Who created the conditions in which the money men in the financial sector gave mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them, touching off economic calamity that gave us “Dodd-Frank” reform? Why, it was the federal government, with its Community Reinvestment Act. The CRA requires banks to make mortgages available in poor neighborhoods, where risk of default can be quite high.As noted here by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the CRA did not contribute “in any substantive way” to the economic crisis.
Of course, as Mullane is quick to remind us, it’s his column and he can write what he wants, however fact-free it may be, nyaah-nyaaah (and the Bucks County Courier Times will continue to compensate him for it).
It didn’t work in the 2009 race for governor of Virginia. Democrats tried to cast the Republican nominee, Bob McDonnell, as an extremist on social issues; Mr. McDonnell, now governor, focused relentlessly on the economy.(By the way, here is an example of McDonnell supposedly campaigning on the economy from his contest with Dem Creigh Deeds.)
So what was the first thing McDonnell did after he was sworn into office in January 2010 (him being so “relentlessly focused” on the economy, supposedly)? He told state law enforcement to allow people to bring loaded guns into Virginia’s parks (and let’s not forget HATING TEH GAY too).
(And here is still more on McDonnell's supposed relentless focus on the economy.)
(Yes, I know; lather, rinse, repeat - sigh...)
By a 6-to-6 vote last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit cleared the way for a legal challenge against a dubious legacy of the George W. Bush administration: the wiretapping of Americans’ international communications without a warrant or adequate judicial supervision in antiterrorism investigations.Neither am I – I’m concerned also for the following reason…
The tie decision, which allowed an earlier ruling to stand, was a well-deserved setback to the Justice Department’s accountability avoidance strategy. This Catch-22 says that because the wiretaps are secret, no one knows for certain whether they have actually been tapped, and that means no one has a right to sue the government.
We hope the Obama administration does not appeal to the Supreme Court, and allows the legal challenge to go forward. Given its dismal record on this matter, we are not holding our breath.
The most troubling opinion I (in favor of surveillance) was filed by the court’s chief judge, Dennis Jacobs, but joined by none of his colleagues. Judge Jacobs launched into a gratuitous attack on the plaintiffs and their lawyers, whom he charged with bringing the “frivolous” case “to act out their fantasy of persecution, to validate their pretensions to policy expertise, to make themselves consequential rather than marginal, and to raise funds for self-sustaining litigation.” He likened the suit to a plaintiff’s claim that the C.I.A. was controlling him “through a radio embedded in his molar.”Indeed – as noted here, his court issued “a bad reading of federal law” when they let gun manufacturers off the hook in response to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s lawsuit, and they also let former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman “skate” as well, ruling that she could not be held liable for assuring residents near Ground Zero that the air was safe to breathe (overturning a verdict against Whitman issued by U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts, who stated that Whitman’s actions “shocked the conscience”).
Judge Jacobs has expressed similar contempt before. He embarrassed the appeals court he is supposed to lead and cast serious doubt on his judicial impartiality.
And Jacobs has also ruled that Medicaid funds could be denied to disabled people, even though he knew that this, in his words, could be “a death sentence for some patients.” And he also thinks free speech claims from a student newspaper are “silly.”
So the best the Obama Administration can do on the issue of warrantless surveillance with a court as staunchly conservative as this one is a tie. If that isn’t a message that they’re on the wrong side here, I don’t know what is.
This is chicken-hearted non-governance at best, considering that, as noted here, such a tax is favored by 65 percent of the residents of this state (when you consider how much Corbett has received from the natural gas industry, though, as noted here, this is merely “return on investment”).
Update 10/7/11: Good for the Dems calling to end this insanity here.
