A very good essay by Peter Beinart:
Independents are the most fickle, the most cynical, and the least ideological people in the American electorate. When they’re unhappy with the state of the country, they tend to stampede the party in power—less because they disagree on the issues than because they decide that the folks running government must be malevolent and corrupt. In Washington, congressmen violate ethics rules all the time. But when independents get in one of their sour moods, these infractions become matches on dry tinder. In 1994, the scandals concerning Rostenkowski and the House bank helped sweep the Gingrichites into power. In 2006, according to exit polls, the scandals surrounding mega-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Rep. Mark Foley did more to lose the GOP control of Congress than did the Iraq war. Pelosi became speaker, in fact, by running against the GOP’s “culture of corruption” and promising the “most ethical Congress in history.”
Now Republicans are hurling those phrases in her face. Democrats, who in April 2006 held a 17-point advantage as the party less “influenced by lobbyists and special interests,” have seen that margin dwindle to eight points, according to the Pew Research Center. The National
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February 28, 2010 – 11:12 pm
And I am Marie of Roumania:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave no indication that her support was wavering for embattled Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, in the wake of his admonishment by the House ethics panel last week.
“It said he did not knowingly violate House rules. So that gives him some comfort,” the speaker told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. Rangel was publicly admonishment by the panel for violating House rules by failing to properly disclose financial details of trips he took to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008.
The ethics panel didn’t find sufficient evidence to conclude that Rangel knew that misleading information was provided to the ethics committee before the trips were approved. His office said in a statement last week that the ethics committee “found that the chairman himself had no actual knowledge that the trip in fact violated House rules.”
February 28, 2010 – 7:01 pm
. . . A bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes.
–Nancy Pelosi, who believes that because “Republicans have left their imprint” on the health care bills, the bills are bipartisan. Never mind that back when Republicans controlled Congress, this wasn’t Pelosi’s standard for bipartisanship.
February 26, 2010 – 4:01 pm
Now that the House Ethics Committee has rendered its judgment, and has found that Congressman Charlie Rangel broke Congressional gift rules by taking trips to the Caribbean financed by corporate interests, is it too much to ask that he pay the consequences?
Beyond the trips, Rangel faces more troublesome allegations regarding his failure to pay taxes on a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic, the use of his congressional office to raise money for the wing of a New York college named in his honor, revised financial disclosure forms that show more than $500,000 in previously unreported wealth, and his use of a rent-controlled apartment for his political committees.
Rangel said Thursday that he met with ethics investigators about a month ago to discuss those issues but he offered no details of those discussions.
Since Rangel asked the ethics panel in the summer of 2008 to scrutinize his activities, which had become a source of controversy, Democrats have defeated a series of GOP resolutions calling for his resignation as Ways and Means chairman.
February 23, 2010 – 5:21 pm
Here’s the problem that reconciliation predictions run into: there’s simply no way to do the math.
February 15, 2010 – 11:18 am
Rising Democrat star Evan Bayh will announce today that he will not run for reelection to the US Senate. This is big!
January 21, 2010 – 4:55 pm
So sayeth the Speaker herself.
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
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Posted in Blogs, Chequer-Board
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Also tagged Barack Obama, Congress, Democrats, health care, Health Care Policy, Health Care Reform, Obama Administration, Politics, Republicans, Scott Brown
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December 10, 2009 – 11:01 am
So before jetting off to accept his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, President Obama went on a sales run for his jobs package idea — and he came back empty handed. Why do the left and the right both hate this idea for spending TARP funds? We’ll discuss this and more on today’s edition of Coffee and Markets.
December 8, 2009 – 11:02 am
As the Senate considers a health care bill that amounts to the largest entitlement expansion in American history, we sit down today with health care and budget policy expert James Capretta to discuss the prospects in the Senate and the wide-ranging economic ramifications of the current legislation.
December 2, 2009 – 2:00 am
So he came in as a great recruiter, a great builder, a new innovator, already with the rings on his finger, the prizes around his neck, and he was going to make everything better — but then he started losing people, right and left, and the team he built crumbled. It’s time we started asking: is Barack Obama going to end up like Charlie Weis?
By Francis Cianfrocca
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Posted in Features, Podcasts, Politics
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Also tagged Barack Obama, Coffee and Markets, Harry Reid, health care, health care bill, NFIB, Podcast, Podcasts, Small Businesses
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November 9, 2009 – 9:06 pm
Apparently, open government was only worth agitating about when Republicans ran the House of Representatives.
November 9, 2009 – 8:04 am
Today’s Coffee and Markets podcast focuses on the surge in stock markets around the globe, the health care vote over the weekend, and the difficulty of regulating moral hazard.
