US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

it ain't just in america. look what cameron's proposed, amid the smokescreen of the hacking scandal:

Under the changes, every public service except for national security, frontline policing and the judiciary will be opened up to providers from the private and voluntary sector.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/11/david-cameron-promises-end-state-monopoly-public-services

yes, you read that right.

^^^Yes, been monitoring that and all the other shite Cameron is trying to bury while everyone's busy flaying Rupert Murdoch.

what a guy

william gibson here we come

opened up to

what does this mean? i mean, sure, if you want to get into the "caring for the desperately poor and sick" game for the money, go ahead and try...

It could have horrible consequences for the NHS, is the thing... but UnitedHealth and similar are very excited about this, goole! You should be looking into this story IMO.

what does this mean? i mean, sure, if you want to get into the "caring for the desperately poor and sick" game for the money, go ahead and try...

a lot of the pressure that's been applied since the announcement is in light of the kind of privatisation that killed stuff like royal mail, here, last time around; services arise that skim the easier practices leaving public services to deal with the more complicated & more expensive ones. amongst the other subsidiary problems for the nhs would be limiting the kind of small-scale, daily-bread kinda practices that are used in teaching & training nurses & doctors

with the mail, btw, that meant royal mail being the ones that had to schlep recorded delivery envelopes to the remotest corners of scotland, without the counterweight of making money from abundant inner-city, straightforward deliveries.

Oh, "cream skimming"! I learned all about that in telecom law this year! Although in that context it was more independent private actors skimming from a govt-approved private monopoly than from a service directly provided by the govt.

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/jamesfallows/assets_c/2011/07/UMB%20Debt%20Sign-thumb-1200x900-57474-thumb-560x420-57475.jpg

Obama keeps trying to work little deals that Republicans keep saying no to. They like tax breaks and they don't like helping Obama on the jobs front

Mr. Obama suggested in Thursday’s meeting that leaders end tax breaks for ethanol producers, oil and gas companies and corporate jet owners, and offset those tax increases with an extension of the payroll tax credit for employees, a Democratic official familiar with the meeting said, but Republicans said they would not support it.

So now the House is taking their time (according to TPM) because--

Scores of House Republicans say they won't vote to raise the debt limit unless a Constitutional balanced budget amendment has been sent off to the states for ratification. And so whatever Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and other Congressional leaders decide about the real path ahead, he'll hold votes next week on a major spending cut and spending cap plan that includes a hike in the debt ceiling, and, separately, on a balanced budget amendment. The latter would require a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate and, in its current form, stands little chance of passing either chamber.

The votes themselves will put some political pressure on Democrats to support the nominally popular balanced budget amendment, and will allow Republicans to claim they voted to raise the debt limit in the event that the government runs out of borrowing authority. But the so-called "cut, cap, and balance" approach is dead on arrival in the Senate.

house doing a good job of making the senate look like a bastion of sanity

Now the Senate wants to catch up in the insanity. Democratic Reid has decided to let MccConnell discuss with him creating a commission made up of Dems and Republicans that can force a vote on binding entitlement cuts, and McConnell wants this as part of a McConnell/Reid deal on the debt.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/mcconnell-proposal-would-force-major-review-of-entitlements/2011/03/03/gIQA50iAGI_blog.html

ugh that Bowles-Simpson proposal was a bucket of horse shit.

Obama boasting about "defying [his] base" is the mouth into which the bucket of horse shit is poured.

The funny thing is that as soon as Obama endorses a Republican idea, the Republicans back away from it.

He's also pushing this notion now that we have to do something big on the deficit now, in order to get it off the table so he can then address more traditional Democratic concerns. But agreeing to an austerity proposal won't leave any money available in the future, and the notion that Republicans won't find something else to use to try to block traditional Democratic policies is naive.

it's like i told charlie brown, don't bother tryna kick the football, just go cleat lucy in the face.

The funny thing is that as soon as Obama endorses a Republican idea, the Republicans back away from it.

pretty much. This isn't about the deficit, it's about the 2012 election and giving Obama no legislative victories leading up to it. /mr conventonial wisdom

i literally choked on my food when i read "balanced budget amendment"

out of amusement, i mean

it's a bizarre demand to insert in the middle of negotiations

from thursday but a pretty perfect summary of where we're at - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/opinion/15krugman.html

The funny thing is that as soon as Obama endorses a Republican idea, the Republicans back away from it.

pretty much. This isn't about the deficit, it's about the 2012 election and giving Obama no legislative victories leading up to it. /mr conventonial wisdom

― brownie, Friday, July 15, 2011 9:12 PM (

But on some, they want to take and expand--entitlement cuts and Social Security cuts.

