Despite what the media has been reporting for more than two weeks, and as NWN has warned right along, Mitt Romney did not win the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses. Rick Santorum finished first. Oops. So much for all the commentary about Romney’s historic sweep of the first two contests. This is a good example of why I mostly stopped watching U.S. cable news a long time ago.
7:45 PM Pacific UPDATE: NEW POLL SHOWS GINGRICH UP BY 6 IN SOUTH CAROLINA AS HE WINS ANOTHER DEBATE, STONING A CNN STAR IN THE PROCESS. I thought that Newt Gingrich won the second South Carolina debate of the week tonight on CNN in Charleston.
It would have been hard for him to lose it after the way it opened.
CNN moderator John King, rather amazingly, opened the debate by asking Gingrich about allegations from his second wife Marianne Gingrich, just aired on ABC less than two days before the pivotal primary, that he had asked her for “an open marriage” over a decade ago when they were still married.
Gingrich proceeded to stone King, saying he would not answer his questions, denying the specific charge in the process and declaring it “despicable” that a presidential debate would be opened in this manner. None of his opponents contradicted him.
The audience went wild for Gingrich, giving him a standing ovation.
Meanwhile, a new Public Policy Polling survey shows Gingrich holding a 6-point lead over Mitt Romney, who had held a big lead at the beginning of this very eventful week.
This is consistent with, in fact better than, what I reported here last night with an Insider Advantage poll giving the ex-House speaker a smaller edge over the Romney.
It’s Gingrich 35%, Romney 29%, Rick Santorum 15%, and Ron Paul 15%.
A caveat. People are only now beginning to learn of his ex-wife’s dramatic and salacious charges against Gingrich. That could impact his now big lead among evangelicals.
Or it may not. Rick Perry sought to inoculate Gingrich as a reformed sinner this morning when he pulled out of the race to endorse him. And Gingrich has previously acknowledged behavior he regrets.
Romney, who was booed for giving another waffling answer about his financial dealings, has big problems of his own. Including today’s revelation that he didn’t really finish first in Iowa, which I’ve been mentioning as a likelihood for quite a while now.
I’m not seeing any mea culpas from the media types who rushed to anoint Romney as the Iowa winner.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … NEWTONIAN MOTION: THE UNDEAD!
** QUICK HITS. It’s fight night in Charleston, South Carolina, with the four remaining Republican presidential candidates debating less than two days before voting begins in the South Carolina primary. CNN calls it “a dead heat” between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, who had to admit today that he didn’t really finish first in Iowa as has been claimed for more than two weeks. Rick Santorum did, with Ron Paul third and Gingrich fourth. You can watch the show at 5 PM Pacific on CNN. … But much of the news media is going wild over Gingrich’s ex-wife taking this occasion to rip him for their decades old marriage, claiming he wanted “an open marriage.” … On a second day touring Southern California in the wake of yesterday morning’s State of the State address, Governor Jerry Brown drew warm reactions from crowds of business executives in Orange County and civic types in San Diego. … Meanwhile, legislative Democrats not surprisingly reacted with some skepticism about Brown’s proposed budget cuts and legislative Republicans didn’t like the proposed tax hikes. I should have a function key for those stances.
** NEW POLL: BIG BUSINESS AND BIG GOVERNMENT EQUALLY DISLIKED. A new Gallup Poll survey as this momentous election year starts getting into full swing shows that the bugaboos of the left and the right are equally disliked in American life.
Big business? Bad.
Big government? Bad.
Too bad life is a little more complicated than that.
Americans’ satisfaction with the size and power of the federal government is at a record-low 29% and their satisfaction with the size and influence of major corporations remains near the all-time low at 30% — making both highly susceptible targets for politicians and presidential candidates in this election year. …
Gallup began asking these questions in its annual Mood of the Nation surveys in 2001. About half of Americans in January 2001 were satisfied with the size of the federal government and of major corporations, and satisfaction with both has generally been declining since. …
Politicians and political groups have criticized the size and influence of both the federal government and big corporations this year, with the former mostly a focus of Republican attacks, and the latter a Democratic target. Rank-and-file Republicans’ and Democrats’ views of these two entities align with the partisan nature of these political attacks.
Republicans in particular are displeased with the size and power of the federal government, with 16% satisfied and 84% dissatisfied. Democrats are more positive about the federal government, but hardly overwhelmingly so, with 49% satisfied and 47% dissatisfied. The politically crucial group of independents is slightly more negative than the national average.
Democrats, as would be expected, are disproportionately displeased with the size and influence of major corporations, with 71% dissatisfied and 23% satisfied. Republicans break even in their views of major corporations, with 48% satisfied and the same percentage dissatisfied. Independents — as was the case in their views of the federal government — are slightly more negative than the national average. …
Taken in the aggregate, both of these big entities appear to be susceptible targets. Republicans are much less negative than average about major corporations. Democrats are much less negative about the federal government. Still, at least half of both of these political groups remain dissatisfied with the federal government and major corporations, signaling some appetite for change among Americans of all political persuasions.
Politicians and other critics therefore run some risk when they target one of these two unpopular entities while appearing to vindicate or support the other. President Obama’s strategists have apparently already recognized this, and Obama recently announced that he plans on reducing the size of six government agencies by consolidating them. Republican presidential candidates may at some point find it useful, likewise, to publicly take positions favorable toward reducing the power of major corporations.
** STATING THE STATE: JERRY BROWN GETS DISCIPLINED AND LAYS IT OUT.Straighten out the chronic crisis of the present and move the state forward into the future. That’s Jerry Brown’s mission as governor of California this time around, which he laid out rather clearly in his new State of the State address.
He’s also making progress early on in clearing the field for his revenue initiative in November.
Brown has articulated everything he said in this speech before. But he hadn’t framed it up and put it all together in a coherent way, preferring too often to rely on his improvisational rhetorical skills. And he certainly hadn’t ventured out from the capital in the North in any sustained manner to push his program around the state, yet he followed this State of the State address by, in essence, bringing the State of the State to several communities across Southern California on Wednesday and Thursday.
Since a fast declining news media doesn’t cover public affairs nearly as well as it used to, especially when it isn’t convenient, a leader has to find ways to make it convenient to cover. Which is why Brown delivered essentially the same speech he gave Wednesday morning at the State Capitol in Sacramento to a packed audience in Los Angeles City Hall — and an accompanying large bank of TV news cameras — on Wednesday afternoon.
As I wrote in “Jerry Brown 2.0 at 1,” marking the first anniversary of his inauguration after talking with him over the holidays, “Brown made it very clear that he intends to keep thinking big even in a time of limits. He wants to push hard for California to continue its leadership role on renewable energy, green tech, and climate change, develop future-oriented transit and water systems, and restructure California government, both by making sense of its sprawling agencies and by realigning services to bring them closer to the people who benefit.
“And all of it in the midst of digging out from under the wreckage of the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression, in a massively hyper-partisan era, necessitating huge budget cuts and the pursuit of new revenues.”
Brown’s State of the State address ran largely along those lines.
Brown’s Republican opponents, increasingly cartoonish in their reflexive oppositionism, amusingly released their video attacks on his State of the State a day before he delivered it, when the speech was certainly not finished. It was a telling error, allowing Brown to make a joke at the beginning of his speech about their “precognition,” a reference to the Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise film Minority Report.
Here’s how he defined the agenda, with a link to the full address:
The year 2012 presents plenty of opportunity and, if we work together, we can:
Stimulate jobs
Build renewable energy
Reduce pollution and greenhouse gasses
Launch the nation’s only high-speed rail system
Reach agreement on a plan to fix the Delta
Improve our schools
Reform our pensions, and,
Make sure that prison realignment is working–to protect public safety and reduce recidivism.
Here are several of Brown’s key passages, and what they mean. …
Texas Governor Rick Perry, appearing this morning in Charleston, South Carolina, pulled out of the Republican presidential race and endorsed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington, Florida, and New York.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He then flew to Orlando, Florida on Air Force One.
At 9:35 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks on a new strategy to promote tourism and travel at
Main Street USA in the Walt Disney World Resort.
At 11:15 AM Pacific, Obama departs Orlando, Florida on Air Force One en route New York City.
At 1:30 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in New York City.
At 2:30 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at Daniel Restaurant.
At 3:30 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at another fundraiser at Daniel Restaurant.
At 4:50 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at a private residence.
At 6:25 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at the Apollo Theatre.
At 8:05 PM Pacific, Obama departs New York City on Air Force One en route Joint Base Andrews.
Big developments late last night and this morning in the Republican presidential race. The Republicans debate tonight at 5 PM Pacific on CNN from Charleston, South Carolina.
And, as I reported here last night, Newt Gingrich took a slight lead over Mitt Romney in a new South Carolina primary poll.
The Palmetto State votes on Saturday, and there is a big debate tonight on CNN.
And Gingrich’s presumably still angry second wife is about to appear on ABC News saying very unflattering things about her ex-husband.
You can find this all just as coincidental as you prefer.
Then this morning Rick Perry pulled out of the race and endorsed Gingrich, emphasizing in his statement his belief in personal redemption and faith in Gingrich’s religious belief, an obvious counter to impending remarks from Marianne Gingrich.
Ron Paul is at 15% and Rick Santorum is at 11%, while Rick Perry brings up the rear with 3%.
An Insider Advantage poll taken over the weekend, prior to the debate, had Romney holding a 10-point lead over the ex-House speaker.
In the first TV ad of his re-election, President Barack Obama’s campaign goes after “secretive oil billionaires” for their attacks on Obama’s promotion of green tech.
The Romney campaign spent all of Wednesday attacking Gingrich, with even the see no evil/hear no evil candidate himself chiming in to try to drive points home.
Then the Drudge Report came up with an “exclusive,” read leak, that Gingrich’s second wife will make a highly negative appearance on ABC News to discuss her ex-husband.
Sensing danger in the wake of Gingrich’s Monday night debate win and the controversy over his own financial dealings, Romney yesterday called in reinforcements to help prop up his campaign in the South Carolina primary. Anti-Gingrich surrogates rolled in and TV ads erupted. The best thing Romney has going for him is a split field.
For its part, the Obama Administration turned down the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas, citing an arbitrary 60-day decision deadline imposed by Congressional Republicans as part of the end of year fiscal deal to extend the payroll tax cut. But pipeline promoters can seek a different path for it.
And the Obama campaign rolled out its first TV ad, an attack on “secretive oil billionaires” funding attacks on Obama’s green tech agenda, and a defense of the controversial Solyndra loan.
The crises with Iran and Israel continue to percolate.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Southern California.
Governor Jerry Brown essentially repeated his State of the State address yesterday afternoon before a packed crowd, and a big bank of TV news cameras, at LA City Hall. Recognizing that, as may have been mentioned here on occasion, events in the state capital don’t resonate much in the rest of the state, Brown is taking his State of the State message on the road in Southern California.
Today he is in Orange County and San Diego.
At 9:30 AM, Brown addresses the Orange County Business Council in Irvine.
At 12 noon, he addresses the City Club of San Diego in the San Diego Hall of Champions.
** EXTREMISM IN DEFENSE OF IRONY: BY ROMNEY’S RADICAL DEFINITION HIS OWN CHIEF STRATEGIST IS “ANTI-FREE ENTERPRISE.”
Q. “Do you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious, is it about jealousy, or is it about fairness?”
A. “You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare.”
Mitt Romney on The Today Show after his New Hampshire primary victory, reacting to criticism of his record as head of the unfortunately named Bain Capitol.
So much for the idea of Mitt Romney as a moderate. A chameleon or flip-flopper on social and environmental issues, sure, which in some circles counts as “moderate.” But on economic issues, a radical capitalist employing extreme rhetoric.
Shocked by being under fire from fellow Republicans for his work as a corporate takeover specialist, Romney and his allies have reacted with a semi-controlled hysteria, deeming any criticism of the era’s anything-goes financialized capitalism the functional equivalent of socialism. … From my January 15th essay.
** BOMBING BAIN: HOW DOES THE POLITICS OF WALL STREET GREED PLAY IN THE G.O.P.?There’s no little irony in the attacks being leveled on Mitt Romney’s adventures in capitalism by fellow Republicans. The Romney crew, and many doctrinaire Republicans in love with market ideology, are reacting with fury to any criticism of capitalism as being strictly out of bounds. A chief irony not yet remarked on is that Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist and media consultant, attacked Romney protege Meg Whitman for her own adventures in capitalism during the 2010 California’s governor’s race.
For the six years or so in which he has been running for president of the United States, Mitt Romney has been largely allowed by the media and his opponents to position himself as a “venture capitalist.” Which sounds very benign, conjuring up as it does visions of what venture capitalists do; i.e., provide seed capital and early capital and guidance for entrepreneurs with promising new products and services.
But, while Romney’s Bain Capital did some of that, the reality is that he was more of a leveraged buyout artist … From my January 10th column.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $101 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $67 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $13 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
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Appearing last night on Fox News’s Sean Hannity show, Sarah Palin compared Newt Gingrich to “Smokin’ Joe Frazier” and said that she would vote for Gingrich if she were voting in the South Carolina primary.
8:40 PM PACIFIC UPDATE: GINGRICH TAKES SLIGHT LEAD IN NEW SOUTH CAROLINA POLL, SECOND WIFE TO APPEAR ON ABC NEWS. A brand-new poll by Insider Advantage of the South Carolina Republican primary, taken after Monday night’s debate which was won by Newt Gingrich, shows Gingrich moving into a very slight edge over Mitt Romney, 32% to 29%.
Ron Paul is at 15% and Rick Santorum is at 11%, while Rick Perry brings up the rear with 3%.
An Insider Advantage poll taken over the weekend, prior to the debate, had Romney holding a 10-point lead over the ex-House speaker.
The Romney campaign spent all of Wednesday attacking Gingrich, with even the see no evil/hear no evil candidate himself chiming in to try to drive points home.
And now the Drudge Report has an “exclusive,” read leak, that Gingrich’s second wife will make a highly negative appearance on ABC News to discuss her ex-husband.
** QUICK HITS.Sensing danger in the wake of Newt Gingrich’s Monday night debate win and the controversy over his own financial dealings, Mitt Romney today called in reinforcements to help prop up his campaign in the South Carolina primary. Anti-Gingrich surrogates rolled in and TV ads erupted. The best thing Romney has going for him is a split field. The next debate is tomorrow night. … The Obama Administration today turned down the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas, citing an arbitrary 60-day decision deadline imposed by Congressional Republicans as part of the end of year fiscal deal to extend the payroll tax cut. But pipeline promoters can seek a different path for it. … Governor Jerry Brown essentially repeated his State of the State address this afternoon before a packed crowd, and a big bank of TV news cameras, at LA City Hall. Recognizing that, as may have been mentioned here on occasion, events in the state capital don’t resonate much in the rest of the state, Brown is taking his State of the State message on the road in Southern California. Tomorrow he is in Orange County and San Diego.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … STATING THE STATE: JERRY BROWN GETS DISCIPLINED AND LAYS IT OUT.
