Shorter David Brooks

Shorter David Brooks:

Based on rigorous polling of myself, Democrats are failing just like Republicans failed. So there.

DougJ at Balloon Juice rightly points out that Brooks failure to mention Iraq as being pretty important to the history of the Republican Party’s failure during the Bush years. Implied but unmentioned by DougJ is that Brooks’ claims of Democrats walking the same failed strategic path as Republicans doesn’t hold water without a failure of parallel scale and unpopularity. Seeing none, let’s swiftly move on from Brooks’ idiocy and never mention this column again.

Presidential Certitude

Via Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo, I really like the stand President Obama made this weekend on including the public option in healthcare reform legislation.

[A]ny plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans – including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest – and choose what’s best for your family.

This is key. It goes without saying that  the GOP efforts (under partnership with conservative Democrats in the House and Senate) to weaken reform includes not only stripping out the public option, but preventing key measures that would ensure affordability, and thus feasability of reform, from being included in the legislation must also be stopped. The public option is a huge piece of it and the one that has certainly received the most attention in public discourse, but it’s presence in the bill is not both necessary and sufficient for the bill to be successful.

Nonetheless, it’s good to see President Obama taking a firm stand at a time where anti-reformers seem to be gaining momentum to block progress as we near fruition.

Must Read: Sirota on China

Progressive writer David Sirota has a must-read column on China in his regular space at the San Francisco Chronicle. Sirota highlights the massive economic disparity that exists in China as a result of Communist Party rule. He aptly describes the CCP as “an extreme version of the Republican Party that couples Genghis Khan’s intolerance with Hank Paulson’s authoritarian capitalism.” Sirota spends a great deal of time narrating the parallel between the current Chinese economic structure and America’s Gilded Age. In addition to unimaginable poverty, Sirota sees China in the midst of commiting environmental destruction with global repercussions.

It’s rare that an American political observer has such clear-sighted views of China, including looking past the gilded coastal cities dominating global capitalism and seeing a corrupt and destructive ruling party, massive poverty, and destructive environmental policies. Trust me, Sirota’s piece will not be mistaken for the usual clap-trap we see from Nick Kristof and Tom Friedman. Go give it a read.

Glenn Greenwald vs. Chuck Todd

Glenn Greenwald’s interview of the Beltway Conventional Wisdom Chuck Todd is pretty extraordinary. It’s hard to imagine a more vivid illustration of two world views colliding: that of someone who believes in the rule of law and someone who thrives in the Beltway petri dish of insiderism and self-congratulatory hackery. Todd dismisses upholding the rule of law as “idealistic” and any effort to apply US law to the actions of Bush officials as something that isn’t possible, as far as I can tell, because Washington DC wasn’t constructed on the summit of Mount Everest.

Todd espouses a fundamental problem with the notion that any efforts to hold Bush officials to account through investigations and prosecutions would lead to political debates on cable TV. I don’t get this objection. What is wrong with the country hearing a debate between people who want to enforce the law and people that want to sweep lawbreaking under the rug, even if the former tend to be Democrats and the later tend to be Republicans and Beltway journalists like Chuck Todd? Would it be political because the American people would be so repulsed by the GOP desire to establish a separate system of justice for Republican political elites who controlled the country for eight years from the Bush White House, and as a result GOP electoral prospects would be hurt? Todd never really elucidates why a legal process being perceived from the outside as political is actually bad. Glenn asks him what’s wrong with there being a national, nightly debate on torture and the rule of law, but Todd seems to use the word political as a catch-all excuse that is functionally vacuous.

