Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to affect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.
Tea Party Plan: No Minimum Wage, No Social Security
Leading Tea Party candidates pushing radical constitutional theory to abolish minimum wage and Social Security. Time's Adam Cohen: "Since minimum-wage opponents have no reasonable chance of prevailing in Congress or state legislatures, they are turning to their last best hope: the judiciary ... politicians like [WV's John] Raese and [AK's Joe] Miller ... are starting to lay the groundwork. Conservatives like them are looking back to an earlier, pre–New Deal era, from the late 1890s through the 1930s, when conservative courts routinely struck down laws designed to help working people ... if conservatives are ever able to bring [that era] back, the courts could do away with far more than the minimum wage. They could revive now discredited ideas of liberty of contract and outdated views about the scope of the Federal Government's power to pass all sorts of federal laws, including those related to the right to join a union, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and even Social Security."
GOP plans to hobble EPA chief with incessant requests to testify, if its takes control of Congress. Politico: "Congressional Republicans planning an assault on the Obama administration’s environmental record aim to turn Lisa Jackson into public enemy No. 1 ... 'I think she’ll be very much in demand on the Hill, at times not of her choosing,' said a former staffer on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. 'It will diminish her free time, shall we say.'"
GOP candidates often rail against spending, offer few specific cuts and back plans that increase deficit. NYT: "... Republican candidates and party leaders are offering few specifics about how they would tackle the nation’s $13.7 trillion debt, and budget analysts said the party was glossing over the difficulty of carrying out its ideas ... the $1.1 trillion cost over the next 10 years of the Medicare prescription drug program, which the Republican-controlled Congress adopted in 2003, by itself would add more to the deficit than the combined costs of the bailout, the stimulus and the health care law ... most Republicans are calling for the permanent extension of all Bush-era tax cuts, which would add $700 billion more to the deficit ... many Republicans are calling for a repeal of the health care law, a step that would actually increase the deficit by more than $100 billion ..."
Stimulus results good, but not good enough, to give Dems a boost, reports AP: "The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported last month that 1.4 million to 3.3 million people are employed because of the program ... The stimulus program has kept many state and local governments fiscally viable, and the money has been a boon to the construction industry, financing thousands of road and bridge projects. In other areas — tax cuts, Medicaid health benefits, unemployment checks, food stamps — the stimulus has provided some relief to millions suffering in a tough economy ... Still, the stimulus has proved a powerful weapon in the GOP arsenal because its benefits are unclear for many voters..."
W. Post's Steven Pearlstein cuts Dems slack on the economy: "...Obama and the Democratic Congress were dealt a lousy economic hand, and they've played it about as well as anyone could ... given the magnitude of the financial crisis and the global imbalances that gave rise to it, a prolonged period of slow growth and high unemployment was almost inevitable. The political reality, however, is that voters are unwilling to accept that economic reality."
Rep. Henry Waxman hits the Chamber of Commerce, at the Chamber of Commerce. HuffPost's Amanda Terkel: "At an event sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday ... Waxman expressed concerns with reports that the Chamber may be spending foreign money on its political activities, saying that the group loses credibility with poor disclosure." Waxman also presses Chamber to back climate bill reports The Hill.
Truthdig's Richard Reeves sees the flood of secret corporate cash creating another Watergate: "The last time we ran an election in the shadows was 1972. Watergate. That year, with the re-election campaign of President Nixon, cash literally flowed into the White House to beat the date that new campaign regulations came into effect ... Where did that money come from? No one really knew. Where did it go? No one knows how much there was or where it all ended up. That was the lesson of giving and taking money without transparency or accountability. It damned near brought down the country ... The only question now is the timing of the next Watergate."
W. Post's Katrina vanden Heuvel warns this election will determine whether we let corporations own our democracy: "This tidal wave of corporate cash -- which could run up a $5 billion price tag on the most expensive midterm election in history -- is, 'the dagger directed at the heart of democracy,' as Bill Moyers said in a speech at Common Cause's 40th anniversary gala. It is increasingly possible, he added, for 'oligarchs and plutocrats to secretly buy our elections and consolidate their hold on the corporate state.' This, in the end, is the current front of a historic struggle. Who governs America -- the powerful few or the many, money or citizens?"
The Koch brothers and other wealthy Republican donors are already meeting to plan the next election. NYT: "A secretive network of Republican donors is heading to the Palm Springs area for a long weekend in January, but it will not be to relax after a hard-fought election — it will be to plan for the next one. Koch Industries ... is planning a confidential meeting at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa to, as an invitation says, 'develop strategies to counter the most severe threats facing our free society and outline a vision of how we can foster a renewal of American free enterprise and prosperity.' ... Those efforts, the letter makes clear, include countering 'climate change alarmism and the move to socialized health care,' as well as 'the regulatory assault on energy,'..."
Criminal Investigation Begins In Foreclosure Scandal
Feds investigating possible criminal violations in foreclosure fraud scandal. W. Post: "The criminal investigation, still in its early days, is focused on whether companies misled federal housing agencies that now insure a large share of U.S. home loans, and whether the firms committed wire or mail fraud in filing false paperwork ... Obama administration officials offered few details about how they were proceeding."
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow uncovers documents exposing "mortgage shell game": "Judges across the country might not be amused to learn that MERS promises 'no recording or re-recording of assignments,' since that's exactly the problem at hand. As for 'ease of delivery into secondary markets' - that is, the bundling and re-selling of mortgages - there's no question that MERS has enabled that. MERS provides the chips for the housing market casino. And as for the claim that there will be 'no chain of title issues,' that's a hard claim to defend now that Attorneys General for all fifty states are investigating the matter."
