Eideard

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President Barack Obama on Monday seized on the award of the Nobel prize in economics to his pick for the Federal Reserve to ratchet up pressure on Senate Republicans, who have blocked the confirmation.

Peter Diamond’s nomination is among dozens the White House says are being held up in the Senate.

“I have nominated Peter to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve to help bring his extraordinary expertise to our economic recovery,” Obama said in a statement. “I hope he will be confirmed by the Senate as quickly as possible.”

Diamond told a press conference held to mark the award of the coveted prize he had no plans to withdraw his name from consideration for the Fed job.

The White House says Senate Republicans are blocking nominations purely to thwart Obama and argues that in the case of Diamond, this puts the U.S. economic recovery at risk.

“Obstructing a nominee as well-qualified as Peter in a time of economic crisis is a harmful attempt to score political points that hurts our middle class and our broader economic recovery,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs…

Other jobs being kept in limbo by the Senate include top judicial appointments and the confirmation of Obama’s new budget director, Jack Lew, although approval in that instance was withheld by Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu to protest Obama’s offshore oil drilling ban.

Diamond, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was one of three economists named as winners of the 2010 economics Nobel on Monday. The others were American Dale Mortensen and British-Cypriot Christopher Pissarides.

The economists were honored for work helping to explain unemployment and job markets.

Senate Republicans blocked Diamond’s confirmation to the Fed Board in Washington in August.

The Party of NO will now change their official reason for blocking Diamond to a different rationale. Since their original lie was that he wasn’t yet qualified for the position.

Given the subject of Diamond’s essential work, it’s ironic to see his appointment blocked by the party still covered in crud from policies which helped provoke and produce this recession.

Your kids deserve better. Because Congress failed to pass the Child Nutrition Bill last week, unhealthy school lunches will remain unhealthy.

While the bill wasn’t perfect, it would have created stronger nutritional standards and provided more money for the school lunch program — adding six cents per lunch for the first time in 30 years. This was the first step on the long ladder to fresh food, and now it’s a missed opportunity.

Among other things, this bill would have banned the junk food that is served in schools and competes with the fresh food your kids need. Eating this junk every day will take 10 years off their lives and cost you a fortune — adding thousands of dollars to the family health care tab…

Over the last two years, more than 700 advocacy groups have been working to get these important changes written into law. Yet Congress could not bring enough support to pass the bill. Do members not value the health of America’s kids..?

If this bill doesn’t get passed when Congress comes back in November, then it’s going to be another five years before we have another shot at fixing these regulations. Five years is too long to wait. Without this legislation, school food will stay in the Dark Ages of nutrition and your kids are going to suffer. They deserve better.

Congress has denied funds sufficient to add just one apple to children’s meals.

Nope, liberal Dems who said they resented the plan’s funding from the budget for food stamps provoked their resistance. I guess they’re incapable of rewriting a bill that needs broader, more progressive riders. That’s the excuse, anyway.

As the recall of tainted eggs grew to more than a half-billion late last week, three federal agencies were involved in the response, yet it was not clear which one was in the best position to lead.

On August 13, the Food and Drug Administration posted on its website a press release from Wright County Egg, one of the nation’s largest egg producer, that millions of eggs were being voluntarily recalled because of possible Salmonella contamination. In the days that followed, FDA inspectors were reportedly dispatched to Wright County Egg facilities.

“Because USDA is responsible for egg safety at processing plants, it is troubling that FDA is the lead agency in this investigation even though it has never inspected the Wright County Egg facility,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), a leading Congressional food safety advocate. “Instead of reinforcing each other’s work, the current food safety system of split jurisdiction appears to have resulted in a disjointed inspection process.”

So, when did the USDA do any inspections?

Read the rest of this entry »

The votes are in. By a tally of 60-38, the Senate voted to end debate on the final version of financial reform legislation, A final vote on the Dodd-Frank bill that emerged from the conference committee reconciling the House and Senate versions of the proposed law later today is a mere formality. The President will then sign it and the bill will become the law of the land.

