Ware On SOFA Negotiations: ‘Tehran Was In The Room’
Ware On SOFA Negotiations: ‘Tehran Was In The Room’
On Saturday, in what has become one of the rituals of Iraqi politics, a delegation of Shiite lawmakers and government officials met with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to review the latest changes to the status of forces agreement. According to “an official in Sistani’s office who spoke on the condition of anonymity,” Sistani “gave the Iraqi side the green light to sign it.”
On Sunday, Iraq’s cabinet “overwhelmingly approved a proposed security agreement that calls for a full withdrawal of American forces from the country by the end of 2011.” The agreement now moves to the full parliament, where it is expected to be voted on by next week.
Earlier today, I sat down with CNN’s Michael Ware, who has been reporting from Iraq for the last six years, to discuss the cabinet’s approval of the status of forces agreement. Specifically, I asked Michael to respond to the idea that the cabinet’s approval represents a “defeat” for Iran, as former Coalition Provisional Authority adviser Dan Senor argued this morning on Fox News.
Watch it:
WARE: I would argue that it could potentially be a victory for Iran. In some ways you can argue that these [the SOFA negotiations] have been a form of indirect peace talks with Iran to end that part of the conflict.[…]
Iran has a whip hand, or a key hand at least, within the political framework there. So during these negotiations between Baghdad and Washington, Tehran — whether we like it or not — was in the room. Tehran, in some ways, in some fashion, is a party to this agreement. And you’ll see that some of the sticking points and some of the nuances within the negotiations were issues that were very close to the heart of Tehran….Iran is in a position where it didn’t get everything that it wanted, but then neither did Washington — and indeed neither did Baghdad — but Iran still will feel that it has something of a comfort zone as a result of this in the form that it should hopefully pass the Iraqi parliament.
Meanwhile, NRO’s James Robbins thinks it’s funny that Muqtada al-Sadr has been “making firey demands that the US agree to conditions for the status of forces agreement that both sides had pretty much agreed on anyway.” I think it’s more funny that Sadr has been making these demands for years, that Maliki managed to steal some of Sadr’s nationalist thunder by adopting those demands and then getting the Bush administration to agree to them, and that Robbins thinks this represents a victory for the Bush administration.
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Iraqis on the SOFA: Definitely Maybe!
Iraqis on the SOFA: Definitely Maybe!
The New York Times’ Alyssa Rubin declares that the election of Barack Obama “is already beginning to shift the political ground in Iraq and the region.”
Iraqi Shiite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about American troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month.
“Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011,” said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party. “If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama.”
Buried in the middle of the article is what I think is a more accurate rendering of the scene:
Mr. Obama’s election also coincided with the American negotiators’ acceptance of many of the changes Iraqis demanded in the agreement, which created an overall picture that was easier both for the Iraqis and their neighbors — Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia — to accept.
The American negotiators sent a new version of the agreement to Iraqi leaders on Thursday that included many of the changes Iraqis had demanded. In public, Iraqis said merely that they were studying the document.
By contrast, the Washington Post reports that Iraq’s chief spokesman said with unusual forcefulness Thursday that his government will continue to insist on a firm withdrawal date for U.S. troops, despite American demands that any pullout be subject to prevailing security conditions.”
“Iraqis would like to know and see a fixed date,” spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in an interview in which he also reiterated Iraq’s position that American forces be subject to Iraqi legal jurisdiction in some instances.
Iraqi officials, who see President-elect Obama’s views on the timing of a U.S. withdrawal as consonant with their own, appear to be leveraging his election to pressure the Bush administration to make last-minute concessions.
While I think there’s little doubt that Obama’s election has had an effect on the calculations of Iraq’s political leaders, and strengthened their position against the Bush administration, there’s a danger in overstating the amount of influence that U.S. leaders themselves have in Iraqi politics, a consistent problem with Bush’s approach.
The SOFA in its previous form was effectively scuttled by prominent Shia clerics with influence on Iraq’s leading Shia parties, and it remains to be seen whether the changes accepted by U.S. negotiators will be enough to satisfy the ayatollahs. Unsurprisingly, several Sadrist leaders have already indicated that they are not.
The Bush administration has wasted a huge amount of time and political capital basically bargaining with Iraqi government to stay in Iraq. Rather than accept the inevitability of a U.S. exit, and then leverage that withdrawal to pressure Iraqi leaders to confront the difficult political issues which still persist, President Bush instead clung to a fantasy of a long-term military presence in Iraq, and now finds the impending arrival of a new administration being used as leverage against him.
You Don’t Want This, Wehner
You Don’t Want This, Wehner
Former Bush administration official Peter Wehner’s latest paean to the Iraq surge contains a lot of what we’ve seen before, but then steps seriously wrong.
