cuticle maintenance

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/LYBwq4gv-vk/-MA-Sen:-Seriously,-Enough-with-the-Complacency

What have I been saying the last couple of days?

That complacency is the main danger Democrats face in Massachusetts right now.

PPP is polling Massachusetts right now, and, finding that there's a "massive enthusiasm gap" and that Republican Scott Brown has very high favorables, here's their conclusion:

This has become a losable race for Democrats- but it could also be easily winnable if Coakley gets her act together for the last week of the campaign. Complacency is the Democrats' biggest enemy at this point and something that needs to be overcome to avoid a potential disaster.

If you live in or near Massachusetts, it can't hurt to volunteer. There are phone banks going all day tomorrow in Watertown and Charlestown, and next weekend is a three-day weekend. If she wins big, your effort won't have been necessary. But what would you prefer: regretting an unnecessary effort, or watching a Republican win and knowing you didn't do what you could to prevent it?

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/1TQAcfipZ9A/-Televising-the-conference

I happened to catch Eric Boehlert of Media Matters on the "Montel Across America" radio show this morning, and wanted to address something that came up during the discussion interview.

Montel entered into the following exchange after playing clips of then-candidate Obama saying he'd opt for open, transparent and televised negotiations on the health care bill, including the conference committee on the bill:

WILLIAMS: How can you argue this? The President said it over and over and over again: this will be on C-SPAN. Now we get down to the short strokes, and it's in the closed room.

BOEHLERT: Yeah, you know, I mean, Brian Lamb, the CEO of C-SPAN sent a letter over to the Congressional leaders asking that the reconciliation be televised, and things like that. And, you know, I think that's an interesting and could be potentially a good idea. I don't think it's ever been done. We've never seen the reconciliation process between the House and Senate televised. And I guess the only point I'd make about what Obama was saying on the campaign -- I don't think he was talking about the reconciliation process. He was comparing the Clinton in '93, when sort of the White House, well, was accused of writing the legislation and leaving Congress out of it. I think, clearly, those comments from Obama on the campaign trail were talking about formulating the legislation. I certainly don't think he was talking about when, you know, there's a bill passed by the House and the Senate, they meet to sort of make ends meet -- that that would be on C-SPAN. But he certainly opened the door to having a debate about a transparent process.

WILLIAMS: I mean, he opened that door, and you know, Igor Volsky was on a little earlier in the show today, from the Center for American Progress, and he made a good point about the fact that, yeah, you know, it's good for the process in some ways. All it does though is help hamper the process and slow it down, because most of the politicians use it as a free opportunity to grandstand and politicize the process rather than actually utilize the process for what it was there for, which is to come up with a decent bill. But it does kind of, you know, come back and bite you. You've got to look at yourself in the mirror when you say eight times, I'm gonna be transparent, I'm gonna be transparent on health care, on health care, on health care, on health care. When you do it eight times, the public may expect you to follow through with what you said.

BOEHLERT: Yeah, and when you talk about C-SPAN a lot, and when C-SPAN comes up and says, oh by the way, we want to air the reconciliation process -- so, yeah, there's always things you say on the campaign trail which can come back to haunt you. I would argue that this is not as direct as some critics are trying to make it. Again, I don't think anyone was ever discussing the reconciliation process. And again, I don't think that has ever been televised in the history of C-SPAN. It certainly wasn't televised when Republicans were running Congress. And I think there is something to be said for once you do televise it. This reconciliation process, in any bill it's difficult and complicated. For health care, it's even more difficult and complicated. And the idea that you're going to televise it and then make the process somehow any better -- there's an argument to be made that that will just complicate things. Of course, there's an argument to be made that all transparency is a good thing in government.

OK, I've got some issues with this. But because I've said a number of times now that when the question deals with Congressional procedure, the answer is almost always "yes and no," you won't be surprised to learn that the answer is the same in this case, too.

First of all, the minutia: the conference process is not the same thing as reconciliation. We've been over this. Though a conference reconciles competing versions of a bill, "reconciliation" also refers to a specific budgetary procedure that's also come up a lot in the context of the health insurance reform bill, and it just confuses things needlessly to refer to the conference process as the reconciliation process.

With that out of the way, we could come to the question of whether or not candidate Obama meant to include the conference process in his definition of the "negotiations process." On the one hand, I hope so, because it's really not helpful in transparency terms to say that the preliminary stages of the process will be open, but the rewrite will be closed. Conference is often where the rubber meets the road, and to exclude it -- without explicitly saying so -- from your definition isn't exactly fair.

On the other hand, I guess I hope that Obama didn't include the conference process in his working mental definition of the negotiations process, because the President, while naturally a powerful player in the process, really has no business dictating legislative procedure to the Congress. One branch per person, please.

But to me, at least for the moment, that's kind of a lesser point too. Basically, I've come to expect overpromising and blurring the lines on the campaign trail. That's probably part of why I dislike the primary campaigns so much. It seems a waste of time to me to fight with one another so intensely over the contents of campaign position papers, when I know so much of it is going straight out the window when it gets to Congress, anyway.

That does, however, bring me to the other point, which is the one where I pivot to the "yes and no" answer.

Has there ever been a Congressional conference committee televised on C-SPAN? Yes there has. As a matter of fact, C-SPAN televised the February 2009 conference committee meeting on the stimulus bill, and you can watch it on the C-SPAN web site. And if you do, you'll hear Harry Reid say that there hasn't been an open conference like that for 15 years.

So, "yes and no." Yes, there have been televised conferences before. And no, it doesn't happen very often and never happened when Republicans were in charge, as Boehlert points out.

