In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama called on Congress to pass the “Buffett Rule,” a principle advanced by the famed investor Warren Buffett that ensures that millionaires and billionaires do not pay less in taxes as a share of their income than middle class families pay — as a matter of fairness.
** OBAMA THIS WEEKEND. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events this weekend.
As the Republican presidential race rambles on, Mitt Romney looks like he has a decided edge over Rick Santorum in the upcoming primaries in Wisconsin and Maryland on Tuesday. Newt Gingrich, who seemed to indicate that he is sidelining his primary campaigning in favor of talk and lobbying while retaining his delegates, showed up in both states to keep campaigning after his announcement.
Meanwhile, more momentous events are occupying Obama’s attention.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Arabian Gulf foreign ministers in Riyadh on Saturday. She confirmed that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program will start up again on April 13th. And that they will take place in Istanbul, meaning the US accepted the proposal made at the end of the week in Tehran by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan.
Clinton warned Iran that it must show it is serious in the upcoming talks and not simply stalling as she says they have done before.
She and leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council discussed regional missile defense and how to keep shipping lanes open in the event of threatened Iranian attempts to disrupt them.
In Syria, the Assad regime keeps saying that it has accepted the UN-brokered ceasefire. Now that it has broken the back of its opposition, as it claims.
But it is refusing to withdraw its forces from centers of opposition, which seems to fly in the face of the ceasefire agreement.
In AfPak matters, seeming revelations about Osama bin Laden’s ramblings across Pakistan while the most wanted man in the world — discussed here yesterday — continue to reverberate.
And the Afghan government is insisting that the Obama Administration spell out precisely what sort of military presence it has in mind after the widespread withdrawal still slated for late 2014, and precisely what bases it wants to to be allowed.
Obama has a full week ahead in terms of a public schedule, which of course does not reflect the big geopolitical crises he is attempting to manage.
On Monday, Obama will host Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada and President Felipe Calderon of Mexico for the North American Leaders’ Summit (NALS) in Washington.
This meeting will focus on economic growth, energy, climate change, and regional and global security. The leaders will also discuss North America’s role in the Americas preparing for the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia later in April.
On Tuesday, Obama will deliver remarks at the AP Luncheon during the American Society of Newspaper Editors Convention in Washington.
On Wednesday, Obama will host an Easter Prayer Breakfast at the White House. Christian leaders from around the country will join the President at the breakfast. Also on Wednesday, Obama will sign the STOCK Act, making clear that Members of Congress are subject to the same insider trading laws that apply to everyone else.
On Thursday, Obama will sign the JOBS Act, which includes several initiatives Obama proposed last fall to help small businesses and start-ups grow and create jobs.
On Friday, Obama will deliver remarks at the White House Forum on Women and the Economy. In the evening, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will mark the beginning of Passover with a Seder at the White House with friends and staff.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, AfPak, and North Korea.
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 Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events this weekend.
Brown declared Saturday to be Cesar Chavez Day, issuing this proclamation:
“Eighty-five years ago today, César Chávez was born near his family farm in Yuma, Arizona. While he was still young, his family lost their farm in the Great Depression and became migrants following agricultural work around the Southwest. During his formative years, Chávez was exposed to the dismal working conditions that migrant workers were forced to endure.
“In 1962, after working for many years as a community organizer, he founded the organization which later became the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). As leader of the UFW, Chávez organized agricultural laborers to protest and demand improvements in their working and living conditions. The UFW motto of “Sí se puede” or “Yes, we can,” continues to resound as a timeless rallying cry to workers for social justice.
“César Chávez and the UFW played an instrumental role in the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which I signed into law in 1975. This landmark bill made our state first in the nation to give farm workers the right to seek union representation and bargain collectively within an established legal framework.
“Californians of every generation and background continue to be inspired by the leadership of César Chávez. On this anniversary of his birth, I ask all Californians to join me in continuing to build on his dream of a world where all workers are treated with dignity and respect.”
Brown helped carry Chavez’s casket during the long funeral procession in 1993 near the union’s headquarters in Kern County. I walked with Brown during much of it, talking along the way.
Late on Friday afternoon, Brown sent a government reorganization plan, previously discussed, to the Little Hoover Commission which would cut the number of state agencies from 12 to 10 and eliminate various other offices and commissions. Here’s a summary of the plan.
The legislature has 90 days to block the reorg, if they try to do so.
Next week Brown’s allies now running the California High Speed Rail Authority are expected to unveil a revamped business plan that will streamline the process and cut the overall cost of the system by more than $30 billion, bringing it back down to $68 billion. Brown has been talking about this for some time, as previously discussed here.
The spine of the system, which Brown and the Obama Administration want to begin work on soon, would run from Merced in the northern San Joaquin Valley to the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.
Included in the plan would be near term upgrades of rail systems in the San Francisco Bay Area and LA areas to make them compatible with fast rail, and to provide more immediate sweeteners to major population centers from an historic project that will still take decades to complete.
Expect this to happen.
Brown also issued a statement on the death of Rex Babin, the outstanding Sacramento Bee political cartoonist, saying “he had a keen eye and a sharp pen. We’ll miss his humor and his insight.”
As did former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was not infrequently skewered by Babin, but developed an appreciation for his art and wit.
“My thoughts are with the family of great Sac Bee cartoonist Rex Babin. Take a moment and go discover some of his work for yourself today.
I’ll have more to say about Babin during the week. He died Friday from stomach cancer, and was only 49.
I loved Babin’s work. Though I didn’t always like it. He was very smart, funny, and a little off-kilter, with a very good eye.
The fact that he never won a Pulitzer Prize is much more a commentary on that award than on the quality of his work. Of course, I couldn’t tell you who won a Pulitzer last year, but I can tell you about Babin’s last editorial cartoon series, “ApoCALypse Now.”
** CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS IN CRISIS: ANOTHER BIG SHOE DROPS.Another big shoe dropped Wednesday in the ongoing crisis of the California Republican Party. One of its young rising stars, state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, a decorated Marine veteran of the Iraq War, dropped his party registration to become an independent. Which might be a path forward for Republicans who don’t reject modernity and governance.
Ranking Republicans privately bemoaned the fact that their party has a very thin bench when it comes to people who might win a future statewide election. Fletcher was part of a very short list.
Meanwhile, Governor Jerry Brown continued to get good news moving forward toward his November revenue initiative, a measure that would have been unnecessary had Republicans last year not rejected him and his more moderate course at that time on taxation. …
Fletcher’s move sets up a very intriguing test case for Republicans who haven’t turned their backs on modernity and governance. … From my March 29th essay.
April 1st marks the centenary of the day the Titanic set sail from Belfast in Northern Ireland, on what was to be its first and last voyage. The city is now bringing the ship’s history to life with the opening of the “Titanic Centre”, part of a series of events to mark the anniversary of the tragic voyage of a ship meant to evoke the grandeur of a new technological age.
** MAD MEN (FINALLY) RETURNS: WORTH THE WAIT?Mad Men is back, finally, after the biggest series hiatus since The Sopranos. Was it worth the wait? …
Part of the brilliance of Matthew Weiner’s conception of the show is that it has shown us a world we haven’t really seen otherwise. Yes, it’s set in the ’60s, but the bulk of it has been about the early ’60s. Which for most is terra incognita, aside from hazy images of JFK, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil rights movement, Sinatra and the Rat Pack, and the early days of the Beatles.
The massively over-exposed part of the ’60s, which gave rise to culture wars which still exist in this country, not to mention a baby boomer cultural dominance which has become more than a little dull even as it has persisted for decades, is still yet to come. …
But the rumblings of change — in this case racial change and generational change — are getting much louder. And the drumbeat of dissatisfaction despite success, a constant in the show, is louder than ever. … From my March 27th essay.
** THE REAL GAME CHANGE: PALINISM’S RISE AND MODERATE REPUBLICANISM’S ECLIPSE. … From my March 23rd 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.
Star Kate Winslet joined director James Cameron, who earlier in the week became the first individual to explore the deepest spot in the world’s oceans, a trench in the Pacific nearly seven miles beneath the surface, in London at the world premiere re-launch of the movie Titanic. The record-breaking film, still the domestic box office champion, is being re-released in 3D to mark the 100th anniversary of Titanic’s doomed voyage.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $103.02 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $69 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 $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.
Japan’s defense minister has ordered missile units to intercept a North Korean rocket that Pyongyang plans to launch in April.
FRIDAY FUNHOUSE.
After some embarrassing big defeats at the hands of Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney is trying to take command of the Republican presidential race with wins in next Tuesday’s primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. And Santorum is trying to take advantage of Newt Gingrich’s newly downsized campaign presence, which supposedly will place him mostly on the “Big Talk” sidelines of Washington.
But Gingrich is campaigning in Wisconsin today, and was in Maryland yesterday. And new polling shows Romney opening a significant if uncertain lead in Wisconsin.
While the Republicans play their reindeer games, with establishment figures like former President George H.W. Bush (who had already endorsed Romney), Florida Senator Marco Rubio (who has a dramatic veep-like story to tell about being the child of exiles from the Castro regime which has all the virtues one can imagine it would have short of being true), and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (whose terribly vulnerable budget proposal passed the House but is headed for instant oblivion in the Senate) rallying around Romney, President Barack Obama has a big set of real world headaches with which to contend.
Not the least of which is the very uncertain fate of the national health care law, which underwent three days of largely deflating oral arguments before a US Supreme Court which may well shoot it down in June. And may have actually done so today, in a secret vote which usually presages a final decision.
But while “Obamacare” may or may not have an uncertain fate — I tend to think it has a certain fate — Obama’s geopolitical crises tend to possess true uncertainty.
The crisis in Syria, linked closely to the Iran crisis and to troubled relations with Russia, due to those alliances, rumbles on with lethal impact. The Assad regime says it has accepted the UN ceasefire plan, but the firing hasn’t ceased today.
This issue is transfixing the Arab League summit in Baghdad, where fewer than half of the 22 member nations are represented by their heads of state. That low turnout reflects the widespread Arab world suspicion of the new Iraq and its Iran-friendly government.
Gee, isn’t that exactly what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney expected to happen when they invaded Iraq nine years ago?
Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Erdogan was in Iran Thursday, where he met with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The two confirmed that new nuclear negotiations will begin on April 13th.
Erdogan offered Istanbul as the site of negotiations between Iran and the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China, now set to begin on April 13th.
Which, given Turkey’s apparent preferences, at least in this matter, would offer something of a home court advantage to Iran.