Befitting the legacy of Commentary magazine’s longtime editor Norman Podhoretz, Wehner is less concerned with actually considering the practical implications of the moralistic national security policies he champions than he is with wielding that moralism as a bludgeon against his political enemies. Consequently, you will find no mention in Wehner’s article of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have been killed and maimed as a result of the glorious war that Wehner supported and shilled for. No reference to the cleansing and displacement of more than 4 million Iraqis as a result of the invasion and occupation that he continues to insist, in stone defiance of overwhelming, if not conclusive evidence to the contrary, is a foreign policy success. And certainly nothing of the jihadists who are now returning home — better trained, and more deeply indoctrinated — from the front that Wehner would have us believe represents a victory against global jihadism.
Wehner’s purpose is not to consider the Iraq war’s effects on America’s overall national security, but to hail the surge. But even here he stumbles. His assertion that violence in Iraq has returned to almost “normal” levels is accompanied by an unintentionally ironic footnote, which informs us that “’security incidents’ in Iraq are at levels not seen since early 2004.” Speaking at the Heritage Foundation earlier this month, General David Petraeus noted that attacks had decreased from a high of 180 per day in 2007 to 25 per day. 25 is better than 180, certainly, and our commanders and soldiers deserve recognition for that. But 25 terrorist attacks a day is not normalcy.
Obscuring that point is all in a day’s work for a partisan propagandist like Wehner. It’s part of his job to spin the winning of twenty dollars after the loss of a thousand as proof of George W. Bush’s poker acumen.
But Wehner also writes something that I think requires special attention. More »
Global Boiling Continues To Stoke California’s Fires As Bush Recklessly Does Nothing
Global Boiling Continues To Stoke California’s Fires As Bush Recklessly Does Nothing
Wildfires in Southern California this week “destroyed more than 50 homes and forced thousands of residents to flee.” “At least two deaths have been confirmed, more than 10,000 acres have been scorched, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency.” Just one week of bringing three wildfires under control cost over $12 million. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) rightly recognized that this problem is only going to get worse with global warming:
As the climate warms and wildland fires become bigger and more intense, a rapid response is critical to prevent the spread of fires.
And yet, as the San Jose Mercury News reports, “The Bush administration has failed to outfit massive California Air National Guard cargo planes for firefighting duty despite pressure from the military and elected officials—a delay that could have grave implications as the state confronts the worst of its wildfire season.” In April, Schwarzenegger told Bush it “would be reckless” to not have these aircraft ready. In July, more that 1,700 wildfires burned across California, at a cost of greater than $200 million. And October and November bring the peak of the southern California wildfire season, with Santa Ana winds fueling potentially catastrophic conditions.
Of course, Bush has not only made fighting wildfires harder by his mismanagement of the National Guard, but also by his reckless inaction on global warming. The San Francisco Chronicle explains the vicious wildfire-global warming cycle:
The risk of catastrophic wildfires like those that swept through the state the past two years is expected to increase as the world heats up, forests dry out and weather patterns shift, forestry experts said.
Studies have shown that fires in general are burning hotter and bigger and that fire season is coming earlier in the year. A recent study by NASA predicted lightning will increase about 6 percent as the amount of carbon dioxide doubles.
Research by the U.S. Forest Service shows that the average number of trees killed by fires increases due to a warmer climate and consequently less snowmelt. The data were bolstered by UC Davis scientists who have reported significant changes in weather patterns over the years, including less snowfall and more rain in the Lake Tahoe Basin contributing to drier forest fuels and more severe fires.
“It’s a vicious circle,” Pfister said. “Global warming leads to dryness, more fires, more health effects, more dead forests and less vegetation to take up the carbon. And this all adds to more global warming.”
2008 Retiree Would Have Lost $26,000 In Bush/McCain Style Private Social Security Account
2008 Retiree Would Have Lost $26,000 In Bush/McCain Style Private Social Security Account
The wild stock market fluctuations have wiped out $2 trillion in private retirement accounts in the last 15 months.
If John McCain and George W. Bush had had their way, millions of worker’s Social Security benefits would have been at risk.
To illustrate this risk, a new analysis from the Center for American Progress Action Fund finds that a retiree with a private Social Security account invested in stocks, along the lines of those proposed by President Bush and supported by John McCain in 2005, would have lost approximately $26,000 if they had retired on October 1, 2008 after 35 years of contributions to such an account.
Read the full analysis here.
But it could have been even worse. If the U.S. economy had undergone a decades long slump and performed like the Japanese economy over the past 35 years, the account would created a loss of almost $70,000.
In a rosier scenario, if the U.S. market had performed like the German market, a worker would have made almost $40,000 in their account. But this radical unpredictability is precisely the reason why draining trillions from Social Security to pay for these accounts is a very bad idea.
Check out a review of what the research from the 2005 Social Security privatization debate can tell us about John McCain’s plan to put retirement security on the stock market here.
To oppose the privatization of Social Security, sign the “Golden Pledge” here.
How Deregulation Killed The Wild West
How Deregulation Killed The Wild West
Our guest blogger is Todd Darling, a documentary filmmaker whose film, “A Snow Mobile For George,” is being featured tonight in Washington, D.C., by Reel Progress.
