Red State

The expected move of Hillary Clinton to Foggy Bottom will set off an intriguing parlor game among New York State Democrats. Whom will Governor Paterson appoint to succeed Clinton? And how will it affect the gubernatorial and senate races in New York in 2010?

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has long been seen as a likely primary opponent to Paterson in 2010, and given his famous name and fundraising base, he's likely to offer a stiff challenge. Paterson will surely be tempted to dispatch Cuomo to Washington -- if he's willing to go.
Recent reports say Cuomo would turn the job down, but his attitude might change once the discussion moves past hypotheticals.

On the other hand, the New York State chapter of NOW wants a woman to succeed Clinton. That could boost the chance that New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn could become the first openly lesbian member of the U.S. Senate. And if all that speculation weren't enough, the New York Post reports that Paterson and Senator Chuck Schumer may already have a deal to appoint a relative nobody to the spot. It seems that Schumer's priority is that he get recognized as New York's senior Senator, and Andrew Cuomo would be the only contender for the Senate seat to threaten that status. Schumer apparently wants a less high-profile junior Senator -- someone like Buffalo Representative Brian Higgins, or Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand.

Whoever ultimately succeeds Clinton, both the successor and Paterson will be up for re-election in 2010. Waiting in the wings are New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (whose popularity has dipped since he announced his plan to seek a third term), and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
A recent Marist poll shows that even as Paterson's popularity falls, he still leads both Bloomberg and Giuliani. But Giuliani may have an ace-in-the-hole if he runs for Goveror in 2010: he will be the only one of the three candidates who won't be responsible for eliminating massive budget deficits in the next two years. Both Bloomberg and Paterson are looking at tax increases and spending cuts to address the deteriorating fiscal state of New York City and New York State, respectively. Neither one may be sporting a shining resume in 2010, and voters may be ready for new leadership.

CBS refused to air the pro-secret ballot, anti-card check ad embedded below because, according to a CBS representative, "viewers would be 'confused' by its contents within [CBS's] program."

Now, I won't argue that a network - even one which uses the public airwaves to send its message - should be forced to air every ad that is offered it. If CBS doesn't want Americans for Job Security's money, than it has every right to refuse the organization's ad.

However, the claim that viewers could possibly "confuse" what is clearly an issue-advocacy advertisement with CBS's actual "news" content does send a very clear -- and interesting -- message about how CBS views its own programming, does it not?

MSNBC considers an interesting question: is card check the only way to save the UAW?

One advantage the Honda and Hyundai plants in Alabama have over the General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford plants in Michigan is lower labor costs. That's because, in part, auto workers in Michigan are represented by the UAW and workers in Alabama aren’t.

This cost differential has been a theme of the debate this week in Congress over whether taxpayers should subsidize GM, Ford and Chrysler.

But what if the UAW could more easily organize workers at Honda and Hyundai? UAW-represented workers at Honda and Hyundai could then bargain for higher wages.

The Employee Free Choice Act, passed by the House of Representatives last year, but stymied in the Senate, aims to make unionization easier by allowing workers to join a union by signing a card rather than by going through a secret-ballot election. The bill is called “card check” for short...

A UAW ally, Rep. Tim Ryan, D- Ohio, said enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act “would level the playing field. Each facility would be competing on the same playing field.”

He noted, “We have a (GM) facility in Lordstown, Ohio, where I’m from. GM just moved a lot of their production to build the new ‘Cruze’ in that facility and added a thousand jobs three or four months ago, and they just took them away” due to the economic distress.

“It’s a union plant; the union worked with GM; they took some concessions, they made the deal work, and GM invested in the plant,” Ryan said...

But UAW ally Rep. Dale Kildee, D- Mich., who was represents Flint, Mich., the city where GM was born, said that joining a union is only the first step.

“After you get recognized, you still have to bargain,” he pointed out. “You can get recognized under the Employee Free Choice method or the election method. It’s what happens afterwards in the bargaining that really determines the differences (in wages).”

He added, “I think eventually the South is going to be organized. Under a Democratic House and Senate and president, the ability to organize could be enhanced. But you’d still have difficulty organizing in the South.”

The three U.S.-based automakers are on the verge of economic collapse, largely because the compensation demanded by their unionized workforces leave them unable to compete with more efficient automakers based elsewhere. So the solution suggested by Congressional Democrats is to hobble those automakers as well?

This 'solution' won't work for long. Soon those companies will shut down their operations in the U.S., and service the market with imports constructed elsewhere. If Democrats get their way, all auto work will eventually be too expensive to conduct here in the U.S.

