Democratic Senators Who Voted To Confirm Fascists To The Supreme Court

Justice Ginsburg, who, like Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, went to my high school, James Madison in Brooklyn, knows what she's talking about when she says the decision by the 5 right-wing Republican activists on the Supreme Court, each of whom is also a corporate whore, produced an anti-democratic ruling stinking of "hubris." She pointed out how illogical their nakedly partisan arguments were:

In the Court’s view, the very success of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act demands its dormancy. If the statute was working, there would be less evidence of discrimination, so opponents might argue that Congress should not be allowed to renew the statute. In contrast, if the statute was not working, there would be plenty of evidence of discrimination, but scant reason to renew a failed regulatory regime.

Our fellow Madison alumnus, Bernie Sanders, was even more to the point: "The Supreme Court has turned back the clock on equality in America by striking down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The landmark civil rights law that Congress passed almost five decades ago, and reauthorized with overwhelming bipartisan support only seven years ago, has been an important tool to protect voters in places with a history of discrimination. The law is as necessary today as it was in the era of Jim Crow laws. We must act immediately to rewrite this vital law." I think Republicans have a different agenda than Bernie. Speaking for all the racists and bigots who dominate the GOP, neo-fascist Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-SC) was positively giddy with the decision:

Today’s Supreme Court’s ruling invalidating the preclearance requirements contained within the Voting Rights Act is a win for fairness, South Carolina, and the rule of law. The preclearance requirement forced South Carolina to spend millions of dollars to defend a photo identification requirement for voting that had already been ruled constitutional by the US Supreme Court. The court’s ruling will hopefully end the practice of treating states differently and recognizes that we live in 2013, not the 1960's.

Michael Keegan, President of People for the American Way called the Supreme Court riling a "terrible blow to the Voting Rights Act."

As the Supreme Court swerves further to the right, our constitutional liberties continue to take a beating. Today, the Supreme Court seriously undermined an important piece of the premier civil rights legislation of the past century-- legislation that civil rights heroes gave their lives for. This decision sends a chilling message to all those Americans who continue to face politically-motivated hurdles on their way to the ballot box.

In his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice John Roberts pledged to behave like an umpire-- just calling balls and strikes, and staying out of the game. Today that umpire upended decades of civil rights law. His decision substitutes his own opinions for the findings of America’s elected representatives in Congress, who found numerous cases of ongoing, racially-based political gerrymandering and trickery. Moreover, it does so in an area in which the Constitution specifically and intentionally gives Congress wide discretion. Reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act received near unanimous support in both houses of Congress just a few years ago, and was signed into law by President Bush. Today’s decision is a blatantly inappropriate exercise in legislating from the bench. Conservatives who have spent decades decrying judicial activism should take note.

In two separate cases yesterday, Justice Ginsburg called on Congress to fix the damage done by decisions handed down by our nation’s highest court. That need is even greater today. Congress should move quickly to enact a coverage formula under Section 4 to protect voters whose right to participate in our democracy was badly undermined today. The American people deserve no less.

So how did these 5 corporate whores and GOP political hacks wind up on the Supreme Court? Who's to blame? Glad you asked, especially in light of a tweet from Matt Canter, Deputy Executive Director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee:

These are the 5 right-wing extremists on the Court with some info about how each got there, chronologically. First came Reagan's second pick, Antonin Scalia, who got the job when Reagan elevated former GOP Arizona voter fraud operative William Rehnquist to be Chief Justice. Although Scalia is probably the most extreme ideological rightist appointed to the court since Jackson appointed Roger Taney in 1836, he faced no opposition from the Judiciary Committee and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. Among the Democrats voting for him were Joe Biden, Carl Levin, Ted Kennedy, Max Baucus, and Pat Leahy. Take a bow, guys.

Reagan's next appointment was Anthony Kennedy, who had previously drafted California Governor Reagan's pro-corporate and very reactionary tax policies. He was Reagan's third choice after the Senate rejected Bork (who almost made Scalia seem mainstreamish) and Douglas Ginsburg, who withdrew after it came out he was a pothead. He was confirmed 97-0 in 1988. The same bunch of Democrats still kicking around today who voted for Scalia-- Biden, Levin, Baucus, and Leahy-- also voted for Kennedy.

Then we get Clarence Thomas, George H.W. Bush's second appointment-- and, ironically, the second African-American to serve on the Court. (Bush's first appointment was David Souter who has already retired.) Because Thomas was so clearly unqualified in every way, this was a very contentious confirmation process. Thomas' career has always been serving as a professional Uncle Tom for the GOP and he's easily the least qualified justice nominated to the Court in the 20th Century, Jeffrey Toobin remarking that he was the only "plausible" African American the GOP could come up with to replace Thurgood Marshall, who would be a lockstep corporate whore and right-wing ideologue. He hasn't disappointed. The American Bar Association was astounded about his unsuitability for the appointment. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 7-7 and sent his nomination to the full Senate without a recommendation. He was confirmed by a 52-48 vote on October 15, 1991, the narrowest margin for approval in more than a century. All the normal Democrats (plus mainstream Republicans Bob Packwood and Jim Jeffords) voted against him. But 11 conservative Democrats, mostly from the South, joined the Republicans to confirm him. None of the Democrats are still in the Senate except Dick Shelby (AL), who soon after switched parties and joined the GOP.

The final two monsters on the Court, Roberts and Alito, were nominated by George Bush. Bush nominated Roberts to take over from Sandra Day O'Connor when she retired in 2005, but just as the process was getting underway, Rehnquist-- who was already horribly senile-- finally died. Bush realized they could slip Roberts-- a total Chamber of Commerce kind of guy-- in as Chief Justice. With Ted Kennedy, Richard Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein and Joe Biden voting against him, the Judiciary Committee approved the nomination 13-5. The following week he was confirmed by the Senate 78-22, all the Republicans and exactly half the Democrats voting for him. Democrats still serving in the Senate today who voted to confirm Roberts:

• Max Baucus (MT)
• Tom Carper (DE)
• Tim Johnson (SD)
• Mary Landrieu (LA)
• Patrick Leahy (VT)
• Carl Levin (MI)
• Patty Murray (WA)
• Bill Nelson (FL)
• Mark Pryor (AR)
• Jay Rockefeller (WV)
• Ron Wyden (OR)

