Washington Extra – The bench’s backstories
The challenge to Arizona’s tough immigration law may have the justices thinking about their own families’ origins and journeys to America. As Reuters reports today, nearly all of them, like their countrymen, descend from people who came looking for a better life (the notable exception is Justice Clarence Thomas whose great-grandmother was a slave).
Their ancestral stories may not tell us how they feel about illegal immigration or whether they will rule in favor of Arizona. But they are clearly a point of pride in their biographies and were often cited in nomination hearings.
Take Justice Samuel Alito, who referred to the experience of his own father, brought to the United States from Italy as an infant. It “is typical of a lot of Americans both back in his day and today. And it is a story, as far as I can see it, about the opportunities that our country offers, and also about the need for fairness and about hard work and perseverance and the power of a small good deed.”
Here are our top stories from Washington…
U.S. eyes options to restart Afghan peace talks – President Obama’s administration, seeking to revive stalled Afghan peace talks, may alter plans to transfer Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay prison after its initial proposal fell afoul of political opponents at home and the insurgents themselves. For more of this exclusive story by Missy Ryan, read here.
No privilege for most stay-at-home moms -poll
The recent flap over women voters — especially stay-at-home mothers — has sent both Republican and Democratic pundits scrambling and with good reason: many stay-at-home moms aren’t affiliated with either party and are a ripe target for swing votes, a new poll shows.
The survey from Gallup Inc also finds that moms who don’t work aren’t exactly a pampered lot, despite Ann Romney – the wife of a multi-millionaire businessman – being portrayed as their standard bearer. It found most moms who stay home are more economically disadvantaged than their working peers.
Women with more education and those with higher family incomes are far more likely to work after having children than lower-income women and those who have less schooling, the polling firm found.
“It does appear that stay-at-home mothers are more economically disadvantaged than working mothers, rather than more advantaged. And this may be directly related to education,” Gallup said in its poll released this week.
The dust-up over whether women who don’t work and instead stay home with their children are privileged arose last week when Democratic pundit Hilary Rosen made comments that seemed to criticize Ann Romney, whose husband Mitt is one of the wealthiest people to ever seek the U.S. presidency and who has never been employed outside her home.
According to Gallup, which interviewed more than 45,000 U.S. adult women over three months earlier this year, most mothers with children under age 18 work outside the home — 63 percent. Thirty-seven percent stay home.
The survey found 84 percent of moms with young kids who have postgraduate-level education also have a job along with 75 percent of college graduates and 66 percent of those with just some college coursework. That compares with 48 percent of those who have at most a high school education.
Who’s out of touch? Biden takes aim at Romney on economy
Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday accused Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney of disregarding the importance of the manufacturing sector as a source of jobs for middle class Americans and said the former Massachusetts governor had offered “consistently wrong” remedies for the U.S. economy.
In a campaign speech in Davenport, Iowa, a key battleground state in the general election, Biden also said Romney showed a lot of “chutzpah” by suggesting President Barack Obama was “out of touch” with ordinary Americans.
“Out of touch? Romney?” Biden said to laughter from his audience at an Iowa factory. “I mean, pretty remarkable, pretty remarkable.”
Biden zeroed in on Romney’s former role as head of the private equity firm Bain Capital, mentioning U.S. factories that were closed by the company, including one that makes photo albums and picture frames. “I’m tempted to say, Mitt, thanks for the memories. You know what I mean?”
He also took aim at Romney’s opposition to the auto industry bailout – touted by the Obama administration as a measure that saved over a million jobs – saying that the former Massachusetts governor would have “let Detroit go bankrupt.”
While Biden touted the Obama administration’s recently brokered free trade agreements with Korea, Columbia, and Panama, as well as new tax laws that favor clean energy firms that operate on U.S. soil, he criticized Romney’s tax proposals, saying they would reward companies that move jobs overseas.
Biden’s attacks on Romney over the economy come as Romney, becoming more confident that he will clinch the Republican presidential nomination, has sought to rally conservatives by attacking Obama’s record on jobs and growth.
As Obama has done, Romney needs to master the art of communication. http://www.basecandy.com/mitt-romney.htm l
Washington Extra – Theater of the absurd
No one said extending the payroll tax cut in Congress by December 31 would be a walk in the park. But did we really expect it to turn into another marathon with multiple detours?
After a rare display of bipartisanship on Monday on a spending bill to keep the government running through 2012, Tuesday gave way to another day of bitter back and forth, in which Democrats and Republicans aimed to out-maneuver and out-smart each other.
The Republicans managed to pass their payroll tax cut bill in the House with the controversial measure to speed up the decision on green-lighting the Keystone oil pipeline. It almost certainly won’t make it through the Senate and the White House made clear today that President Obama will veto it if it does. He’s decided the Keystone pipeline has to wait until after the elections and won’t be dragged into this debacle.