Israel and others, of course, view this all as a stalling tactic as the Iranian nuclear program advances.
It would be impossible to fly them back over the most direct routes. And ferrying them back in the midst of a war would be quite time-consuming.
Our AfPak problems are continuing. More murders today in Afghanistan, where nearly a dozen Afghan police fighting the Taliban were killed as they slept by a colleague, who then escaped.
And while two of our top generals visited in Pakistan with the chief of staff there, it emerged that Osama bin Laden, according to the testimony of his youngest wife, had no less than five safe houses during his lengthy stay in Pakistan. And his wife gave birth to a couple of children, too, in Pakistani hospitals.
Not exactly a model of stealthy tradecraft, is it?
No wonder the Pakistanis are reneging on the original plan to ship bin Laden’s family to Saudi Arabia. It’s definitely in their interest to hold on to them, as they fully intend to do.
The US on Thursday suspended its massive food aid to North Korea, granted when the Hermit Kingdom agreed to back away from its nuclear weapons program, in the wake of North Korea’s plan to launch a satellite next month, which also doubles as the test of an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Today another large shoe dropped, with Japan announcing that it will shoot down the rocket as it arcs over its territory.
I believe this is known as an act of war.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington, Vermont, and Maine.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then flew on Air Force One to Burlington, Vermont.
There he delivered remarks at a campaign event at the Sheraton Burlington Hotel and at a campaign event at the University of Vermont.
At 12:30 PM Pacific, Obama departs Burlington, Vermont on Air Force One en route Portland, Maine.
At 1:20 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Portland, Maine.
At 2:15 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at Southern Maine Community College in Portland.
At 4:20 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at the Portland Museum of Art.
At 5:35 PM Pacific, Obama departs Portland, Maine on Air Force One en route Joint Base Andrews.
At 7:05 PM Pacific, Obama arrives Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 7:20 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, AfPak, and North Korea.
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.
** CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS IN CRISIS: ANOTHER BIG SHOE DROPS.Another big shoe dropped Wednesday in the ongoing crisis of the California Republican Party. One of its young rising stars, state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, a decorated Marine veteran of the Iraq War, dropped his party registration to become an independent. Which might be a path forward for Republicans who don’t reject modernity and governance.
Ranking Republicans privately bemoaned the fact that their party has a very thin bench when it comes to people who might win a future statewide election. Fletcher was part of a very short list.
Meanwhile, Governor Jerry Brown continued to get good news moving forward toward his November revenue initiative, a measure that would have been unnecessary had Republicans last year not rejected him and his more moderate course at that time on taxation.
Fletcher’s move of course ties in with my “California Republicans Have No One To Blame But Themselves” and “The Real Game Change: Palinism’s Rise, Moderate Republicanism’s Eclipse” pieces here on the Huffington Post last week.
The Republicans have already seen their big strategic move for the year, the attempt to block the Citizens Redistricting Commission’s new state Senate lines from going into effect, fail. The party used up its money on that hare brained venture and will no be hard-pressed to defend its members in new legislative and congressional districts. And it couldn’t recruit a significant candidate to run against U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, even though it’s a great low-risk opportunity for someone with a future to get his or her name out there.
So losing one of its few potentially electable future hopes is a big deal.
Not that it’s not at least somewhat situational, mind you.
Fletcher, 35, is running for mayor of San Diego, with the first round election just under 10 weeks away. And the San Diego Republican Party endorsed a much more conservative city councilman over Fletcher. So Fletcher, who sought the party endorsement, is making a move he wouldn’t have made otherwise.
But it’s a move made necessary by his party’s rightward shift.
It’s not as though Fletcher is some sort of closet Democrat, or a liberal Republican — yes, such creatures did once walk the land, in the Mad Men era — or even a real moderate. He is a moderate conservative,
He hasn’t moved to the left. His party has moved further to the right, with its endorsed candidate, San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio, helping lead the way.
Voice of San Diego has a useful compendium of stories chronicling the rightward move of the party in San Diego, as well as Fletcher’s emergence as a rising GOP star and penchant for reaching across the aisle from time to time to get things done.
Fletcher backed Governor Jerry Brown’s jobs plan late last year, in which the governor proposed to swap a much maligned big tax break for corporations doing business out of state for a set of tax breaks for businesses creating jobs in California. Fletcher provided one of the two Republican votes needed to pass the measure in the Assembly, but Brown couldn’t find the two needed votes in the Senate to send the plan to his desk.
Fletcher has also backed gay rights, giving an emotional speech in the Capitol as a decorated Marine veteran opposing the “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” policy and voting for legislation requiring curriculum materials to reflect the role of gays and lesbians in history. And he’s an advocate of renewable energy, voting for Brown’s legislation to require that 33% of all electric power in California come from renewable sources by the end of 2020.
But, no liberal, he says he won’t back Brown’s November revenue initiative.
Actually, Fletcher comes from the mainline of the Republican Party. He’s married to Mindy Tucker Fletcher, who was spokeswoman for George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and later a deputy chief of staff for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And he’s backed by some of the state’s top moderate conservative Republicans, such as former Governor Pete Wilson (also an ex-Marine, who was first elected to the Assembly and became San Diego mayor before becoming the last California Republican to win a seat in the U.S. Senate, 30 years ago); Wilson’s longtime chief of staff, Bob White, who managed Arnold Schwarzenegger’s landslide win in the 2003 California recall election; and former Los Angeles Mayor Dick Riordan.
Fletcher, a graduate of California Baptist University, not exactly a hotbed of the counter-culture, enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve after 9/11, rising to the rank of staff sergeant. He was decorated for bravery in combat in the Iraq War and for his work as an intelligence specialist in the Horn of Africa.
I don’t know Fletcher, but I’ve met him several times, first at a Schwarzenegger party in 2006. He’s personable and smart, with a certain mediagenic quality. I could see him mounting a serious statewide campaign in the future.
He’s being aided in this campaign by new senior advisor Matt David, who served as Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial communications director and a John McCain aide and more recently was Jon Huntsman’s presidential campaign manager.
Huntsman, of course, had an impressive third place finish in the New Hampshire primary but otherwise found it difficult to break through in a presidential primary process dominated by the hard right. Not that Huntsman, the former governor of Utah, was anything like a liberal. But the economic conservative Huntsman believes in the science of evolution and climate change. And he had been President Barack Obama’s choice as US ambassador to China, and that was a bridge too far for Republicans this year, as Team Obama anticipated when the president made the appointment.
Fletcher’s move sets up a very intriguing test case for Republicans who haven’t turned their backs on modernity and governance. …
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
Brown proclaimed today “Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day.”
It’s nearly 39 years since the last major ground combat units left Vietnam.
Here’s the text from Brown’s proclamation:
“Over two million Americans served in the Vietnam War and related conflicts in Southeast Asia between 1959 and 1975. More than 58,000 did not return. Of those who survived, over 300,000 suffered physical injuries in combat, and an even greater number developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychiatric ailments as a result of their service.
“Our treatment of the veterans of Vietnam and other wars reflects profoundly on our character as a nation. Too many of our veterans suffer from unemployment, poverty, homelessness, substance abuse and disability. Last year I signed Executive Order B-9-11, creating the Interagency Council on Veterans to coordinate the state’s efforts in providing assistance to veterans in need. While the Council continues to explore every possible improvement in policies and programs related to veterans’ issues, I urge all citizens to act in the same spirit by welcoming home our veterans, thanking them for their service and assisting them in every conceivable way.”
Brown also today signed a new state-tribal gaming compact with the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. The compact allows the operation of 3,000 slot machines. Up to 15% of the casino’s net earnings will go to local communities and to regulation and mitigation activities around gambling. Brown says that the tribe estimates that the project will create approximately 700 construction jobs and 2,500 jobs at the new facility. The compact requires regular audits of gaming operations and other enforcement and public safety measures.
** MAD MEN (FINALLY) RETURNS: WORTH THE WAIT?Mad Men is back, finally, after the biggest series hiatus since The Sopranos. Was it worth the wait?
Naturally, there are spoilers ahead. I confess to a certain diffidence about it all, all two hours of it. Which is not to say it’s not quite good. It’s just that more is going on this year in what we laughingly call the real world than in 2010. And not much has happened in the Mad Men universe since Season 4 ended nearly a year and a half ago.
Only about half as much time has passed in the Mad Men universe as has passed for us, and not much has happened that was not otherwise obvious. …
Part of the brilliance of Matthew Weiner’s conception of the show is that it has shown us a world we haven’t really seen otherwise. Yes, it’s set in the ’60s, but the bulk of it has been about the early ’60s. Which for most is terra incognita, aside from hazy images of JFK, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil rights movement, Sinatra and the Rat Pack, and the early days of the Beatles.
The massively over-exposed part of the ’60s, which gave rise to culture wars which still exist in this country, not to mention a baby boomer cultural dominance which has become more than a little dull even as it has persisted for decades, is still yet to come. …
But the rumblings of change — in this case racial change and generational change — are getting much louder. And the drumbeat of dissatisfaction despite success, a constant in the show, is louder than ever. … From my March 27th essay.
** THE REAL GAME CHANGE: PALINISM’S RISE AND MODERATE REPUBLICANISM’S ECLIPSE.The term “game change,” like so many sports-oriented terms in politics, is decidedly over-used. But the events depicted in the Game Change film really do constitute just that, though not in the way that my friend Steve Schmidt, the top John McCain advisor who utters the phrase in the film and with whom I communicated throughout the period of the film, intended it. …
Now that Game Change has emerged as one of HBO’s biggest movies ever, in a steady rotation on the cable network, and the film itself has yielded widespread acclaim outside of the Palinista camp, it’s useful to pull back and look at the bigger import of the events the film depicts and the background against which they played out. … From my March 23rd 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.
An unmanned European robotic supply ship has docked with the International Space Station in the first such mission since the US space shuttle retired. The spacecraft carried more than seven tons of supplies including food, and oxygen. It will eventually be filled with rubbish and sent off in a destructiveplunge back through the Earth’s atmosphere.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $69 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 $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.
While the rest of us have to wait until June — well, assuming the news doesn’t leak — the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court will know the likely outcome of the historic health care case by the time they go home this weekend.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS IN CRISIS: ANOTHER BIG SHOE DROPS.
