Rebutting GOP Smears of Dodd on Countrywide

David Fiderer of the Huffington Post again provides a thoughtful and comprehensive rebuttal of the last round of bogus smears being hurled at Chris Dodd by Republicans who choose to ignore that Dodd was already exonerated of any wrongdoing related to Countrywide mortgages. Congressional investigation showed that Countrywide was not offering bargain rates for VIPs:

Overall it appears that the VIPs were often offered quicker, or more efficient loan processing and some discounts. However, it also appears that all VIP loans, including all [Friends of Angelo] loans, were required to meet the same underwriting standards and conditions for resale on the secondary market and non-VIP loans.  Furthermore, there is evidence on the record that the discounts offered to VIPs and FOAs were not the best deals available at Countrywide or in the marketplace at large. In sum, participation in the VIP or FOA programs did not necessarily mean that borrowers received the best financial deal available either from Countrywide or from other lenders.

Fiderer’s whole piece is worth a read. It’s clear that this vacuous crap is the most that Rob Simmons and other GOP challengers (or the particularly gullible and lax Michael Moore) are throwing at Dodd.

Dodd, Leahy, Feingold, & Merkley to Repeal Retroactive Immunity

It’s about damned time.

Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Russ Feingold (D-WI), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) announced today that they will introduce the Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act, which eliminates retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that allegedly participated in President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program.

“I believe we best defend America when we also defend its founding principles,” said Dodd. “We make our nation safer when we eliminate the false choice between liberty and security. But by granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies who may have participated in warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, the Congress violated the protection of our citizen’s privacy and due process right and we must not allow that to stand.”

Senator Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said, “Last year, I opposed legislation that stripped Americans of their right to seek accountability for the Bush administration’s decision to illegally wiretap American citizens without a warrant. Today, I am pleased to join Senator Dodd to introduce the Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act. We can strengthen national security while protecting Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. Restoring Americans’ access to the courts is the first step toward bringing some measure of accountability for the Bush-Cheney administration’s decision to conduct warrantless surveillance in violation of our laws.”

“Granting retroactive immunity to companies that went along with the illegal warrantless wiretapping program was unjustified and undermined the rule of law,” Feingold said. “Congress should not have short-circuited the courts’ constitutional role in assessing the legality of the program. This bill is about ensuring that the law is followed and providing accountability for the American people.”

“During the previous administration, telecommunications companies were granted retroactive immunity for violating the rights and privacy of millions of Americans,” said Merkley. “I am proud to join Senator Dodd and co-sponsor the Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act to help restore accountability and increase oversight to protect the privacy rights that have been central to our nation since its inception.”

There is more work to be done to roll back the FISA Reauthorization Act of 2008. But this is a key part of that work and is certainly commendable.

The Importance of the Underlying Bill

There has rightly been a lot of attention given to the New York Times article, in which anonymous senior Senate aides float the idea that Harry Reid will not include the public health insurance option in the combined bill that is brought to the floor for a vote. Reid’s office has denied that this is the case, but the proof will be in the pudding. We will likely know in the next week or two what the bill Reid brings to the full Senate for consideration is and the contents of that bill will almost certainly be determinative of its outcome.

The reason for this is that we are approaching the point in time where substantive changes to the content of the legislation are able to be made. The big ticket item is obviously the public health insurance option, though there is no doubt the fate of provisions relating to access, affordability, and employer responsibility will be determined by the contents of Reid’s bill, too.

The reason that Reid’s decision is so crucial is that any amendment on the floor to controversial parts of the bill will likely require 60 votes to pass. This is not because it is in the Senate rules that controversial provision take 60 votes. It is not. But what has been the rule since Lyndon Johnson’s tenure as Majority Leader is that unanimous consent agreements are used to set ground rules for debate, amendments, and voting. To make a deal so things move forward, anything controversial like amendments which would add or remove the public health insurance option, will require 60 votes. And such, any amendment is almost certainly doomed to failure.

Chris Bowers highlights this in a run-down of the legislative state of play on health care reform:

No good strengthening amendments will pass on the Senate floor. If there is no public option in the bill that passes through Kent Conrad’s Budget committee, don’t expect one to emerge from the Senate via amendments. The 60-vote culture will be in effect for all amendments to the health care bill when it arrives on the Senate floor, and so there won’t be enough votes for the public option–or any other significant strengthening amendment-if it is not included in the bill that comes out of the Budget committee.

Republicans will not find 20 Democratic votes to strip the public option and while there are certainly more than 51, it is doubtful there are 60 votes to insert the public option in via an amendment.

The Times article reports on Reid’s decision making process:

“None of these decisions are going to be made without significant presidential input,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid.

And so, it is up to Harry Reid and, on the tough calls, President Obama. They will determine what the Senate votes on later this year. If the public health insurance option is in the bill, it is because Reid and Obama have decided that they want it to be, for they will know that it will not be stripped via amendment. And if it is not, it is because Reid and Obama expressly decided that they do not want it to be part of health care reform legislation. It is that simple.