But there's more. Go ahead and watch the whole conference, but you'll never see any of the negotiations. Why not? Because they weren't conducted in that room. They were conducted elsewhere, and then the conferees came into a nice conference room with a big, broad table and some TV cameras in it, and proceeded to read speeches to each other -- Democrats praising the bill and the process, and Republicans condemning it.

What was in it? Oh, you heard a little about that. How did it get in there? Not so much about that.

So again, "yes and no." Yes, you can put a conference committee on C-SPAN. But no, you can't make them actually do their deals in front of the camera. And so you get the "steak sauce" answer: You asked for an open and transparent conference. We just showed you everything covered by the definition of "conference" on C-SPAN.

But you didn't learn anything.

And that's part of the value of learning about the process -- and the gap between what the rules say and how things are actually done. Ask for a televised conference and you may very well get it. But you won't necessarily get what you were after, and you'll instead spend your time arguing with one another over something more akin to what the meaning of "is" is.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/X_m3OLME-VM/-Catherine-Biden-Has-Died

Condolences to Vice-President Biden and his family:

My mother, Catherine Eugenia “Jean” Finnegan Biden, passed away peacefully today at our home in Wilmington, Delaware, surrounded by her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren and many loved ones. At 92, she was the center of our family and taught all of her children that family is to be treasured, loyalty is paramount and faith will guide you through the tough times. She believed in us, and because of that, we believed in ourselves. Together with my father, her husband of 61 years who passed away in 2002, we learned the dignity of hard work and that you are defined by your sense of honor. Her strength, which was immeasurable, will live on in all of us.

For more discussion, see Julie Gulden's diary.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/Mv8Iw944c2w/-NY-SEN:-Horald-Ford-to-seek-GOP-nomination

Braking newz:

Focksnews.com -- At a press conference in Washington, DC today, former Tennessee Rep. Horald Ford today announced he would seek the GOP nomination to challenge U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) in the 2010 election.

"I'm a life-long conservative who has dedicated his political capital to weakening the Democratic Party," Ford said.

Ford said teabaggers would just love him.

"For starters, I'm to the right of most New York Republicans," Ford said. "Dede Scozzafava? HA! I'm to the right of that Doug Hoffman dude, and he didn't even run as  Republican."

Asked for specific examples of his conservative record, Ford rattled off a comprehensive list.

"Well, I'm pro-life," he said. "I want to outlaw abortion. I said so in 2006 -- live, on national TV. It's up there on YouTube if you want to see it.

"But that's not all, folks. I am for the Iraq War. I'm against immigration. I thought Congress should have intervened in the Terri Schiavo case to stop her socialist husband. And I'm for permanent repeal of the Nazi estate tax.

"I'm the teabaggers' sweetest dream and the Democrats' worst nightmare."

Asked about whether his support for the bailouts and his career as a Wall Street consultant might hurt his reputation amongst teabaggers, Ford muttered something about the looming Communist menace and stormed out of the press conference.

Rumor has it Glenn Beck is looking to serve as the Ford campaign's spokesbagger.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/Li25AFlI3z4/-Midday-Open-Thread

• Portugal, which, by the way, is 84% Catholic, becomes the sixth European country to legalize same-sex marriage. As Joe Sudbay at Americablog points out, it's refreshing to see a government that isn't run by the Conference of Catholic Bishops.
• President Obama will:

  ... unveil a $2.3 billion tax credit on Friday to promote clean energy technology and boost job creation in the hard-hit manufacturing sector, the White House said.

  It said in a statement the credit, from funds earmarked under an emergency $787 billion stimulus package Obama signed in February 2009, would create 17,000 new U.S. jobs and would be matched by an additional $5 billion in private capital.

• Fire up the tea kettles:

  In a National Journal survey of 109 Republican "party leaders, political professionals and pundits", not a single one deemed Sarah Palin to be the most likely Republican nominee.

• Tom Cole (R-OK), the only Native American in the House, calls RNC Chairman Michael Steele's use of the phrase, "honest injun," unacceptable and offensive. And maybe when Steele's book tour is over, he'll apologize.
• Who knew? Bob Bennett (R-UT) just isn't conservative enough:

  “Bob Bennett is out of touch with the times and with his state, and Utah Republicans have better choices for their candidate in November,” Club President Christ Chocola said.

  “Our extensive research into the race suggests Utah Republicans already understand this, as they have begun rallying around several viable and superior candidates,” he continued. “The Club for Growth PAC is committed to seeing one of them defeat Bennett either at the nominating convention in May or in a primary election in June.”

• Read greendem's diary and learn how dangerous it can be for a cartoonist in a teabagging world.
• Can someone please light a fire under Martha Coakley?

  According to PPP’s Tom Jensen, Democratic candidate Martha Coakley’s sleepy campaign–which is increasingly starting to irritate party strategists who trusted her to lock the race down early–has resulted in an electorate that’s more Republican than usual and more anti-health care reform than the state as a whole. Brown, one of the few Republicans of stature in the state, has a 60 percent favorable rating–a result of his own ads and of being basically ignored by Coakley.

• From the you-can't-make-this-shit-up files:

  Fed up with the mainstream media filter, Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) is taking her quest to inform Americans about the threat of jihad to the Internet -- namely, YouTube -- in a new weekly terror news video series that will be featured on her congressional Web site.

  Who is paying for Myrick's little one-woman jihad?

• A former GOP chairman says that a gubernatorial bid by Norm Coleman is a "bad idea both for Coleman and for Minnesota."
• Will anyone listen?

  Mountaintop coal mining -- in which Appalachian peaks are blasted off and stream valleys buried under tons of rubble -- is so destructive that the government should stop giving out new permits to do it, a group of scientists said in a paper released Thursday.

