sitting president to support lowering taxes in 40 years.

American politics favors people who want the government to either be smaller or a government that works in their favor economically. It's pretty much tradition at this point to be opposed to any social program unless it's completely necessary.

I'm not opposed to slimming down the government if it meant removing the bureaucracy and paper waste attached to it, but I don't think it's just that simple. This is like how fast food and retail employers threaten their workers and say they'll buy kiosks instead of hiring minimum wage employees. What happens when the kiosks break or need maintenance? That requires now hiring somebody with a post-secondary education for the minimum price of 2 minimum wage employees and benefits to keep them and keeping them on at all times regardless of what they do. It'd be better at that point to just keep the system the way it is. I feel the same way about the government.

It's why I think that it should be looked at more carefully even when I support it.

 

[FyreWulff]

Nebraska ACLU joins suits against gay marriage ban

http://journalstar.com/news/local/c...cle_f1c080f8-ca0c-5d7a-a9dc-329374cc2985.html

Nice to see, a bit late but still nice

 

[PhoenixDark]

The irony was that the Great Liberal Lion Ted Kennedy played a key role in a lot of this deregulation, especially trucking, he and Carter were basically inventing "neo-liberalism" or Clinton's DLC or Tony Blair's "Third Way" before anyone cared enough to label it.

They and some of the Liberal Republicans of the era, notably Romney under Nixon*, felt that the problem of "liberalism" was that it had become too bureaucratic, was still based around 1930's designs and wasn't actually responding to modern needs. You saw some of this late in the century with the "paperless government" that came out of Al Gore's commission. Basically that, having five million file cabinets may have been how you had to do it in 1935 but does more harm than good in 1995 or 2035 for meeting the goals of the program.

Reagan road the wave with rhetoric but he was never actually doing much unlike Carter, let alone Thatcher. (Of course Thatcher had absolute power essentially to slash through the UK government.)

*Who Nixon appointed to HUD to get rid of him as a challenger, and then the guy was trying to do all sorts of stuff to make the department work and asking for Nixon's time and support, which was annoying, so Nixon eventually just stopped allowing him to meet with him lol

Politics is often local, not strictly ideological. "Liberal" Michigan democrats have catered to the auto industry for 60 years, Ted Kennedy had a variety of special interests, etc. Likewise conservative lawmakers have spent decades supporting a variety of big government ventures; Iowa's love of farm subsidies comes to mind.

All (regular) people remember is rhetoric and how the economy was doing at the time, hence why people pretend Reagan was a conservative savior (although they often admit his immigration "fuck up"). If the economy improves over the next two years Obama will be remembered as a liberal Reagan by many people, despite being a corporatist.

 

[Wilsongt]

The GOP are such trolls and Cruz and Erick Erickson are their troll leaders.

 

[Black Mamba]

The U.S. government expects to earn $5 billion to $6 billion from the renewable-energy loan program that funded flops including Solyndra LLC, supporting President Barack Obama’s decision to back low-carbon technologies.

The Department of Energy has disbursed about half of $32.4 billion allocated to spur innovation, and the expected return will be detailed in a report due to be released as soon as tomorrow, according to an official who helped put together the data.

The results contradict the widely held view that the U.S. has wasted taxpayer money funding failures including Solyndra, which closed its doors in 2011 after receiving $528 million in government backing. That adds to Obama’s credibility as he seeks to make climate change a bigger priority after announcing a historic emissions deal with China.A $5 billion return to taxpayers exceeds the returns from many venture capital and private equity investments in clean energy, said Michael Morosi, an analyst at Jetstream Capital LLC, which invests in renewable energy.

“People make a big deal about Solyndra and everything, but there’s a lot of VC capital that got torched right alongside the DOE capital,” Morosi said. “A positive return over 20 years in cleantech? That’s not a bad outcome.”

http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...s-5-billion-from-program-that-funded-solyndra

Thanks Oba....wait a minute!

 

[AntoneM]

It's also worth noting that Clinton didn't just roll over on issues even though he did wind up signing a lot of it. The Republicans brought welfare reform to him three or four times that he vetoed before he finally signed it. It originally started out as far more conservative legislation. People inside the Clinton Administration DID want to reform a lot of it, even along conservative lines, for those reasons of efficiency, which the new Republican Congress initially viewed as meaning they could start the bidding way to the "right" but Clinton held his ground. He also held his ground a lot better than Obama did during the shutdowns imo and let Dole and Gingrich get to their own squabbles over it.

Clinton supported NAFTA, but everything had basically already been signed by Bush except the last t's being crossed. DADT was actually seen as an extremist left-wing policy at the time. (by conservative media) And there was also like a three month media jerkfest over a woman going to The Citadel which was more evidence of Clinton destroying the military even though he had nothing to do with any of it.

The Administration also had a major fight with the Democratic Congress in its first few years over the budget that raised taxes among other things. Bob Woodward's one book covered it and there was another more academic one. Where basically both the GOP and Democrats in Congress tried to take advantage of a newbie Administration, which figured out things too late and it came down to Bentsen basically telling all the newbies to shut the fuck up so he could tell certain Senate leaders to shut the fuck up as they were holding up the entire deal on like three little pieces within it. The most famous one being I think a home heating fuel tax the Admin wanted but Midwestern Senators were all like "fuck no bro, it gets cold!"

