History & Change: On Daniel Inouye

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

It had been 31 years since a bunch of American businessmen had organized a coup against the monarchy that had ruled Hawaii for generations when Daniel Inouye was born. His parents came from Japan, and along with Korean and Chinese workers, the Japanese had come to work on the Sugar plantations. That same year, Congress passed a law banning further immigration from Japan to Hawaii or anywhere else in the United States.

In 1924, on the mainland, Calvin Coolidge was President and Republicans had majorities in both the House and the Senate. It was the era when a President could get away with saying little and doing even less, and Congress basically let the good times roll.

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Plenty of Blame to Go Around

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

There is nothing good about the Newtown, Connecticut shootings. President Obama said what I thought my President should have said and the way I wanted my president to have said it in his remarks there last night.

I am no longer worried about my son. But my son is worried about his two little girls. They are not yet old enough for school, but sending a seven-year-old to school should not be a cause to worry all day that he or she will come home safely. Continue reading →

The Enemy Within

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I feel like America is collectively living in a very disturbing episode of the Twilight Zone. The events from Friday morning in Connecticut have thrown me for a loop.

A kid from the suburbs killed a bunch of small kids from the suburbs and their teachers and their principal. That these children are roughly the same age as my son fills me with a combination of rage, dread, sadness, empathy, and confusion. Continue reading →

Fiscal Cliff Tragedy/Comedy, Part I

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The tragedy and the comedy of the fiscal cliff negotiations are that they have little to do with the fiscal cliff.

The fiscal cliff is a relatively straight-forward collection of budget issues. But like so many other budget issues that have become the playground of ideologues, the fiscal cliff negotiations have been hijacked by a herculean clash over political dogma, a classic struggle between progressive forces dedicated to the redistribution of wealth and libertarian forces dedicated to dismantling government as we know it. Continue reading →

Holding Middle-Class Tax Cuts Hostage

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

Which one is better..or worse? To which guilty party can these words be assigned, Your Honor?

We are always surprised, although we shouldn’t be, when we see the media attack the GOP in Congress for ‘holding the middle-class hostage to getting tax cuts extended for the wealthy (‘fat-cat, dishonest, conniving, Scrooge-like white rich) guys’. (That is the intimation, isn’t it? Tell the truth.)

Why is it taken as the Gospel Truth that the current impasse is solely the fault of the Republican Party in charge of the House of Representatives in Congress? Continue reading →

Costas-Gate

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I like Bob Costas. I like how he presents himself. I actually got a chance to meet him on the set of a show we did together, and he came across as a very reasonable, slightly conservative, well put-together guy. He is also a sports nut, who could tell you the lineup of the 1964 Cardinals.

I like sports, but I couldn’t remember the lineup of my favorite team of all time, the South Side Hit Men, who almost won the pennant in 1977. I could get a few of them, but my memory is not good enough to recite the whole line-up.

Bob Costas stepped in it the other day when he talked about gun control at half time of the Sunday Night Football game. He pissed off a lot of conservatives, who found it completely inappropriate to mix politics and sports. Continue reading →

This ‘n That

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I am desperately searching for something to write about that doesn’t include the words “fiscal cliff.”

Maybe we’ll just cruise around the net and see what catches our attention.

Here’s one. Remember that unbelievable photo of the 13-year-old Afghan girl who was on the cover of National Geographic in 1985? It was taken by Steve McCurry. If you’re old enough, you probably remember it. If you’re not, it’s worth looking at.

The National Geographic folks recently auctioned off much of its photo library and that particular picture sold for $178,900. Continue reading →

Least Among Us

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

It is in the Book of Matthew that you can read, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’”

No country does more for the least among us, especially the disabled community, than the United States.

The Americans with Disabilities Act passed Congress in my first year up on Capitol Hill. I was working for House Minority Leader Bob Michel at the time, and as a newly minted conservative, I wasn’t particularly fond of the ADA. It forced small businesses to build access ramps, required small towns to buy specially-equipped buses so that people in wheelchairs could have access to public transportation, it required schools to spend money educating disabled children. Continue reading →

Offer, Counter-Offer

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Republicans went all crazy yesterday and countered the White House with a fiscal cliff proposal that was first dreamed up by that crazy right-winger Erskine Bowles.

Bowles, who used to toil in the trenches as Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff and who once ran for office in North Carolina as a Democrat, has obviously been seduced by that other right-wing kook, Alan Simpson. How dare Bowles, the closing days of the Super Committee, offer something so radical as to include $800 billion in revenues and about double that in spending cuts. Continue reading →

Better Storm Drains for All

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

It is now likely that a deal will not be reached between now and December 31 to avoid the fiscal cliff. Before you become an economic prepper and start stocking up on canned goods and extra Tequila, remember I also thought Mitt Romney would win the election.