• Geraldo Rivera flip-flops on racial profiling.
• Elvis Presley would have been 75 years old today.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/7Uk_GXUp7GI/-Steele-abruptly-cancels-ABC-interview

Uh-oh...is RNC Chairman Michael Steele's head about to roll? CQ Politics:

Under fire from top donors and Congressional Republicans, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele Friday abruptly cancelled a scheduled noon interview with ABC News — the network that has played host to some of Steele more controversial statements.

Steele had been scheduled for an appearance on "Top Line" with Rick Klein, but after confirming his noon appearance at 11:15 with Klein, Steele suddenly backed out 15 minutes later, according to Klein’s Twitter feed.

According to Klein's tweets, Steele initially blamed his cancellation on a mysterious "emergency meeting." Next, sources told Klein there was not only no emergency meeting, there was no meeting at all. Then, the story changed again, with aides claiming that there was a meeting scheduled, but it wasn't an emergency. Hmmm, sounds fishy.

Who knows what is going on, but just in case this is our last chance to weigh in on the matter, it's time for our first ever official leadership poll on Michael Steele.

Let your voice be heard!

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/pmackeEo0LU/-Weekly-Tracking-Poll:-2010-Opens-With-Relative-Quiet

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 1/4/2010-1/7/2010. All adults. MoE 2% (Last weeks results in parentheses):

Full crosstabs here. This poll is updated every Friday morning, and you can see trendline graphs here.

It is hard to divine discernible trends this week, the first full week of 2010. The Daily Kos "State of the Nation" tracking poll shows an incremental movement pretty much across the board, with that movement positive in all cases except for the president, who gives back a single point off his recent gains.

Digging into the numbers a little bit, we see three fairly interesting blips that could be legitimate movement. One is good news for the Democrats, while the other two are bad news for the Democrats.

The good news first: the right track/wrong track metric, which could be a critical indicator of Democratic prospects given the fact that they are "in charge" of both Congress and the White House, has started to creep back towards parity. It is still a long, long ways away from being able to whistle "Happy Days Are Here Again" (the RT/WT sits today at a net negative 16: 41/57). But that is a net shift of four points towards optimism in the last three weeks.

The first piece of bad news for the Blue team: there is still significant issues with voter intensity. This week, Democrats are offering their bleakest self-assessment of their voting intent. Only 53% of Democrats say that they are certain or likely to vote in November, versus 45% of Democrats who say that they are either unlikely to vote or certain not to vote. A lot of the forecasts of Democratic doom in November are predicated on this very "enthusiasm gap" between the two parties.

If there is a silver lining in this week's statistics on planned voter turnout in 2010, it is that Republican numbers are finally coming out of the stratosphere. While they are still considerably stronger than the Democrats, the days of over 80% of Republicans either being certain or likely to vote are gone. Today, that number sits at just 72%, the lowest that number has been since Research 2000 began asking that question back in November.

The second piece of bad news for the Democrats come in the form of the tracking poll's variation on the generic ballot test. While the Democratic lead on this question has not receded any further (it sits at three points ofr the third week in a row), it is worth noting that there has been a significant shift in the undecideds. Whereas once upon a time, Democrats could mollify themselves with the fact that the number of Democrats still undecided on their voting intentions were in the double digits, that reservoir of expected Democratic voters is now gone. While just 1% of Republican voters are still on the fence, the number of Democratic undecided voters is now also way down, to just 4%. What this means, as a practical matter, is that Democrats can no longer assume that they will pick up the lions share of the undecided vote.

Independents, as they have been all along, are still watching and waiting. In every poll of this Congressional preference test taken since the question began being asked in May, a majority of Independent voters consider themselves undecided. Ordinarily, Democrats could take comfort in the fact that 67% of Independents have unfavorable views of the GOP. The aggravating factor is that 61% of Independents also hold unfavorable views of the Democrats. And, as Tom Jensen at PPP has noted on more than one occasion, those voters who have contempt for both parties are considerably more likely to vote for the party out of power.

Which means that Democrats have an interesting needle to thread. They need to do enough for their base to ensure that those folks will shake off their relative indifference towards the 2010 elections, but they also have to drive up their favorabilities with Independent voters.

If the mantra that the main thing Independent voters want is results is true, it means that the Democratic Congress might need to be busier in 2010 than their natural tendency to be timid and cautious in an election year would dictate.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/pp1d7dpXEt0/-Transparency-Problem-in-HCR-Debate

Kossack Mote Dai's discovery that "objective" analyst and MIT economist Jonathon Gruber has received a sole-source contracts with the Department of Health and Human Services since June 19, 2009 to consult on the “President’s health reform proposal" has gained some larger attention.

Marcy reported that he has two contracts for a total of $392,600 to consult on the plan. The issue is that Gruber has consistently been referenced by the White House as an objective analyst in support of the bill--including the controversial excise tax--without disclosing his role as a contractor on the issue. Marcy:

Now, HHS says they had to put Dr. Gruber in charge of evaluating health care reform proposals because he’s got,

"a proven micro-simulation model with the flexibility to ascertain the distribution of changes in health care spending and public and private sector health care costs due to a large variety of changes in health insurance benefit design, public program eligibility criteria, and tax policy."

Even assuming that Gruber is the only one in the world who can run these simulations, don’t you think it’s rather, um, dubious that the guy evaluating the heath care reform–for $300,000–is also the package’s single biggest champion?

Politico's Ben Smith followed up with Gruber:

I asked Gruber about the reports, and he responded by stressing that the contract was not for public relations, but for analysis, and that he's long advocated for a consistent set of policies.