Do you think they would vote for him again today? I might add that among the other Democrats who voted to confirm Roberts were Russ Feingold, Joe Lieberman (before he was kicked out of the party), and Blanche Lincoln. Among the 22 senators voting NO were Barack Obama, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

And the final piece of shit in a judicial robe, also nominated by Bush-- after his girlfriend Harriet Miers was laughed out of Washington by Democrats and Republicans-- was Sam Alito, another Big Business hack. Bush nominated him for the O'Connor seat in November, 2005 and he was approved by the Judiciary Committee on a 10-8 party line vote. John Kerry decided to filibuster the nomination because Alito was so extreme. The filibuster was shut down in a 72-25 vote, paving the way for confirmation. The cloture vote was the one that counted and the Democrats still serving today who crossed the aisle and voted with the GOP to end the filibuster were:

• Max Baucus (MT)
• Maria Cantwell (WA)
• Tom Carper (DE)
• Tim Johnson (SD)
• Mary Landrieu (LA)
• Bill Nelson (FL)
• Mark Pryor (AR)
• Jay Rockefeller (WV)

This week Alito was caught making juvenile faces while women members of the Court read their opinions. Among the Democrats backing the filibuster were Obama, Feingold, Clinton and-- finally-- Leahy.

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Progressives Break With The Clinton-Bush-Obama Trade Policy Nightmare

Great minds think alike but, alas, we don't have many of those in Congress. Thank God we do have Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the Senate and Alan Grayson in the House. All three are skeptical-- very skeptical-- about the latest and most atrocious trade bill Corporate America is trying to shove down our throats, with the help of many of their colleagues and... el Presidente. Thursday all those Republicans who obstruct every Obama nomination were stumbling all over each other to vote to confirm the conservative American jobs killer Obama named as U.S. Trade Rep, Michael Froman. Corporate America was popping the champagne bottles. The nomination passed 93-4-1, only Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Joe Manchin and Carl Levin voting against one of Obama's worst picks for anything ever. (Barbara Boxer voted "present.")

Senator Warren spoke at the Constitution Society for Law and Policy this week and told the convention that the far right business lobby, the Chamber of Commerce now owns the Supreme Court. "Take a look at the win rate of the Chamber of Commerce. According to the Constitution Accountability Center, the Chamber moved from a 43 percent win rate during the very conservative Berger Court to a 56 percent win rate under the very conservative Rehnquist court. And now they are at a 70 percent win rate under the Roberts Court. Follow this pro-business trend to its obvious conclusion and you will end up with a Supreme Court that’s a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chamber of Commerce."

Not more than a few minutes after the vote Thursday, Bernie Sanders tweeted "Today, virtually no piece of legislation can get passed unless it has the ok from corporate America" and posted this video:


Bernie Sanders on the Independent in Politics from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.


The Obama Administration has been very secretive about the newest corporate trade bill it's burdening America with, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. They don't want anyone seeing the bill because it's more evidence that corporate America-- the guys who finance the cushy careers of our political elite-- no longer has any allegiance to America whatsoever, nor to American values or even American prosperity. They don't even see themselves as American but as cosmopolitan transnational citizens of the corporate world. They are international entities committed to the lowest international norms they can find for the sole purpose of maximizing corporate profits and the wealth of the top 1%. These are the traitors to this country, not Edward Snowden, and they should be identified as the secretive, bipartisan, slimy criminals they really are-- along with their Republican and Democratic political handmaidens, be it Boehner, McConnell or Obama. In a letter to his supporters, Congressman Alan Grayson explains how he came to read the toxic treaty... and what it means to 99% of us.

Last month, 10,000 of us submitted comments to the United States Trade Representative (USTR), in which we objected to new so-called free trade agreements. We asked that the government not sell out our democracy to corporate interests.

Because of this pressure, the USTR finally let a member of Congress-- little ole me, Alan Grayson-- actually see the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP is a large, secret trade agreement that is being negotiated with many countries in East Asia and South America.

The TPP is nicknamed “NAFTA on steroids.”  Now that I’ve read it, I can see why. I can’t tell you what’s in the agreement, because the U.S. Trade Representative calls it classified. But I can tell you two things about it.

1)    There is no national security purpose in keeping this text secret.

2)    This agreement hands the sovereignty of our country over to corporate interests.

3)    What they can’t afford to tell the American public is that [the rest of this sentence is classified].

(Well, I did promise to tell you only two things about it.)

I will be fighting this agreement with everything I’ve got. And I know you’ll be there every step of the way.

In other words, an anti-American power grab by corporations with no affinity with this country and no concerns whatsoever about the people who live in this country. “It is easy to understand why this NAFTA-style agreement has been kept secret," said Grayson. The TPP is a disturbing attack on American democracy and sovereignty. It puts corporate interests ahead of American interests.” Grayson has called on the USTR to release the full draft text of the agreement to the public, as it did under the Bush administration in 2001 with the draft text of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americans, the most recent major plurilateral agreement that the U.S. negotiated. “Each and every U.S. citizen should have the opportunity to read this agreement because if it is signed, the TPP will have a dramatic impact on our rights and our freedom,” Grayson added. The treaty will make it possible for corporations to file lawsuits to prevent government actions that they just don’t like, such as health and safety regulations. Similar trade agreements have allowed the World Trade Organization to strike down country-of-origin meat labels, dolphin-safe tuna labels and limits on candy-flavored cigarettes marketed to kids. The TPP is reported to include the same terms. Hope and Change!

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Democratic Party Immigration Hypocrisy

The Democratic Party doesn't have much going for it... except that the alternative is the Republican Party. Last November I couldn't-- for the first time since turning 18-- pull the lever for the Democrat running for president (nor for my incumbent [Blue Dog/New Dem] Democratic congressman)... but I already knew a Republican wouldn't beat either. It's more than me not just wanting to be forced to pick between the lesser of two evils though. I can no longer deny that the Democratic Party serves interests, primarily on Wall Street and in the Military Industrial Complex, that are antithetical to my own. This week a former Democratic congressional candidate, a prominent attorney and a leader in his state's Democratic Party sent me an e-mail that read, in part:

I think the better hope may lie in a rejuvenated Occupy movement, or the formation of a Labor Party, or both. The Democrats, collectively, are pathetic. And electing the occasional decent one doesn’t change that much.

