Dream Deferred, Now Due
Peter Dreier, writing at WaPo, asks "What would King march for today?": "What would the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. march for if he were alive today? America has made progress on many fronts in the half-century since King electrified a crowd of 250,000 people, and millions of Americans watching on television, with his 'I Have a Dream' address at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. But there is still much to do to achieve his vision of equality. Fortunately, many Americans are involved in grass-roots movements that follow in his footsteps. King began his activism as a crusader against racial segregation, but he soon recognized that his battle was part of a much broader fight for a more humane society. Today, at age 84, King would no doubt still be on the front lines, lending his voice and his energy to major battles for justice."
E.J. Dionne reminds us of what's often forgotten about the March on Washington 50 years ago: "The things we forget about the March on Washington are the things we most need to remember 50 years on. ...We forget that the majestically peaceful assemblage that moved a nation came in the wake of brutal resistance to civil rights and equality. And that there would be more to come... We forget that the formal name of the great gathering before the Lincoln Memorial was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Jobs came first, an acknowledgement that the ability to enjoy liberty depends upon having the economic wherewithal to exercise our rights. The organizing manual for the march, as Michele Norris points out in Time magazine, spoke of demands that included 'dignified jobs at decent wages.' It is a demand as relevant as ever."
50 years after, Martin Luther King's 'Dream' still not realized in U.S.: poll [Reuters]: "Fifty years after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I have a dream' speech, nearly half of those who responded to a new poll said a lot more needs to be done before people in the United States would 'be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' The Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., found that 49 percent of those polled think 'a lot more' needs to be done to achieve the color-blind society King envisioned in his 1963 'I Have a Dream' speech. But 73 percent of black respondents and 81 percent of whites thought the two races get along 'very well' or 'pretty well.'"
Shutdown Showdown
Clock Is Ticking for Recess, and for a Deficit Deal [NY Times]: "Budget talks between the White House and Senate Republicans have gone nowhere since Congress began its summer recess, increasing chances of a fiscal stalemate that could lead to a government shutdown in October or the threat of a government default later in the fall. ...In search of a compromise, a group of Senate Republicans are scheduled to meet with top White House officials next Thursday, the first such meeting since Aug. 1, when negotiators promised that staff and high-level talks would continue throughout the month."
John Boehner Seeks To Calm Republican Clamor Over How To Stop Obamacare [Huffington Post]: "U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner warned rank-and-file Republicans in a conference call on Thursday against using the threat of a government shutdown to stop the implementation of Obamacare, according to people on the call. On the call, Boehner reminded Republicans of the political backlash their party suffered when the government shut down in 1995-1996, according to one person on the call. Another participant in the call, Oklahoma Representative Tom Cole, said the speaker's main message was that he and other leaders were still committed to killing President Barack Obama's signature health care law but that they did not want a government shutdown."
Boehner proposes ‘short-term’ bill to avert government shutdown [Washington Post]: "House Speaker John A. Boehner said Thursday that he plans to avert a government shutdown at the end of September by passing a 'short-term' budget bill that maintains sharp automatic spending cuts, known as the sequester. 'When we return, our intent is to move quickly on a short-term continuing resolution that keeps the government running and maintains current sequester spending levels,' Boehner (R-Ohio) said on a conference call with GOP lawmakers, according to a person on the call. 'Our message will remain clear,' Boehner said. 'Until the president agrees to better cuts and reforms that help grow the economy and put us on path to a balanced budget, his sequester — the sequester he himself proposed, insisted on and signed into law — stays in place.'"
Challenging Voter ID
Justice Department sues Texas over voter ID law [Washington Post]: "The Justice Department on Thursday redoubled its efforts to challenge state voting laws, suing Texas over its new voter ID measure as part of a growing political showdown over electoral rights. The move marked the latest bid by the Obama administration to counter a Supreme Court ruling that officials have said threatens the voting rights of minorities. It also signaled that the administration will probably take legal action in voting rights cases in other states, including North Carolina, where the governor signed a voter ID law this month."
Texas sued: Why the Justice Department will 'mess with Texas' [Christian Science Monitor]: "Holder is concentrating on Texas because of years of litigation over the state's voter ID law and redistricting maps that federal judges in Washington have determined would either indirectly disenfranchise minorities and the poor, or intentionally discriminate against minorities. Texas is the only state found to have intentionally discriminated against minorities in this decade's round of redistricting, and the state was banned from enforcing either law. But the U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring revisions to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was seen by some as taking away the judges' authority to intervene. That has forced Holder and minority groups to use other aspects of the Voting Rights Act or the Constitution to fight the cases in other federal courts."