I do indeed have a contract with HHS. Throughout this year I have provided technical assistance to the administration and to Congress with my micro-simulation model, as well as based on my experience as a member of the Massachusetts health connector board. But NONE of the work I have done in public, or any public declarations I ahve [sic] made, has been in any way funded by the Administration. That funding was strictly for internal work that I did for the administration and, via the administration, for congress. All externally visible work and comments, such as my editorials or public reports, have been done on my own time.

Moreover, at no time have I publicly advocated a position that I did not firmly believe - indeed, I have been completely consistent with my academic track record....

Gruber told POLITICO that he has told reporters of the contract "whenever they asked" and noted that he formally disclosed that "I am a paid consultant to the Obama Administration" in a form attached to his most recent, December 24 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, though it wasn't widely known by reporters on the beat.

Gruber received his first contract back in March, and didn't disclose these contracts publicly until last month, and that's a problem. Gruber's analysis has been used for public relations by the White House in support the plan. Using the excuse that "if anyone asked, I told them" is not the same as actual transparency, and opens Gruber and the White House up, unnecessarily, to criticism on the transparency front. This isn't to question Gruber's qualifications as an economist or to suggest that his analysis has been influenced by the money. It's to point out that by not disclosing that he was getting paid for these analyses, that he opened himself--and the White House--to those charges from the bill's opponents. The lack of disclosure for all these months was a boneheaded move by both Gruber and the White House.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/BHPdHmwuEg0/-Ladies-and-gentlemen,-Michael-Steele-is-Going-Rogue

You know that book that Michael Steele wrote? The one that's giving him all sorts of troubles with party elders? The one that outlines the principles of the GOP? Turns out, nobody in the GOP knew he was writing it. Greg Sargent:

Top Republican Party leadership operatives on Capitol Hill were totally blindsided by RNC chair Michael Steele’s new book on the GOP’s route back to power, angering senior aides who thought they should have been consulted in advance and given a heads up about it, well-placed Republican sources tell me.

The charge is likely to further anger Steele’s critics, who say that he’s used the RNC perch to profit personally with paid speeches and a new book, with little regard to how it impacts the party, and at the expense of fundraising and other party duties.

GOP aides are irked that Steele set forth principles in his book for reviving the party without discussing them in advance or letting them know what was coming.

Adding more fuel to the fire: Steele spent $14 million in 2009 -- a non-election year -- depleting RNC coffers by two-thirds. Hahaha. Consider this yet another vote of confidence for Michael Steele as Chairman of the RNC...from those of us on the left.

oldcharliebrown has posted an entry titled Recognising Female SF/F/H Magazine Editors, which lists 18 names so far, and is looking for more.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/hu-DnDnrM3I/-Terrorism-QA

Q: What's the goal of terrorists?

A: To terrify.

Q: What was Dick Cheney's response to the failed Christmas Day attack?

A: To claim that Americans should be terrified.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/t1xTS9OaVv4/-MA-Sen:-Hashtags-and-Teabags

If there's one lesson to draw from the Rasmussen poll (yes, Rasmussen, so hefty pinch, salt, all that) showing Republican Scott Brown down only nine points to Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election, it's that the biggest danger is Democratic complacency. It's Massachusetts, we figure. Of course the Democrat's gonna win!

She probably is. But it's hard to be complacent in the face (and other parts) of Scott Brown, who is making a determined and convincing play for the teabaggerate.

There's his endorsement from the Tea Party Express, which is apparently the corporate edge of teabaggery.

He also recently was the beneficiary of a Friends of the Tea Party fundraiser. (In case you were wondering, you can be a Patriot for just $25 but if you want to be a Son of Liberty it'll cost you $100 -- and you can bring on the Revolution for $500.)

He doesn't think waterboarding is torture. No, indeedy:

"I do not believe it is torture. America does not torture, and we used aggressive, enhanced interrogation techniques."

And he really, really wants you to know that he would be the 41st vote against health care reform. In fact, at the time of this writing, 65% of his last 50 tweets (excluding those that used the Twitter retweet function) had the hashtag #41stVote appended to them.

You don't have to think he has a real chance at winning to be proud of voting against this guy.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/mC4wR7FPL7w/-National-Public-Option-Swapped-for-State-Based-Public-Plans

One of the few areas in which the Senate insurance reform bill is better than the House's is in the provision for state innovation. That provision, says Igor Volsky, could be the key to more substantial reform at the state level.

A national public health insurance option is unlikely to muster 60 votes in the Senate, but House Democrats could insist on including a provision in the final health care bill that provides start-up funds to states that choose to create state-based public options. The current Senate bill allows states to independently finance such programs. Offering government seed money, however, could entice more states to take up the venture and prove politically valuable to liberal Democrats facing a backlash for abandoning the provision. States like New York, California and Washington would likely establish such plans and their successes may motivate conservative states to also adopt the measure.

The state-based approach was first introduced in March 2009 by the New America Foundation’s Len Nichols. Nichols proposed the creation of 50 different-state based public options that would be operated by politically appointed managers and owned by the government. The plans would reimburse providers at market rates and compete on a completely level playing field with private insurers. The proposal was never publicly considered at the time, but a watered down version — that passes muster with Sens. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) and Ben Nelson’s (D-NE) — may be the last hope for including some kind of public plan in the final bill. For instance, lawmakers may have to adopt a broad definition for what constitutes a ‘public plan’ and eschew the ‘government owned’ language or simply expand the definition of co-ops, which already receive government seed money in the Senate legislation.

