I think we all knew that the growing call for filibuster reform was going to meet with some resistance eventually.

Well, here it is:

Senior Democrats say Reid will not have the votes to change the rule at the beginning of next year.

“It won’t happen,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said she would “probably not” support an effort to lower the number of votes needed to cut off filibusters from 60 to 55 or lower.

Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) echoed Feinstein: “I think we should retain the same policies that we have instead of lowering it.

“I think it has been working,” he said.

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) said he recognizes his colleagues are frustrated over the failure to pass measures such as the Disclose Act, campaign legislation that fell three votes short of overcoming a Republican filibuster Tuesday.

“I think as torturous as this place can be, the cloture rule and the filibuster is important to protect the rights of the minority,” he said. “My inclination is no.”

Sen. Jon Tester, a freshman Democrat from Montana, disagrees with some of his classmates from more liberal states.

“I think the bigger problem is getting people to work together,” he said. “It’s been 60 for a long, long time. I think we need to look to ourselves more than changing the rules.”

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who is up for reelection in 2012, also said he would like the votes needed for cloture to remain the same.

“I’m not one who think it needs to be changed,” he said.

There are plenty of reasons to believe it's still possible to get these Senators on the same page with reformers, but I won't go into them all just yet. We've got to give them some time and talk things out with them first.

But there is one thing I'd like to address directly right now, and that's the statement from Jon Tester, who said that he thought the real problem was "getting people to work together."

Well, who couldn't agree to that? Right? But here's where I'm going to guess that Sen. Tester and I differ in our approach. For him, the emphasis is probably on "together," whereas for me, the emphasis is on "work." Because the Senate isn't "working," but they're "together" whether they like it or not.

The Senate's not working, because there are something like 400 bills that have been passed by the House during the 111th Congress that the Senate has failed to consider. The Senate's not working, because there are dozens and dozens of executive nominations gathering dust. But most of all, the Senate's not working because it doesn't take any work to stop it from working. And that's what the Republicans are interested in doing. Worse, current rules make stopping the Senate from doing its work the easiest thing in the world to do.

That's just plain wrong, and I'll bet anything Senator Tester would agree with that. I'm guessing that's true because Senator Tester seems like the kind of guy who prides himself on his hard work, whether it's on the farm or in the Senate.

And he strikes me as a fair guy, too. So I know he'll understand when I say that if you want to allow for extended debate to let the minority be heard, that's fine.

But it's not free.

You should have to work -- and work hard -- to be able to stop an important bill. You should have to work yourself half to death to be able to derail an entire legislative agenda. And quite frankly, you shouldn't count on ever seeing the light of day again if you're looking to bottle up the entire agenda of the biggest Senate majority elected in decades. It should be that hard to do.

But it's not. Most times, you don't even have to lift a finger. And you know Jon Tester can't really be OK with that.

The filibuster is no longer a measure of the courage and dedication of a single Senator, fighting against all odds to demand that his voice be heard. Today's filibuster is the coordinated act of an entire party caucus, and it's hardly ever aimed at getting additional debate time, but rather at stifling debate and preventing Senators from doing the job we sent them to Washington (and paid them with your tax dollars) to do. And that's to vote. To make the tough calls and the hard decisions on public policy, and choose a direction for America. They're not doing it though. And they're not doing it because the filibuster makes it impossible for them to do it. (But that's not stopping their paychecks, in case you were wondering!)

Stopping an entire legislative agenda -- or even just demanding a little bit of extra time to debate and consider an important decision -- ought to take real, honest, hard work. And that should mean being on the floor to participate in that debate you demanded. How can anybody "work together" if one side doesn't even have to show up?

That's the current state of the filibuster. The minority need only show up once in a while to vote "no" on whether or not to end debate, but they don't have to show up more than one at a time to actually participate in that debate. Just talk about nothing, one at a time, and then pass it on to a colleague when you feel like heading out for a drink. And once in a while, call in your buddies to show up to say "no."

That's not work.

But the majority does have to do the hard work. They're the ones who prepare measures for floor consideration. Who shepherd it through committee. Who gather support for it among colleagues and interest groups and constituents. Where's the "work" from the minority? All they do in this "working together" business is show up and say "no."

Well, I imagine that even Senator Tester would like to see that change. Only there's no way to change it without opening up to the possibility of changing Senate rules, because so long as there's no way to make Senators do their work, he can wish all day long that his Republican colleagues would "work together" with him and it won't make a damn bit of difference. Maybe he has been wishing, but I certainly haven't seen it happening. Have you? It must not be working real well. And I've got to believe that the reason it's not working real well is that the rules make it so that you have more power when you refuse to work than you do when you agree to pitch in.

That's got to change. And if Jon Tester doesn't think so, I'd love to hear him tell me why.

This should fix all the problems on Wall Street:

The New York company is telling employees that they will no longer be able to get away with profanity in electronic messages. That means all 34,000 traders, investment bankers and other Goldman employees must restrain themselves from using a vast vocabulary of oft-used dirty words on Wall Street, including the six-letter expletive that came back to haunt the company at a Senate hearing in April.

...

Goldman's employee emails have been a touchy subject ever since the Securities and Exchange Commission accused the firm in April of cheating clients by selling mortgage securities that were secretly designed by a hedge-fund firm to cash in on the housing market's collapse.

