Sign Of Our Times: Using The Best Propogandists Money Can Buy To Re-Brand The Left

Midway through Philip Rucker and Paul Kane's story about Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's transition to minority leader comes an interesting bit of news. The California Democrat, vilified by Republicans in the last election, has turned to director Steven Spielberg for help rebranding House Democrats.

Lawmakers say she is consulting marketing experts about building a stronger brand. The most prominent of her new whisperers is Steven Spielberg, the Hollywood director whose films have been works of branding genius. Lawmakers said Spielberg has not reported to Pelosi with a recommendation.

Spielberg has been a power player in Democratic politics for years, working on everything from President Bill Clinton's millennial celebrations to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. He endorsed Hillary Clinton in the last presidential race, but since then he's helped fundraise for President Obama.

But, the news that he is advising the leading Democrat in the House on building a strong party brand would seem to be a different -- and more expansive -- role than Spielberg has played in the past. (source)

After Years Of Proclaiming Bush Tax Cuts For The Rich As Evil, Barry Signs A Bill To Extend Them

U.S. President Barack Obama signs into law a bill at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, December 17, 2010. Obama on Friday signed into law a bill extending Bush-era tax cuts and other benefits based on a deal he brokered with Republicans that angered liberals.

President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law a bill extending Bush-era tax cuts and said he hoped the bipartisan spirit that had made it possible would help restore Americans' faith in Washington.

"The final product proves when we can put aside the partisanship and the political games, when we can put aside what's good for some of us in favor of what's good for all of us, we can get a lot done," he said at a White House ceremony.

Obama brokered the tax deal with Republicans over the objections of many of his fellow Democrats who said it was too generous to the rich, and U.S. lawmakers passed the $858 billion package of renewed tax cuts and more unemployment benefits near midnight on Thursday.

"This is real money that's going to make a real difference in people's lives," Obama said. "That's how we're going to spark demand, spur hiring, and strengthen our economy in the new year."

The bill was expected to provide at least a short-term boost to the U.S. economy and reduce unemployment, which remains near 10 percent. But it will also add to a $14 trillion national debt that some fear is nearing dangerous levels.

Most Democrats, including Obama, had opposed extending the lowered tax rate for the wealthiest Americans, but Obama agreed to a temporary extension to get a deal with Republicans.

Many Democrats also resisted a provision raising the exemption threshold for the estate tax to $5 million from $3.5 million in 2009 and cutting the estate tax rate to 35 percent from 45 percent.

Obama defended the bill as the right thing to do for the country despite its flaws, and signaled it could be a blueprint for future cooperation that would make ordinary Americans feel better about their government.

"If we can keep doing it, if we can keep that spirit, I'm hopeful that we won't just reinvigorate this economy ... I'm also hopeful that we might refresh the American people's faith in the capability of their leaders to govern," Obama told an audience that included Republican and Democratic leaders.

DEBT DEBATE

Obama's compromise reflects the new political reality that many see pushing him to lead more from the center as he gears up for the 2012 presidential election, after Republicans in November congressional elections won control of the House of Representatives and increased their weight in the Senate.

Among Obama's most pressing challenges when the next Congress begins in January is to fashion a bipartisan consensus on spending cuts and to overhaul the U.S. tax code to tackle the U.S. budget deficit and rising debt.

"We've got to make some difficult choices ahead when it comes to tackling the deficit," Obama said, noting that this could prove a tougher task than agreeing to extend tax cuts.

"But the fact is, I don't believe that either party has cornered the market on good ideas. And I want to draw on the best thinking from both sides," he said.

The president has in hand the recommendations of his bipartisan debt panel that he has said includes some good ideas on closing tax loopholes and lowering rates. But he has not actually endorsed the report's findings.(source)

Obama's Mystery Proposal To Regulate The Internet

If President Obama wants his executive branch to resemble the opaque, power-hungry political machinations in Chicago, he seems to be succeeding in the area of Internet regulation. Last April, a federal court told the Federal Communications Commission that it has no business regulating the Internet. Unfortunately, judicial rejection of the commission's first swing at the "net neutrality" ball -- the idea the FCC must regulate the Internet to insure everybody has equal access -- didn't deter Obama's FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, from taking another whack.

