CBO Finds That Cap And Trade Will Work - In The Long Term
(Extreme Ice Survey)
The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, also known as H.R. 2454, was passed on a near party-line vote by the House of Representatives and now awaits a vote in the Senate. As with nearly everything else in Washington, the bill has become a source of rancor and dispute between right and left - and everyone in between. But in its latest examination of the bill's likely impact, the Congressional Budget Office says the domestic cost of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions paints a more nuanced picture.
Projecting likely trend lines through the year 2050, the CBO concludes that the passage of the legislation will slightly dampen long-term GDP growth. But with a much larger economy by the middle of the century - the CBO expectation is that it will be approximately two-and-a-half times as large as it is today, the impact on peoples' everyday lives will be muted. (One caveat: CBO data tend to rely on some very precise assumptions; if they're false the analysis turns out to be meaningless.)
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Geithner To Retire His Role As Pinata?
5709925Meet Tim Geithner, the Obama administration's human pi?ata. Though maybe for not much longer.
Given how regularly he gets smacked around by critics of the president's economic policies, Geithner can be forgiven for feeling like a pi?ata sometimes. With the nation's unemployment rate hovering over 10%, he's the guy everyone gets to hate. Check out the latest Rasmussen survey which reports that 42% of the public now believes that he's doing a poor job dealing both with the credit crisis as well as with the sundry federal bailout programs. (I'll have more to say about that in a moment.)
The good news for Geithner - if you can term it that - is that the figures remain unchanged from the last time Rasmussen asked that question in a March survey. I don't think he's losing much sleep over any of this. Besides, there's no reason to shed tears for the guy. Geithner knew what he was suiting up for when he accepted the president's invitation to serve as his Treasury Secretary. Also, he was given a chance to play the role of hero. With the economy rapidly contracting and the financial credit system frozen, history would remember Geithner fondly - as would the private sector after leaving government service to find a better paying job - if he could oversee a turnaround.
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Given how regularly he gets smacked around by critics of the president's economic policies, Geithner can be forgiven for feeling like a pi?ata sometimes. With the nation's unemployment rate hovering over 10%, he's the guy everyone gets to hate. Check out the latest Rasmussen survey which reports that 42% of the public now believes that he's doing a poor job dealing both with the credit crisis as well as with the sundry federal bailout programs. (I'll have more to say about that in a moment.)
The good news for Geithner - if you can term it that - is that the figures remain unchanged from the last time Rasmussen asked that question in a March survey. I don't think he's losing much sleep over any of this. Besides, there's no reason to shed tears for the guy. Geithner knew what he was suiting up for when he accepted the president's invitation to serve as his Treasury Secretary. Also, he was given a chance to play the role of hero. With the economy rapidly contracting and the financial credit system frozen, history would remember Geithner fondly - as would the private sector after leaving government service to find a better paying job - if he could oversee a turnaround.
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Pot-Kettle-Black?
(CBS/ AP)
The ACORN conspiracy has also featured in the list of reasons that losing conservative candidate Doug Hoffman's unconcession offered to explain his defeat in the New York Congressional 23rd race. In a new letter to his backers, Hoffman wrote: "I'm sure you are as dismayed as I am to learn of the mischief that took place in Oswego and neighboring counties. We know this would not be the first time for the ACORN faithful to tamper with democracy."
Here's Robert Stacy McCain in the American Spectator picking up the complaint:
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The Southern Health Conundrum
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With the nation's Republican governors gathered in Austin this week for their annual meeting, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour offered his take on current events during an appearance on CBSnews.com's Washington Unplugged. He covered the usual talking points, the basic pitch being that Republican ideas are more in tune with the needs of the nation than the policies offered by Obama & Co. But I had to do a double take after he told Bob Schieffer that "the American people want us focused on jobs, not on health care reform..."
A lot of people obviously agree - and there are good arguments on both sides of the health care reform debate - but Barbour's timing was way off. Only one day earlier, a study funded by UnitedHealth found that Barbour's great state of Mississippi ranked dead last in its ranking of the nation's healthiest states. In fact, the state has finished in last place for the last nine years. When I called up his office seeking a comment, the staffer who answered the phone wasn't familiar with the study. He should be - it's a doozy.
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Disclosure Row Over White House Coverage
Believe me, there's nothing like a journalistic cat fight to get the blood flowing. Well, spats between intellectuals - especially fought out on the back pages of the New York Review Of Books - rate a close second. But you get the real deal when reporters square off over who sits on the side of the angels (and by process of elimination, who is not.)
