This is a pretty amazing read from the NYT on Harry Reid's chief of staff and how much the White House hates him - As Democrats Work to Unify, A Top Reid Aide Causes a Rift

Also I'm in the midst of writing a post on Obama's executive amnesty announcement and writing it up in Word rather than the web window because it is extensive. I'm at 767 words and have to cover a few more topics. I am going to go to Shop Rite then come home and finish it up and post it for most of you not to read. Having a Friday.

i'll be stopping halfway through, so just have the first half polished up so i can disagree

jerz i'm gonna read that post and get real heated

TomatoPie wrote:

Phan In Phlorida wrote:(sigh) 1950s... It was an era with sky-high marginal tax rates and large government bureaucracies.

Yeah, we been shrinking government since those halycon days of big spending back in the 50s

Coincidentally matches up with the increasing "participation of blacks in American society"... the start of the civil rights movement, school desegregation in the south, integration of southern universities...

Phan In Phlorida wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:

Phan In Phlorida wrote:(sigh) 1950s... It was an era with sky-high marginal tax rates and large government bureaucracies.

Yeah, we been shrinking government since those halycon days of big spending back in the 50s

Coincidentally matches up with the increasing "participation of blacks in American society"... the start of the civil rights movement, school desegregation in the south, integration of southern universities...

so, all the bad stuff!

jerseyhoya wrote:This is a pretty amazing read from the NYT on Harry Reid's chief of staff and how much the White House hates him - As Democrats Work to Unify, A Top Reid Aide Causes a Rift

Also I'm in the midst of writing a post on Obama's executive amnesty announcement and writing it up in Word rather than the web window because it is extensive. I'm at 767 words and have to cover a few more topics. I am going to go to Shop Rite then come home and finish it up and post it for most of you not to read. Having a Friday.

Presdient Obama announced Executive Amnesty?

in the sense that it's a reprieve from deportation, yeah. in the Reagan Amnesty sense that people actually think of when they see the word amnesty used, no. he changed no laws.

This will be even more persuasive when you explain to our viewers what "All Government Spending (Budget Concept) means, and how it differs from Government Spending on Goods and Services (GDP concept, G).

You were going to do that, right? Cause without, what you've got is 2 different squiggly lines

TomatoPie wrote:

Has-been Ed Gillespie is an utter fucking idiot; it's what you are by default when you take health policy advice from Bill Kristol and Dan Senor.

And if you're in Virginia, and you voted for this idiot, you got lucky. Idiot.

jerseyhoya wrote:This is a pretty amazing read from the NYT on Harry Reid's chief of staff and how much the White House hates him - As Democrats Work to Unify, A Top Reid Aide Causes a Rift

Just tonally/phrasing-wise, that's a weird article ("roll onto," "insanely hard-working"). I wonder if the usual Times national politics editor is out or something.

Also, my god what a dysfunctional bunch of idiots. The piece might be best data point I've ever seen behind the truism that DC is Hollywood for ugly people; if you told me all that dick-measuring and general rage was between staffs of rival movie studio heads rather than people working for the president and the majority leader, it would make more sense.

drsmooth wrote:Has-been Ed Gillespie is an utter #$!&@ idiot; it's what you are by default when you take health policy advice from Bill Kristol and Dan Senor.

And if you're in Virginia, and you voted for this idiot, you got lucky. Idiot.

Under my alternative, Medicaid would revert to pre-Obamacare eligibility levels. Anyone who was added to Medicaid under Obamacare would be free to buy personal insurance with their new tax credits. Those who remained on Medicaid could voluntarily switch to them.

LOL

jerseyhoya wrote:This is a pretty amazing read from the NYT on Harry Reid's chief of staff and how much the White House hates him - As Democrats Work to Unify, A Top Reid Aide Causes a Rift

good stuff. That he's a Philly guy is the capper of course

Taxing people by not taxing them is not a good strategy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html

today I learned school lunches were awesome and delicious until michelle obama got her grubby hands on them

drsmooth wrote:This will be even more persuasive when you explain to our viewers what "All Government Spending (Budget Concept) means, and how it differs from Government Spending on Goods and Services (GDP concept, G).

You were going to do that, right? Cause without, what you've got is 2 different squiggly lines

TomatoPie wrote:

Surprising that you ask, because you know the answer.

