ThinkFast: November 3, 2009

Buoyed by their success in New York?s 23rd congressional race, right-wing activists ?are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.? ?What you?re going to see,? said FreedomWorks? Dick Armey, ?is moderates and conservatives across the country in primaries.?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has reportedly reached a ?private understanding? with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) that would ensure the Connecticut senator does not block a final vote on health care reform. ?Lieberman keeps assuring Reid that he?s OK,? said one source. ?But he?s one of those characters ? you never know with Joe.

“Maine could become the first state to endorse gay marriage by popular referendum” today “as voters head to the polls to decide whether to repeal a recently-passed law legalizing unions between people of the same gender.” Following the disappointment of Proposition 8’s success last year in California, “advocates of same-sex marriage are optimistic that ballot box history won’t repeat itself in Maine.”

The suicide rate in the Army has passed that of the general population for the first time. Sixteen American soldiers took their lives in October, and suicides have risen 36 percent since 2006.

The Senate voted 85-2 to cut off debate on a bill that would expand homebuyer and business tax credits and expand jobless benefits. This bill would add up to 20 more weeks of aid to unemployment benefits, extending them through Thanksgiving and Christmas.

A “record number of lobbyists have quit the business this year,” according to a new study by the Center for Responsive Politics and OMB Watch. “About 1,400 lobbyists, or 8% of the industry, left in the three-month period ending June 30.” The report’s authors say the drop may be a consequence of the Obama administration’s new ethics regulations.

Pentagon auditors have warned contractor KBR that it needs to “cut its workforce there or face nearly $200 million in penalties for keeping thousands too many on the payroll.” Without “significant action,” KBR will have “one employee for every 3.6 troops in Iraq by August 2010.”

Media Matters Action Network is launching a new website today that aims to document the financial and political ties of conservative groups, called Conservative Transparency. Knowing the source of conservative funding will assist the entire progressive movement in responding to attacks from ‘astroturf’ organizations,” said Chris Harris, the group’s communications director.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Iran to ?stick to an agreement to ship low-enriched uranium abroad for processing.? “Acceptance of this proposal would be a good indication that Iran does not wish to be isolated,” Clinton said. Iran is seeking greater assurances that the fuel ?would be enriched to a higher level and returned.?

And finally: Did actor Edward Norton “beat Sarah Palin like a rug” in the New York Marathon on Sunday? You betcha.

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Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/03/thinkfast-november-3-2009/

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Drew Westen: "Leadership is a quality Barack
Obama . . . has failed to show as president"

How serious is the administration about reforming
the bad old ways of the financial services industry?

"Genuine leadership means setting the agenda. It means taking tough stands. It means telling people the truth forcefully and evocatively in a way that makes them want to listen and act. It means drawing lines in the sand when you must, and refusing to compromise your values even if you have to compromise on some of the policies born of those values when you have no other choice. It means fighting for what you believe in and taking on powerful vested interests when people's lives and livelihoods are at stake. And it means looking backward at the past so you don't make the same mistakes, looking sideways at alternatives so you know your options, and using that vision to move the nation forward.

"Leadership is a quality Barack Obama showed on the campaign trail. It is a quality he has failed to show as president."

-- Drew Westen, in "Leadership, Obama Style,"on HuffPost post yesterday
by Ken

All of a sudden we're in "Year One Retrospective Mode" for the Obama administration -- a bit prematurely, it seems to me, since what we're commemorating now is the anniversary of the election rather than the inauguration. It's fair to say that Howie and I haven't been exactly consistent cheerleaders, voicing not only serious disagreements with the administration but dark forebodings about its intentions.

I can certainly appreciate the "world of change in 287 days" the Washiington Post's Gene Robinson writes about, noting that for all his quibbles and quarrels with some of the president's actions, "he's a president, not a Hollywood action hero." And I certainly identify with the mixed feelings of OpenLeft's Mike Lux, who for all his reservations, often deep, concludes we have to pull together and work as best we can with the Obama team, 'cause they are, after all, what we've got. I'm certainly on board with Mike's conclusion:

I am looking for big, deep, transformative, history making change, and am looking for an administration eager to work with the progressive movement to help make that happen. My optimistic side sees the good things that have happened, and appreciates them. I remind myself that it took Lincoln almost two years to free the slaves, and it took FDR more than two years to pass Social Security- even in big change eras, it doesn't always happen immediately. But it's only a year until the next election, and if we don't start delivering real change and real results- tangible results- for the American people soon on jobs and health care and other big issues, we won't have a chance for bigger changes in 2011.