** QUICK HITS.Does Israel have a secret deal with Azerbaijan to serve as a staging area for its strike against Iran’s nuclear program?That’s what Foreign Policy is saying in a lengthy new take-out. But how would the planes get back to Israel? … The California Commission on the Status of Women today elected Oscar-winning actress Geena Davis, an Arnold Schwarzenegger appointee, to be its new chair. Davis, a Mensa member and semi-finalist for the 2000 U.S. Olympic archery team perhaps best known for the feminist action classic Thelma and Louise, brings a higher profile to a commission that Governor Jerry Brown has slated for the budgetary axe.
** NEW SURVEY: MEDIA FREEDOM IS (SORT OF) THE GLOBAL NORM. Except where it’s not, of course.
A new Gallup Poll survey shows that nearly two-thirds of adults surveyed in 133 countries around the world say that their country enjoys widespread media freedom.
That’s roughly the same level as it was in 2010.
Finland leads with the highest proportion, 97%, asserting media freedom, while Belarus trails with only 23%.
Media freedom is judged highest in the advanced industrial world of North America and much of Europe and Asia.
Popular assessments generally track with those of acknowledged experts in the field.
The countries where perceived media freedom is lowest span multiple regions, including the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and former Soviet Union countries. Fewer than 4 in 10 adults in 11 countries, including Gabon, Armenia, Palestinian Territories, and Iraq, say their media have a lot of freedom — despite legal or constitutional provisions that guarantee freedom of the press or speech in most of these countries. Independent media evaluators, such as Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders, also rate these 11 countries poorly on their freedom of the press indicators. …
With a few exceptions, perceived media freedom is highest in developed countries in Asia, Europe, and North America. Ghana is the sole representative of sub-Saharan Africa in the list of countries worldwide where roughly 9 in 10 or more adults say their media have a lot of freedom. Freedom House recognizes the press in Ghana as among the most free in Africa.
In an early morning appearance in the Rose Garden, President Barack Obama challenged Congress to end massive subsidies to major oil companies at a time of sky-high gasoline prices and corporate profits. Senate Republicans promptly shot down the idea.
** 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 delivered remarks in the Rose Garden urging Congress to vote to end massive subsidies to oil companies.
Senate Republicans promptly blocked the idea on the Senate floor.
There will be plenty of rhetorical moves with no consequent action in this election year.
Various deficit reduction ideas, sometimes paired with big tax cuts for the rich and corporations, have been floated and shot down in recent days.
I don’t see much need to chronicle all that churning.
After three days of oral arguments, James Carville and other Democrats are starting to say it may be best for Democrats if the US Supreme Court strikes down the national health care law, a point made here in the “Teeing Up Tuesday” piece. And something of a tell.
But Obama got good news today in the form of jobs numbers, with unemployment claims down to a four-year low.
Meanwhile, the Republican presidential race keeps on chugging on in advance of next Tuesday’s primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.
Newt Gingrich has significantly scaled back his candidacy, as discussed here yesterday, and Ron Paul continues his big fade, leaving Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney battling it out.
Romney appears today with former President George H.W. Bush, who endorsed him a couple of months back, as he attempts to corral what there is of a GOP establishment behind his candidacy.
While that goes on, major geopolitical crises roil the already bubbling waters of the global scene.
The US has suspended its massive food aid to North Korea, granted when the Hermit Kingdom agreed to back away from its nuclear weapons program, in the wake of North Korea’s plan to launch a satellite next month, which also doubles as the test of an intercontinental ballistic missile.
The US has suspended food aid to North Korea in response to a planned rocket launch next month. Pyongyang insists it is launching a satellite for scientific purposes. But the US suspects the real aim is to test a long-range nuclear missile.
Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Erdogan is in Iran today, where he met with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The two confirmed that new nuclear negotiations will begin on April 13th.
And Erdogan offered Istanbul as the site of negotiations between Iran and the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China.
Israel and others, of course, view this all as a stalling tactic as the Iranian nuclear program advances.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, and AfPak.
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 Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
The California Teachers Association has contributed $1.5 million for the passage of Brown’s November revenue initiative.
CTA has also just given $1 million to the California Democratic Party, which was already rolling in dough, especially compared to the California Republican Party, which has essentially only enough funding to continue basic operations.
University of California president Mark Yudoff also endorsed Brown’s initiative, saying its passage is necessary to protect the state university system from further cutbacks.
Yudoff will ask the UC Board of Regents to endorse the measure.
** MAD MEN (FINALLY) RETURNS: WORTH THE WAIT?Mad Men is back, finally, after the biggest series hiatus since The Sopranos. Was it worth the wait?
Naturally, there are spoilers ahead. I confess to a certain diffidence about it all, all two hours of it. Which is not to say it’s not quite good. It’s just that more is going on this year in what we laughingly call the real world than in 2010. And not much has happened in the Mad Men universe since Season 4 ended nearly a year and a half ago.
Only about half as much time has passed in the Mad Men universe as has passed for us, and not much has happened that was not otherwise obvious. …
Wisely, as Season 5 begins with its cinematic two-hour premiere, the show is only up to around Memorial Day 1966.
Part of the brilliance of Matthew Weiner’s conception of the show is that it has shown us a world we haven’t really seen otherwise. Yes, it’s set in the ’60s, but the bulk of it has been about the early ’60s. Which for most is terra incognita, aside from hazy images of JFK, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil rights movement, Sinatra and the Rat Pack, and the early days of the Beatles.
The massively over-exposed part of the ’60s, which gave rise to culture wars which still exist in this country, not to mention a baby boomer cultural dominance which has become more than a little dull even as it has persisted for decades, is still yet to come. …
But the rumblings of change — in this case racial change and generational change — are getting much louder. And the drumbeat of dissatisfaction despite success, a constant in the show, is louder than ever. … From my March 27th essay.
** THE REAL GAME CHANGE: PALINISM’S RISE AND MODERATE REPUBLICANISM’S ECLIPSE.The term “game change,” like so many sports-oriented terms in politics, is decidedly over-used. But the events depicted in the Game Change film really do constitute just that, though not in the way that my friend Steve Schmidt, the top John McCain advisor who utters the phrase in the film and with whom I communicated throughout the period of the film, intended it.
The pick of Sarah Palin was intended to be a dynamic game changer in McCain’s 2008 race against Barack Obama. But it proved to be a different sort of game change. It was the harbinger of a virulent rightward move in Republican politics as we see in today’s presidential primaries, and the further devolution of the media culture into hysteria and hyper-partisanship. And it showed just what going for the win, the sine qua non of consultant culture, can end up meaning.
Now that Game Change has emerged as one of HBO’s biggest movies ever, in a steady rotation on the cable network, and the film itself has yielded widespread acclaim outside of the Palinista camp, it’s useful to pull back and look at the bigger import of the events the film depicts and the background against which they played out. … From my March 23rd 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 major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $69 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 $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.
Three days of arguments on President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul have come to an end at the U.S. Supreme Court with Republican politicians saying the law puts freedom at risk.
** QUICK HITS. After three days of oral arguments, James Carville and other Democrats are starting to say it may be best for Democrats if the US Supreme Court strikes down the national health care law, a point made here in the “Teeing Up Tuesday” piece. And something of a tell. … There’s a pretty fair buzz in California circles today about state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher’s decision to switch from Republican to independent. Fletcher is a moderate conservative, and decorated ex-Marine, whom many have seen as one of the few Republicans with statewide potential, but he’s trailing in a race for mayor of San Diego and saw a more conservative city councilman take the local GOP endorsement early this month. I’ll have much more to say on this matter, which of course ties in with my “California Republicans Have No One To Blame But Themselves” piece from last week, linked below.
** NEW POLL: ECONOMIC CONCERN STILL DOMINATES, DESPITE OTHER HEADLINES. A new Gallup Poll survey shows that economic concerns are still dominant with the electorate, despite big headlines about racial strife and geopolitical crises.
Ironically, of course, nothing can change the economic picture faster than one of these geopolitical crises — Iran and Israel — going critical.
A variety of economic-related issues dominate Americans’ top concerns on a list of 15 issues facing the country today. The economy and gas prices lead the list, with 71% and 65% of Americans, respectively, saying they personally worry “a great deal” about each. These are followed by federal spending and the budget deficit (60%), the availability and affordability of healthcare (60%), unemployment (55%), Social Security (48%), and the availability and affordability of energy (48%). …
Race relations — very much in the news this week over the Trayvon Martin case — are at the bottom of the list, with 17% of Americans saying they worry about them a great deal. The poll was conducted March 8-11, after Martin had been shot and killed by a neighborhood watchman in Sanford, Fla., but before the recent escalation of protests and rallies around the country, with some charging that racism has played a role in aspects of the case.
Fifty-five percent of Americans say they worry “only a little” or “not at all” about race relations, making it the only issue with majority concern at this low a level — though it is possible that more recent developments in the Martin case have increased Americans’ concern. Other low-ranking issues include illegal immigration, the possibility of future terrorist attacks in the U.S., and the quality of the environment, with just over a third of Americans highly worried about each of these. …
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has dramatically scaled back his presidential campaign. But he is not getting out of the race, or releasing his delegates, saying he is carrying on till the Republican National Convention.
** OBAMA TODAY. Following his big trip to South Korea around the global Nuclear Security Summit, President Barack Obama is back in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He has no scheduled public events.
Newt Gingrich has dramatically scaled back his presidential campaign, laying off a third of his campaign staff and letting his campaign manager go.
He says he will spend less time competing in primaries and caucuses and more time running what I’ve called “the Big Talk” campaign out of Washington, engaging on the issues and lobbying delegates on his behalf.
Notably, he is keeping on his top communications aides.
This is a way for him to hold on to his delegates while picking up a few more by accretion — he campaigned yesterday in Annapolis, about 40 miles outside of Washington, in advance of next Tuesday’s Maryland primary — and keep his hand in the game unless Romney wraps up the nomination.
Which he is nowhere near doing anytime soon.
It is also a way to respond to repeated calls for him to get out of the race and let Rick Santorum finally get his one-on-one shot against Romney.
Had Gingrich not been in Michigan, for example, Santorum’s eyelash defeat there would have been a comfortable win in what is arguably Romney’s home state.
Gingrich’s fundraising has fallen off dramatically and his debt has risen. Once he proved unable to beat Santorum in Alabama and Mississippi — where the ex-senator managed to win despite Gingrich splitting much of the far right vote — the die was cast for Gingrich.
Not that Santorum wants him to end his campaign. That would allow Romney to cherry-pick some of Gingrich’s delegates and get closer to the nomination.
So this sets up a very interesting scenario for Newt watchers. More to follow on this.
