* FIRST READ: the defiant “NO” vote by House Republicans will boomerang on them

From FIRST READ this morning (1-29-09) … 

• it’s worth pointing out that the Republican Party is about as unpopular now as the president who just left office.
• December’s NBC/WSJ poll showed that only 27% of the country viewed the GOP favorably (versus 49% who said that about the Dem Party)
• a new Gallup analysis of the 350,000 interviews it conducted in 2008 finds the Democratic Party leading in every state in the nation except in Alabama, Kansas, Nebraska, Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah.

LMW COMMENT … the defiant “NO” vote by House Republicans will boomerang on them. Opposing an enormously popular President and voting against a stimulus package that the country overwhelmingly supports is stupid politics. Look for significant Republican support in the Senate, responding favorably to President Obama’s outreach to them, and more than a few changed votes in the House when the bill is ultimately returned from the joint committee for final vote in both houses.

* KRISTOF: there are no simple answers for terrorist prisoners

Nicholas Kristof writes in the 1-29-09 NYT (thanks to Moody for the link) …

• President Obama is resisting calls for an investigation into torture and other abuses during the Bush years, so the chance to learn from our mistakes is slipping away.
• The first step is to appoint a high-level commission — perhaps a McCain-Scowcroft Commission? — to investigate torture, secret detention and wiretapping during the Bush years, as well as to look ahead and offer recommendations for balancing national security and individual rights in the future.

LMW COMMENT … I am hearing arguments from intelligent people who say we should bring all the Gitmo prisoners to trial in U.S. courts. I think this is not the way to go. Convictions under U.S. rules of evidence, without credible witnesses or documents, are unlikely. But just holding the prisoners with no charges or convictions is equally impractical. We do need a separate, viable, fair process for the existing prisoners that might not be totally transparent for legitimate national security reasons. We also need a plan for future prisoners. There are bad people out there who want to hurt us. We should look for them and prevent them from carrying out their plans; we should not wait until after they have acted. So we need a process for finding, arresting, interrogating and imprisoning these people, perhaps forever if the terrorist threat continues indefinitely. These people are not analogous to POW’s captured on a battlefield, or even to spies as we knew them in the cold war years. We need different procedures. Perhaps a commission to discuss this rationally would be a good start.

read the entire column at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/opinion/29kristof.html?ref=opinion

 

* ZAKARIA: the next few days on the stimulus package really matter

Fareed Zakaria writes in NEWSWEEK (1-29-09) …

•  President Barack Obama will have to quickly start planning for a set of more extraordinary measures to pull the United States out of its current, unsustainable economic condition.
• The American economy is entering its sharpest economic contraction since 1974—a recession that is likely to be the longest since the Second World War.
• But that’s not the worst of it. The American financial system is effectively broken. Without a functioning financial system, even a massive stimulus will not restore the economy to a normal growth trajectory.
• The Obama economic team knows that there is no simple answer to this extraordinarily complex situation. And yet the government has to do something. Without large-scale action, the financial system will keep bleeding.
• The politics of this are even worse. The American public believes that we have already spent far too much money on bailing out the banks. But the economic fact is that we have not spent enough. Speed is also crucial.
• There remains a spirited debate over what should be done now. But at its heart everyone seems to agree with former Treasury secretary Hank Paulson’s original diagnosis—the problem is that banks have huge amounts of bad assets (related to mortgages) on their books.
• Tackling the banks will not be the end of these problems. As President Obama has often pointed out, until the housing market stabilizes, the crisis will continue. Housing is what underpins many of these toxic assets.
• This current crisis has resulted in a deep erosion of American power that we have not fully understood. I have traveled to Europe, Asia and the Middle East in the past three months and am writing this from Canada. The attitudes of officials and businessmen range from shock to rage at what they see in the United States.
• The most important way for President Obama restore America’s credibility and influence in the world is to rescue the American model. Obama’s rhetoric suggests that he understands this issue. But does Congress? Can the American political system rise to the challenge?

LMW COMMENT … Fareed Zakaria, as always, offers perceptive and comprehensive analysis. He alone is worth the price of a subscription to NEWSWEEK. On the issue of the economy, I have previously predicted that President Obama’s main problem will be the U.S. Congress, and not just the Republicans, bad as they are. Now that the stimulus package has passed the House (which must be the originator of all revenue bills) the real debate can begin in the Senate. Here we will see if Republicans truly wish to cooperate in the nation’s interest or whether they are limited to narrow ideological political objectives, whether they will be a constructive minority party or just the blowhard organ of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. Here we will also see if the majority Democrats in Congress can participate in meaningful compromise and adopt at least some of the valid ideas of the Republicans. On both sides of the aisle, we will see if Barack Obama’s bi-partisan initiatives can bear fruit. And it’s not just politics; it really matters for all of us.