Barack Obama raised our expectations through the roof with his stirring campaign. He needs to deliver change we can believe in. He needs to convince us that "yes, we can" is more than a political slogan. He needs to take seriously the history of struggle he is always talking about, and create the same kind of big transformative change that Lincoln and TR and FDR and LBJ did.

I feel even closer to the Young Turks' Cenk Uygur, who like me is still trying to figure out what this Obama fellow's intentions are.

If he's the guy who got us all excited that anyone could become president, that anything was possible, that real change was coming and the one that was going to stop the same old power players in Washington from controlling everything to the detriment of the people, then we're in great shape. That means he is one of us.

You can question his tactics, but as long as he has the right goals and the right agenda, we'll be fine. We're all hoping (with the audacity of hope, I suppose) that he's the master chess player who is carefully finding ways to play the system but in the end will do the right thing.

I don't even mind if he tries but fails. As long as he is pushing for us, working for us and wants to actually challenge the status quo (the central message of his campaign). Even if we fail in the short term, if we all fight together and we have the president on our side, we will ultimately prevail.

What I do mind is if he is not that guy. If he just played us to get elected and will give us just enough change to placate the masses but leave the system completely intact. That's the kind of guy who would push for a trigger for the public option and pretend he actually gave you the public option. It's not about the trigger, it's not about the public option it's not even about health care reform -- it's what it says about him. Is he playing the politicians and lobbyists in Washington or is he playing us?

The rumination that really grabbed me, though, is Drew Westen's, which I cited at the top. What he's focusing on, as the quote up top suggests, is the quality of the president's leadership, in particular as contrasted with the kind he showed as a presidential candidate.

Sure, we won't know the outcomes of many of his decisions for years. We won't know, for example, if the health care reform bill he ultimately signs really turns out to be "budget-neutral" ten years from now. But we can see how he let its budget-neutrality become the central theme of the debate and the way he has tacitly or explicitly supported, or failed to support, different aspects of that legislation, including ways of paying for it that either do or don't come out of the pockets of working and middle class Americans -- the same people who are just seeing their health care premiums raised by a third in anticipation by the health insurance companies. And in that sense, I think we have seen the clear outlines of Obama's approach to leadership.

And his conclusion about the president's presidential leadership, again, is not favorable: ""Leadership is a quality Barack Obama showed on the campaign trail. It is a quality he has failed to show as president."

Leadership is not about saying, "me, too." It is not about waiting until Congress finally passes a hate crimes bill that makes slaughtering a gay kid a real crime, or waiting for Congress to end don't-ask/don't tell -- when even the vast majority of the public is for it -- and then pulling out your special "me, too" pen for the signing ceremony. Leadership is not making public pronouncements that simultaneously support and undercut the goal of requiring the health insurance industry to compete with at least one plan they don't control.

The health care debate is a prototypical example. Obama could have told members of Congress when the health care fight began, "If the average American doesn't have the same quality and range of options at the end of this process that you do, I will not sign any appropriations bill for next year that includes health insurance for federal employees, your family and mine included, because if it's good enough for us, it's good enough for the people we serve." Had the president done that, he would have had populist sentiment at his back, not with its back up against Democrats over "death panels." Blue Dogs and conservative Democrats would have been champions of populist reform, both because it would have been in the interest of their own family's health and because it would have struck a resonant chord with their constituents. All it would have taken was a sharp condemnation of the health insurance industry -- something he ultimately ended up having to do anyway after they decided his plan was no longer in their interest -- and what has led to a recent shift in the Democrats' favor on health care reform.