New talks between Iran and the UN Security Council’s permanent five members plus Germany are apparently set to begin April 13th. No location has been mentioned but I would expect it to be Vienna.
While Iran and Israel seem on a collision course over the Iranian nuclear program, the advent of new talks may stave off military action for a while longer.
Meanwhile, Israel’s centrist Kadima party, the main opposition to the right-wing coalition plus Labor which governs Israel now, dumped its leader, former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who was just in the US on a speaking tour.
Livni was defeated, 62-37, in a party vote by former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Shaul Mofaz, demonstrating anew that Israel’s opposition is in near total disarray.
Pakistan’s army chief of staff, General Ashfaq Kayani, held talks today with top US commanders for the first time since US airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last year and triggered a near collapse the two nations’ already deeply troubled AfPak strategy.
Kayani met with General James Mattis, head of Central Command, the US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, at their request. The US is trying to revive operational ties, which have reached a very low ebb with the CIA kicked out of its Pakistani drone base and the border closed to supplies to Afghanistan.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, and AfPak.
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.
Congressman Bobby Rush, protesting against the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida, donned a hoodie and shades on the floor of the House today before being removed on the order of the white congressman from Mississippi then presiding, Congressman Gregg Harper, who ruled that Rush violated a House rule against wearing a hat on the floor. Rush, who represents Chicago, is a former Black Panther who soundly defeated a young state senator named Barack Obama in the 2000 Democratic primary.
** MAD MEN (FINALLY) RETURNS: WORTH THE WAIT?Mad Men is back, finally, after the biggest series hiatus since The Sopranos. Was it worth the wait?
Naturally, there are spoilers ahead. I confess to a certain diffidence about it all, all two hours of it. Which is not to say it’s not quite good. It’s just that more is going on this year in what we laughingly call the real world than in 2010. And not much has happened in the Mad Men universe since Season 4 ended nearly a year and a half ago.
Only about half as much time has passed in the Mad Men universe as has passed for us, and not much has happened that was not otherwise obvious.
Incidentally, The Mad Men File, containing all my pieces on the show from 2009 on, is available here.
Wisely, as Season 5 begins with its cinematic two-hour premiere, the show is only up to around Memorial Day 1966.
Part of the brilliance of Matthew Weiner’s conception of the show is that it has shown us a world we haven’t really seen otherwise. Yes, it’s set in the ’60s, but the bulk of it has been about the early ’60s. Which for most is terra incognita, aside from hazy images of JFK, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the civil rights movement, Sinatra and the Rat Pack, and the early days of the Beatles.
The massively over-exposed part of the ’60s, which gave rise to culture wars which still exist in this country, not to mention a baby boomer cultural dominance which has become more than a little dull even as it has persisted for decades, is still yet to come.
That’s been a very good thing for Mad Men, not least because the late ’60s, in addition to being very contentious, is also very cliched. And if there is one thing Mad Men is good at it, it’s avoiding cliche. But when the entire milieu is shot through with cliche, that is much harder to pull off.
Fortunately, Woodstock is still a long ways off. And the Summer of Love is, too (along with San Francisco), though it’s just over a year away in the Mad Men universe.
But the rumblings of change — in this case racial change and generational change — are getting much louder.
And the drumbeat of dissatisfaction despite success, a constant in the show, is louder than ever. …
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Sacramento.
At 11 AM, he participates in the promotion ceremony in the Governor’s Office for Colonel Sylvia Crockett.
Colonel Crockett is being promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Army National Guard.
She is the first Latina to become a general in the California Guard.
At 1 PM, Brown will speak with police chiefs, sheriffs, district attorneys and dozens of other law enforcement leaders at the 20th Annual Alliance of California Law Enforcement Legislative Day in the Capitol at the Sacramento Convention Center.
** THE REAL GAME CHANGE: PALINISM’S RISE AND MODERATE REPUBLICANISM’S ECLIPSE.The term “game change,” like so many sports-oriented terms in politics, is decidedly over-used. But the events depicted in the Game Change film really do constitute just that, though not in the way that my friend Steve Schmidt, the top John McCain advisor who utters the phrase in the film and with whom I communicated throughout the period of the film, intended it.
The pick of Sarah Palin was intended to be a dynamic game changer in McCain’s 2008 race against Barack Obama. But it proved to be a different sort of game change. It was the harbinger of a virulent rightward move in Republican politics as we see in today’s presidential primaries, and the further devolution of the media culture into hysteria and hyper-partisanship. And it showed just what going for the win, the sine qua non of consultant culture, can end up meaning.
Now that Game Change has emerged as one of HBO’s biggest movies ever, in a steady rotation on the cable network, and the film itself has yielded widespread acclaim outside of the Palinista camp, it’s useful to pull back and look at the bigger import of the events the film depicts and the background against which they played out. … From my March 23rd essay.
** CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME.There’s a lot of hissing and moaning on the right in California, and among some avowedly middle-of-the-road pundits, about Governor Jerry Brown’s compromise with a left-labor coalition on his November revenue initiative. What’s the complaint? More taxes on the rich. Part of the complaint is about the fiscal volatility of relying more on people whose incomes can fluctuate. Part of it is about protecting the rich, a bottom-line GOP issue these days.
The fact is that if the Republican Party hadn’t determinedly taken itself even further to the right over the past several years, they wouldn’t be facing what shapes up in polling as popular soak-the-rich solutions. Republicans took themselves out of the governance play in California several years ago, ignoring what turned out to be a fateful warning speech about their steep decline from then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, turning into a reflexive Party of No. … From my March 22nd 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 major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $107 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $73 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 $7 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.
The new national health care law came under heavy fire today during questions from conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court.
** NEW COLUMN COMING UP … MAD MEN (FINALLY) RETURNS: WORTH THE WAIT?
TEEING UP TUESDAY.
There’s no Republican primary this week, after Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney traded wins in Louisiana and Illinois last week. The next primaries on tap are next Tuesday, in Wisconsin, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, leaving the candidates free to frenetically troll for cash in California as they campaign frantically on several fronts.
But there is plenty of thunder on the right this week, with the US Supreme Court hearing oral arguments pro and con on the national health care bill finally pushed through in 2009 by President Barack Obama and then majority Congressional Democrats. And Obama is coming under some fire for having told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in front of a hot mike during the weekend’s Nuclear Security Summit in South Korea, that he’ll be more flexible with Russia after the election. That’s in reference to the European missile shield project ostensibly about Iran but really about Russia, that is so vexing to the Russians and of such little apparent concern to the Iranians.
Meanwhile, back in California politics, Governor Jerry Brown got some excellent news in the form of a new USC Dornsife/LA Times poll on his November revenue initiative. But he continues to have trouble with his legislative party, which is balking at budget cuts and public pension reforms.
The US Supreme Court is in the midst of hearing three days of arguments on Obama’s national health care law, and the federal mandate that all individuals must purchase health insurance coverage is coming under heavy fire. The legislation may not survive as a result.
This reminds that health care is a big morass of an issue. Looking back to some of the things I wrote about its passage, predicting, as former President Bill Clinton did, that it would catch on in popular support once it was enacted, I wish I’d stuck with my more cynical traditional view. Which I’ll get into more if the Court strikes down the law in the next few months.
Is it a disaster for Obama if the law is struck down? I suspect not. He will then have some folks to blame and no downside with the law’s actual implementation.
While the wheel spins and spins and spins on health care, as it has for many decades, Obama wrapped uo the global Nuclear Security Summit and his all-important side meetings with top world leaders.
Are we any closer to a resolution of the Iran crisis? Or of the renewed North Korea crisis? Which was precipitated when the Hermit Kingdom opted to launch a satellite next month — which also doubles as the test of a long-range missile delivery system — just a few weeks after agreeing to back away from its nuclear weapons program in exchange for massive food aid?
That will be clearer as the week goes on.
I suspect that China will help with North Korea. But that Iran and Israel are still on course for a potentially explosive showdown.
The news is bad yet again in Afghanistan. Three more NATO soldiers were murdered on Monday by their Afghan colleagues. Two were Brits, one was an American. Even if we keep giving in on conditions for an ongoing status of forces agreement for a small residual force past 2014, the transition to getting there is still falling apart.
But there is good news on Syria, where the Assad regime, having spent months assaulting its democratic opposition, says it has accepted former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s ceasefire proposal.
Here’s what the rest of Obama’s week looks like. As always, his public schedule does little to reflect his crisis management, and has plenty of space and flexibility built in for all of that.
On Tuesday, Obama wraps up the Nuclear Security Summit and departs Seoul en route to Washington, where he arrives on Tuesday evening.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House.
On Friday, Obama will attend campaign events and fundraisers in Burlington, Vermont, and Portland, Maine, returning to Washington in the evening.
Jerry Brown’s public schedule for the rest of the week is as unclear as usual. But we have a good idea of what he is working on.
He received excellent news over the weekend and on Monday from the latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll. Dornsife, incidentally, is the name of the patrons of USC’s College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences.
USC runs the poll and the LA Times publishes its results a bit in advance of everyone else.
Brown’s new hybrid initiative, result of a compromise with the California Federation of Teachers and other members of a left-liberal coalition, tested very well in the soundings done by two national polling firms run by Democrat Stan Greenberg and Republican Linda DiVall, both of whom joined the poll’s director, USC Unruh Institute of Politics director Dan Schnur, in a conference call to discuss the poll and its findings on Monday.
Schnur, former communications director for Republican Governor Pete Wilson and John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, declared: “Governor Brown has pulled off a political coup” with his revised initiative. He has “removed the principal impediment to his plans with minimal substantive changes.”
Unless significant financial opposition arises, he said, “It’s a very adroit move by the governor.”
And if that opposition comes from the business community and/or the very rich, it won’t be that hard to demonize it.
The poll shows the revised Brown initiative ahead by a whopping 64% to 33%.
In contrast, the last remaining rival measure, heiress Molly Munger’s plan to raise the income tax for virtually everyone, trails 64% to 32%.
As I’ve said all along, she has no chance of winning and is wasting her money in proceeding and my time in having to keep typing the obvious.
Brown’s own ratings are constant, with 49-35 on job approval and 51-34 favorable/unfavorable.
The poll found major concern about public pensions, but not a great sense of urgency. But it also found that a key symbolic element to maintaining support for the expanded public pension system enacted more than a decade ago is losing its potency.
It’s interesting to note that voters are “plus seven for public employee pensions and only plus 13 for teachers and police and firefighters,” as Greenberg pointed out.