Read the entire article at … http://www.newsweek.com/id/181407

 

* NYT: illegal acts by the Bush crowd should be investigated and, if the evidence is there, prosecuted

From an editorial in today’s NYT (1-29-09) …

• Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should have considered himself a lucky man when he was allowed to resign in disgrace in August 2007 without being hauled into Congress on perjury or contempt charges.
• No one in the Bush administration — certainly not Mr. Gonzales — has offered evidence that torturing prisoners produced reliable information.
• It did undermine the law, further endanger American soldiers who might be captured in the field and destroy the nation’s image.
• That smug self-assurance should be another powerful reminder to the White House of the need for an unsparing review of all of Mr. Bush’s policies on torture, wiretapping and executive power.
• Only by learning the details of those disastrous decisions can the nation hope to undo the damage and make sure these mistakes are not repeated.

LMW COMMENT … It may be that delving into the illegal Bush policies and actions regarding wiretapping, Gitmo, and torture would inhibit a spirit of cooperation with Republicans. It is a worthy goal, as President Obama has said repeatedly, to “look forward.” BUT …  if America is to regain its rightful pride in the ideals that make our country a special place in this world, we cannot ignore criminal behavior by our highest leaders. Congress won’t act. The Democratic majority in Congress has shown it is no more capable of competent action than the Republicans: the failure to demand accountability for the $350 billion in bailout money proves that Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi et al are still the same bunch of wimps they have been for the past two years since achieving a majority. But President Obama can and should act. Once the new Attorney General is confirmed, he should launch an exhaustive review to identify illegal behavior by the Bush crowd, and if there is evidence to support it, he should bring prosecution.

Read the entire editorial at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/opinion/28wed2.html?ref=opinion

 

 

* Herbert (NYT) … why is anyone listening?

Bob Herbert writes in the NYT …

• What’s up with the Republicans? Have they no sense that their policies have sent the country hurtling down the road to ruin?
• The G.O.P.’s latest campaign is aimed at undermining President Obama’s effort to cope with the national economic emergency by attacking the spending in his stimulus package and repeating ad nauseam the Republican mantra for ever more tax cuts.
• The question that I would like answered is why anyone listens to this crowd anymore.
• This is the party that preached fiscal discipline and then cut taxes in time of war.
• This is the party that still wants to put the torch to Social Security and Medicare.
• Why is anyone still listening?

LMW COMMENT … President Obama will listen, but (I surely hope) will not bend from the principles and the people who elected him.

Read the entire article at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/opinion/27herbert.html?_r=1

 

* Republicans … a time to listen, and a time to ignore

Ari Berman posts on THE NATION …

• Republicans, having driven the economy into a ditch during the last eight years, are now opposing the one piece of legislation–an economic stimulus–that might turn things around.
• It’s going to be very difficult for Obama to rationally negotiate with many of them. Obama himself seems to have reluctantly realized that, telling a gathering of House Republicans, “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.”
• When the number two Republican in the House, Rep. Eric Cantor, complained of a provision in the stimulus bill that would help low-income workers, Obama responded: “You’re correct, there’s a philosophical difference, but I won (the election), so we’re going to prevail on that.”
• Quite right. Elections have consequences and the public put Democrats squarely in control of Washington for the first time since 1992. 
• It’s smart politics for Obama to listen to Republicans but bad policy to let them dictate his legislative agenda.

LMW COMMENT … Couldn’t agree more. President Obama should talk with Republicans, listen to their ideas, accommodate them if it improves the legislation, but ignore them if all they do is stick to the narrow-minded counter-productive agenda of the past 8 years which the country has quite soundly rejected. 

Read the entire post at … http://www.thenation.com/blogs/state_of_change/402076/partisanship_isn_t_a_dirty_word

* healthcare … let’s do what works

Atul Gawande writes in NEW YORKER …

• Every industrialized nation in the world except the United States has a national system that guarantees affordable health care for all its citizens. Nearly all have been popular and successful. But each has taken a drastically different form, and the reason has rarely been ideology. Rather, each country has built on its own history, however imperfect, unusual, and untidy.
• The 2003 prescription-drug program for America’s elderly aimed to expand the Medicare insurance program in order to provide drug coverage for some ten million elderly Americans who lacked it, averaging fifteen hundred dollars per person annually. 
• The White House, congressional Republicans, and the pharmaceutical industry opposed providing this coverage through the existing Medicare public-insurance program.
• Instead, they created an entirely new, market-oriented program that offered the elderly an online choice of competing, partially subsidized commercial drug-insurance plans. It was, in theory, a reasonable approach. But it meant that twenty-five million Americans got new drug plans, and that all sixty thousand retail pharmacies in the United States had to establish contracts and billing systems for those plans.
• On January 1, 2006, the program went into effect nationwide. The result was chaos.
• This is the trouble with the lure of the ideal. Over and over in the health-reform debate, one hears serious policy analysts say that the only genuine solution is to replace our health-care system (with a single-payer system, a free-market system, or whatever); anything else is a missed opportunity.
  • But this is a siren song. Grand plans admit no possibility of mistakes or failures, or the chance to learn from them. If we get things wrong, people will die. 
  • This doesn’t mean that ambitious reform is beyond us. But we have to start with what we have. It won’t necessarily be clear what the final system will look like.
  • Massachusetts, where I live and work, recently became the first state to adopt a system of universal health coverage for its residents. It didn’t organize a government takeover of the state’s hospitals or insurance companies, or force people into a new system of state-run clinics. It built on what existed. The results have been remarkable. After a year, 97.4 per cent of Massachusetts residents had coverage, and the remaining gap continues to close.