But for those playing along at home - the blue line - relatively flat - shows government spending on goods and services as a percent of GDP. That line alone disproves the notion that the 1950s were some golden time of outsized government.

The other line tells the complete story, though. It includes all the government spending in the blue line, plus adds in all the other government spending that does nothing to contribute to GDP. That includes interest on debt and, of course, transfer payments. Welfare, social security, medicaid, food stamps.

So - clearly - for the socialists on the board - stay right here, 'cos these are the Good Old Days.

Grudge fuck Erin Burnett

TomatoPie wrote:
The other line tells the complete story, though. It includes all the government spending in the blue line, plus adds in all the other government spending that does nothing to contribute to GDP. That includes interest on debt and, of course, transfer payments. Welfare, social security, medicaid, food stamps.

So - clearly - for the socialists on the board - stay right here, 'cos these are the Good Old Days.

Medicare?

I have many opinions on Obama’s executive amnesty thing. The shorter version: the legality of Obama’s action seems on pretty firm ground or at least unlikely to be overturned, but it also seems like that’s not the right question to be asking. The implications for the scope of presidential powers appear to be pretty real, but I’m not sure that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The underlying policy seems fine though not great, but it is an insufficient step if you want CIR passed and seems like this makes any comprehensive action on the issue less likely for the foreseeable future. The excuse that he should act because the Senate passed a bill last year but the House didn’t is insane. And finally Obama is a big fat gigantic liar on this, which is amusing if not terribly consequential. Feel free to read on if you care to see me expand on these brilliant insights.

It seems like most people think Obama can do this if he wants, and even if he can’t technically issue the executive order on all these topics, finding someone who has the standing to challenge the illegality of his move will be difficult. I am not a lawyer, so don’t have much interesting to add to that.

The more interesting question to me is whether Obama’s actions are in keeping with past norms or creating new political norms for executive authority in domestic policy. There’s a back and forth over at Andrew Sullivan’s blog from a bunch of folks talking about precedent on the actions. I think the distinction between what Reagan and Bush did and what Obama is pretty clear. Reagan and Bush were working on trying to implement a law passed recently by Congress. If Obama is reacting to anything, he’s trying to build on his own executive order from a few years ago and not legislation from Congress. Plenty other folks have written about how this is a major change, and I guess I buy it. Douthat is usually pretty good, and not some wide eyed winger who hypes stuff for shits and giggles, and his column from this weekend (like much of the rest of the stuff he’s written on this) - the Great Immigration Betrayal – is pretty angry.

If he is setting new norms (or expanding the boundaries of the permissible or however you want to phrase it), that’s pretty interesting for both parties moving forward. Democrats might feel fine trying to throw the first punch of the fight on the expansion of executive orders affecting domestic policy. Sort of like with the change to the filibuster rules, sure someday this might bite the party in the ass, but if you don’t trust the GOP to adhere to these norms when they eventually take back power anyway, there’s no downside to being the first mover. There is also the added fact that Democrats are unlikely to have unified control of government until 2020 at the earliest, as it’d take something of a wave to win the House back, and there hasn’t been a significant House wave in the direction of the party holding the White House since 1964. Nixon’s landslide reelection netted the GOP 12 seats. Reagan’s landslide reelection only netted 16 seats. Could the Democrats pick up 30 House seats in 2016 or over 2016 and 18 while holding the WH? I guess, but that seems very unlikely, so executive order is the best path for enacting Democratic policy preferences for the next 2-6 years. In the short and medium term, it will probably work out well for them. In the long run, it might turn out to be a mistake, because if the power the executive can claim is the power to ignore shit, that seems like there are more practical applications for the GOP to abuse than Democrats.

On the GOP side of the internet, there’s been an interesting back and forth the past few days over what the GOP’s reaction should be the next time there’s a Republican president. If you care to read, an example from the dig in, fight this, we don’t want a GOP president doing this side comes from Charles Cooke at National Review. A decent response from Gabriel Malor suggests grabbing it with both hands and running.