On a national level, it’s Mitt Romney 30%, Gingrich 27%, Rick Santorum back down to 15%, Ron Paul 13%, and Rick Perry 4%.
I’m no fan of Rasmussen, as readers know, but the poll is clearly on to something here. The Romney campaign, and even the usually above the fray/don’t know about attacks candidate himself, is spending a lot of energy today attacking Gingrich.
All of which makes Thursday night’s debate in Charleston, South Carolina very important.
As always, the key to beating Romney is for the other conservatives to drop and let Gingrich have a clear shot.
Perry, in particular, was expected by his staff to drop out after Iowa but mysteriously decided to carry on after retreating to Texas and nearly suspending his campaign.
Santorum, who may actually have finished first in Iowa, as I’ve mentioned a few times and which is a whole other story largely unreported by the media, hasn’t been able to get any traction since then.
But the story in the new numbers, taken Tuesday night, is Gingrich’s jump 11 points from 16% two weeks ago. Romney’s support is essentially unchanged from 29% at that time, while Santorum is down six points from 21%. Paul’s and Perry’s support is also unchanged. Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman earned four percent (4%) of the vote at the start of the month but dropped out of the race this week. This suggests that many voters are still looking for an alternative to Romney and currently see Gingrich as that candidate.
Among Republican primary voters nationwide, 34% think Romney is the GOP candidate who would do a better job managing the economy, but almost as many (29%) feel Gingrich would do the better job. Paul’s a distant third at 14%. When it comes to national security and defense, Gingrich is the clear leader: 43% think he would do a better job versus 18% who say the same of Romney.
Indicative of how fluid the race remains, just 41% of likely GOP primary voters nationally are certain of how they will vote at this time. Most (51%) say they could still change their minds, and another seven percent (7%) haven’t made an initial choice yet.
The jump in Gingrich’s support nationally comes after a Monday night debate in which most analysts said the former speaker did very well. …
** “CALIFORNIA ON THE MEND.” GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN’S 2012 STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS (as prepared):
As required by the state constitution, I am reporting to you this morning on the condition of our state.
Putting it as simply as I can, California is on the mend. Last year, we were looking at a structural deficit of over $20 billion. It was a real mess. But you rose to the occasion and together we shrunk state government, reduced our borrowing costs and transferred key functions to local government, closer to the people. The result is a problem one fourth as large as the one we confronted last year.
My goal then was to balance budget cuts with a temporary extension of existing taxes—if the voters approved. You made the reductions and some very difficult decisions but the four Republican votes needed to put the tax measure on the ballot were not there. So we are left with unfinished business: closing the remaining gap.
Again, I propose cuts and temporary taxes. Neither is popular but both must be done. In a world still reeling from the near collapse of the financial system, it makes no sense to spend more than we have. The financial downgrading of the United States, as well as of several governments in Europe, should be warning enough. It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and digging ourselves into a deep financial hole—to do good—is a bad idea. In this time of uncertainty, prudence and paying down debt is the best policy.
For my part, I am determined to press ahead both with substantial budget cuts and my tax initiative. The cuts are not ones I like but the situation demands them. As for the initiative, it is fair. It is temporary. It is half of what people were paying in 2010. And it will protect our schools and guarantee—in the constitution—funding for the public safety programs we transferred to local government. With enough time, we can and should devise more permanent tax reform but for now we should finish the job of bringing spending into balance with revenues.
Putting our fiscal house in order is good stewardship and helps us regain the trust of the people. It also builds confidence in California as a place to invest and realize one’s dreams. Contrary to those critics who fantasize that California is a failed state, I see unspent potential and incredible opportunity. Every decade since the 60’s, dystopian journalists write stories on the impending decline of our economy, our culture and our politics. Yes, it is fair to say that California is turbulent, less predictable and, well, different. Yet, look at the facts.
After the mortgage bubble burst in 2007, California lost a million jobs, much of it driven by the overleveraged construction industry and its financial partners in the under-regulated mortgage industry. The result is a recovery far slower than after the previous six national recessions. But now we are coming back. In 2011, California personal income grew by almost $100 billion and 230,000 jobs were created—a rate much higher than the nation as a whole.
Contrary to those declinists, who sing of Texas and bemoan our woes, California is still the land of dreams—as well as the Dream Act. It’s the place where Apple, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, QUALCOMM, Twitter, Facebook and countless other creative companies all began. It’s home to more Nobel Laureates and venture capital investment than any other state. In 2010, California received 48% of U.S. venture capital investments. In the first three months of last year it rose even higher—to 52%. That is more than four times greater that the next recipient, Massachusetts. As for new patents, California inventors were awarded almost four times as many as inventors from the next state, New York.
California has problems but rumors of its demise are greatly exaggerated.
The year 2012 presents plenty of opportunity and, if we work together, we can:
Stimulate jobs
Build renewable energy
Reduce pollution and greenhouse gasses
Launch the nation’s only high-speed rail system
Reach agreement on a plan to fix the Delta
Improve our schools
Reform our pensions, and,
Make sure that prison realignment is working—to protect public safety and reduce recidivism.
Last year, I appointed a top advisor with an impressive background in the private sector and charged him with finding out what doesn’t work for business in this state and how to fix it. What he heard consistently was that business needed an effective champion to navigate the state’s plethora of complex laws and regulations which can discourage investment and job creation. You enacted a law to restructure our office of business development and place it in the governor’s office. Under the name GO-BIZ, we now have a point of contact at the highest level for businesses large and small. More than that, the GO-BIZ office is staffed with people who understand what it’s like to be in business and stand ready to intervene and give real help to get businesses open and projects off the ground.
Already California is leading the nation in creating jobs in renewable energy and the design and construction of more efficient buildings and new technologies. Our state keeps demanding more efficient structures, cars, machines and electric devices. We do that because we understand that fossil fuels, particularly foreign oil, create ever rising costs to our economy and to our health. It is true that the renewable energy sector is small relative to the overall economy but it pays good wages and will only grow bigger as oil prices increase and the effects of climate change become more obvious and expensive.
I have set a goal of 20,000 megawatts of renewable energy by 2020. You have laid the foundation by adopting the requirement that one third of our electricity come from renewable sources by that date. This morning I can tell you we are on track to meet that goal and substantially exceed it. In the last two years alone, California has permitted over 16,000 megawatts of solar, wind and geothermal energy projects.
In the beginning of the computer industry, jobs were numbered in the thousands. Now they are in the millions. The same thing will happen with green jobs. And California is positioned perfectly to reap the economic benefits that will inevitably flow.
California also leads the nation in cleaning up the air, encouraging electric vehicles and reducing pollution and greenhouse gases. Our vehicle emissions standards—which have always set the pace—now have been adopted by the federal government for the rest of the country.
Under AB 32, California has stepped out and crafted a bold plan to deal with climate change and foreign oil dependency. The plan will require less carbon in our fuels, more efficient technologies across a broad swath of businesses and a carefully designed cap and trade system that uses market incentives instead of prescriptive mandates.
As a result, California is attracting billions of dollars in clean tech venture capital investments. In 2011, almost 40% of such investments were made in California, making our state not only the leader in the nation but in the world.
My commitment is to continue these innovative programs and build on them in the coming year in every way that I can.
Just as bold is our plan to build a high-speed rail system, connecting the Northern and Southern parts of our state. This is not a new idea. As governor the last time, I signed legislation to study the concept. Now thirty years later, we are within weeks of a revised business plan that will enable us to begin initial construction before the year is out.
President Obama strongly supports the project and has provided the majority of funds for this first phase. It is now your decision to evaluate the plan and decide what action to take. Without any hesitation, I urge your approval.
If you believe that California will continue to grow, as I do, and that millions more people will be living in our state, this is a wise investment. Building new runways and expanding our airports and highways is the only alternative. That is not cheaper and will face even more political opposition.
Those who believe that California is in decline will naturally shrink back from such a strenuous undertaking. I understand that feeling but I don’t share it, because I know this state and the spirit of the people who choose to live here. California is still the Gold Mountain that Chinese immigrants in 1848 came across the Pacific to find. The wealth is different, derived as it is, not from mining the Sierras but from the creative imagination of those who invent and build and generate the ideas that drive our economy forward.
Critics of the high-speed rail project abound as they often do when something of this magnitude is proposed. During the 1930’s, The Central Valley Water Project was called a “fantastic dream” that “will not work.” The Master Plan for the Interstate Highway System in 1939 was derided as “new Deal jitterbug economics.” In 1966, then Mayor Johnson of Berkeley called BART a “billion dollar potential fiasco.” Similarly, the Panama Canal was for years thought to be impractical and Benjamin Disraeli himself said of the Suez Canal: “totally impossible to be carried out.” The critics were wrong then and they’re wrong now.
Another huge issue we must tackle is water. Last week, Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar – met here in Sacramento with those in my administration who are working to complete the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. Together we agreed that by this summer we should have the basic elements of the project we need to build. This is something my father worked on and then I worked on—decades ago. We know more now and are committed to the dual goals of restoring the Delta ecosystem and ensuring a reliable water supply.
This is an enormous project. It will ensure water for 25 million Californians and for millions of acres of farmland as well a hundred thousand acres of new habitat for spawning fish and other wildlife. To get it done will require time, political will and countless permits from state and federal agencies. I invite your collaboration and constructive engagement.
Next, I want to say something about our schools. They consume more tax dollars than any other government activity and rightly so as they have a profound effect on our future. Since everyone goes to school, everyone thinks they know something about education and in a sense they do.But that doesn’t stop experts and academics and foundation consultants from offering their ideas — usually labeled reform and regularly changing at ten year intervals—on how to get kids learning more and better. It is salutary and even edifying that so much interest is shown in the next generation. Nevertheless, in a state with six million students, 300,000 teachers, deep economic divisions and a hundred different languages, some humility is called for.
In that spirit, I offer these thoughts. First, responsibility must be clearly delineated between the various levels of power that have a stake in our educational system. What most needs to be avoided is concentrating more and more decision-making at the federal or state level. For better or worse, we depend on elected school boards and the principals and the teachers they hire. To me that means, we should set broad goals and have a good accountability system, leaving the real work to those closest to the students. Yes, we should demand continuous improvement in meeting our state standards but we should not impose excessive or detailed mandates.
My budget proposes to replace categorical programs with a new weighted student formula that provides a basic level of funding with additional money for disadvantaged students and those struggling to learn English. This will give more authority to local school districts to fashion the kind of programs they see their students need. It will also create transparency, reduce bureaucracy and simplify complex funding streams.
Given the cutbacks to education in recent years, it is imperative that California devote more tax dollars to this most basic of public services. If we are successful in passing the temporary taxes I have proposed and the economy continues to expand, schools will be in a much stronger position.
No system, however, works without accountability. In California we have detailed state standards and lots of tests. Unfortunately, the resulting data is not provided until after the school year is over. Even today, the ranking of schools based on tests taken in April and May of 2011 is not available. I believe it is time to reduce the number of tests and get the results to teachers, principals and superintendents in weeks, not months. With timely data, principals and superintendents can better mentor and guide teachers as well as make sound evaluations of their performance. I also believe we need a qualitative system of assessments, such as a site visitation program where each classroom is visited, observed and evaluated. I will work with the State Board of Education to develop this proposal.
The house of education is divided by powerful forces and strong emotions. My role as governor is not to choose sides but to listen, to engage and to lead. I will do that. I embrace both reform and tradition—not complacency. My hunch is that principals and teachers know the most, but I’ll take good ideas from wherever they come.
As for pensions, I have put forth my 12 point proposal. Examine it. Improve it. But please take up the issue and do something real. I am committed to pension reform because I believe there is a real problem. Three times as many people are retiring as are entering the workforce. That arithmetic doesn’t add up. In addition, benefits, contributions and the age of retirement all have to balance. I don’t believe they do today. So we have to take action. And we should do it this year.
As for prison realignment, we are just at the beginning. The cooperation of sheriffs, police chiefs, probation officers, district attorneys and local officials has been remarkable. But we have much to do—to protect public safety and reduce recidivism—and together, we’ll get it done.
It is one thing to pass a law and quite another to implement it and make it work.
As I see it, that’s my job as governor and chief executive: make the operations of government work—efficiently, honestly and in the peoples’ interest. With your help, that’s what we’ll do in 2012 and prove the declinists wrong once again.
Thank you.
Israel and the US have postponed Operation Austere Challenge, set for the next few weeks, the largest joint exercise ever scheduled by the two countries, ostensibly because Israel is short on manpower.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 12 noon Pacific, he participates in an Ambassador Credentialing Ceremony in the Oval Office.
At 12:30 PM Pacific, Obama meets with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in the Oval Office.
At 2:25 PM Pacific, Obama hosts a reception with U.S. Mayors in the East Room.
Iran yesterday warned Saudi Arabia not to increase its oil production as the US and its allies push for an embargo against Iranian oil as part of the drive to stop Iran from producing a nuclear weapon. The Saudis have said they will up their production by 2.7 million barrels per day to make up for a potential loss of Iranian oil on global markets. The US recently sold 84 advanced fighter jets to the kingdom across the Gulf from Tehran.
The European Union is discussing its plan to start its ban on Iranian oil on July 1st.
India formally announced yesterday what has previously been reported, that it will ignore the US request that it drop Iranian oil. Iran is India’s second largest source of oil, after Saudi.
Iran announced that it has made arrests in the case of last week’s assassination of a top nuclear scientist, which Iranian leaders say was carried out by Israel’s Mossad with the assistance of US and British intelligence.
Meanwhile, the war talk in the Israeli press seemed to abate to a large degree yesterday.
And late in the day, Israel announced a delay until next summer for a massive joint exercise with US forces which have already been moving in the region planned for late this month.
The ostensible reason is a lack of Israeli resources for the exercise, but most believe it’s an attempt to ratchet down the tensions in the region.
The exercise was designed in large part to practice counter-moves to an Iranian missile attack.
The US has a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East as the crisis with Iran grows and the Islamic republic’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz continues, as well as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey to meet with Israeli officials.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the veteran California political figure, has expressed grave concern about the prospect of Israeli air strikes on Iran’s nuclear program.
Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich takes a shot at opponent Mitt Romney, saying he is re-naming his flat tax the “Mitt Romney 15 percent flat tax.” This comes after it was revealed that the super-rich Romney pays about a 15% tax rate.
While these major events play out, the Republican presidential race continues.
Mitt Romney is trying to consolidate a frontrunner position after losing Monday night’s debate to Newt Gingrich.
Romney is on the defensive for his Bain Capital adventures and for his personal finances. He has balked repeatedly at releasing any tax records — a practice in presidential politics that his own father, then Michigan Governor George Romney, pioneered over 40 years ago — and seems to have begun paving the way for spinning their eventual release by letting it be known that he is only paying somewhere in the neighborhood of 15% on his own vast income.
So he is catching some significant fire for this.
And Sarah Palin made a de facto endorsement of Gingrich last night on Sean Hannity’s Fox News chatfest.
Palin said she isn’t “formally” endorsing the ex-House speaker, but ripped Romney and said she would vote for Gingrich if she were voting in the South Carolina primary.
Former “First Dude” Todd Palin has already endorsed Gingrich.
Palin described Gingrich as a “Smokin’ Joe Frazier” for his winning debate performance on Monday night.
Romney still has two great advantages.
A divided and fairly inept set of opponents, though Gingrich is again finding his footing.
And a largely (any mysteriously) supportive news media.
Neither will be in play if he gets the nomination. Even if large elements of the media want to support Romney in the general election, they will get a major pushback from Obama and the Democrats.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … STATING THE STATE.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento and the Los Angeles area.
At 10 AM, Brown delivers the State of the State address in the Capitol.
** EXTREMISM IN DEFENSE OF IRONY: BY ROMNEY’S RADICAL DEFINITION HIS OWN CHIEF STRATEGIST IS “ANTI-FREE ENTERPRISE.”
Q. “Do you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious, is it about jealousy, or is it about fairness?”
A. “You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare.”
Mitt Romney on The Today Show after his New Hampshire primary victory, reacting to criticism of his record as head of the unfortunately named Bain Capitol.
So much for the idea of Mitt Romney as a moderate. A chameleon or flip-flopper on social and environmental issues, sure, which in some circles counts as “moderate.” But on economic issues, a radical capitalist employing extreme rhetoric.
Shocked by being under fire from fellow Republicans for his work as a corporate takeover specialist, Romney and his allies have reacted with a semi-controlled hysteria, deeming any criticism of the era’s anything-goes financialized capitalism the functional equivalent of socialism. … From my January 15th essay.
** BOMBING BAIN: HOW DOES THE POLITICS OF WALL STREET GREED PLAY IN THE G.O.P.?There’s no little irony in the attacks being leveled on Mitt Romney’s adventures in capitalism by fellow Republicans. The Romney crew, and many doctrinaire Republicans in love with market ideology, are reacting with fury to any criticism of capitalism as being strictly out of bounds. A chief irony not yet remarked on is that Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist and media consultant, attacked Romney protege Meg Whitman for her own adventures in capitalism during the 2010 California’s governor’s race.
For the six years or so in which he has been running for president of the United States, Mitt Romney has been largely allowed by the media and his opponents to position himself as a “venture capitalist.” Which sounds very benign, conjuring up as it does visions of what venture capitalists do; i.e., provide seed capital and early capital and guidance for entrepreneurs with promising new products and services.
But, while Romney’s Bain Capital did some of that, the reality is that he was more of a leveraged buyout artist … From my January 10th column.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $101 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $67 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $13 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
President Barack Obama welcomed the 2011 World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals, viewed by many as baseball’s greatest comeback team, to the White House today.
** QUICK HITS.Iran today warned Saudi Arabia not to increase its oil production as the US and its allies push for an embargo against Iranian oil as part of the drive to stop Iran from producing a nuclear weapon. The Saudis have said they will up their production by 2.7 million barrels per day to make up for a potential loss of Iranian oil on global markets. The US recently sold 84 advanced fighter jets to the kingdom across the Gulf from Tehran. … The European Union is discussing its plan to start its ban on Iranian oil on July 1st. … India today formally announced what has previously been reported, that it will ignore the US request that it drop Iranian oil. Iran is India’s second largest source of oil, after Saudi. … Iran announced today that it has made arrests in the case of last week’s assassination of a top nuclear scientist, which Iranian leaders say was carried out by Israel’s Mossad with the assistance of US and British intelligence. … Meanwhile, the war talk in the Israeli press seemed to abate to a large degree today.
3:39 PM Pacific UPDATE: Governor Jerry Brown issued this diplomatic statement in response to Think Long’s decision to withdraw its proposed initiative from the 2012 election cycle: “Think Long is doing very important work and I look forward to working with them on the critical issue of more permanent tax reform.”
** JERRY-RIGGING: THINK LONG OPTS TO THINK LONGER. As I wrote over a month and a half ago, the ballyhooed Thing Long Committee’s plans to cut taxes for the rich and big corporations while extending the sales tax to all manner of services was bad politics. And as I revealed on December 12th, based on extensive discussions with well-placed sources, the group of billionaires and prominent former officeholders was looking for a way to proceed without, well, proceeding.
Today the shoe dropped in a formal sort of way, with the announcement by the group that it won’t try to do a November initiative to compete with Governor Jerry Brown’s revenue measure. The group also had proposed a sort of super-committee, amusingly dubbed a “Jedi Council” by one of its boosters, to mess around with initiatives and so forth. There’s more to it, but the idea is so ridiculous I’ve already forgotten most of it.
“It is clear from public reaction, stakeholder meetings and our own public opinion research that Californians are hungry for real reform and are more willing than ever to support a sweeping plan that is fair and will put an end to California’s perpetual financial volatility and suffocating wall of debt,” said Think Long in a statement.
“At the same time, we recognize the practical constraints of the 2012 election calendar – and have come to the conclusion that it will take more time to perfect these proposals, eliminate unintended consequences and provide every stakeholder and everyday Californians a meaningful voice in that process.”
While Think Long couldn’t win, it might have blocked Brown from winning with a well-funded and confusing to the electorate campaign.
This leaves two other potential initiatives dealing with the income tax.
One, the so-called “Millionaires Tax” by California’s second-largest teachers union and a a coalition of left-liberal groups, is still out there but doesn’t have a lot of resources behind it.
Another, by heiress Molly Munger (her father is Warren Buffett’s partner), would raise income taxes on most everybody to principally benefit the schools. As I said as soon as I heard of it, I don’t see an income tax hike on most taxpayers as a good idea politically, and there’s private polling that bears out my rather obvious insight.
But if she wants to waste her money, that’s her prerogative.
** NEW SURVEY: UNEMPLOYMENT DROPS A BIT. A new Gallup Poll survey has some more guarded good news on the economy.
U.S. unemployment dipped to 8.3% in mid-January.
That’s down from 8.5% in December.
And way down from 9.9% a year earlier.
That’s not good for Republicans. Especially if they end up nominating Mitt Romney, who imagined somehow that he would be able to run as an expert job creator but is going to have demonstrate that his expertise is not simply in financial manipulation. And also deal with the fact that there is no substantiation for his own rather fanciful job creation claims — 100,000 jobs! — while there is plenty of evidence of job loss.
But before popping any champagne corks, it’s important to note that the number of people with less than full-time work who want full-time work is actually nearly a percentage point from a year ago.
Too many of the jobs being produced now don’t provide much in the way of income, certainly not replacing what was lost in the great global recession.
Gallup’s mid-month unemployment reading, based on the 30 days ending Jan. 15, serves as a preliminary estimate of the U.S. government report, and suggests the Bureau of Labor Statistics will likely report on the first Friday of February that its seasonally adjusted unemployment rate declined once again in January.
The percentage of U.S. employees who are working part time but want full-time work is at 9.8% in mid-January, the same as in December. The mid-January reading is substantially higher than the 9.1% of January 2011. …
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST
At 9:30 AM Pacific, White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room. The event will be netcast live here on New West Notes. You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events. Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes. You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live netcasts in full streaming mode, as it did with the Ronald Reagan Centennial events from the Reagan Library, as they emerge and are technically available and as significance dictates.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, trying to battle back in the South Carolina primary after being decimated by millions in Mitt Romney super PAC ads in Iowa and elsewhere, got the best of things in Monday night’s debate in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
Obama then met with the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in the State Dining Room.
At 9:30 AM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet for lunch in the Oval Office.
AT 9:30 AM Pacific, White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room. The event will be netcast live on New West Notes.
At 11:15 AM Pacific, Obama meets with King Abdullah II of Jordan in the Oval Office.
Jordan is a key historic interlocutor for the US in the Middle East, and there are major brewing crises with Iran and Israel to be dealt with.
At 12:05 PM Pacific, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama honor the 2011 World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals in the East Room.
Today is the first lady’s 48th birthday.
At 1:35 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in the Oval Office.
The US is dispatching a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East as the crisis with Iran grows and the Islamic republic’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz continues, as well as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey to meet with Israeli officials.
The US is about to embark on major joint military exercises with Israel.
At the same time, Panetta has expressed grave concern about the prospect of Israeli air strikes on Iran’s nuclear program.
While these major events play out, Obama’s would-be Republican rivals are fighting it out for Saturday’s South Carolina primary.
In their first of two South Carolina debates this week, the next is on Thursday night, Newt Gingrich prevailed in a Monday night performance that few a couple of standing ovations from the crowd.
Renewed frontrunner Mitt Romney took heavy fire from Gingrich, Iowa dead heat winner Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry, while Ron Paul — who never attacks Romney — put in a listless performance.
Romney was on the defensive for his Bain Capital adventures, and on his refusal to release tax information.
He now says he may release some information … in three months!
He also had some odd things to say about hunting.
Team O must be having a ball watching this spectacle.
Obama is monitoring a variety of geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Arabian Gulf is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … STATING THE STATE.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown continues working on his new state budget, the upcoming State of the State address on January 18th, and various political plans for 2012, including his big revenue initiative to couple with additional cuts in order to bring the budget into balance.
After his State of the State address in Sacramento on Wednesday, Brown will have several events in Southern California later on Wednesday and on Thursday to amplify and emphasize points made in his speech.
** EXTREMISM IN DEFENSE OF IRONY: BY ROMNEY’S RADICAL DEFINITION HIS OWN CHIEF STRATEGIST IS “ANTI-FREE ENTERPRISE.”
Q. “Do you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious, is it about jealousy, or is it about fairness?”
A. “You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare.”
Mitt Romney on The Today Show after his New Hampshire primary victory, reacting to criticism of his record as head of the unfortunately named Bain Capitol.
So much for the idea of Mitt Romney as a moderate. A chameleon or flip-flopper on social and environmental issues, sure, which in some circles counts as “moderate.” But on economic issues, a radical capitalist employing extreme rhetoric.
Shocked by being under fire from fellow Republicans for his work as a corporate takeover specialist, Romney and his allies have reacted with a semi-controlled hysteria, deeming any criticism of the era’s anything-goes financialized capitalism the functional equivalent of socialism. … From my January 15th essay.
** BOMBING BAIN: HOW DOES THE POLITICS OF WALL STREET GREED PLAY IN THE G.O.P.?There’s no little irony in the attacks being leveled on Mitt Romney’s adventures in capitalism by fellow Republicans. The Romney crew, and many doctrinaire Republicans in love with market ideology, are reacting with fury to any criticism of capitalism as being strictly out of bounds. A chief irony not yet remarked on is that Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist and media consultant, attacked Romney protege Meg Whitman for her own adventures in capitalism during the 2010 California’s governor’s race.
For the six years or so in which he has been running for president of the United States, Mitt Romney has been largely allowed by the media and his opponents to position himself as a “venture capitalist.” Which sounds very benign, conjuring up as it does visions of what venture capitalists do; i.e., provide seed capital and early capital and guidance for entrepreneurs with promising new products and services.
But, while Romney’s Bain Capital did some of that, the reality is that he was more of a leveraged buyout artist … From my January 10th column.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
A century after Captain Robert Scott arrived at the South Pole on January 17th, 1912, his granddaughter Dafila Scott remembers a risk-taker who advanced scientific knowledge. On their return journey from the Pole, after finding that a Norwegian expedition had preceded them by a month, Scott and his four comrades in the Terra Nova Expediton all perished from a combination of exhaustion, starvation, and extreme cold.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $100 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $66 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $14 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Today is Martin Luther King Day. Here is the conclusion of his final speech, delivered the night before his assassination. It always gives me chills because he clearly seems to grasp his impending martyrdom.
“We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. I don’t mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he has allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I have looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land.
I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the promised land!
So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Memphis, Tennessee
April 3, 1968
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
A short but important week on tap in presidential politics and in California politics.
In presidential politics, the curious Republican race heads down the homestretch for Saturday’s South Carolina primary. And President Barack Obama keeps raising money and advancing his economic agenda while he deals with looming geopolitical crises, notably the chronic situation with the Eurozone and, more ominously, with Iran and Israel.
In California politics, Governor Jerry Brown delivers his State of the State address on Wednesday in the Capitol. This will be a good opportunity for him to begin laying out the coherent narrative of his governorship, and set the stage further to advance his major goals for the year, not the least of which is getting more revenue to balance all the budget cuts.
Then Brown hits the road for a few events in Southern California, and keeps pushing to develop support for his November tax initiative and to clear the political underbrush currently littered with potential (and potentially confusing) fiscal initiatives. A couple have fallen by the wayside, thanks in no small measure to work by Brown and his allies, but more must follow.
The Republican presidential candidates hold two debates this week, both in South Carolina. The first is on Monday night, the second is on Thursday night. South Carolina Republicans vote, in an open primary contest, on Saturday.
Polling indicates a competitive race in the South Carolina primary between Romney and Newt Gingrich.
Jon Huntsman dropped out of the race early this morning, and endorsed fellow Mormon Mitt Romney. It wasn’t a surprise. He had a good third place showing in New Hampshire, but had bet his entire candidacy on a breakthrough there. It didn’t quite happen.
I have some good friends who were deeply involved in managing the Huntsman campaign, and it was a quality effort, but I never really saw the rationale for his candidacy. Not in the Republican Party of today.
The former governor of Utah, Obama’s ambassador to China, Huntsman wasn’t enough of a hyper-partisan or reflexive conservative for the primary environment. And the billionaire’s son was too nice to drive a counter-narrative.
Rick Santorum on Saturday won the backing of a rump convention of social conservatives meeting in Texas, but I can’t tell how much, if anything, that means in terms of the primaries. Santorum has lagged since his dead heat showing with Romney in Iowa.
