If you take a look around at what is happening in states and localities across the country, the time for immigration reform seems ripe. In 2009 states considered more than 1500 laws concerning immigrants and immigration, and 353 became law in 48 states, according the National Conference of State Legislatures. In various municipalities, countless others were proposed and/or passed. Many of these measures--both restrictive and inclusive--are borne out of frustration with the status quo.
For the better part of an hour, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been kicked back in the front cabin of Coast Guard One, the small but handsomely appointed plane on which she travels, chatting easily about the challenges of running the third-largest Cabinet department.
Most progressive members of the House will vote for health care reform. But there are a handful of liberals making loud noises about rejecting it. They may not be bluffing. Some of them, like Dennis Kucinich, actually cast nay votes against the House bill last November. But this time, every vote will count. So, those liberals may be the difference between success and failure.
News on health care reform will increasingly be about individual members, as President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi try to accumulate the 216--er, now 217--votes House Democrats need to pass the Senate bill. The widely held assumption among insiders is that the Democrats can count upon about 200 "yes" votes right now, or maybe a few more. There are, meanwhile, somewhere between 30 and 40 House Democratic votes up for grabs.
Neera Tanden points out that Obama's health care bill tilts strongly toward moderates:
All across the country, Republicans are fantasizing about a gigantic electoral tide that will sweep out deeply entrenched Democratic incumbents this November. In their telling, this deep-red surge will be so forceful as to dislodge even legislators who don’t look vulnerable now, securing GOP control of both houses of Congress.
But could this scenario really come to pass? That will depend, in part, on what type of Republican Party the Democrats are running against in the fall.
All across the country, Republicans are fantasizing about a gigantic electoral tide that will sweep out deeply entrenched Democratic incumbents this November. In their telling, this deep-red surge will be so forceful as to dislodge even legislators who don’t look vulnerable now, securing GOP control of both houses of Congress.
But could this scenario really come to pass? That will depend, in part, on what type of Republican Party the Democrats are running against in the fall.
WASHINGTON -- The word "partisanship" is typically accompanied by the word "mindless." That's not simply insulting to partisans; it's also untrue.
If we learn nothing else in 2010, can we please finally acknowledge that our partisan divisions are about authentic principles that lead to very different approaches to governing?
John McCain has a reputation as a legislator of uncommon civility and integrity--largely because, for most of his political career, he deserved it. But the transformation of McCain into just another hackish politician over the last few years has been almost painful to watch.
The latest potential Republican presidential contender is Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. I wrote about Daniels back when he ran the Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush, where his task was to use pseudo-populist demagoguery to deflect from the administration's disastrous fiscal record:
Regionalism is too often thought to require government initiative. As a result, progress is associated with full-on structural reform--and so the controversy (and usually frustration) begins.
Look to the Intermountain West, however, and it becomes immediately clear that regionalism need not require top-down government overhaul, and especially need not require it at the “super-regional” scale of the “megapolitan” spaces described by the Metro Program’s 2008 report “Mountain Megas.”
In the Mountain region, after all, a distinctive style of cooperative and voluntary “governance” has begun to gain force that simultaneously embraces regional and super-regional perspectives while affirming strong local decisionmaking prerogatives.
No less than 32 Front Range mayors backed the extensive FasTracks light and commuter rail system in the last decade. How did that happen? They worked steadily through the Denver area’s Metro Mayors Caucus, an informal “non-confrontational arena for the discussion of common issues and multi-jurisdictional challenges.”
Allowing individuals to purchase health insurance policies sold in other states is a key feature of every Republican health care proposal It's also a horrible idea, as Jonathan Chait and Ezra Klein have both explained today. You should read both of their critiques.
If Congress doesn't pass a climate bill this year, then, as I've mentioned before, individual states are likely to pick up the slack, either through their own efforts to promote clean energy or through regional carbon-trading systems. But an obvious pitfall of a regional system is that participation is totally voluntary, and a state can always leave for any reason.
The Washington Post has him nailed:
You don't usually hear a whole lot about what individual states are doing to tackle climate change. Surely those efforts, however noble, are just too small to matter—too local, too patchy. The only people who can really make a dent in U.S. energy policy are wandering around Capitol Hill, right? It's Congress or bust? Well, maybe. But that option's not looking too bright these days, given the fog around whether Congress will even pass a climate bill this year (or next year, or…).
The closest thing Congress has to its own Tea Party takes place every Wednesday afternoon, in the Gold Room of the Rayburn House Office building. At 1:15, more than 100 congressmen and one aide each gather for the meeting of the Republican Study Committee, and for a little over an hour, the legislators chat about their latest projects to reduce the size of government--or, at least, to stop the latest Democrat effort to expand it.
Granted, too-big-to-fail is an issue that has populist resonance on both right and left. Still, given McCain's trajectory over the last few years, this isn't necessarily a fight I'd have expected him to pick. Good to see him involved. Politico's Victoria McGrane has the story:
A few weeks ago we wrote about how the federal government’s guidance to target funds in “Economically Distressed Areas” is fundamentally flawed. It basically reinforces the ‘peanut butter’ approach of spending infrastructure dollars around very thinly.
