Include President-elect Barack Obama among those concerned that millionaire farmers are getting federal subsidies. A Government Accountability Office report issued Monday said that, between 2003 and 2006, $49 million in subsidies went to farmers who made more than the $2.5 million gross income cutoff. Obama cited the report Tuesday and said that “if it’s true, it’s a prime example of waste.” But the Washington Post’s Ticker blog was skeptical that Obama could do anything, noting that many other presidents have tried and failed to curb farm subsidies. “To the president-elect, we say: Good luck with that,” the blog said. “Let us know how it works out for you.”
Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., is under scrutiny again. This time it’s about a CEO making a $1 million donation to the Charles B. Rangel School of Public Service at City College of New York after Rangel helped preserve a tax loophole. Rangel and the CEO insist that there was no quid pro quo. But Rangel met with the CEO to talk about the tax loophole on the same day they met to talk about the CEO potentially making a donation. Rangel had earlier seemed to be a strong supporter of closing the loophole.
Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post has come out with a list of the “10 Republicans to keep an eye on over the coming months and years.” The list is not of potential presidential candidates in 2012, though some on the list may run. And of particular note, the list doesn’t include Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who Cillizza said is “very lightly regarded by many of the opinion leaders and establishment types within the GOP, making it tougher for her to command a leading role.” The Top 10:
10. Steve Poizner, California insurance commissioner and expected GOP gubernatorial candidate in 2010.
9. Haley Barbour, Mississippi governor.
8. Jon Huntsman Jr., Utah governor.
7. Eric Cantor, Virginia congressman and new House minority whip.
6. Mark Sanford, South Carolina governor and newly elected chairman of the Republican Governors Association.
5. Bob McDonnell, Virginia’s attorney general.
4. Mitch Daniels, Indiana governor.
3. Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor.
2. John Thune, South Dakota senator.
1. Bobby Jindal, Louisiana governor.
The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board seemed happy enough with the choice of New York Federal Reserve president Timothy Geithner to lead the Treasury Department, dubbing him “secretary of bailouts” and suggesting he “knows as well as anyone which banks are vulnerable and likely to threaten the larger financial system.” The editorial went on: “Mr. Geithner’s political style is to listen first, which by itself makes him a better choice than Harvard economist Larry Summers, who would find a way to condescend to Albert Einstein.”
For a city manager candidate who said he fell in love with Wichita, Robert Layton sure seems to be having trouble deciding whether he wants to move here – which isn’t a good sign. The Wichita City Council voted last week to offer Layton the city manager job. But Layton, city manager at Urbandale, Iowa, is unsure now whether he wants it. On Friday he said he would have an answer first thing Monday morning. Then today he said he needed until after Thanksgiving to decide. Why the indecision?
For Layton, one understandable concern was that only four of seven City Council members voted for him. But as Mayor Carl Brewer and others have explained, the split vote reflected the quality of the three finalists for the job, not a lack of confidence in Layton.
President-elect Barack Obama officially announced his economic team today, including Timothy Geithner (in photo) as Treasury secretary and Larry Summers as head of the National Economic Council, suggesting Obama recognizes the need to signal that he’s on top of a recovery strategy.
“We’re out with the dithering. We’re in with a bang,” adviser Austan Goolsbee said on “Face the Nation.” There are competing ideas of what should come next, though.
Over the weekend, Goolsbee and other members of the Obama team signaled they think a huge stimulus package is in order, one aimed at creating or saving 2.5 million jobs over the next two years. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest may be allowed to expire in 2011, rather than rolled back, suggested adviser William Daley on “Meet the Press.” On the same show, former Secretary of State James Baker said he still sees a role for President George Bush in this fragile transition period, urging Bush and Obama to craft a joint proposal “to create confidence and eliminate the fear and anxiety that’s out there, particularly in the financial markets.”
I hope Bill Snyder has success coaching football again at Kansas State University. But he and the university are taking a big risk. Snyder is putting his legacy and the fans’ good will on the line in coming back to coach. And K-State is betting that the 69-year-old will be able to turn the football program around once more. Snyder’s final two seasons as head coach weren’t successful. Will he do better now?