We've got one brewing right now. Yuval Levin, who worked in the White House domestic policy staff as an aide to George W. Bush, now has got a gig writing news stories for Newsweek. The Nation's Ari Melber, who got wind of this, notes that when Levin's first piece ran in the magazine last March, the editors slugged it as an analysis from "a Bush veteran." No such notation was attached to Levin's new piece chronicling why "right-of-center candidates are succeeding in the age of Obama." A few months earlier, Levin even co-authored aTom Bevan in RealClearPolitics tries. Sort of.
"If Melber is worried about a reporter's ideological bias affecting their reporting, maybe he should direct some of his indignation at Richard Wolffe, the "Senior White House correspondent" who covered Obama for the 2008 campaign for Newsweek. Wolffe was so chummy with the Obama inner circle he wrote a book about it, and hopes to write another - when he's not busy appearing on Keith Olbermann's show, that is."
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We've got one brewing right now. Yuval Levin, who worked in the White House domestic policy staff as an aide to George W. Bush, now has got a gig writing news stories for Newsweek. The Nation's Ari Melber, who got wind of this, notes that when Levin's first piece ran in the magazine last March, the editors slugged it as an analysis from "a Bush veteran." No such notation was attached to Levin's new piece chronicling why "right-of-center candidates are succeeding in the age of Obama." A few months earlier, Levin even co-authored a
"If Melber is worried about a reporter's ideological bias affecting their reporting, maybe he should direct some of his indignation at Richard Wolffe, the "Senior White House correspondent" who covered Obama for the 2008 campaign for Newsweek. Wolffe was so chummy with the Obama inner circle he wrote a book about it, and hopes to write another - when he's not busy appearing on Keith Olbermann's show, that is."
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Rage Nation 2.0
(AP)
Talk about political prescience.
The American lexicon is suddenly chockablock with a collection of colorful descriptions forged in the cauldron of an increasingly heated political debate - terms like tea parties, three percenters, birthers, town hall disrupters, and oath keepers. As language reflects the times we live in, this is the new nomenclature used to define an eruption of anti-government rage that increasingly has marked the Obama administration's first ten months in office.
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The Palin Conundrum For Miffed Romney
(AP)
But that fit of pique can't compare with the frustration Romney must feel watching the "All Sarah, all the time" frenzy in advance of the official launch date of Going Rogue, Sarah Palin's tell-all account of the 2008 presidential campaign. On paper, it should be a no-brainer. Here's Romney, with that ponderously impressive resume - CEO of the management consultancy Bain & Company, co-founder of private equity investment firm Bain Capital, CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics and governor of the Bay State from 2003 to 2007 - and yet he can't get the time of day. Maybe that will change by next year, but for the moment, north to south, east to west, the Republican faithful only have eyes for the Thriller from Wasilla.
Which is all the more fascinating because a bevy of new polls suggest that Palin's guaranteed to lose if she becomes the Republican Party's nominee in 2012. A CBS poll found that just 23% of Americans now hold a favorable view of the former Alaska Governor and two in three Americans would not like to see Palin run for president against Barack Obama. According to a CNN survey, fewer than three in 10 Americans believe that she's qualified to serve as president. And an ABC/Washington Post poll found that six in 10 Americans say she's unqualified for the post.
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Firing A Shot Across Obama's Bow
(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
A bow?
I kid thee not. This post by Donald Douglass at the aptly-named blog American Power was representative of the sort of apoplectic commentary triggered by the president's visit with the royal couple as he arrived at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on Saturday.
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Pot Legalization: Already A Moot Point?
(The Ackerley Group)
Not that the opinion of this august medical association likely will sway many of the undecided - if there are many undecided still left. (Are there any?) Judging from the tenor of the posts in the talkback section over the course of our two-day point-counterpoint, both sides appear locked and loaded in their conviction that their opponents are flat wrong.
The central plank of the anti-legalization argument is the claim that marijuana use has destructive health and social consequences. When I was growing up, that was the conventional wisdom, at least until the social changes wrought by the counterculture began stripping away the stigma around pot smoking. So it was that however ably he argued his brief - and his undeniably was a first-rate demonstration of the art of rhetoric - Evans was battling not just with Gray but also against four decades of increasing societal acceptance of marijuana use. The pro-legalization movement has good reason to believe that it's just a matter of time before local legislatures around the country rewrite local laws to reflect that change. In fact, the legislature in my home state of California recently met to hold hearings on a proposal to legalize, regulate and tax pot. On top of this comes the AMA news.