Back on January 13, 2004, when I left Los Angeles loaded down with cameras, winter gear, and a threadbare credit card, few, if any heads would turn at the mention of “deregulation.” Head movement would be limited to a nod, as in “nod out.”
Wall Street’s wipe out changes that. Now we realize that we let the fox into the hen house, and now the fox wants to be reimbursed for the chickens he ate. But, when I set out to make “A Snow Mobile for George,” a film about environmental deregulation, the concept of deregulation was too abstract for most viewers. That’s why I picked the environment because the effects of deregulation had no place to hide. My drive across America, trailing my two-stroke snowmobile, looking for tales of environmental deregulation, didn’t turn up a lot of joy. The reason why should not have surprised me. Simply put, the same deregulation that mangled the environment, also ruined people’s lives. Watch the trailer:
This discovery hit us hard out on a snow-covered ridge in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. A tall cowboy told us his land had been invaded by oil companies. They had come onto his land, uninvited, looking for natural gas — “Coal Bed Methane.” The companies drilled four wells every 80 acres, built roads, installed pipe lines, pumped away his water supplies, polluted his top-soil, installed noisy pressure stations, damaged the natural vegetation, and he had almost no say in the matter. He has been virtually forced off his own private land. More »
With McCain’s Tacit Approval, Bush Rushes To Open Grand Canyon To Toxic Uranium Mining
With McCain’s Tacit Approval, Bush Rushes To Open Grand Canyon To Toxic Uranium Mining
The Bush Administration is rushing forward with plans to mine the Grand Canyon for uranium, ignoring a command from Congress to cease such operations. Since 2003, mining interests have staked out over 800 uranium claims within five miles of Grand Canyon National Park. As Mineweb reports, “The Bureau of Land Management has published a proposed rule which rejects the House Natural Resources Emergency House Resolution enacted in June that bans uranium mining and exploration near the Grand Canyon National Park.” The Arizona Republic explains what’s at stake:
Never mind that the drinking water of more than 25 million people, served by the Colorado River, is at risk.
Or that Arizona Game and Fish warns about the impact on wildlife.
Or that Grand Canyon National Park is still dealing with the toxic mess from past mines.
The proposed BLM rule would not only reject the House’s emergency withdrawal of over one million acres of federal land near Grand Canyon National Park from new uranium mining, but also eliminate the provisions that allow Congress to make such withdrawals in the future. The proposed rule, published on Friday, has a remarkably short comment period, closing in less than two weeks on October 27. House Parks Subcommittee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) blasted BLM’s action, saying, “This last-minute move by this ‘see if we can get it under the clock‘ administration is cowardly.”
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been strangely silent on this issue, despite his claimed commitment to protecting the Grand Canyon from drilling:
But McCain’s claim to Roosevelt-style environmentalism has been badly bruised by his silence on uranium mining near the park and on the Navajo Nation.
“McCain gave us hope that he might be a Teddy Roosevelt type of Republican,” said Roger Clark, air and water director for The Grand Canyon Trust, a Flagstaff, Ariz., environmental group. “Since the beginning of his run for president, including 2000, that has kind of crumbled.”
The Arizona Republic’s editorial concludes that it’s “legacy time at the administration”:
Surely President Bush doesn’t want his to include tainted water and a contaminated landscape. We must keep the temporary ban on uranium mining near Grand Canyon.
Written comments should be submitted online or sent to Director (630), Bureau of Land Management, 1620 L St., NW, Room 401, Washington, DC 20036, Attention: RIN 1004-AEO5.
Draw Down In Iraq, Or Call Up The Draft
Draw Down In Iraq, Or Call Up The Draft
Our guest blogger is Sean Duggan, a Research Associate with the National Security at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Early last week, the Department of Defense announced 2009 troop deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. As part of this scheduled rotation, seven Army brigade combat teams (BCT) and two Army headquarter divisions consisting of nearly 22,000 servicemen and women will deploy to Iraq between winter and summer of next year.
In an election year fixated on the promise of change, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen are seeing none of it. Of the seven brigade combat teams recently notified, this deployment will be the second to either Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001 for four of the brigades, the third deployment for one brigade and the fourth for another.
While violence in Iraq may be down, the operation tempo for our soldiers and their families remains high. Today, there are 152,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, over 20,000 more than were in the country when the surge began in January of 2007. Because the Bush administration has refused to face up to the manpower implications of its open-ended commitment of forces—particularly in Iraq—by reinstituting the draft, it has been forced to deploy and redeploy active brigades without sufficient dwell time.
Of the Army’s 44 combat brigades, all but the First Brigade of the Second Infantry Division, which is permanently based in South Korea, have served at least one tour. Of the remaining 43:
- 9 brigades have had one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan
- 13 brigades have had two tours in Iraq or Afghanistan
- 15 brigades have had three tours in Iraq or Afghanistan
- 5 brigades have had four tours in Iraq or Afghanistan
Unfortunately, few Americans are paying attention. Today, the war in Iraq ranks a distant third on issues American voters feel are most important to them, far behind gas prices and U.S. energy policy and well behind the economy and jobs. This inattention extends to the media as well. As of last week, ABC did not have a single report on World News Tonight from its Baghdad correspondent in 40 days and CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq.