The co-op idea, which has never been viewed as viable either in terms of policy or as a cost-control measure, could certainly be expanded to include a more productive alternative at the state level. The money slated to seed them should be made available to the states, and handful of which have some kind of reform in the works.

Of course, lawmakers and the White House could also drop the arbitrary $900 billion limit on the effort, and achieve the goal of better affordability and funding innovation without doing it on the backs of the middle class.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/8YCcvRDBrkw/-Job-Loss-Report-Bad-on-Almost-All-Counts

The expert consensus proved wrong once again today, and extremely disappointing, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics today reported a drop of 85,000 in the country’s nonfarm employment for December. In one of the only bright spots in today’s report, the bureau revised its report for November, making that the only month since December 2007 to show a slight job gain. The official "U3" unemployment rate remained at 10.%. The decrease in jobs was substantially below the lowest estimate made by experts surveyed by Bloomberg last Friday. The "U6" unemployment rate, an alternative BLS measure that includes discouraged workers and part-time workers who want full-time jobs rose to 17.3%.

The tally of officially unemployed is now at 15.3 million, with the U6 population of unemployed and underemployed still clocking in at 26 million. The civilian labor force participation rate fell to 64.6 percent in December. The employment-population ratio declined to 58.2 percent.

^{Click here for larger image.}

According to the BLS’s current population survey, the civilian workforce fell another 843,000 Americans in December. How many of these retired, decided to stay home to raise a child or take care of an elderly parent or decided to go to college or just got discouraged at looking for work, is unknown. Whatever their reasons, if they had stayed in the workforce, the unemployment rate today would be 10.5%.

Talk of a possible positive BLS jobs report for December grew in the media after the government originally reported last month that only 11,000 jobs had been lost in November, a sharp drop from previous months.

The question now is how long it will be before there is a positive jobs report. At least 8.2 million jobs have been lost during the Great Recession, and even if private-sector jobs were to be created at the rate they were during the Clinton administration, about 225,000 a month, it would take three years before as many people are employed as were working in December 2007, the last time  that the economy showed job growth.

That kind of increase would be hard enough to sustain. But, while there are a few contrarians, many factors continue to point to tepid economic growth over the coming year, meaning that nowhere near 225,000 jobs will be created each month. For instance, in December, the Federal Open Market Committee was generally positive about an improving economy, but most participants

...anticipated that the pickup in output and employment growth would be rather slow relative to past recoveries from deep recessions. A moderate pace of expansion would imply slow improvement in the labor market next year, with unemployment declining only gradually.

How gradually is too gradually? If you’re one of the 6.1 million Americans who has been out of work for six months or more, or one of the several million working part time because you can’t get a full-time position, you’ll likely answer that question rather differently than if you’re a politician who thinks the biggest problem right now is deficit spending.

The BLS report also noted:

• Construction employment declined by another 53,000; manufacturing employment fell another 27,000.

• Employment in health care services rose by 22,000.

• The average workweek for production and non-supervisory workers stayed steady at 33.2 hours.

• The number of long-term jobless (27 weeks or longer) rose to 6.1 million.

• October job losses were revised from 111,000 to 127,000, and the losses for November were revised from 11,000 to a gain of 4,000.

= = =

^{See discussion in SilverOz’s diary here.}

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/FhJ3GlAvpiE/-Your-Abbreviated-Pundit-Round-up

End of week punditry. Sometimes it's great, and other times...

NY Times:

There is the reformer who championed the Family and Medical Leave Act and helped to expand Head Start. There is also the all-too-cozy pal of Wall Street who is one of the top recipients of millions of dollars in donations from commercial banks and the securities industry. Recently, Mr. Dodd’s fingerprints were on legislation that allowed the American International Group to pay big bonuses after the firm was bailed out by taxpayers.

That coziness — especially the V.I.P. cut-rate mortgage he received from the now-defunct subprime lender, Countrywide Financial — is one of the reasons his state’s voters have turned against him. With a legacy to burnish, and no need to drum up campaign contributions, we hope the reformer will be unleashed.

William Schneider:

Hyperpartisanship is making American government dysfunctional. In other countries, when a party has a strong majority and unified control of government, it implements its program, passes laws, and makes changes. After huge victories in 2006 and 2008, Democrats in the United States have that kind of power. Why can't they just govern?

They can. But only in the House, where the majority party rules.

Joe Conason:

The tendency to exaggerate Republican prospects and Democratic woes is among the most consistent biases in American mainstream media -- as yesterday’s coverage of Senate race developments demonstrated -- and will only grow more pronounced as the midterm elections draw closer. All the headlines and analyses depicting a "vicious cycle" of Democrats retiring fell apart upon even a moment’s scrutiny of the Connecticut situation. If the polls leading up to the Dodd and Dorgan retirements were accurate, then both their seats would have leaned strongly Republican next November – and now only one of them does, leaving a net plus for the Democrats today.

There's also a much needed shot in the arm of interest for Democrats. Don't overlook that.

Charlie Cook:

Come November, Senate Democrats' 60-vote supermajority is toast. It is difficult, if not impossible, to see how Democrats could lose the Senate this year. But they have a 50-50 chance of ending up with fewer than 55 seats in the next Congress.

As for the House, we at The Cook Political Report are still forecasting that Democrats will lose only 20 to 30 seats. Another half-dozen or more retirements in tough districts, however, perhaps combined with another party switch or two, would reduce Democrats' chances of holding the House to only an even-money bet.