The three huge challenges we face are American imperialism, climate change, and economic injustice / inequality. And the data on each of those fronts is devastatingly bad, seemingly worse every day.

Like your garden variety Republican politician, there is virtually no issue conservative Democrats like Obama and Clinton don't see through the prism of the nefarious interests that have enriched them and their cronies. This morning the presidente gave a high-sounding speech about comprehensive immigration reform (below). And yet, Outside-the-Beltway, he has cultivated an image as Deporter-in-chief.

The National Day Laborer Organizing Network, an organization that works to improve the lives of transient workers, is critical of the White House’s promises to take a progressive stance on reforms.

“At this point, his words sound like empty promises stacked against his record,” said Pablo Alvarado, the group’s executive director, in a statement.

By 2014, two million people will be deported under the Obama administration, the Huffington Post reported in January. That’s the cumulative amount of immigrants deported under Bush, and more than all deportations before 1997.

“The fact that regressive voices among Republicans have been the loudest and most shrill does not excuse the president's disastrous record on deportations,” Alvarado said. “The president alone oversees the removal of more than 1,100 people every day.”

...[N]early half of all Latinos living in the United States are less likely to report crime due to a potential involvement of immigration enforcement.

“The president must cease policies and dishonest rhetoric that equate immigrants with criminals. He knows full well that it is our families and loved ones he is profiling, criminalizing, and deporting,” he said. “The immigration debate is not one between Democrats and Republicans. It is a debate of fear versus courage.”

This week Garance Franke-Ruta, writing for The Atlantic, gave words to the Democratic Party hope that they can still win in 2014 and 2016 because Latino voters will react against Republican racism and bigotry. "Immigration reform," he asserts, "is the single most important issue for Latino voters. Republicans who oppose it are having trouble accepting that reality." Will it be enough to save the Democrats' worthless necks? Thursday we saw all but 6 House Republicans vote to start deporting DREAMers, joined by three conservative Democrats, John Barrow, Mike McIntyre and Nick Rahall. Franke-Ruta says it's how the GOP is canceling out the gains it may be making with it's well-coordinated "Summer of Scandal that will "guarantee itself a loss in 2016 and a smaller advantage in 2014 than it might otherwise have had."

House Republicans walking away from comprehensive immigration reform. Tying a path to citizenship to continued second-class standing on access to health insurance. Voting to resume deporting undocumented immigrants brought here as children, a year after President Obama issued an executive order instructing the Department of Homeland Security to use discretion and make such deportations a low priority.

Don't take it from me-- take it from the Republican National Committee, which in March issued an autopsy of Mitt Romney's loss and the party's 2012 failure to gain seats in the House or Senate.

"If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States ... they will not pay attention to our next sentence," the "Growth and Opportunity Project" report, the result of months of study, asserted. "It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies."

The establishment Republicans called for the party to back immigration reform as the way to start winning again. "Among the steps Republicans take in the Hispanic community and beyond, we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform," it said. "If we do not, our Party's appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only.... Hispanic voters tell us our Party's position on immigration has become a litmus test, measuring whether we are meeting them with a welcome mat or a closed door."

Or listen to the College Republican National Committee, which just issued a report on retooling the "Grand Old Party for a Brand New Generation."

"The issue of the Republican Party's challenges with the youth vote and the party's challenges with non-white voters are inseparable," the report said. "The immigration debate may set up a 'gateway issue.' For voters who are undecided but have a connection to communities affected by immigration policy, the issue can certainly turn voters away."

...Or listen to Karl Rove, who on Thursday warned in the Wall Street Journal, "Immigration reform is now a gateway issue: Many Hispanics won't be open to Republicans until it is resolved, which could take the rest of the year. But there is little doubt next week's Senate deliberations will shape for some time to come the Hispanic community's perceptions of the GOP."

There were boos in the House gallery when the measure to undo Obama's executive order halting deportation of young undocumented immigrants, known as DREAMers after the still unpassed DREAM Act that would provide them with a pathway to citizenship, passed on a highly partisan vote of 224-201.

While reform advocates remain optimistic about prospects for passage of the Senate Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration-reform bill, what will happen in the House remains unclear.

"We always predicted this would be a roller coaster ride with some dark moments and some strong challenges and some bad days. What makes me optimistic are the fundamentals," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice Education Fund. Speaking on a call organized to discuss new polling from his group and Latino Decisions, he noted, "The challenge that we're up against is resistance within the Republican Party and the institutional legitimacy of Congress-- can it function?...This is going to be a remarkable moment of truth for the Republican Party; they literally are facing an existential moment of truth."

"Do I think the Senate immigration bill can pass the Senate by the end of June by a 2-to-1 margin? Yes," Sharry said.

According the America's Voice/Latino Decisions poll released Thursday, immigration is the number one issue Latino/Hispanic voters care about, surpassing jobs and the economy by 20 percentage points (55 percent to 35 percent). Seventy-eight percent of respondents said it was very or extremely important that Congress address immigration reform this year; 81 percent backed an approach that focused on border security and a pathway to citizenship at the same time-- while only 13 percent backed a border-first approach.

Immigration was an incredibly personal issue for the Latinos surveyed: Sixty-seven percent said they personally knew someone who was undocumented, and for 51 percent that person was a friend or family member.

..."As the electorate overall diversifies, the Republican Party is not going to be able to win another national presidential election if they are not in the high 30s or 40s" with Latino voters, said Matt Barreto, a co-founder of Latino Decisions and professor at the University of Washington. "I don't think it is possible," he said. "They absolutely need make inroads."

Will they fall for weak, compromised Democratic measures? Probably many well. Enough? I doubt it. Voter participation in the Latino community is very low. If the DCCC is whining about bad Republicans voting to deport DREAMers, while spending millions of dollars to reelect Barrow and McIntyre, which they plan to do, are Latinos not capable of figuring out the hypocrisy that drives the party in this-- as in all matters? This, in part, is what Obama had to say this morning:

[I]f we’re going to truly fix a broken system, we need Congress to act in a comprehensive way. And that’s why what’s happening next week is so important.

The bill before the Senate isn’t perfect. It’s a compromise. Nobody will get everything they want-- not Democrats, not Republicans, not me. But it is a bill that’s largely consistent with the principles I’ve repeatedly laid out for commonsense immigration reform.