This month, Goldman agreed to pay $550 million to settle the civil charges, without admitting or denying the allegations.

So it's not that Goldman Sachs employees will stop pushing "shitty deals." They just won't be allowed to describe them that way anymore.

Though Elena Kagan's confirmation to the Supreme Court hasn't really been in question, the support of five Republicans means that there's no jeopardy in next week's vote.

Retiring Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. announced Friday that he will vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, making him the fifth Republican to indicate support for Obama's pick for the job....

Gregg was one of four Republicans who voted both for Kagan’s confirmation as Solicitor General and for Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The other three – Sens. Collins, Lugar, and Snowe – have also said they will vote for Kagan.

Lindsey Graham is the other. Ben Nelson, however, won't. At least that's what CNN's Senior Political Editor Mark Preston tweets:

Neb. Sen. Ben Nelson will vote against Kagan, but will vote with Dems. to help break a filibuster if needed.

That's confirmed in this statement from Nelson's office, based on "concerns" (unspecified) he's heard from Nebraskans. I'm sure Nebraska has been burning up Nelson's phone lines with calls about Kagan.

Nice of him to at least decide he could break this filibuster, particularly now that he knows he won't need to. All of which goes to show that in one area, the Supreme Court,the ultimate vote will generally be along party lines but with enough Republicans who believe that the President's should be shown deferrence in his choice to confirm. Hopefully that will lead Obama, if he is faced with another appointment in his next six years, to nominate a demonstrated liberal to the court.

In a letter sent to BP earlier this month, Texas Governor Rick Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott say that BP General Counsel Jack Lynch told them that the reason BP wasn't limiting claims to the statutory cap of $75 million was that gross negligence led to the disastrous explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

"Finally, we note that your letter states: 'We have not asserted the cap provided under the Oil Pollution Act,'" Perry and Abbott say in reference to BP's statement it wouldn't invoke the post-Exxon-Valdez law that limits a company's spill related liabilities to $75 million. "We read that as an attempt to suggest that BP is voluntarily paying claims associated with the oil spill. The truth is that BP has not asserted the cap because it acknowledged that evidence would reveal that the explosion and resulting spill were the product of gross negligence -- which renders the statutory cap irrelevant. We know this because, during a conference call with Gulf Coast attorneys general, BP General Counsel Jack Lynch acknowledged that gross negligence would be revealed as a cause of the explosion that led to the oil spill."

Such a finding would be significant not only because it would render the $75 million cap moot, but because it would also quadruple the fine-per-barrel that the government could assess on BP. The Houston Chronicle runs the numbers:

If the courts find BP was negligent in activities that caused the Gulf of Mexico oil spill it's fines could nearly quadruple.

• Per barrel fines under the Clean Water Act

• Without gross negligence: $1,100

• With gross negligence: $4,300

• Size of total fines assuming 55,000 barrel-per-day spill rate

• $5 billion without negligence finding

• $19.6 billion with negligence finding

Not surprisingly, BP is now publicly denying that Lynch ever told Perry or Abbott that BP would be found guilty of gross negligence. Call me bipartisan, but this is one scenario where I actually believe Perry and Abbott, both of whom are Republicans.

Interesting note: in explaining why it believes it is entitled to a $10 billion tax deduction bailout to defray the costs of the spill, BP includes among its expenses $5 billion in fines, tallied at $1,100 per barrel, the per barrel rate if they are not found guilty of gross negligence. If they are found guilty of negligence, that fine would rise to nearly $20 billion, but from BP's perspective, the upside would be that they believe that they'd be entitled to a larger tax deduction bailout. Of course, that assumes BP is able to get its hands on a bailout in the first place: legislation is on its way to make sure they can't profit from the spill. Let's hope it gets passed quickly.

What's coming up on Sunday Kos ….

• Dante Atkins will have a motivational message in the aftermath of Netroots Nation.
• Decades ago, a science fiction editor set a goal for his authors: "Give me a creature that thinks as well as a man, but not like a man." Now progressives face another challenge, Mark Sumner wonders if we can build a movement that works as well as the conservatives on all levels without becoming like the conservatives.
• Brooklynbadboy will take a decidedly "good riddance" stance towards the downfall of Harlem's "Gang of Four."
• The primary schedule will get back on track this coming week with high-profile primaries in four different states. Steve Singiser will criss-cross the country offering a preview of the goings-on in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Tennessee.
• Laurence Lewis will remind everyone that the right-wing racism now exploding into the open is neither new nor incidental.
• Now that racism and sexism in America are over, Kaili Joy Gray aka Angry Mouse will explore the plight of the new oppressed minority: white men.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Put Your Brain in Neutral with Late Night Snark:

"BP CEO Tony Hayward complained that he was unfairly 'demonized' in the U.S. over his handling of the Gulf oil spill. In response, demons complained that they were unfairly compared to BP CEO Tony Hayward."
---Jimmy Fallon
-
"'THE SEA-NATE'...Of Course, This Boat Is Not The Actual Senate, An August Body, Of Which I Am Proud To Be A Member, Serving Humbly With 99 fellow Americans, But In Fact, A Nautical Pun Utilizing My Place Of Work Lo These Past Many Years, As Well As A Synonym For The Word Ocean, Which Is In No Way To Suggest This Craft Will Purely Navigate Ocean Waters. In Fact, I Have Made Plans This Very Weekend With The Fergusons To Navigate The Merrimack, Retracing The Steps Of The Famed Sea Captain, Arnold Merrimack, Obviously Steps Being A Figurative Form Of Speech. If Anything, We'd Be Following In The Wake, Which Obviously Has Long Since Diminished, That Trip Having Been Embarked On Centuries Ago. But I Digress. The Point Is, I Have A Very Nice Boat."
---The name of John Kerry's new yacht, as read by Jon Stewart
-
"Microsoft is getting ready to debut a brand new slogan. A three-word motto: Control Alt Delete."
---Jimmy Kimmel
-
"Obama is blowing off the Boy Scouts Jamboree! ... For Pete's sake, Mr. Obama! Every president in the last hundred years has gone...except twelve of them.  Reagan never went, but he honored the Boy Scouts every day by wearing the neckerchief.  Technically it was just his neck wattle."
---Stephen Colbert
-
"Sarah Palin was delivering a speech and she said 'refudiate.' It's not a word---you have refute and repudiate, and she combined them. A lot of times that will happen and people will confuse combinations of words. I remember a couple years ago John McCain mistakenly combined the words Vice President and Palin."
---David Letterman

More at Dan's place

Last weekend of July. Unbelievable. Oh, well...Bottoms up!  Your west coast-friendly edition of  Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

The DNC has a walk down memory lane.

Let's fight to keep it. The DSCC sends out a reminder that "Coats, Vitter, Johnson, Boozman, Blunt, Norton, Buck, Angle, Paul All Want To End Medicare For Seniors In Their States."

Actually, pretty much all Republicans do, though up until recently it hasn't been fashionable (or politically smart) to say so out loud. But the war on the New Deal and the Great Society has really never ended for the GOP.

It was not exactly a surprise to learn that BP believes thinks it is entitled to a $9.9 billion tax benefit, including refunds on taxes paid in previous years, to pay for the cost of cleaning up its own oil spill.

That's right: despite earning $80 billion over the past four years, despite saying that it will pay for the expense of recovery in the Gulf, BP now wants a $10 billion bailout from taxpayers.

Makes you want to scream out loud, eh? Of all companies in the world that do not deserve a bailout, BP might just be the leading example. (Though, to be fair, Goldman does give it stiff competition.)

It's a horrible idea, and Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) agrees. Today he announced plans to block the taxpayer bailout of BP, promising to introduce legislation that would block BP taking advantage of the deduction and any associated tax credits or refunds.

Aside from being the right thing, Engel's idea is political gold: imagine the difficult position it would put Republicans in. Do they support Democratic efforts to make sure BP doesn't profit from its oil spill, or do they believe in bailouts for BP? If Joe Barton's apology is any guide, the results could be a political disaster for the GOP...and another big win for Democrats.

Right now, Democrats can blame Republicans for Senate inaction:

That's some serious GOP obstructionism. Unprecedented.

Democrats can end that by eliminating the filibuster when the new organizing resolution is passed at the beginning of the next Senate. But apparently, too many Senate Democrats hate progress, and would rather have the filibuster as a handy excuse for inaction.

Five Senate Democrats have said they will not support a lowering of the 60-vote bar necessary to pass legislation. Another four lawmakers say they are wary about such a change and would be hesitant to support it. A 10th Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), said he would support changing the rule on filibusters of motions to begin debate on legislation, but not necessarily the 60-vote threshold needed to bring up a final vote on bills...

Senior Democrats say Reid will not have the votes to change the rule at the beginning of next year.

“It won’t happen,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said she would “probably not” support an effort to lower the number of votes needed to cut off filibusters from 60 to 55 or lower.

Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) echoed Feinstein: “I think we should retain the same policies that we have instead of lowering it. “I think it has been working,” he said.

Ha ha ha ha! "It's been working". In what world? It's a fantastic tool for Republican obstructionists, for corporatist Democrats, for attention whores like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman who get to wield veto power over chamber legislation, and for anyone in the chamber who doesn't want clear accountability and democracy.

Fact is, Democrats have the tools to eliminate GOP obstructionism. If they don't use them, then they won't have anyone to blame but themselves for their chamber's inability to do shit. And if you think 59 has been painful, just wait until we're down to 54-56 seats (or worse). The Obama presidency will be effectively over, even if he sticks around until 2016.

(Via Digby.)

So the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that has a long history of fighting discrimination and bigotry, has apparently gone bonkers: they have joined forces with fringe lunatics like Sarah Palin in opposition to the construction of an Islamic Center two blocks from the Ground Zero. Their rationale?

"We are ever mindful of the tragedy which befell our nation there, the pain we all still feel – and especially the anguish of the families and friends of those who were killed on September 11, 2001. The controversy which has emerged regarding the building of an Islamic Center at this location is counterproductive to the healing process."

Adam Serwer responds:

I learned a very important lesson in Hebrew School that I have retained my entire life. If they can deny freedom to a single individual because of who they are, they can do it to anyone. Someone at the ADL needs to go back to Hebrew School.