The funny thing is that Charlie's been saying similare things (based on district by district analysis) for a while, but it doesn't sound like doom and gloom any more. Now it sounds like 'it could always be worse', so get your act together, Dems and make this the bottom. It's a wake up call, not a prophesy. Start here:

Paul Krugman:

Health care reform is almost (knock on wood) a done deal. Next up: fixing the financial system. I’ll be writing a lot about financial reform in the weeks ahead. Let me begin by asking a basic question: What should reformers try to accomplish?

Charles Krauthammer: Terrorists? Just shoot them. Who cares if we shoot the wrong guy? This is America, you wussies. And don't give me that crap about Bush and the shoe bomber. That mistake was understandable. It was made by a Republican.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/KurZjGJuuf0/-Open-Thread-and-Diary-Rescue

This evening's Rescue Rangers are Louisiana 1976, Blank Frank, HoosierDeb, Got a Grip, and YatPundit with vcmvo2 as editor.

The diaries up for rescue tonight are:

• In Republicans Ruined Intelligence Community, Steven D quantifies how the ill-conceived counter-terrorism actions of the Bush Administration have made us less able to detect impending assaults. (HoosierDeb)
• Bruce Nilles brings the current state of the fight to reduce the use of coal and its destructive mining practices into focus and offers encouragement for the tough fight before us in Coal: Looking Back and Looking Ahead. (Got a Grip)
• rhutcheson's well-researched investigative piece introduces us to Chevron's New Heavies who will be defending that corporation in an Ecuadorian pollution case. (Louisiana 1976)
• DWG does a little digging and finds that, unsurprisingly, Ben Nelson has trouble selling his vote in Nebraska. (Got a Grip)
• In Hummingbirds, Flower Pot Heaters, and Solar Aluminum Blinds, gmoke takes a look at some easy-to-build energy saving devices. (Blank Frank)
• Avenging Angel examines this country's current mores on morality and discovers that For Redemption, Tiger Woods Should Become a Republican. (Got a Grip)
• Bob Patterson suggests using the slogan, Come visit the Island of Trash! to invite environmentalists to check out the twice-Texas-sized Pacific Garbage Patch. (Louisiana 1976)
• cabaretic reflects on tonight's Big College Game in An Apology from a Unapologetic Sports Fan. (YatPundit)
• In a persuasive piece Terry Pierson tells Democrats, especially those of his age group, that it's time to go To Battle (2010). (Louisiana 1976)
• In Huff Post & Pataki Bash Obama on Terrorism, Fail Miserably, SuperBowlXX constructs a solid rebuttal of the former New York governor's recent salvo. (Blank Frank)
• Thought-provokingly mommyof3 takes us back in history to show us that Change Doesn't Come from the Middle. (Louisiana 1976)

jotter has today's High Impact Diaries: January 6, 2010.

sardonyx brings tonight's Top Comments: Featured Writers Edition.

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries from the past twenty-four hours in this Open Thread!

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/RUGZL_Zsgcc/-Polling-and-Political-Wrap-Up,-1-7-10

A couple of new polls hit the news today, some further aftershocks from Retirement Tuesday, and some brand-spankin' new campaign news as we hit the "BCS Title" edition of the Wrap....

CT-Sen: Rasmussen Confirms It--Blumenthal Is A Game Changer
When a new Connecticut Senate poll by the crew over at PPP projected a rout for new Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal over the GOP field, Republicans might have mollified themselves by proclaiming that PPP, after all, is a Democratic firm. Well, that comfort lasted exactly one day, as the team at Rasmussen released their own Connecticut poll today, and showed Blumenthal in a similarly strong position. He leads Rob Simmons by 23 points, according to the GOP-friendly Rasmussen (56-33), while leading Linda McMahon (58-34) and Paul-ite Peter Schiff (60-24) by wider margins.

CO-Gov: Ritter's Exit Leads To Closer Race, Says Rasmussen
Rasmussen, as is their typical prolific nature, also polled the newly open gubernatorial election in Colorado. In what has to be good news for Democrats, Rasmussen shows a considerably closer contest than existed when Republican Scott McInnis was challenging incumbent Democratic Governor Bill Ritter. When paired with Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, McInnis led by just three points (45-42). Against former Senator and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, McInnis leads by six points (47-41) according to Rasmussen. This race became a little clearer today, as Salazar demurred from a challenge, and took the intriguing step of endorsing John Hickenlooper, who has not officially entered the race (and, in fact, had announced yesterday that he would defer to Salazar).

IN OTHER NEWS....