This bill would continue to strengthen security at our borders, increase criminal penalties against smugglers and traffickers, and hold employers more accountable if they knowingly hire undocumented workers. If enacted, it would represent the most ambitious enforcement plan in recent memory.

This bill would provide a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million individuals who are in this country illegally-- a pathway that includes passing a background check, learning English, paying taxes and a penalty, and then going to the back of the line behind everyone who’s playing by the rules and trying to come here legally.

This bill would modernize the legal immigration system so that, alongside training American workers for the jobs of tomorrow, we’re also attracting highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers who will grow our economy. And so that our people don’t have to wait years before their loved ones are able to join them in this country we love.

That’s what immigration reform looks like. Smarter enforcement. A pathway to earned citizenship.  Improvements to the legal immigration system. They’re all commonsense steps. They’ve got broad support-- from Republicans and Democrats, CEOs and labor leaders, law enforcement and clergy. So there is no reason that Congress can’t work together to send a bill to my desk by the end of the summer.

We know the opponents of reform are going to do everything they can to prevent that. They’ll try to stoke fear and create division. They’ll try to play politics with an issue that the vast majority of Americans want addressed. And if they succeed, we will lose this chance to finally fix an immigration system that is badly broken.

So if you agree that now is the time for commonsense reform, reach out to your Representatives.  Tell them we have to get this done so that everyone is playing by the same rules. Tell them we have the power to do this in a way that lives up to our traditions as a nation of laws, and a nation of immigrants.

I wonder if he'll be down in Georgia and North Carolina campaigning for Barrow and McIntyre. He raised millions of dollars for his party from wealthy Democrats in California this weekend. How much of that will go towards reelecting racists and bigots like Barrow and McIntyre who vote exactly the way the evil Republicans vote?

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So America Decided To Turn Itself Into A Surveillance State?

The Patriot Act should have been repealed the second the Democrats won control of Congress. Instead, many Democrats worked with Republicans to keep it in place. Same for FISA. Now people are demanding Congress investigate the NSA's and Verizon's indiscriminate, bulk spying on American citizens. Congress? Investigate? What a joke! Congress is responsible for this-- and in a very conservative consensus ("bipartisan") way. Lindsey Graham, hardly an Obama apologist, was just on Fox saying "I’m sure we should be doing this.”

Yesterday, the NY Times slapped the Obama Administration down big time:

Within hours of the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.

Those reassurances have never been persuasive-- whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism-- especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability. The administration has now lost all credibility. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the 9/11 attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.

...This stunning use of the act shows, once again, why it needs to be sharply curtailed if not repealed.

When FISA came up for reauthorization last year it passed the House in a landslide, 301-118. 74 Democrats joined 227 Republicans in favor, including Hoyer of course, but also, very disappointingly, Pelosi. Meanwhile 7 Republicans joined the 111 Democrats who opposed it. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by Raúl Grijalva and Keith Ellison, rallied votes against it. The one member of the Democratic House leadership who bucked that leadership and voted "no" was Xavier Becerra (CA). It's worth noting that then-Senate candidates Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) voted "no" and were elected and wretched New Dem Shelly Berkley (NV) voted "yes" and was defeated.

Bernie Sanders wasn't as surprised as he was ready to tear someone's head off. "As one of the few members of Congress who consistently voted against the Patriot Act, I expressed concern at the time of passage that it gave the government far too much power to spy on innocent United State citizens and provided for very little oversight or disclosure. Unfortunately, what I said turned out to be exactly true. The United States should not be accumulating phone records on tens of millions of innocent Americans. That is not what democracy is about. That is not what freedom is about. Congress must address this issue and protect the constitutional rights of the American people."

Voting with the Republicans in favor of reauthorizing FISA was one of the last votes in the dreadful careers of Jason Altmire (Blue Dog/New Dem-PA), Joe Baca (Blue Dog-CA), Howard Berman (D-Israel), Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Leonard Boswell (Blue Dog-IA), Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY), Mark Critz (PA), Kathy Hochul (New Dem-NY), Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA), Larry Kissell (Blue Dog-NC), Silvestre Reyes (TX), Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR), and Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC). Ed Markey (D-MA), who will face Massachusetts voters June 25, voted against reauthorizing FISA. The Republicans in opposition to Boehner and Obama on this included libertarian-leaning conservatives like Walter Jones (NC), Ron Paul (TX), Jimmy Duncan (TN), Tom McClintock (CA) and Justin Amash (MI).

And I might add that corrupt New Dem Colleen Hanabusa of Hawaii, currently challenging progressive Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz, was a proponent of FISA, voted for it and continues to be one of the most shady Democrats when it comes to taking legalistic bribes from the worst players in the Military-Industrial Complex President Eisenhower warned us against. Hanabusa has been a real problem in the House and she wants to get into the Senate-- where she can do even more damage. You can help keep her out of the Senate by backing Schatz's reelection bid. He has a very different approach to domestic spying than Hanabusa:

"My first vote as United States Senator was against the FISA Amendments Act because it failed to provide transparency, accountability and reasonable limits when the federal government conducts surveillance for intelligence purposes. While I recognize that the FISA Amendments Act has helped to produce useful intelligence, I fear that we do not have a full understanding of the impact that this law has on the privacy of Americans. We need a comprehensive review of the FISA Amendments Act to ensure that Americans’ privacy and civil liberties are protected."

Not just different... better, much better.

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GMO: No One Is Perfect-- Not Even Elizabeth Warren

What about the corporate AgriBusiness predators?

America is embarrassingly overdue to have a woman president. Golda Meir, Indira Gandi and Margaret Thatcher headed their countries' governments in very dicey times. And aside from them, women have been heads of government in Germany, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Argentina, Portugal, Bolivia, Norway, Iceland, the Philippines, France, Chile, Bangladesh, Ukraine, Poland, Turkey, Canada, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and over a dozen other countries... including both Burundi and Rwanda. But electing a woman just because she's a woman is not what I have in mind. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, for example, are women.

