links for 2010-09-23

Democrats abandoned plans to vote before Election Day on extending Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class while eliminating them for better-off Americans, spooked by protests from vulnerable incumbents and bleak prospects for passage.

With time running out to plan for 2011, the delay raises uncertainty for small businesses and individual taxpayers over their future liabilities. It also sets up a titanic battle over taxes after the election.
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But, it continues tax uncertainty which will NOT help the economy.

Comparisons between the Obama White House and the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter are increasingly being made—and by Democrats.

Walter Mondale, Mr. Carter's vice president, told The New Yorker this week that anxious and angry voters in the late 1970s "just turned against us—same as with Obama." As the polls turned against his administration, Mr. Mondale recalled that Mr. Carter "began to lose confidence in his ability to move the public." Democrats on Capitol Hill are now saying this is happening to Mr. Obama.
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Republicans don't need a Contract or a Pledge. Their base is energized. The Democratic base is not. The folks who are going to vote arguably know Republicans stand for the stuff in the pledge because Republicans have been talking about this stuff since the beginning of the cycle. Arguably, it gives Democrats more of a defined target, something that they can redirect attention to. Arguably, had the Republicans been able to produce a more substantive governing document, they would have made it harder for Democrats to demagogue.

Alas, "The Pledge" is pretty easy to make fun of. And that's just among conservatives. (Erick Erickson calls it "just meaningless stuff the Democrats can easily undo and that ultimately the Senate GOP will even turn its nose up at.")
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Is this something better than nothing?

Doubtful…..

3. A Plan to Repeal and Replace Obamacare

First – just repeal it, and if you can’t repeal it… de-fund it. Period. Stop babbling about “replacing.” I don’t want the federal government to “replace” Obamacare. I want the federal government to get out of the health care business and to take the minimal steps necessary to free up competition.

Second – STOP WITH THE MANDATES. STOP IT. STOP IT. MANDATING THAT INSURERS COVER PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS IS JUST AS BAD AS THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE ON ITS FACE – BUT WORSE, YOU IDIOTS, IT WILL LEAD TO AN INDIVIDUAL MANDATE BECAUSE YOU CANNOT COVER THE ALREADY SICK WITHOUT MANDATING THAT THE HEALTHY PARTICIPATE. JUST STOP IT. And mandating a prohibition of caps on lifetime benefits is just as silly.
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Agreed.

The GOP would have been better to do nothing because this Pledge is worse than nothing. It isn't meaningful reform.

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From 2001 to 2006 – with precisely one Boxer Senate campaign during that period – Boxer paid her son more than $320,000, according to a report by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. During the 2008 election cycle, Boxer’s PAC gave $141,000 to the firm Douglas Boxer & Associates. So far this cycle, Boxer’s PAC has paid another $108,000.

It adds up to nearly $570,000 over 10 years. Hey, she’s a loving mother.

“It is an area that’s ripe for abuse, for someone who wants to turn campaign funds into personal use,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the nonprofit group Public Citizen told the Washington Post in 2008. Although most lawmakers do not abuse the practice, he said, “those campaign funds always come from special interests, and those special interests are always looking for something in return.”
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And, what do the special interests get for their money?

Hummmmmmmm

As the President of Common Cause, a non-profit citizens’ lobbying group, Representative Chellie Pingree criticized lawmakers who traveled on corporate jets.

But Rep. Pingree is engaging in the same activity she derided four years ago.

An investigation by MaineWatchdog found that Pingree has been traveling on a private plane owned by the firm of her significant other, Donald Sussman, Founder and Chairman of Paloma Partners, a billion dollar hedge fund.

When AOL reported in late July that Pingree’s office was reimbursed for more travel expenses than any other house member in 2009, MaineWatchdog asked whether any of those reimbursements were related to travel on private planes. A spokesman for Pingree said: “To my knowledge, the Congresswoman does not fly on privately chartered jets.”
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The investigation, however, produced a video of Representative Pingree and Sussman disembarking at Portland International Jetport after a flight from Bridgeport, Conn., on September 17, 2010.