He's bringing a new set of proposed net neutrality regulations to the five-member panel Tuesday. Unfortunately, nobody knows any details of the new proposal because Genachowski has kept them secret until the last possible minute even as he rushed them forward for a vote. How ironic that the Internet, the great and empowering liberator of information that "wants to be free," is being chopped up behind closed doors by an unelected panel. Note, too, that this is being considered by the FCC on the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year.

In their net neutrality quest, Genachowski and two of his fellow Democratic appointees are working to expand government power into an area where the commission has no jurisdiction, under the guise of solving a problem that does not exist. Meredith Baker, a Republican FCC appointee, summarized the situation well: "We have two branches of government -- Congress and the courts -- expressing grave concerns with our agency becoming increasingly unmoored from our statutory authority. By seeking to regulate the Internet now, we exceed the authority Congress has given us and justify those concerns." Incoming House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., has called on the FCC to "cease and desist."

This exercise in government opacity and overreach is already damaging the economy. As major telecommunications and Internet service companies prepare to roll out new fourth generation (4G) wireless service for millions of customers, these unelected bureaucratic commissars are recklessly creating doubt about the future value and profitability of those companies' investments. They are also discouraging future investments that need to be made for the Internet to continue its phenomenal growth.

Federal courts will almost certainly strike down anything the FCC adopts Tuesday, just as they did earlier this year. Congress will also have its chance to undo Genachowski's handiwork through the Congressional Review Act. But why should we have to go this far to rein in a government agency supposedly run by people who took an oath to "support and defend" our Constitution? Is Obama unable to make his own appointees obey the law? Either way, the new Congress should hold Obama accountable for what the FCC is now doing in his name. (source)

DeMint Vows To Reverse FCC's Internet Takeover

Senator Jim DeMint, R-SC

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, says Federal Communications Commission should be renamed the "Fabricating a Crisis Commission," following a vote by the panel's three Democrats to approve proposed rules that amount to a hostile takeover of the Internet by a government agency acting illegally.

The proposal - misleadingly described by proponents as an attempt to insure "net neutrality" by guaranteeing equal access to the Internet - was introduced a year ago by Julius Genachowski, President Obama's appointee as FCC chairman.

A federal court has ruled that the commission has no authority to regulate the Internet, and a bipartisan group of senators and representives warned Genechowski not to attempt to impose a regulatory regime on the Internet earlier this year.

The move's legality was even questioned by FCC Commissioner Michael Copp, one of the Democrats who voted today with Genachowski, saying he considered voting against the proposal because it lacks a sufficiently defensible legal basis to survive a court challenge promised by major Internet Service Providers like Verizon, Microsoft, and AT & T.

But legal challenges by industry are likely to be much less of a problem for the Genachowski-led takeover than efforts in Congress to stop the FCC in its tracks.

That's clearly what DeMint has in mind, as he said in his statement released today following the FCC action:

“The Obama Administration has ignored evidence that this federal takeover will hang a millstone of regulatory and legal uncertainty around the neck of a vibrant sector of our economy.

"Proceeding on its own liberal whims rather than facts, this FCC has chosen to grant itself broad authority to limit how businesses can bring the internet to consumers in faster and more innovative ways.

“Americans loudly demanded a more limited federal government this November, but the Obama Administration has dedicated itself to expanding centralized government planning. Today, unelected bureaucrats rammed through an internet takeover, even after Congress and courts warned them not to.

“To keep the internet economy thriving, this decision must be reversed. Regulatory reform will be a top priority for Republicans in the next Congress, and I intend to prevent the FCC or any government agency from unilaterally burdening our recovering economy with baseless regulation.