Unless you're new to this blog, you're probably aware of our immense esteem for Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. She's certainly my idea of what a great first woman president would be. I'm sure Hillary Clinton will be a better choice than whatever stinking pile of garbage the Republicans puke up in 2016, but-- as happy I will be that we finally have a woman president-- Hillary isn't high on my list of great leaders. At best... she's ok sometimes. Of course, not even Elizabeth Warren is perfect, but, for one reason or another, she's a far better leader than Clinton and a far more dedicated progressive. That said, Friday Senator Warren made a bad mistake. She joined 27 Democrats from across the political spectrum-- from good ones like Tammy Baldwin, Tom Harkin and Sherrod Brown to the careful careerists like Kirsten Gillibrand, Bob Casey, Debbie Stabenow, and Jeanne Shaheen all the way to the worst worthless trash in the Democratic caucus like Joe Donnelly, Mark Pryor and Max Baucus-- to vote down an amendment by Bernie Sanders to permit States to require that any food, beverage, or other edible product offered for sale have a label on indicating that the food, beverage, or other edible product contains a genetically engineered ingredient." Yep, only 26 Democrats plus Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski supported a bill to deal with GMO foods.

I wish Warren voted the right way. Do I still want her to be president? Absolutely. Everyone's entitled to a mistake. These are the Democrats who voted for Sanders' amendment, which was defeated 27-71:

• Mark Begich (D-AK)
• Michael Bennet (D-CO)
• Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
• Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
• Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
• Ben Cardin (D-MD)
• Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
• Martin Heinrich (D-NM)
• Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
• Angus King (I-ME)
• Pat Leahy (D-VT)
• Joe Manchin (D-WV)
• Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
• Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
• Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
• Chris Murphy (D-CT)
• Patty Murray (D-WA)
• Jack Reed (D-RI)
• Harry Reid (D-NV)
• Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
• Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
• Brian Schatz (D-HI)
• Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
• John Tester (D-MT)
• Tom Udall (D-NM)
• Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
• Ron Wyden (D-OR)

What a weird day when Joe Manchin votes the progressive position and Elizabeth Warren votes with the Republicans! By the way, Connecticut's Senate just passed a GMO-labeling bill 35-1. 64 other countries have GMO-labeling laws and some countries ban GMO products sold as food completely. "The concept we're talking about today is a fairly commonsense and non-radical idea," said Sanders just before the vote. "All over the world, in the European Union, in many other countries around the world, dozens and dozens of countries, people are able to look at the food that they are buying and determine through labeling whether or not that product contains genetically modified organisms."

UPDATE: Elizabeth Warren Supports GMO-Labeling

Her Press Secretary, Lacey Rose gave me this statement after the vote yesterday: "The Senator supports labeling and supports the rights of states to set labeling standards based on health and safety. She supports the purpose of the Sanders amendment but voted no because the proposal would have eliminated the ability of the FDA to force states to comply with a more pro-consumer standard in the future."

OK; there you go.

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Water, Water Everywhere-- And An Obstructionist Senate Who Won't Allow It To Be Cleaned Up

This morning I was going over the Senate votes from Tuesday and I found a strange one. The Republicans successfully filibustered an amendment by Bernie Sanders to Boxer's Water Resources Development Act of 2013, which is co-sponsored by Louisiana Republican David Vitter. And in fact, Vitter was one of just 3 Republicans who broke with Miss McConnell's filibuster machine on Sanders' amendment. The amendment would essentially allow FEMA to rebuild bridges and other infrastructure to the state's high standards, so that they don't collapse in the next storm. It was interesting the Texas obstructionists John Cornyn and Ted Cruz are both asking for money to ameliorate the catastrophe in West-- which may well have been another right-wing domestic terror attack-- but refuse to help New Englander's who suffered at the hands of Tropical Storm Irene.

Aside from Vitter, the other Republicans who crossed the aisle and voted with the Democrats were Susan Collins (R-ME) and Roger Wicker (R-MS), who, like Vitter, understands about the need to turn to the federal government for help after big storms. Florida Senator Marco Rubio was another NO vote, thinking less about the folks who live in hurricane-ravaged Florida and more about Tea Party presidential primary voters.

Before they got around to voting on the overall bill-- which passed Wednesday 83-14, there was also a successful vote on Jeff Merkley's and Sherrod Brown's amendment to require the use of American iron, steel, and manufactured goods for these projects. Although the Export-American-Jobs-To-China Caucus, which is led by McConnell, Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) tried killing it with a filibuster, enough Republicans in states where these products are made-- particularly Alabama, Illinois and North Carolina-- abandoned the GOP's anti-Made In America insanity, allowing Merkley to get the 60 votes he needed. Amazing to me that right-wing Republicans would oppose Made-in-America efforts like this. Merkley tried appealing to them by reminding them that “if we don’t make things in America, we won’t have a middle class in America. American manufacturing companies create good, living wage jobs. We all benefit when our tax dollars go to create more jobs and success in America.”

They just DO NOT CARE. And although Rob Portman (R-OH) voted against it, Sherrod Brown was jubilant when it passed: “This is great news for Ohio workers and manufacturers. When we invest in American infrastructure, we should also invest in American manufacturing. We know how to make things in this country and should use American taxpayer dollars to bolster domestic manufacturing as much as possible.”

Merkely also pointed out that "for many years, Buy America provisions have established the basic principle that when we spend federal taxpayer dollars on public infrastructure projects, American businesses and workers should do the work. Backed by an open, competitive market-driven process, Buy America rules have provided the foundation for millions of miles of roads, bridges, light rail, and subways, and millions of good-paying jobs. The amendment expands those current standards for roads, bridges, and rail to cover WIFIA (Water Infrastructure Financing Innovation Act) federally financed water infrastructure projects."

Kentucky voters should remember that McConnell led this filibuster against American jobs when they go to the polls in 2014. And, by the way, Merkley is one of only 3 Senate incumbents endorsed by Blue America for 2014.

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Well, Of Course Rich Kids Are Smarter Than Poor Kids

My pal Roland teaches in an inner city elementary school in one of the toughest neighborhoods in L.A. Everyday he comes home exhausted and frustrated and drained. "Maybelline was suspended again," he seems to tell me more often than I ask him if he wants to eat at Ink or M.A.K.E. Maybelline is 8. I remember when he first told me about her at the beginning of the semester. He said he thought she might be a genius, definietly the smartest child in his class. He seemed excited to play a role in helping her reach her potential. Now he's relieved when she doesn't terrorize his other students, steal their lunches and pencils or just beat them up. Maybelline's probably not going to Harvard or Stanford (where Sean Reardon teaches education and sociology). More likely she's going to end up at the Central California Women's Facility outside Chowchilla. Essentially, she has no parents; no idea who her father was and her mom's a junkie, in and out-- mostly in-- jails and prisons. Maybelline lives with her unemployed grandfather.

