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Policy 
Thu Oct 20, 2011 at 14:25:48 PM MST
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( - promoted by Fong)
Denver may have one of the most heated school board races in the nation. Faction fighters on both sides of the political debate at Denver Public Schools would have you believe their opponents do not care about children in Denver. Battle lines have been drawn pitting friend against friend, former ally against former ally, community leader against community leader. Accusations fly about outside interference in neighborhood matters, the relative power of teachers unions, and the hidden agenda of corporate America to take over our schools (to allegedly create more consumers and "bean counters" than critical thinkers and visionaries, some say).
Above all the din of the warring factions, one rational, knowledgeable voice continues to bring voters back to the reason the school board exists: doing what's best for the children and families of Denver. Emily Sirota, candidate in southeast Denver's District 1, is disinterested in the circus-like politics of the DPS Board.
"I don't belong to one camp or the other; I intend to make decisions based on research about how students learn best. I work collaboratively, bringing together all of the stakeholders. I am not running as a slate. I am an independent thinker", said the red-haired mother of ten month old, Isaac.
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Tue May 03, 2011 at 06:50:08 AM MST
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With all of the focus on the killing of Osama bin Laden over the last few days it is easy to get distracted from some serious issues that are running on their own clock and don't look like they are getting resolved, at least not yet. Specifically there is the issue of the debt ceiling that the Untied States will reach in another 12 days.
On May 15th we are going to be statutorily unable to borrow any more money as a nation. This is more than a bit of a problem in that we have just passed a budget that spends more than we will receive for the rest of this fiscal year and we are going to do the same next year, no matter if we adopt the Ryan budget or the Presidents budget or the one we should really be talking about the Peoples budget.
However there is a small ray of sunshine in all this gloom. Yesterday the Treasury Department announced that there had been higher than expected tax revenues recently, which means that the real "drop dead" date for the US government is now set at August 2nd.
Why is there a buffer zone between the day we hit all the money we can barrow and the day that we start to default on our debts and cause a world wide depression? It is because like any large organization the United States can move money around for a while. Which is not the same as saying that we can do this indefinitely or that there will not be affects from doing so, just that we don't run our finances on a completely ragged edge.
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Thu Apr 28, 2011 at 06:50:35 AM MST
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While we've been distracted by tons and tons and tons of Birther and Afterbirther coverage and the cracks filled in with the ramp up for the wedding of Kate Middleton and William Windsor there have been events going on in Syria that are increasingly pointing to more trouble in that Arab State.
Over the last few days tanks have been deployed in Deraa and other cities inside Syria. The various security forces have opened fire with live ammunition on protesters with more than 400 reported dead. It is hard to know exactly what is going on in Syria as the Assad government had expelled all foreign journalists. However in the days of the internet reports and video are leaking out.
Today there is a major development. The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that 400 members of the Ba'ath Party have resigned the government and the party over the killing and oppression of the protesters. Here are excerpts from two of the mass resignation letters:
From the Deraa officials:
"In view of the negative stance taken by the leadership of the Arab Socialist Baath Party towards the events in Syria and in Deraa, and after the death of hundreds and the wounding of thousands at the hands of the various security forces, we submit our collective resignation."
From officials in Banias:
"Considering the breakdown of values and emblems that we were instilled with by the party and which were destroyed at the hand of the security forces ... we announce our withdrawal from the party without regret,"
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Wed Apr 13, 2011 at 06:24:16 AM MST
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There is an apocryphal quote from the Vietnam War "We had to destroy the village to save it". I call it apocryphal because its attribution is murky and it has been distorted from the original quote over time. However it is still a powerful idea that leaders can get so close to their immediate goals that they lose sight of the bigger picture of what they are trying to achieve.
The quote comes from the story of Ben Tre , a provincial capital in the Mekong Delta. The United States Army made the decision to shell and bomb the town, even though there were large numbers of civilians in it, in order to break the Viet Cong hold on the town. They destroyed the town to deny it to the enemy. Not exactly a productive thing to do when you are fighting a counter insurgency.
It sees that this kind of thinking has infected the Congressional Republicans. Yesterday Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Dr. Evil -VA) said that he and his caucus, who control the House of Representatives, will not take up the issue of raising the debt ceiling until after it actually is hit. Right now the Treasury department estimates this will happen no later than May 15th.