He also did have Dick Morris whispering in his ear that signing any kind of welfare reform would guarantee re-election 1996 because it would destroy the one issue polling showed Clinton could take any hits on. And it would be too early for any effects of the reform to bother him. Somewhat like the Democrats tried to do with phasing in Obamacare or pushing things after 2012. Only more effectively.

Clinton was also able to use the line-item veto for a while which makes singing laws a lot easier when you can just "cross out" sections of the bill.

 

[Wilsongt]

As a federal judge prepares to rule on Mississippi’s ban on same-sex marriage, a group known as the Magnolia State Heritage Campaign is trying to cement Christianity as the state’s official religion in its constitution. They are proposing a constitutional amendment that they hope will be on the 2016 ballot.

The campaign’s Arthur Randallson explained to American Family Association news network OneNewsNow, “We have taken a little bit of time to prepare an initiative that covers promoting Christianity, which is recognized as the principal religion of Mississippi from the founding of the state in 1817 to the present, and affirmed in the state constitution prayer acknowledging the Holy Bible.”

Kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

4th Circuit shot down South Carolina AG who requested a stay on the striking down of the gay marriage ban. As if they were actually going to acknowledge his request for a stay.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Keystone fails in senate

http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...s-5-billion-from-program-that-funded-solyndra

Thanks Oba....wait a minute!

I believe they included a nuclear loan which is damn safe in that number. To be fair

 

[thepotatoman]

Keystone fails in senate

I still don't get why Reid wasted time on that. Doesn't seem to make sense to spend time on Landrieu when you've given up spending money on her. Isn't there other appointment confirmations he could be doing with the minimal time he has left, or did they already confirm everyone they wanted?

 

[Oblivion]

Somebody refresh my memory. Is 60 votes in the senate enough to override a presidential veto, or do you need 67 votes?

 

[TacticalFox88]

Somebody refresh my memory. Is 60 votes in the senate enough to override a presidential veto, or do you need 67 votes?

67.

 

[eBay Huckster]

Somebody refresh my memory. Is 60 votes in the senate enough to override a presidential veto, or do you need 67 votes?

67.

Speaking of those numbers...

Keystone fails in senate

For once, I'm glad the cloture requirement's still 60.

 

[Oblivion]

67.

67.

Okay good. That means Keystone could still get shitcanned even when the new congress begins.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Somebody refresh my memory. Is 60 votes in the senate enough to override a presidential veto, or do you need 67 votes?

67 and 290 in the house they don't have the votes for either

They'll have 62 or 63 in the next senate but it would require 55 dems in the house. And remember they pushed out pro keystone people from the dem caucus so they'd have to go for more liberal members.

What the dems should do is angle for keystone on the condition the renewable tax credits continue.

 

[jamesinclair]

They should trade one pipeline for one high speed rail line

 

[Oblivion]

67 and 290 in the house they don't have the votes for either

They'll have 62 or 63 in the next senate but it would require 55 dems in the house. And remember they pushed out pro keystone people from the dem caucus so they'd have to go for more liberal members.

Even better!

What the dems should do is angle for keystone on the condition the renewable tax credits continue.

Obama needs to come out and say that the Keystone Pipeline is something he really, REALLY hates, and so any concession has to be pretty damn big.

 

[thepotatoman]

Outside of Keystone XL and the Iran treaty stuff, I can't really think of anything a group of congressional dems joined republicans on against Obama. I'm guessing there wont be many overridden vetos, if any.

The only thing really to fear is Obama choosing not to veto.

 

[RustyNails]

Can't wait for Barack Ibn Hussain Al Obama to issue the immigration royal decree and watching Hannity just give up.

 

[Diablos]

Landrieu is dumb for not having the sense to speak out against the Pres (however staged or sincere it may have really been) by being in support of Keystone XL BEFORE THE FUCKING MIDTERMS.

HERP MCDERP

 

[Carpe Libertatem]

Landrieu is dumb for not having the sense to speak out against the Pres (however staged or sincere it may have really been) by being in support of Keystone XL BEFORE THE FUCKING MIDTERMS.

HERP MCDERP

Landrieu has always been in support of the Keystone XL and was open about her disagreement with the president on it...? I don't really get what you're saying.

 

[Oblivion]

Grubergate is (unsurprisingly) still going, but I do have to ask, what exactly is the difference between Gruber trying to massage the numbers to make Obamacare look more palatable and Republicans' attempts at using "dynamic scoring" to make tax cuts look more palatable?

 

[Aaron Strife]

heh

 

[Mario]

heh

Love that the number of Republicans voting for it is not even a dynamic variable.

 

[TacticalFox88]

Wilson's appeal in SC was denied.

hahahahaha

Eat shit, asshole.