Did you read Reardon's OpEd in the NY Times over the weekend, No Rich Child Left Behind? He didn't mean the kind of rich Maybelline is. She doesn't have to study for her tests-- she never does-- but she aces them anyway. What a shame that society will squander that kind of richness! "Here’s a fact that may not surprise you," offers Reardon: "the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion." And the differences are growing-- gigantically.

One way to see this is to look at the scores of rich and poor students on standardized math and reading tests over the last 50 years. When I did this using information from a dozen large national studies conducted between 1960 and 2010, I found that the rich-poor gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30 years ago.

To make this trend concrete, consider two children, one from a family with income of $165,000 and one from a family with income of $15,000. These incomes are at the 90th and 10th percentiles of the income distribution nationally, meaning that 10 percent of children today grow up in families with incomes below $15,000 and 10 percent grow up in families with incomes above $165,000.

In the 1980s, on an 800-point SAT-type test scale, the average difference in test scores between two such children would have been about 90 points; today it is 125 points. This is almost twice as large as the 70-point test score gap between white and black children. Family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race.

The same pattern is evident in other, more tangible, measures of educational success, like college completion. In a study similar to mine, Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski, economists at the University of Michigan, found that the proportion of students from upper-income families who earn a bachelor’s degree has increased by 18 percentage points over a 20-year period, while the completion rate of poor students has grown by only 4 points.

...In San Francisco this week, more than 14,000 educators and education scholars have gathered for the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The theme this year is familiar: Can schools provide children a way out of poverty?

We are still talking about this despite decades of clucking about the crisis in American education and wave after wave of school reform.Whatever we’ve been doing in our schools, it hasn’t reduced educational inequality between children from upper- and lower-income families.

Part of knowing what we should do about this is understanding how and why these educational disparities are growing. For the past few years, alongside other scholars, I have been digging into historical data to understand just that. The results of this research don’t always match received wisdom or playground folklore.

The most potent development over the past three decades is that the test scores of children from high-income families have increased very rapidly. Before 1980, affluent students had little advantage over middle-class students in academic performance; most of the socioeconomic disparity in academics was between the middle class and the poor. But the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor. Just as the incomes of the affluent have grown much more rapidly than those of the middle class over the last few decades, so, too, have most of the gains in educational success accrued to the children of the rich.

...It may seem counterintuitive, but schools don’t seem to produce much of the disparity in test scores between high- and low-income students. We know this because children from rich and poor families score very differently on school readiness tests when they enter kindergarten, and this gap grows by less than 10 percent between kindergarten and high school. There is some evidence that achievement gaps between high- and low-income students actually narrow during the nine-month school year, but they widen again in the summer months.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t important differences in quality between schools serving low- and high-income students-- there certainly are-- but they appear to do less to reinforce the trends than conventional wisdom would have us believe.


If not the usual suspects, what’s going on? It boils down to this: The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school.



My research suggests that one part of the explanation for this is rising income inequality. As you may have heard, the incomes of the rich have grown faster over the last 30 years than the incomes of the middle class and the poor. Money helps families provide cognitively stimulating experiences for their young children because it provides more stable home environments, more time for parents to read to their children, access to higher-quality child care and preschool and-- in places like New York City, where 4-year-old children take tests to determine entry into gifted and talented programs-- access to preschool test preparation tutors or the time to serve as tutors themselves.

But rising income inequality explains, at best, half of the increase in the rich-poor academic achievement gap. It’s not just that the rich have more money than they used to, it’s that they are using it differently. This is where things get really interesting.

High-income families are increasingly focusing their resources-- their money, time and knowledge of what it takes to be successful in school-- on their children’s cognitive development and educational success. They are doing this because educational success is much more important than it used to be, even for the rich.

With a college degree insufficient to ensure a high-income job, or even a job as a barista, parents are now investing more time and money in their children’s cognitive development from the earliest ages. It may seem self-evident that parents with more resources are able to invest more-- more of both money and of what Mr. Putnam calls “‘Goodnight Moon’ time”-- in their children’s development. But even though middle-class and poor families are also increasing the time and money they invest in their children, they are not doing so as quickly or as deeply as the rich.

The economists Richard J. Murnane and Greg J. Duncan report that from 1972 to 2006 high-income families increased the amount they spent on enrichment activities for their children by 150 percent, while the spending of low-income families grew by 57 percent over the same time period. Likewise, the amount of time parents spend with their children has grown twice as fast since 1975 among college-educated parents as it has among less-educated parents. The economists Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey of the University of California, San Diego, call this escalation of early childhood investment “the rug rat race,” a phrase that nicely captures the growing perception that early childhood experiences are central to winning a lifelong educational and economic competition.

It’s not clear what we should do about all this. Partly that’s because much of our public conversation about education is focused on the wrong culprits: we blame failing schools and the behavior of the poor for trends that are really the result of deepening income inequality and the behavior of the rich.

We’re also slow to understand what’s happening, I think, because the nature of the problem-- a growing educational gap between the rich and the middle class-- is unfamiliar. After all, for much of the last 50 years our national conversation about educational inequality has focused almost exclusively on strategies for reducing inequalities between the educational successes of the poor and the middle class, and it has relied on programs aimed at the poor, like Head Start and Title I.

We’ve barely given a thought to what the rich were doing. With the exception of our continuing discussion about whether the rising costs of higher education are pricing the middle class out of college, we don’t have much practice talking about what economists call “upper-tail inequality” in education, much less success at reducing it.

Meanwhile, not only are the children of the rich doing better in school than even the children of the middle class, but the changing economy means that school success is increasingly necessary to future economic success, a worrisome mutual reinforcement of trends that is making our society more socially and economically immobile.

We need to start talking about this. Strangely, the rapid growth in the rich-poor educational gap provides a ray of hope: if the relationship between family income and educational success can change this rapidly, then it is not an immutable, inevitable pattern. What changed once can change again. Policy choices matter more than we have recently been taught to think.

So how can we move toward a society in which educational success is not so strongly linked to family background? Maybe we should take a lesson from the rich and invest much more heavily as a society in our children’s educational opportunities from the day they are born. Investments in early-childhood education pay very high societal dividends. That means investing in developing high-quality child care and preschool that is available to poor and middle-class children. It also means recruiting and training a cadre of skilled preschool teachers and child care providers. These are not new ideas, but we have to stop talking about how expensive and difficult they are to implement and just get on with it.

