The Philedelphia Inquirer is reporting that Senator Arlen Specter (formerly-R-PA) intends to run in the Democratic primary for Senate in 2010. This has been rumored for a while, but now, it’s official (Specter’s statement - PDF). As has been reported, Pennsylvania has a closed primary, with only registered Republicans or Democrats allowed to vote in their respective primaries.
Why is this so important? Specter only narrowly won his primary in 2004 against a far-right, former head of Club for Growth, Pat Toomey. Well Toomey is back again and, since the 2006/2008 cycles, at least 200,000 voters have changed their registrations from Republican to Democrat, not including new registrations. This makes the Republican party in not only much smalled in Pennsylvania, it’s also much, much more conservative. While Senator Specter has consistently made PN’s “Favorite Member of Congress”, it is highly unlikely that, as the Senator said himself, he will become “an automatic sixtieth vote”.
April 28 2009 | Democrats and Politics and Republicans and Senate | No Comments »
Wow! First, the Iowa Supreme Court voids a gay marriage ban, but today, the Vermont legislature overrode Governor Jim Douglas’ (R) veto to legalize gay marriage in the state, making it the first state to do it legislatively.
April 07 2009 | Civil Liberties | No Comments »
One, it appears as though Mayor Mike has conducted a push-poll - a push-poll by any other name still smells the same. Two, he has hired Howard Wolfson.
April 07 2009 | New York City and Politics | No Comments »
In a special election for NY-20, the seat vacated by Governor David Patterson’s appointment of now-Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, there is a mere 65 votes (of 154,623 cast on Tuesday) separating Democrat Scott Murphy from Republican, and State Assembly Minority Leader, James Tedisco. According to the Times, there were 10,055 absentee ballots issued, with 5,907 already received, but one thing is certain; this isn’t going to be decided for at least a couple of weeks.
April 01 2009 | New York and Politics | No Comments »
In the early evening last night, the Senate was forced to vote down one of the most ridiculous ammendments proposed in recent memory during the debate about the D.C. voting rights bill. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) suggests that, since proponents of D.C. voting rights in the House of Respresentatives main point is “no taxation without representation”, that D.C. residents not have to pay income tax.
This proves that Senators Coburn’s amendment (which got a whopping 7 votes) simply isn’t serious. What would Senator Coburn do about FICA, which, for poor residents of the District, is the main, or only tax, they pay? What about the federal gas tax? Would Senator Coburn not allow the use of Federal Highway Trust Fund monies and interstate highways that come into the District from Virginia or Maryland or subsidies for the D.C. Metro? Please.
February 26 2009 | Senate | No Comments »
As reported by the Times, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CN) managed to get stricter pay restrictions inserted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. According to the Times, top Obama administration economic aids opposed the tighter restrictions.
Top economic advisers to President Obama adamantly opposed the pay restrictions, according to Congressional officials, warning lawmakers behind closed doors that they went too far and would cause a brain drain in the financial industry during an acute crisis. Another worry is the tougher restrictions may encourage executives to more quickly pay back the government’s investments since, in a compromise with the financial industry, banks no longer have to replace federal funds with private capital. That could remove an extra capital cushion, further reducing lending.
“These rules will not work,” James F. Reda, an independent compensation consultant, said on Friday. “Any smart executive will (a) pay back TARP money ASAP or (b) get another job.”
Of course, Mr. Reda is none other than the fool who made the comment that “$500,000 is not a lot of money.” Aside from the stupidity and tone deafness, this is one of the worst arguments, and there have been many, that have come out of the debate around the economic recovery package passed last night. You can pillory this argument with one simple question: Where are these guys (and they are overwhelmingly white men) going to go?
Aside from becoming professional sports stars or Hollywood actors, there is almost no other profession that doles out multimillion dollar compensation packages. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average compensation for a chief executive in the coal mining industry was $142,820; oil and gas, $159,560; for utilities, $164,720; for transportation-related manufacturing, $161,260; for legal services, $180,010; for motion pictures, $207,090.
Furthermore, with tens of thousands of lay-offs in the industry, there is no shortage of well-educated and experienced professionals that would, presumably, be grateful for any job. And, even at the executive level, what is the demand amongst Fortune 500 companies for a chief executive that presided over a yearly loss of $18.62 billion and $28 billion over five straight quarters of losses (cheers to you, Vikram Pandit)?