Why is the House Majority Leader going to wait? Because he sees political advantage in playing with the nations credit rating. You see even when we a prevented by law from borrowing any more money there are ways that the Treasury department can shift dollars around for a few weeks to keep paying for things. They think they can get us through June and into July before those emergency measures run out.
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Mon Apr 11, 2011 at 07:14:28 AM MST
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But today I see a lot of black clouds on the horizon. The way that the budget fight played out makes me very concerned for the next big issue, the debt ceiling. As important as not shutting down the government was and is, putting the United States in a position where we even look like there is a question of defaulting on our debt is incredibly dangerous.
We owe a lot of money in the form or Treasury bonds. Right now we pay a very, very low rate of interest on that debt. Part of the reason that we do so is that everyone in the world is confident that the U.S. is not going to default on that debt.
The reason that we must raise the debt ceiling is that we just passed a budget that will spend more than we take in this year. That combined with the maturing of previously sold bonds means that we must borrow more money in the form of bonds to meet these obligations. The problem is that the amount we can borrow is limited by law and would have to be raised by Congress.
If they do not raise that limit then someone, somewhere is not going to be paid the money they are owed by the United States. That brings up the question of how safe any of those bonds are. When that happens the amount of interest that bond buyers require to loan us money will go up and everything the government does becomes more expensive. That is before we get into the follow on problems for the global economy where the United States represents 40% of the total.
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Mon Apr 04, 2011 at 06:38:15 AM MST
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It seems like a never ending story. We're on the brink of a government shut down, due to the complete and utter intransigence of the Republicans (you can't call it anything else when the Dems have caved and caved again and there is still no deal) to take anything but the completely arbitrary 61 billion in cuts and the riders that would defund EPA's control of greenhouse gasses (which Congress refused to make legislation on) and Heads Start and Planned Parenthood and public broadcasting (both NPR and PBS).
They insist, loudly and contrary to the facts, that this will improve our economy by reducing the deficit. When confronted with the fact that it this budget would cost between 200,000 and 1 million jobs, this year, Speaker Boehner (Spray Tan, OH) said "So be it".
Before this fight is even done the Republicans, in the form of Rep. Paul Ryan, are introducing their budget resolution. It would cut4 trillion ($4,000,000,000,000,000)in federal spending over the next 10 years.
Take a minute to think about that. We are talking about draconian cuts to programs that really help the middle class at an annualized rate of 100 billion this year (that is what the 61 billion the Republicans want to cut would be over a full year), and this guy wants to cut 400 billion a year in spending over the next 10 years.
Of course, this is the same Rep. Ryan who last year proposed a deficit reduction plan that was spread over 50 years and at the end of that time would not have balanced the budget. It is hard to understand how anyone can take someone like this seriously. I guess it comes down to the fact that he is the highest ranking Republican in budget matters so when he speaks, even if it is gibberish, it is news.
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Mon Mar 28, 2011 at 06:34:30 AM MST
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There is often a bit of cognitive dissonance when one finds oneself agreeing with even part of the agenda of ones political opponents. I find myself there, in small part, with the desire of the Republicans to simplify the tax code, at least in some areas. Of course the devil is in the details of what should be simplified and who pays the cost, and there, of course the Republicans and I part ways.
Pretty much everyone is familiar with the Alternative Minimum Tax. It is a tax provision that was put in place to prevent deductions from completely wiping out income tax obligations. It was enacted in its current form without an indexed increase for inflation, so it has been monkeyed with in an ad hoc basis as more upper middle class folks started making more money and running afoul of it.
What you might find shocking in the wake of the news that General Electric is not only paying no tax this year but getting around 2 billion in tax benefits (what a person would call a refund, but not really) is that it applies to corporations too.
In fact the threshold is rather low, with a corporation falling into the Corporate AMT at just $310,000 of income. The problem is that that companies like GE and B of A have all kinds of things they can do to avoid paying this tax.
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Tue Mar 08, 2011 at 07:29:03 AM MST
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We're flat broke. What do you think of when you read that? Having been busted more than a few times in my life it means no money and no prospect of getting any. Pretty simple and straight forward, unless, of course, you are the Speaker of the House; then "broke" can be parsed and spun and twisted.
