Democrats should call the Republicans' bluff and hold hearings to let GOP senators air their reasons for repealing the birthright to citizenship that is part of the 14th Amendment.
It is especially ironic that the leaders of the repeal effort include Sens. Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, Republicans from South Carolina, the original laboratory for bad government ideas. You may recall that South Carolina was the principal instigator of the Civil War. The 14th Amendment was passed in 1868 largely to prevent the unreconstructed Confederates who controlled Southern states from denying the rights of citizenship to newly freed slaves. Of course, the thugs won anyway and the Supreme Court in 1883 decided - in an aside - that the 14th Amendment gave civil rights to corporations even as the courts declined to uphold the civil rights of black citizens in the South.
There are a lot of angry people out there, and we have plenty of reasons to be mad. But that doesn't mean we have to be stupid.
The Tea Party movement claims to be a populist organization that spontaneously erupted from the grassroots to protest Barack Obama's usurpation of the White House and his "socialist" attempt to provide an economic stimulus and health insurance for the 44 million working poor who earn too much for Medicaid but are too young for Medicare.
But those "grassroots" were groomed by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey's FreedomWorks, political advocacy groups linked to oilman David Koch and other Republican operatives. Events were promoted by Rupert Murdoch's Fox "News" and the Wall Street Journal. Also, there are several Tea Party groups, but Tea Party Nation, a for-profit corporation, charged $549 for a convention in Nashville that drew about 600 teabaggers to hear such luminaries as former US Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who longed for the good old days of literacy tests for voters, and former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), who thinks we should abandon hope for change.
Much of the debate on health-care reform has concerned the creation of the "public option," which is limited in scope and would not take effect until 2013, and the amendment demanded by Catholic bishops that would expand the prohibition on federal funds paying for abortions to also prohibit subsidized private insurance coverage for abortions. But HR 3962 (the Affordable Health Care for America Act), as it emerged from the House on Nov. 7, would provide important help for middle-income families immediately. Effective Jan. 1, it would stop insurance companies from arbitrarily rescinding coverage when patients file claims. It strips the health insurance industry of its exemption from antitrust laws covering market allocation, price fixing and bid rigging. And the bill would end lifetime caps on how much insurers will cover, which is a leading cause of family bankruptcy
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, told The Progressive Populist Thursday that there will be 60 votes to bring a health care reform package to the floor for Senate debate this fall. Harkin, the new chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in an interview that there will be the necessary 51 votes to pass the full bill with a public option included.
An angry crowd opposed to health care reform disrupted a town meeting held by Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Austin) at an Austin grocery store Saturday and followed him to another town meeting in nearby Bastrop in the latest in what appears to be an organized right-wing effort to disrupt Democratic members of Congress. See more at Progressive Populist. Cross posted from DailyKos.com.
After six months in the White House, President Barack Obama is still looking good as he settles in. But he needs our help.
Some liberals have lost hope in Obama because he has failed to fulfill some of his campaign promises. He hasn't closed Guantanamo. He hasn't stopped the military from discharging gay service members. He hasn't thrown Dick Cheney in jail. (OK, he never promised that, but we had hopes.)
Doing away with local car dealers is a short-sighted, anti-consumer move that won't help Chrysler or General Motors sell more cars but it threatens more than 100,000 jobs at dealerships.
Chrysler has notified 789 dealers with 40,000 employees that it would end their franchise agreements in June and the company would not buy back unsold vehicles and parts inventories.
GM has told 1,100 dealerships with more than 63,000 workers that it will not renew franchise agreements next year.
Pity the Grand Old Populists. One day the Republican grandees are railing against President Obama's Treasury secretary for standing by while AIG gave bonuses to the traders who helped to wreck the economy. Then the memo comes from GOP Central that they are opposed to the Democratic move to claw back those hateful bonuses with a 90% tax. It appears that Republicans and their ideological mentors hate tax increases a lot worse than they hate nameless greedy insurance company executives.
But Wall Streeters really resent it when we rubes stick our noses in their doings. They were alarmed when the House, with 85 Republicans joining the Democratic majority, passed a bill that would slap a 90% tax on bonuses for executives of government-rescued corporations whose family incomes exceed $250,000.
When John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, I was 6 years old, so his election didn't mean as much to me as it did for my parents. For them, JFK's election legitimized Irish Catholics in American society, more than a century after our ancestors had immigrated to the United States.
Before JFK, many Catholics felt they had something to prove, particularly in Northwest Iowa, where Irish Catholic was about as "ethnic" as you got in the 1950s and '60s. Since JFK, we haven't sent any more Catholics to the White House, but that's because we have better things to do (mainly fighting amongst ourselves).
Now, whatever else happens, a clear majority of voters in the United States have put their trust in a black man to lead us into what appears to be the roughest economic patch since the Great Depression. It isn't the end of racism, as some Republicans have suggested, but from here on African-American parents won't be jiving their kids when they tell them they can grow up to be president. Regardless of whatever else Barack Obama accomplishes in the next four years, he has raised aspirations.
As we wait for the most highly-anticipated inauguration in a generation, President-elect Barack Obama has demonstrated that he belongs in the Oval Office. His approval ratings have topped 70% in Gallup polls as he has put together a Cabinet that should provoke lively debates but it also will keep progressives worried about who's got Obama's ear.
Obama's choices for labor secretary and trade representative are a good example of the potential for creative tension: Organized labor applauded the selection of Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) as labor secretary. The daughter of immigrants, whose father worked at a battery recycling plant and was a member of the Teamsters union, Solis has been a steady pro-labor and progressive representative in four terms in the House from the Los Angeles area. She took a leadership role in fights to help workers organize and bargain collectively, to reframe the trade debate and to defend the rights of workers in the US and abroad during eight years of the most anti-labor administration in modern history. Solis has voted with the AFL-CIO labor federation 97% of the time since coming to Congress-which some Republicans think is an argument against her.
More troubling is Obama's choice of former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk as trade representative. Kirk is a "free trader," a pro-business Democrat who supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and Permanent Normal Trade Relations for China but he opposed fast track for trade deals in an unsuccessful 2002 Senate race. Sure, he looked good against John Cornyn but now he will be responsible for implementing Obama's pledges to create a new trade and globalization policy for Americans.
Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, said on Bill Moyers' Journal on PBS Jan. 9 that the nomination of Solis and Kirk shows Obama was serious when he says he wants to see people debate the issues. "Then he'll make the choice." But asked by Moyers if he was worried about that, Gerard replied, "Absolutely I'm worried about that."
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