• NY-Sen: With the GOP flailing about for a candidate in the wake of the news over the holidays that Rudy Giuliani would not be a participant in the 2010 elections, they might have landed on a semi-legitimate name: Molinari. Specifically, Susan Molinari, who was the longtime representative of the Staten Island-based 13th district now represented by Democrat Steve McMahon. Molinari is being egged on by both Giuliani and her dad Guy Molinari, a former Congressman in his own right and a player in NY GOP circles. In other New York Senate news, if Harold Ford decides to follow through with a primary challenge to Senator Gillibrand, he might have a a little 'splaining to do that his voter registration in the state of New York was not established until after he had already registered interest in running for the Senate seat. He registered to vote on November 23, 2009, which was the same week that Glenn Thrush over at Politico wrote about Ford's possible Senate ambitions.
• ND-Sen: In the wake of the retirement of longtime Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan, the Democrats might have also landed on a semi-legitimate name: Heitkamp. Heidi Heitkamp, the former state attorney general, is expressing interest in making a Senate bid against the likely GOP nominee, Governor John Hoeven. The two are hardly strangers: Heitkamp actually acquitted herself quite well when they met in a gubernatorial race in 2000, when Hoeven scored a 55-45 victory. Another Democrat is eyeing the race as well, as former Dorgan staffer Kristin Hedger appears interested in a bid.
• PA-Gov: This came as a bit of a surprise, if only because it is hard to figure out this gentleman's next move. Jim Gerlach, the suburban Philly Congressman (PA-06) who appeared to be running for Governor from the moderate wing of the party, rather abruptly ended his campaign for Governor today. The immediate speculation dealt with whether or not he would seek re-election. There are at least a few factors that will make Gerlach reluctant to seek re-election: for one thing, it appears that no one has leapt out (at least in these first few hours) upon hearing the news that he is no longer running for Governor. In fact, two candidates, Republican Curt Schroder and Democrat Doug Pike seemed to be pretty clear that they weren't moving. The other factor is he has few resources left in his federal campaign account, meaning he would be starting from a hole, financially.
• MI-Gov: There was also a Democratic campaign entrance in another race shaken up by Retirement Tuesday, but it remains to be seen if this particular move is a game changer. In the wake of John Cherry's self-ejection from the race on Tuesday, Democratic state senator Hansen Clarke, a veteran of the state legislature for over a decade, announced for the state in the wake of the Cherry announcement. Clarke has run unsuccessfully for Detroit Mayor, as well.
• AR-Sen: Given recent polling, it might not even require a top-tier Republican to claim the Senate seat of Democratic incumbent Blanche Lincoln. As it happens, another mid-tier Republican has entered the fray, although this one will be a familiar face for Lincoln. Jim Holt, a former state senator who got 44% in a challenge to Lincoln in 2004 (and also lost to Bill Halter in their battle for Lt. Governor in 2006), is going to formally announce next week that he is challenging Lincoln for re-election.
• NE-Gov: Lost in the flurry of big names hitting the bricks on Retirement Tuesday was another announcement that chilled Democratic prospects in a 2010 election. In the Heartland, Democrats lost their best prospect for Nebraska Governor when former Omaha Mayor Mike Boyle elected not to make a gubernatorial bid this year. That leaves Nebraska Democrats casting about for a serious candidate in what would, admittedly, be a tough race.
• FL-Sen: This is probably a sign that your campaign is not going as expected. Amid rumors (one of which, according to Taegan Goddard, began on Mark Foley's facebook page!) that he is about to eject, Florida Governor Charlie Crist felt compelled to shoot down speculation about his exit from the Senate race.
• TX-Gov: In another sign that your campaign is not going as expected, there are now reports that Senator John Cornyn is appealing to his Texas Senate mate, Kay Bailey Hutchison, to drop her gubernatorial bid. Hutchison is currently trailing incumbent Governor Rick Perry in a fairly acrimonious Republican primary for Governor.
• IA-Gov: It is, indeed, anticlimatic: the leading Republican candidate for Governor, former four-term Governor Terry Branstad, removed the "exploratory" part off of his campaign label, making his challenge of incumbent Democrat Chet Culver official.
• THE MONEY CHASE: As will happen all month (expect this to be a regular feature throughout January), campaigns are leaking their warchests at the close of 2009, trying to establish some buzz about their campaigns. One guy that is probably going to get a little buzz for his take is former Democratic Governor Roy Barnes in Georgia, who raised close to three million dollars in the second half of 2009. Meanwhile, another Democratic candidate for Governor is looking good, as Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett raised three quarters of a million of a bucks in his bid for Wisconsin Governor. Meanwhile, in Florida's competitive gubernatorial election, both Democrat Alex Sink and Republican Bill McCollum topped one million for the quarter, but Sink retains a funding lead overall. One House report that will raise some eyebrows: young Republican Armando Gutierrez, who is challenging Alan Grayson in FL-08, reported over three hundred thousand banked in his bid. This is especially intriguing, since Gutierrez has not gotten much love from the GOP establishment in his bid. (H/T: Johnny Longtorso at SSP.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/dJlI4D_rl9g/-The-Policy-Arguments-Against-an-Excise-Tax

House Democrats are steadfastly opposed to the Senate's excise tax in the health insurance bill, despite Obama's support for it. But politics is certainly not the only reason to nix this tax. There are serious economists who question whether it would achieve the goal of curbing health costs or raising wages, the two prongs of the argument in support of it. There's also the problem of who it's actually going to hit:

Health analysts recently questioned the assumption that the tax would target only the most lavish insurance packages, nicknamed "Cadillac plans." The analysts, writing in the journal Health Affairs, found that some less-generous plans could be taxed because they are costly for other reasons. The location of an employer and the type of industry, for example, have as much to do with the cost of plans as the generosity of the benefits and the kind of plan. Smaller businesses, especially those with a preponderance of older workers, tend to have higher premiums, as do certain industries, including the health-care sector.

The Senate bill would phase in the tax more slowly in some higher-cost states and exempt a few industries that tend to have expensive plans, such as mining. But opponents say it is impossible to find a workable way of targeting the tax so it would spare people whose plans are not particularly generous.

"It's a very blunt instrument," said former labor secretary Robert Reich. "It makes far more sense on policy and political grounds to tax the top 1 percent rather than sweep in so many people that are paying more for health care, not because they are getting more health care but because they're older or working for small businesses."

And in terms of lowering costs? As long as the cost of care remains as high as it is in the U.S.--and the bill does little to force providers to bring down those costs--putting the burden of cost cutting on consumers isn't the most effective, or fair, way to slow spending.

Separately, several health-care experts question whether shifting people into lower-cost plans is the best way to slow spending. It is possible, they concede, that the tax could move more employees into HMOs known for more efficient spending. But many markets lack such options.