While all this plays out, in frequently amusing fashion, Obama has some truly big boy problems to deal with. With regard to the chronic Eurozone crisis which may yet drag down a nascent global economic recovery, and especially in the Middle East.
The least volatile is the Eurozone crisis, brought closer to a boil again by yesterday’s Standard & Poor’s downgrade of nine national financial ratings, including those of France, Italy, and Austria.
Only Germany stands as a very strong economy there now.
There’s not much the US can do to help, of course, so Obama is mostly monitoring to assess how things might affect the very uneven, still stuttering American economic recovery.
In the other big geopolitical crisis, surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and Israel’s potentially itchy trigger finger, the US is very much a proactive agent.
Yet even here, the US is hardly in control.
While Iranian leaders denounce the assassination of another leading nuclear scientist and crowds chant against Israel and the US, American efforts to enlist more countries in a Western embargo of Iranian oil are coming up short.
China, India, Turkey, and Pakistan have all said that they will keep on buying Iranian oil.
China and Pakistan are no surprise. The other two are, if not a surprise, certainly a sign that America’s diplomacy hasn’t paid off.
But economic warfare may be superseded by the old-fashioned kind.
Obama has dispatched both the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Arabian Gulf area.
The former will arrive shortly.
The latter, General Martin Dempsey, will be in Israel by mid-week for meetings with the top leaders there.
With all the tumult over the Iranian crisis, replete with dueling military exercises, tightening sanctions, threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, threats of air strikes on Iran, and a series of assassinations and bomb blasts targeting Iran’s nuclear program, the US is concerned that Israel may be about to go ahead with a military escalation which would have manifold consequences.
Here’s what Obama’s week looks like. As usual, there is tremendous flexibility built in to deal with crises.
On Monday during the day, the Obamas participate in a community service project in the Washington, DC area in celebration of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service and in honor of Dr. King’s life and legacy. In the evening, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will attend the Let Freedom Ring Celebration at the Kennedy Center.
On Tuesday morning, Obama will meet with the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness at the White House. In the afternoon, Obama will host King Abdullah II of Jordan at the White House. Jordan has long been a key interlocutor for the US in the Middle East, and generally very helpful with crisis management.
Later on Tuesday, Obama will welcome the World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals to the White House to honor the team and their 2011 World Series victory.
Tuesday is also Michelle Obama’s 48th birthday, and the Obama campaign has several activities around that.
On Wednesday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House.
On Thursday, Obama will travel to Orlando, Florida to deliver remarks on the economy, then to New York City for fundraisers.
On Friday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House.
President Barack Obama and his family are among those around the country who will honor the legacy of Martin Luther King. The Obamas took part in a community service project early this morning in Washington to honor King’s memory.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
The Obama family then participated in a service project event in honor of Martin Luther King in the Washington area.
At 3 PM Pacific, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attend the Let Freedom Ring Celebration at Kennedy Center.
Obama is monitoring a variety of geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Gulf is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … STATING THE STATE.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown continues working on his new state budget, the upcoming State of the State address on January 18th, and various political plans for 2012, including his big revenue initiative to couple with additional cuts in order to bring the budget into balance.
** EXTREMISM IN DEFENSE OF IRONY: BY ROMNEY’S RADICAL DEFINITION HIS OWN CHIEF STRATEGIST IS “ANTI-FREE ENTERPRISE.”
Q. “Do you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious, is it about jealousy, or is it about fairness?”
A. “You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare.”
Mitt Romney on The Today Show after his New Hampshire primary victory, reacting to criticism of his record as head of the unfortunately named Bain Capitol.
So much for the idea of Mitt Romney as a moderate. A chameleon or flip-flopper on social and environmental issues, sure, which in some circles counts as “moderate.” But on economic issues, a radical capitalist employing extreme rhetoric.
Shocked by being under fire from fellow Republicans for his work as a corporate takeover specialist, Romney and his allies have reacted with a semi-controlled hysteria, deeming any criticism of the era’s anything-goes financialized capitalism the functional equivalent of socialism.
It’s all quite melodramatic, and deeply ironic, in that Romney’s own chief strategist and media consultant, Stuart Stevens, produced a brutal TV ad in the 2010 California governor’s race attacking Romney’s billionaire Bain protege Meg Whitman for her own Wall Street manipulations, complete with circling vultures and the like, as I revealed in my Tuesday piece here on the Huffington Post. More on that in a moment.
Amidst all the hyperventilating histrionics, what is happening in the overall, of course, is that Romney and his people are being boxed into the position of asserting that anyone who criticizes the anything goes practices of Wall Street is “anti-free enterprise.” That dog won’t hunt. In fact, that dog will turn around and bite. Very, very hard.
Just a coincidence, I’m sure, but has anyone else noticed that the villain in this year’s upcoming Batman epic, sequel to 2008′s mega-hit The Dark Knight, is named “Bane?” Talk about your cultural stereo effect later this year. … From my January 15th essay.
** BOMBING BAIN: HOW DOES THE POLITICS OF WALL STREET GREED PLAY IN THE G.O.P.?There’s no little irony in the attacks being leveled on Mitt Romney’s adventures in capitalism by fellow Republicans. The Romney crew, and many doctrinaire Republicans in love with market ideology, are reacting with fury to any criticism of capitalism as being strictly out of bounds. A chief irony not yet remarked on is that Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist and media consultant, attacked Romney protege Meg Whitman for her own adventures in capitalism during the 2010 California’s governor’s race.
For the six years or so in which he has been running for president of the United States, Mitt Romney has been largely allowed by the media and his opponents to position himself as a “venture capitalist.” Which sounds very benign, conjuring up as it does visions of what venture capitalists do; i.e., provide seed capital and early capital and guidance for entrepreneurs with promising new products and services.
But, while Romney’s Bain Capital did some of that, the reality is that he was more of a leveraged buyout artist, a form of corporate raider who uses the assets of the acquisition target, and sometimes his own firm, as collateral for loans and then finds “efficiencies” within the takeover target to make the deal work for him. There’s a lot of asset stripping and plant closings and lay-offs involved in finding those efficiencies. And since the chief beneficiaries — aside from the holy magic of the market, of course — of ruthlessly paring away “inefficiency” is Romney and his partners, it looks an awful lot like corporate rapaciousness for personal profit. … From my January 10th column.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
NASA and some of its most famous astronauts are locked in a legal battle over collectables acquired during their space missions. Commander Jim Lovell and his crew of Apollo 13 successfully wrestled their damaged spacecraft home in 1970. But when Lovell attempted to sell a checklist used in the expedition, stunningly fetching more than $300 000 for it, NASA cried foul. Now NASA has blocked Lovell and other astronauts from selling their memorabilia, which the agency allowed them to take home 40 years ago, angering some veteran space explorers.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $100 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $66 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $14 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Here is an interesting analysis of Iran’s options in the Strait of Hormuz. This was produced over two years ago by the private intelligence group Stratfor. A second US aircraft carrier strike group is en route to the area.
** EXTREMISM IN DEFENSE OF IRONY: BY ROMNEY’S RADICAL DEFINITION HIS OWN CHIEF STRATEGIST IS “ANTI-FREE ENTERPRISE.”
Q. “Do you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious, is it about jealousy, or is it about fairness?”
A. “You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare.”
Mitt Romney on The Today Show after his New Hampshire primary victory, reacting to criticism of his record as head of the unfortunately named Bain Capitol.
So much for the idea of Mitt Romney as a moderate. A chameleon or flip-flopper on social and environmental issues, sure, which in some circles counts as “moderate.” But on economic issues, a radical capitalist employing extreme rhetoric.
Shocked by being under fire from fellow Republicans for his work as a corporate takeover specialist, Romney and his allies have reacted with a semi-controlled hysteria, deeming any criticism of the era’s anything-goes financialized capitalism the functional equivalent of socialism.
It’s all quite melodramatic, and deeply ironic, in that Romney’s own chief strategist and media consultant, Stuart Stevens, produced a brutal TV ad in the 2010 California governor’s race attacking Romney’s billionaire Bain protege Meg Whitman for her own Wall Street manipulations, complete with circling vultures and the like, as I revealed in my Tuesday piece here on the Huffington Post. More on that in a moment.
Amidst all the hyperventilating histrionics, what is happening in the overall, of course, is that Romney and his people are being boxed into the position of asserting that anyone who criticizes the anything goes practices of Wall Street is “anti-free enterprise.” That dog won’t hunt. In fact, that dog will turn around and bite. Very, very hard.
Just a coincidence, I’m sure, but has anyone else noticed that the villain in this year’s upcoming Batman epic, sequel to 2008′s mega-hit The Dark Knight, is named “Bane?” Talk about your cultural stereo effect later this year.
Romney is readying a defense of his record at Bain Capital, replete with testimonials from workers at companies he funded or took over extolling his work. (As for the companies and jobs that went south, I predict we will hear … crickets. From the Romney camp, that is.) I believe we’ve seen this movie already in California, with similar ads featuring the former employees of Romney protege Meg Whitman when she was blown out by Jerry Brown in a landslide in the 2010 governor’s race. At a certain point, someone will point out that Romney and Bain refuse to release any real substantiation of their claims of being job creators, as distinguished from wealth creators.
In his zeal to reclaim the moral high ground from Newt Gingrich’s charges, the former Mormon bishopgoes so far as to invoke a sort of divine right of financialized capitalism: “I think when you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on 99% vs. 1%, and those people have been most successful will be in the 1%, you’ve opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.”
Which is a whole new level of spin beyond Romney’s claim of principally being a venture capitalist. …
** OBAMA TODAY – SUNDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
Most of the Republican presidential candidates — with the notable exceptions of Mitt Romney and Ron Paul — appear today on the various Sunday chat shows. Romney obviously doesn’t want to face sustained questioning about Bain Capital and Paul has struggled with the sustained scrutiny of the media spotlight.
Polling indicates a tight race in the South Carolina primary between Romney and Newt Gingrich.
Rick Santorum yesterday won the backing of a rump convention of social conservatives meeting in Texas, but I can’t tell how much, if anything, that means in terms of the primaries. Santorum has lagged since his dead heat showing with Romney in Iowa.
Obama has dispatched both the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Arabian Gulf area.
The former will arrive shortly.
The latter, General Martin Dempsey, will be in Israel by mid-week for meetings with the top leaders there.
With all the tumult over the Iranian crisis, replete with dueling military exercises, tightening sanctions, threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, threats of air strikes on Iran, and a series of assassinations and bomb blasts targeting Iran’s nuclear program, the US is concerned that Israel may be about to go ahead with a military escalation which would have manifold consequences.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Gulf is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
The suddenly resurgent San Francisco 49ers came from behind not once but twice in the final four minutes of Saturday’s game against the record-setting New Orleans Saints. Their 36-32 victory puts them in the National Football Conference Championship Game next Sunday. The dramatic victory came 30 years nearly to the day since “The Catch” launched the 49er dynasty of the 1980s and early 1990s.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SUNDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
Brown continues working on his new state budget, the upcoming State of the State address on January 18th, and various political plans for 2012, including his big revenue initiative to couple with additional cuts in order to bring the budget into balance.
Brown has never been a huge sports fan — though he did learn about the Raiders when he became Oakland’s mayor, being especially intrigued to learn that their star player was also named Brown, and attended some of their biggest games — but I’m sure that he, like all Northern Californians, was thrilled by the resurgent San Francisco 49ers spectacular play-off victory yesterday over the favored New Orleans Saints.
On this, the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Brown issued the following proclamation:
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, 1964
Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, a dream we can still see vividly when we revisit the most famous of his many timeless speeches. His vision of a world free of hatred and injustice has changed the face of American society and continues to inspire people around the world. What gave Dr. King’s dream such force was his steadfast commitment to confront his enemies without violence and to love those who hated him, knowing that hatred only begets hatred, and violence always fans the flames of injustice.
On this 82nd anniversary of his birth, let us reflect on his words and vision, and consider what each of us can do today to help keep his dream alive. Many opportunities to serve our communities can be found at CaliforniaVolunteers.org.
NOW THEREFORE I, EDMUND G. BROWN JR., Governor of the State of California, do hereby proclaim January 15th 2012, as “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.”
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama discussed “in-sourcing” efforts to make things in America.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … EXTREMISM IN DEFENSE OF IRONY.
** OBAMA TODAY – SATURDAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
Meanwhile, all the Republican candidates are campaigning today in South Carolina, with the exception of Ron Paul, who is back in Texas for the weekend.
Several polls show a tight race between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, who is also doing a tele-town hall for the Florida primary tonight.
South Carolina votes a week from today, on January 21st.
While the curious Republican race plays out, Obama is monitoring some major geopolitical crises.
The least volatile is the Eurozone crisis, brought closer to a boil again by yesterday’s Standard & Poor’s downgrade of nine national financial ratings, including those of France, Italy, and Austria.
Only Germany stands as a very strong economy there now.
There’s not much the US can do to help, of course, so Obama is mostly monitoring to assess how things might affect the very uneven, still stuttering American economic recovery.
In the other big geopolitical crisis, surround the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and Israel’s potentially itchy trigger finger, the US is very much a proactive agent.
Yet even here, the US is hardly in control.
While Iranian leaders denounce the assassination of another leading nuclear scientist and crowds chant against Israel and the US, American efforts to enlist more countries in a Western embargo of Iranian oil are coming up short.
China, India, Turkey, and Pakistan have all just said that they will keep on buying Iranian oil.
China and Pakistan are no surprise. The other two are, if not a surprise, certainly a sign that America’s diplomacy hasn’t paid off.
But economic warfare may be superseded by the old-fashioned kind.
Iran today sent a rare formal letter to the US through the Swiss, formally charging the US with complicity in the assassination of the director of its Natanz nuclear enrichment plant in broad daylight on the streets of Tehran.
Standard & Poor’s has downgraded the financial ratings of nine Eurozone countries, including France, Italy, and Austria. Germany, however, retains its AAA rating.
In the fifth attack of its kind in two years, a magnetic bomb was attached to the door of 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan’s car during the Wednesday morning rush-hour in the capital. His driver was also killed.
U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton denied responsibility and Israeli President Shimon Peres said Israel had no role in the attack, to the best of his knowledge.
“We have reliable documents and evidence that this terrorist act was planned, guided and supported by the CIA,” the Iranian foreign ministry said in a letter handed to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, state TV reported. The Swiss embassy represents U.S. interests in a country where Washington has no diplomatic ties.