The 25 finalists for Time magazine’s Person of the Year 2008 include John McCain, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, Michael Phelps, T. Boone Pickens, Henry Paulson, Gordon Brown, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hu Jintao and Tina Fey (in photo). But does anybody really think the editors can choose anybody but President-elect Barack Obama? In the setup to its online poll, the only “cons” the magazine lists for Obama are: “He neither cured cancer nor won the World Series. Also, could be funnier.”
“Old arguments about the 1960s never die. They just provide skeletons to pull out of the closet and rattle at opponents during presidential campaigns.” That was the conclusion of columnist Clarence Page after interviewing William Ayers and listening to him speak during his book tour. Ayers refuses to give a blanket apology for the extremist side of anti-war protests, but he would be willing to participate in a truth and reconciliation process alongside government leaders who started the Vietnam War and kept it going. But Page said that “there’s not much chance that our Vietnam generation will reach closure through a truth commission or anything else.”
Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, was among 73 Republican freshmen swept into office touting the “Contract With America.” As of January, notes CQPolitics, Tiahrt will be among only 15 remaining members of that 1994 GOP class in the House. Seven of the original 73 lawmakers are now senators, and seven retired or lost re-election bids this year. Looking back, Tiahrt said he wished Congress had exercised more aggressive oversight, pointing to 2005 hearings on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as one example. The lenders’ problems were spotlighted, but action didn’t follow. “And look where we ended up,” Tiahrt said.
Time magazine included John McCain’s “The fundamentals of the economy are strong” among its Top 10 Unfortunate Political One-Liners. The rest: Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” (1973). Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” (1998). George H.W. Bush’s “Read my lips: no new taxes” (1988). Jimmy Carter’s “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times” (1976). Rep. Mark Foley’s “It’s vile. It’s more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction” (1998, about Clinton). Lyndon Johnson’s “We still seek no wider war” (1964, after the Gulf of Tonkin incident). Clinton’s “That depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” (1998). Herbert Hoover’s “The fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis” (1929). Nixon’s “You know, I always wondered about that taping equipment but I’m damn glad we have it, aren’t you?” (1973).
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., didn’t make it to the Florida presidential primary, dropping out of the race for the GOP nomination months before. But he received one write-in vote in the general election in Duval County, Fla., according to the Florida Times-Union. Of course, other recipients of single write-in nods included Bill O’Reilly, James T. Kirk, Tommy Chong, Joe the Plumber, “Against All,” “They Both Suck ‘08″ and “Twice Cooked Pork $4.95.”
The court order last week to release five Algerian men who had been held at Guantanamo Bay for seven years was another rebuke of the Bush administration’s unconstitutional detention program. President Bush had claimed during his 2002 State of the Union address that the men were part of a plot to bomb a U.S. embassy. But once detainees were finally given the right to challenge their detention, thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the government dropped the embassy allegation. Now a Bush-appointed judge has ruled that the government didn’t have evidence to hold the men. Robert C. Kirsch, one of the detainees’ attorneys, said the case showed “the human cost of what can happen when mistakes are made at the highest levels of our government, and no one has the courage to acknowledge those mistakes.” It also shows what can happen when our government sets aside the very principles that made our country great.
Good for Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., for his continuing leadership in the Senate on Africa. On Wednesday he introduced, with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., a resolution calling for a cease-fire in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Brownback said in a statement: “With over 250,000 people displaced in the last two months, sporadic fighting between armed groups, rape and sexual violence thriving on impunity, this forgotten crisis continues to pass through each of our hands without our knowledge. Exploited minerals, used in our daily electronics, are being smuggled out of eastern Congo which in turn are funding armed groups and allowing this conflict to continue. We call on the electronics industry for transparency in their products, we call for an immediate cease-fire and negotiations towards a political solution to this conflict, and we call on the international community to not allow Congo to fall into the shadows once again and be so easily forgotten.” On Thursday the U.N. Security Council approved sending 3,100 more soldiers and police to Congo, but there is more the world community can and should do to quell the violence and respond to the resulting humanitarian crisis.
