Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 30

Wayne Barrett and Tom Robbins | Michael Tomasky

Back when I was 14 or 15, sitting in Morgantown dreaming about the world beyond my doorstep, I discovered my first issues of The Village Voice. Its national following in those days, which was considerable, owed chiefly to its raucous cultural coverage, such as emanated from the venerable film critic Andrew Sarris; and to some extent its coverage of national politics, led then by Jim Ridgeway and this newcomer from England who wrote scrabrously but wittily by the name of Alex Cockburn.

But there was another Voice too - the muckracking paper that covered, and uncovered, New York City. I read those pages less when I was 15 than I did Robert Christgau's rock reviews. But as I became more interested in this journalism thing, I started reading up on the scandals involving city councilmen and assembly members from 400 miles away, and about the deals hatched on this exotic sounding thing called the New York City Board of Estimate.

That Voice was shaped by Jack Newfield, one of the great investigative reporters in the US of the 20th century. His supporting cast included people who were pretty formidable in their own right: Joe Conason, whose name and excellent work I'm sure you know; Bill Bastone, who went on to found the great and innovative web site thesmokinggun.com; and Wayne Barrett and Tom Robbins.

Wayne and Tom have been two of New York's best investigative journalists for decades. Now, they're leaving the Voice. Wayne was let go: he makes too much money (by Voice standards) to keep on payroll any more. Stories like that, alas, aren't even shocking in our trade anymore. Tom, upon hearing the news about his old friend, up and quit, without another job lined up.

They were also mentors of mine. Especially Tom, with whom I worked at my first journalism job. But both of them. Now, I can't say I learned their reporting methods. I didn't have the intestines to be an investigative reporter. But they taught me about integrity, which they certainly have, and I try to have. And we had a hell of a lot of fun, too. And they've made New York a better and more honest place in innumerable ways.

They're not done. But the Voice without those two - especially Wayne, who wrote yesterday that he reckoned he's written more column inches in the history of the Voice than anyone, and I reckon that's undoubtedly true - is a different place.

It's a long time since the Voice's glory days, of Cockburn and Newfield and Sarris and Nat Hentoff and Ellen Willis and Stanley Crouch and so many others. Even my time there was a little after the glory days, and I first walked in the door 20 years ago. This is no one's fault. These things happen. The community of people it was originally created to serve has long since dispersed. The Village's old coffee houses and greasy spoons and artists' flops are Starbucks and Banana Republics and $2 million condos.

But it never lost a step on city and state politics, where it's always been of first-rank importance. Wayne and Tom are the main reasons why. Keep after 'em, gents.

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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Depressing end-of-life planning retreat | Michael Tomasky

It's depressing to see the administration reverse itself on end-of-life planning under the new healthcare law. Background: On Dec. 26, the NYT's Robert Pear broke a big story: while the administration had said in the wake of last year's despicable and phony "death panel" controversy that it would not include end-of-life planning in Medicare coverage, it turned out that it was doing that anyway.

If the story had broken at a normal time, and not the day after Christmas, we'd have heard a thunderous roar. As it was, the usual suspects got busy with the usual factfree slimes. Media Matters documented some of the swill (how much do they pay those poor people who have to sit around and watch that wretched nonsense?). Remember, the "death panel" charge was called by Politifact the the Lie of the Year for 2009.

Today's follow-up by Pear documents that the Obama administration has just caved again to these demagogues, and it had its collective head up its you know what. Read this:

Although the health care bill signed into law in March did not mention end-of-life planning, the topic was included in a huge Medicare regulation setting payment rates for thousands of physician services. The final regulation was published in the Federal Register in late November. The proposed rule, published for public comment in July, did not include advance care planning.

The November regulation was issued by Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a longtime advocate for better end-of-life care. White House officials who work on health care apparently did not focus on the part of the rule that dealt with advance care planning.

What the hell is that? Berwick is widely respected, by the way, except by the kookoos who hate him because he praised the NHS. But did he or someone under him just try to slide this in? And did the relevant people at the White House not even notice?