"In order to provide the stability businesses need to grow, I will work with my fellow senators to see passage of my FCC Act, which would ensure that the FCC can only use its rulemaking powers where there is clear evidence of a harmful market failure, as well as the REINS Act, which would add the accountability of a Congressional vote before any government agency’s proposed major regulations may be finalized.”

If the FCC plan somehow manages to survive, it will almost certainly do for First Amendment liberties and the Internet what it did for them in regulating broadcast television and radio. Former CBS News president Fred Friendly's landmark book, "The Good Guys, the Bad Guys and the First Amendment," describes in great detail how the Kennedy and Johnson administrations used the FCC to silence conservative critics.(source)

Sign Of The Times: Apologizing For Having To Say, "Christmas"

DOOMSDAY FOR BARRY: A Decision May Be Necessary (The Bush Tax Breaks Nightmare And How To Deal With It)

A massive bipartisan tax package preventing a big New Year's Day tax hike for millions of Americans is on its way to President Barack Obama for his signature.

The measure would extend tax cuts for families at every income level, renew jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed and enact a new one-year cut in Social Security taxes that would benefit nearly every worker who earns a wage.

The president is expected to sign the bill this afternoon.

In a remarkable show of bipartisanship, the House gave final approval to the measure just before midnight Thursday, overcoming an attempt by rebellious Democrats who wanted to impose a higher estate tax than the one Obama agreed to. The vote was 277-148, with each party contributing an almost identical number of votes in favor (the Democrats, 139 and the Republicans, 138).

In a rare reach across party lines, Obama negotiated the $858 billion package with Senate Republicans. The White House then spent the past 10 days persuading congressional Democrats to go along, providing a possible blueprint for the next two years, when Republicans will control the House and hold more seats in the Senate.

"There probably is nobody on this floor who likes this bill," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. "The judgment is, is it better than doing nothing? Some of the business groups believe it will help. I hope they're right."

Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., said that with unemployment hovering just under 10 percent and the deadline for avoiding a big tax hike fast approaching, lawmakers had little choice but to support the bill.

"This is just no time to be playing games with our economy," said Camp, who will become chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee in January. "The failure to block these tax increases would be a direct hit to families and small businesses."

Sweeping tax cuts enacted when George W. Bush was president are scheduled to expire Jan. 1 - a little more than two weeks away. The bill extends them for two years, placing the issue squarely in the middle of the next presidential election, in 2012.

The extended tax cuts include lower rates for the rich, the middle class and the working poor, a $1,000-per-child tax credit, tax breaks for college students and lower taxes on capital gains and dividends. The bill also extends through 2011, a series of business tax breaks designed to encourage investment that expired at the end of 2009.

Workers' Social Security taxes would be cut by nearly a third, going from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent, for 2011. A worker making $50,000 in wages would save $1,000; one making $100,000 would save $2,000.

"This legislation is good for growth, good for jobs, good for working and middle class families, and good for businesses looking to invest and expand their work force," said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Some Democrats complained that the package is too generous to the wealthy; Republicans complained that it doesn't make all the tax cuts permanent.

Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla., called it "a bipartisan moment of clarity."

The bill's cost, $858 billion, would be added to the deficit, a sore spot among budget hawks in both parties.

"I know that we are going to borrow every nickel in this bill," Hoyer lamented.

At the insistence of Republicans, the plan includes an estate tax that would allow the first $10 million of a couple's estate to pass to heirs without taxation. The balance would be subject to a 35 percent tax rate.

Many House Democrats wanted a higher estate tax, one that would allow couples to pass only $7 million tax-free, taxing anything above that amount at a 45 percent rate. They argued that the higher estate tax would affect only 6,600 of the wealthiest estates in 2011 and would save $23 billion over two years.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the estate tax the "most egregious provision" in the bill and held a vote that would have imposed the higher estate tax. It failed, 194-233.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said he thought the White House could have gotten a better deal.