We have all seen the great orange Speaker saying "We're broke" over and over again as he tries to sell a justification for what his masters (the Freshmen Republican "Tea Partiers") insist on him doing with the budget. It is really an effective statement, powerful, short and direct. It would be perfect if it were not for the fact that it is flatly a lie.
The United States has a deficit. That is true. The United States also has a lot of debt, but to say that we are "broke" is ridiculous. It is just another half truth scare tactic from the party that has made a performance art-form of the practice.
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Wed Jan 12, 2011 at 07:14:35 AM MST
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There is an argument raging on the blogs and elsewhere as to what caused Jared Loughner's murderous rampage. It is starting to settle down to the an argument about political speech, the Left pointing to the legion of violent and eliminationist statements form the Right and the Right throwing anything they can up to prove that Loughner was really a Lefty who flipped out.
The problem with this, as with all arguments with those on the Right is it becomes a pie fight with simple answers offered to a complex problem. You get idiocy like that from David Frum who insists this whole thing hinges on Loughner being a pot head. Which gets traction even though the usual stereotype of stoners is they can't get off the couch, let alone plan to assassinate a sitting Representative.
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Fri Dec 03, 2010 at 07:35:39 AM MST
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The lesson I have learned from a lifetime around and in politics is this: Sometimes you give away something you don't want to in order to get something you do want. Seems pretty straight forward, but it is, to my mind, the cause of more ink (or electrons) being spilled and more ulcers and heartburn than anything else. Being a maximalist about everything only works for so long, then the whole system falls apart.
Now our President seems to have over-internalized this idea, and has a really bad habit of going into negotiations by giving something the other side wants right away and then letting them and faint hearted Democrats cram more down his throat as the process goes on. Still there are times when you might not be able to get all you want and that is when compromise is required, no matter how galling.
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Mon Oct 04, 2010 at 05:55:48 AM MST
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If you're a Liberal or Progressive or just a vanilla Democrat who has been thinking about an electoral rout this fall, congratulations, you're a member of the elite. I can't really estimate how many of us there are, but the fact is that most of the nation did not really start paying attention to the 2010 election cycle until after Jerry Lewis brought his Memorial Day telethon to a close.
Sure there was lots of polling that said people were pissed at the government, who wouldn't be when there is nearly 10% unemployment and things don't seem to be getting measurably better for millions of people? The "Throw the Bums Out!" sentiment is always strongest before the vast majority of the people start paying attention to the actual candidates they have to choose between. That is part of why the generic ballot polling is almost useless. We don't get to pick between Democrat and Republican, we get to pick between two (or occasionally more) real people who speak and have a record we can judge.
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Thu Sep 23, 2010 at 06:22:38 AM MST
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There is going to be a lot of analysis on the Republican Pledge to America today, and here is some more! Instead of going into the actual policy, which others can and will cover better, I thought I'd talk about the wording. There is a lot to be learned by how a group talks about its policies. Communication requires a certain tailoring to the audience to be affective but the choices one makes in that tailoring can often be as telling as the message.
The first thing that I noticed is unlike the 1994 Contract with America this document is just a pledge. A pledge is a lot weaker than a contract. Sure the Founding Fathers pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to establishing a new nation, but the march of time has warn down the meaning of pledge. People pledge to fund drives all the time but don't pay; nations pledge to things like the United Nations Millennium Development Projects but they don't come through with the money.
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Wed Sep 22, 2010 at 06:23:01 AM MST
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Not much of value comes from gangs. Oh sure there are some rap artists who started as gang members and I am not going to minimize the art that they have created, but really they are the exception not the rule. Gangs in history and in contemporary America are generally associated with criminal activity.
Given this basic premise it is hard to understand why a long time United States Senator would want to form a gang, but Sen. Lieberman really has a bit of a chubby for them. It was eons ago in blog time, 2005, but there was a show down between Democrats and Republicans over judicial nominees. The Dems where holding up 11 applet court nominees and the Republicans were talking about the "nuclear option" of ending the filibuster.
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Tue Sep 14, 2010 at 06:31:06 AM MST
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There are a lot of angry people in the American electorate. There are the Tea Party folks who think that there has been some kind of revolution and they are in danger of losing their country (even though the country they imagine they were part of never really existed). They are fired up and they intend to vote for some of the most radically reactionary candidates in decades. They have helped nominate folks like Sharon Angle who believes that unemployment insurance is a bad thing, and thinks that it is not a huge problem if conservatives resort to so-called "Second Amendment remedies", basically armed insurrection.