The spokesman for Iran’s Joint Armed Forces Staff, Massoud Jazayeri, said: “Our enemies, especially America , Britain and the Zionist regime (Israel), have to be held responsible for their actions.”
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
Military Crisis Zone Times: The Gulf is eleven hours ahead of Pacific time, and Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES – SATURDAY. Governor Jerry Brown is in Los Angeles and Northern California.
He appears this morning at Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca’s multi-faith prayer breakfast at the Prayer of Love Ministries in South LA. Brown will discuss his public safety and prisons realignment program.
Brown continues working on his new state budget, the upcoming State of the State address on January 18th, and various political plans for 2012, including his big revenue initiative to couple with additional cuts in order to bring the budget into balance.
On Friday, Brown signed a pact with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to expand a renewable energy partnership first forged with the Arnold Schwarzenegger Administration.
As Salazar pointed out, the partnership has given rise to more than a dozen utility-scale solar energy projects and more than 130 renewable power projects in California. They’ve all undergone strong review and, if they were currently online, the state would already have enough renewable power to meet its standard of 33% from renewable sources.
The pact that Brown and Salazar signed brings in transmission projects to get the power properly distributed.
“Now that our successful partnership has demonstrated that advancing renewable energy projects in California can be done, and can done in the right way, it is essential to ensure that transmission facilities to get this power to market are also part of the equation,” said Salazar in a statement.
“As part of today’s agreement, which will expand our partnership on renewable energy, Interior and California will identify needed transmission projects to track, troubleshoot and shepherd. What’s happening in California is nothing short of a revolution – clean energy is creating jobs, powering our economies, and making believers out skeptics.”
For his part, Brown said: “California has made tremendous progress in permitting renewable projects, and now we need to make sure the transmission lines that deliver this clean energy are built as quickly as possible. Putting these construction projects on a fast track will put people back to work and keep California a leader in renewable energy.”
** BOMBING BAIN: HOW DOES THE POLITICS OF WALL STREET GREED PLAY IN THE G.O.P.?There’s no little irony in the attacks being leveled on Mitt Romney’s adventures in capitalism by fellow Republicans. The Romney crew, and many doctrinaire Republicans in love with market ideology, are reacting with fury to any criticism of capitalism as being strictly out of bounds. A chief irony not yet remarked on is that Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist and media consultant, attacked Romney protege Meg Whitman for her own adventures in capitalism during the 2010 California’s governor’s race.
For the six years or so in which he has been running for president of the United States, Mitt Romney has been largely allowed by the media and his opponents to position himself as a “venture capitalist.” Which sounds very benign, conjuring up as it does visions of what venture capitalists do; i.e., provide seed capital and early capital and guidance for entrepreneurs with promising new products and services.
But, while Romney’s Bain Capital did some of that, the reality is that he was more of a leveraged buyout artist, a form of corporate raider who uses the assets of the acquisition target, and sometimes his own firm, as collateral for loans and then finds “efficiencies” within the takeover target to make the deal work for him. There’s a lot of asset stripping and plant closings and lay-offs involved in finding those efficiencies. And since the chief beneficiaries — aside from the holy magic of the market, of course — of ruthlessly paring away “inefficiency” is Romney and his partners, it looks an awful lot like corporate rapaciousness for personal profit.
I’ve always felt that Romney’s record makes him terribly vulnerable in any general election scenario. But does it make him vulnerable inside the Republican Party? … From my January 10th column.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0 AT 1.A year into his latest go-round as governor of California, Jerry Brown doesn’t stand much on ceremony these days. That was evident even before the snafu which caused the roll-out of his state budget five days earlier than scheduled (and delayed this about to roll-out piece). I talked with Brown over the holidays about how things have gone, how they are going, and how they (he hopes) will go.
President Barack Obama will carry California. That’s not in question. What is in question is California’s future.
Brown made it very clear that he intends to keep thinking big even in a time of limits. He wants to push hard for California to continue its leadership role on renewable energy, green tech, and climate change, develop future-oriented transit and water systems, and restructure California government, both by making sense of its sprawling agencies and by realigning services to bring them closer to the people who benefit.
And all of it in the midst of digging out from under the wreckage of the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression, in a massively hyper-partisan era, necessitating huge budget cuts and the pursuit of new revenues. A pursuit foiled last year by last ditch right-wing Republican efforts, despite months of intensive personal negotiation by Brown. … From my January 7th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil closed on Friday at $98.70 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Energy markets are closed on the weekend.
This is up about $65 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $15 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
France just had its financial rating downgraded by Standard & Poor’s, complicating efforts to sort out the Eurozone crisis.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … EXTREMISM IN DEFENSE OF IRONY.
** QUICK HITS.The rhetoric around the threatened US-Iran showdown in the Strait of Hormuz heated up some more today, following a Tehran funeral for a nuclear scientist widely believed to have been assassinated by the Israeli Mossad and two reported incidents of Iranian naval craft harassing US Navy ships. … The HBO movie Game Change about the 2008 presidential election — starring Ed Harris as John McCain and Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin, with Woody Harrelson (!) as McCain (and former Arnold Schwarzenegger) campaign director Steve Schmidt, is out on March 10th. I’ll have more on this. … The Department of Defense today may have given another boost to California’s plans to rapidly adopt renewable energy. A new DOD report indicates that 7000 megawatts of power, the equivalent of seven nuclear plants, is to be had from placing installations on military bases in the California desert.
** NEW POLL: OBAMA WINS PLURALITY OVER CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS ON SETTING THE COURSE. A new Gallup Poll survey shows that, by a 46-42 margin, a margin which has held pretty consistently throughout 2011, Americans want President Barack Obama to set the course for the nation rather than Congressional Republicans.
That is a real lead, but it’s hardly a big one.
Ironically, Republicans were favored over Obama, and by a large margin. BEFORE they got their hands on the levers of power in Congress, that is.
The same thing happened the last time the Republicans took the House, after the 1994 elections. But it took a lot longer for voters to sour on Republicans then, even though then House Speaker Newt Gingrich pushed for a government shutdown.
Of course, this crop of Republicans has essentially done that, and much more.
Gallup asked a similar question in both the George W. Bush and the Bill Clinton administrations. Typically, Americans prefer that the president have more influence than the opposing party in Congress.
However, that has not always been the case. In the first year after Republicans took control of both houses of Congress in 1995, Americans generally wanted the GOP Congress to have more influence than Clinton. But starting in about April 1996, Americans’ preferences shifted more toward Clinton, where they remained for the rest of his presidency.
During the latter years of Bush’s presidency, when he suffered from low approval ratings, Americans wanted the Democrats in Congress to have more influence by roughly 2-to-1 margins.
** NEW SURVEY RESULTS: CONSERVATIVES BEST MODERATES, OUT-NUMBER LIBERALS BY 2 TO 1. The end of the year compendium of Gallup Poll results on partisan identification finds conservatives for the third year in a row besting moderates as the largest broadly defined, self-defined ideological grouping in US politics.
And besting self-defined liberals by a 2 to 1 margin.
So when folks on the left wonder why they don’t just get left-liberal rhetoric from Democratic politicians, well, they really shouldn’t.
I believe I may have made this point before.
Not incidentally, there are twice as many very conservative Republicans as there are very liberal Democrats.
Not that you would necessarily grasp reality that from all the noise way over on the left.
The data also shows how the Republican Party has gone from being a conservative/center-right party to a hard right-wing party over the past decade.
With the exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s period of ascendancy in California, and some of John McCain’s work prior to becoming the Republican presidential nominee, that’s been all too clear.
The Democrats, in contrast, have become more liberal — but not nearly so liberal as the Republicans have become conservative.
Younger voters are dominated by moderates. But older voters are dominated by conservatives.
Political ideology in the U.S. held steady in 2011, with 40% of Americans continuing to describe their views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This marks the third straight year that conservatives have outnumbered moderates, after more than a decade in which moderates mainly tied or outnumbered conservatives. …
The percentage of Americans calling themselves “moderate” has gradually diminished in the U.S. since it was 43% in 1992. That is the year Gallup started routinely measuring ideology with the current question. It fell to 39% in 2002 and has been 35% since 2010. At the same time, the country became more politically polarized, with the percentages of Americans calling themselves either “conservative” or “liberal” each increasing.
Gallup measures political ideology by asking Americans to say whether their political views are very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal, or very liberal. Relatively few Americans identify with either extreme on this scale, although 2 in 10 Republicans self-identify as very conservative — double the proportion of Democrats calling themselves very liberal.
The majority of Republicans say they are either very conservative or conservative, but the total proportion of conservatives grew 10 percentage points between 2002 and 2010, from 62% to 72%. At the same time, the percentage of moderates fell from 31% to 23%. Relatively few Republicans say they are liberal — just 4% in 2011. Republicans’ ideology largely held at the 2010 levels in 2011. …
Mitt Romney rolled out this ad this morning to defend his record in the private equity business, citing the Wall Street Journal’s unsurprising criticism of any criticism of Wall Street practices.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He then met with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in the Oval Office.
Following that, Obama delivered remarks on government reform in the East Room.
Obama wants to merge the functions of the trade and commerce agencies.
At 10:45 AM Pacific, Obama attends a fundraiser at the Jefferson Hotel.
At 12:45 PM Pacific, Obama meets with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office.
At 2:30 PM Pacific, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama host Tuskegee Airmen along with cast and crew members of the movie Red Tails for a screening at the White House.
The film, produced by George Lucas, depicts the trials, tribulations, and heroics of black aviators in World War II.
Emerging polling indicates a close race in South Carolina between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. The ex-House speaker would have the decided edge there now if Texas Governor Rick Perry had taken the hint from his two very distant finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire and dropped out, as his staff largely expected him to.
While Romney and his rather amusing allies furiously try to brand any criticism of the corporate takeover business as “anti-free enterprise,” the Eurozone looks to be teetering close to crisis again, with possible downgrades of the financial ratings of France and other nations.
France, of course, is key to the bailout of several other nations.
Taliban leaders said yesterday that a video showing US Marines urinating on dead jihadist fighters will not derail nascent peace talks. But it sure isn’t helping win hearts and minds in Afghanistan or elsewhere in the Islamic world. (Of course, we don’t really want to talk about what the mujaheddin did to Soviet prisoners.)
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has ordered a full investigation and Marine Corps officials say they have identified two of the four Marines in the video, hailing from a North Carolina-based unit.
Final results from Egypt’s third round of parliamentary voting are expected today, with Islamist parties expected to do very well. Former President Jimmy Carter was on international channels this morning, noting irregularities but saying he expects the results to be reported fairly, and that the military government pledges to follow through on its promise to step away.
A top US official is in Egypt, meeting yesterday with the Muslim Brotherhood, which has run a clear first in all elections so far, but not meeting with the radical fundamental Salafists, who have run a pretty strong second.
And in Iran, anger against Israel and the US for yesterday’s assassination in Tehran of the director of the Natanz nuclear enrichment plan continues to grow. There is obviously an intelligence war underway.
The US denies any involvement. Israel, whose Mossad is widely believed to be behind the assassination, has been cagier.
Thousands of mourners at today’s funeral of an Iranian nuclear scientist assassinated in Tehran chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is wrapping up his Latin American tour today, seeking to make more trouble for the US.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Time: Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento and Northern California.
At 11 AM at a solar farm facility owned by Recurrent Energy, but slated for sale to Google, in Elk Grove south of Sacramento, Brown and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will announce an agreement between the State of California and the Obama Administration to advance California’s renewable energy agenda. Recurrent Energy is developing four new Sacramento-area projects expected to generate 160 million kilowatt hours of electricity in their first year of operation, equivalent to the electricity consumption of 12,000 homes.
Recurrent Energy CEO Arno Harris will also be on hand for the announcement.
Brown yesterday accepted the resignations of the director of the California High Speed Rail Authority and its chairman of the board.
He is moving the controversial agency within his proposed new mega-transportation agency. He is also naming Dan Richards, the former Bay Area Rapid Transit district chairman who was a young aide in his first administration, as the new chairman of the high speed rail authority.
Senator Dianne Feinstein backs the move, as well as Brown’s plan to press forward this year with the first phase of the project.
Brown continues working on his new state budget, the upcoming State of the State address on January 18th, and various political plans for 2012, including his big revenue initiative to couple with additional cuts in order to bring the budget into balance.
** BOMBING BAIN: HOW DOES THE POLITICS OF WALL STREET GREED PLAY IN THE G.O.P.?There’s no little irony in the attacks being leveled on Mitt Romney’s adventures in capitalism by fellow Republicans. The Romney crew, and many doctrinaire Republicans in love with market ideology, are reacting with fury to any criticism of capitalism as being strictly out of bounds. A chief irony not yet remarked on is that Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist and media consultant, attacked Romney protege Meg Whitman for her own adventures in capitalism during the 2010 California’s governor’s race.
For the six years or so in which he has been running for president of the United States, Mitt Romney has been largely allowed by the media and his opponents to position himself as a “venture capitalist.” Which sounds very benign, conjuring up as it does visions of what venture capitalists do; i.e., provide seed capital and early capital and guidance for entrepreneurs with promising new products and services.
But, while Romney’s Bain Capital did some of that, the reality is that he was more of a leveraged buyout artist, a form of corporate raider who uses the assets of the acquisition target, and sometimes his own firm, as collateral for loans and then finds “efficiencies” within the takeover target to make the deal work for him. There’s a lot of asset stripping and plant closings and lay-offs involved in finding those efficiencies. And since the chief beneficiaries — aside from the holy magic of the market, of course — of ruthlessly paring away “inefficiency” is Romney and his partners, it looks an awful lot like corporate rapaciousness for personal profit.
I’ve always felt that Romney’s record makes him terribly vulnerable in any general election scenario. But does it make him vulnerable inside the Republican Party? … From my January 10th column.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0 AT 1.A year into his latest go-round as governor of California, Jerry Brown doesn’t stand much on ceremony these days. That was evident even before the snafu which caused the roll-out of his state budget five days earlier than scheduled (and delayed this about to roll-out piece). I talked with Brown over the holidays about how things have gone, how they are going, and how they (he hopes) will go.
President Barack Obama will carry California. That’s not in question. What is in question is California’s future.
Brown made it very clear that he intends to keep thinking big even in a time of limits. He wants to push hard for California to continue its leadership role on renewable energy, green tech, and climate change, develop future-oriented transit and water systems, and restructure California government, both by making sense of its sprawling agencies and by realigning services to bring them closer to the people who benefit.