Westen credits the president with "set[ting] a national agenda, and an ambitious one at that," and with "[speaking] to the world in a way that has restored their faith in America, at least for now." But he suggests:

It would be nice to see from the president a little less Rodney King -- "Why can't we all get along?" -- and a little more Martin Luther King, who wasn't interested in compromising on 3/5 of a man or 3/5 of a vote -- and who wouldn't have sat on the sidelines waiting to declare victory upon insuring 3/5 of the people who can't afford health insurance. When the Senate sent its fifth and final health care bill out committee, the president lavished praise on one person -- Republican Senator Olympia Snow, apparently for failing to obstruct the process -- who promptly noted that her support was only temporary. The president's highest-level surrogates then fanned out on the Sunday morning shows to demonstrate his staunch commitment to equivocation on whether the health insurance industry needs some healthy competition to bring costs down and guarantee high quality, affordable care.

This, in microcosm, is the essence of the President's approach to leadership -- Obamaprise -- the art of compromising when you don't have to. The goal is not to get the best possible bill, to fulfill his campaign pledges to the people who elected him, or to fulfill values to which he is deeply committed, whatever they seem to be when the dust settles on his latest moving speech. The goal is to find someone with whom to compromise, whether it's the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance industry, or Senate Republicans on health care; the energy industry and the "clean coal" lobby on climate change; or the banks lavishing their latest set of outrageous bonuses on their executives for another Heckuva-Job-Bernanke year.

He offers some counter-examples of real leadership:

Leadership is not searching for the golden mean between what's right and what's wrong, what's true and what's false, what the Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress and the people who elected them to run the country believe after eight dismal years of Bush Republicanism and what Chuck Grassley or Olympia Snowe finds aesthetically or financially appealing.

We were lucky Abraham Lincoln did not invite Jefferson Davis into his cabinet to insure that he had a "team of rivals."

We were lucky FDR famously "welcomed the hatred" of those who had plunged the nation into the Great Depression because that freed him to regulate them.

We were lucky Lyndon Johnson did not let the knowledge that he was handing the South to the Republicans for at least a generation by signing the Civil Rights Acts deter him from the dictates of his uncompromised conscience.

And he concludes:

President Obama needs to reflect on whatever is driving his compromised approach to leadership. He will no doubt accomplish many good things in his four or eight years in office, in part because there is so much damage from the preceding administration to undo, and with a Republican Party in complete disarray, he will no doubt accomplish incremental change we can believe in if that's really what he wants to take to the voters in 2012.

But if he does not change course, he is on the path to being known as the first black president -- nothing more, nothing less -- a solid caretaker on the order of Dwight Eisenhower, who tinkered around the edges of the ideology of the last visionary president, FDR, the way Obama is tinkering around the edges of the last game-changing president, Ronald Reagan.

With his extraordinary intellect and his ability to speak to people's hopes and aspirations, this president has the capacity to be the transformative leader we all thought we were electing. But if he wants to be known for giving eloquent speeches followed up by field goals where he could have had touchdowns, he is well on his way to the thirty yard line.

#


Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/11/drew-westen-leadership-is-quality.htm
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Demand the Rest of the Stimulus

Way back in February, the always-right Paul Krugman warned that not only was the compromise $750 billion stimulus too small, but so was the original $1 trillion plan.  There was a $2 trillion hole in economic demand, and only $2 trillion in spending would fill it.

Nine months later, here we are, with exactly the weak, jobless recovery he predicted.

NOW can we take Krugman's advice?

The good news is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the Obama stimulus plan, is working just about the way textbook macroeconomics said it would. But that's also the bad news - because the same textbook analysis says that the stimulus was far too small given the scale of our economic problems. Unless something changes drastically, we're looking at many years of high unemployment.

And the really bad news is that "centrists" in Congress aren't able or willing to draw the obvious conclusion, which is that we need a lot more federal spending on job creation.

SNIP

So the government needs to do much more. Unfortunately, the political prospects for further action aren't good.

What I keep hearing from Washington is one of two arguments: either (1) the stimulus has failed, unemployment is still rising, so we shouldn't do any more, or (2) the stimulus has succeeded, G.D.P. is growing, so we don't need to do any more. The truth, which is that the stimulus was too little of a good thing - that it helped, but it wasn't big enough - seems to be too complicated for an era of sound-bite politics.

But can we afford to do more? We can't afford not to.