I have learned the same lesson in my life, not just in Hebrew School, but also being the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. So too has J Street. Even if you have no intention of ever setting foot inside such a center, you should still stand up against the campaign of irrational fear-mongering being waged against the facility -- especially if you are part of a group whose mission is to fight all forms of bigotry. Whether or not the proposed Islamic Center is politically popular is besides the point: the bottom-line is that you can't put an asterisk next to tolerance.

President Obama is in Motor City today to focus attention on what he feels is an untold success story: the improving fortunes of American automakers thanks to the administration's decision to use TARP funds to bailout General Motors and Chrysler.

DETROIT — President Barack Obama is in the heart of the U.S. auto industry Friday pushing an important election-year claim: that his administration's unpopular auto industry bailout has turned into an economic good-news story.

Speaking at a Chrysler plant in Detroit that recently hired more than 1,000 people, Obama said his administration's bailout out of U.S. car companies saved more than 1 million jobs and kept communities that depend on the auto industry afloat.

Obama said progress in the auto industry is one of the bright spots in the nation's economic recovery. He said that while the auto bailout may not have been popular, the recent growth of car companies is proving critics wrong.

Since the administration took action, the auto industry has added 55,000 jobs -- the best growth since 1999 -- and the administration says 1.1 million jobs have been saved in the economy at large. Unfortunately, the President's visit to Detroit coincides with today's less-than-stellar GDP report which showed continuing anemic growth in the economy.

Against the backdrop of the disappointing GDP report, it strikes me that one of the challenges the administration has in selling the good news out of Detroit is that it doesn't seem to be embracing similar programs for other parts of the economy. Remember, the stimulus only funded about $250 billion in contracts, and that was spread out over three years and the entire economy. The auto bailout cost $60 billion. That imbalance raises a question: if the intervention to help Detroit was successful, then why not do it on a broader scale?

Similarly, even though most economists agree that the spending portion of the stimulus provided a valuable boost to the economy, it's reasonable to ask why there isn't a push to spend more? In other words, given that we know the economy is still weak, if we believe that things like the auto bailout and the stimulus were effective -- but not sufficient -- then shouldn't it stand to reason that we need more of the same?

Instead, we are hearing more from policymakers about reducing deficits and belt-tightening than we are about additional jobs programs. Even if the reason they aren't talking about such programs is recognition that Republicans would block any new initiatives, it seems as if the failure to embrace more stimulus sends the signal that they actually don't believe the original stimulus was effective in the first place, even though that obviously isn't what they really believe.

I guess what I'm saying comes down to this: given that the administration (correctly) believes that the auto industry bailout and the stimulus programs helped the economy, and given that the economy is not yet fully recovered, wouldn't the best way to demonstrate their belief in the value of stimulus be for them to propose more of it, perhaps in the form of a $250 billion per year plan to rebuild our energy transmission grid? And on the flip side, doesn't backing off proposing additional stimulus effectively send a message that they don't believe it works, even if the opposite is actually true?

Update: DarkSyde points to local reaction to President Obama's visit:

Visiting Obama deserves credit for saving GM, Chrysler

President Barack Obama comes to Detroit today, looking for love in the factories of America's hardest-hit big city.

Beset by a sputtering jobless economic recovery, Obama will tout the federal rescues of General Motors and Chrysler as bold moves that staved off another Great Depression and saved thousands of jobs.

While the revivals of GM and Chrysler are still works in progress, at least the automakers are still alive to launch the Chevrolet Volt and the new Jeep Grand Cherokee from the Detroit plants Obama will visit. And that's about as big a triumph as the president can claim from his first 18 months on the job.

Yes, there are still partisan critics sniping about bailouts and "Government Motors." But make no mistake about the Detroit rescue.

The fact that GM and Chrysler are not only alive but modestly profitable in a weak market, after years of losing billions of dollars when car and truck sales were 50% higher, looks like more than just a successful government intervention.

It looks like a flat-out miracle.

That's excellent stuff. Now, let's see more of it. Go national! $250 billion per year in clean energy investments -- it will change America and change the world. And it will be a political success beyond belief.

• Joe Scarborough really is a wanker.
• KY-Sen: Run for your lives! Rand Paul says Hitler is coming to America because of Obama and the Democrats!

  Remember when it was beyond the pale to compare the political opposition to Hitler? But that rule only applies to Democrats. Conservatives can do it with impunity.

• And while we're visiting with Kentucky blogger Barefoot and Progressive, he got video of Rand Paul's former campaign manager, and asked him why he didn't pull the plug on the Rachel Maddow interview which got his general election campaign off to such a horrid start.

  The answer? Because Rand Paul was looking really good and making a lot of sense. So much so, in fact, that they had to stick him in Cheney's underground undisclosed bunker for weeks as they waited for the storm to pass.

• July marks a distressing record.

  With the deaths of three more American troops on Friday, July became the deadliest month for U.S. forces in the nine-year Afghan war.

  The killings came in a manner and location that has typified the recent increase in violence in Afghanistan. NATO officials said two of the American service members died in a roadside bombing while another was killed by a separate insurgent attack, all of them in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban insurgency is strongest. The rudimentary bombs often made from fertilizer are a favored weapon of the Taliban and the predominant killer of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

  The latest killings, a total of six over two days, pushed the death toll to 66 Americans, surpassing June, when 60 Americans were killed. The overall toll for NATO forces in July is still below the record reached in June, when 103 NATO troops were killed.