But we need to do much more than expand and improve preschool and child care. There is a lot of discussion these days about investing in teachers and “improving teacher quality,” but improving the quality of our parenting and of our children’s earliest environments may be even more important. Let’s invest in parents so they can better invest in their children.

This means finding ways of helping parents become better teachers themselves. This might include strategies to support working families so that they can read to their children more often. It also means expanding programs like the Nurse-Family Partnership that have proved to be effective at helping single parents educate their children; but we also need to pay for research to develop new resources for single parents.

It might also mean greater business and government support for maternity and paternity leave and day care so that the middle class and the poor can get some of the educational benefits that the early academic intervention of the rich provides their children. Fundamentally, it means rethinking our still-persistent notion that educational problems should be solved by schools alone.

The more we do to ensure that all children have similar cognitively stimulating early childhood experiences, the less we will have to worry about failing schools. This in turn will enable us to let our schools focus on teaching the skills-- how to solve complex problems, how to think critically and how to collaborate-- essential to a growing economy and a lively democracy.

Nothing really there for Maybelline-- nor for most of her classmates. Not any more than the air traffic controller fix helped them or their families or communities.

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Unanimous Consent-- If Not Courageous

Keith took that oath-thing seriously

Yesterday everyone was upset that the Senate had passed-- by voice vote (so no record of who voted for and against it) and by unanimous consent-- a work-around for the sequester for the FAA. TPM pointed out that Eric Cantor was crowing how the craven Democrats had backed down. Cantor's Memo:

As a CQ / Roll Call reporter tweeted last night, "Make no mistake, this FAA fix is a complete, utter cave by Senate Democrats and, if signed, by the White House." This is a sentiment expressed in other press reports over the last 12 hours, including, Politico: "Democrats blink first on aviation” and Chicago Tribune: “White House Scrambles For Damage Control."

Consider that the Democrats opening position was they would only replace the sequester with tax increases. By the first of this week Senator Reid proposed replacing the whole sequester with phony war savings. And by last night, Senate Democrats were adopting our targeted “cut this, not that” approach. This victory is in large part a result of our standing together under the banner of #Obamaflightdelays.

Ezra Klein came right out and said in the Washington Post that The Democrats have lost on sequestration. "The original theory," wrote Klein, "was that the specter of sequestration would be so threatening that Republicans and Democrats would agree to a budget deal rather than permit it to happen. That theory was wrong. The follow-up theory was that the actual pain caused by sequestration would be so great that it would, in a matter of months, push the two sides to agree to a deal. But Democrats just proved that theory wrong, too."

In effect, what Democrats said Friday was that in any case where the political pain caused by sequestration becomes unbearable, they will agree to cancel that particular piece of the bill while leaving the rest of the law untouched. The result is that sequestration is no longer particularly politically threatening, but it’s even more unbalanced: Cuts to programs used by the politically powerful will be addressed, but cuts to programs that affects the politically powerless will persist. It’s worth saying this clearly: The pain of sequestration will be concentrated on those who lack political power.

...It is worth noting how different the Democrats’ approach to sequestration has been to the GOP’s approach to, well, everything. Over the past five years, Republicans have repeatedly accepted short-term political pain for long-term policy gain. That’s the governing political principle behind their threats to shut down the government, breach the debt ceiling, and, for that matter, accept sequestration. Today, Democrats showed they’re not willing to accept even a bit of short-term pain for long-term policy gain. They played a game of chicken with the Republicans, and they lost. Badly.

In the House Friday, the bill passed 361-41, a dozen Boehner-hating Republicans joining just 29 Democrats willing to stand up for principle. I was shocked to see Hoyer was one of the Democrats taking a principled position along with people like Donna Edwards, Barbara Lee, Keith Ellison, John Conyers, Mark Pocan, Rick Nolan, Chellie Pingree, who we usually expect this kind of courageousness from.

You see, what's at stake here is that, of course there should be no sequester on the FAA air traffic controllers. We've come a long way since Reagan. But by signaling to the Republicans that they'll fold on each individual sequester matter, it puts the Republicans-- most of whom don't give a shit about public opinion-- to pick and choose. That means things like Head Start will never get dealt with-- just destroyed. That's what Obama will be remembered for, just or not. And that takes us back to the Senate vote Thursday night.

The unanimous voice vote came around 8pm and only had two participants, Harry Reid and Susan Collins. They were unanimous. Now, to be fair, Reid had requested-- in writing-- that any Democrat who didn't agree to the unanimous consent agreement speak up. Not ONE SPOKE UP... until the next day. Who can argue with what Bernie Sanders said on the Ed Schultz Show Friday after the House vote?

What we have to understand is that clearly there was a serious problem. We're seeing air traffic delays all over the country and that's something that has to be addressed. The problem is that when it's Members of Congress who are flying-- and they do a lot of flying-- when it is business people, upper class people who fly, we respond. But what my worry is, you've got 70 thousand kids that are going to lose slots in Head Start [and] I don't think our Republican friends are going to be quite so quick to respond to the serious crisis and what it means to working families. When you've got folks not getting the public health that they need, I don't think our Republican friends are going to be there. When teachers are going to be laid off, I don't think our Republican friends are going to be there. Clearly the answer is we need to end sequestration but do it in a way that makes sense, which is to have more revenue coming in, primarily, in my view, by ending these outrageous loopholes, such that one out of four corporations in America pays nothing in taxes. But not just cut, cut, cut.

I asked another very progressive congressman, a House Member, why he voted for the bill today. "Because the world is better with it than without it," he told me, "even though it’s a stupid way to accomplish that." We went back and forth a little and I mentioned that the Republicans would get their way on everything about the sequester they had manipulated Obama and the foolish Democrats into to begin with. "It’s worse than that," he told me. "What we voted on doesn’t end the sequester for air traffic control. All it does is give the White House the authority to move a certain amount of FAA money from certain other accounts to the air traffic control account. The FAA still is subject to the sequester cut, in full. It’s just a device to shift blame from the Republicans to the White House if anything goes wrong. Notwithstanding that, it’s better than the status quo, and I’ve got the world’s 23rd largest airport to think about."