High unemployment doesn't just punish the economy today; it punishes the future, too. In the face of a depressed economy, businesses have slashed investment spending - both spending on plant and equipment and "intangible" investments in such things as product development and worker training. This will hurt the economy's potential for years to come.

Deficit hawks like to complain that today's young people will end up having to pay higher taxes to service the debt we're running up right now. But anyone who really cared about the prospects of young Americans would be pushing for much more job creation, since the burden of high unemployment falls disproportionately on young workers - and those who enter the work force in years of high unemployment suffer permanent career damage, never catching up with those who graduated in better times.

Even the claim that we'll have to pay for stimulus spending now with higher taxes later is mostly wrong. Spending more on recovery will lead to a stronger economy, both now and in the future - and a stronger economy means more government revenue. Stimulus spending probably doesn't pay for itself, but its true cost, even in a narrow fiscal sense, is only a fraction of the headline number.

O.K., I know I'm being impractical: major economic programs can't pass Congress without the support of relatively conservative Democrats, and these Democrats have been telling reporters that they have lost their appetite for stimulus.

But I hope their stomachs start rumbling soon. We now know that stimulus works, but we aren't doing nearly enough of it. For the sake of today's unemployed, and for the sake of the nation's future, we need to do much more.

Read the whole thing.


Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheyGaveUsARepublic-FrontPage/~3/61atIPZGRVQ/deman
d-the-rest-of-the-stimulus

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Free Credit Report

Come to think of it, why should banks be allowed to maintain a secret ranking system of customers that they share with everyone but the customer? Isn’t that kind of monopolistic?

Someone thought so, because your credit report belongs to you and you don’t have to pay anyone to get it. But that doesn’t stop enterprising souls from trying to sell you what you already paid for. Have you seen those adorable commercials for freecreditreport.com?

The Federal Trade Commission is not amused. It has long believed that the company that owns freecreditreport.com is deliberately diverting people from a government-mandated site where consumers can get free credit reports by law, and using the reports as a lure for a $14.95 monthly service that alerts subscribers to important changes in their credit status.

A while back an enterprising member of Congress proposed a bill to make Americans pay a private corporation for what we already built and maintained with our tax dollars. Basically the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was giving out weather reports to everyone without additional charges. How socialistic. Some silly idea about public safety, no doubt.

While generally respected as one of the premier weather organizations in the United States, the National Weather Service has been perceived by some[citation needed], particularly libertarians and commercial weather services such as AccuWeather, as competing unfairly with the private sector. In 2005, Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) introduced the National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005, a bill intended to limit the NWS’s ability to provide data that could be given by commercial outlets, but at cost to generate private profit. The bill was widely criticized by users of the NWS’s services. The bill died in committee during the 2005 session.

How hurtful. Especially to the campaign fund.

In the wake of the bill’s introduction, Santorum, who had already gained notoriety for his activism against gay rights and the recent Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas that struck down sodomy laws in the United States, was accused of political impropriety and influence peddling due to the fact that Joel Myers, the head of Pennsylvania-based AccuWeather and one of Santorum’s constituents, was also a Santorum campaign contributor. Though no action was taken by the Senate on the accusations, Santorum has become the most significant target of the Democratic National Committee’s campaign effort for the 2006 U.S. Senate Election.

In September 2005, while the bill was still in committee, Santorum criticized the National Weather Service’s forecasting of Hurricane Katrina, claiming that more lives could have been saved if the NWS’s operation focused on severe weather. However, both public and professional opinion held that the NWS’s forecasting had in fact been substantially better than most other sources, and Santorum’s comment was largely ignored.

Well, anyway, if you’re not afraid that socialist demons will jump out of your screen you may visit these sites, which have, as you will notice, .gov in the address–

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration There is a cool weather map of the East Coast with color coded storms in real time.

Federal Trade Commission. Find out what you can get that you have already paid for with your tax dollars, and then if you want more services shop around for a private vendor who isn’t spending millions on TV commercials claiming to give it away for ‘free’.