  What a fucking mess. Bring our troops home.

• I want to see Hailey Barbour, Rush Limbaugh, and Bobby Jindal eat Gulf Coast seafood.

  Scientists have found signs of an oil-and-dispersant mix under the shells of tiny blue crab larvae in the Gulf of Mexico, the first clear indication that the unprecedented use of dispersants in the BP oil spill has broken up the oil into toxic droplets so tiny that they can easily enter the foodchain.

• Mosque madness.

  And here we actually get to the nub of the problem. Joking about the exact scope of the proposed mosque exclusion zone the issue here is whether or not we should be defining Islam, as such, as an “ideolog[y] opposed to America” comparable to the ideology that powered the Soviet Union. I say “no,” Team Newt says yes. That’s both repugnant and strategically disastrous.

  And while the ADL embarrasses itself, J Street shows how the issue should be handled.

• Atrios:

  If We Cared About The Women And Children Of The World

  It would be far better to spend $100 billion per year granting them political asylum and paying for their transport and relocation to the US than invading their countries and caressing them with our freedom bombs.

• Rolling my eyes at the latest Fred Barnes idiocy.
• Scientists now believe that there was no such animal as triceratops. Rather, the beloved and well-known dinosaur was the juvenile form of Torosaurus. Here's a diagram of how the triceratops/torosaur skull might've morphed over time. Note, this isn't established fact, just the latest theory from two paleontologists.

  Luckily, triceratops was named first. So if this is confirmed by peer review, and consensus builds that they're the same animal, then "torosaur" will get the axe. That'll avoid the mess we got when Brontosaur was axed because 1) it was the same animal as Apatosaurus, and 2) Apatosaurus came first.

• Who knew Manta Rays could leap nine feet out of the water? So incredibly cool.
• A two-fer: 1) more evidence of Republicans who lie with abandon, and don't give a shit about the fact that they're lying, and 2) more evidence that filibuster reform is long overdue.

For a week, Senate Republicans have been blocking a jobs and small business bill, as well as aid to states. That led to the tricky parliamentary move Harry Reid pulled last night, as David described earlier.

Harry Reid will move to strip out the text of an FAA authorization bill and substitute instead language to address the additional domestic spending that was itself stripped out of the supplemental appropriations bill the other day. That's $10 billion for teacher job retention and $16.1 billion for FMAP (Federal Medical Assistance Percentage) payments. (That's Medicaid money for the states.) Like the House did and appears to be doing again, the Senate will now isolate out a popular piece of a bill that's stalled and try to get that to a vote.

That's where the Solomon's choice comes in. Republicans--particularly those "moderates" Snowe, Collins, and Brown--have forced this absolutely critical funding to save jobs in the states to be offset. In other words, the money has to come from somewhere else. The Hill explains where it's coming from.

The entire cost of the bill is covered by offsets, such as a provision to end tax credits on corporate foreign-earned income. Closing the foreign income tax credits will raise $9 billion in revenue.

Democrats will also make $8.4 billion in spending recissions. Another $6.7 billion will come from cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Supplemental nutrition assistance is also known as food stamps. Ezra has a good explanation of how this came about.

Some background: The Recovery Act included an immediate 13.6 percent increase in food stamps (which are now known as SNAP). That increase equals out to a maximum of $80 per household -- and these are not rich households. But the price of food has leveled out, and in some cases decreased, in the recession. Meanwhile, the number of people who needed help skyrocketed to more than 40 million. For that reason, the program's costs ballooned from an expected $20 billion to about $65 billion. The new price tag scared some, so people began talking about cutting the benefits back.

And here we are. Democrats needed to offset spending on two worthy, important programs. So they're cutting another important, worthy program. But you really can't think of a worse program to cut than SNAP. SNAP is an extraordinarily well-targeted stimulus. It goes to poor households, for something they need to buy. According to Mark Zandi's numbers, it's literally the most stimulative way to spend a dollar: Better than state and local aid, or unemployment insurance. You get more than $1.70 of economic activity for each buck you put in.

Those "moderate" Republicans are forcing Reid to rob the nutrition program in the future to prevent even more massive layoffs at the state level now. As Ezra says, this is a very hard choice, one which the same Republicans who want to extend the Bush tax cuts to the country's richest people are forcing. Dems have to deal with it, since they are held hostage to the filibuster, to try to save at least some of the jobs that are at risk if the state aid doesn't pass.

As it stands now, the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors are reporting that 481,000 state and local workers will be laid off in the coming year.

Hmmm.

Obama should give Warren a recess appointment

CAPITALISM AND markets depend on the morality, honesty, and good faith of those who participate in them. Markets function best and deliver prosperity when they are honest and the law enforces that honesty; dishonesty, fraud, and official corruption are the poisons that keep markets in many parts of the world from delivering the goods.

That’s where Elizabeth Warren comes in. Those who are lobbying hard against her nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Agency are the same people who lobbied against financial reform legislation and lost. They paint her as the enemy of capitalism and free markets. Nothing could be further from the truth: She is the enemy of dishonesty, abuse, and just plain theft.

What goddam commie wrote this shit?

Charles Fried teaches constitutional law at Harvard Law School. He served as solicitor general in the second Reagan administration and as a justice on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.

Yup. This guy.