This is a really important issue, and end-of-life-planning is in fact humane and decent. No one has to participate. But for those who choose to, such discussions and planning and actions might have been covered.

I told you before about my mother's death. We could have spent a half million dollars of Medicare's money if we'd wanted to, or maybe a million, who knows, keeping her on a respirator for a month or more. But we knew it wasn't what she wanted. Nobody loves their mother more than my sister and I loved ours. But we knew her wishes, and we knew what was realistic.

It's confounding, shall we say, that the administration did what it did in November. But it's disgusting that these demagogues whipped this up again, and sickening that the administration caved.

Obama administrationUS healthcareMichael Tomasky
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Out goes Gibbs, in comes Daley … maybe | Michael Tomasky

It was good for a black president to have a white guy from Alabama be his public face, but it's time for change

Some people seem to have strong feelings about Robert Gibbs. I can't say that I do. When the administration was new, I watched the daily briefings, which I don't any longer. I gather some of the journalists based there found him brusque, but journalists based there find virtually every White House press secretary brusque. Basically, thought it was a good idea for a black president to have a white guy from Alabama be his public face.

So now that he's leaving, is it important? Well, yes, it is. Most people don't understand how demanding that job is, and the authority that comes with it. It's not exactly a policy-making position, but it is high inner circle; Gibbs probably has had as much face time with the president as just about anyone. So he's been giving advice as well as taking orders. The person with that job has a lot of inside sway.

Even so, that person is mostly judged on how he or she performs on television on a daily basis. Assessed as a TV character, Gibbs is a little flat and unmemorable. I don't mean to sound harsh. I'm just saying, imagine him as a movie character, an actor auditioning for that role. Would you cast him? Probably not. He doesn't have much TV charisma. Ain't his fault. Just the way it is. So a more charismatic person might do the job a little better.

I find the Bill Daley chatter more confounding. Really? To hire a new chief of staff in a "big shake-up" they have to stick with Chicago? That's weird. I don't care about the inevitable right-wing "Chicago thug politics" meme, which is the usual silliness, but I do think it sends a signal that they're an insecure bunch and need an unusually high comfort level with new people. Tom Daschle, the other person evidently in the running, would seem to me to be better, if only because of his many personal relationships on the Hill.

But now, it's not only about the Hill. Since the GOP will now be running the House, the administration isn't going to get much (if any) positive progressive legislation passed. That means they'll need to try to do what they can administratively, which would seem to me to mean that they need to highlight the work of executive agencies and cabinet members.

I've written this before. I think Obama hired a solid and talented cabinet, and no one in America knows what the hell any of them is doing, except for Hillary and Geithner, and unless they get dragged before the cameras during some emergency, like Ken Salazar during the BP thing. They need to get those people out there more. So they need a chief of staff who'll facilitate that, too.

Two years is an unusually long time to go until a big shake-up, especially for Democrats. So this change doesn't signal instability. It is in fact overdue. It just needs to be real change.

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Republicans: good at theatre, dreadful at governing – as we'll see tomorrow | Michael Tomasky

For years Republicans have shown no aptitude for running the country. Not surprising when they don't really believe in it

It's often said in Washington that Republicans are better in opposition than at governing, and the last two years have borne out this observation with a vengeance. It sure looks like it's been fun being a Republican. The economy was terrible, and the other guys were in charge. And even though it was mostly the Republicans who messed up the economy in the first place, and who started the wars that neither George W Bush nor (probably) Barack Obama will really and truly be able to count in the win column, they knew that they could rely on Americans to forget that over time – and forget Americans did. So all they had to do was sit back and throw darts.

Into the bargain, and probably to the great surprise of many of them, the Tea Party movement erupted out of some Americans' rage at the government and at their fellow citizens who took out mortgages they couldn't quite afford. The media often write about the tension between Tea Party insurgents and establishment Republicans, and it's there. But mostly the movement has been as pennies from heaven for the GOP: you have a bunch of extremists running around comparing the Democratic president to Hitler and Stalin. If they go too far, you can gently denounce them. But mostly, you just let them carry on with their wild analogies, which work their way into the civic bloodstream but for which you do not get blamed. It's been a great racket.