Never before have the American people asked so much from so few of our soldiers. If the president and his successor are committed to fighting the war in Iraq over the long term, he should have the courage of his convictions and call for reinstating the draft. If not, the only responsible course is to set a timetable to bring the troops home.
After Calling On Them To Finance His War And Tax Cuts, Bush Blames Foreign Investors For Crisis
After Calling On Them To Finance His War And Tax Cuts, Bush Blames Foreign Investors For Crisis
Last night, President George Bush addressed the nation, in an attempt to explain the current financial crisis and to build support for the administration’s $700 billion bailout proposal. In the address, Bush said that the crisis began after “a massive amount of money flowed into the United States from investors abroad because our country is an attractive and secure place to do business,” which led to easy credit and then to the housing bust. Watch it:
Bush, though, left out a large part of the equation. The problem isn’t simply that too much foreign investment came into the U.S. because of businesses. It’s that the U.S. had to borrow money from foreign nations at an alarming rate, after it dug itself into debt paying for the Iraq War while cutting taxes. This, as well as lax regulation and oversight of Wall St. on the part of the administration, contributed to the credit troubles.
A significant reason for the current $9.6 trillion federal debt has been the Iraq War. And while the Bush administration has been spending $12 billion a month in Iraq, it’s also been cutting taxes. The Center for Budget Policy and Priorities (CBPP) says Bush’s tax cuts accounted for 42% of the “unprecedented” explosion of the deficit in recent years, which of course adds to the debt. The total cost of the full cuts amounts to about $400 billion per year.
Thus, the U.S. had to turn to foreign investment for financing. Currently, 45% of U.S. Treasury securities are owned by foreign nations, with the most owned by China and Japan. Other nations owned less than 20% of these securities as recently as 1994.
Bush simply left out of his assessment the fact that much of the foreign investment went to finance a war and tax cuts that couldn’t be paid for.
Medical Professionals: ‘Thanks, But No Thanks’ For Deceptive HHS Rule
Medical Professionals: ‘Thanks, But No Thanks’ For Deceptive HHS Rule
Medical professions are saying “thanks, but no thanks” to the Bush administration’s proposed regulations allowing health care workers to opt-out of providing abortion and contraceptive services.
Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt has argued that the new rule is necessary to protect the “freedom of expression and action” of medical professionals, but medical professionals disagree. The American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics say that “doctors and nurses are already not required to perform abortions or sterilizations.”
Indeed, the proposed regulation would be redundant if it weren’t so expansive. By using an “opinion put forth several months ago by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists” as pretext to issue new regulations, Leavitt is potentially expanding the existing conscience exemption. Medical professionals have expressed concern about the consequences of the new rule:
Implementation of this regulation would effectively allow health care providers’ personal beliefs to override patients’ right to full disclosure of accurate information and available health care resources.
Similarly, in a separate letter to the HHS, 13 attorneys general have also complained that “the rule was too vague about what health care procedures may be withheld”:
The proposed regulation completely obliterates the rights of patients to legal and medically necessary health care services in favor of a single-minded focus on protecting a health care provider’s right to claim a personal moral or religious belief.
Thus, for the Bush administration, the new regulation are a bridge to limiting women’s access to reproductive services.The purpose of the regulation is to muddy the waters and allows conservatives to threaten “both the diversity of beliefs in our pluralistic society and the health and well-being of patients seeking care.”
UPDATE: Time is running out but there’s still a chance to act. You can submit comments on the regulation here or by emailing your comments to consciencecomment@hhs.gov by 11:59 pm EDT Thursday, September 25th.
Maliki: Bush Tried To Delay U.S. Withdrawal To Help McCain
Maliki: Bush Tried To Delay U.S. Withdrawal To Help McCain
In an al-Iraqiya interview on September 17, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki discussed the state of negotiations between the U.S. and Iraqi governments regarding the eventual withdrawal of U.S troops from Iraq. Maliki said that “perhaps one of the two most important points is deciding the final date.” Transcript via Open Source Center:
MALIKI: Actually, the final date was really the end of 2010 and the period between the end of 2010 and the end of 2011 was for withdrawing the remaining troops from all of Iraq, but they [the Bush administration] asked for a change [in date] due to political circumstances related to the domestic situation [in the US] so it will not be said to the end of 2010 followed by one year for withdrawal but the end of 2011 as a final date. Agreement has been reached on this issue. They are willing to respond positively because they, too, are facing a critical situation.
President Bush has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. withdrawal would be dictated by military commanders and the situation on the ground, and not by political considerations. Now, according to Prime Minister Maliki, the Bush administration has attempted to time a withdrawal in a way that would benefit John McCain and the Republican Party. I would say that I’m shocked, but of course, this is the way that the Bush administration has always treated national security, as just another piece in a political game.