Moving beyond the norms question to the details of the action itself, I think these are all good things that should be the law of the land eventually, but would be much better within the context of other, more permanent changes. Not sure in isolation they will be more positive than negative. The more we do on the bringing the folks here illegally into the legal side of things without accompanying enforcement stuff, the more this is just going to keep happening every few years. According to AP Fact Checkers he’s underselling the actions he’s taking, I guess trying to seem more reasonable. It’s sort of hard to evaluate the policy because I think a lot of Obama’s motivations for doing this are more political than policy based. If I had to apportion the why for Obama flipped on this, pretty sizable chunks would go to ‘appeasing base by doing something and trying to get the GOP to do something crazy in response in addition to him actually wanting to enact these policy changes.

I’ll talk more about policy stuff moving forward down below, but I think this largely nukes any chance of any substantial immigration reform passing Congress while Republicans control at least the House and a Democrat is President. Not sure it was terribly high to begin with (in an earlier article Douthat talks about how Obama’s first major executive action on immigration scuttled the momentum for Congressional action back in 2012). I guess we’ll see how it all progresses.

There’s been a lot of excusing of the action because Congress hasn’t acted. I think this is completely nuts. In a lot of ways I think it makes it worse for him to act. These are people who are elected, and they are aware of the issue, and they haven’t passed legislation to address it. The Senate bill may or may not have gotten a majority in the House if it went to the floor, but if there was a clear majority in the House that wanted to get it to the floor, a majority of members could sign a discharge petition (how CFR passed). This didn’t happen from the branch of government responsible for making laws. Now Obama is saying “send me a bill that gives me what I want policy wise, and I won’t take this unilateral action.” What the hell kind of a negotiation is that?

What’s more insane is that Democrats controlled the House and Senate from 2007-11 and didn’t pass immigration reform themselves. Bush was in favor of CIR, Obama is in favor of CIR. This issue pretty clearly didn’t just become something that HAD TO BE ADDRESSED in the past 18 months. Suddenly Obama needs to issue an executive order on an issue he had routinely claimed he did not have the power to affect unilaterally because the House didn’t bring a Senate bill to the floor this session? Seriously? Is this how we decide when it is OK for a President to take unilateral action making sweeping policy changes? Another exasperated sentence ending in a question mark?

Related to the I Have To Act argument is the assertion that the action is popular. Well, that really depends on the poll question being asked. It seems that the policy details of immigration reform are usually pretty popular, but what Obama is doing isn’t. The NBC News/WSJ poll from earlier this week found support at 38-48. And in actual political campaigns we’ve seen time and again that candidates running in swing districts in general elections run ads attacking their opponents for supporting amnesty. Not exactly a ton of pushback in the other direction. In Politico’s excellent backgrounder on how the Obama administration arrived at their policy decision and how they were going to roll it out, they point out that the decision to stall the announcement to after the election was due to how abysmal the polling was on the issue in Iowa and Arkansas. What Obama is actually doing appears to be unpopular, and the issue is a negative to run on in real live elections, but it’s totally popular and he should do it because it’s so popular.

Addressing the policy angle moving forward, here are many things I know I think. I think Congress should pass comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship. I think the bill should include significant enforcement mechanisms at the border to prevent this from being the hot issue again 20 years after passage, and likely any bill will need these as triggers for the amnesty to kick in. I think the Republican Party will neither be helped nor harmed significantly by the passage of CIR if they’re involved in its passage with the increase in Hispanic voters down the line mitigated to some extent by the GOP improving its vote share in the Hispanic community through the issue being off the table. I think the Democrats like having this as an issue to run on more than they care about actually ‘solving’ the problem. I think the issue many Americans have with low skilled immigration – too often dismissed as mere racism – does not resonate with the average person on this board or in my day to day life because for the most part we have college degrees and work in white collar fields and do not deal with the negative influence mass, low skilled immigration has on wages.

Finally, the Obama is a big fat liar segment. I appreciate politicians who do what is necessary to win, and I don’t think hypocrisy is among the more potent insults one can hurl at a politician because everyone is a hypocrite. But for posterity’s sake, Obama’s ridiculousness on this issue cannot be summed up with just a passing mention. He repeatedly said he did not have the power to do what he just announced last night. The Washington Post gave him an upside down Pinocchio for his “royal flip flop” on the issue. The frequency of his claims of not having the power to do what he ended up doing is pretty staggering, especially for a guy who ran against Bush’s expansion of executive power. The RNC clipped some of his past statements into a handy 1 minute video.

There's a 99% chance that I stopped in the middle of multiple sentences and never returned to them because I jumped around in writing that and didn't proofread it because INTERNET