"When I talk to the Republicans they are giddy about this bill," he said. (source)

Last-Ditch Effort To Ram Through Omnibus Bill By Barry, Pelosi Et Al Fails

After wrestling with - and finally abandoning - a 1,900-page catch-all spending bill stuffed with more than $8 billion in home-state projects known as earmarks in Washington and pork in the rest of the country, Senate leaders need to come up with a measure to keep the federal government running into early next year.

Nearly $1.3 trillion in unfinished budget work was packed into the spending measure, including $158 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave up on the bill Thursday after several Republicans who had been thinking of voting for it pulled back their support.

Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky had thrown his weight against the bill in recent days, saying it was "unbelievable" that Democrats would try to muscle through in the days before Christmas legislation that usually takes months to debate.

"Just a few weeks after the voters told us they don't want us rushing major pieces of complicated, costly, far-reaching legislation through Congress, we get this," McConnell said. "This is no way to legislate."

The turn of events was a major victory for earmark opponents like Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who for years have been steamrolled by the old-school members of the powerful Appropriations Committee.

The spending barons saw their power ebb in the wake of midterm elections that delivered major gains for Republicans - with considerable help from anti-spending tea party activists.

"We just saw something extraordinary on the floor of the United States Senate," a grinning McCain said.

The $1.27 trillion catchall bill wrapped together 12 bills - blending $1.1 trillion for the operating budgets of every federal agency with an infusion of funding to carry the war in Afghanistan into its 10th year - into a single foot-tall piece of legislation that Democrats had hoped to pass with just a couple of days' worth of debate.

It was designed to bankroll the day-to-day operations of the government for the budget year that started Oct. 1, funding the almost one-third of the federal budget that Congress has to pass each year.

The House and Senate typically spend months on the 12 annual spending bills, but Democrats didn't bring even a single one to the Senate floor this year, an unprecedented collapse of an appropriations process. The House only passed two of the 12 bills and didn't make any of the other 10 public.

The sinking of the bill was a setback for President Barack Obama, who supported it despite provisions to block the Pentagon from transferring Guantanamo Bay prisoners to the United States and fund a program to develop a second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which the administration says is a waste of money. Obama came under fire from Republicans for supporting the bill after promising after the election to take a harder line on earmarks.

Just Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made a public push for the omnibus measure at an appearance at the White House, saying that operating under a stopgap measure frozen at current levels would be a major hardship for the Pentagon.

McConnell had earlier quietly backed the effort to produce the legislation, which had significant input from Republicans on the Appropriations panel.

But release of the bill on Tuesday sparked an outcry among the GOP's conservative political base. Senate Republicans held two combative closed-door meetings in which the rank-and-file turned up the heat on those few Republicans who were considering voting for the bill.

Republicans were also irate that the measure contained money to begin implementation of Obama's controversial health care law and a financial overhaul measure that all but a handful of Republicans opposed.

On the merits, most of the rest of the bill had bipartisan support. It stuck to a spending cap sought by Republicans while boosting spending for Head Start, veterans programs and Pell Grants for disadvantaged college students. But that message didn't get out amid the firestorm over earmarks and the measure's remarkable size.

McConnell proposed Thursday to keep the government running at current funding levels through Feb. 18. By then, Republicans will have taken over the House and bolstered their strength in the Senate, giving them greater leverage to force spending cuts.

The House last week passed a yearlong funding bill that's mostly frozen at current levels. (source)

What The ObamaNation Has Brought Us: Taking From The Rich

President Obama’s $8 Billion Earmark Rerun: Lesson Not Learned?

The Obama administration today told Congress to pass an omnibus spending bill containing $8 billion in earmark projects, even though just a few days ago the president said one of the lessons he learned from the 2010 midterm elections was to take more seriously the public’s disapproval of – and his pledge to oppose -- earmarks.