Read The Full Article:
http://kmareka.com/2009/11/03/free-credit-report/

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Daily Futures Commentary November 3, 2009

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

The U.S. Dollar is trading sharply higher overnight as investors are once again becoming more risk averse. This week, investors are facing…

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http://jutiagroup.com/2009/11/03/daily-futures-commentary-november-3-2009/

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Wall Street déjà vu

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The situation may not be as grave as it was a year ago though it's hard to believe Geithner. Is Wall Street showing strong numbers? Sure, but so what? As all of us witnessed in the last few years, Wall Street shot up by thousands of points and then lost it all during the Bush years. They gambled with your money and then it was Wall Street who was bailed out, not you. Geithner somehow also tries to suggest that we won't be paying for ridiculous bonuses but it's a complete lie. It's happening and again, Goldman Sachs who has received $14 billion via AIG should also be a part of any talks on limiting compensation.

As a reader wrote in, how do you not bubble these actions up to Obama? He is the president and Geithner (and Summers) work for him? Is he too trusting? Is he naive? Even worse, does he actually believe this is the correct model for long term recovery? None of these possibilities are very attractive though maybe there is some other plan that is less obvious. Hopefully there is some other plan behind the scenes because the non-stop bailout of Wall Street and support for another round of gambling is unacceptable.

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/uCW6D8ehXwQ/wall-street-deja-vu.htm
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Gubernatorial Races a Poor Yardstick

Here is the problem with using the results from New Jersey or Virginia tonight to judge the status of the national political environment. It's not so much that the races are "meaningless" in the abstract, but that ticket-splitting is so common in gubernatorial races that the noise swamps the signal.

Of the eleven states with a PVI of D+7 or bluer, five (Hawaii, Vermont, Rhode Island, California and Connecticut) currently have a Republican governor. Of the ten states with a PVI of R+10 or redder, meanwhile, four (Kentucky, Kansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming) have a Republican governor. The correlation between gubernatorial elections and elections to the House, Senate and Presidency has been very weak, at least recently. In fact, if you compare the share of the vote that the Democratic candidate got in the most recent gubernatorial election in each state to the share that Barack Obama got last November, it is almost literally zero:



Another way to expose the same concept: here are the percentage of ticket-splitters -- Obama voters voting for a Republican governor, or McCain voters voting for a Democratic governor -- in the 12 states which held gubernatorial elections last year:



As you can see, the percentages vary radically from state to state. In North Dakota, 57 percent of Obama's voters voted Republican for governor, in Utah 48 percent, and in Vermont, 38 percent. Meanwhile, in West Virginia, 59 percent of McCain's voters went with a Democrat for governor, 41 percent in New Hampshire, and 36 percent in Montana. On average, about 22 percent of voters for both candidates split their gubernatorial and Presidential ticket in these states. This compares with 8 percent of Obama voters who voted for a Republican for the U.S. House, and 12 percent of McCain voters who voted Democratic for the House. Ticket splitting is about twice as common in gubernatorial races as in races for the Congress.

Public Policy Polling thinks that, in both New Jersey and Virginia, about 15 percent of Obama voters (the ones who bother to turn out) will vote Republican for governor, whereas about 5 percent of McCain voters will vote Democratic for governor. Those percentages, coupled with depressed turnout among their base, will almost certainly cost the Democrats Virginia and possibly New Jersey. But they're also well within the range of "normal" given the local circumstances intrinsic to gubernatorial campaigns -- similar, for instance, to what happened in Washington State last year.

To be clear, the fact that gubernatorial races are not a reliable benchmark does not mean the Democrats are not in trouble in 2010 -- whoa, too many double negatives there -- nor that Democrats might not have done better if Obama's approval rating was 62 percent instead of 52 percent. It just means that New Jersey and Virginia don't have particularly much informational value -- we won't become very much smarter about the future based on what happens there. To the extent that we do learn something, it will probably be hints about turnout, motivation and enthusiasm, rather than something about the electorate's policy preferences.

NY-23 could potentially be more telling, except that the dynamics of the race are so unusual that everyone will have plenty of (good) excuses for whatever outcome might ensue. Still, I'll bet you that NY-23 -- not New Jersey or Virginia -- is actually the race monitored a little more carefully on Capitol Hill.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/11/gubernatorial-races-poor-yardstick.html

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Mike's Blog Roundup

Linda R. Monk, J.D.: Let Us Now Praise Uppity Women (h/t Where?s the Outrage?)