More great news for Don Juan DeNevada:

The Senate on Thursday night quietly approved a resolution that will allow Sen. John Ensign’s aides to testify to a federal grand jury investigating the aftermath of the Nevada Republican’s extramarital affair with a former campaign aide.

By voice vote, the Senate approved the resolution that would authorize employees of the Senate to give testimony to a grand jury in Washington.

Senate aides said that the resolution was necessary because Senate rules would prohibit employees from testifying outside of the halls of Congress. The rule was put in place as a way to uphold the Senate's constitutional right under the Speech or Debate clause, which prohibits members of the House and Senate from being prosecuted for work related to their legislative duties.

The Senate action is the most recent sign of trouble for the two-term incumbent. In March, federal investigators started filing subpoenas in their investigation of whether Ensign illegally paid his former mistress hush money and in the first quarter of the year he managed to raise a grand total of just $50.

Sharron Angle wishes she would've thought of this first!

[Rand] Paul believes mountaintop removal just needs a little rebranding. "I think they should name it something better," he says. "The top ends up flatter, but we're not talking about Mount Everest. We're talking about these little knobby hills that are everywhere out here. And I've seen the reclaimed lands. One of them is 800 acres, with a sports complex on it, elk roaming, covered in grass." Most people, he continues, "would say the land is of enhanced value, because now you can build on it."

I don't know, this doesn't look all that enhanced to me:

Big Coal wants to keep doing this, so their handiwork can spread throughout more of Appalachia like a malignant tumor.

Hobet Mine, WV, 1984:

Hobet Mine, WV, 2009:

Hearing Rand Paul talk, is it any wonder that Big Coal is mobilizing to spend whatever it takes to get him into office?

Contribute to Jack Conway
Jack Conway for Senate

p.s. Mark Sumner on the same issue here.

Last night the House brought up, under suspension, the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, a bill that would have provided up to $7.4 billion in aid to the survivors of 9/11, including all the first responders who breathed in all manner of toxins in the aftermath of the attacks.

Bills that are non-controversial are often brought up under suspension of the rules, which also allows leadership to block amendments. Given the huge popularity of this bill, Dems wanted to prevent Republicans from adding a typically insane amendment to make the vote more difficult. So, prevented the opportunity to make political hay because of this procedural move, the Republicans (and a few Blue Dogs) used that as their excuse to vote against the bill.

Which brought this, from Rep. Anthonly Weiner: "If you believe this is a bad idea, to provide health care, then vote no—but don’t give me the cowardly view that ‘if only it was a different procedure.'" Watch:

Those great patriotic Republicans who have been more than happy to use 9/11 victims and heroes as political props for years but when it comes time to do something for them, obstruction is more important.

There's ongoing discussion in nokona's diary.

Sure, the GOP national platform consists of greed, taking control of women's bodies, greed, tearing out safety rules, greed, encouraging environmental disaster, greed, full time war, and greed. But that's to be expected. If you want to know what's really going on in the minds of the Republican faithful. There's only one place to look, the Necronomicon... er, I mean the Republican Party platforms.

This is the first of a series of spelunking editions into the screaming void that is Republicans left to define the world for themselves.

Triskaidekaphobia
Ah, the number 13. Always a source of fear. That's certainly true for Iowa Republicans who hope to strike fear in the hearts of Democrats by using the 13th amendment. They don't mean the current 13th amendment, the one outlawing slavery. That one they'd just as soon forget. No, says Iowa's GOP, the 13th amendment that the rest of the nation is following is not the real deal.

Instead, it wants to reintroduce the "original 13th Amendment" first offered  by senator Phillip Reed of Maryland in 1810. The amendment states that "if any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honor” from a "foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen" and "shall be incapable of holding any office of trust."

Why should Iowa Republicans be so interested in passing an amendment that failed 150 years ago? Because Barack Obama won a little thing called the Nobel Prize. That's right, Iowa Republicans want to pass a constitutional amendment that would strip Obama of his citizenship... for winning the Nobel Prize. Take that, birthers! Time to step up your game.

Demon Children
The Maine GOP platform is a source of endless wonder and boundless horror, but their number one foreign policy priority might be a surprise:

Reject the UN Treaty on Rights of the Child.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is so controversial that it has been accepted by 194 countries. As it happens, the world contains 196 countries. Meaning that the two countries remaining to sign are Somalia (where no one can agree on who gets to hold the pen) and... you guessed it, the United States. What does this treaty do? It sets out a list of rights that should be protected for every person under the age of 18. Who wrote the list? Guessed it again: the United States. Why is the United States one of two countries not to sign onto the treaty that it had the largest hand in writing? Because the GOP has taken up the mantle of rejecting any treaty, no matter how well intentioned, so that we are protected from the black helicopters and blue helmets of "international law" (feel free to shiver), plus home schooling associations within the GOP have become terribly worried that provisions insisting that children deserve a good education might force them to, you know, give their children at least one fact a year. What other scary things are in the convention? Well, there's this:

Article 6

1. States Parties recognize that every child has the inherent right to life.

Boy, it's a good thing the United States hasn't agreed to anything like that. The Maine GOP has turned the inherent right to life into enemy #1.

Zee Mystery of zee Money
Also in the Maine GOP platform is their #1 goal "to promote the general welfare."