It is more likely that employers would lower the cost of plans by increasing deductibles and co-pays, which skeptics say would not necessarily bring down health-care costs. Most costs are incurred by a minority of chronically ill patients. And health care is not like other markets, where consumers can make their own judgments based on quality and price; instead, patients make most major health-care decisions based on what their doctors tell them, skeptics point out.

A Rand study from the 1970s found that higher co-pays and deductibles led patients to limit medically necessary care as much as wasteful care, possibly leading to more costly health-care needs later....

Opponents of the tax say the case for it assumes that the country's high health-care costs are the result of patients' overuse of care. But, they note, the country's usage of medical care is by many measures lower than in other developed countries; it is the price that is so much higher here.

"The biggest problem we have isn't that we're demanding so many services, but it's that the type of services we're providing are so expensive," said Thomas Rice, a UCLA health-care expert.

Finally, the Economic Policy Institute, among others, debunks the idea that the cost savings employers receive from cutting back high value plans will actually end up back in workers' pocket in wage increases.

Economic Policy Institute president Lawrence Mishel takes apart that argument in a short, new issue brief.

First, even though unions often lament that in negotiations they face uncomfortable choices between protecting insurance and raising wages, Mishel argues that health insurance cost increases haven’t been big enough to greatly suppress wage growth:

The share of health care in total wages (in nominal, non-inflation adjusted terms) grew from 7.2% in 1989 to 9.4% in 2007, suggesting that the expanded role of health costs could have reduced wage growth by 2.2% over this entire 18-year period, or 0.12% each year....Further, overall benefits’ (health care plus all other fringe benefits) share of total compensation has actually been stable for the last 20 years or so....Hence, the story of stagnant wages in the U.S. economy is not one of growing non-wage competition.

Second, wages grew in the late ‘90s because productivity was increasing rapidly, and tight labor markets combined with a higher minimum wage pushed up wages. In any case, health care expenditures grew about the same rate throughout the ‘90s. Virtually no job creation and weak union or other institutional elevations of wages, not much higher healthcare costs, accounted for low wage growth in the 2000s.

Third, over several decades, low-paid workers have lost the most ground–but they’re also least likely to have employer paid health insurance. And in the late 1990s, when low-paid workers made their biggest gains, it wasn’t a result of health cost containment. Most still didn’t have employer-provided insurance. Finally, Mishel writes, “the worst wage growth in the 2000s was for low- and middle-wage workers, the groups with the least health care coverage.”

The excise tax as currently written is, as Reich says, too blunt an instrument to effectively control costs. With the Senate bill's already discriminatory rating for older Americans, where they could pay as much as three times for a policy as younger workers, this tax could disproportionately hit them. It was a bad idea when McCain proposed it in the 2008 campaign, and the Obama campaign opposed it, and it's a bad idea now.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/lmXXSethwys/-BCS-Championship-Game:-HornsElephants

Hook 'em Horns or roll Tide -- take your pick and settle in for the BCS Championship college football game.

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/fmci-Y3DKVs/-Netroots-Nation:-What-I-Love-About-This-Job

"Adam," I've been asked (by the voices in my head), "What do you enjoy most about serving as chairman of the board of directors of Netroots Nation?  Is it being backstage with folks like Bill Clinton?  Is it the site selection process?  Is it access to the Chairman's Suite, or the ability to append the word 'Chairman's' gratuitously to whatever you're doing?"

And the answer is no.  My favorite part of all of this is what's just started -- our proposal submission and evaluation process.

Because at the core of what we're doing in Las Vegas from July 22-25 (register now!), as it is every year, are the panel discussions, roundtables, training sessions and other substantive gatherings that you generate which occupy our days during the conference.  Through this process we define what it means to be in the Netroots every year -- what issues do we care about, and what perspectives are worth hearing -- making the conference itself a way to educate ourselves, informing and inspiring activism for the year which follows.  

This is a bottom-up process.  These ideas come from you, and if there's one theme I'd have for the 2010 conference, it's this: given what we now know, what do progressives need to do to make change happen?

We want to see proposals for panels that run the gamut of progressive policy, but, as always, we’ve set a few priority areas. We’ll be sure to cover:

• Comprehensive immigration reform
• Employee free choice and labor issues
• The economy, job creation and financial reform
• Organizing around the 2010 election
• Long-term systematic and infrastructure changes to the political process

As members of the Netroots community, one of our greatest strengths is our ability to shun conventional wisdom in favor of new approaches. Each session should offer a Netroots hook and cover interesting topics from new perspectives -- though, of course, some of that can involve bringing in non-Netroots folks to educate us and listen to us.  

We want forward-looking ideas that provide attendees with tools to make change and ideas to build upon. Feel free to browse our archive of previous sessions and check out our video archive to see what has been done in years past, but don't be afraid to think outside the box with regards to topic or format.  (Indeed, really: moderator plus four speakers has not been handed down from Sinai as the only way to do things.)

When you're brainstorming, here are a few things to think about:

• How does my idea help the broader progressive movement?
• How will it empower activists to take what they've learned and use it for the greater good?
• Do my proposed panelists represent diversity — of ethnicity, gender, geography, age and viewpoint?

Click here to read the full list of guidelines and submit your idea.  (We take these guidelines seriously -- there are numerical grades, spreadsheets, conference calls, the works.)  As you'll see from the guidelines, your ideas need not be fully formed at this stage, but we will want to see a good level of thoughtfulness and planning.  (You can't just give us a title and say "and I'll find three awesome people to talk about it."  Be as specific as reasonably possible.)

The deadline for submission is February 8, and feel free to email me at adam (at) netrootsnation dot org if you have any questions about this process.  Help us build a great conference in our return to Las Vegas.