The latter was a very effective symbol in defeating then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2005 initiatives but it may since have becoming overused.
The pollsters also noted a huge gender gap in that regard, with women plus 26 while men were minus 1.
Brown got more good news in the form of winning the Ocean Champion Award last night from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
And Be is moving to revive the Hydrogen Highway fueling stations proposed by Schwarzenegger to provide a needed infrastructure for hydrogen-fueled vehicles, just as he is for electric vehicles. Schwarzenegger launched the program in 2004 but it has languished since, with oil companies refusing to participate in the partnership. Now the state, through its Air Resources Board, will require it.
Speaking of ocean champions, Schwarzenegger’s friend and frequent director, James Cameron, on Monday became the first solo explorer to reach the deepest point in the oceans, the Mariana Trench. Cameron descended to a depth of nearly seven miles in a small submersible vehicle, spending over three hours in its Challenge Deep in the Pacific Ocean 200 miles from Guam. Cameron’s explorations will assist future plans by the space program with Jupiter and its moons.
It yields this priceless quote from far right blogger Jon Fleischman, a former state party vice chairman and ranking California Republican ideologist: “Raising taxes is a legitimate part of his history. But as a practical matter, a great number of conservatives will first learn that Reagan signed tax increases when they read this story. It’s just not a part of the narrative.”
Nope. Reality is just not a part of the narrative.
That’s all on the plus side for Brown, and it is quite a lot. On the minus side is that legislative Democrats are balking on his latest budget cuts. And there is little appetite among Democratic pols for public pension reform.
The public, as the USC poll shows, isn’t all that eager for it, either. But more efficiencies in government will have to be demonstrated to ensure the passage of Brown’s revenue initiative. And the public pension question is a very real problem.
The U.S. chief of naval operations, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, commenting yesterday at a conference in the Gulf, said he is “very confident” that the Navy can keep the Strait of Hormuz open in the event of an Iranian move to close it, which Tehran has threatened to do on several occasions in response to sanctions against its nuclear program.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is wrapping up his major trip around the global Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea.
Obama attended a second plenary session of the Nuclear Security Summit, then held a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani of Pakistan.
Following that, very early this morning Pacific Time, he departed Osan Air Base outside Seoul on Air Force One en route to Washington, DC.
At 4:55 PM Pacific, Obama lands at Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 5:10 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, and AfPak.
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 Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
** THE REAL GAME CHANGE: PALINISM’S RISE AND MODERATE REPUBLICANISM’S ECLIPSE.The term “game change,” like so many sports-oriented terms in politics, is decidedly over-used. But the events depicted in the Game Change film really do constitute just that, though not in the way that my friend Steve Schmidt, the top John McCain advisor who utters the phrase in the film and with whom I communicated throughout the period of the film, intended it.
The pick of Sarah Palin was intended to be a dynamic game changer in McCain’s 2008 race against Barack Obama. But it proved to be a different sort of game change. It was the harbinger of a virulent rightward move in Republican politics as we see in today’s presidential primaries, and the further devolution of the media culture into hysteria and hyper-partisanship. And it showed just what going for the win, the sine qua non of consultant culture, can end up meaning.
Now that Game Change has emerged as one of HBO’s biggest movies ever, in a steady rotation on the cable network, and the film itself has yielded widespread acclaim outside of the Palinista camp, it’s useful to pull back and look at the bigger import of the events the film depicts and the background against which they played out. … From my March 23rd essay.
** CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME.There’s a lot of hissing and moaning on the right in California, and among some avowedly middle-of-the-road pundits, about Governor Jerry Brown’s compromise with a left-labor coalition on his November revenue initiative. What’s the complaint? More taxes on the rich. Part of the complaint is about the fiscal volatility of relying more on people whose incomes can fluctuate. Part of it is about protecting the rich, a bottom-line GOP issue these days.
The fact is that if the Republican Party hadn’t determinedly taken itself even further to the right over the past several years, they wouldn’t be facing what shapes up in polling as popular soak-the-rich solutions. Republicans took themselves out of the governance play in California several years ago, ignoring what turned out to be a fateful warning speech about their steep decline from then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, turning into a reflexive Party of No. … From my March 22nd 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.
The Hunger Games, based on the best-selling series of dystopic scifi novels, enjoyed the third biggest opening weekend in history, and largest ever for a non-sequel.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $107 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $73 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 $7 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.
Aircraft assigned to Carrier Air Wing 1 arrived aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise earlier this month as Enterprise was already underway on the ship’s final deployment of its storied half-century history. Enterprise, which took part in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, is part of a three carrier US naval force in the Arabian Gulf region as the Iran crisis continues to percolate.
** OBAMA THIS WEEKEND. President Barack Obama is on the road for a major trip around the global Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea.
On Saturday travels to South Korea on Air Force One.
On Sunday, Obama attends early events pertaining to the global Nuclear Security Summit in South Korea.
After his open press arrival at Osan Air Base outside of Seoul, Obama ventures up to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between South Korea and North Korea where he visits with US troops serving on the Korean Peninsula.
The DMZ features the world’s biggest mine field. The US has 28,000 troops in South Korea, a larger force than the Canadian Army.
On Sunday afternoon, Obama holds a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Recep Erdogan of Turkey at the Grand Hyatt Hotel
Later in the afternoon, Obama holds a bilateral meeting with President Lee Myung-bak of the Republic of Korea at the Blue House, the official residence of the South Korean presidency.
Following that bilateral meeting, Obama and President Lee will hold a joint news conference at the Blue House.
On Sunday evening, Obama will attend a dinner with President Lee at the Blue House.
Here’s what Obama’s week ahead looks like, on the public side of things.
On Monday morning, Obama will deliver remarks at Hankuk University in Seoul on his ongoing efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Later in the day Obama will hold bilateral meetings with President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, President Hu Jintao of China and President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan. In the evening, Obama will attend a Nuclear Security Summit working dinner with other international leaders.
On Tuesday, Obama will attend the Nuclear Security Summit. Later in the day, Obma will depart Seoul en route to Washington, where he arrives on Tuesday evening.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House.
On Friday, Obama will attend campaign events and fundraisers in Burlington, Vermont, and Portland, Maine, returning to Washington in the evening.
As usual, Obama’s schedule has plenty of flexibility built in for dealing with crises.
Meanwhile, Rick Santorum is poised for a big win over Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in the Louisiana primary on Saturday as the Republican presidential race rolls on.
Ron Paul? Yep, still running. His only noteworthy move of late was to run a TV ad which seems to decry the media focus on Romney’s “Etch-a-sketch” campaign gaffe. Backstopping Romney yet again, in what is probably his biggest impact in a race which has seen him launch vicious, heavily funded ad attacks on Romney’s chief rivals but never on Romney himself.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, and AfPak.
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.
In his weekend video/radio address, President Barack Obama urged the House of Representatives to pass a bipartisan transportation bill to repair roads and bridges and provide construction jobs around the country.
** THE REAL GAME CHANGE: PALINISM’S RISE AND MODERATE REPUBLICANISM’S ECLIPSE.The term “game change,” like so many sports-oriented terms in politics, is decidedly over-used. But the events depicted in the Game Change film really do constitute just that, though not in the way that my friend Steve Schmidt, the top John McCain advisor who utters the phrase in the film and with whom I communicated throughout the period of the film, intended it.
The pick of Sarah Palin was intended to be a dynamic game changer in McCain’s 2008 race against Barack Obama. But it proved to be a different sort of game change. It was the harbinger of a virulent rightward move in Republican politics as we see in today’s presidential primaries, and the further devolution of the media culture into hysteria and hyper-partisanship. And it showed just what going for the win, the sine qua non of consultant culture, can end up meaning.
Now that Game Change has emerged as one of HBO’s biggest movies ever, in a steady rotation on the cable network, and the film itself has yielded widespread acclaim outside of the Palinista camp, it’s useful to pull back and look at the bigger import of the events the film depicts and the background against which they played out.
The move is terrific, cunningly cast, which is key in this sort of picture. Julianne Moore is dimensional and outstanding as Sarah Palin; Ed Harris makes for a mostly noble John McCain (as he did for another iconic American aviator, John Glenn in The Right Stuff); and Woody Harrelson is excellent as Steve Schmidt, who is actually the key character in the film.
I came to know Schmidt well in 2006 when he ran Arnold Schwarzenegger’s landslide re-election campaign as governor of California and communicated regularly with him throughout his time in John McCain’s campaign, not least around the Sarah Palin pick, which of course he championed. To his present chagrin, as he’s made abundantly clear.
In fact, the very first story on my New West Notes blog in January 2006 broke the news that Schmidt was coming aboard as Schwarzenegger’s campaign manager.
Schwarzenegger was in deep trouble after his 2005 special election agenda of more conservative reform initiatives came up decidedly short. Many Democrats figured he would be easy pickings if he even bothered to run for re-election.
But Schwarzenegger, with whom I was friendly well before he ran for governor in the dramatic 2003 California recall but with whom my communication became frayed during his 2005 special election adventure, determined to pull back from the abyss to which most of his team had helped lead him and re-tool his operation. As I also reported not long before Schmidt’s arrival, he brought a well-known Democratic operative, Susan Kennedy, on board as his new chief of staff.
I wrote that Schmidt was being brought on board as “a right-wing hatchet man” to balance Susan Kennedy, a pro-choice leader and lesbian married on Maui whose appointment enraged California’s far right.
Schwarzenegger’s then new communications director, Adam Mendelsohn, now Schwarzenegger’s longtime political advisor (whom I’d gotten to know several years earlier when he was a congressional district director and friend of a girlfriend), called and told me I had it wrong, that Schmidt was a reasonable and moderate pragmatist, as well as one of his best friends.
Early in our first meeting, I wasn’t so sure about that. …
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Northern California.
On Saturday morning, Brown speaks at a memorial service for former Marin County Supervisor Hal Brown at the Marin Civic Center Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium in San Rafael.
Hal Brown, who passed away recently from cancer, was the governor’s cousin. He served some 29 years on the Marin County Board of Supervisors after first being appointed by Brown to replace Barbara Boxer after her election to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Hal Brown went on to become his county’s most popular county supervisor, winning many elections and re-elections to his office.
** CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME.There’s a lot of hissing and moaning on the right in California, and among some avowedly middle-of-the-road pundits, about Governor Jerry Brown’s compromise with a left-labor coalition on his November revenue initiative. What’s the complaint? More taxes on the rich. Part of the complaint is about the fiscal volatility of relying more on people whose incomes can fluctuate. Part of it is about protecting the rich, a bottom-line GOP issue these days.
