1) I'm not going to do the Area Votes in Congress thing this week because there wasn't much going on in the week prior to this one. The only vote I wanted to highlight was on H Res 1190 by the Repugs to keep Democrats from using a "self-executing rule" to both pass the Senate health bill and change parts they dislike (the writeup is here).
As you might expect, all local area Democrats in the House voted against the measure, with all Repugs voting in favor. All Democrats, that is, except the pitiful John Adler and Tim Holden who, in their stupidity, opposed health care reform (to respond to Holden, click here – as far as I know, Adler doesn't have a primary opponent, but he should).
2) Someone named Jamie M. Fly at Irrational Spew Online tells us the following about the arms control agreement signed today by Presidents Obama and Medvedev of Russia (built upon the START treaty with an effective term of ten years, reducing nuclear missiles and launchers – more here).
And I know this will be hard to believe coming from Fly, but his opinion is negative (lather, rinse, repeat)…
Today's announcement only increases the danger that this administration will continue to neglect U.S. allies in Europe while it "resets" relations with Russia. In 2010, arms control and disarmament should not be the raison d'être of U.S.-Russia relations, let alone of American foreign policy. In its rush to make nice with Moscow, this administration has too often overlooked the real concerns of key U.S. allies such as Georgia, which faces continued threats and provocations by Russian military forces. Even the Czech Republic, which will host the treaty's signing ceremony in early April, will find that occasion an unfortunate consolation prize after Czech leaders were humiliated last fall when President Obama abruptly changed course and canceled plans to deploy a missile-defense radar in that country, failing to notify the Czechs in advance.
Well, says Fly; he's partly right, but as usual, there's another side to this (here)…
Jiří Paroubek, the chairman of the country's Social Democrats, hailed the U.S. decision as "a great victory for the Czech people." The Communists also welcomed the decision. So did the Green Party, which has stressed from the very beginning that they would have supported a NATO-run system but not one built and run by the United States. Missile defense opponents from areas that were to host parts of the planned system didn't hide their enthusiasm for Obama's decision. Local media, however, were quick to point out that their joy wouldn't last, since the $73 million promised by the previous government in an attempt to buy their support will most likely disappear as well.
On the other side, the Civic Democratic Party expressed disappointment with the U.S. decision. Mirek Topolánek, the party's leader and current Czech prime minister, was widely quoted as saying the decision was a sign that Washington has lost interest in Central Europe and that it gave in to Russia. Jan Vidím, a Civic Democrat and chair of the parliamentary committee for defense, was even bolder, saying the decision was "a betrayal" and a sign of "cowardice" on Obama's part in the face of Russian pressure.
The story also tells us that two-thirds of those Czechs polled opposed the deal, including the villagers interviewed for this 2007 BBC story.
"Missile defense" is the moronic dream of Republican hawks who aren't honest enough to admit that it will never work, though it is bound to create untold riches for defense contractors who would be only too happy to engage in the futile pursuit of this technology aptly dubbed "Star Wars" (if any of those supporting it were to try explaining how it could have prevented the 9/11 attacks, maybe I'll listen to them).
3) And my oh my, is Bushco's Dana Perino (now with Fix Noise) in a snit (here)…
(With the student loan reform bill just passed) Competition and choice have been taken away in the student loan market. If the tables were turned, Democrats would be crying foul and demanding an ethics investigation. The American people deserve to know what happened.
You want to know what happened, Dana? Fine; read this (including the following)…
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A landmark measure to make college more affordable and create jobs that stay in the U.S. at no cost to taxpayers will be included in the historic health care legislation scheduled for an upcoming vote in Congress, U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, announced today. The measure represents the single largest investment in federal student aid in history, and includes many of President Obama's key education initiatives.
"This legislation offers the most sweeping changes to the federal student loan program in a generation," said Miller, who unveiled the details of the package this morning. "This is really about making a simple choice. Congress can either continue the longstanding boondoggle that rewards banks with tens of billions of dollars in subsidies at the expense of families and taxpayers – or we can invest that money directly in students and America's world economic leadership.
…
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this change would generate $61 billion in savings over 10 years that will be used to boost Pell Grant scholarships, make student loans more manageable for borrowers to repay, and strengthen community colleges.
Private lenders and banks would still have a role in servicing all federal student loans, which would guarantee borrowers high-quality customer services, maintain jobs in the private sector, and even protect jobs from being shipped overseas. Direct government loans, unlike loans made by banks, must be serviced by U.S. workers..
The news release on Congressman Miller's site tells us that the vast majority of student loans are "direct" from the government anyway, as opposed to "subsidized" loans by financial entities who really don't even need to be part of the equation (they ended up that way as part of a scam perpetrated by the Repugs when they ran Congress, including a certain House Minority Leader, as noted here).
And this is part of a tradition of congressional Democrats reforming the student loan process; related legislation includes the College Opportunity and Affordability Act and the Student Loan Sunshine Act (noted here in the same post in which Perino once lambasted the "do-nothing" Congress responsible for these measures).
4) Finally, if you think Baby Newton Leroy Gingrich (including his "American Solutions" outfit) is an unlikely champion of free speech, you're not alone; as noted here…
On his first day in office, President Obama issued a memo calling for greater transparency and accountability regarding the government's handling of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
…
(However) According to a new audit from the National Security Archive at George Washington University, only 13 out of 90 government agencies could document concrete changes in their FOIA practice as a result of the memo. The audit also found that only four agencies reported more releases and fewer denials from last year and that old requests -- some as old as 18 years -- were still pending.
The American Solutions post con-vee-niently neglects to mention the following from the linked New York Times story…
The White House, however, took issue with the group's methodology and said that the administration had made clear progress in turning around an executive branch that is often averse to public disclosures.
"What we have done this year is to build the infrastructure to build a lasting change," Norm Eisen, the special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, said Sunday.
"It's not enough for us to make initial, strong pronouncements. How do you really turn the battleship to achieve a lasting impact?" he asked. He said that throughout the executive branch, public information officers "are really trying to turn that battleship, and the initial returns are positive," with more documents being released in the last year under Freedom of Information Act, or F.O.I.A., requests. But "there's much more to do" and it will probably take another year before the changes are fully seen, he added.
As you read the American Solutions post, though, what you end up discovering is that this is all a lead-in to some alleged conspiracy (yet another "-gate"), or, as Gingrich and his pals put it, "the continuing saga of trying to find out from the (Department of the Interior) the results of the six month long public comment period for new offshore oil and gas development. After numerous delays and extensions, DOI finally sent us a partial response which included internal emails revealing a deliberate attempt to hide the results of the comment period from the American people."
By the way, reading about the "numerous delays and extensions" reveals a case study in how the right-wing noise machine influences simpatico politicians (including some Democrats who should know better) by manufacturing imagined conspiracies and cover-ups (hilarious, actually, when you consider what the last Republican to occupy An Oval Office did concerning the Freedom of Information Act, as noted here).
I'm not going to waste any more time on what Gingrich alleges here, since it was established long ago that we're not going to "drill, baby, drill" our way to energy independence, which should be the ultimate goal here.
Besides, Gingrich is, to say the least, an unlikely free speech advocate, since he advocated here for what would be tantamount to a new Sedition Act (and as noted here, he is responsible for the repulsive and cowardly statement today that Democrats are somehow responsible for recent death threats and violence "because of the way they conducted the health care debate").
I and many others will keep a careful record of such statements in the event that a "President Newt for 2012" exploratory committee is ever formed.
Note: I had trouble with the first Gingrich link - that's why it doesn't link directly to the post in question, but only to the American Solutions site.
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