“We wish there were no earmarks and are troubled with their presence” in the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill, an administration source told ABC News. “But Secretary Gates has told the President that the alternative bill” – a continuing resolution that for one year funds the government, which is due to run out of cash at the end of the week – “doesn't have the funding critical for several national security priorities.”

Gates issued a statement this evening saying that without the omnibus spending bill, the Pentagon would be left “without the resources and flexibility needed to meet vital military requirements” – specifically “the military pay raise, increases in military health care costs, higher fuel prices, and other ‘fact of life’ bills.” The shorter funding bill would “slow our efforts to meet unanticipated wartime needs,” he added, while the bigger funding bill would provide funding for “critical national security initiatives” including the new Cyber Command and increasing special operations forces.

The president’s acquiescence with a bill that contains $8 billion in earmarks stands in contrast with what he said was a lesson learned from the 2010 midterm “shellacking,” when he indicated that he regretted not taking more of a stand against a different $8 billion in earmarks in a 2009 omnibus spending bill.

At his press conference after the shellacking, the president said that upon taking office, “we were in such a hurry to get things done that we didn’t change how things got done. And I think that frustrated people.”

The president said he’s “a strong believer that the earmarking process in Congress isn’t what the American people really want to see when it comes to making tough decisions about how taxpayer dollars are spent. And I, in the rush to get things done, had to sign a bunch of bills that had earmarks in them, which was contrary to what I had talked about. And I think folks look at that and they said, ‘Gosh, this feels like the same partisan squabbling, this seems like the same ways of doing business as happened before.’ And so one of the things that I’ve got to take responsibility for is not having moved enough on those fronts.”

The president said the midterms provided him with “an opportunity to move forward on some of those issues,” and he specifically cited incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., as wanting “to see a moratorium on earmarks continuing. That’s something I think we can work on together.”

Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring said Wednesday evening that President Obama and Cantor have not spoken about earmarks since the president mentioned his name at that press conference.

“So right after his election rebuke, President Obama claimed that he to work together to reform earmarks and today he supports a bill that contains billions of dollars of wasteful pork,” Dayspring said. “If that’s the kind of reform the President had in mind, Eric Cantor isn’t interested. People are furious and rightly so with the runaway spending and the joke process that they are watching Democrats are engage in. Even after the election shellacking, the President and his party still don’t get it. If he is serious about working together, he needs to take it seriously and pledge to veto this pork laden spending bill.”

The president told 60 Minutes last month that while he had “campaigned saying we should stop doing earmarks….I had to make a decision, ‘Do I sign this omnibus bill to finish last year's business? And, you know, make sure that I can keep on working with Congress to get all these things done? Or do I veto that bill and have a big fight right away in the middle of an economic crisis?’ Well, I decided to sign the bill. Now, that's an example of where I was so concerned about getting things done that, you know, I lost track of part of the reason I got elected. Which was we were gonna change how business was done here.”

After a number of decisions like that, the president said, “I think what people started feeling was, "Gosh, this is sort of business-as-usual in Washington,’ And that's part of what I ran against. And so, I reflect a lot about over the next two years, making sure that I remind myself, my job is not legislator in chief. It's not just a matter of how many bills I'm passing, no matter how worthy they are. Part of it's also setting a tone in Washington and for the rest of the country that says, "We're responsible’…” (source)

Earmark Foes Pressure Obama

Arizona Republican Representative Jeff Flake

Newly emboldened earmark foes are calling on President Obama to back up his opposition to pork-barrel spending with action.

Mr. Obama, who stopped requesting earmarks during his final year in the Senate, has used his bully pulpit to call for reform of the process by which lawmakers direct federal funding to pet projects. He even made it the sole focus of a recent weekly address, identifying earmarks as a possible area of bipartisan cooperation with the GOP.

But the president has signed billions of the sometimes-controversial projects into law during his first two years in office - even though he has later expressed regret for doing so.