And then they'll complain that multinationals are doing too much offshoring.

What is it about guys named Al trying to change election rules after the election is over?

Geez.

Franekn has filed suit with a favorable judge in a favorable county demanding the right to dig through rejected absentee ballots. It's against the rules, mind you, so Franken is demanding the rules be changed.

Opening up the rejected-ballot question is also a recipe for potential fraud. When the Franken campaign filed its initial lawsuit demanding access to the voter lists, it used as an example an 84-year-old woman in Beltrami County whose vote was supposedly rejected because she'd had a stroke, and therefore her signature on her absentee ballot did not match the one on file. After some outside investigation, the Franken campaign admitted that the story was not true, and that her ballot had been rejected for entirely different (and legitimate) reasons.

In other words, Franken is lying to sow doubt about the election. Stealing it during the canvassing process didn't work. Now he has to change the rules.

Of course, even the media in Minnesota is getting tired of his antics.

Franken needs to trust the secretary of state and the 87 county auditors to do their jobs and do them well. The system in place is open and transparent. A lawsuit at this point is like trying to change the rules of a football game during the overtime period. Let’s play by the rules of the existing recount lawbook.

In a perfect emblem of (1) how insular the media really is and (2) the national spotlight that will continue to focus on the Governor of Alaska wherever she goes, Sarah Palin did one of those typical silly ceremonies politicians across the country get asked to take part in, and went and pardoned a turkey in advance of Thanksgiving. But while the President has a turkey brought to him, Gov. Palin went to the turkey, handing down the pardon from a barnyard in Wasilla, then giving a news conference to reporters.

Why did this end up in the national news, including a sneering report on MSNBC? Well, the turkey farm went on with its usual business this time of year of slaughtering turkeys for Thanksgiving tables, and cameras caught a farm employee doing just that in the background while Gov. Palin talked to reporters:

The NY Daily News pronounced this a "shocking video".

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The GOP really does have a Senator problem -- a group of old kleptocrats who've been around for so long, they view themselves as entitled to power, prestige, and graft.

One of the Senators who is not willing to get comfy is Senator Jim DeMint. It must gall the other members of the Senate Republican Caucus that Jim DeMint thinks they should stand for something. After all, they must think, Senate rules do require them to stand when they want to speak. Clearly, then, they are standing for something.

Just not anything any one in America is interested in.

Jim DeMint is out to change that and Roll Call reports the geriatric brigade, clutching to power by fingernails, is having no part of it:

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If nothing else, the Great Depression proved very instructive. Plenty of commentators and analysts learned one of its important lessons: protectionist policies are only likely to deepen and worsen an economic slowdown. One person who's given no indication that he's learned the lesson is Barack Obama, but we can at least hope that his protectionist talk was nothing more than campaign rhetoric.

That said, it seems likely that the current move to bail out the Big 3 U.S. automakers might ignite a trade war anyway:

A U.S.-triggered spate of global carmaker-bailout proposals may spark trade disputes over whether the Americans are unfairly trying to subsidize their industry or just making up for state aid foreign rivals already enjoy.

As the U.S. considers throwing a lifeline to General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC, officials in Europe are preparing their own assistance packages -- even as they threaten to lodge a World Trade Organization complaint against any U.S. bailout. Other governments also may take issue with an American rescue as their own automakers press them to follow the U.S.'s lead.

Any WTO complaints may open a Pandora's Box, bringing to a head a long-simmering dispute over government policies that U.S. automakers say unduly aid their rivals, including state-financed health-care and retirement benefits, and currency policies.

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According to Gallup:

The Republican Party's image has gone from bad to worse over the past month, as only 34% of Americans in a Nov. 13-16 Gallup Poll say they have a favorable view of the party, down from 40% in mid-October. The 61% now holding an unfavorable view of the GOP is the highest Gallup has recorded for that party since the measure was established in 1992.

and

Most rank-and-file Republicans (59%) want to see the party move in a more conservative direction and another 28% want it to remain about the same. Only 12% would prefer to see the Republican Party become less conservative.

That 12% is no doubt Republican members of Congress.

Of course, if they were to put Jeff Flake on Appropriations and Jim DeMint on Finance, they could prove me wrong about that.

That's a serious question, and one that can be profitably asked across the political spectrum. In fact, the following questions are really directed at our lurkers: does having Rep. Jefferson in a position of trust and authority bother you, on a fundamental level? Are you tired of having this man's continued presence in Congress give the lie to all of your pious statements about being for clean government? Do you quietly fume about how the runoff election and his federal trial for bribery and racketeering will happen at about the same time?