Last week, the right-wing fever swamp was bubbling up over an article by Amir Taheri, in which Taheri claimed that Barack Obama had “tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.” Not only did the story turn out to be a complete fabrication, now we find out that the complete opposite is the case: It is the Bush administration that tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay a draw-down of the American military presence, once again playing politics with America’s national security, and effectively repudiating past claims that a U.S. withdrawal will only be “dictated by the facts on the ground.”
Two questions: What did McCain know about this, and when did he know it?
FLASHBACK: Six Months Ago, Paulson Said ‘Our Banks And Investment Banks Are Strong’
FLASHBACK: Six Months Ago, Paulson Said ‘Our Banks And Investment Banks Are Strong’
On Saturday, the Bush administration officially revealed its plan for a $700 billion bailout of troubled financial institutions. The New York Times called the plan “stunning for its stark simplicity,” and noted that the administration is “requesting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department.”
Yesterday, Think Progress pointed out that the Bush administration has a history of squandering taxpayer money, but that the bailout proposal has no oversight mechanism. And the man who would wield the “unfettered authority” is Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who, prior to the recent financial turmoil, consistently maintained that the U.S. banking system is “safe and sound.”
Last night, Paulson appeared on Fox News Sunday, where he was reminded of an interview six months ago in which he said “I’ve got great confidence in our financial market…Our institutions, our banks and investment banks, are strong.” Watch it:
Some are saying that we should simply trust Mr. Paulson, because he’s a smart guy who knows what he’s doing. But that’s only half true: he is a smart guy, but what, exactly, in the experience of the past year and a half — a period during which Mr. Paulson repeatedly declared the financial crisis “contained,” and then offered a series of unsuccessful fixes — justifies the belief that he knows what he’s doing? He’s making it up as he goes along, just like the rest of us.
Krugman added that, “basically, after having spent a year and a half telling everyone that things were under control, the Bush administration says that the sky is falling, and that to save the world we have to do exactly what it says now now now.”
However, an oversight mechanism is essential to ensure that the bailout benefits more than just the investment banking industry. As David Abromowitz and Andrew Jakabovics wrote for the Center for American Progress, “with appropriate oversight mechanisms, Congress and the public can monitor use of these authorities to ensure that America’s taxpayers, homeowners, and communities—not simply our investment firms—benefit from this extraordinary intervention and that the benefits are lasting.”
Bush’s Tax Cuts Look Even Worse In Light Of Federal Bailouts
Bush’s Tax Cuts Look Even Worse In Light Of Federal Bailouts
Tuesday evening, the Federal Reserve announced that it would lend troubled insurer AIG $85 billion, in return for a 79.9% stake in the company. This move comes on the heels of the bailouts of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and just months after the bailout of Bear Stearns. CNBC has put the total tab for the recent government rescues by the Fed and the Treasury Department at $900 billion.
The rescues, while necessary to prevent a wider financial meltdown, will cause the already near-record federal deficit of $407 billion to explode. Before the bailouts, the projected federal deficit for 2009 was $546 billion. But when President George Bush came to office eight years ago, it was projected that America would have a budget surplus next year of $710 billion. So what happened?
As an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows, 42% of the “fiscal deterioration” was due to the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003:
The key factors have been large tax cuts and increases in security-related programs. For fiscal 2009, some $1 trillion of the $1.3 trillion deterioration in the nation’s fiscal finances stems from policy actions, and tax cuts account for 42 percent of this $1 trillion deterioration.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), for his part, has proposed a doubling of the Bush tax cuts, which would blow an even bigger hole in an already-spiraling federal deficit. A Center for American Progress analysis concluded that McCain’s proposals would result in a deficit of $505 billion, before the government has to ante up for the bailouts. With America on the hook for $900 billion, and with the effects of Bush’s irresponsible tax cuts lingering, how will McCain pay for any of his proposals?
Bush Rations Health Care In Minnesota
Bush Rations Health Care In Minnesota
After arguing that progressive health care reform would ration care and deny coverage, the Bush administration “plans to drop Medicaid coverage for 18,000 low-income parents in Minnesota.”
According to the Star Tribune, the administration buried the $135 million budget cut “in a 29-page document outlining federal changes affecting the state’s subsidized health program,” MinneostaCare:
Most of those affected are parents of children who have been enrolled in the state children’s health insurance program (known as SCHIP)…The Bush administration’s opposition to covering parents with children’s health program funds, a practice used by Minnesota and a half-dozen other states that have their own programs for children’s health coverage.
The Bush administration argues that by denying coverage to parents, they can cover more low-income children. But a growing body of evidence shows that “expansions of parents’ coverage lead to enrollment gains among children.” In fact, “states that have expanded Medicaid coverage for low-income parents have experienced significantly greater gains in enrollment among eligible children than states that did not expand parents’ coverage.”
From a report by the Center for Policy and Budget Priorities:
Families USA also estimates that reducing federal funds to Medicaid acts “like a giant anti-stimulus package” that will lead to a loss in jobs and wages and “will force governors and state legislators to make increasingly difficult choices about providing state services.”
Which Eight Years Did McCain Prefer?