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CBO's Chief: Apres Moi Le Deluge?
(IStockPhoto)
Last week he gave a talk at the annual fall research conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management that made Malthus a comparatively upbeat read. He freely referenced previous reports June and August reports he delivered to Congress. Few people actually read those tomes. They should. Here are a few nuggets:
• The federal debt is already large relative to GDP by historical standards. In fact, it will equal about 60 percent of GDP by the end of this fiscal year. That's the highest it's been since the early 1950s. "As a result, further large deficits and increases in the debt will raise serious economic risks."
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The Left's Stupak Stupification
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
The amendment would strip away abortion coverage in the public insurance option. Moreover, it also would mean that private plans would be prohibited from extending coverage for abortion procedures if they take in patients who get government subsidies. Offered by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), the proposal was backed by 64 Democrat lawmakers whose votes secured passage of the House healthcare bill in a 220-215 vote.
Pelosi felt she had to agree to the compromise as the price of moving the process along. Still, the deal infuriated party liberals who described the momentas a rollback of women's reproductive health. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). declared it to be "simply outrageous." What's more, the decision reportedly caused some female Congresswomen to weep and led to a shouting match between Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro and California Rep. George Miller, an ally of the House Speaker. Traditional allies like
NARAL and Planned Parenthood responded with promises to lobby to rid that language from any Senate bill.
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When <i>Muslims</i> Commit Violence?
(AP)
"It seems, though, that when an American military officer who is a practicing Muslim allegedly shoots forty of his fellow soldiers who are about to deploy to the two wars the United States is currently fighting in Muslim countries, some broader meaning might, over time, be discerned, especially if the officer did, in fact, yell "Allahu Akbar" while murdering his fellow soldiers, as some soldiers say he did," he writes.
I have no idea what would motivate someone to carry out this heinous crime. Maybe religion was involved. But only days after the shootings how can anyone be sure? On NBC's Meet the Press, the U.S. Army's Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey urged the public not to rush to conclusions and referred to reports about so-called early warning signs about Hasan's behavior as "speculation" based on anecdotes. But what does he know?
Connecticut's Sen. Joe Lieberman went on Fox News Sunday to press for an investigation because, he said, Hasan reportedly "showed signs of being a "self-radicalized, homegrown terrorist." Lieberman may have missed delivery of his Sunday New York Times, which carried word that investigators have tentatively concluded that Hasan, an army Major, was not part of a terrorist plot.
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Post-NY23, What's The Strategy? Try Scorched Earth
(Jim Lewis/NPS.gov)
Yes, their candidate lost the battle to the Democrats but the grassroots activists around the country who supported Bill Hoffman's candidacy remain convinced they're on the right side of history. And in writing down their morning-after election analyses on Wednesday, they also delivered a hard-edged message to the Republican establishment: Get behind us or get out of the way.
Erick Erickson of RedState.com, one of the blog sites that strongly supported Hoffman's candidacy, put it bluntly: The conservatives still won. How? By defeating the phony Republican (Dede Scozzafava) who was originally chosen by the party. Erickson's declaration deserves being quoted at length:
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U.S. Chamber Of Commerce: Half Pregnant On Global Warming?
5397433A crack in the ice?
A couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was the object of a hoax when environmentalists held a fake press conference in Washington D.C. supposedly announcing the organization's about face on climate regulation. (A representative from the real chamber showed up to set the pranksters straight.)
The chamber has opposed both the cap-and-trade climate bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives earlier in the year and has objected to plans by the Environmental Protection Agency's to more closely regulate greenhouse gases.
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A couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was the object of a hoax when environmentalists held a fake press conference in Washington D.C. supposedly announcing the organization's about face on climate regulation. (A representative from the real chamber showed up to set the pranksters straight.)
The chamber has opposed both the cap-and-trade climate bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives earlier in the year and has objected to plans by the Environmental Protection Agency's to more closely regulate greenhouse gases.
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In Battle For the Republican Party, It's Game On
(CBS)
Rightly or not, it seems nearly everyone is taking their cue from the New York's 23rd congressional race where pollsters say Doug Hoffman now leads the race. David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union, told the Los Angeles Times that a Hoffman victory would be akin to "dropping a bomb into the center of the Republican caucus."
Hyperbole? Up to a point. As others have pointed out, the district in question has been reliably Republican since the middle of the 19th century. But if the party mandarins, who until this week had spurned Hoffman in favor of a more moderate candidate, don't know what his victory represents, former congressman and now MSNBC show host Joe Scarborough makes it plain.
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