In the end, while Greenwald and Todd have a long conversation, I am left feeling repulsed by the attitudes Todd displays, as one of Washington’s premier political journalists, towards investigating wrongdoing perpetrated by politicians and their staff. It shouldn’t be hard for a journalist to say there should be openness and accountability in government (especially in regards to clearly illegal actions), but Todd utterly resists any of Greenwald’s arguments from having a place in reality. Apparently while Todd can intellectually grasp what should happen in an “ideal” America, he doesn’t believe the America of our ideas exists in “reality.” That one of the biggest names in the DC press has such a low opinion of America as it exists today is simply depressing. As a result, I doubt we’ll ever see Chuck Todd or his peers in the Beltway elite ever endorse the validity of meaningful investigations into the crimes of the Bush administration. This behavior almost certainly reduces the likelihood that such investigations will ever actually exist, as it’s clear the White House is inclined to take significant cues from the Beltway Conventional Wisdom machine on this issue.

You can read the transcript here or listen to the audio here.

CW FAIL: Healthcare Reform

Sometimes the extent to which Beltway reporters and the Republicans spinning them don’t get it is mind-boggling. This is from Robert Pear and David Herszenhorn of the New York Times, on the party line vote on healthcare reform legislation that passed out of the HELP Committee yesterday:

But the partisan split signified potential trouble ahead. Republicans on the panel, who voted unanimously against the measure, described the idea of a new public insurance option as a deal-breaker. They said they still hoped that a consensus bill would emerge from the Senate Finance Committee.

While massive energy has been exerted  — some of it by the White House — to create the idea that in order for a healthcare reform bill to pass and be successful, it has to have bipartisan support, this just isn’t true.

In fact, reform that includes a public health insurance option, near universal coverage, strong affordability and employer responsibility measures could pass out of both the House and the Senate without a single Republican vote. Democrats in the Senate don’t even need a single Republican to get past cloture: they have a 60 vote caucus.

As long as Majority Leader Reid and the White House are willing to treat the cloture vote on the final healthcare reform bill as what matters and enact total caucus discipline to get the bill an up or down vote, it won’t matter that Republicans don’t support it. On final passage the need for Republicans is even smaller – we just need 50 votes for it to pass (with Vice President Biden there to cast the deciding vote).

The only consensus that matters at this point is what Senators Reid, Dodd, and Baucus find as they work to finish the Finance bill and merge it with the HELP bill. The Republicans are effectively done in this process, which is clearly something that anyone who wants meaningful change through strong legislation can celebrate.

Dodd & Healthcare Reform

Health Care for American Now is running an ad thanking Senator Chris Dodd for his work on the HELP Committee to put forward legislation that includes a public health insurance option.

HCAN will have even more to thank for, as the HELP Committee has just passed  their version of the bill out of committee. Jonathan Cohn reports that in the end, Dodd chose putting out a good bill over a bipartisan one:

There will be a lot of commentary about the Committee’s failure to attract any Republican support; Christopher Dodd, who has been serving as chairman in Kennedy’s absence, expressed repeatedly his “regret” that bipartisan support proved elusive. But he also stated that he was content with the choice that he, and his fellow Democrats, made. “The important issue is a good bill,” Dodd said in a press conference after the vote. “I will not sacrifice a good bill for [the sake of bipartisanship.]”

Dodd went on to note that a weak bill, even one with bipartisan support, might be difficult to sustain, both during the congressional debate and afterwards. In other words, a weak bill would do less for the American people–and they would be less satisfied with it.

Are you listening, Max Baucus?

If the Senate ends up passing a final version of healthcare legislation that combines the HELP and Finance bills and includes a strong public health insurance option, it will be directly because of Chris Dodd’s leadership. His work kept this key component in the legislation and thus has kept it a reality moving forward. Kudos, Senator Dodd – you’ve more than earned the thanks of HCAN and many, many other Americans

Xinjiang Analysis

Philip Bowring had an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday on the uprising in Xinjiang and the sympathetic response East Turkestan’s Muslim Uighur population has received from other Asian and Muslim nations. I have some problems with his essay, including his glossing over of the invasion of East Turkestan by the Mao’s PLA in 1949 as settlement that occurred “postwar,” but there are some real gems of analysis in his piece. Notably his take on the Chinese government’s failure to recognize the underlying causes of unrest in Xinjiang, as in Tibet, are being ignored at the risk of further unrest.