Which Eight Years Did McCain Prefer?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its monthly employment data, and the picture is bleak: the American economy lost 84,000 jobs in August, and the employment rate jumped to 6.1%, the highest in five years.
While productivity is up 4.3% since last year (people are working harder with better, more efficient technology), real wages have sagged, dropping .4%.
These numbers are a continuation of trends resulting from the policies of George W. Bush: when times are good, they’re only good for corporations and the wealthy, and when times are bad, they’re mostly bad for the middle class.
Take a look at the comparison in job growth from Bush’s presidency to the eight years before George W. Bush:
Unfortunately, John McCain plans to continue George W. Bush’s failed economic policies. Today, in response to the new job numbers, McCain’s campaign said “Americans are hurting and we must act to create jobs.”
They’re right, but that’s not what John McCain’s Bush-style economic plan would do.
Bush On Iraq Troop Numbers: ‘I’m Not In These Meetings, Because I Got Other Things To Do’
Bush On Iraq Troop Numbers: ‘I’m Not In These Meetings, Because I Got Other Things To Do’
Excerpts from Bob Woodward’s new book in this morning’s Washington Post add more detail to a portrait of a President who fidgeted while Iraq burned:
Publicly, Bush maintained that U.S. forces were “winning”; privately, he came to believe that the military’s long-term strategy of training Iraq security forces and handing over responsibility to the new Iraqi government was failing. […]
In October 2006, the book says, Bush asked Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser, to lead a closely guarded review of the Iraq war. That first assessment did not include military participants and proceeded secretly because of White House fears that news coverage of a review might damage Republican chances in the midterm congressional elections.
This is pretty consistent with past reports of a White House in which politics and policy were one and the same, in which matters of national security were considered in terms of how best to achieve political advantage for the President and his party.
Woodward also writes that Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the president’s commanding general in Iraq from 2004 to 2007, “came to believe that Bush did not understand the nature of the Iraq war”:
“Casey had long concluded that one big problem with the war was the president himself,” Woodward writes. “He later told a colleague in private that he had the impression that Bush reflected the ‘radical wing of the Republican Party that kept saying, “Kill the bastards! Kill the bastards! And you’ll succeed.” ‘ “
As we’ve written here before, quite a few members radical “kill the bastards” wing of the Republican Party are now part of John McCain’s campaign, and will likely be helping him plan those “other wars” McCain has promised American must fight.
Importantly, Woodward also confirms again that — despite the constant crowing of war supporters eager to exhume their reputations — the 2007 troop escalation “was not the primary factor behind the steep drop in violence there during the past 16 months.” Rather, factors like the Sadr militia “freeze,” the completion of large-scale sectarian cleansing, and the Anbar revolt, combined with a new counterinsurgency strategy which enabled greater cooperation between U.S. forces and the Iraqi population to reduce violence.
Further, as some predicted, the tactic of empowering independent Sunni tribal militias has yet to show results in terms of Iraqi political reconciliation. With Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki failing to make good on promises to find jobs for these some 100,000 Sunni militamen, and with Shia-dominated Iraqi government forces now arresting the movement’s leaders, there are few signs that that cutting deals with independent militias will result in a stable Iraqi state.
Bush Exploits Hurricane Gustav To Demand More Offshore Drilling
Bush Exploits Hurricane Gustav To Demand More Offshore Drilling
President Bush exploited this morning’s press briefing on the “follow-up efforts” to Hurricane Gustav to attack Congress about lifting the offshore drilling moratorium. Stating that “what happens after the storm passes is as important as what happens prior to the storm arriving,” he made the declaration that “our discussion here today is about energy.” Bush wasn’t referring to the 1.4 million Louisianans who have lost power due to the storm’s destructive force, and chose not to mention the 102 deaths caused by Gustav. Instead, he went on the attack:
I know that Congress has been on recess for a while, but this issue hasn’t gone away. And, uh, this storm should not cause members of Congress say well, we don’t need to address our energy independence. It ought to cause the Congress to step up their need to address our dependence on foreign oil. And one place to do so is to give us a chance to explore in environmentally friendly ways on the Outer Continental Shelf.
Watch it:
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough were both floored by Bush’s decision “to use another hurricane in Louisiana to promote offshore drilling at this point,” after he “performed so poorly during Hurricane Katrina.”
Bush’s tasteless politicization of an ongoing civil emergency repeated tired right-wing talking points. As Van Jones told the Wonk Room last week, Bush is selling false solutions and more pollution:
Let’s be very clear. Number one: There’s no such thing as American oil any more. These are multinational corporations. If you let multinational corporations drill all this oil, they’re going to sell it to the highest bidder, whether it’s China, or India, it doesn’t matter. Why would we throw away America’s beauty chasing the lost drops of oil, so multinational corporations can sell it to India and China?