In theory, the House-approved bill clears the way for the two sides to compromise and get the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits extended by year end. It’s pretty clear that most Republicans and Democrats want to give the boost to voters and the fragile American economy. And the White House says it still expects an “eleventh hour” deal. But after watching the elaborate political theater that played out on Tuesday, it’s anyone’s guess when cooler heads might prevail.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
U.S. lawmakers in showdown over payroll tax cuts U.S. Republican and Democratic lawmakers are locked in an end-of-year fight that threatens a government shutdown, an effective tax hike for 160 million Americans and the loss of benefits for millions of unemployed. With just days left to resolve the crisis, both parties traded recriminations on Tuesday even as they tried to out-maneuver each other for political advantage in a high-stakes battle that will likely carry over into the 2012 elections.
For more of this story by Caren Bohan and Rachelle Younglai, read here.
Shaq throws in support for Obama in 2012
NBA star Shaquille O’Neal said on Monday he believes President Barack Obama is doing a ”fabulous job” and will win the 2012 presidential election.
O’Neal, who retired from pro basketball this year, joined a handful of celebrities endorsing the Democratic president, ranging from singer Lady Gaga and actor Tom Hanks to Basketball hall-of-famer Magic Johnson.
“It’s a hard job … You can’t please everybody but I think he’s doing a fabulous job,” O’Neal told CNN host Piers Morgan. ”The world is in a little bit of turmoil right now — the economy’s down — but … he’s going to pick it back up and I think he’s going to win this next election.”
A group of current and former NBA stars are due to play in a fundraising game in Washington on Dec. 12, the Obama campaign website says. Confirmed players include Johnson, Carmelo Anthony, Vince Carter, Alonzo Mourning and Jerry Stackhouse.
Photo Credit: REUTERS/Scott Audette (Shaq waves to fans at an exhibition game), REUTERS/Larry Downing (Obama compares his shoe with a basketball sneaker belonging to O’Neal)
Im black and I can confirm that there are many local black politicians that play and win on race. Especially with urban poor in gerrymandered districts.
However in statewide and national races, this is not true. There are many famous black personalities that supported Clinton over Jesse in prior primaries. Shaq was one of them.
As to why do 90% of African Americans support Obama – well its because many are poor and poor peoples interests are represented by Democrats (well at least from a superficial level). Cain would have not got majority of the black vote if he would have won the Republican nomination against a white democrat. Its not racial voting when there are underlying ideological reasons.
Obama focus on policy, not polls – White House
The White House is downplaying several new polls showing President Obama’s job approval ratings plunging to new lows along with rising public concern over high unemployment and the sluggish economy.
“The president is focused on the measures he can take… to address the urgent need to grow our economy and create jobs; to deal with the fact that economic growth is not fast enough and that job creation is not substantial enough,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said at Tuesday’s press briefing when asked how concerned Obama is about the poll numbers.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Obama’s overall job approval rating at a low of 44 percent, down 3 percentage points since July. More than half of Americans now disapprove of Obama’s job performance and one in three say they’re worse off financially since he’s been in the White House, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll. And a poll by Politico and George Washington University shows 72 percent of voters believe the country is heading in the wrong direction.
Asked what Obama would say to people who feel worse off now than before he took office, Carney said the president would tell them: “He fully understands the anxiety that is out there among the American people about the economy, the frustration at the pace of growth, the frustration at the pace of job creation. And that’s why he feels it is so urgent to take action now and not to simply say, oh, well, we shouldn’t do anything and then let it all be decided next year after an election.
Obama will deliver proposals for putting people back to work in a speech to Congress Thursday night.
In advance of the speech, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell signaled Obama’s ideas could get a cool reception from congressional Republicans. McConnell said he expects Obama will offer “more of the same failed approach that’s only made things worse over the past few years.”
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney unveiled his economic plan on Tuesday. Click here to read about it .
Reuters/Ipsos poll: Majority says U.S. on wrong track
A large majority of Americans say the United States is on the wrong track and nearly half believe the worst is yet to come, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.
The poll reflects growing anxiety about the economy and frustration with Washington after a narrowly averted government default, a credit rating downgrade by Standard & Poor’s, a stock market dive and a 9.1 percent jobless rate.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll — conducted from last Thursday to Monday — found 73 percent of Americans believe the United States is “off on the wrong track,” and just one in five, 21 percent, think the country is headed in the right direction.
The survey found that 47 percent believe “the worst is yet to come” in the U.S. economy, an increase of 13 percentage points from a year ago when this question was last raised.
President Barack Obama was politically bruised in the brutal debt ceiling debate and negative views on the economy are worrisome signs for his 2012 re-election bid. His approval rating dropped to 45 percent from 49 percent a month ago.
Ipsos pollster Julia Clark said the wrong-track measure reflects widespread unhappiness with the economy and frustration at both political parties, but “you can’t say it’s a predictor of how Obama will fare” in 2012.
A new Washington Post poll on Wednesday underscores just how angry Americans are the state of the economy and Washington’s seeming inability to do anything about it. “Anger at Washington has been growing for some time, but the latest political battle has resulted in an intensification of the discontent,” The Washington Post reports.