If we do tumble over, the automatic sequester – spending cuts – kick in and everyone is looking for the worst-case scenario of what services will be lost to old folks, young folks, sick folks, and all the other folks in the United States. Continue reading →

Soak the Rich

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

My friend, the smart Senate staffer, sent me this missive this morning. I thought I would share it with you:

“There is clearly a Democratic obsession with taxing the rich. Let’s go through a little fiscal arithmetic and take the Democrats’ tax increase obsession out to its logical conclusion.

From a purely political power acquisition perspective, it makes all the sense in the world. It’s been a constant theme of Democrats for many years. Not all, but most, tell the American people that all of our fiscal problems can be Continue reading →

Capitalism

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

With the Redskins playing the Monday night game and the Nationals still not having made a deal with their 1st baseman, Adam LaRoche, there’s not much to think about here in Our Nation’s Capital other than that pesky fiscal cliff.

Depending on what comes up in your Google search for “what will be the effect on GDP of the fiscal cliff” you get answers ranging from a drop of about 1.4 percent (NASDAQ) up to four percent (Washington Post).

Most of the guesses fall in the 3-3.5 percent range. Continue reading →

Second Terms

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Now that the biggest parlor game in the world “Who will be the next President” is over, the next parlor game that has us obsessing here in our nation’s capital is: Who is in and who is out in President Obama’s second-term Cabinet and senior White House staff?

Putting together the senior team for a second term is far different from the first term. Oh, there are professional members of the transition team who have served in previous Administrations, but the new boss is likely to be overwhelmed with the number of decisions that have to be made in the relatively few weeks between election day in early November and Inauguration Day on January 20. Continue reading →

Line Cutters

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

During the American Civil War, it became quite fashionable for the very wealthy to pay for the privilege to have somebody else take their place in the actual fighting of the conflict.

I was thinking about this dynamic at the airport today.

Instead of paying for the privilege of having somebody else fight for you, in today’s world of frequent flyers and business class travel, you can actually pay for the privilege of cutting in line. Continue reading →

Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I am thankful that I never, ever have done the early shopping the night of or the morning after Thanksgiving.

Black Friday is a black mark on American capitalism in my view. For once, I am with the union workers, who said “enough is enough” to the folks who run Walmart.

No offense to my friends at Walmart, but come on people. There is plenty of time between now and Christmas for everybody to get their shopping done. Continue reading →

The Pledge

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Much was made over the weekend about cracks in Grover Norquist’s “No Tax Pledge” by Rep. Peter King and Senators Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA).

Before we go on, we all know there IS such a thing as the “No Tax Pledge,” but until last night as I was writing this, I had never actually read it.

Here is the operational section of the pledge as signed by hundreds of candidates for the U.S. House and U.S. Senate: I pledge that I will… Continue reading →

High vs. Low-Income Earners

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

Income disparity is not as big as you may think, believe it or not.

Everyone is talking about ‘taxing the rich!’, ‘redistributing the wealth!’ and ‘income inequality!’ as if it is something from a fairy tale or something. If you didn’t know better, you would think you were reading history from the French Revolution (‘Off with their heads!) or the writings of Leon Trosky and the others who brought ‘income-equality’ (as in ‘low’ income for everyone but the rulers) in Soviet Russia for almost a century. Continue reading →

Game Change or More of the Same?

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

It was a status quo election. Or was it?

The players all seem exactly the same. Barack Obama. John Boehner. Harry Reid. Mitch McConnell. Nancy Pelosi. The only change in any top leadership position was John Cornyn taking over from Jon Kyl as the Republican Whip.

Power in Washington is a game of perception. Who has it? Who doesn’t? Who can keep his troops in line and who can’t?

Power slowly recedes from a second term President. Second terms are never pretty. Continue reading →

Electoral Collage

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The United States Constitution provides for an indirect election of the President. That is, you didn’t vote for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney last week; you voted for electors pledged to vote for one or the other.

The 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which superseded a large section of Article II, Section 1) suggests says that the ballots of the electors in the several states having marked their ballots for President and Vice President shall “transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United

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Kick the Can Over the Fiscal Cliff

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The election wasn’t over for 48 hours before both sides started laying down their opening bids on dealing with what has become known as the “fiscal cliff.”

At its core, the “fiscal cliff” (and I’m going to stop putting it within quotes from here on) is the result of the Congress and the President (to use another phrase I wish I could excise from the political lexicon) “kicking the can down the road.” Continue reading →