Are you?

Well, talk is cheap. Time for you people to clean your house.

There's a guy running against Jefferson in the general. His name's Joseph Cao (you can contribute here). Vietnamese-American, philosophy professor (trained with the Jesuits, no less), bachelors' in physics, and an attorney with a history of social work both here and abroad. He's also not a corrupt Louisiana nepotist currently under indictment on multiple counts of abusing his office, which should also be a factor for your support. All in all, if we're to believe your rhetoric, he's precisely the kind of Republican that you keep telling us that we should be running for office. Well, here he is. The fact that he's considered a long shot is not a judgment on us, by the way. Nor is the fact that Rep. Jefferson still has a position of authority in Congress. That's all you guys, and until you're collectively ready to cut Bill Jefferson loose, he's going to keep on being a blot on your honor.

So. In LA-02, on December 6th, vote for the Republican.

It's important.

Moe Lane

PS: Again. ...in his freezer.

And now a palate cleanser, courtesy of Failblog:

Your day will be better than this. Open thread.

So this week we witnessed the jarring spectacle of three wealthy, well-dressed CEOs flying from Detroit to Washington, DC, each in his individual private jet, to ask for anywhere from 25 to 50 billion dollars of your money.

Instead, Congress turned them away. Democrats (if you take them at their word) said they wanted to give Detroit a big slug of money from the Treasury’s bank-bailout fund.

Republicans, understandably wary of the public reaction to allocating new money for yet another bailout, proposed instead to redirect $25 billion that has already been allocated for fuel-economy research, and allow the automakers to use it for operating capital instead.

In the end, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided that it was his way or the highway, and he refused even to bring the Republican proposal (offered by Senators Dodd and Voinovich) up for a vote.

The news reporting naturally spins all of this as a desire on the part of Republicans to stand in the way of a solution.

So Reid let everyone get out of Dodge for the Thanksgiving holiday, and they’ll (presumably) come back in early December to give it another shot.

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But while Barack Obama still has a lot of affection among antiwar types who saw him as a champion of their interests, that affection seems to be waning somewhat:

Antiwar groups and other liberal activists are increasingly concerned at signs that Barack Obama's national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views on other important foreign policy issues.

The activists are uneasy not only about signs that both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates could be in the Obama Cabinet, but at reports suggesting that several other short-list candidates for top security posts backed the decision to go to war.

"Obama ran his campaign around the idea the war was not legitimate, but it sends a very different message when you bring in people who supported the war from the beginning," said Kelly Dougherty, executive director of the 54-chapter Iraq Veterans Against the War.

The activists -- key members of the coalition that propelled Obama to the White House -- fear he is drifting from the antiwar moorings of his once-longshot presidential candidacy. Obama has eased the rigid timetable he had set for withdrawing troops from Iraq, and he appears to be leaning toward the center in his candidates to fill key national security posts.

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No word yet on the cause:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed while giving a speech on national security to a prominent Republican lawyers' organization.

Mr. Mukasey appeared to slur about 20 minutes into his speech at the Federalist Society's annual dinner, held in a Washington hotel. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, who provide security for the attorney general, rushed to his aid before he fell to the floor of the podium. District of Columbia Fire Department medics arrived and began efforts to provide medical attention. The state of his health is unknown.

We'll update as we hear more. Until then: prayers and good wishes for him, his family and loved ones are, as always, appropriate.

Don't you feel reassured by that news, Detroit?

Waxman Wins Powerful Energy and Commerce Post

Rep. Henry Waxman unseated fellow veteran Democratic lawmaker John Dingell Thursday to become chairman of the House’s powerful Energy and Commerce Committee.

The House Democratic Caucus voted 137 to 122 to accept the recommendation of its steering committee and agreed to replace Dingell, 82 years old, a long-time friend of the auto industry, with Waxman, a 69-year-old Californian anxious to ease global warming, a top concern of president-elect Barack Obama.

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To go along with the piece I wrote earlier today (here), the bond market appears to have picked up on the theme of deflation. The 30-year US Treasury bond rocketed upward in price to more than 118 and a half by today’s market close, and much of the move came late in the day.

This price corresponds to an interest-rate of 3.49% for the long bond. Just this morning, it was trading to yield over 3.90%. For the bond to drop over 40 basis points of yield in a single day is simply unheard of.

If this pricing holds up (and bond yields have been exceptionally volatile for many months now), it indicates at the very least that there is now an expectation that inflation will be non-existent for years into the future.

But I don’t think that’s the whole picture here.

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