Hillary Clinton's extemporaneous words have at times caused problems for the Obama administration. But you have to tip your cap to her quick and clever comeback here:
Several lawmakers mentioned the months of deliberation, which resulted in what Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) called a policy with "a little something for everybody."
Vice President Biden’s chief economic advisor Jared Bernstein seemed loathe to make headlines during a forum the Metro Program staged last week in Washington with the National League of Cities (NLC) on the nation’s deepening local government fiscal crisis. Instead, he stuck close to his text, raised smart academic questions about possible courses of action, and emphasized he was not expressing any official administration preferences about how to proceed.
And yet for all that, Bernstein committed news. Most notably, in a sign of gathering momentum for additional economic stimulus, he expressed a surprising openness to more direct federal forays into job creation as unemployment continues to rise.
First, Bernstein seemed to entertain the possibility of some sort of special fiscal relief for cities and other municipalities, acknowledging the possibility raised in a framing paper produced for the Brookings-NLC event that local government service cuts and layoffs could well impose a significant drag on the nation’s economic recovery just as the extraordinary interventions of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) trail off. Said Bernstein: “We’ve got to do more to translate economic growth and continue helping states and localities meet the deep fiscal challenges they face so as to [help them] avoid taking steps that make getting out of this mess that much harder.”
Sometime last year, I remember watching a video of Barack Obama addressing his campaign staff in Chicago. The talk took place after Obama had won the Democratic primary. It was a pep talk, and the theme was, “Now it’s really serious, we have to win.” One thing Obama said stood out. He said that if John McCain won, none of the important issues facing the country would be solved, and he singled out climate change. I don’t care what McCain promises, Obama told his staff, if he wins, he’s not going to do anything about it.
“Iguana / Alligator footage by Werner Herzog.”
This tidbit of information appears in the closing credits of Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, but it might more usefully have been conveyed in the opening titles, if only to give audiences a better idea of what’s in store. Though it borrows the first half of its name from Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film, and likewise tells the story of an out-of-control, drug-addicted cop, the movie is neither remake nor sequel; it’s a Herzogian exercise of another kind altogether. (Both directors have said they would have preferred the new film not be titled Bad Lieutenant at all, but Herzog was overridden by the producers, who envision a somewhat dubious franchise boost at the box office.)
We realize that the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to American soil is a complex problem and that people can object in good faith. But some of the rhetoric from the right on the issue has gone from NIMBY to just plain DSM-IV. Here are four of the stranger quotes from public officials:
--In light of this weekend’s revelation that a large number of prisoners may be transferred to a supermax prison outside Chicago, Representative Mark Kirk wrote President Obama: “As home to America's tallest building, we should not invite Al Qaeda to make Illinois its number one target.”
--Kirk was supported by fellow Illinois Representative Donald Manzullo: “Gitmo is not being closed, it's being moved to northwest Illinois. That hatred and animosity will also transfer to northwest Illinois. And the terrors and threats to Gitmo and the people who have become terrorists because of Gitmo, that hatred and animosity will also transfer to northwest Illinois, thereby making this area of the country and the entire country a magnet for terrorists.”
State government budget problems have been a well-publicized element of the nation’s ongoing economic crisis. Less remarked upon has been a lower-profile meltdown: the nation’s soon-to-be ugly local government fiscal mess. And now it’s time to tune in.
How do things look? The short answer is: brutal! And that is why four of America’s toughest-minded mayors--Mayors Michael Nutter, Elaine Walker, Scott Smith, and Chuck Reed of Philadelphia, Bowling Green, Ken., Mesa, Ariz., and San Jose respectively--will travel to Washington Thursday (read the joint Brookings/National League of Cities background paper here) and review what they are dealing with prior to remarks to be delivered by Vice President Biden’s chief economic advisor Jared Bernstein.
The mayors’ messages will likely be tart. With nearly nine in 10 city finance officers reporting a declining ability to meet local fiscal needs, city budget officers across America are projecting nearly a 3 percent average budget shortfall in 2009, and much deeper shortfalls in 2010 and 2011. What is more, while there is regional variation, the pressure is building in virtually all corners of the country, shaped by differences in metropolitan economies, state-local tax structure, and service demands. In Philadelphia Mayor Nutter has been hit by rising unemployment which has hurt income tax collections. In Mesa, Mayor Smith has been managing through the fiscal chaos generated by a colossal sales tax crash and maybe the nation’s worst foreclosure mess. And in all quarters things are almost certainly going to get much, much worse. That’s because while income and sales taxes are typically the earliest sources of city revenue to decline as job losses in a community increase and consumer purchases decrease, property tax collections--which make up the bulk of city revenue nationwide--decline much more slowly as real property assessments are adjusted to reflect declining housing values and have only just begun to slump.
Sarah Palin’s autobiography Going Rogue doesn’t have an index. Why? Well, I’m not exactly sure. But it sure makes finding gems in the text--such as the defense of that $150,000 clothing bill, the petty attacks on Katie Couric, and Palin-isms like “maverick” and “dang!”—a pretty tough slog. So, here’s an index. A really, really long and thorough one. Want to know where Palin celebrated one of her baby showers with her gal pals? It’s in here. Want to know how she feels about the ACLU, or Ashley Judd, or Steve Schmidt?