The proposed McConnell entitlement commission will reportedly go beyond that lame Simpson one (foolishly put together by Obama with Social Security haters in charge) by requiring a Congressional up and down vote like when they voted on base closings.

Info out on big money supporters for campaigns:

For Obama, the sheer number of bundlers — and the volume of donations they represent — signals another potential juggernaut like 2008, when he shattered all records by raising $745 million. During his first campaign, he had 47 bundlers who raised $500,000 or more — a total he is already more than halfway to matching.

Obama’s biggest bundlers include longtime supporters such as Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, former New Jersey governor and senator Jon Corzine, and fashion editor Anna Wintour. But there are new names on the campaign’s bundlers list as well, such as Marc Benioff, a tech CEO who runs salesforce.com.

Several of the key bundlers, including Benioff, held events at their homes in which Obama came. These events usually gave donors special access to Obama, including the chance to ask the president direct questions in a closed-door atmosphere.

Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel, the brother of former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, helped raise between $50,000 and $100,000.

Romney did not release a full list of bundlers, but his campaign was required to disclose bundling by six registered lobbyists, totaling $517,000 in contributions. The lobbyists included Patrick Durkin of Barclays, who raised $168,000, and Wayne Berman, with Ogilvy Government Relations, who raised $102,000.

The lobbyist bundler requirement was put in place by an ethics law sponsored by then-senator Obama, who has not accepted contributions from registered lobbyists or corporate PACs in his presidential bids. The Obama campaign attacked the GOP field on Friday for declining to identify their top fundraisers.

Obama’s biggest bundlers include longtime supporters such as Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, former New Jersey governor and senator Jon Corzine, and fashion editor Anna Wintour.

old new jersey politicians never die ...

So, in the too-good-to-be-true-in-modern-America department, looks like Elizabeth Warren is stillborn:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-15/obama-eliminates-warren-as-consumer-head.html

Ugh

ugh x2

a Constitutional balanced budget amendment has been sent off to the states for ratification

is there any chance something like this will pass? it would cripple this fucking country.

(also it'd probably be repealed in a few decades, but in the meantime it'd be crippling.)

No chance at all.

that will pass, that is

An ugh to this to--Obama talking to college kids rationalizing his approach as taking a middle of the road approach and as being right because he believes it's in the middle

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/to_merry_principle_to_a_politi030918.php

“If you are only talking to people who you agree with, then politics is always going to disappoint you,” Obama said. “Politics will always disappoint you. You think about some of the issues we’ve worked on over the last couple of years, I think the College Republicans here would say that I was pretty liberal president, right? But if you read the Huffington Post, you would think that I was some right-wing tool of Wall Street. Both things can’t be true, but I think that what it has to do is, this sense of, ‘We have a position and we can’t compromise on it.’

“And so, one of the challenges of this generation is, I think, to understand that the nature of our democracy and the nature of our politics is to marry principle to a political process. That means you don’t get a 100% of what you want. You don’t get it if you are the majority; you don’t get it if you are in the minority. And you can be an honorable in politics understanding that you are not going to get 100% of what you want.

he's right, but the devil's in the details--as in, how and where and when you compromise. and when to show a bit of steel.

think the College Republicans here would say that I was pretty liberal president, right? But if you read the Huffington Post, you would think that I was some right-wing tool of Wall Street. Both things can’t be true

oh sure they can

My god -- no one heckled him, eh.

a Constitutional balanced budget amendment has been sent off to the states for ratification

huh?

think the College Republicans here would say that I was pretty liberal president, right? But if you read the Huffington Post, you would think that I was some right-wing tool of Wall Street. Both things can’t be true

sure he can ... lotsa socially-liberal Wall Streeters!

xpost w/ goole

XD

A few days ago the House passed a measure to prohibit spending on energy efficiency standards for lightbulbs.

but somehow, i think, that stupidity is overshadowed by the upcoming vote on the amendment offered by Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL) to prohibit federal websites that teach children about energy efficiency.

ugh god fuck these people in their eyeholes

the funniest thing about that is that he apparently thinks there are droves of children out there reading about energy efficiency on federal websites that just have to be stopped

Energy efficiency websites: the facebook killer?!?!

lol Sandy Adams is a woman, but actually looks mannish.

http://images.politico.com/global/news/110714_sandy_ap_328.jpg

i just assume that anyone that stupid is a man

also i guarantee you that north florida has the highest percentage of men named "Sandy"

Ha! Probably right.