But now the times they are a-changing. Having taken control of the House of Representatives as of tomorrow, Republicans now have to govern. They have to do things like make a budget. And not just a fake budget, like in a campaign. A real budget, that adds up, more or less. They have to negotiate with a Senate still in Democratic hands over the final shape of appropriations to the various federal agencies. All that sounds suspiciously like hard work. And Washington Republicans, for all their thumpety-thump rhetoric about hard work and personal initiative and so on, are largely lazy and unserious people. They won't do the work, and in two years, it will show.

How can I say that? Alas, recent history bears it out. When I say lazy I don't mean that they fail to arise from bed. They manage that. I mean intellectually lazy. And yes, unserious. Let's look at the last three Republican presidents, going back to 1980. In that time Republicans have been screaming about the budget deficit. So what did they actually do to fix it? Ronald Reagan opened up a gaping hole, which was somewhat repaired from its worst point by the time he left office but was still far larger than that of Jimmy Carter, his predecessor. On the whole, Reagan lost America $81bn. Think that's a lot? George HW Bush cost the country $135bn. Think that's a lot? His son cost us – get ready – $632bn. Bill Clinton, meanwhile, made us $526bn.

Most liberals call this hypocrisy, and it is that. But it's something even worse than hypocrisy. It's complete and utter lack of seriousness about governing. Hypocrisy is, at the end of the day, just an allegation about character. But that combined $848bn they've added to the deficit: that's real money, pal. And they don't do a thing about it, really. They yell and scream that it's all the Democrats' fault. A little of it is. But most of it is the fault of the massive tax cuts Republicans have pushed through, which have left revenues and expenditures wildly out of balance.

Failures to cut spending on the domestic front largely reflect the wishes of the American people, who call themselves conservative in theory, but who, in practice, want to see the government spend money on entitlement benefits, education, environmental protection and so on. Republicans secretly know this and respond to it. They had the run of every branch of government in the early 2000s, and what did they do with it? Increased spending and expanded Medicare!

They're not serious people. They're great at theatre. We all know that. They will open the new session of the House of Representatives over which they now preside with a public reading of the full text of the constitution, taking turns. (I wonder who gets to read the bit about slaves counting as three-fifths of a person?) That's excellent PR. And they're matchless at their little rhetorical ornamentations, like "death tax" (estate taxes) and "death panels" (which did not exist).

But running the country? They've shown almost no aptitude for it for many years. The reason is simple and was imperishably expressed by the scholar Alan Wolfe in an essay he wrote four years ago: "Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: if you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well."

Obama has not on the whole been a commanding and decisive leader so far. And his fate is still lashed chiefly to the economy, and if it's still tottering in two years' time, he will suffer for it. So I can't say with confidence yet how he'll be positioned as November 2012 approaches. But I can say this. It's highly likely that after watching Republicans for the next two years, a majority of Americans will conclude that Obama is the only grownup in the room.

RepublicansTea Party movementUnited StatesUS politicsMichael Tomasky
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Yay, America | Michael Tomasky

I see via Sully that Rich Lowry, editor of The National Review, wrote the following on New Year's Eve:

When the likes of Marco Rubio, the new Republican senator from Florida, say this is the greatest country ever, sophisticated opinion-makers cluck and roll their eyes. What a noxious tea-party nostrum. How chauvinistic. What hubris.

Lowry didn't name any sophisticated opinion-makers who so clucked or rolled. Probably because none did. Or maybe one or two did. But I doubt they're really either sophisticated or opinion-makers.

I agree with Rubio. Most liberals do. Leftists are another matter. But I have little doubt that every one of my close friends, (American) liberals almost all, would vote for the US as the greatest country on earth.

But why does a column like Lowry's still seem ridiculous and kind of offensive to me? Andrew takes a whack (link above):

Imagine that once a month or so, Michael Jordan called a press conference, confidently listed his achievements as a basketball player, and insisted, "My greatness is simply a fact." He'd be correct: he was a spectacular basketball player, arguably the best in history. Same with Tiger Woods. Or Stephen Hawking. On the other hand, we're put off when people announce their own greatness – experience has taught that they're usually doing so because they're a braggart, or a narcissist, or a bully. (In Rich Lowry's case, it's intellectual bullying - wielding the collective club of nationalism against genuine worries about America's fiscal bankruptcy, academic decline, and economic stagnation).