And people also got to remember, we didn’t stop this as an environmental issue. We didn’t stop offshore drilling for the duckies and the fishies. We stopped it because coastline communities were suffering. Because the property owners, the children who live in those coastline communities — not when there were oil spills — but every day, when your child goes out to swim, he comes back covered in oil, you have to use gasoline to get the oil off your child. That was happening coast to coast
Transcript: More »
Census Data: The Importance Of Public Heath Care Programs
Census Data: The Importance Of Public Heath Care Programs
The decrease in the number of uninsured — from 47 million to 45.7 million — underscores the importance of public health care programs. As Len Nichols of the New Health Dialogue Blog rightly notes:
…a weakened economy and rising health care costs have led fewer Americans to buy private insurance and more Americans to turn to the government for safety net coverage. Let’s keep in mind, however, that the numbers released today are for 2007, before the economy really took a turn for the worse. Therefore, we can expect the reduction in private coverage enrollment and increased dependence on Medicaid to be magnified in 2008. This path places increasing strain on local, state, and federal governments who are already grappling with tough budgetary constraints.
Indeed, while conservatives continue to fear-monger and misrepresent public health programs as “inefficient rationed care,” “government run” or “controlled,” Americans are turning to them in greater numbers.
According to the new census data, in 2007 the percentage of people with private coverage dropped from 67.9% to 67.5%, while the number of Americans with government-provided health coverage increased from 27.0% to 27.8%. The number of children with private insurance also fell by 0.4%, and 1.2% more children received coverage through public programs.
This greater availability of care is the result of state, not federal, progress. President Bush’s refusal to adequately fund SCHIP and expand public health programs has forced state governments to pick up the slack. While the economy tempers prospects “for further progress,” “state efforts to expand Medicaid and SCHIP during 2007 reached a level not seen since the late 1990s.”
During 2007, “governors in 34 states offered plans to reduce the number of uninsured children, parents, adults, aged and disabled in their state through Medicaid expansions, SCHIP expansions…market-based approaches.”
The Kaiser Foundation offers this chart:
In fact, according to the new data, Massachusetts health reform — which has insured 439,000 new residents and cut the number of uninsured nearly in half — is responsible “for 24% of the decline nationally in the number of uninsured.”Last week, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released a report that underlined the important role public health programs like SCHIP and Medicaid play in providing health care to children. As the CEO of foundation pointed out, “programs like SCHIP are a true lifeline for vulnerable children. Hard-working parents need these programs, and their children benefit greatly because of them.”
Yesterday’s census numbers suggest that public health programs are a “lifeline” for all Americans who cannot afford private coverage.
Census Data: Most Americans Suffering Under Bush Economy
Census Data: Most Americans Suffering Under Bush Economy
Today’s new census numbers confirm the disproportionality of President Bush’s economic expansion. Unfortunately, the president’s economic policies — which were supposed to serve as “a rising tide that raised all boats” — have redistributed wealth to the richest Americans and left the middle and lower classes behind.
And while the new data “did show an uptick for 2007,” years of declining income and earnings outweigh this most recent growth.
Taking the new census numbers into account, most Americans lost money during the Bush expansion:
- Median household incomes down: 0.6% lower in 2007 than in 2000
- Men’s earnings down: 0.38% less in 2007 than in 1999
- Women’s earnings can’t keep up: continued upward swing but were unable to “overcome other drags on household income”
- More Americans in poverty: 5.7 million more people lived in poverty in 2007 than did in 2000
The Center for Policy and Budget Priorities notes, “never before on record has poverty been higher and median income for working-age households lower at the end of a multi-year economic expansion than at the beginning. The new data add to the mounting evidence that the gains from the 2001-2007 expansion were concentrated among high-income Americans.”
A new Center for American Progress report graphically presents the severity of the income redistribution:
Misery Index Hits 17-Year High
Misery Index Hits 17-Year High
Our guest blogger is James Kvaal, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
After eight years of economic mistakes, unemployment and inflation are both rising and American families are hurting. By one measure – the “Misery Index” made famous by Jimmy Carter – the economy is in its worst shape since mid-1991.
The Misery Index is simply the combination of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. It reached 11.3 percent in July. While still well below its heights in the 1970s and early 1980s, the Misery Index is now at its highest level since the first George Bush was president according to data from www.miseryindex.us.
The Misery Index was designed by Carter advisor Arthur Okun, who noted that inflation and unemployment figures often point in opposite directions and therefore neither gives a broad picture of the economy. The index climbs during periods of stagflation, which combine stagnant economic growth, high unemployment, and high inflation.
Stagflation puts Fed policymakers in a box. Cutting interest rates to spark the economy could make inflation even worse, while raising rates to fight inflation could worsen the downturn. Meanwhile, families are feeling the bite of hard times.
Bushonomics = McCainonomics: Corporations Win, Families Lose
Bushonomics = McCainonomics: Corporations Win, Families Lose
In a new report from the Center for American Progress, Senior Fellow Scott Lilly chronicles the “extraordinary transfer of wealth that took place between ordinary households and the extremely well-to-do” during the past eight years under President George W. Bush.