Jerry Nadler (D-NY), a senior member on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, voted for it as well, pointing to over 3,500 flight delays reported since Sunday "as a result of the indiscriminate budget cuts which were mandated by the so-called sequester." His statement:

“While this bill is not nearly good enough, I nevertheless support its effort to help the FAA deal with the effects of severe and misguided budget cuts. Indiscriminate, across-the-board budget cuts were never a good idea, and their effects on things like air travel were all too predictable. So while this bill may help the FAA to better handle such draconian budget cuts, it unfortunately does nothing to prevent equally damaging cuts to other critical public sector programs. It does nothing for the 70,000 children who will be forced off of Head Start, or for the millions of Americans who will have to wait longer for new prescription drugs to reach the market, or for the 600,000 women, infants, and children who will be left hungry after being dropped from the supplemental nutrition program. Only by repealing the sequester outright can we avoid these severe budget cuts and prevent their crippling effects on vital public services.

“Unfortunately, instead of addressing these problems and working to create jobs, Republicans in Congress have spent their time pursuing a single-minded obsession with cutting government spending. Meanwhile, the deficit has been shrinking at the fastest rate since the demobilization after WWII. In this fiscal year alone we have seen deficit estimates fall 15% on the strength of our growing economy. The deficit was originally projected to be $900 billion. Earlier this year, the Congressional Budget Office revised it down to $850 billion. And just last week it was revised down again to $775 billion. That is a $125 billion savings. It is enough already. With these savings alone, we could cancel the sequester without increasing the deficit by a penny.

“We are already reducing the deficit by more than we planned, and the results of these cutbacks are being felt across the nation in ways that slow our economy, hurt the elderly, take food out of the mouths of women and children, and undermine our students as they try to prepare for their futures. We can no longer afford Republican attempts to pursue such a contractionary fiscal policy during a period of high unemployment and stagnant middle class wages.

“In order to build on our economic recovery, we need to stop all of the severe budget cuts-- not just those affecting air travelers. It is time to cancel sequestration and start pursuing policies that will actually help Americans get back to work.”

So... what I would ask Nadler and Sanders and our other progressive friends whose hearts I know are in the right place, where do we go from here? Is there a strategy? We seem to have unilaterally disarmed. Is all that's left starting petitions and wringing our hands? By the way, Keith Ellison, one of the few strategic thinks among the Democrats, voted NO. He explained exactly why to Minneapolis voters:

“I oppose the harmful furloughs for air traffic controllers, which create unnecessary flight delays, and impact our hardworking pilots, flight attendants, and airport workers. Air traffic controllers keep our families safe and support an economy that relies heavily on air travel to function. But avoiding these cuts should not come at the expense of millions of teachers, researchers, and American families who are also feeling the devastating impacts of the sequester. By maintaining cuts to students on Head Start, women and children on nutrition assistance, and funding for cancer research, we are neglecting the communities who can least afford it.

“This bill does not address the 8,000 fewer students who will receive primary and secondary education assistance in Minnesota or the 100 teachers and aides who may lose their jobs because of it. It does not help the more than 2,000 civilian Department of Defense employees in Minnesota who will be furloughed-- losing $12.5 million to support their families. And it does not help the more than 3,000 Minnesotans who will not be tested for HIV because the Minnesota Department of Health will lose about $127,000 in funding.

“The flight delays this week are only one example of what will happen if Republicans in Washington get the huge budget cuts they are demanding. Instead of only addressing the most visible impacts of these harmful cuts, we should fully repeal the sequester and adopt a balanced approach that asks wealthy corporations and individuals to pay their fair share. It’s time to stop pushing broken ideas and start investing in America’s working families.”

My cowardly congressman, Adam Schiff, a New Dem, happily voted to give the Republicans their way. The word courageousness is not part of his vocabulary. Thank God there are a few like Ellison around. In fact... you can find Keith here if you want to let him know you support what he did Friday.

I've pretty much given up on Obama altogether. I voted for a protest candidate in November. But he's still the president and there's nothing but worse on the political horizon. This morning, though, he used his weekly address to talk about dumping Sequestration altogether and replacing it with a Grand Bargain.

Two months ago, Congress allowed a series of automatic budget cuts to fall across the federal government that would do the opposite. In Washington-speak, these cuts were called the “sequester.” It was a bad idea then. And as the country saw this week, it’s a bad idea now.

Because of these reckless cuts, there are parents whose kids just got kicked out of Head Start programs scrambling for a solution. There are seniors who depend on programs like Meals on Wheels to live independently looking for help. There are military communities-- families that have already sacrificed enough-- coping under new strains. All because of these cuts.

This week, the sequester hurt travelers, who were stuck for hours in airports and on planes, and rightly frustrated by it. And, maybe because they fly home each weekend, the Members of Congress who insisted these cuts take hold finally realized that they actually apply to them too.

Republicans claimed victory when the sequester first took effect, and now they’ve decided it was a bad idea all along. Well, first, they should look at their own budget. If the cuts they propose were applied across the board, the FAA would suffer cuts three times deeper.

So Congress passed a temporary fix. A Band-Aid. But these cuts are scheduled to keep falling across other parts of the government that provide vital services for the American people. And we can’t just keep putting Band-Aids on every cut.  It’s not a responsible way to govern. There is only one way to truly fix the sequester: by replacing it before it causes further damage.

A couple weeks ago, I put forward a budget that replaces the next several years of these dumb cuts with smarter cuts; reforms our tax code to close wasteful special interest loopholes; and invests in things like education, research, and manufacturing that will create new jobs right now.

So I hope Members of Congress will find the same sense of urgency and bipartisan cooperation to help the families still in the crosshairs of these cuts. They may not feel the pain felt by kids kicked off Head Start, or the 750,000 Americans projected to lose their jobs because of these cuts, or the long-term unemployed who will be further hurt by them. But that pain is real.

The American people worked too hard, for too long, rebuilding from one economic crisis just to see your elected officials keep causing more. Our economy is growing. Our deficits are shrinking.  We’re creating jobs on a consistent basis. But we need to do more to help middle-class families get ahead, and give more folks a chance to earn their way into the middle class.  And we can, if we work together. That’s what you expect. That’s what I’m going to work every single day to help deliver.

But don't expect him to veto it. He won't. He's not FDR... and never will be. We've seen what he is.

Bingo!

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