Lastly, the assertion that these constraints would incent these companies to pay back public funds faster is ridiculous on its face. The fact of the matter is, most likely, at least several of the largest banks that received TARP funds are technically insolvent. In order to pay back Treasury, they would have to sell assets in order to replace the payment money and maintain capital reserve levels (in recent Congressional testimony, even after selling over $100 billion in assets, J.P. Morgan admitted it is still leveraged at over 10-to-1). In order to sell some of those assets, the banks would have to mark-to-market prices, record more losses and further erode their capital base.
This is simply not a credible argument; disappointing.
February 14 2009 | Congress and Economics and Obama Administration | No Comments »
It’s great to hear that the Obama administration is planning on capping executive pay for companies that take TARP funds (hopefully, they’ll be tough about it and apply the caps as broadly as possible). Despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans are very angry about the situation, and the fact that the average American household of four has a median income of somewhere between $45K - $50K, here’s a money quote from the Times article this morning:
“That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus,” said James F. Reda, founder and managing director of James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm. “And you know these companies that are in trouble are not going to pay much of an annual dividend.”
Brilliant.
February 04 2009 | Economics and Obama Administration | No Comments »
In the midst of our current debate over the economic recovery and reinvestment bill in Congress, there has been some gross misstatement and misinformation by both conservatives and liberals. Pay very close attention to the language used (which the media has picked up on): the Democrats want to give away tax payer money to people that don’t even pay income taxes.
Conservatives will interchange the general terms taxes with income taxes. Their goal is to make the erroneous claim that nasty liberals want to take your hard-earned dollars and give it away to people who don’t pay anything. In fact, even those who effectively pay no income taxes pay the most regressive tax under the U.S. tax code, the payroll tax - 12% on every dollar the average American earns. The President’s proposal, and the language that passed the House earlier this week, is a slightly lower withholding of FICA for the next two years.
While the language will be technically correct in saying that there are people who will receive this tax benefit that pay no federal income tax, it has absolutely no relation to what will be debated in Congress. While it has been phrased, in shorthand (useful in a campaign), as $500 for an individual at $1000 for families, it will actually amount to $10 - $50 less being withheld per paycheck.
This is where the disingenuousness on the liberal side comes in: Liberals generally prefer more direct spending over tax cuts. While I generally sympathizes with this philosophy (as would one John Maynard Keynes), one of the arguments to try to diffuse support for the administration’s proposal is total misinformation. The argument some will use is that last year Congress adopted a stimulus that mailed a check to the American people and some evidence shows that they largely used it pay down debt rather than consume.
However, again, the proposal doesn’t simply put a check in the mail. For the vast majority of the American people, a few extra dollars per paycheck are far more likely to be spent. While it is absolutely true that tax cuts get far less bang for the buck than infrastructure spending, the nature of the proposal, because it will be delivered in small amounts per paycheck, makes it very likely it will get spent. Either way, neither side seems interested in actually debating the underlying proposal rather than their particular ideologies.
January 31 2009 | Congress and Democrats and Domestic Policy and Obama Administration and Politics and Republicans | No Comments »
I just recently heard, on last weeks’ On the Media, about a new website, USAspending.gov, and, both as a citizen and as a software engineer, I found it fascinating. The site was created as a requirement of The Federal Funding and Transparency Act of 2006 that “requires a single searchable website, accessible by the public for free” of all government contracts, grants and awards. You can search the database in several different ways, including by company, Congressional district and state.
Also interesting, though not surprising considering what we’ve discovered about our new President, the act was co-sponsored by, then-Senator, now President Barack Obama (that’s first time I’ve written that, it felt great). Aside from his repeated calls for transparency, what gets the tech side going? The site has published an API, which means tech-savvy people from all over can access the raw data, mix it with other data freely available via the web and, perhaps, make discoveries not possible on the site alone - very cool.
January 21 2009 | Domestic Policy and Obama Administration and Technology | No Comments »
I’m not sure I completely agree with everything the former Labor Secretary asserts (more on this later), but Secretary Reich makes an awfully convincing argument over at TPM.
January 15 2009 | Domestic Policy and Economics and Politics | No Comments »
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