 

[benjipwns]

Grubergate is (unsurprisingly) still going, but I do have to ask, what exactly is the difference between Gruber trying to massage the numbers to make Obamacare look more palatable and Republicans' attempts at using "dynamic scoring" to make tax cuts look more palatable?

Perspective.

 

[benjipwns]

Clinton was also able to use the line-item veto for a while which makes singing laws a lot easier when you can just "cross out" sections of the bill.

You know, I've never looked into what happened to those line-item vetos...did they stand or were they reversed with it?

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Grubergate is (unsurprisingly) still going, but I do have to ask, what exactly is the difference between Gruber trying to massage the numbers to make Obamacare look more palatable and Republicans' attempts at using "dynamic scoring" to make tax cuts look more palatable?

democrats did it. that and the video that shows pretty blatent contempt for voters that gets the moral outrage so much easier to whip up

 

[NeoXChaos]

Well Mary, you had a good run. Sigh

I just hope we dont get Vitter next year.

BTW, if the unfortunate comes true, who gets the vitter senate appointment?

 

[kess]

Surveillance Reform dies in the Senate, 58-42

Roll call here

 

[Aaron Strife]

Well Mary, you had a good run. Sigh

I just hope we dont get Vitter next year.

BTW, if the unfortunate comes true, who gets the vitter senate appointment?

Some asshole

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Surveillance Reform dies in the Senate, 58-42

Roll call here

McConnell has got his party save rand and cruz on lock

Well Mary, you had a good run. Sigh

I just hope we dont get Vitter next year.

BTW, if the unfortunate comes true, who gets the vitter senate appointment?

 

[benjipwns]

McConnell has got his party save rand and cruz on lock

Interestingly, Rand voted Nay. The four Republicans in favor were Cruz, Dean Heller, Mike Lee and Lisa Murkowski.

The lone D nay was Bill Nilson.

 

[thepotatoman]

Interestingly, Rand voted Nay. The four Republicans in favor were Cruz, Dean Heller, Mike Lee and Lisa Murkowski.

The lone D nay was Bill Nilson.

Rand says he voted against it because it included an extension of the Patriot act to December 2017, unlike the rest of party which voted against it because terrorism.

McConnell has got his party save rand and cruz on lock

Maybe, but rand or cruz still have enough weight to throw around that they can create a revolt all by themselves if they really put an effort into an issue. That's basically how the shutdown happened.

 

[Metaphoreus]

The judge in the criminal prosecution of Rick Perry has denied a defense motion to dismiss the case on technical grounds.

A Texas judge refused on Tuesday to quash on technicalities two criminal felony indictments for abuse of power against Gov. Rick Perry, ruling that the potentially embarrassing case against the possible 2016 presidential hopeful should proceed.

The governor's defense team had sought to have the matter thrown out, arguing that the special prosecutor, Michael McCrum, wasn't properly sworn in and some paperwork wasn't correctly filed. But a written ruling from District Judge Bert Richardson, who like Perry is a Republican, sided with McCrum.

"This court concludes that Mr. McCrum's authority was not voided by procedural irregularities," Richardson wrote. . . .

His attorneys have also sought to have the charges against Perry dismissed on constitutional grounds, but Richardson has yet to have a hearing on that challenge and isn't expected to rule on it for weeks.

The day before Richardson's ruling, Perry's defense team filed a 28-page brief asserting that the case shouldn't continue because Perry's actions were protected by the constitutional powers of his office. They also bristled at McCrum's past suggestions that the governor wasn't above the law in arguing that his fate should be decided by a jury — just like any criminal defendant.

"This invalid prosecution cannot go to trial — not because Governor Perry is above the law, but because everything he is accused of this case is absolutely protected," the attorneys wrote Monday.

I think the constitutional challenges to the prosecution are more persuasive, but it looks like we'll have to wait to see how those turn out.

 

[Diablos]

Landrieu has always been in support of the Keystone XL and was open about her disagreement with the president on it...? I don't really get what you're saying.

Political theater. Run ads against the Pres in LA (pre-midterm election) hammering away at him for not wanting to have anything to do with Keystone XL. At this point who cares.

Not that I've seen local ads from there but I am under the impression, given how they want to campaign for the runoff that they were not quite on point beforehand.

 

[HylianTom]

So Obama's immigration order comes on Friday.

I wonder if the Ferguson coverage will overshadow it..

 

[NYCmetsfan]

So Obama's immigration order comes on Friday.

I wonder if the Ferguson coverage will overshadow it..

epic friday news dump

 

[thefro]

epic friday news dump

Perfect timing... everyone will be on vacation from the talk shows and TV shows next week.

Then it's the Holidays and by New Year's Eve it'll be super-old news.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

The right wings laughable attempts to come up with a right policy corollary are pathetically sad. The two major ones have been changing social security and not collecting taxes about 10% or something.

Its like they can't read or understand this power to adjust ices targets for deportation is explicitly given to the president. Those other examples are laws written much more concretely.

They should be blaming themselves for ceeding the power.

 

[RustyNails]

So Obama's immigration order comes on Friday.

I wonder if the Ferguson coverage will overshadow it..

I was hoping they would dump it right after signing a deal with Iran.