That's all true. In addition, I have a somewhat different set of reasons for why I think the US is great. Here's Lowry:

We had the advantage of jumping off from the achievement of the British. We founded our nation upon self-evident truths about the rights of man, even if our conduct hasn't always matched them...

So far, I agree. Then:

We got constitutional government to work on a scale no one had thought possible; made ourselves a haven of liberty for the world's peoples; and created a fluid, open society. We amassed unbelievable wealth, and spread it widely. Internationally, we wielded our overwhelming military and industrial power as a benevolent hegemon. We led the coalitions against the ideological empires of the 20th century and protected the global commons. We remain the world's sole superpower, looked to by most of the world as a leader distinctly better than any of the alternatives.

Well, benevolent hegemon a lot of the time, but most definitely not all the time. But let's set that aside.

I think some things that made the US the greatest country in the world are Social Security, labor unions, integration (vociferously opposed by, say, the magazine Lowry edits), and the high taxation that helped us spread that amassed wealth so widely. Millions of other Americans agree with me. Even plenty of rich ones.

We worry that we're on our way to being a not-very-great and definitely-not-very-nice country, which is what we think we'll be if the conservatives have their way. So as I see it, Rubio - and, it must be said, Lowry himself, while a nice guy in my limited personal experience - are out to destroy that which makes America great. So you could say I think Rubio and Lowry hate America. But see, I don't usually talk like that, cuz they have their take, and I have mine, and on the world spins, and I don't actually think they hate America. I just think they're wrong about almost everything.

But conservatives do talk like that, ceaselessly, and they do it to score cheap points, and that's why liberals are bored by chest-thumpery of the Rubio or Lowry varieties.

United StatesMichael Tomasky
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Repealing healthcare, and Pinkerton's better idea | Michael Tomasky

So the Republicans in the House are going to vote to repeal healthcare. Politico:

The House will vote next week to repeal the new health care law, making good on a top-tier GOP campaign promise and setting up a showdown with President Barack Obama over his signature domestic policy achievement.

Majority Leader-elect Eric Cantor (R-Va.) announced Monday the timeline for considering the repeal legislation: The bill posted Monday, the Rules Committee will meet Thursday, and the rule for the debate will be considered on the House floor Friday. The repeal vote will follow on Wednesday, Jan 12.

The GOP repeal bill is only two pages long – a stark contrast to the 2,000-plus pages in the final health care legislation, a number that was cited repeatedly by Republicans as evidence the bill amounted to a massive government overreach.

Of course, all this is just show, and they know it. The Senate won't take up such a bill, and Obama would veto any such bill, so there are two firewalls against this having any meaning.

Still, it'll be interesting to see how many votes they get. Presumably every Republican, which is 242. Of the 34 Democrats who voted against HCR, only 13 remain. So presumably they'd max out well below the veto-proof majority of 291 (two-thirds of the body).

It's also somewhat interesting that the bill in question:

would call on four key committees to create health care legislation that addresses 12 different goals, to "lower health care premiums through increased competition and choice," "increase the number of insured Americans," "protect the doctor-patient relationship," and "prohibit taxpayer funding of abortions and provide conscience protections of health care providers," for example.

The resolution appears aimed at blunting Democratic criticism that Republicans aren't serious about enacting solutions to expand health care coverage to millions of uninsured Americans.

But they did this during the debate, right? And their bill insured what, 3 million or 5 million people, as opposed to the Dems' 36 million? Yes, here it is. Just 3 million by 2019. So these won't be serious proposals, really. Just enough for them to say look ma, we did something.