The Plum Line: Harry Reid calls GOP's transparency bluff: Is your health care bill a secret, or merely non-existent?

AMERICAblog News: Top McCain campaign advisor running out of insurance. He has a "pre-existing condition."

Apoliticus: Top 5 annoying talents of President Obama

Bill in Exile: New York Twenty Three (not work safe)

Family and Friends blog: Our Achilles Heel

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/mike-finnigan/mikes-blog-roundup-335

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2008 Electorate: African Americans - We Are Not
All of Us Alike

It's easy to shift into shorthand when looking at demographic data and start talking about how[...]

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african-americans-we-are-not-all-of-us-alike

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Abbreviated Pundit Round-Up

Your one stop pundit shop.

Dana Milbank says that today's elections will be a referendum on Obama. Or not. Depends who you're talking to and who wins.

Eugene Robinson marks the anniversary of President Obama's election:

Obama's months in office have been so action-packed that it's easy to forget some of the historic steps he has taken: nominating Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. Going to Egypt and speaking directly to the Muslim world about cooperation rather than conflict. Embracing multilateralism as the template for U.S. foreign policy in the new century. Accepting the scientific consensus on climate change. Investing in "green" jobs and education reform as key engines of economic development.

And then there's health-care reform. I've been impatient with Obama's strategy of letting Congress take the lead on writing legislation, but he's brought us to the brink of truly meaningful reform much faster than anyone could have imagined a year ago. We still have some fighting to do over two words -- "public" and "option" -- but it looks like the principle that everyone is entitled to health insurance, a Democratic Party goal for at least six decades, is about to become law.

Quite a record for 287 days: All that, and a Nobel Peace Prize, too.

Bob Herbert:

President Obama made an appearance in Florida last week that should have gotten more attention. At a time when many Americans are apprehensive about the state of the economy and uncertain about the nation’s long-term prospects, Mr. Obama delivered an upbeat speech that offered a glimpse of a broader overall vision and a practical way forward on the crucial issues of energy and jobs.  [...]

What was missing from these appearances by the president and vice president was the feeling of excitement that should accompany the early stages of an important national mission. Mr. Obama made his appearance in Arcadia, delivered his remarks and quickly moved on to other matters. The nation was not moved. The president’s remarks were not widely heard.

Mark Zandi says that the recession is over, and that now is the time to help small businesses to hire again.

Fred Barnes rewrites history:

For decades, a rule of thumb in Washington has said that there should be popular support and a bipartisan majority before approving an initiative that significantly affects tens of millions of Americans.

Joel Jankowsky, a Washington lobbyist, complains that lobbyists:

... are being excluded from contributing their expertise at a critical time in our nation's history.

If only.

Cal Thomas adds his voice to the conservative call for revolution:

Americans who believe their government should not be a giant ATM, dispensing money and benefits to people who have not earned them, and who want their country returned to its founding principles, must exercise that power before it is taken from them. The 10th Amendment is one place to begin. The streets are another. It worked for the left.

Derrick Z. Jackson points out a moment of bipartisanship:

Apparently things are so bad for the nation’s parks that some Republicans took a time out last week from the bitter partisanship over health care and their general blockade on climate change legislation and helped Congress pass a $32.2 billion spending measure that boosts funding 17 percent. Hard-line Republicans wailed that the spending was too much. But enough Republicans, such as Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, understood what Americans want. “My preference, if I were the king, I wouldn’t spend this much money on this bill this year,’’ Alexander told Congressional Quarterly. “This is a tough time. But I doubt Americans will begrudge spending on national parks.’’

Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Bob Bennett of Utah, warmly embraced the tens of millions of dollars coming to their states. Maine will see funds for coastal seabird protection, expansion of the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, further land conservation in the Baxter State Park region, sewer infrastructure in Portland, and lake invasive species removal.

But you did have to chuckle when Bennett said, “I am pleased that Congress recognizes the need for these important projects.’’ He should have said that he was pleased his fellow Republicans finally woke up.

At least for a moment.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/5WT-MfltHzo/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Ro
und-Up

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