The fact is that if the Republican Party hadn’t determinedly taken itself even further to the right over the past several years, they wouldn’t be facing what shapes up in polling as popular soak-the-rich solutions. Republicans took themselves out of the governance play in California several years ago, ignoring what turned out to be a fateful warning speech about their steep decline from then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, turning into a reflexive Party of No. … From my March 22nd essay.
** JERRY BROWN DEALS AWAY TROUBLE ON THE LEFT.Governor Jerry Brown has dealt away some potential problems on the left to strengthen his chances of passing a revenue initiative in November.
Brown dealt with California’s chronic state budget crisis by making big cuts in 2011. But he couldn’t get Republicans to go along even with a public vote on extending 2009′s temporary tax hikes, and so has had to go to the ballot this year. After Brown and his allies succeeded in convincing a group of billionaires and former officeholders (the Think Long Committee) to back away from their own tax initiative plans, which would have lowered tax rates on the rich and corporations, likely muddying the electoral waters with a big money campaign even though they had little chance of success, he then had two other initiatives to deal with.
** 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.
The Hunger Games, based on the best-selling series of dystopic scifi novels, is en route to one of the biggest opening weekends in movie history.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $106.87 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $73 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 $7 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.
The Nuclear Security Summit this weekend in South Korea will be discussing the state of efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons — notably with regard to Iran and North Korea — as well as the state of nuclear power a year after the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.
FRIDAY FUNHOUSE.
The Republican presidential race careens on, etch-a-sketches and professed lack of concern about unemployment and all, as do the several geopolitical crises President Barack Obama is attempting to manage, crises which are directly driving a big political problem for the president just as he is resurgent, i.e., the price of gasoline.
Back in California politics, Governor Jerry Brown pushes forward with his big November initiative on revenues and announces a big move to support a new generation of electric vehicles.
After Mitt Romney seemed to regain the upper hand with a 47-35 win in Tuesday’s Illinois primary, Rick Santorum seems set to return the favor in Saturday’s Louisiana primary. Romney just can’t win in the South, even with all his financial advantages and the continued presence in the race of Newt Gingrich.
But he has another new problem that may be equally as problematic, his top communications aide’s characterization of the Romney campaign as an “etch-a-sketch” venture. Just shake the board clear of primary policy stands and change it all around for the general election campaign, if there is one.
Not surprisingly, Democrats continue to have a great deal of nasty fun with Mitt Romney and his top communications aide’s reference to the “Etch-A-Sketch” campaign. Fair? Unfair? How about precisely on target for the chameleon candidate?
Obama wrapped up his “American Energy” tour yesterday, emphasizing his commitment both to renewable energy and to sustainable oil and natural gas development.
He was buoyed by some very good economic news, indicating that jobless claims are down to the lowest point since February 2008. That’s when many were fervently denying that the US was in any recession, much less the worst recession since the Great Depression, not that they will say anything like that now.
But Obama was also clearly on the defensive on gasoline prices, driven much higher in part due to the heightened geopolitical risk factor caused by the various crises Obama is attempting to manage, especially the Iran/Israel crisis.
The Keystone XL pipeline project plays heavily into this, which is why Obama urged its southern portion while wanting to study the main part down from Canada, which many environmentalists imagined had been killed last year. As I discussed yesterday here on NWN, Keystone is quite popular, not that much is known about it, of course.
Obama will try to rally more support for the diplomatic and economic suppression of Iran’s nuclear program, and of North Korea’s, this weekend at the Nuclear Security Summit in South Korea.
In addition to the focus on Iran, look also for a lot of talk about North Korea’s satellite launch next month — which also serves as a test for a long-range missile — in the wake of agreeing to back away from its nuclear weapons program in exchange for major food aid.
While all this plays out, and the US publicly and reportedly privately urges Israel not to attack Iran, we have no less than three aircraft carrier strike groups in and around the Arabian Gulf. Ordinarily, there is one. In time of crisis, there are two. The three we have on station there now are the Enterprise, on the final deployment of a 50-year career that began with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Abraham Lincoln, and Carl Vinson.
Secretary of State Hillary Afghanistan, negotiating with Afghan officials, appears to be getting closer to an ongoing status of forces agreement allowing a residual US force to remain in the country after the general withdrawal.
The Afghans are seeking veto power over night raids. They already achieved future control over the prisons.
But another picture is getting messier. The civilian lawyer for the Army sergeant accused of massacring Afghan civilians outside Kandahar, who represented serial killer Ted Bundy, says there is very little actual evidence against his client and that he intends “to put the war on trial.”
And trial there will be, as the Army charged the sergeant today with 17 counts of murder.
Finding himself in a less trying situation with regard to his November revenue initiative, after forging his compromise measure last week, is Governor Jerry Brown. He just has heiress Molly Munger’s terminally ill initiative to deal with now. Oh, and potential opposition from well-heeled donors against tax hikes on the well-heeled. We’ll see if anything like that emerges.
Today in Santa Barbara, at a Wall Street Journal conference on the intersection of ecological concern and economic opportunity, Brown talked up what is happening in California.
He also chose today to announce a big move to create the infrastructure for electric vehicles in California, using a $120 million settlement with one of the rapacious merchant power companies that profiteered in the California power crisis a decade ago to fund the construction of a statewide network of charging stations for zero-emission vehicles.
But, fascinating and important as all this is, there remains one even larger happening this weekend: The return of Mad Men.
I’ll have some things on that ahead, as well.
President Barack Obama announced a surprise pick this morning to head the World Bank, Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim. He’s a medical doctor and with a strong background in global health and soft development programs.
** NEW FEATURE COMING UP … THE REAL GAME CHANGE: PALINISM’S RISE AND MODERATE REPUBLICANISM’S ECLIPSE.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington and en route to South Korea.
Obama received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then met with senior advisors in the Oval Office.
And he announced his pick of Dr. Jim Yong Kim, president of Dartmouth College, to head the World Bank, something that was not on his original schedule for the day.
Obama is prepping for this weekend’s Nuclear Security Summit in South Korea.
At 8:45 PM Pacific, Obama departs the White House on Marine One en route Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Air Force One.
At midnight Pacific, Obama departs Joint Base Andrews on Air Force One en route to Seoul, South Korea.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, and AfPak.
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.
** CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME.There’s a lot of hissing and moaning on the right in California, and among some avowedly middle-of-the-road pundits, about Governor Jerry Brown’s compromise with a left-labor coalition on his November revenue initiative. What’s the complaint? More taxes on the rich. Part of the complaint is about the fiscal volatility of relying more on people whose incomes can fluctuate. Part of it is about protecting the rich, a bottom-line GOP issue these days.
The fact is that if the Republican Party hadn’t determinedly taken itself even further to the right over the past several years, they wouldn’t be facing what shapes up in polling as popular soak-the-rich solutions. Republicans took themselves out of the governance play in California several years ago, ignoring what turned out to be a fateful warning speech about their steep decline from then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, turning into a reflexive Party of No.
Brown, who crushed Meg Whitman’s biggest spending non-presidential campaign in American history as he won a historic third term in November 2010, pushed a more centrist course last year, spending months trying to work with Republican legislators in endless rounds of talks. He began with a big compromise, huge budget cuts delivered on the barrelhead in advance, then spent months working to get a handful of Republican votes needed to surmount California’s unusual two-thirds requirement for revenue increases. (Tax cuts, of which there have been many, especially in flush times, require only a simple majority.)
Logically, Brown’s plan should have worked. He put forward a tough-minded balanced plan that showed dramatically from the beginning his willingness to cut as well as tax. But logic isn’t that big in Sacramento, and it’s not at all big with the Republican Party, long dominated by right-wingers, that became even more conservative even after enjoying an unexpected windfall of success with the much more moderate Arnold Schwarzenegger.
According to well-informed sources, Schwarzenegger, following his landslide election as governor in the 2003 California recall election, met with state Republican leaders and urged that they begin finding ways to appeal more to women voters, on issues such as education and health care. They weren’t responsive.
After his near-death experience in 2005 pushing more conservative initiatives dealing with nonetheless real issues, Schwarzenegger swept to a landslide re-election in 2006, during what was otherwise a very good year for Democrats, pushing an agenda of creative centrism. Clearly he had a very good idea of what it took to succeed, but noticed that most of his party kept on moving further to the right nonetheless.
After an increasingly uneasy experience dealing with the party through much of 2007, Schwarzenegger decided to address matters head on. It didn’t turn out as he’d hoped.
Texas Governor Rick Perry’s presidential candidacy turned out badly, despite having a party that was ready to nominate someone like him, but he neatly demonstrated the ascendance of the far right in the California Republican Party four-and-a-half years ago.
That’s when Schwarzenegger, having won re-election by a 17-point landslide margin 10 months earlier, decided to level with his fellow Republicans at their state party convention outside Palm Springs.
I previewed the speech on my New West Notes blog after reading it the day before. …
** FROM THE JERRY FILES. Governor Jerry Brown is in Southern California and Northern California.
As I revealed here a few weeks ago would be the case, Brown was in Santa Barbara this morning where he was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal’s managing editor Robert Thomson on how California’s environmental policies are impacting the economy and driving growth, as part of the newspaper’s ECO:nomics Conference.
He also announced a big move to create the infrastructure for electric vehicles in California, as I discuss in the Friday Funhouse column above.
** JERRY BROWN DEALS AWAY TROUBLE ON THE LEFT.Governor Jerry Brown has dealt away some potential problems on the left to strengthen his chances of passing a revenue initiative in November.
Brown dealt with California’s chronic state budget crisis by making big cuts in 2011. But he couldn’t get Republicans to go along even with a public vote on extending 2009′s temporary tax hikes, and so has had to go to the ballot this year. After Brown and his allies succeeded in convincing a group of billionaires and former officeholders (the Think Long Committee) to back away from their own tax initiative plans, which would have lowered tax rates on the rich and corporations, likely muddying the electoral waters with a big money campaign even though they had little chance of success, he then had two other initiatives to deal with.
** MAKING SENSE OF KALEIDOSCOPIC PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS.Presidential politics has gone kaleidoscopic. Between Mitt Romney’s split decision on a not so Super Tuesday for him and the big geopolitically-driven crises President Barack Obama has to manage, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. Here’s a view of the forest. … From my March 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.
The Hunger Games, based on a best-selling novel about a dystopic future, is on track for one of the biggest opening weekends in movie history.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $107 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $73 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 $7 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.