Here's our friend Pinkerton on what the GOP should really be doing. Jim tells me he got really swamped last December. I tried to sound him out on filibuster reform, and he said he doesn't really care that much, but he did send along this:

House Republicans campaigned against Obamacare last year, and so of course they should keep their promise this year. As politicos say, "You have to dance with the one that brung you." Moreover, as Rep. Fred Upton has predicted, more than a few Democrats will join in the vote to repeal - if only to cover themselves, 2012-wise, by casting a "free" vote. That is, a vote on something that won't happen for as long as Barack Obama is president - the "refudiation" of national health insurance.

The greater challenge - and opportunity - is for the GOP to start defunding the legislation, piece by piece. And some pieces are less popular than others. We all have read, for example, about the supposed $10 billion for new IRS agents to help enforce Obamacare provisions; even FactCheck.org, while skeptical of the $10 billion figure, agrees that "some new agents might be hired." Or maybe they won't get hired, if the Republicans have their way.

Factcheck is, to my reading, a little more than skeptical of the figure:

Q: Will the IRS hire 16,500 new agents to enforce the health care law?

A: No. The law requires the IRS mostly to hand out tax credits, not collect penalties. The claim of 16,500 new agents stems from a partisan analysis based on guesswork and false assumptions, and compounded by outright misrepresentation.

Sure. And those agents are all going to get a nice fancy trip to India that's going to cost the taxpayer $200 million a day...

Anyway, the repeal vote will be what the R's are good at: more no no no. Eventually they're going to have to do a little yes yes yes. That's the hard part for them.

RepublicansUS CongressUS healthcareMichael Tomasky
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Second thoughts on my chosen candidate | Michael Tomasky

Well, my experiment in picking an RNC chair may already have run into insurmountable turbulence. At a debate yesterday, which some of you mentioned watching, the candidates were asked by Grover Norquist to name their favorite book.

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Experiment: pick the next RNC chair | Michael Tomasky

I wonder if Michael Steele had been a better party chairman whether the GOP would be keeping him. Which is to say, I wonder if the party insiders still think it'd be handy to have a black guy around to throw rhetorical darts at Obama, or if they're just over that.

In any case, Steele is on the way out. The election for a new RNC chairman is Jan. 14, and while Steele is running, everyone thinks he's a dead man walking.

There are four other candidates. Maria Cino of the Beltway, Saul Anuzis of Michigan, Ann Wagner of Missouri and a man with two utterly unpronouncable names, Reince Priebus of Wisconsin. I know nothing about any of them, although I am familiar with the Anuzis name.

I'm going to share with you links to their pictures. Let's all choose who we think the new chair will be based simply on how they look.

Here's Cino.

This is Anuzis.

Here you see Wagner in action (well, smiling).

And finally, Rents Preebuss.

Study them carefully. Who looks the most Republican to you?

I say Wagner hands down. I could easily picture her dining at the Homestead or dressed to the nines at an ol' Mizzou homecoming game. No, that's not to say that Democrats don't dine at the Homestead, as indeed I have (and enjoyed it, sort of - the food isn't as good as it ought to be), or dress to the nines at homecoming games (as indeed I have not and never will). But you get my drift. And she looks like a perfectly nice lady, I might add.

But to me, she looks the most Republican of the four, and on that alone, I predict that she will win. This isn't as crazy as it sounds. Usually, and I mean like 70% of the time, you can be shown the photos of the two candidates for any race - some local race somewhere that you know nothing about - and pick the winner just based on their looks.

And in this particular case, I have a deeper reason. Affinity groups such as political parties go with people as leaders they feel comfortable with. Steele was an aberration for an extremely aberrant historical circumstance. Partly in response, I think Republicans will want in the new chair a surfeit of normalcy. That starts with how the person looks, and that means Wagner. I'm eager to hear what you think. This will be an interesting little experiment.

Michael SteeleMichael Tomasky
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Obama's new year blues as Republicans push for spending cuts

With the Republicans in a position of real power, Obama and the Democrats are bracing themselves for a fight on three fronts

What's in store for Barack Obama as 2011 opens? Forget the nicey-nice tenor of the lame-duck session. As of tomorrow the new Congress is sworn in. Republican John Boehner takes the gavel out of Nancy Pelosi's hands and will preside over the House of Representatives, a body that has 63 more Republicans than it did last year. Over on the Senate side of the Capitol building, the Democrats are still the majority, but the Republicans number 47 rather than 42, and among the new faces are several hard-right tea-party types. The era of co-operation (that glorious two-week interval!) is over.