And all of it in the midst of digging out from under the wreckage of the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression, in a massively hyper-partisan era, necessitating huge budget cuts and the pursuit of new revenues. A pursuit foiled last year by last ditch right-wing Republican efforts, despite months of intensive personal negotiation by Brown. … From my January 7th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $99 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $65 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $15 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Here’s what all the buzz is about. King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came To Town, the full 28-minute documentary.
** QUICK HITS.Taliban leaders said today that a video showing US Marines urinating on dead jihadist fighters will not derail nascent peace talks. But it sure isn’t helping win hearts and minds in Afghanistan or elsewhere in the Islamic world. (Of course, we don’t really want to talk about what the mujaheddin did to Soviet prisoners.) Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has ordered a full investigation and Marine Corps officials say they have identified two of the four Marines in the video, hailing from a North Carolina-based unit. … California High Speed Rail Authority director Roelof van Ark resigned today. Governor Jerry Brown, as part of his reorganization of state government, wants to move the high speed rail outfit into a new Transportation Department. … Senator Dianne Feinstein backs the reorg move, as well as Brown’s plan to to continue moving forward with the project. … State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg, who wants to defer more budget cuts in hopes that revenues pick up (they’ve actually dropped some more), told reporters today that he wants to trim the Arnold Schwarzenegger-devised $11 billion water bond by a few billion dollars before going ahead with it.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … EXTREMISM IN DEFENSE OF UNCONSCIOUS IRONY.
** IN THE SHADOW OF BAIN: SOUTH CAROLINA HEATS UP IN A DEAD HEAT. As the seemingly unlikely twist of big-time conservative Republicans like the former speaker of the House and the governor of Texas attacking Mitt Romney for practicing untrammeled finance capitalism plays out this week, so does the upcoming January 21st primary in South Carolina.
Unlike Iowa and New Hampshire, South Carolina is more like much of the rest of the US in having relatively high unemployment and a very patchy economy.
Mitt Romney had taken a lead there after his super PAC decimated the curiously slow to react Newt Gingrich. But a new poll from Insider Advantage taken Wednesday night indicates that not only has Romney not received a bounce in the Palmetto State from his long expected Granite State triumph, the South Carolina primary is now a statistical dead heat.
It’s Romney 23%, Gingrich 21%. Rick Santorum and Ron Paul trail with 14% and 13%. (Paul is suffering by having no influx of independents down South.)
And the pro-Gingrich super PAC TV ads based on the notorious “King of Bain” documentary have just gone up late today.
The film is very powerful. Is it accurate in all its particulars? I have no idea. Since Bain and Romney refuse to release much relevant material about their private equity business, much less support Romney’s claims to have created 100,000 jobs, it’s hard to say.
But the dynamic is clearcut, and those who follow the private equity business tell me that the stories sound familiar.
Romney comes off like an elitist automaton, and manages, among other things, to have himself photographed on the tarmac in a suit getting his shoes shined next to a private jet.
What?
Think about the hubris of that, especially in light of his longstanding desire to follow his former governor father into public life.
Much of the organized right-wing intelligentsia is attacking Gingrich and Rick Perry for going after Romney’s “vulture capitalism.” And while neither backed down today, they focused more on other aspects. Of which there are quite a few.
Most right-wing opinion journalists weighing in are quite exercised by any criticism of Romney’s work. And Rush Limbaugh, who has been something of a Gingrich admirer, has done a severe 180 on the erstwhile frontrunner.
Keep in mind, however, that Bain Capital owns Clear Channel, the conservative radio conglomerate. And Rush Limbaugh works for Clear Channel. Which means that Limbaugh works for Bain, so it is no surprise that he excoriates critics of Bain.
Senator John McCain, who actually doesn’t like Romney, rallied to his side nonetheless as the party establishment tries desperately to contain an attack at its core.
“These attacks on, quote, Bain Capital is really kind of anathema to everything that we believe in,” said McCain this morning on CBS News.
That would be more convincingly heartfelt had McCain not ripped Romney in 2008 for, er, exactly the sort of thing he’s getting ripped for right now.
“As head of his investment company he presided over the acquisition of companies that laid off thousands of workers,” McCain, quoted by the New York Times, in a 180 of his very own four years ago.
Incidentally, unlike President Barack Obama and other candidates, Romney won’t divulge who his fundraising bundlers are. But NBC got ahold of invitations to two big fundraisers revealing that these big ticket events — in Manhattan and in Palm Beach, Florida — are led by big-time corporate takeover artists in the private equity field. Which is exactly what Romney’s Bain Capital is.
Meanwhile, the ads are flying and the game is in the wind.
** NEW SURVEY: ECONOMIC CONFIDENCE HITS SEVEN-MONTH HIGH. A new Gallup Poll survey has some measured good news.
Economic confidence in the US has risen to a seven-month high. It’s even approaching a level reached a year ago. And it’s much higher than it was over the summer, when things were approaching meltdown during the preposterous Washington impasse over the federal debt ceiling/budget deficit stand-off.
But it’s really not very good at all.
The only thing that is good is that it is going up. A rising psychology is some moderate good news for President Barack Obama.
And the sense of economic confidence has gone up significantly over the past week, and by a great deal over the past two months.
But the situation is very delicate.
The Gallup Economic Confidence Index improved to -27 in the week ending Jan. 8, continuing the steady improvement in the index seen since the summer, when it fell below -50. Americans’ economic confidence is now the most positive Gallup has measured since May 2011, and is approaching the -20 level recorded a year ago. …
The Economic Confidence Index rose seven points in the past week, up from -34 in the week ending Jan. 1. The index is now up significantly from -39 at the start of December, and from -43 at the start of November. …
Americans’ perceptions about the economy’s direction have improved significantly over this period, rising from -45 two months ago to -21 today — a 24-point improvement. More specifically, 37% during the week ending Jan. 8 say the economy is getting better and 58% say it is getting worse, producing the -21 outlook rating. By contrast, views about current economic conditions are up eight points, from -41 to -33. Eleven percent of Americans now rate economic conditions “excellent” or “good,” while 44% call them “poor.”
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST
At 10:30 AM Pacific, White House press secretary delivers a briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room. The event will be netcast live here on New West Notes. You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events. Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes. You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live netcasts in full streaming mode, as it did with the Ronald Reagan Centennial events from the Reagan Library, as they emerge and are technically available and as significance dictates.
In this interview on The Today Show the morning after winning the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary, former leveraged buyout artist and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said that any questioning of Wall Street practices and rewards is merely the result of envy.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
Obama is in a series of private meetings today.
At 10:30 AM Pacific, White House press secretary Jay Carney delivers a briefing in the James S. Brady Briefing Room.
The event will be netcast live here on New West Notes.
Mitt Romney is readying a defense of his record at Bain Capital, replete with ads from workers at companies he took over extolling his work. I believe we’ve seen this movie already in California, with similar ads run by the former employees of Romney protege Meg Whitman.
At a certain point, someone will point out that Romney and Bain refuse to release any real substantiation of their claims of being job creators, as distinguished from wealth creators.
What is happening in the overall, of course, is that Romney and his people are being boxed into the position of asserting that anyone who criticizes the anything goes practices of Wall Street is anti-capitalist. I don’t believe, to put it mildly, that this is a credible line of argument.
Meanwhile, Obama’s campaign raised more than $68 million in the 4th quarter. This includes more than $42 million to the campaign itself, and another $26 million for the Democratic Party’s affiliated effort.
More than 1.3 million people have contributed to Obama’s re-election drive to date.
The Romney campaign announced yesterday that it raised $24 million in the last quarter.
Big trouble for the US on the AfPak front(s).
A video has surfaced which appears to show US Marines urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
While the sentiment is understandable — something which many civilians may fail to grasp — the act, if genuine, is unforgivably stupid. It’s causing a huge blowback in the Islamic community in Afganistan and elsewhere, and comes as the US is working with Qatar and others to establish a working negotiation with the Taliban.
Indeed, the prime minister of Qatar was in Washington yesterday for meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and an unannounced visit to the White House, to help facilitate this. The Taliban have set up a foreign office in Doha, Qatar, which is also the home of Al Jazeera.
In Pakistan, the prime minister yesterday sacked the defense minister in the wake of the ongoing controversy over that country’s former US ambassador having presented a letter requesting American assistance to avoid a military coup in the wake of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Video appearing to show US Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters is causing grave problems in Afghanistan.
The now former defense minister is said to have been too close to Pakistani Armed Forces chief of staff General Afshaq Kayani.
In Nigeria, which saw a spate of deadly anti-Christian violence on Christmas Day carried out by Islamist rebels, a general strike is now underway in Africa’s biggest oil industry.
And in Iran, anger against Israel and the US for yesterday’s assassination in Tehran of the director of the Natanz nuclear enrichment plan continues to grow.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still on Latin American tour, seeking to make more trouble for the US.
He’s in Cuba today.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Time: Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is working on his new state budget, the upcoming State of the State address on January 18th, assuming it’s not posted online beforehand (that’s a little joke), and various political plans for 2012, including his big revenue initiative to couple with additional cuts in order to bring the budget into balance.
Even as the state’s economy continues to drag with one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, a new report from the Franchise Tax Board reveals that the number of people with million dollar-plus annual incomes is up a whopping 27% in the last two years.
That won’t hurt Brown’s revenue initiative.
Yesterday afternoon, Brown made several appointments, mostly to the state lottery commission. The most notable of which was Oakland developer Phil Tagami, who gained a certain measure of fame late last year when he faced off against Occupy Oakland vandals who tried to enter his downtown building.
Tagami brandished a shotgun, and the Occupy folks, evidently members of the notorious Black Bloc of dedicated anarchists, took his point and departed.
Tagami is a great character, and Brown gets a kick out of him.
Beyond that, he has been a key player in the revitalization of downtown Oakland, one of Brown’s signature accomplishments as mayor of Oakland, which was threatened by how the Occupy folks chose to gravely mishandle their protest efforts.
** BOMBING BAIN: HOW DOES THE POLITICS OF WALL STREET GREED PLAY IN THE G.O.P.?There’s no little irony in the attacks being leveled on Mitt Romney’s adventures in capitalism by fellow Republicans. The Romney crew, and many doctrinaire Republicans in love with market ideology, are reacting with fury to any criticism of capitalism as being strictly out of bounds. A chief irony not yet remarked on is that Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist and media consultant, attacked Romney protege Meg Whitman for her own adventures in capitalism during the 2010 California’s governor’s race.
For the six years or so in which he has been running for president of the United States, Mitt Romney has been largely allowed by the media and his opponents to position himself as a “venture capitalist.” Which sounds very benign, conjuring up as it does visions of what venture capitalists do; i.e., provide seed capital and early capital and guidance for entrepreneurs with promising new products and services.
But, while Romney’s Bain Capital did some of that, the reality is that he was more of a leveraged buyout artist, a form of corporate raider who uses the assets of the acquisition target, and sometimes his own firm, as collateral for loans and then finds “efficiencies” within the takeover target to make the deal work for him. There’s a lot of asset stripping and plant closings and lay-offs involved in finding those efficiencies. And since the chief beneficiaries — aside from the holy magic of the market, of course — of ruthlessly paring away “inefficiency” is Romney and his partners, it looks an awful lot like corporate rapaciousness for personal profit.
I’ve always felt that Romney’s record makes him terribly vulnerable in any general election scenario. But does it make him vulnerable inside the Republican Party? … From my January 10th column.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0 AT 1.A year into his latest go-round as governor of California, Jerry Brown doesn’t stand much on ceremony these days. That was evident even before the snafu which caused the roll-out of his state budget five days earlier than scheduled (and delayed this about to roll-out piece). I talked with Brown over the holidays about how things have gone, how they are going, and how they (he hopes) will go.
President Barack Obama will carry California. That’s not in question. What is in question is California’s future.
Brown made it very clear that he intends to keep thinking big even in a time of limits. He wants to push hard for California to continue its leadership role on renewable energy, green tech, and climate change, develop future-oriented transit and water systems, and restructure California government, both by making sense of its sprawling agencies and by realigning services to bring them closer to the people who benefit.
And all of it in the midst of digging out from under the wreckage of the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression, in a massively hyper-partisan era, necessitating huge budget cuts and the pursuit of new revenues. A pursuit foiled last year by last ditch right-wing Republican efforts, despite months of intensive personal negotiation by Brown. … From my January 7th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $102 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $68 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $12 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Highlighting large and small firms ranging from Ford to a North Carolina furniture company for keeping jobs in the US, President Barack Obama says he wants to reward companies that invest in America and eliminate tax breaks for those that don’t.
** QUICK HITS. Mitt Romney is readying a defense of his record at Bain Capital, replete with ads from workers at companies he took over extolling his work. I believe we’ve seen this movie already in California, with similar ads run by the former employees of Romney protege Meg Whitman. … At a certain point, someone will point out that Romney and Bain refuse to release any real substantiation of their claims of being job creators, as distinguished from wealth creators. … What is happening in the overall, of course, is that Romney and his people are being boxed into the position of asserting that anyone who criticizes the anything goes practices of Wall Street is anti-capitalist. That dog won’t hunt. … Meanwhile, in California politics, even as the state’s economy continues to drag with one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, a new report from the Franchise Tax Board reveals that the number of people with million dollar-plus annual incomes is up a whopping 27% in the last two years. That won’t hurt Governor Jerry Brown’s revenue initiative.
** JERRY-RIGGING: BACK AND FORTH ON THE BUDGET, DISCOVERY OF BOXES BEING BLOWN. Well, this is what happens when big things are done on the fly.
Governor Jerry Brown made a great recovery last Thursday when, with only a few hours notice, he went ahead and did a full-on news conference on his state budget proposal after it was inadvertently published online five days ahead of schedule.
He was confident and assured, clearly having a strong grasp of what he was talking about. As well he should have, since he is very hands-on with this stuff, perhaps to a fault.
But as a result of the premature roll-out, days of needed explanation and emphasis were lost. And something very big, namely a major reorganization of the state government, was mostly lost in the shuffle.
Observers are only now beginning to focus on that particular big piece of the puzzle of governmental reform. Which deserves a column all its own.
Meanwhile, the state’s Legislative Analyst Office (LAO) has issued a report on Brown’s budget saying that, while it makes major moves to bring the state’s budget into balance, it relies on volatile revenues from high-income taxpayers and makes harsh cuts in social service programs.
Well, no kidding there, folks. Of course it does that.
Brown’s revenue plans rely on increased taxes on the rich and on more sales tax from all. When the rich are less rich, there is less revenue. And unless the tax plan is passed in November, there won’t be any new revenue at all.
That is all, as they say politely, inherent. Which is another way of saying obvious.