Under Bush’s mismanagement, workers’ real wages have declined even as corporate profits have skyrocketed, bountiful surpluses have been squandered into deep deficits, and the real engine of sustainable American growth — the middle-income American family — is straining under household debt, record gas prices, and the spiraling costs of health care.
Check out these charts from Scott Lilly’s report:
- Household incomes are down:
- Corporate profits are up:
- The richest 1% of Americans experienced the greatest income growth:
And yet, McCain wants to double Bush’s tax cuts for corporations and the richest Americans, increase the deficit with budget busting tax breaks, and burden middle class families with a flawed health care scheme that would raise taxes on many and deliver worse coverage to most. For American families, Senator McCain would do a heckuva job.
McCain Embraces Newt’s Big Oil Lie, Chants ‘Drill More, Drill Now, Pay Less’
McCain Embraces Newt’s Big Oil Lie, Chants ‘Drill More, Drill Now, Pay Less’
This is the third post in our investigative series on American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF).
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has completed his journey from “maverick” to the heart of the right-wing/Big Oil movement. His travels began last month when he abandoned his longheld opposition to offshore drilling. With increasing ease, McCain is shilling for the oil industry’s agenda. In today’s appearance before the Urban League, McCain said:
Last month, the President finally lifted the executive ban on offshore oil and gas exploration, and called on Congress to lift its ban as well. Lifting that ban could seriously lower the price of oil — and Congress should get it done immediately. We need to “drill more, drill now, and pay less at the pump.”
McCain is being “cruelly misleading” when he pretends ending the moratorium on Outer Continental Shelf drilling “could seriously lower the price of oil.” Only a month ago, McCain was honest about how useless it would be, saying “I don’t see an immediate relief,” just “a psychological impact that I think is beneficial.”
The old, straight-talking McCain has hopped a ride on the low-road express. McCain is raking in the Big Oil millions, and oil-industry lobbyists such as Nancy Pfotenhauer have taken control of the campaign. He’s using the “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” slogan of Newt Gingrich’s 527 corporation American Solutions for Winning the Future — the type of organization McCain once tried to ban — while Gingrich is in closed-door meetings with right-wing representatives and attacking Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) on Fox News. Rush Limbaugh counseled McCain to embrace the AWSF campaign on June 13, four days before McCain announced his support for offshore drilling:
It’s that simple. Drill here. Drill now. Pay less. We’re the United States of America. We can do it.
The day after McCain flipped, Rush gave his approval:
All right, all right, all right, drill here, drill now, pay less. Drill here. Drill now. Pay less. Folks, this is the issue.
Behind this common agenda is the same network of right-wing financiers that propelled Bush into office. There are 14 Bush Pioneers — the top fundraisers who bundled over $100,000 in contributions for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 — backing Newt Gingrich’s ASWF:
Fourteen Bush Pioneers, who funneled over $2 million to Bush’s election, have contributed over $4 million to Newt’s ASWF. Eight of those same right-wing money men are top McCain fundraisers, channelling $2 million into his coffers. Four — including top ASWF contributor Sheldon Adelson — are billionaires. Their agenda is all about “Winning the Future” for themselves.
UPDATE: In the question-and-answer period at the Urban League, John McCain dismissed the truth that lifting the offshore drilling moratorium couldn’t “seriously lower the price,” appealing to his talks with “the actual people that do the work, that are in the business”:
So I disagree with those experts and I’ve talked to the actual people that do the work, that are in the business that say within months and certainly within a very short time, we could have additional oil supply for this nation. So we ought to drill now.
Watch it:
Friends of the Earth: “By all appearances McCain has lost touch with reality.” The Sierra Club: “Senator McCain may ‘disagree with the experts,’ but that doesn’t make the facts go away.”
Bush’s ‘Sprint To The Finish’: Destroy The Planet
Bush’s ‘Sprint To The Finish’: Destroy The Planet
The Bush era of energy policy has been one of contempt for the planet and the economy — all for the benefit of Exxon and its ilk. Now he wants to tie our future to even dirtier, deadlier, costlier fossil fuels. Today in West Virginia, President Bush declared his plan for a “sprint to the finish” of his tenure:
We all want to be environmentally friendly people, but we also want to have practical policies that deal with the problems we face today and the problems we’ll face tomorrow if we don’t get going.
What are these “practical policies”?
— “We use about 1.1 billion tons of coal a year. That sounds like a lot to me. It — and so the challenge is, how do we make sure that this reliable source of U.S. energy remains in the center of our strategy?”
— “First, we ought to be drilling offshore exploration, what’s called the Outer Continental Shelf.”
— “Secondly, we ought to expand oil production by tapping into oil shale.”
— “We ought to be drilling in Alaska.”
— “I believe that one really promising source of energy, so we can power our automobiles and become less dependent on foreign energy, is coal-to-liquids projects.”
This is a call for a “sprint to the finish” of civilization as we know it. The Wonk Room has explained how coal-to-liquids, oil shale, expanded offshore drilling would benefit no one but corporate polluters — and would dramatically worsen the climate crisis.
Two weeks ago, former Vice President Al Gore, Bush’s 2000 opponent,