There is a concerted effort to discredit and demonize the current board majority of Goldberg, Sanderson, DiBlasio, Palsky, and myself as being left-wing, union panderers who are not responsive to the needs of the community. This effort is being undertaken by “Better Pennsbury” and certain elements within the Republican Party. The champions of the effort to take control of the school board are Simon Campbell and Allan Weisel. They have actively recruited Steven Kosmorsky, Chris Cridge, and Dorothy Vislosky to unseat incumbents. If only two of their candidates win, they will, with the help of Zawacki, take control of the school board. Their organization has mounted a campaign attempting to portray an image of inadequacies, of secrecy, of deceit, and have recruited a cadre of people to accentuate their agenda at board meetings.Dolnick goes on to make his case as to the fact that the charges faced by the current majority of the Pennsbury school board are utterly manufactured and typically ridiculous.
We must do all that we legally can to support Goldberg, Sanderson, DiBlasio, Palsky and Dolnick and oppose Campbell, Kosmorsky, Cridge and Vislosky; if any two of the latter bunch wins, the kids in our school district will surely lose (increased class size, less time for teacher/student review, tighter budgets which usually means fewer textbooks, etc., etc., etc.). And that doesn’t even consider the rabid right-wing agenda that usually follows also when these cretins take over.
Also keeping with local area politics, please click here to support Diane Marseglia and Det Ansinn for Bucks County Commissioners (here is more on their development plan for the county), and click here to read about Ken Seda/Ron Schmid who are running for Lower Makefield Township supervisors.
Carter was working in his Plains study on October 6, 1981 when a reporter called to ask his response to the attempted assassination of Sadat. The former president broke out in goose bumps. This was the first time he had heard about the hail of automatic gunfire at a military parade in Cairo that left eleven dead and forty wounded. Reassured that his Egyptian friend had “only suffered minor injuries” in the shooting, Carter gave the reporter a short statement denouncing terrorism, then quickly ended the conversation so he could try to reach Sadat in Cairo. Unable to do so, Carter talked to the American ambassador in Egypt, who reassured him that Sadat was alive and that the failed assassins – an Egyptian army major and two enlisted men – had been apprehended. Carter monitored CNN news reports all that afternoon, expecting to hear upbeat updates, when suddenly the tragic news of Sadat’s death was announced, the assassins having been identified as religious fanatics opposed to Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel and his recent ordered arrest of 1,500 Coptic and Muslim extremists. Carter sat alone in his study and wept. “It was a great personal loss for me and a severe blow to the prospects for peace in the Middle East,” he lamented.(By the way, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the former U.N. Secretary General’s death in a plane crash; I read the following remembrance recently, which I thought was well done.)
Shortly after the grim announcement, Sadat’s widow Jehan called Jimmy and Rosalynn and invited them to stay at her Cairo home for the funeral. The Carters were, after all, close to Sadat’s entire family, including his children and grandchildren. Shortly thereafter, however, the State Department called. On the grounds that government security agencies deemed it “too dangerous” for (then President Ronald) Reagan and (Vice President George H.W.) Bush to make the journey to Egypt, State officials formerly requested that Carter join ex-presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in the official U.S. delegation to the funeral.
This was Alexander Haig’s brainchild, and Carter refused. Incensed that Reagan was afraid to make the journey, he was determined to go to the funeral on his own. The State Department mounted a relentless campaign to change his mind: “Ed Muskie and Cy Vance and Jody Powell and Hamilton Jordan and financial contributors to my campaign all called to say I should go with the official delegation,” Carter recalled. “So after about the tenth call I decided I would go with Nixon and Ford. I was really aggravated about it, though.” Reagan did apologize for staying home at an interfaith memorial service for Sadat at the National Cathedral, where the Reverend John T. Walker, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, eulogized the Egyptian president as a “great prophet” for global peace. Before attending the service, Reagan had signed a proclamation instructing all American flags on government buildings, embassies and naval ships to be flown half-staff. The only foreign citizens previously accorded such an honor were U.N. Secretary Dag Hammarskjold in 1961 and Winston Churchill in 1965.