Return to the principles of Austrian Economics

Austrian economics is a school of thought that goes back to the 15th century. There is only one problem with returning to the principles of the Austrian school of economics -- it's hard to return to something that was never believed in the first place. See, this fringe version of economic theory has always been a little suspect because it's:

• Not based on any quantifiable theory
• Is unsupported by math
• Is considered laughable by research economists
• is only supported by a few, fanatic foundations

Which, I suppose, is why it's perfect for today's GOP. As it happens, there is a school of economics that America could return to. It's called the American school of economics and it defined US policy from the nation's inception and was designed to help the nation be economically independent and self-sufficient. Sound like something the GOP might like? Here's a description of that economic system knocked together by our founding fathers.

It consisted of these three core policies:

  1. protecting industry through selective high tariffs and subsidies
  2. government investments in infrastructure creating targeted improvements
  3. a national bank with policies that promote growth

that American school? Pretty much kicked to the curb by Reagan. Seems odd that the Maine GOP would want to ditch the system that brought the nation from a standing start to the greatest economy on earth and replace it with an unworkable theory out of Austria. But you know how those Republicans always want America to be more like Europe.

The Commerce Department announced this morning that economic expansion in the second quarter of 2010 was worse than the expert consensus had estimated. It clocked in at a paltry 2.4 percent in seasonally adjusted annualized growth of gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced. This reflects a growing trade deficit and reduced consumer spending. Today’s second-quarter numbers will be revised twice in the next two months as more complete data become available.

In addition to the second-quarter report, the department’s annual revisions of GDP from earlier quarters indicate that the Great Recession has been even deeper than previously thought and the recovery weaker. For instance, the third quarter of 2009 was revised from 2.2 percent growth to 1.6 percent, and the fourth quarter of 2009 - which has shown the largest growth since the recession began in 2007 - was revised from 5.6 percent to 5 percent. GDP for the first quarter of 2010 was modified from 2.7 percent to 3.7 percent, the only upward revision.

The revisions help explain why the U.S. economy has lost so many more jobs than economists would have predicted given the magnitude of the previously reported drop in GDP; that is, the previously reported drop in GDP was misleading.

Although the U.S. economy has now seen four consecutive quarters of growth, the drop in the rate of that growth since the fourth-quarter of 2009 is anything but encouraging for rank-and-file Americans.

The best news in the Commerce report was that business spending on equipment and software increased by 21.9 percent in the second quarter, with overall business investment up 28 percent. But real personal consumption expenditures increased only 1.6 percent in the second quarter, compared with an increase of 1.9 percent in the first. Those numbers were reflected in this morning's University of Michigan report that consumer confidence has fallen to a nine-month low.

As a gauge of economic performance, much less of economic well-being, gross domestic product leaves a good deal to be desired. Efforts to replace it, however, including that commissioned by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with Joseph Stiglitz in charge, have yet to succeed. But GDP is only one gauge, to be considered alongside others.

Nine months ago it wasn’t hard to find predictions from Barron’s or Goldman-Sachs that annualized GDP growth for the second quarter would top 5 percent and maybe even reach 6 percent. Three months ago, many prognosticators were still estimating growth at 4 percent. By early July, most experts had dropped their predictions to around 3 percent.

The weak report is no surprise, but neither is it a yawn. A heavy load of mostly disappointing economic data - in manufacturing, retail consumption spending, unemployment, housing foreclosures, truck and rail traffic, exports vs. imports and consumer sentiment, combined with more recent reports of sluggishness from the Fed and its branch banks – had already greatly lowered the optimistic expectations from earlier in the year. Talk of a “V”-shaped recovery - the “rubberband” effect so widely touted as late as April - has become subdued.

Just yesterday, Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher offered the latest version of the downbeat view when he said economic growth would continue a “slow slog” of improvement but remain below 3 percent for a “prolonged period.” Overall, he said, “I fear the nation’s economy will be sailing forward at suboptimal speed, despite the fact that the cost of borrowing is low, equity markets have shown resilience and liquidity is plentiful on corporate balance sheets and in the form of excess reserves in the banking system.”

St. Louis Fed President James Bullard released a white paper the same day evaluating [pdf] the possibility that the United States could follow the path of Japan by falling into a long-running deflationary period.

The quarterly Associated Press Economic Survey found that the majority of 42 economists surveyed don’t think we’re headed for a double-dip recession, but they do see much slower growth into 2011 and do not believe employment will return to the 5 percent level until 2015.

Far less optimistic than they were in January, economists at Goldman-Sachs now say the economy will only grow 1.5 percent in the second half of the year. One of them, Jan Hatzius, says: "Absent  substantial further stimulus, we worry that final demand will recover only very slowly given the continuing headwinds on sectors such as housing, consumption and state and local spending."

Prajakta Bhide, a research analyst at Roubini Global Economics, says: “Given how weak the labor market is, how long we’ve been without real growth, the rest of this year is probably still going to feel like a recession.  It’s still positive growth — rather than contraction — but it’s going to be very, very protracted.”