But in politics, the obvious frequently needs to be hammered home. Which is something Brown could have done by now.
The LAO also differs in its assessment of how much will be gained from Brown’s new tax, principally in a much more conservative assessment of future capital gains. Who has the best public employee economists? I’m not qualified to assess that.
I do have a definite view about communication, however, and Brown’s view of the revenue picture could have been well-established now.
Of course, it’s not clear that Brown would have used those five days lost by the administration’s glitch all that well. He has a capable press staff, but it’s small, and in many respects, and not at all surprisingly, reactive.
Long-range conceptual planning is a Brown strength. The governor is someone who definitely thinks ahead. Long-range PR planning is not a Brown strength.
Which is no surprise, since it is very difficult to schedule anything, even very important things that affect his agenda, more than 30 days in advance with this governorship.
He doesn’t like to be locked down in a narrative. He doesn’t like to follow text. This is true not only with respect to people who are relatively new to him. It is also true with respect to people with whom he’s been closely associated for many years.
He likes to think of it as retaining spontaneity, of being in the moment. Of course, if he were somewhat less spontaneous, there is a good chance that he would have won a Democratic presidential nomination, if not the presidency itself.
Here, incidentally, is Brown’s statement in response to the LAO report: “The Legislative Analyst’s Office report underscores the fundamental uncertainty of our time and, therefore, the financial imperative to be prudent, make the tough cuts now and give the voters a choice on additional revenues.”
** NEW SURVEY: SATISFACTION UP, SLIGHTLY. A new Gallup Poll survey shows that satisfaction in America is up some from the past year. But it’s still as low as it’s ever been in a recorded presidential election year.
Which I don’t think is as ominous as it sounds for President Barack Obama, as he doesn’t get the lion’s share of the blame for the situation we find ourselves in.
And because all politics is relative, by which I mean he runs against an opponent.
Eighteen percent of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States today, a slight improvement from the latter half of 2011, when satisfaction levels ranged from 11% to 16%. …
Though improved, the current figure remains well below 39%, which is the historical average satisfaction rating. Gallup first asked this question, its version of the “right track”/”wrong track” measure, in 1979.
Satisfaction has been consistently below average since 2005, spanning the last years of the Bush administration and the first years of the Obama administration. Satisfaction has not been as high as 40% since July 2005 and has not been at or above 50% since January 2004.
Satisfaction is one of several key measures, along with presidential approval and economic confidence, that help predict election outcomes. When Americans are largely dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country, incumbents and incumbent political parties are vulnerable to defeat.
Gallup has never found satisfaction lower in January of a presidential election year than it is now, though in several years — including 1992, 1996, and 2008 — satisfaction was relatively low. Of these years, only in 1996 did satisfaction improve over the course of the year, to 39%, a level high enough to help incumbent Bill Clinton win re-election. …
>>>>>>LIVE VIDEO NETCAST
At 9:15 AM Pacific, President Barack Obama discusses his plan to “in-source” American jobs, from the East Room of the White House. You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
** LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.
With massive geopolitical events swirling and the 2012 presidential race unfolding, the White House is increasingly a pivot point for the day’s events. Live streaming of key presidential events is now available as a matter of course here on New West Notes. You can mute the audio by clicking on the pause button.
NWN will continue to present other live netcasts in full streaming mode, as it did with the Ronald Reagan Centennial events from the Reagan Library, as they emerge and are technically available and as significance dictates.
As expected, Mitt Romney won his neighboring New Hampshire Republican presidential primary last night.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and Illinois.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
They then held a roundtable meeting on Insourcing American Jobs at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
At 9:15 AM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks on Insourcing American Jobs in the East Room.
The event will be netcast live here on New West Notes.
At 11:55 AM Pacific, Obama departs the White House on Marine One en route Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Air Force One.
At 12:10 PM Pacific, Obama departs Joint Base Andrews en route Chicago, Illinois.
At 2 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Chicago.
At 2:50 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at the UIC Forum in Chicago.
At 5:30 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at a private residence.
At 7 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at a private residence.
At 8 PM Pacific, Obama departs Chicago on Air Force One en route Joint Base Andrews.
At 9:30 PM Pacific, Obama arrives Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 9:45 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
While Obama hits his economic themes, the Republicans who would oppose him are busy sorting out their messy primary.
As expected, Mitt Romney won his much touted redoubt state of New Hampshire last night.
I stopped playing tennis to save my knees for other stressful purposes, but the phrase I recall that applies is that he held his serve.
Romney did not slide, as some polling indicated he might, in this state which has become a second home to him even before he was the governor of neighboring New Hampshire.
In fact, his margin of victory was quite healthy.
But his performance, 39% of the vote, was hardly overwhelming.
Ron Paul was second, well back with 23%, and a late surging Jon Huntsman was third at 17%.
Newt Gingrich was a distant fourth with Iowa winner or tier, depending upon your perspective, Rick Santorum just behind, showing no bounce from his big showing in the first in the nation contest state.
Romney benefits greatly from a divided opposition. And it looks like that opposition will continue to be divided going into the January 21st primary in South Carolina.
Romney has taken a lead there, aided by heavy TV advertising both from his official campaign and from his super PAC. But he is going to run into heavy opposition there from Gingrich and some of the others.
And for a guy who is so eager to get into general election mode, Romney continues to show a remarkably tin ear. Or maybe just reveal his unvarnished self.
On the Today Show this morning, NBC’s Matt Lauer asked Romney an intriguing question: Are questions about Wall Street greed and excess about envy or about fairness? And what did Romney say? “I think it’s about envy. It’s about class warfare.”
I know that Team O loves it.
Another Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated today in Tehran. The Iranian government blames the Israeli Mossad.
While the pols play their reindeer games, a different sort of game, with much higher stakes, is underway elsewhere surrounding Iran.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is on a Latin American tour, seeking to drum up support for his regime from US critics in the Southern Hemisphere, in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and elsewhere.
While he is out and about, Iranian commanders plan another naval exercise intended to demonstrate convincingly the Islamic republic’s ability to shut down the critical oil choke point at the Strait of Hormuz.
And while these moves and counter-moves are underway, someone today assassinated another Iranian nuclear scientist, this one the head of the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility.
In broad daylight on the streets of Tehran.
The Iranians blame the Israeli Mossad, and mutter about a joint venture in assassinating their key figures undertaken by Israel and the US.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Time: Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** BOMBING BAIN: HOW DOES THE POLITICS OF WALL STREET GREED PLAY IN THE G.O.P.?There’s no little irony in the attacks being leveled on Mitt Romney’s adventures in capitalism by fellow Republicans. The Romney crew, and many doctrinaire Republicans in love with market ideology, are reacting with fury to any criticism of capitalism as being strictly out of bounds. A chief irony not yet remarked on is that Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist and media consultant, attacked Romney protege Meg Whitman for her own adventures in capitalism during the 2010 California’s governor’s race.
For the six years or so in which he has been running for president of the United States, Mitt Romney has been largely allowed by the media and his opponents to position himself as a “venture capitalist.” Which sounds very benign, conjuring up as it does visions of what venture capitalists do; i.e., provide seed capital and early capital and guidance for entrepreneurs with promising new products and services.
But, while Romney’s Bain Capital did some of that, the reality is that he was more of a leveraged buyout artist, a form of corporate raider who uses the assets of the acquisition target, and sometimes his own firm, as collateral for loans and then finds “efficiencies” within the takeover target to make the deal work for him. There’s a lot of asset stripping and plant closings and lay-offs involved in finding those efficiencies. And since the chief beneficiaries — aside from the holy magic of the market, of course — of ruthlessly paring away “inefficiency” is Romney and his partners, it looks an awful lot like corporate rapaciousness for personal profit.
I’ve always felt that Romney’s record makes him terribly vulnerable in any general election scenario. But does it make him vulnerable inside the Republican Party?
In 2010, when Romney’s Bain protege, billionaire ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman ran for governor of California, a race which was Romney’s idea, Stevens was on the other side of the fence. He was the media consultant for Whitman’s Republican primary opponent, Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.
Whitman, whose chief strategist, Mike Murphy, is a disgruntled rival of Stuart Stevens in Romney-land, was carpet-bombing California with endless ads, building up a big lead in the Republican primary and threatening then former Governor-turned-Attorney General Jerry Brown — who of course ended up trouncing Whitman and her biggest spending non-presidential campaign in American history in a landslide — in the process. She had to be taken down if Poizner was to have a chance at the nomination.
One route was to attack her for her own various adventures in capitalism, especially her lucrative practice of using her inside position as a Goldman Sachs board member to cash in on stock offerings. Which was not illegal, just as what Romney did is not illegal.
So Stevens (he and I both worked on the NBC series Mister Sterling, which was created by former West Wing producer and current MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell) came up with what I think was the best ad of 2010. I would run it here but the ad, which I ran on my Huffington Post piece in May 2010, has since been taken private and is no longer available for you to see. Whitman, now CEO of Hewlett Packard, is a finance co-chair for her old friend Mitt, and it’s all one big happy Romney family now. …
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown announced yesterday that he will deliver his State of the State address one week from today, before a joint session of the state Legislature in the Capitol at 10 AM on January 18th.
Brown is working on his new state budget, the upcoming State of the State address, and various political plans for 2012, including his big revenue initiative to couple with additional cuts in order to bring the budget into balance.
State Controller John Chiang yesterday afternoon released his report on state budget receipts and disbursements in December. It pushes back against the notion on left and right that nothing need be done now on cuts and revenues.
The report shows that monthly revenues came in $165.2 million below the latest projections contained in the governor’s proposed 2012-13 Budget. When compared against the 2011 Budget Act, December revenues were $1.4 billion below estimates.
“While we saw positive numbers in November, December’s totals failed to meet even the latest revenue projections,” said Chiang. “Coupled with higher spending tied to unrealized cost savings, these latest revenue figures create growing concern that legislative action may be needed in the near future to ensure that the State can meet its payment obligations.”
** JERRY BROWN 2.0 AT 1.A year into his latest go-round as governor of California, Jerry Brown doesn’t stand much on ceremony these days. That was evident even before the snafu which caused the roll-out of his state budget five days earlier than scheduled (and delayed this about to roll-out piece). I talked with Brown over the holidays about how things have gone, how they are going, and how they (he hopes) will go.
President Barack Obama will carry California. That’s not in question. What is in question is California’s future.
Brown made it very clear that he intends to keep thinking big even in a time of limits. He wants to push hard for California to continue its leadership role on renewable energy, green tech, and climate change, develop future-oriented transit and water systems, and restructure California government, both by making sense of its sprawling agencies and by realigning services to bring them closer to the people who benefit.
And all of it in the midst of digging out from under the wreckage of the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression, in a massively hyper-partisan era, necessitating huge budget cuts and the pursuit of new revenues. A pursuit foiled last year by last ditch right-wing Republican efforts, despite months of intensive personal negotiation by Brown. … From my January 7th essay.
** IOWA THEN AND NOW.The chaotic jumble of holding the Iowa presidential caucuses on January 3rd is now fully apparent. With rampant confusion about who will actually participate, and yoyo-ing swings in support — all playing out against a bizarre backdrop of the holidays, millions in disembodied attack ads, and Barack Obama pondering a US-Iran showdown in the Strait of Hormuz — the folly of the accelerated nomination calendar is clear. … From my December 30th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $101 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $67 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $13 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
Mitt Romney still has the lead in his New Hampshire redoubt, but there is some doubt among a big chunk of primary voters.
NOTE: I’m in transit today, so publishing will be light.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … BOMBING BAIN: HOW DOES THE POLITICS OF WALL STREET GREED PLAY IN THE G.O.P.?
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 11:45 AM Pacific, Obama joins Administrator Lisa Jackson at an EPA event and makes brief remarks thanking the agency’s staff.
At 12:30 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in the Oval Office.
It’s New Hampshire Primary Day.
Monday saw a very active final full day of campaigning before the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary.
Newt Gingrich is doubling down on attacking Mitt Romney as a rapacious corporate raider, both in his own interviews and encouraging his allies in mounting a massive TV campaign in South Carolina, where the next primary takes place on January 21st. Unlike Romney, he’s not pretending he doesn’t know what his aligned super PAC is doing.
Romney had a bad moment over the weekend when he claimed never to have seen an ad blasting Gingrich, then turned around and recited it virtually word for word a few moments later.
Rick Perry, still in the race with big money in the bank and on the air in South Carolina, is chiming in, as well.
The ex-Massachusetts governor should still win today, however, though his numbers have been trending down for a seventh day in a row.
Jon Huntsman appears to be making a late move in the Granite State. Though he is starting out well behind. He was effective yesterday in jumping on Romney’s poorly phrased remark that he enjoys firing people who perform services for him.
Romney was referring to insurers, not everyone, as many who criticize him are inferring. But Huntsman points out how damaging such a gaffe can be for a supposed safe general election choice like Romney.
A not especially happy-looking President Barack Obama yesterday thanked White House chief of staff Bill Daley for his service and introduced budget director Jack Lew as the new chief of staff, as of the end of January.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Time: Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** JERRY BROWN SCHEDULE UPDATE: AT 11 AM, Brown joins Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to announce an agreement between the State of California and the Obama Administration to advance California’s renewable energy goals and create clean energy jobs.
The announcement will be made in Elk Grove, at the site of a Recurrent Energy solar project. Recurrent Energy CEO Arno Harris will also be on hand.
Recurrent Energy’s four Sacramento-area projects are expected to generate 160 million kWh of electricity in year one, equivalent to the electricity consumption of 12,000 homes.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is working on his new state budget, the upcoming State of the State address, and various political plans for 2012, including his big revenue initiative to couple with additional cuts in order to bring the budget into balance.
The Legislative Analyst Office and the Department of Finance differ on how much Governor Jerry Brown’s initiative would raise from high-income taxpayers, with the former about $2 billion a year lower in its estimate. But they’re only estimates.
Heiress Molly Munger, who has proposed her own tax initiative, which would raise the income tax on most everyone in the state to fund education, has put $500K into her nascent campaign.
Which does not seem like a smart initiative to me.
I’ve never met her and, unlike the other players in the initiative sweepstakes, can’t say what’s driving her or how she is likely to respond to stimuli.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0 AT 1.A year into his latest go-round as governor of California, Jerry Brown doesn’t stand much on ceremony these days. That was evident even before the snafu which caused the roll-out of his state budget five days earlier than scheduled (and delayed this about to roll-out piece). I talked with Brown over the holidays about how things have gone, how they are going, and how they (he hopes) will go.
President Barack Obama will carry California. That’s not in question. What is in question is California’s future.