Stricken with grief, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter flew to Washington, D.C., where they met Nixon and Ford for a helicopter ride at dusk to the South Lawn of the White House. Once inside, they traded stories about Sadat with President Reagan in the Blue Room for more than half an hour. “We had a short but necessary meeting with Reagan.” Ford recalled. “It was a very wise decision on his part to have us former presidents attend the funeral as a display of continued American support of Egypt.” Reagan, in a low-key mood, wished his three predecessors good luck with a toast: “Ordinarily I would wish you happy landing, but you’re all Navy men, so I wish you bon voyage.”Why am I not surprised to read this about Al "I'm In Charge Here" Haig, by the way?
Carter was impressed neither by the occasion, by Reagan’s remarks, nor by his own return to the White House. “The only reason Reagan greeted us was to have a photo of four presidents together,” Carter quipped. And the shot would be a rarity: this was the first time in the twentieth century that three former presidents had meet with an incumbent. What’s more, not since Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and then-vice president Lyndon Johnson attended the funerals of former Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn in 1961 and Eleanor Roosevelt in 1962 had so many presidents appeared in the same frame.
It was clear who was in charge on the flight from Andrews Air Force Base to Cairo: Alexander Haig, the official leader of a delegation that included a handful of congressmen and senators, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, ambassador to the U.N. Jeane Kirkpatrick, army chief of staff Gen. Edward Meyer, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Motown singer-composer Stevie Wonder, and a fourteen-year-old boy from Liberty, South Carolina who had become pen pals with Sadat. Haig claimed the large compartment in the front of the plane for himself, leaving the three former presidents, Rosalynn, and Kissinger to fight for elbow space in the small press compartment.
Nixon noticed that there was some initial tension between Carter and Ford, so he played the icebreaker. “We were all former presidents who served our country well, so there was no reason for any residual bad blood between us,” Ford recalled. “Nixon brought us all together.” As for the incumbent administration, throughout the flight Reagan’s chief of protocol, Lee (Mrs. Walter) Annenberg, continually interrupted the former presidents’ conversations and naps with firm instructions from Gen. Haig as to his rules once they arrived in Egypt. “One of the instructions was that when we arrived in Cairo, no one was to get off the plane before Secretary of State Haig,” Carter recalled. “He was to get off first, and he was the only one to speak to the news media. It was ridiculous. He treated us like children.”
Upon landing Haig strode off the plane like Douglas MacArthur returning to the Philippines and addressed the press pool assembled at the airport as the three former presidents stood muzzled on the tarmac. When he was finished, Haig waived the former commanders-in-chief into armor-plated limousines flown in from Washington, which whisked them first to their hotel and then to meet Hosni Mubarak at the Al-Tahara Palace. Cairo was quiet, its streets empty due to the four-day feast of Eld al-Adha, a traditional Muslim observance that not even Sadat’s assassination could disrupt. At the palace Mubarak assured the American presidential delegation that he would carry out Sadat’s policies, including the Camp David peace accords. Carter felt fully confident of Mubarak’s ability to govern Egypt and his own mission to create a Palestinian homeland, as determined at Camp David, in memory of “Brother Anwar.”As Wikipedia tells us, Sadat was the first Arab leader to visit Israel officially when he met with Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and spoke before the Knesset in Jerusalem in November 1977. He then participated in the Camp David Accords with Carter and Begin, which led to the 1979 peace treaty (and as I recall from reading the Brinkley book, Carter expressed his frustration with Begin on numerous occasions for not moving forward as prescribed by the Accords, which ended up driving Carter towards Yasir Arafat and the PLO…as much as I respect Carter, I think he was wrong to help elevate the profile of a thief and demagogue like Arafat, though I can understand the former president’s frustration).
The treaty, however, galvanized Arab opposition to Arafat, which led to his murder (also noted in the Brinkley excerpt…on top of that, it didn’t help that Sadat quite rightly referred to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeni as a “lunatic”). And for that reason, we should take a minute or two today and recall heroism on the part of a world leader the like of which we may not see again in our lifetimes.
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