LMW COMMENT … this is an excellent article that gets past ideology to a consideration of what is likely to work. President Obama, when he gets to healthcare reform, is likely to take this sort of pragmatic approach. We can help by pushing back against the “only my way is best” approach likely to be pushed by Democrats, Republicans, AARP, the AMA, the pharmaceutical companies, and many others.

Read the entire article at … http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/26/090126fa_fact_gawande

Atul Gawande became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1998. Also a surgeon, he completed his surgical residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, in 2003, and joined the faculty as a general and endocrine surgeon. He is also an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, and the associate director of the B.W.H. Center for Surgery and Public Health

* email from the President

Lewis –

Thank you for being part of the most open inauguration in our nation’s history. As we begin the work of remaking America, we must draw on the common hopes that brought us together this week. I’m counting on you to keep the spirit of unity and service alive.

You can visit  …  http://www.whitehouse.gov/ … to learn about our plans to bring change to America, and how you can get involved in the work ahead.

We face many challenges. But we face them as one nation. And we have seen, time and time again, that there are no limits to what we can accomplish when we stand together. Our journey is just beginning.

Thank you for all you do,

President Barack Obama

LMW COMMENT … I never used to get emails from the President asking for input (or for anything else). This is good.

* Obama’s Geithner compromise

JACKIE CALMES and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN write in the NYT …

•  Timothy F. Geithner, Mr. Obama’s choice to be Treasury secretary, was grilled less about his prescriptions for the perilous times than about his personal failure to pay more than $34,000 in payroll taxes earlier in the decade.
• Mr. Geithner insisted his nonreporting of the payroll taxes on income from the I.M.F. from 2001 to 2004 were mistakes that were, in his words, careless and avoidable but unintentional.
• Despite the fire, senators of both parties predicted Mr. Geithner would be confirmed. The Finance Committee will vote Thursday morning. The full Senate could vote next week, but Democrats said timing would depend on agreement from the Senate Republican leadership.

LMW COMMENT … Geithner will be confirmed and we fervently hope he will be effective as Treasury Secretary and help lead us out of our economic debacle. BUT … he did not offer the Senate committee a plausible explanation of why he failed to pay certain 2001-02 taxes after IRS audited and directed that he pay the same taxes for 2003-04. Did IRS know about the prior years but say he didn’t have to pay? Had the statute of limitations expired? It is inconceivable to me that Geithner simply didn’t remember the 2001-02 taxes, not after paying the substantial sum including penalties for 2003-04. It seems to me he thought he could legally get away without paying the prior years, so he did. Maybe most U.S. taxpayers would have done the same. The Obama response is interesting. Geithner was told, in November, to pay the prior years, which he apparently did not legally have to do, and Obama decided to stick with him as the best choice for a crucial post. There is a interesting coming together of ‘doing the right thing’ and ‘compromising when compromise is needed.’ I think we’ll see this pragmatic approach again and again. President Obama is unlikely to ever cut off his nose to spite his face.

Read the entire article at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/business/economy/22treasury.html?_r=1&hp

* in science as in so many other areas, welcome to President Obama

GARDINER HARRIS and WILLIAM J. BROAD write in the NYT …

• When he vowed in his Inaugural Address to “restore science to its rightful place,” President Obama signaled an end to eight years of stark tension between science and government.
• On issues like stem cells, climate change, sex education and contraceptives, the Bush administration sought to tame and, in some cases, suppress the findings of many of the government’s scientific agencies.
• Besides discouraging scientific pronouncements that contradicted administration policies, officials insisted on tight control over even routine functions of key agencies.
• In early 2004, more than 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement claiming that the Bush administration had systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry.
• The administration, it said, had “misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies.”

LMW COMMENT … George Bush’s rejection of science was a less well publicized but still very important way in which he diminished our country. With his lack of curiosity and limited intelligence, Bush never seemed to understand the value of science. It is so good to have a real president again instead of the caricature that occupied the oval office for the past 8 years.

read the entire article at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22science.html?hp