W. Post's Harold Meyerson rips big banks for rushing to foreclose again: "The banks that are repossessing millions of homes with a speed that suggests they're double-parked are the same banks that made billions by swapping paper on millions of homes purchased with mortgages that made no financial sense. Garbage in, garbage out. Hey, it's only people's lives.
CJR's Ryan Chittum shreds Fortune's Duff McDonald for regurgitating banker spin: "...I find it very hard to process the notion that revelations of mass-scale lender fraud leads to an unsupported attack on borrowers. Odder still, we have actual evidence of 'insidious criminality' on the lender side. That’s why the feds are investigating. Where, you have to wonder, is the parallel evidence of a spontaneous mass breakdown of Americans’ financial planning abilities sometime in the mid-2000s?"
Slate's Eliot Spitzer reveals the most shocking secret about how the banks hid their toxic mortgages: "... I encouraged all the investigators with whom I spoke to begin by demanding access to the documents that the credit departments of the banks examined. Some of these documents have emerged ... These documents, from Clayton Holdings, a due diligence company retained by the banks, reveal that Clayton, after analyzing more than 900,000 mortgages, told the banks that about 30 percent of the loans being packaged into securitized products did not satisfy the banks' own underwriting standards ... It is not too late to use the Clayton information to claw back bonuses and hold the banks, rating agencies, and government enforcement agencies accountable."
NY Fed pressing Bank of America to buy back fraudulent mortgages that were part of the bank bailout. NYT: "If the Fed and the investors succeed, it could cost Bank of America billions of dollars. ... The legal battle turns on the question of whether the banks properly represented the loans they put together into mortgage-backed securities when they sold them to investors. If the banks ignored evidence that the underlying mortgages did not conform to underwriting standards or they lacked the proper paperwork, the banks could be obligated to buy the troubled mortgages back."
NY Fed may even sue if Bank of America doesn't comply reports W. Post.
Health Insurance Profiteering May Bolster Reform
Wendell Potter writes, at HuffPo, that United Health's recent profits may strengthen the implementation of health care reform at the state level: "United announced Tuesday morning that its third-quarter profit jumped 23% ... largely because it spent far less of its customers' premiums on medical care than it did this time last year. When an insurance company spends less of every premium dollar it takes in on medical care, it has more left over to reward shareholders and a handful of senior managers ... maybe, just maybe, the nation's state insurance commissioners -- whom Congress gave the responsibility of determining how major parts of the new law will be implemented -- will finally realize that they don't need to give the big insurers the truck-sized loopholes they have been lobbying so hard for over the past several weeks."
"Boeing is now walking back claims that it’s changing its health care plan in response to the Affordable Care Act" reports Wonk Room's Igor Volsky.
NYT's David Leonhardt argues health care reform should be tougher on what treatments Medicare can reimburse: "In the new issue of the journal Health Affairs, two doctors, both former Medicare officials, have laid out a plan to do so. It would give expensive new treatments three years to prove that they worked better than cheaper treatments, or their reimbursement rates would be cut to that of the cheaper treatments ... The full costs of treatments would be covered for three years, which would still give companies an incentive to innovate."
China Hikes Rates
Paul Krugman blasts China for raising interest rates: "...the United States is pursuing an expansionary domestic monetary policy, which increases overall world demand; however, a side consequence of this policy is a weaker dollar. China is pursuing a weak-yuan policy; to counter the inflationary domestic effects of that policy, it’s pursuing a contractionary domestic monetary policy, reducing overall world demand. We’re doing the right thing; they’re making the world as a whole worse off."
Curious Capitalist's Michael Schuman offers the China perspective: "...(1) China is still really really poor; (2) Alleviating that poverty is the sole basis for the legitimacy of the ruling regime; and (3) Chinese leaders are thus terribly afraid of their own, restive populace ... So for Beijing, it's economic growth at all costs, however the world might grumble about it. China's yuan policy won't significantly change until the regime feels secure enough to change it."
Breakfast Sides
Texas oil companies are going to lose their attempt to defeat California's carbon cap, says HuffPost's Carl Pope:: "The latest field poll shows that in only a few weeks the polling numbers have moved from a dead heat to an 11-point deficit for Prop 23, which is now getting only 34 percent of the vote. At this stage, ballot measures that don't have a majority almost always lose."
If Congress doesn't act before Nov. 30th, writes AFL-CIO's Mike Hall, millions will face a bleak winter when unemployment benefits expire: "That’s the date the extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits program expires. But Congress does not return to work until Nov. 15 and then will adjourn again for the Thanksgiving holiday, leaving just a few days when lawmakers are in town to extend the lifeline that has been so vital as unemployment continues to hover near 10 percent."
New GOP group forms to end citizenship by birth. USA Today: " Republican lawmakers in 15 states Tuesday announced a nationwide effort to change the way the 14th Amendment is interpreted and stop granting citizenship to babies born in the USA to illegal immigrants ... Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce said Kansas lawyer Kris Kobach, who helped draft Arizona's tough immigration law now on appeal in the federal courts, is working with him and Republican state Rep. John Kavanagh to draft a bill that all the states could use as a model on the citizenship issue ... He would not say exactly how they will propose denying citizenship..."