The big issue will be one with which British readers may be familiar: the budget. The deficit hovers well north of $1tn. Medicare, the elderly public-insurance plan paid for through payroll taxes, is in parlous fiscal shape. Social security it is not, really, but a lot of people believe it is (or say they do). So now that the Republicans are in a position of real power, they will push Obama and the Democrats for severe spending cuts.

They will be looking for concessions on social security that will probably include raising the retirement age. As for Medicare, its fate is also wrapped up in the healthcare bill, which many new Republicans hope to repeal, and which the supreme court may partially invalidate as unconstitutional sometime this year.

For their part, Democrats will push back on two fronts. First, that the Pentagon not be spared the budget knife. Democrats say, yes, we'll take a look at outlays for liberal things like environmental protection and poverty fighting, but the military needs to be on the table too. Second, many Democrats will simply be dead set against any tinkering with social security. To liberals, an increase in the retirement age is a benefits cut, since such an increase slices a year or two or three out of the time window during which people will receive benefits.

Into this already roiling mix, toss a vote on raising the country's debt ceiling. Many of the new conservatives, haters of government spending, say they will vote no. If Congress fails to raise the ceiling, bond markets and economies the world over would be threatened. Everyone in Washington presumes that a very-high stakes poker game combining all these elements will be played, probably sometime this spring.

All this will be managed by a White House team that will be, to some extent, new, as a staff shakeup is expected soon. What's no longer new, of course, is Obama himself. He's been at this two years now and hasn't handled the political messaging very well. We'll certainly be given the opportunity to see what he's learned.

US CongressObama administrationUS domestic policyUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsUnited StatesMichael Tomasky
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Obama's new year blues as strengthened Republicans push for spending cuts

Social security spending at centre of tough fight for Democrats

What's in store for Barack Obama as 2011 opens? Forget the nicey-nice tenor of the lame-duck session. As of tomorrow the new Congress is sworn in. Republican John Boehner takes the gavel out of Nancy Pelosi's hands and will preside over the House of Representatives, a body that has 63 more Republicans than it did last year. Over on the Senate side of the Capitol building, the Democrats are still the majority, but the Republicans number 47 rather than 42, and among the new faces are several hard-right tea-party types. The era of co-operation (that glorious two-week interval!) is over.

The big issue will be one with which British readers may be familiar: the budget. The deficit hovers well north of $1tn. Medicare, the elderly public-insurance plan paid for through payroll taxes, is in parlous fiscal shape. Social security it is not, really, but a lot of people believe it is (or say they do). So now that the Republicans are in a position of real power, they will push Obama and the Democrats for severe spending cuts.

They will be looking for concessions on social security that will probably include raising the retirement age. As for Medicare, its fate is also wrapped up in the healthcare bill, which many new Republicans hope to repeal, and which the supreme court may partially invalidate as unconstitutional sometime this year.

For their part, Democrats will push back on two fronts. First, that the Pentagon not be spared the budget knife. Democrats say, yes, we'll take a look at outlays for liberal things like environmental protection and poverty fighting, but the military needs to be on the table too. Second, many Democrats will simply be dead set against any tinkering with social security. To liberals, an increase in the retirement age is a benefits cut, since such an increase slices a year or two or three out of the time window during which people will receive benefits.

Into this already roiling mix, toss a vote on raising the country's debt ceiling. Many of the new conservatives, haters of government spending, say they will vote no. If Congress fails to raise the ceiling, bond markets and economies the world over would be threatened. Everyone in Washington presumes that a very-high stakes poker game combining all these elements will be played, probably sometime this spring.

All this will be managed by a White House team that will be, to some extent, new, as a staff shakeup is expected soon. What's no longer new, of course, is Obama himself. He's been at this two years now and hasn't handled the political messaging very well. We'll certainly be given the opportunity to see what he's learned.

US CongressObama administrationUS domestic policyUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsUnited StatesMichael Tomasky
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