"If you want to know how you really change the practice, it's for a president to say, 'I'm simply going to veto bills that have these projects in them,' " said Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican and a leading anti-pork crusader. "He has to know what a stain there is around the country for this kind of politics, for earmarks in general, and if he were to take a firm stand that would be huge for him."

Indeed, with a near-record federal deficit and an economy that's still struggling to recover, public pressure to control government spending is immense and congressional Republicans have latched onto an earmark moratorium as a part of the answer. But members of Congress are also intent on protecting what they see as their constitutional prerogative to appropriate federal dollars, and those competing tensions have set up one of the key showdowns on Capitol Hill.

"The president really is the lynchpin in all of this," said Steve Ellis, vice president of government watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. "He can talk to the Senate Democrats and say, 'Hey, it's not like I'm telling you to do something I didn't do when I was in the Senate.' So he has a bit of the moral high ground there."

Mr. Ellis noted that Mr. Obama has already had some luck "saber rattling" with Congress over a defense authorization bill last summer that included $1.8 billion for new F-22 fighter jets. The Senate eventually voted to cut funding for the program after Mr. Obama made the first veto threat of his presidency.

The president has been less interested in standing up to lawmakers when it comes to pork barrel spending projects - despite vowing to crack down on them during his 2008 campaign. Soon after taking office in March 2009, he criticized, but signed, a $410 billion omnibus spending bill loaded with $7.7 billion in earmarks, including $200,000 for a California tattoo removal program.

Mr. Obama justified his signature by pointing out that the legislation was left over from the previous year, declaring however that it "must mark an end to the old way of doing business." Nine months later, he signed a second omnibus bill totaling $447 billion, with nearly $4 billion in earmarks.

Both House Republicans, who will take control of the chamber in January, and their Senate counterparts have agreed to voluntarily ban earmarks, which account for less than 1 percent of federal spending but have become symbols of government waste and even corruption. In particular, the Senate GOP moratorium was a major coup for earmark hawks, who welcomed a change of heart by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a longtime defender of directing federal dollars to projects back home.

With their new majority, House Republicans could effectively block requests by House Democrats. But Democrats still control the Senate and, along with a few Republican outliers who are bucking their caucus on the pork moratorium, such as Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have vigorously resisted the anti-earmark wave.

That leaves a bipartisan band of agitators, led by Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, looking to force fellow lawmakers into line with a binding moratorium that, as a change to Senate rules, would require 67 votes and is unlikely to pass. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, an avowed earmarker, has agreed to allow a vote on the proposal even as he warned it would lead to a power grab by the executive branch.

"I think I have an obligation to the people of Nevada to do what's important to Nevada and not what's important to some bureaucrat with green eyeshades," Mr. Reid, of Nevada, told reporters last week in a routine defense of the practice.

But Mr. Obama seems to have recommitted himself to a tough public stance on pork since his party's "shellacking" at the polls earlier this month.

In a postelection press conference, he appeared to regret having signed bills piled high with earmarks, saying the process "isn't what the American people really want to see when it comes to making tough decisions about how taxpayer dollars are spent" and that he hopes to work with Republicans on reform.

He told Americans in a weekly address that "we can't afford" earmarks amid staggering deficits, and even put out a statement in response to Mr. McConnell's reversal in a bid to stay out front on the issue.

The real test, however, will come if and when Congress sends Mr. Obama another pork-laden bill. That may not happen until next year, as Mr. McConnell has vowed to block consideration of an omnibus spending bill during the so-called "lame duck" session of Congress.

Asked last week by a reporter whether the president would use his veto pen to enforce his views on earmarks, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs ducked the question, saying the administration would have to "evaluate a piece of legislation for what is and is not" in the bill.

Mr. Flake, who thought Mr. Obama "would take a firmer stand initially," said it would be a mistake for the president to sign another omnibus riddled with pet projects.

"I think people would say that's just more of the same," said Mr. Flake, who described the fight over pork as "a new ball game" come January, when the new Congress is sworn in. (source)