It may not be too late for China to address Uighur grievances, but the Chinese Communist Party’s centralist tendencies and cultural chauvinism make it unlikely. The Chinese media’s presentation of the disturbances suggests that few lessons are being learned. Underlying issues go unaddressed, the Hans are presented as the main victims and Uighurs as ungrateful for the material progress that China has bestowed on what was once known as East Turkestan.

Then there is the Islamic issue. Central Asian Islam is mostly of a relaxed and unfanatical sort, but Muslim identity in Xinjiang has been strengthened both by restrictions on religious activities and by the rise in Muslim consciousness globally.

China has tried to pin the Al Qaeda label on Xinjiang separatists and will doubtless do so again — helped by Al Qaeda proclaiming that it will retaliate for the Urumqi killings.

Bowring is spot-on in identifying Han chauvinism as a fundamental problem in the Chinese government’s response to unrest in occupied territories.  As far as I know, the Chinese government has yet to concede that a single Uighur was killed by government forces or Han vigilantes yet – despite numerous reports from exile groups and independent media that Uighurs are being killed in great numbers.

Moreover, Bowring is right to identify the error the Chinese government is making in trying to pin the terrorist label on Uighur students holding protests. If you call someone a violent terrorist long enough and treat them as the same, before to long it won’t be shocking if some of these young men do turn to violent ways. This is why it is so fundamentally wrong for the Chinese government to try to pin the blame for this unrest and all instances of violence on Rebiya Kadeer of the World Uighur Congress. She is one of the strongest bulwarks against Uighurs turning to violence. She is an advocate of finding political resolution through non-violent means. Notably the tactic of trying to demonize the leading non-violent leader as a violent terrorist in East Turkestan is exactly the same one the Chinese government used, with no success, in Tibet with the Dalai Lama last year.

Bowring concludes that East Turkestan  will remain “a “pebble in the shoe” for China’s diplomacy” but will not become an issue of international prominence. Sadly he is right unless people of conscience make efforts to hold the Chinese government to account for their violent military crackdown in East Turkestan. Just as in Tibet, China’s ongoing military occupations and how they treat the occupied peoples must be fundamental in consideration of the relationship foreign governments are willing to build with China. Few countries are willing to make Tibet and East Turkestan issues in their diplomatic relations with China, but that doesn’t mean the quietism of world governments is morally right.

Unicameral Time?

Obviously I’m no fan of Rick Lazio, Hillary Clinton’s 2000 opponent for Senate in New York (post-Giuliani). But the problems he identifies with the New York State Assembly and Senate sound an awful lot like the problems we have in the federal House of Representatives and Senate.

IS it any wonder that nothing gets done in Albany? The New York Assembly and Senate pass different versions of the same bill and can’t agree on what the final legislation should look like. When lawmakers do get together to hash out their differences, they meet behind closed doors. Too often, a good bill appears in one house, and never comes up for debate in the other.

…

The unicameral system increases transparency by eliminating the need for conference committees — meetings between members of the Assembly and Senate that occur after each house approves different versions of a bill. They’re intended to iron out those differences, but too often, new language creeps in and backroom deals are cut without public knowledge. In addition, lawmakers would be held accountable for blocking good ideas because of partisanship or special interest pressure. The Assembly would no longer be able to kill legislation passed by the Senate or vice versa. Every smart idea proposed by a legislator should be brought to the floor, debated and given a fair up or down vote.

Lately I’ve been joking with friends that someone should introduce a constitutional amendment to replace the bicameral legislature with a unicameral system so we can actually get something decent and progressive passed during the Obama administration. The Senate nowadays seems to be a place where good ideas go to die, be it a death by a thousand cuts in the name of centrism and bipartisanship, or an outright rejection by a few obstinant conservatives.