What’s worse is the inevitability of it all. The inevitability of Reid and Obama refusing to wrangle conservative Senate Democrats to force them to stand up for the party and this presidency…and the expressly right policy. The inevitability of advocates of the public option trying to put a bright sheen a bill without it. I can see Schumer, Rockefeller, Brown or Dodd saying now, “We will get a chance to vote on it via an amendment and that’s the best we could have hoped for.” As if leadership could not have made a different choice…

At the end, though, there’s something reassuring about this process. If it goes as predicted above, with the public option sent by Harry Reid and Barack Obama to die the death of a failed amendment to a crappy bill then I will know exactly what I can expect when it comes to leadership from Obama and Reid. But if they do the right thing, if they push for policies that will literally affect every single American, then I can look forward to having a real Democratic presidency, after all. As I keep saying, time will tell.

Dodd on the State of Health Care Reform

Via CT Blogger of My Left Nutmeg, here’s Senator Chris Dodd talking about the state of health care reform. Of particular note is Dodd’s take on the notion that the Democratic Party has been unable to maintain caucus discipline generally and the importance for their to be caucus discipline on the procedural vote to move to debate whatever legislation comes forward in the Senate. Dodd suggests that all 60 members of the Democratic caucus should vote for cloture to overcome the expected Republican filibuster of health care legislation. Dodd says he’s repeatedly told the caucus that is unique. He tells his colleagues that “you may not get another chance to do something as significant as you will in the next fifteen weeks.”

We shall see if Senate Democrats follow Dodd’s lead and stand as one to give the Senate the chance to debate health care reform.

Sirota on Obama & Primaries

David Sirota identifies a crucial problem with President Obama’s engagement on behalf of incumbents in Democratic Senate primaries: he’s stymieing primaries of people that are holding up his legislative agenda. Or, more specifically, he’s squashing primaries that would have the effect of either moving the incumbent to the left or replacing him with a more liberal Senator.

So, again, why is the White House trying to crush primaries? I’m not expecting him to back primary challengers…but why is he trying to crush them, instead of simply staying out of the races entirely? I mean, I get why incumbent Senators or House members don’t want to face primaries – they just want an easy ride. The vexing question is why the president would try to help them crush primaries, when those primaries would help it pass its legislative agenda?

In Sirota’s column on the same subject,  he gives a very harsh critique of Obama’s justifications for trying to crush these primaries.

Hence, in trying to prevent or weaken primaries against incumbents, Obama is not merely signaling a royalist’s disdain for local democracy. He is exposing a corrupted pol’s willingness to prioritize country club etiquette over policy results. If his agenda ends up being killed, that cynical choice will be a key cause of death.

It’s what the Democratic elite does – protect the members of their club from the indignant Democratic rabble. It’s unfortunate that a President who waged a successful primary campaign as an outsider with little experience would so quickly slide into the mold of the people he came to Washington to change.

Arguably the best thing that happened to the chances of Obama’s agenda succeeding, at least on health care and labor reform, was Joe Sestak’s decision to primary Arlen Specter from the left. In the course of this year, Specter moved from opposing a public option to supporting single-payer health care. That would simply not have been possibly if Specter wasn’t fighting for his political life in a Democratic primary. He moved from being an opponent to the health reform policy package Obama supports to being an advocate for one even stronger than what is under debate in Washington.

That is what makes Obama’s efforts to quash primaries in Pennsylvania and Colorado and New York so odd. It undermines his agenda to have more conservative Democrats in the Senate, especially ones that are not being challenged to move to the left by primaries. Even if the liberalism of Specter, Gillibrand, and Bennett is temporary, it is better than nothing, as it ensures that at lest 25-50% of Obama’s first term is spent with these people behaving like liberal Democrats and not moderate Republicans.  The only explanation that I see is that Obama doesn’t believe in primaries; he supports “kicking away the ladder” after he and his peers have climbed up it. Who knew that the President would have such an aversion to democracy in the Democratic Party?

President McCain

Eric Boehlert documents and deconstructs John McCain’s mind-boggling 13 Sunday news show appearances so far this year. Boehlert and Steve Benen both not that McCain chairs no committees, is not involved in the health care reform debate, and he isn’t currently pushing any major bills on his own nor is he a key swing vote in any legislation under consideration. The Beltway press corps just has an illogical love of John McCain.

It’s great to be reminded that as far as the media is concerned, elections do not have consequences.

The Coming Trigger War

Mike Lux is right, courting of Olympia Snowe’s support for health care legislation by the White House has the potential of starting a war within the Democratic Party over what reform will look like and who has the power to determine it. If Snowe comes at the cost of a trigger for the public health insurance option — constructed to be so weak that it will likely never be triggered — then it will surely cost liberal votes in both the Senate and the House. It will effectively put the Democrats in Congress in a position that pits their ideology against the President. This is an awful place to be, but more importantly it is an avoidable place to be.

What would instead make more sense would be for the White House to make the cloture vote in the Senate on whatever legislation comes to the floor a party line vote that will be scored by leadership. That is, if you don’t vote in favor of ending debate and getting the legislation to a majority wins situation, you will raise the ire of the White House, the Senate leadership, and the DSCC. In this way, it doesn’t matter how Olympia Snowe will vote – because the 60 members of the Democratic caucus will be sufficient to pass cloture and get to a simple majority-rules vote. On final passage, the White House will signal that members can take a walk if they don’t like the bill.