Brown made it very clear that he intends to keep thinking big even in a time of limits. He wants to push hard for California to continue its leadership role on renewable energy, green tech, and climate change, develop future-oriented transit and water systems, and restructure California government, both by making sense of its sprawling agencies and by realigning services to bring them closer to the people who benefit.
And all of it in the midst of digging out from under the wreckage of the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression, in a massively hyper-partisan era, necessitating huge budget cuts and the pursuit of new revenues. A pursuit foiled last year by last ditch right-wing Republican efforts, despite months of intensive personal negotiation by Brown. … From my January 7th essay.
** IOWA THEN AND NOW.The chaotic jumble of holding the Iowa presidential caucuses on January 3rd is now fully apparent. With rampant confusion about who will actually participate, and yoyo-ing swings in support — all playing out against a bizarre backdrop of the holidays, millions in disembodied attack ads, and Barack Obama pondering a US-Iran showdown in the Strait of Hormuz — the folly of the accelerated nomination calendar is clear. … From my December 30th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $103 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $67 from the low of $39 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $11 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
White House chief of staff Bill Daley, a former Midwestern chairman of the J.P. Morgan investment bank and secretary of commerce in the Clinton Administration, has rather unexpectedly resigned today. He will be replaced at the end of the month by federal Budget Director Jack Lew.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … BOMBING BAIN: HOW DOES THE POLITICS OF WALL STREET GREED PLAY IN THE G.O.P.?
** QUICK HITS. A very active final full day of campaigning before the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary. … Newt Gingrich is doubling down on attacking Mitt Romney as a rapacious corporate raider, both in his own interviews and encouraging his allies in mounting a massive TV campaign in South Carolina, where the next primary takes place on January 21st. Unlike Romney, he’s not pretending he doesn’t know what his aligned super PAC is doing. Romney had a bad moment over the weekend when he claimed never to have seen an ad blasting Gingrich, then turned around and recited it virtually word for word a few moments later. … Rick Perry is chiming in, as well. … The ex-Massachusetts governor should still win tomorrow, however, though his numbers have been trending down for a sixth day in a row. … Jon Huntsman appears to be making a late move in the Granite State. Though he is starting out well behind. He was effective today in jumping on Romney’s poorly phrased remark that he enjoys firing people who perform services for him. Romney was referring to insurers, not everyone, as many who criticize him are inferring. But Huntsman points out how damaging such a gaffe can be for a supposed safe general election choice like Romney. … In California politics, the Legislative Analyst Office and the Department of Finance differ on how much Governor Jerry Brown’s initiative would raise from high-income taxpayers, with the former about $2 billion a year lower in its estimate. But they’re only estimates. … Heiress Molly Munger, who has proposed her own tax initiative, which would raise the income tax on most everyone in the state to fund education, has put $500K into her nascent campaign. I’ve never met her and, unlike the other players in the initiative sweepstakes, can’t say what’s driving her or how she is likely to respond to stimuli.
** SURPRISE! OBAMA GETS A NEW WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF (HE’S SURPRISED, TOO). Love him or hate him, you have to acknowledge that Rahm Emanuel, now the mayor of Chicago, is generally a very effective political operative. And for all his, er, rough-hewn ways, was pretty popular with the staff.
It’s harder to say that about his replacement, former Commerce Secretary-turned investment banker Bill Daley, who suddenly stepped down today nearly a year earlier than expected.
Now, in earlier days, I used to ascribe more effect to aides, operatives, consultants, strategists, managers, advisors, what have you, when it comes to how a politician is doing/will do. Now I understand that the effect is more marginal than I had thought.
Which is not to say that it is immaterial.
Daley had seemed an odd choice to me, in a way, when Obama picked him. Not so much because he had been out of Washington for quite awhile, which is what the Washington line was, naturally. But because he always struck me as more a business politico than a strategic thinker or political operative. And because his standing as an investment banker seemed decidedly off-key given the dynamics of the situation.
But in another way, he made perfect sense. He was a Chicago guy, a Clinton alum who nonetheless helped Obama, and Obama knew him.
And as we have seen, Obama has not been about broadening his circle all that much. So that alone made him a natural choice.
But Daley was suited to a very different sort of environment, one in which deals could be cut with more pragmatic business-oriented Republicans. An environment which, needless to say, does not actually exist in Washington.
And even if it had, the dynamics would likely have hurt Obama’s standing with his own party base.
Couple all that with Daley’s unwillingness to be a team builder with the staff — his penchant for having a closed door and needlessly excluding more junior yet still quite significant aides from meetings — and it was a bad situation.
So Daley is gone at the end of the month, replaced by budget director Jack Lew.
Which may actually be a good thing, if the staff is more energized and positive going into a very challenging re-election year.
What is not a good thing is that Obama himself, both in public accounts and in what I am being told privately, was surprised that Daley decided to resign now rather than complete the year, as he had committed to do last fall when some of his managerial duties were given to longtime Obama senior advisor/trouble-shooter Pete Rouse, who was the president’s chief of staff when he was in the Senate.
If Obama isn’t reading his own chief of staff properly, that’s a problem.
** NEW SURVEY: IT’S INDEPENDENTS’ DAY. A new Gallup Poll survey compiling the data on partisan political identification for 2011 comes to a stunning conclusion.
Self-described political independents are now the plurality in American politics.
A whopping 40% of voters now call themselves independents.
That is the highest level that Gallup has ever measured, besting the old record of 39%, set in 1995 and tied in 2007.
Democrats continue to edge out Republicans for second place, in partisan ID, 31% to 27%.
But Dems shouldn’t get too satisfied about that, either, for more independents lean Republican than Democratic.
Which is contrary to what our friends on the left often prefer to believe.
In fact, despite a genuinely terrible year for the Republicans in partial federal power last year, they are in no worse shape ID wise than they were before. And in far better shape than in 2008.
There was a two-point increase in independent identification from 2010 (38%) to 2011 (40%). The increase in independent identification came at the expense of Republican identification, which dropped from 29% to 27%, while Democratic identification held steady at 31%.
The net result of those changes is an increase in the Democrats’ advantage in party ID over Republicans, from two points to four points. However, that remains below the eight- (36% to 28%) and seven-point (34% to 27%) Democratic advantages in 2008 and 2009, respectively.
More Americans have identified as Democrats than Republicans in all but a few years since 1988.
Despite the Democratic advantage in party identification, proportionately more American independents lean to the Republican Party than to the Democratic Party. Thus, when independents’ party leanings are taken into account and combined with the party’s core identifiers, the parties end up tied. In 2011, 45% of Americans identified as Republicans or leaned to the Republican Party and 45% identified as Democrats or leaned Democratic.
This is similar to 2010, when the Democrats had a 1-point advantage in leaned party identification, but remains well below the 12-point Democratic advantage in 2008 — the largest Gallup has recorded for either party since it began regularly measuring leaned party identification in 1991. …
Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, trying to lock down his first clear win of the season, discussed his economic plans and experience, and criticized President Barack Obama, during a campaign appearance in New Hampshire.
MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
A big week in presidential politics, and a quieter week than expected in California politics.
Tuesday is the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary, and longtime near-favorite son Mitt Romney has long held a big lead there. We’ll see how his margin holds up, and how late-breaking attacks against the former leveraged buyout artist from other Republicans — notably former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose big lead in the polls was wiped out by super PAC attacks funded by Romney’s former Bain Capital colleagues — play out as the race continues to unfold.
With the economy showing some continued slight improvement, President Barack Obama rolls out a new theme of “in-sourcing” to grow jobs at home, as distinguished from “out-sourcing,” which he will undoubtedly ascribe to Romney and other leading Republicans. But he has some nail-biting to do as the crisis with Iran continues to unfold.
California politics will be quieter than expected, following the inadvertent release last Thursday of Governor Jerry Brown’s state budget proposal, a classic snafu occasioned by some thumb-fingered action in the Brown Administration leaving the plan mistakenly published online. Brown made a quick and highly competent recovery, of course, pulling off an impromptu press conference not long after.
We’ll get a good read this week on how conservative Republicans’ efforts to block the Citizens Redistricting Commission’s state Senate districts are going. Signatures for the proposed referendum are being tabulated and the state Supreme Court, which has already refused to appoint a special master to begin drawing new lines hears arguments on Tuesday about the lines.
Brown continues working on budget issues, naturally, and on promoting his initiative for the November ballot. Implicit in that is limiting the clutter of revenue and other fiscal measures on that ballot.
After many months of curious delay, Romney’s opponents finally gave him some serious criticism in a Sunday morning debate in Concord, New Hampshire on Meet the Press, giving the lie to his claim that he is not a politician and noting that, with low job approval, he chose to drop his re-election bid in 2006 after a single term as governor of Massachusetts to run for the Republican nomination for president.
Romney’s longtime lead in New Hampshire is holding up so far in new polling, though he has been declining for the past five days. Rick Santorum’s Iowa draw — there’s more evidence that Santorum actually finished first, by the way, not that it still would not be a statistical draw — is proving far less damaging for him, at least in his adopted state, than Newt Gingrich’s Iowa win would have been.
Romney fared relatively well in a pair of debates over the weekend, being allowed to lay back once again on Saturday night while his opponents went after each other and ABC-TV moderators again declined to bore in on Romney.
But things went much less well for Romney in Sunday morning’s debate, where his record of flip-floppery and chronic office-seeking was exposed.
Romney’s Bain Capital background is coming under increasing fire, an ominous sign since it’s happening in the Republican contest. Romney is going to have spin very hard to keep up the facade that he was a venture capitalist rather than a leveraged buyout artist. The two are very different things, yet the media has let him slide on this all along.
Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman did score well, however, and set themselves up for future competitiveness. As does this development. Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson just put $5 million into a pro-Gingrich super PAC.
Gingrich’s big lead in Iowa was shot down by Romney’s super PAC. I suspect the former House speaker’s allies are going to return the favor.
Meanwhile, as the US ramps up plans for major joint military exercises with Israel, set to begin sometime in the next few weeks, Iran announced on Sunday that it will hold another set of naval exercises in the region in and around the critical oil choke point at the Strait of Hormuz.
These exercises will be specifically geared to practice shutting down the Strait.
Which I think means that Iran intends to actually shut down the Strait of Hormuz, at least for a time, in the guise of “practice.”
The announcement of the exercises, set for February, comes just days after a 10-day Iranian exercise in the region replete with major saber rattling.
And it came on the same day of another announcement from Tehran, that Iran will begin more nuclear enrichment at an underground site later this month.
Then today Tehran announced that it has sentenced a former U.S Marine to death for supposed espionage.
American Amir Mirzai Hekmati, a former Marine who also holds Iranian citizenship, has been sentenced to death by a judge in Iran for spying for the CIA, local media reported on Monday. The 28-year-old received the death penalty for “cooperating with a hostile nation, membership of the CIA and trying to implicate Iran in terrorism,” the verdict said, according to the country’s semi-official Fars news agency.
In Egypt, preliminary results are in from the third and final round of parliamentary voting. Islamists again dominated.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm again led the way, with some 41% of the vote, followed by the the hardline Salafist Al Nour Party with 20% of the vote.
Secular liberal reformist parties, who in many ways represent the protest sentiment which overthrew Hosni Mubarak only to have him replaced by in interim military government, have fared poorly in all three rounds of the voting.
Here’s how Obama’s week looks.
On Monday, Obama will welcome the NBA Champion Dallas Mavericks to the White House to honor their victory.
On Tuesday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House.
On Wednesday, Obama will travel to Chicago to attend campaign events focusing on his new “in-sourcing” economic theme.
On Thursday and Friday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House.
As usual, Obama’s week is more flexible and open at the end, to deal with emerging issues. It’s fairly flexible elsewhere, as well, reflecting the looming Iranian crisis.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings and met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
At 9 AM Pacific, Obama visits with the NBA Champion Dallas Mavericks in the East Room.
At 4 PM Pacific, Obama attends a fundraiser at The Jefferson Hotel.
At 5:40 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a fundraiser at the Capital Hilton Hotel.
Obama is monitoring a variety of other geopolitical crises, mostly related to the Arab awakening, AfPak, and Iraq.
War Zone Time: Afghanistan is twelve and a half hours ahead of Pacific time.
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown is working on his new state budget, the upcoming State of the State address, and various political plans for 2012, including his big revenue initiative to couple with additional cuts in order to bring the budget into balance.
** JERRY BROWN 2.0 AT 1.A year into his latest go-round as governor of California, Jerry Brown doesn’t stand much on ceremony these days. That was evident even before the snafu which caused the roll-out of his state budget five days earlier than scheduled (and delayed this about to roll-out piece). I talked with Brown over the holidays about how things have gone, how they are going, and how they (he hopes) will go.
President Barack Obama will carry California. That’s not in question. What is in question is California’s future.
Brown made it very clear that he intends to keep thinking big even in a time of limits. He wants to push hard for California to continue its leadership role on renewable energy, green tech, and climate change, develop future-oriented transit and water systems, and restructure California government, both by making sense of its sprawling agencies and by realigning services to bring them closer to the people who benefit.
And all of it in the midst of digging out from under the wreckage of the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression, in a massively hyper-partisan era, necessitating huge budget cuts and the pursuit of new revenues. A pursuit foiled last year by last ditch right-wing Republican efforts, despite months of intensive personal negotiation by Brown. … From my January 7th essay.
** IOWA THEN AND NOW.The chaotic jumble of holding the Iowa presidential caucuses on January 3rd is now fully apparent. With rampant confusion about who will actually participate, and yoyo-ing swings in support — all playing out against a bizarre backdrop of the holidays, millions in disembodied attack ads, and Barack Obama pondering a US-Iran showdown in the Strait of Hormuz — the folly of the accelerated nomination calendar is clear. … From my December 30th essay.
** OBAMA: RIDING WITH HISTORY. (NOTE: As Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, this column was the featured column on the top of the front page of the Huffington Post.) … From my January 19th, 2009 Huffington Post column.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in three wars in the region, and the Arab awakening underway, it’s valuable to keep up with news and perspectives from the leading Middle Eastern-based TV news network. Based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, Al Jazeera is very influential and more than a bit controversial. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer. The NWN live link to AJ does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti. While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND NATIONAL ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Having crashed over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, 2008, crude oil is trading around $101 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $67 from the low of $34 per barrel prior to enactment of the Obama economic recovery program, reflecting a low point in global economic activity, and down about $13 from the price at the time of the Osama bin Laden raid.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum. You can send me a private tip by clicking on the “Contact” button in the upper right.
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