Then there are another group of angry folks, this time on the Left. They were the ones who suffered through eight years of Republican lawlessness and were inspired by the promise of change the Obama campaign offered. Many feel betrayed by the fact that change has not been as intense as they imagined. They point, with good reason, to the promises made by the President on issues like Health Care reform and the reality of what the legislative process gave us. No public option, lots of compromise and a bill that while it does good things for some is not the kind of transformational change that the Left (myself included) wanted.
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Tue Aug 10, 2010 at 06:39:02 AM MST
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Dad, Uncle Otho, Uncle Kenny, all died before they were 70, Mom and my mother-in-law are both likely to die before that age as well. They all died relatively young for various reasons, but none of them lived to see the retirement age radical Republicans like Minority Leader John Boehner and his economic hit man Rep. Mike Pence want to make the new threshold for Social Security benefits. The specious argument that the tanned man and the ghost of budgets passed make is that if we don't do something about Social Security spending the program will not be able to pay the (meager) benefits that are promised. It has exactly no basis in fact, like most radical Republican policy ideas it is not designed to address a problem but to advance a political agenda, this time to dismantle a program that has been loved by the public to the long term credit of the Democrats.
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Sun Aug 08, 2010 at 12:58:59 PM MST
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( - promoted by Fong)
For me, there is something a bit amiss when our political conversations become focused on individuals, and not on the purposes that they serve. There are really two fundamental questions all of our political discourse should be ultimately anchored in: What are we trying to accomplish? and, How can we best accomplish it?
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Wed Aug 04, 2010 at 06:47:38 AM MST
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The new Director of Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (OEMRE) (sheesh!) Michael Bromwich said yesterday that the Obama Administration is looking at the possibility of ending the deep water drilling moratorium "significantly" earlier than the Nov. 30 expiration date. This is in response to the uproar from Gulf State lawmakers (most from the radicalized Republican Party) that it is killing jobs.
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Tue Aug 03, 2010 at 06:53:23 AM MST
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Let's start with an issue that comes up every time I do one of these Bodineism in the Republican Party posts, the complaint is I am doing Jethro a disservice by comparing him to the radical Republicans. I love Jethro. He is gormless in the extreme and while his lack of self-awareness and intelligence gets him in a peck of trouble, it is never ever done out of malice. That said, the ability of radical Republicans to spout the most blatantly stupid lines and say them with a straight face has no better analog in pop culture than dear old Jethro, hence the term Bodineism.
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Mon Jul 26, 2010 at 06:43:10 AM MST
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( - promoted by Fong)
Republicans have a real problem. Well, they have a lot of them but we are not talking about moral, genetic or hygienic problems, we're talking about a political problem. They pulled a fast one with their double round of tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. At the time we were told (against all evidence, and common sense) that if we cut the tax rate for the ultra-wealthy, if we allowed them to pass on their enormous wealth to their heirs without taxing it that there would be a robust economy, that millions and millions of jobs would be created. It was the old trickle down economy idea, dressed up for the big time.
The thing was even their own numbers showed that any positive effect would be wiped out in 10 years and then it would become a major problem in terms of budgets. So rather than face the music and the voters with this news, the Republicans put a sunset provision in the bill. It would only last 10 years, then revert to the same level of tax that the Clinton economic expansion had. This all looked pretty sweet to Republicans. They would be able to move the burden of paying for government to from wealth to work, and would have a whole decade to get these cuts made permanent.
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Tue Jul 20, 2010 at 06:25:24 AM MST
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One of the quirks of my personality (yes, I know you thought my whole personality was the quirks) is that I tend to think that nothing I do well is particularly unique. I am under the impression that everyone can write, that baking is a merely a matter of reading and that if people took the time everyone could analyze stacks of data and come to a rational understanding of how inputs and process interact to determine output quality. These are all skills that I have spent a little time and effort to develop, so I figure anyone could duplicate what I have done.
Where I don't expect people to be like me is in what they think. I assume that people are going to be of a different mind on some issues than me, we are all different in experience and temperament, so how in the world could we be similar in our views, even in large numbers? Yet the Republican base and many of its elected officials can't seem to get their heads around the idea that most of the nation does not agree with them and their agenda.
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