Sticking the landing. Literally. Helo stunt flying is risky enough, much less in the thin air of the mountains of Afghanistan. Reportedly, no one was injured in this crash of a US Army helicopter.
** QUICK HITS.Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who has been delivering a number of pointed messages on the Iran crisis, said today that the threat of an Israeli attack may be forcing Iran to hold off on deciding to proceed further on developing a nuclear weapon. He acknowledged that the US and Israel have different perspectives on when a strike might be necessary, which he attributes to greater US strike capability and hence a longer time frame for decision. He didn’t say that it might simply be a bad idea. Meanwhile, a new poll of Israeli public opinion shows strong opposition to an Israeli attack without active US military participation. Only 23% support “blue and white” aka unilateral Israeli action. … Sketchy times. Not surprisingly, Democrats continue to have a great deal of nasty fun with Mitt Romney and his top communications aide’s reference to the “Etch-A-Sketch” campaign. Fair? Unfair? How about precisely on target for the chameleon candidate? … Who’s the top American governor on Twitter? Why, it’s Jerry Brown, according to The Hill. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who naturally has more followers than Jerry, was the leader when he was in office. … And that’s the big California political news this afternoon. As it were.
** NEW POLL: KEYSTONE PIPELINE STRONGLY FAVORED. Want to know what President Barack Obama was doing talking up oil drilling in Oklahoma?
Not that most know much about it, despite more than a little media coverage, indicating the environmentalists haven’t done much of a job of publicizing concerns with the project.
The pipeline is very heavily favored by Republicans and by people in the regions through which the pipeline would pass.
This is why I wrote in December that any celebration over Obama’s denying the project was decidedly premature.
A solid majority of Americans think the U.S. government should approve of building the Keystone XL pipeline, while 29% think it should not. Republicans are almost twice as likely as Democrats to want the government to approve the oil pipeline. About half of independents also approve.
These data were collected as part of Gallup’s annual Environment survey, conducted March 8-11, 2012. The Keystone XL oil pipeline is a politically divisive project, which President Obama and the Republicans in Congress have been battling over. The proposal from TransCanada Corporation for building a pipeline to carry crude oil from Canada down to the Gulf of Mexico, first made in 2005, needs approval from the U.S. president because it crosses an international border. The Republicans in Congress inserted a provision on the pipeline in the payroll tax extension bill late last year, but in January, President Obama rejected TransCanada’s permit entirely. However, the administration is allowing TransCanada to reapply for the permit it needs.
The pipeline would travel through the Midwest and the South, and Americans in those two regions are the most likely to approve of the project. Nearly 7 in 10 Midwesterners want the government to approve the building of the pipeline and 61% of those in the South do as well. There has been discussion in Washington and in the media about the potential new jobs the pipeline project would create, which may partly explain the higher support seen in those regions. Americans in the West and East are less likely to approve. …
Appearing this morning in Oklahoma, President Barack Obama defended his administration’s handling of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, saying Congress made it impossible for him to make an informed decision.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … THE REAL GAME CHANGE: PALINISM’S RISE AND MODERATE REPUBLICANISM’S ECLIPSE and CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Oklahoma, Ohio, and Washington.
Early this morning, Pacific Time, Obama delivered remarks in a pipe yard outside Cushing, Oklahoma.
He backed the building of the southern portion of what would be the highly controversial Keystone XL pipeline to carry synthetic Canadian oil to Texas.
Obama then flew on Air Force One from Cushing, Oklahoma to Columbus, Ohio.
At 12:05 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Columbus, Ohio.
At 12:35 PM Pacific, Obama tours the Center for Automotive Research at Ohio State University.
At 1:25 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at Ohio State University.
At 2:20 PM Pacific, Obama departs Columbus, Ohio on Air Force One en route Washington.
At 3:30 PM Pacific, Obama lands at Joint Base Andrews, where he boards Marine One.
At 3:45 PM Pacific, Obama lands on the South Lawn of the White House.
At 3:55 PM Pacific, Obama hosts a reception for Greek Independence Day in the East Room.
Obama is on his “American Energy” tour, emphasizing his commitment both to renewable energy and to sustainable oil and natural gas development.
He got some very good economic news this morning.
It seems that jobless claims are down to the lowest point since February 2008. That’s when many were fervently denying that the US was in any recession, much less the worst recession since the Great Depression, not that they will say anything like that now.
Secretary of State Hillary Afghanistan, negotiating with Afghan officials, appears to be getting closer to an ongoing status of forces agreement allowing a residual US force to remain in the country after the general withdrawal.
The Afghans are seeking veto power over night raids. They already achieved future control over the prisons.
But another picture is getting messier. The civilian lawyer for the Army sergeant accused of massacring Afghan civilians outside Kandahar, who represented serial killer Ted Bundy, says there is very little actual evidence against his client and that he intends “to put the war on trial.”
Obama is heading to South Korea this weekend for the Nuclear Security Summit. Look for a lot of talk about North Korea’s satellite launch next month — which also serves as a test for a long-range missile — in the wake of agreeing to back away from its nuclear weapons program in exchange for major food aid.
And of course, look for talk about the Iran crisis. But don’t look for US aircraft carriers, because they are off to the Arabian Gulf.
Three of them, at least, with their accompanying strike groups. They are the Enterprise, on the final deployment of a 50-year career that began with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Abraham Lincoln, and Carl Vinson.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, and AfPak.
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 Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events as of this morning.
On Friday, as I revealed here a few weeks ago, Brown will be interviewed by the Wall Street Journal’s managing editor Robert Thomson on how California’s environmental policies are impacting the economy and driving growth, as part of the newspaper’s ECO:nomics Conference in Santa Barbara.
Some 300 business and policy leaders will be on hand to weigh risks and opportunities in markets that are impacted by the environment.
Yesterday he met with 102 year-old World War II veteran Bea Cohen in the Governor’s Office as part of celebrations honoring Women’s Military History Week. Cohen is believed to be the oldest living female World War II veteran in California and one of the oldest in the country.
A native of Buhush, Romania, she witnessed the start of World War I before immigrating to the United States as a child. When the second World War started, she worked at the Douglas Aircraft Company in Los Angeles before enlisting in the U.S. Army. As a private first class, she was assigned to Elveden, England, working in secret communications. Today she lives in Los Angeles and still attends meetings at the Veterans Home in West LA.
** JERRY BROWN DEALS AWAY TROUBLE ON THE LEFT.Governor Jerry Brown has dealt away some potential problems on the left to strengthen his chances of passing a revenue initiative in November.
Brown dealt with California’s chronic state budget crisis by making big cuts in 2011. But he couldn’t get Republicans to go along even with a public vote on extending 2009′s temporary tax hikes, and so has had to go to the ballot this year. After Brown and his allies succeeded in convincing a group of billionaires and former officeholders (the Think Long Committee) to back away from their own tax initiative plans, which would have lowered tax rates on the rich and corporations, likely muddying the electoral waters with a big money campaign even though they had little chance of success, he then had two other initiatives to deal with.
** MAKING SENSE OF KALEIDOSCOPIC PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS.Presidential politics has gone kaleidoscopic. Between Mitt Romney’s split decision on a not so Super Tuesday for him and the big geopolitically-driven crises President Barack Obama has to manage, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. Here’s a view of the forest. … From my March 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.
The Hunger Games, based on the dystopic future novel, opens tomorrow and looks set to be the next big youth smash hit.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM AL JAZEERA. With the US entangled in major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $105 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $71 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 $9 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.
The lawyer for the Army sergeant accused of massacring Afghan civilians outside Kandahar says there is very little actual evidence against his client and that he intends “to put the war on trial.”
** QUICK HITS. President Barack Obama is heading to South Korea this weekend for the Nuclear Security Summit. Look for a lot of talk about North Korea’s satellite launch next month — which also serves as a test for a long-range missile — in the wake of agreeing to back away from its nuclear weapons program in exchange for major food aid. And of course, look for talk about the Iran crisis. But don’t look for US aircraft carriers, because they are off to the Arabian Gulf. … Governor Jerry Brown has named the California poet laureate. He is Juan Felipe Herrera, an acclaimed author and University of California at Riverside professor hailed as a hybrid artist. The UCLA grad is the son of migrant workers from Mexico. … There’s been a great deal of speculation that Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson would back away from continuing to bankroll Newt Gingrich’s super PAC, especially in the wake of recent setbacks for him in Macau. (Which you have not heard about.) But no, Adelson has put another $2.5 million in for the former speaker of the House, and more may be on the way. … But is this to help Gingrich? Or Mitt Romney? After all, at this point, Gingrich is largely spoiling the candidacy of the man that Romney calls a spoiler, Rick Santorum.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … THE REAL GAME CHANGE: PALINISM’S RISE AND MODERATE REPUBLICANISM’S ECLIPSE and CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington, Nevada, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He then flew to Las Vegas, Nevada on Air Force One.
At 1:10 PM Pacific, Obama tours Copper Mountain Solar 1 Facility in Boulder City, Nevada.
At 1:20 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks at Copper Mountain Solar 1 Facility in Boulder City.
At 2:50 PM Pacific, Obama departs Las Vegas, Nevada on Air Force One en route Roswell, New Mexico.
What, no stop at Area 51 first?
At 4:20 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Roswell, New Mexico.
At 5:15 PM Pacific, Obama delivers remarks on expanding domestic oil and gas production in Maljamar, New Mexico.
At 6:35 PM Pacific, Obama departs Roswell, New Mexico on Air Force One en route Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
At 7:50 PM Pacific, Obama arrives in Oklahoma City.
Obama is on his “American Energy” tour, emphasizing his commitment both to renewable energy and to sustainable oil and natural gas development.
Mitt Romney won big last night in Illinois, helped by several Rick Santorum miscues — like saying he doesn’t care about the unemployment rate, thus negating his innate blue collar appeal — and the continued presence of Newt Gingrich in the race.
Now the race moves on to Louisiana, where Santorum has a better chance than the Prairie State, where Romney led throughout, despite serious tightening two weeks ago.
Romney is in trouble today for an idiotic statement. This one made by a top aide, rather than himself, which characterized the chameleon candidate as an “etch-a-sketch” candidate.
Hey, I didn’t say it, they did!
Meanwhile, as part of its energy strategy, the Obama Administration is moving forward with plans to impose tariffs on Chinese solar panels, arguing that China is trying to take over the burgeoning market with unfair trade and labor practices.