It will be years before we can evaluate whether the bill is a success or not. Perhaps the most optimistic way to view it is as merely a first step towards real reform. But any further progress will be slow, especially if the GOP makes significant gains in the House and Senate this November. Liberals may not like the Dodd-Frank bill, but the vast majority of Senate Republicans simply despise it.

Understand that the Republican Party – whether controlled by traditional American conservatives, which it is not, or nutball racist chickenhawks – is 100% beholden to the most reactionary Wall Street ideologues.

The Democrats who think that the bill won’t prevent another crisis believe it is too weak. Any improvements that would have made the bill stronger would have been even more vociferously opposed by Republicans. McConnell’s complaint about 2300 pages of new regulations skips merrily over the reason why new rules are necessary — because the country just went through the worst financial crisis in three generations.

The current crop of Senate Republicans are sticking to the same old story line they’ve been pushing since the 1970s: Regulation is bad. Their awesome pigheadedness demonstrates a remarkable effort to be consistent in the face of all evidence provided by actual reality. The best thing about the passage of bank reform is that these troglodytes failed to stop it.

Continuing deregulation, oversight by country club dance partners, would have extended the corruption and cronyism that laid the foundation of the Great Recession we’re still so slowly working our way out of.

More of the same might have guaranteed more silver in the pockets of the Judas GOP. It would given the rest of us more – and more frequent – opportunities to populate our local soup kitchen.

If you wondered how Republicans care about workingclass families…

Senate Republicans have once again blocked legislation to reinstate long-term unemployment benefits for people who have exhausted their aid, prolonging a stalemate that has left more than a million people without federal help.

With the Senate apparently paralyzed by partisan gridlock, the fate of the aid, as well as tax breaks for businesses and $16 billion in aid for cash-strapped states, remains unclear. California and dozens of other states are hoping for federal aid to help balance their budgets.

Republican lawmakers — joined by Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska — maintained a unified front to sustain a filibuster of the $110-billion bill. The vote was 57 to 41; the majority was three short of the 60 needed to cut off debate and bring the bill to a final vote.

So much for democracy.

“If there were ever evidence that this is the party of no, this is it,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who added that several governors would be arriving in Washington next week to make the case for the bill to help states, businesses and those who have been out of work more than six months…

The unemployment extension would add about $30 billion to the national debt. Democrats say all the provisions in the bill are offset by spending cuts and tax increases except the jobless benefits, which Congress traditionally has approved as an emergency without looking for a way to pay for them. Benefits for the long-term unemployed lapsed at the end of May because of the congressional stalemate.

The Labor Department estimates that more than 1.2 million long-term unemployed will have lost their benefits by the end of this week.

Any idea how many times in my life I’ve seen the Republican Party do their utmost to impede or disable unemployment insurance? I lived and worked, been unemployed and out on the job trail through several major recessions since I started as an apprentice machinist in 1955.

Time after time, Republicans used beancounter excuses to try to halt the legislation FDR got through Congress in 1935 to aid folks out of work during the Great Depression. And here we are, now – struggling out of the Bush/Bankers Great Recession and the Party of NO continues their crusade against working people.

Another fight over spending is breaking out between Republicans in Washington and GOP governors across the country. The battle echoes last year’s fight over the stimulus bill, which was backed by some Republican governors and opposed by nearly all GOP members of Congress.

This year’s dispute is over a program created in last year’s massive stimulus bill that increased the federal aid for states’ Medicaid obligations.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other Republican governors want to extend the program. Along with some Democratic governors, they say the extra federal Medicaid funding is still needed to help close state deficits…

Senate Democrats have included a six-month extension of the program, now set to expire at the end of this year, in a tax bill expected to be voted on this week. Senate Republicans oppose the measure unless its $24 billion cost is fully offset with other spending cuts…

Schwarzenegger, Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R-Vt.) and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (Fla.) — have publicly praised the state aid in the stimulus as helpful in retaining jobs and keeping the economy from sinking further, a sentiment that has put them at odds with the congressional GOP’s anti-spending message…

Douglas, the chairman of the National Governors Association, has argued that lawmakers must pass the extension of the enhanced federal Medicaid match money soon because state legislatures are readying their budgets for next year…

A total of 16 GOP governors plus Crist joined Democratic governors in sending another letter in February to congressional leaders urging passage of the extension in February.

