President Obama talks on the phone in the Oval Office, Dec. 11. Pictured, from left, are: Director of Communications Dan Pfeiffer; Rob Nabors, Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs; and Chief of Staff Jack Lew. (Pete Souza)
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12:0: President Obama holds a conference call with a bipartisan group of mayors and community leaders
12:30: Jay Carney briefs the press
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Paul Krugman: Both Jonathan Chait and Charles Pierce have a field day with a Politico piece titled, without a hint of irony, Crafting a boom economy. In said piece they talk to various Very Serious People, and divine the insider consensus on What Must Be Done – which mainly seems to involve, naturally, cutting Social Security and Medicare while reducing corporate tax rates.
What I find remarkable about this piece is that after everything that has happened these past five years or so, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen still take it for granted that these people actually know what they’re talking about….
…. The whole theme of the Politico piece is that great things would happen if only the insiders could override all this messy democracy stuff. But the real lesson is that those insiders are not only self-dealing, but profoundly ignorant and wrong-headed. It’s too bad that so many journalists still can’t see that.
Full post here
See also Liberal Librarian’s post at The People’s View: ‘More adventures in our failed media experiment’
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Steve Benen: There was a widely held fear after Election Day that systemic voting restrictions would soon be forgotten. The outrage over voter-suppression tactics was real – unnecessary voter-ID laws, closed early voting windows, ridiculously long lines and waiting times – but once the election came and went, would the political world’s short attention span forget the fiascos?
Fortunately, no – or at least, not yet. Several Democratic members of Congress have already unveiled modest-but-helpful election reforms, and in the Obama administration, Attorney General Eric Holder continues to take the issue very seriously….
Full post here
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NYT: A broad swath of the nation’s leading chief executives dropped its opposition to tax increases on the wealthiest Americans on Tuesday, while the White House quietly pressed Wall Street titans for their support as well.
Before Tuesday’s about-face, the Business Roundtable had insisted that the White House extend Bush-era tax cuts to taxpayers of all income brackets, but the executives’ resistance crumbled as pressure builds to find a compromise for the fiscal impasse in Washington before the end of the year.
“We recognize that part of the solution has to be tax increases,” David M. Cote, chief executive of Honeywell, said on a conference call with reporters. “That’s the only thing that allows a reasonable compromise to be reached.”
More here
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TPM: As Michigan Republicans pushed their controversial right to work legislation another step forward Tuesday, organized labor’s promise not to go quietly was realized.
…. labor groups say they’ve found a way to unwind the Michigan Republicans’ attempt to write the law in a way that makes it impossible to be overturned at the ballot box …. A high-ranking labor source told TPM unions are ready to turn Michigan into the next Ohio.
“If this bill is signed today, it will be Thunderdome for Governor Snyder and Michigan for the next two years,” the official said. “There are multiple options for a referendum, for the voters to have their say on this issue and all options are on the table, the fight is far from over.”
Full post here
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First Lady Michelle Obama during an event with the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition on the South Lawn of the White House, May 9, 2011 (Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
NYT: After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines. The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.
“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011.
The drops are small, just 5 percent here in Philadelphia and 3 percent in Los Angeles. But experts say they are significant because they offer the first indication that the obesity epidemic, one of the nation’s most intractable health problems, may actually be reversing course.
More here
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LL, thought you might like this photo from a Steve Benen post on Michigan!
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MooooOOOOooooOOOOoooOOOOoooorning!