Campaigning today in Louisiana, Rick Santorum hit Mitt Romney, yesterday’s big winner in Illinois, for his top aide’s comment today that Romney is “an etch-a-sketch” candidate who would shake up and recast his “views” for the general election.
It’s one of the great ironies that China is so aggressive on green tech, since the PRC refuses to move on greenhouse gas reductions and has been very aggressive in coal-fired electric power.
Mixed signals today out of Israel, where on Monday Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Iran is verging on the “zone of immunity” in which no air strikes will have much effect on their rogue nuclear program.
Today the word is that Israel is eager to give at least three months to allow new sanctions against Iran to bite.
I wonder if Israel expects us to have three aircraft carrier strike groups hanging around the Gulf three months from now.
I also wonder how much Israel really expects from the new sanctions.
The Obama Administration today declared Japan exempt from Iran oil sanctions, saying it is pleased with Japan’s voluntary efforts to limit its use of Iranian oil.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, and AfPak.
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 Northern California and Southern California.
He spoke this morning in Palm Springs at the funeral of Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians Chairman Richard Milanovich.
Brown speaks on Friday outside Santa Barbara at a major conference on “eco:nomics” — environmental considerations driving sustainable economic practices and greentech — sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, as I revealed here a few weeks ago.
The left-labor coalition behind the “Millionaires Tax” initiative in California is dropping its efforts to qualify the measure as a back-up, saying it expects that the compromise version negotiated with Governor Jerry Brown will make it. The group had initially said it would drop its own drive, then said that it would have a back-up. Brown will have a back-up.
** JERRY BROWN DEALS AWAY TROUBLE ON THE LEFT.Governor Jerry Brown has dealt away some potential problems on the left to strengthen his chances of passing a revenue initiative in November.
Brown dealt with California’s chronic state budget crisis by making big cuts in 2011. But he couldn’t get Republicans to go along even with a public vote on extending 2009′s temporary tax hikes, and so has had to go to the ballot this year. After Brown and his allies succeeded in convincing a group of billionaires and former officeholders (the Think Long Committee) to back away from their own tax initiative plans, which would have lowered tax rates on the rich and corporations, likely muddying the electoral waters with a big money campaign even though they had little chance of success, he then had two other initiatives to deal with.
** MAKING SENSE OF KALEIDOSCOPIC PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS.Presidential politics has gone kaleidoscopic. Between Mitt Romney’s split decision on a not so Super Tuesday for him and the big geopolitically-driven crises President Barack Obama has to manage, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. Here’s a view of the forest. … From my March 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 major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $107 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $73 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 $7 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.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie campaigned over the weekend in Illinois for Mitt Romney, who hopes to recoup from some recent major losses to Rick Santorum.
** QUICK HITS. Mitt Romney is projected a big winner tonight in the Illinois Republican presidential primary, blowing open what had been a relatively close race last week with Rick Santorum. The ex-Pennsulvania senator has made several mistakes of late, including saying that he doesn’t care about the unemployment rate. Oops. … The left-labor coalition behind the “Millionaires Tax” initiative in California is dropping its efforts to qualify the measure as a back-up, saying it expects that the compromise version negotiated with Governor Jerry Brown will make it. The group had initially said it would drop its own drive, then said that it would have a back-up. Brown will have a back-up.
TEEING UP TUESDAY.
A big week in presidential politics, with Republican primaries in Illinois and Louisiana on tap, and even bigger doings in geopolitical crises. In California politics, the November revenue initiatives scramble, now on course of sorts, plays out further.
Today is the ninth anniversary of the US and allied invasion of Iraq.
Mitt Romney, who does very well in the US colonies won during the Spanish-American War, took a low-key Puerto Rico primary over the weekend. He has bigger challenges in Illinois today and Louisiana on Saturday.
Polling indicates that Romney will recover handily in Illinois following some big recent losses to Rick Santorum in Alabama, Mississippi, and Kansas. Louisiana may be another matter. If Newt Gingrich weren’t still in the race, however, Illinois would not be at all a comfortable experience for the putative on and off frontrunner.
Iran’s banks and other finance-oriented institutions have been stopped from using the Swift system to make or receive payments. SWIFT is The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. This is a move by the US and other global financial powers as further sanction against Iran’s nuclear program, and will make Iranian trade that much more difficult.
But word of potential Israeli air strikes is spinning up again in the wake of comments by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who says that Iran’s “zone of immunity” to military strikes capable of knocking out its nuclear program has nearly arrived.
The US, which is discouraging military action while new sanctions kick in, will soon have three aircraft carrier strike groups in and around the Arabian Gulf region. Normally, there is only one on-hand. In times of crisis, there are two.
USS Enterprise, on its last deployment in its half-century history, is joining the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike groups.
Enterprise was first dispatched to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, a historical event with some parallels to the Iran crisis, so it is fitting that its last deployment comes now to the Gulf region.
This morning in Washington, Marine General John Allen, our top commander in the Afghan War, testified that he won’t finish assessments for further potential troop witdrawals until after the November election.
Though that wasn’t how he put it, of course.
Things have gone from very bad to decidedly worse there of late, as I have mentioned once or twice.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, looking to survive in the post-US aftermath, has become sharply critical of the American role, and even of the narrative around the disastrous massacre of 16 civilians outside Kandahar the weekend before last.
The Syrian crisis also careens onward, with the Assad regime continuing its bloody crackdown on opposition figures and concentrations, despite widespread international condemnation and sanctions.
Dozens were killed today also in terrorist bombings across Iraq, marking the ninth anniversary of the US invasion.
The Iraqi government is also coming under fire internationally for allowing Iran overflight rights to provide arms to the Assad regime in Syria, in violation of Arab League policy. Baghdad will shortly host the Arab League summit.
Back in California politics, things are much less hot. Governor Jerry Brown, having dealt away trouble on the left by producing a compromise revenue initiative with a left-labor coalition that recognized it probably couldn’t mount a full-scale campaign for its own initiative but refused to abandon the field entirely, is moving forward on an accelerated timetable to qualify the measure.
Meanwhile, heiress Molly Munger, who stubbornly insists that her initiative, which would raise income taxes on virtually everyone to benefit the schools but leave the general fund mostly in the lurch, is trying to pump up the polling numbers for her measure with a hasty TV ad campaign.
Her scenario still has a ways to play out.
Brown is heartened to see that relatively few Republican legislative candidates — now running in open primary scenarios in new districts — have signed the no-tax pledge that proved to be such a hamstringing of governance over most of the past decade.
Had the Republican legislative caucuses been less constrained last year, of course, none of these initiative machinations would be necessary. And taxes on the rich, a great bugbear for, well, the rich, and major elements of the business community, not to mention a few pundits, would be less likely to go up.
The open primary, which Brown supported, was championed by his predecessor, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, as was the redistricting reform initiative. Which Brown was much more circumspect about.
Actually, he was pretty circumspect about the open primary, too, not wanting to give potential Democratic rivals any oxygen in the race as he cleared the primary field, but he was for it.
Here’s what Obama’s week ahead looks like. As usual, his public schedule doesn’t reflect much of what he is dealing with behinds the scenes, and has plenty of flexibility built in.
On Tuesday, Obama will welcome Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Enda Kenny of Ireland to the White House as a late celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. They and Vice President Joe O’Biden will attend a St. Patrick’s Day lunch at the U.S. Capitol. In the evening, the Obamas will host a St. Patrick’s Day reception at the White House.
On Wednesday, Obama will begin a two-day trip to highlight his policy to develop the new energy economy in Boulder City, Nevada where he will visit the Copper Mountain Solar 1 Facility, the largest photovoltaic plant operating in the country with nearly one million solar panels powering 17,000 homes. Obama will then travel to oil and gas production fields located on federal lands outside of Carlsbad, New Mexico, an area home to some 70 active drilling rigs.
On Thursday, Obama will travel to the Cushing, Oklahoma area to discuss the sustainable development petroleum energy infrastructure. He will wrap up the trip at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, home to some of the country’s most advanced energy-related research and development. That evening, back at the White House, he will host a reception in recognition of Greek Independence Day.
On Friday, Obama will attend meetings at the White House.
Marine General John Allen, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, testified today in Washington that winding down the decade-plus war is on track.
** NEW COLUMNS COMING UP … THE REAL “GAME CHANGE” and CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME.
** OBAMA TODAY. President Barack Obama is in Washington.
Obama has received the daily intelligence and economic briefings in the Oval Office.
He and Vice President Joe O’Biden then met with Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny in the Oval Office.
Obama, Biden, and Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny attended a St. Patrick’s Day lunch at the United States Capitol.
At 1:30 PM Pacific, Obama and Biden meet with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in the Oval Office.
At 4 PM Pacific, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama host a St. Patrick’s Day reception in the East Room.
Obama is monitoring several geopolitical crises involving the Arab Awakening, Iran and Israel, Iraq, and AfPak.
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 Northern California.
He has no scheduled public events.
Brown’s pick to head the troubled California National Guard, Major General David Baldwin, was confirmed by the state Senate on a 35-0 vote. He had previously sailed through the Senate Rules Committee despite coming under serious fire from old guard Guard elements.
Baldwin, a paratrooper who has served two tours in the Afghan War, was deputy commander of the 101st Airborne Division’s tactical command post in Afghanistan when Brown recalled him last year to take over the state Guard.
Brown also had Baldwin promoted from colonel to two-star general, which is quite a jump all at once.
** JERRY BROWN DEALS AWAY TROUBLE ON THE LEFT.Governor Jerry Brown has dealt away some potential problems on the left to strengthen his chances of passing a revenue initiative in November.
Brown dealt with California’s chronic state budget crisis by making big cuts in 2011. But he couldn’t get Republicans to go along even with a public vote on extending 2009′s temporary tax hikes, and so has had to go to the ballot this year. After Brown and his allies succeeded in convincing a group of billionaires and former officeholders (the Think Long Committee) to back away from their own tax initiative plans, which would have lowered tax rates on the rich and corporations, likely muddying the electoral waters with a big money campaign even though they had little chance of success, he then had two other initiatives to deal with.
** MAKING SENSE OF KALEIDOSCOPIC PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS.Presidential politics has gone kaleidoscopic. Between Mitt Romney’s split decision on a not so Super Tuesday for him and the big geopolitically-driven crises President Barack Obama has to manage, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds. Here’s a view of the forest. … From my March 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 major military operations 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. 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 from the Russia Today channel. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the state-run 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 $106 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
This is up about $72 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 $8 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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