The three situations I see which best elucidate the problems with a progressive House and a conservative Senate all are deeply important to the progress of the nation. In November 2007, the House passed the RESTORE Act, which stopped warrantless wiretapping and restored the rule of law and the power of FISA; after months of delays against something worse lead by Chris Dodd, the Senate eventually passed a FISA Amendments Act that included retroactive immunity for telecoms that helped the Bush administration spy on Americans and legalized the illegal surveillance program. The Senate’s obstinancy forced something worse onto the House. Now we see a House body that is prepared to pass incredible, progressive healthcare reform legislation and the Employee Free Choice Act intact. But conservative Democrats in the Senate stand in the way of both pieces of legislation. In order for something to get passed, something worse must be made. That’s the way the system works when you have a strong, progressive House and the Senate majority dominated by the whims of conservative Democrats who show no party loyalty nor adherence to campaign promises (either their on or the President’s). Even if good legislation is passed in any of these areas, there will likely be substantive differences between the two bodies that require a conference committee. The conference committee on healthcare will include conservative Democrats and Republicans like Baucus and Grassley, while one in the House could likely include people like Mark Pryor and Mike Enzi. That is, what enters a conference committee will only be reported out as more conservative than what the House produced, at least under the current power dynamic in Washington.

I obviously don’t think that the Senate is going to be done away with any time soon. From a practical partisan standpoint, it would be terribly shortsighted. The fact is, though, that when historians look back on the early years of President Obama’s first term, it will be clear that a handful of conservative Democrats in the Senate were the main, meaningful obstacle to the swift enactment of a robust Democratic agenda. Perhaps on a longer time frame good legislation can come out of the Senate on par with the House, but as of now we’re not seeing it. We’re seeing the opposite and it’s a shame that there isn’t an easy fix (well, you know, other than making conservative Democrats have an iota of party loyalty and vote for cloture on every piece of Democratic legislation).

Torture and Accountability

The investigation of Bush-era US interrogation policies that include torture shouldn’t be controversial. Nor should the investigation of the illegal surveillance of Americans. But apparently it is because someone told Scott Shane that it would impair the ability for President Obama to have a positive domestic agenda.

Torture took place in our names. Pretending that it didn’t will not improve our standing in the world. But investigating it and holding those who ordered it to account might actually make a difference. We know the evidence exists. We have to have the courage, as a government and as a people to face our actions.

Yes, there are major challenges facing us domestically. We need major healthcare reform, labor law reform, education reform, and a coherent energy policy that helps in the fight against global warming. But we are capable of multitasking. We can look forward while correcting the errors of the past. Hell, that’s the whole point of all of these domestic reform initiatives – that things were done poorly or incorrectly in the past, that we have to learn from them, and now do things better. How is the investigation of Bush-era abuses of the rule of law and rules of war any different?

Only people who wish to protect the perpetrators of these illegal actions on torture, surveillance, extraordinary rendition, and data mining will forward the canard that accountability and investigation will stymie the President’s positive domestic agenda.  It’s a bogus argument and one that has the potential to make permanent the damage the Bush administration did to America’s standing in the world.

Dodd Pissing Off Lobbyists

Via tparty, the Dodd campaign has put out a web video highlighting recent press where he has been anonymously attacked by lobbyists for healthcare industries and financial industries for not listening to their corporations’ concerns.

Here’s a link to the Roll Call article where health insurance lobbyists whine about Dodd not listening to them.

Here’s a link to an earlier story in Politico where financial sector lobbyists say the same thing.

And here’s a story from Mother Jones which explicitly lays out how Dodd is ignoring lobbyists for the industry most in play in his work on Banking and HELP committees.

I don’t think all of this makes Dodd a populist – a term I’m guessing he’d reject. I think this is Dodd just being the capital D Democrat that he is. He’s showing a strong recognition that he has the power to use his office to help working Americans in Connecticut and nationwide by passing legislation that really cements his legacy as one of the Senate’s true liberal lions. In this situation and in these tough economic times, Dodd is demonstrating that he will put the peoples’ interests ahead of corporations and lobbyists. I can hardly imagine a better way for Dodd to be conducting his business than the way he’s doing it now. Frankly, if lobbyists for Wall Street and health insurance companies are pissed off by his actions, you know Dodd is doing something right.