Colin Powell slams NC’s new voting law in speech [McClatchy]: "Former Secretary of State Colin Powell took aim at North Carolina’s new voting law Thursday, saying it hurts the Republican Party, punishes minority voters and makes it more difficult for everyone to vote. 'I want to see policies that encourage every American to vote, not make it more difficult to vote,' said Powell, a Republican, at the CEO Forum in Raleigh. 'It immediately turns off a voting block the Republican Party needs,' Powell continued. 'These kinds of actions do not build on the base. It just turns people away.' The retired general served as the keynote speaker at the event and made his remarks moments after Gov. Pat McCrory left the stage. McCrory was in the audience for a portion of Powell’s speech."
Obamacare Is Here To Stay
Brian Beutler, at Salon, says the right is beginning to realize it's been lied to by Republicans: "Imagine in 2006 if Democrats had campaigned for the midterms not just against the war in Iraq, but on a leadership-backed pledge to end it — presumably with whatever hardball procedural tactics were required to do that. Or, take another example and recall progressives’ genuine anger in 2009 and 2010 when Democrats slowly bled the public option when a bit more procedural aggressiveness could in theory have put it into the law. Either will give you a vague sense of the disappointment conservatives feel that after three years of being told Obamacare is an existential threat to the country, Republican leaders are unwilling to test the limits of their power in order to end the law."
The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky explains why Obamacare is here to stay: "The lay of the land right now, after you strip away the rhetorical bluster, is this. A mere 14 Republican senators (out of 45) have signed Mike Lee’s letter pressing for defunding Obamacare. ...So, one-third of the Senate caucus. Then Thursday, a House version of the Lee letter was released. It has 80 signatures. ...As with the Senate, this 80 number constitutes almost exactly one-third of the House GOP caucus. ...One-third of each caucus doesn’t amount to that much leverage. So the odds are, however ugly this fall is, that we’re going to get through it with Obamacare intact. Then this drumbeat will start on the right. Well, we couldn’t defeat it in opposition, so there’s only one answer. We have to win the White House, hold the House, and capture the Senate. Then we can repeal. This is actually fiction, too; they would need 60 Senate seats, and maybe more, and they aren’t getting that. But it’s their only shot, and it’s the kind of fiction that people love to pretend can come true."
Breakfast Sides
Robert Reich explains the rise and fall of the public good: "America no longer values public goods as we did decades ago. The great expansion of public institutions in America began in the early years of 20th century, when progressive reformers championed the idea that we all benefit from public goods. Excellent schools, roads, parks, playgrounds and transit systems would knit the new industrial society together, create better citizens and generate widespread prosperity. ...But in a post-Cold War America distended by global capital, distorted by concentrated income and wealth, undermined by unlimited campaign donations, and rocked by a wave of new immigrants easily cast by demagogues as 'them,' the notion of the public good has faded."
Kevin Drum breaks down president Obama's plan to make college more affordable: "The basic idea here is that endlessly increasing the amount of federal student aid just isn't working anymore. At this point, all it does is encourage universities to raise their prices, which means that students are no better off than they were before. In fact, maybe worse, since they end up graduating with ever more gargantuan loans to pay off. Instead we need to reward universities that actually provide a good bang for the buck: a solid education and high graduation rates at a reasonable cost."
Matt Yglesias uses transportation infrastructure to explain why conservatives don't like Obama's higher education ideas: "To take an analogy outside the education space, liberals often argue that the government should spend more on transportation infrastructure. The best counterargument to this is that America has the highest cost structure for civil engineering projects in the world so spending more would lead to tons of waste. If some future reformers were to step up and bring U.S. costs down to French or Spanish levels, then suddenly the number of projects that pass cost-benefit scrutiny would soar and the public appetite for new infrastructure investments would soar with it. If you're committed to keeping the government small, your best bet is to opportunistically align with rent-seeking elements and try to ensure that when public money is spent it's spent wastefully."
Tom Coburn: Obama 'close' to impeachment [Politico]: "Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) joined with a handful of other Republican politicians Wednesday, warning the President that his impeachment could be near. According to Tulsa World, at a convention in Muskogee, Okla., Coburn said Wednesday that the president was 'getting perilously close' to the Constitutional standard for impeachment. He also called the Obama administration lawless and incompetent, the news site reported, although he acknowledged the president as a 'personal friend.'"