So much media attention has been given to needing 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. But this just isn’t true. 60 votes are needed to overcome the Republicans’ filibuster – a procedural vote that does not necessarily relate at all to the content of the legislation. To wit, we’ve seen the GOP walk away from  provisions they have previously supported with the sole principle involved being “Delay, delay, delay.”

If the White House demands it and if Harry Reid demands it, the cloture vote on health care legislation can be a party-line vote. Rather than moving to 51 votes to pass something under reconciliation, this would allow 51 votes to pass something under normal rules. A public option would be possible, as would any other provision. And Olympia Snowe would not be in a position to divide the Democratic Party.

It’s really a question of leadership. Will Snowe be the fulcrum that the Democratic Party is broken in two on? Or will President Obama show some muscle and demand support from the Senate to simply get to a majority vote? We shall see.

“Sufficiently Vague”

Glenn Greenwald writes:

In one important sense, the “tea party” movement is similar to the Obama campaign for “change”:  it stays sufficiently vague and unspecific to enable everyone to read into what they want, so that people with fundamentally irreconcilable views believe they’re part of the same movement.

I think this is pretty spot on and Greenwald’s full piece goes into greater detail as to how the teabaggers are made up of very diverse subsets whose largest commonality is “Obama is bad.”

I watch Glenn Beck’s show almost every day. I just read his book, The Real America, and I’m probably going to pick up Common Sense later today. Beck is tapping into something powerful and it has the potential to derail any hope for progressive policy change during the Obama administration. Understanding the dynamics at play are key to diminishing their political effectiveness.

What makes the tea party movement tough to pigeon hole and Beck even tougher is that any charge of partisanship or being connected to the Republican Party is met by a “What? Who? Me?” response along the lines of “Republicans are corrupt and they should get the boot, too.” Beck routinely repositions his highly specific political and policy attacks around a common refrain of taking back Washington from corrupt elected officials and political agents.

Now I’m not so confident that Beck is doing anything other than being smart. He’s incredible adept at shifting between vague generalities, hair-brained conspiracy theories, and succinct political commentary that reveals him as an incredibly conservative individual. Most importantly, he’s spent about three decades working professionally in radio and has learned how to mobilize people to do what he wants them to do, most recently in the realm of politics, but for years as a shill for his corporate sponsors.

Obviously Beck wouldn’t be garnering the success he currently is if the vague arguments he’s making weren’t looping in large numbers of people that are ready to engage on some issue or another. What should be clear, though, is that while Beck’s charges are manifold, the impact they and the people who agree with some set of them have is fairly limited: to undermine the Obama administration and the Democratic Party at the benefit of the Republican Party. Greenwald is right that it is not accurate to describe the tea party movement as a Republican one; but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a movement that, at least at this point in time, almost exclusively benefits the GOP.

China Again Bans Foreign Travel to Tibet

“No witnesses.”

This is one of the governing philosophies of the Chinese government when it comes to areas that they occupy during times of unrest. Witnesses can bring photographs, videos, and first-hand accounts of what happens in China and Tibet during unrest. They can account for who initiated violence if it occurs. They can document government brutality during crackdowns. And they can take this evidence back outside the world’s largest prison and make sure the global community knows what atrocities the Chinese government has perpetrated against the Tibetan people. In fact, it was precisely this scenario that started the modern Tibetan independence solidarity movement. Westerners traveling in Tibet in 1989 documented the uprising that followed when Chinese forces fired on unarmed demonstrators and the crackdown that accompanied the ensuing uprising. Organizations like International Campaign for Tibet and Free Tibet Campaign owe their roots to witnesses of Chinese brutality against Tibetans in the late 1980s.

But China’s government has learned their lesson and now regularly expels foreigners from Tibet and bars their entrance for prolonged period of time. We saw extensive travel, journalistic, and foreign travel bans into Tibet in spring and summer 2008, as well as winter and spring of 2009. We’ve also seen an extensive travel ban in East Turkestan during Uighur protests.

Now, again, the Chinese government has prohibited all foreigners from traveling to Tibet between now and early October around fears that Tibetans will protest a parade by occupying Chinese forces mandating the celebration of 60 years of Communist Party rule. Rather than cancel this offensive celebration of a brutal military occupation out of respect for Tibetans and concern for any violence that may be precipitated, the Chinese government is simply prohibiting any foreigners from coming into Tibet for the next three weeks or more. This way, there will be no witnesses to whatever happens and they can use state media to spin whatever propaganda they choose in the event that something does happen.

This action, just weeks ahead of President Obama’s planned visit to China to meet with CCP leader Hu Jintao, is a slap against those who have pushed for liberalization of China’s policies towards Tibet. Obama is also scheduled to briefly meet with Hu at the UN opening ceremony and the G-20 meeting. President Obama must raise Tibet with Hu when they meet and he cannot pull punches. This reprehensible behavior cannot be glossed over or ignored by the Obama administration.