The GDP report combined with predictions of a slowdown make the Fed’s downwardly revised outlook that growth for the entire year will range from 3.0-3.2 percent seem overly optimistic. Even if the economy did grow at that level, it would be discouraging. It’s true that GDP growth of 3.3 percent is the average for all quarters since 1947. But that’s too low during the first stages of a recovery to generate enough jobs to put the millions who have lost theirs  back to work. Although there are dissenters, under what economists call “Okun’s law” it takes about 3 percent growth just to create enough jobs to keep pace with the population increase.

Millions of Americans are hamstrung by hugely profitable corporations continuing to off-shore jobs and unwilling to invest their hoards of cash in economic activity that requires new domestic hiring, by banks unwilling to lend to small businesses, by small businesses unwilling to seek loans because of lack of consumer demand, by lack of consumer demand because of debt and the lack of jobs.

Harold Meyerson describes the situation in stark terms:

Is this model sustainable? It's hard to say -- a double-dip recession could plunge their profits yet again. But from the American worker's perspective, the [corporate] model, no less than a new downturn, is an unqualified disaster. It portends the kind of long-term, structural unemployment that we haven't seen since the 1930s. It locks into place a generation of reduced incomes.

This dystopian America already stares us in the face. Fully 46 percent of the unemployed have been without work for six months or more -- the highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began measuring such things in 1947. Two years ago, just 18 percent of the unemployed were jobless for more than six months. America's private-sector job machine -- the marvel of the world since 1940 -- has clanged to a halt, and there's no place for it in corporations' new business model. …

Corporations have figured out a way to make money without resuming hiring. Their model is premised on not resuming hiring. If the public sector doesn't fill the gap, the era of American prosperity is history.

Getting the public sector more deeply into the act requires getting Congress to act. And while the majority of the House appears willing to do so, the ever-obstructionist Senate minority stands squarely in the way of anything but the most watered-down economic legislation no matter who gets harmed by its failure.

Like it or not, America post World War II was redesigned as a country for cars first, people second. We can all hope that will change and push for legislation that favors more variable use communities, better public transport, and urban renewal, but for many years to come there's going to be a need to shuffle people down the highway on a regular basis in areas where mass transportation is inadequate.

So we better look at ways to do it more efficiently -- ways that do as much as possible to prevent repeats of the big disaster we're all still dealing with... the war in Iraq. Oh, and also that godawful mess from BP.

This week there was some news on a couple of fronts when it comes to replacing our current generation of automobiles with something that slurps up less petroleum.

When it comes to big manufacturers offering consumers something different in the marketplace, we already had Nissan offering the electric Leaf which will become available in some states this fall for around $33,000. That sounds pricey for a little hatchback that only goes 100 miles on a charge, but thanks to Federal tax breaks, the price of the Leaf should be knocked down to around $25,000. This morning General Motors announced that the Chevy Volt will also be available around the end of the year at a price of $41,000. Again, that price is a bit daunting, but federal tax breaks bring it to around $33,000 and some states will offer additional breaks. The Volt offers up quite a different bundle of technology from the Leaf. Nissan's offering is pure electric. The General's option is a "plug-in hybrid" (or "Extended Range EV" depending on who does the naming). The Volt will travel around 40 miles on an electrical charge, then kick in a gas-powered engine to recharge the batteries and keep the system moving after that. The Leaf is smaller, lighter, simpler, and cheaper. The Volt has the advantage of essentially limitless range, since the gas engine can keep things moving indefinitely. As an over-generalization, the Leaf is well suited to a daily commute, while the Volt is a better option for those who regularly need to face a longer journey.

The best thing is that these two vehicles should start showing up in American driveways within a few months, and by this time next year they should have competition from several other EVs including electric versions of some "regular" cars, such as the Ford Focus.  For those of us who have been holding onto a increasingly unreliable vehicle waiting for the day when an EV was available, I can only say "hurry up and start offering these in the Midwest, darn it, my 'check engine' light has been on for 20,000 miles."

Meanwhile, as big manufacturers gear up to start production, don't count out the little guys. The Automotive X-Prize is coming down to its last phase, with only a few teams remaining. In the "mainstream class" (essentially four-wheeled vehicles holding at least four passengers) only a single team remains. The Very Light Car from Edison2 hews close to the ideas that Amory Lovins introduced years ago in his "hypercar" design. As the name implies, it's very light and very aerodynamic. Rather than running on an electric engine, the Very Light Car has a regular internal combustion engine burning E85 -- it just doesn't burn very much of it. There are two other classes in the Automotive X-Prize: alternative tandem class (one driver in front, one passenger in back) and alternative side by side (just what it sounds like). In the tandem class, only the E-Tracer from Swiss team X-Tracer remains. The side by side group includes five remaining competitors, among them Aptera, Li-ion, and Zap.

There's potential prize money out there in the shape of $10 million for the team that proves its vehicle is practical, safe, maneuverable, and capable of getting more than 100 MPG (or MPG equivalent, for electric vehicles). The ways the rules are set up, it's quite possible that none of this year's teams will take home the money. But already the competition has been a showcase of innovation. With only a handful of teams remaining, it's interesting now to look back at all the teams that began the competition.

Honestly, if I could get my hands on an Aptera 2e, an e-Tracer, or a Very Light Car, I'd buy one today -- even over a Leaf or Volt. These highly efficient vehicles look like just the thing to get me down the road with minimum gas use and maximum jaw droppage. Maybe one of these teams will shortly get a multimillion boost toward getting their factory running.