When the right complains about “class warfare,” it’s evidence of lazy thinkers who are feeling desperate. If they are worried about class envy pitting groups against one another, they probably ought to re-read their own proposals. The Republican plan does impose huge sacrifices on the poor and the middle class, while cutting taxes on the rich and corporations. All in all, the terms “class warfare” and “corporate welfare” apply nicely to conservative proposals. As to the math, taxes on the rich need to be raised, and significantly more than the measely 3% that Republicans were willing to crash the economy to prevent.
Palin’s take on S&P downgrade
“Many commonsense Americans like myself saw this day coming,” Sarah Palin says of the Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating and the fallout in the markets.
In what reads like an economic policy statement, the former Alaska governor and possible presidential candidate says she is “surprised that so many people seem surprised by S&P’s decision.”
“Weren’t people paying attention over the last year or so when we were getting warning after warning from various credit rating agencies that this was coming?” she said in a lengthy posting on her Facebook page.
Palin, who is still weighing whether to join the crowded race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, says she even sounded some of those warnings herself.
“Back in December 2010, I wrote: ‘If the European debt crisis teaches us anything, it’s that tomorrow always comes. Sooner or later, the markets will expect us to settle the bill for the enormous Obama-Pelosi-Reid spending binge.’ ”
Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate in the 2008 election, lays out her solutions for turning around the U.S. economy: stop deficit spending, balance the budget, repeal President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms and overhaul entitlement programs.
She also takes a rhetorical whack at the economic policies of Obama — and his Ivy League education.
Well, NJConservative, I hope you checked back. Socialist Alaska has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge taxes on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The taxes finance the Alaska government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual welfare check to every man, woman, and child in the state, whether they work or not. One of the reasons Palin was such a popular governor is that she added an extra $1,200.00 to 2008’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269.00.
A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, Sarah Palin told a visiting journalist, “We’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s COLLECTIVELY Alaskans own the resources. So we SHARE IN THE WEALTH when the development of these resources occurs.”
Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it, “collectively,” no less, but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl Marx. Alaska is the most socialist state in the union. And that’s precisely why their budget is in such good shape.
Stark realities of U.S. life without credit
Amid the political fingerpointing over which party will catch the blame if Congress fails to raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit, comes the stark reality of what bills get paid after Aug. 2, if the U.S. government can’t borrow more money.
A group of House Republicans wrote a letter to President Barack Obama on Thursday to say there would be plenty of money from tax receipts to make interest payments to creditors, pay Social Security retirement benefits, cover Medicare health payments and pay U.S. military troops.
Senate Democrats at a news conference made clear that once those bills were paid, little would be left for anything else.
“It would require the Treasury to make some very dark and difficult choices,” said Senator Charles Schumer, a member of the Senate Democratic leadership.
The U.S. monthly revenue totals $172 billion, while its monthly obligations total $307 billion. Payments for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, interest on the debt, troops and defense needs will gobble up the entire monthly income.
There would be no money for student loans just as young people are heading back to school, no money for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, border security, health research, food inspections, Schumer said.
“You don’t have anyone at the border, anyone doing food inspections, anyone in the FAA (air traffic control) towers. America would come to a grinding halt,” Schumer said.
The real problem is that the military means the USA bought to achieve world hegemony have failed. Spectacular (and very expensive) tactical defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan: We failed to plunder Iraq’s oil, and we failed to gain control of the pipeline route into Central Asia from the Taliban.
The 20th century was not kind to defeated empires. No reason to believe the 21st will be different.
Palin sees U.S. economy as “sinking ship”
Fresh off her “One Nation” bus tour that may or may not have been a precursor to a 2012 presidential campaign, Sarah Palin on Sunday likened the sputtering U.S. economy to a sinking ship.
“It’s very noble of President Obama to want to stay at the helm and maybe go down with this sinking ship,” said Palin, who herself resigned as Alaska governor in 2009 with more than a year left in her first term.
“I prefer, many Americans prefer, that we start plugging the hole, that we start powering the build pump and start getting rid of this unsustainable debt that is sinking our ship. We don’t have to go the way of the Titanic,” Palin said in a Fox News interview.
Economic woes are a big political challenge for President Barack Obama as he competes for reelection in 2012. In his weekend radio and Internet address, Obama warned “there will be bumps on the road to recovery.” His warning came after new government data showed unemployment rose to 9.1 percent in May.
Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, said the United States needed to turn in another direction, away from what the Obama administration has offered.
“Their plan for bigger government, more federal control over our private sector, more regulations and burdensome mandates on the people and our businesses, it’s not working and we do need to shift gears and change course,” she said.
Asked what President Palin would do, she said: cut the federal budget; cut spending; cut the corporate tax rate; and “unleash” domestic energy production opportunities.
Typical Palin.
Quitter talks about quitters.
Oh, also typical Palin – it’s a BILGE pump not a build pump.
There’s not much she doesn’t screw up.
Interested article.