With a Democrat headed for the White House, conservative talk radio should have plenty of real issues to fret over. So why are the Limbaughs and Savages screeching about a phantom threat – the return of the Fairness Doctrine? Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein have expressed some nostalgia for the federal regulation, which from 1949 until 1987 attempted to mandate ideological balance on controversial issues on radio and television stations that use public airways. But “there’s no one in a position of authority pressing to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine,” said Andrew Schwartzman of the Media Access Project. “It is much lower priority than dealing with consolidation of the media, network neutrality . . . and dealing with the digital television transition.” Besides, in today’s multimedia free-for-all, who really believes that a Fairness Doctrine is enforceable, even if it were desirable?
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan joins the “keep Defense Secretary Robert Gates” crowd: “He is a bipartisan figure of respect – truly an object of across-the-board admiration. He is not part of the old crew that got us into war and bungled it but the new crew that stabilized it and created progress.” But Noonan sounds the alarm on would-be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “To invite in the Clintons – and it’s always the Clintons, never a Clinton – is to invite in, to summon, drama that will never end. Ever.”
“When King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia stood before the United Nations last week to proclaim his opposition to ‘religious intolerance,’ anyone listening would have to think: Of all the gall!” wrote Joel Brinkley. Yet no one who attended the conference, including President Bush, pointed out the hypocrisy. “Saudi Arabia, it happens, is the world’s most intolerant state on religious matters,” Brinkley noted. “Sure, many other nations are guilty of atrocities committed in the name of religion. We humans have a long and sorry history of that. Today, however, only in Saudi Arabia are these rules institutionalized on such a broad scale – and enforced.”
Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker was already in hot water with the GOP base for criticizing Sarah Palin. Now she may be excommunicated for declaring that the GOP has a God problem. “The evangelical, right-wing branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh,” she wrote. “Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. The choir has become absurdly off-key, and many Republicans know it.” Parker argued that “it isn’t necessary to evict the Creator from the public square, surrender Judeo-Christian values or diminish the value of faith in America. But like it or not, we are a diverse nation, no longer predominantly white and Christian. The change Barack Obama promised already has occurred, which is why he won.” Her conclusion: “The future of the GOP looks dim and dimmer if it stays the present course. Either the Republican Party needs a new base – or the nation may need a new party.”
Abortion doctor George Tiller’s effort to dismiss the misdemeanor case against him seems like a bit of a stretch. But hearings this week have shown that the public was correct to be concerned about former Attorney General Phill Kline’s dogged pursuit of Tiller and abortion records.
Tiller’s attorneys contend that Kline convinced a Topeka judge to let him subpoena medical records based on a false claim – that Tiller wasn’t reporting to authorities cases involving sexual abuse of minors. An internal memo shows that Kline had neither a complainant nor an allegation that Tiller knowingly violated the law. It’s even more serious that Kline’s office may have deliberately misled the judge by presenting a specific case as evidence of a possible reporting violation when it knew – or should have known – that Tiller had in fact properly followed the law.
The hearing has also revealed how Kline’s office worked closely with anti-abortion groups. And former Kline investigator Jared Reed testified that he believed Kline’s office was willing to do whatever it took to get a conviction, “up to and including breaking the law.”
That’s what it looked like to many voters, too.
“A lot of people would be quietly feeling the angst somewhere else. But that’s not the McCain I know. The McCain I know is a fighter, and he’s the one who came back here today.” – former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, speaking about Sen. John McCain’s quiet return to the U.S. Senate Tuesday
Include President-elect Barack Obama among those concerned that millionaire farmers are getting federal subsidies. A Government Accountability Office report issued Monday said that, between 2003 and 2006, $49 million in subsidies went to farmers who made more than the $2.5 million gross income cutoff. Obama cited the report Tuesday and said that “if it’s true, it’s a prime example of waste.” But the Washington Post’s Ticker blog was skeptical that Obama could do anything, noting that many other presidents have tried and failed to curb farm subsidies. “To the president-elect, we say: Good luck with that,” the blog said. “Let us know how it works out for you.”