Congressional Republicans hope to achieve beatification by teabaggers – and reelection, they hope – with their dedication to ideology over the needs of ordinary citizens of the United States.

RTFA. Enjoy the unintentional humor when the author recalls opportunist sluggos like Rick Perry declaiming again how he opposes any stimulus funds – before he accepts them. The dicho bears repeating: “Republicans would have invented hypocrisy if Christians hadn’t beaten them to it!”

Death Panels waiting to deploy – again – on behalf of the Republican Party

President Obama traveled to New York City today, where he pointedly told members of the city’s financial industry to stop fighting reasonable industry reform.

“We will not always see eye to eye,” Mr. Obama said to members of the banking industry in his speech at New York’s Cooper Union, not far from Wall Street. “We will not always agree. But that does not mean we have to choose between two extremes.”

“We do not have to choose between markets that are unfettered by even modest protections against crisis, or markets that are stymied by onerous rules that suppress enterprise and innovation,” he continued. “That’s a false choice…”

But he also lamented that some on Wall Street “forgot that behind every dollar traded or leveraged, there is family looking to buy a house, and pay for an education, open a business, save for retirement.”

“A free market, he said, “was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it…”

The president targeted Republicans, among them Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, who have suggested the legislation is actually going to encourage future taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street.

“That may make for a good sound bite, but it’s not factually accurate. It is not true,” he said, to applause. He said the system as it stands is what led to bailouts.

“A vote for reform is a vote to put a stop to taxpayer-funded bailouts,” he said. “That’s the truth. End of story. And nobody should be fooled in this debate.”

I hope American voters take the time to examine the facts of what is proposed instead of relying on the Party of No to tell them what to believe.

Thanks, Cinaedh, for the pic

Democracy manages to slip into the U.S. Senate

Lael Brainard won Senate confirmation today as the Treasury Department’s top financial diplomat, giving her a key role in U.S. efforts to persuade China to adopt a more flexible currency.

The Senate approved President Barack Obama’s nominee in a bipartisan 78-19 vote that was stalled more than a year by Republican concerns over Brainard’s tax payments.

That’s a year of stalling, hemming and hawing by crap moralists like Jim Bunning of Kentucky. One of the Republican thugs who specialized in blocking unemployment checks.

Nineteen Senate Republicans joined 57 Democrats and two independents in confirming Brainard Treasury Department under secretary for international affairs…

The timing of the confirmation vote is significant as it occurs before meetings this week of the Group of 20, the smaller Group of Seven and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank…

As well as holding a key position in talks with China, Brainard would help shepherd U.S. official positions through the global lending agencies that are being urged to take on a stronger role in monitoring global currency policies.

The Party of NO continues their favorite folk dance – Blocking the Road.

The White House and leading Democrats in Congress are close to proposing legislation that would force private companies and groups to disclose their behind-the-scenes financial involvement in political campaigns and advertising…

The legislation is being developed in response to a major Supreme Court decision in January that found that the government could not ban corporations from spending in political campaigns.

The decision, a break from precedent, drew strong personal protest from President Obama. White House and Congressional leaders have been working for the last three months to find a way to stem what they predict will be a flood of corporate money flowing into November’s midterm elections.

Democrats say they think the debate gives them an attractive political issue. It allows them to position themselves against Wall Street and corporate money in politics while railing against what they view as the Supreme Court’s pro-business stance just as a new vacancy has opened on the court…

As one example of the types of spending they want disclosed, officials pointed to the millions of dollars some of the nation’s biggest insurance companies gave to the Chamber of Commerce to help underwrite advertisements attacking the Obama administration’s health care plan.

The Democrats’ proposal would require corporations or groups like labor unions, advocacy groups and so-called 527 organizations that are involved in political expenditures to identify all their financial donors or set up separate accounts to handle political spending and identify the donors to that account…

To counter the Republican-owned Supreme Court decision on campaign funding, it looks as if there really will be proposals for transparency, revealing who the big money supports.

Anyone hazard a guess on what the vote will be from the Party of NO?