Good afternoon, Daily Kos readers. This is your afternoon open thread to discuss all things Hill-related. Use this thread to praise or bash Congresscritters, share a juicy tip, ask questions, offer critiques and suggestions, or post manifestos.
This is an open source project, so feel free to add your own insights. Here's the news I found lurking around the Internets...
In ur tubez upgrading ur internets
Are you reading this on dial-up (*shudder)? Don't panic. There's no photos or video. Those of us with broadband don't even think twice about about things like that. Indeed, some of our younger readers might not even have ever suffered through dial up. These are the same kids who have no frame of reference about 286 processors, 300 baud, VHS, 33 1/3 vinyl, or Atari 2600.
Anyone who has been on (or is still on) dial-up knows what a pain in the ass it truly is. Downloading a two minute video takes an hour or more. Buying and selling online is a major undertaking since it takes so long just to download a photograph of what you are buying. Video chat? You've got to be kidding me. Viewing the.pdf of the health care bill? Forget about it. Online classrooms? Please.
Well, the stimulus bill might actually do something to solve those problems.
FCC plan would greatly expand broadband Internet connections
The Federal Communications Commission announced on Monday its long-awaited plan to bring broadband Internet connections to every home and business in the United States, part of an ambitious, multibillion-dollar attempt to create a new digital infrastructure for the nation's economy.
The national broadband plan outlines dozens of policy recommendations aimed at raising the portion of people with high-speed Internet connections to 90 percent, from the current 65 percent, over the next decade and significantly increasing the connection speeds of homes with such service.
Mandated by last year's stimulus legislation, the plan will be presented to Congress on Tuesday and is widely expected to set the FCC's agenda for years to come. It would move the commission squarely into the age of the Internet, creating a federal mandate for installing thousands of miles of new fiber-optic cable and erecting many cellphone towers.
That increase in speed they are talking about in the second paragraph? The New York Times is talking about 100 megabytes megabits a second. The average user has around 3-4 meg/second. For non-techies, that means you will be able to do some really neat stuff on your computer in the next decade.
Economically, this plan would also introduce competition into the market, which could potentially decrease your internet bill. If you are still attached to your home phone, this has the potential to let you replace your landline with Skype, which is free.
The GOP will probably cast this as (sing along if you know the lyrics), "a government takeover of the internet." Back here in the real world, a rural cable company manager once explained the economy of scale to me. In the city, your ISP can get hundreds of subscribers for every mile of cable run and maintained. Out in the sticks, it could take five miles of cable to reach one subscriber. It is cost prohibitive for the private market to do extensive rural broadband.
The FCC's plan and a test to check your speed is available at www.broadband.gov.
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Health care process update
What's wrong with this headline?
Democrats move closer to passing Senate health bill without actual vote
Let's start with the second and third paragraphs of the story:
The House Rules Committee on Tuesday morning released a memo defending the so-called "deem and pass" procedure, which the memo said has a long precedent in the House and is used commonly.
"For starters, despite what the minority may claim, the precedent for adopting a resolution and at the same time concurring in a Senate amendment to a bill was set back in 1933," the Rules memo states.
Instead, I am sitting here watching the GOP Representatives parroting the talking points of the day. We don't get to vote on this. We won't get an up-or-down vote. This is a procedural trick.This violates Article I section 7. I don't want my pony.
Or you could read David Waldman's Stupid Headline Tricks which explains why this is fine.
Or we could talk about how many times the Republicans used the rules to grease the path to passage when they were in power.
Or we could talk about how Article I, section 7 allows both chambers to set their own rules. As a follow up, I wonder what the House Republicans think of the filibuster.
Or there is Rush Holt on my tee vee machine who asks if the the American people care what "process" the insurance companies used to settle on a 25 percent increase in premiums.
Meanwhile, here are some of the other headlines:
Tea Party Crowd Calls For Pelosi To Be Tried For Treason (VIDEO)
Scattered amongst the now-familiar chants, shouts and cackles at this morning's Code Red tea party-style rally on Capitol Hill (you know the drill -- "Kill the Bill!," "Shame!," etc) was a new line of attack on the Democratic health care reform package and the woman trying to bring it to final passage in the House, Nancy Pelosi.
"Treason!" several in the audience yelled as Pelosi's "deem and pass" plan was criticized by speaker after speaker standing in the center of the circle of several hundred protesters. "Try her for treason!"
Note: Lying your way into an unnecessary war is not treason. Torturing prisoners of war is not treason. Letting an American city drown is not treason. Spying on American citizens is not treason. But using a routine procedural rule to help people get the health care they need apparently is treason.
Oh, and that protest was kind of a dud.
The Health Care Letdown
WHILE Democrats may yet enact health care reform via a convoluted process that involves passing three separate bills, many people may wonder, "What happened to the postpartisan era?" Both President Obama’s 11th-hour meeting with Republicans and the Republican leaders’ demands to "start over" are recognized by Americans for what they are — political talk substituting for bipartisan legislation.
As health policy adviser for Senator Olympia Snowe, the Maine Republican, while Congress considered this most critical and complicated issue, I saw firsthand how a failure to recognize the magnitude of the task, and a toxic political environment, undermined the effort to achieve reform.
Note: you are not going to agree on every point, but this should be required reading for anyone who cares about the process of the health care bill. The author concludes by noting that, should this bill fail, things will get worse and worse. In a decade, we might have no choice but to do single payer. Perhaps we should save the money and effort and just do that now.
Savvy Dems Reject GOP 'Advice' on Health Reform
To hear Republican congressional leaders and strategists tell it: If Democrats pass health care reform, the party of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Obama is toast.
Seriously, the message from the Grand Old Partisans is that voting to give Americans greater access to medical care is the political equivalent of a suicide pact.
The theme was repeated again and again in weekend interviews by top Republicans.
Note: Gee. Thanks for the advice. I have a feeling that we will lose some seats in the House -- the Dems who vote against this bill. And finally, on a related note:
Former Obama Campaign Staffer Hildebrand Could Run Against Rep. Herseth Sandlin In Dem Primary
Steve Hildebrand, a former top staffer to the Obama campaign in 2008, says that he could potentially run against Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD) in the Democratic primary -- if she doesn't vote for health care reform.
"I want to see how she votes on health care," Hildebrand, a native South Dakotan, told CNN. "If the vote is very, very close and we lose it or come close to losing it, I will take a seriously look at challenging her."
Note: We might have another race to highlight soon. Sandlin seems to be leaning no.
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"Government takeover of student loans"
Here we go again...
Student lenders protest ‘nationalization’ effort
Student lenders are mounting a final push to keep an overhaul of the industry embraced by the Obama administration and congressional Democrats out of the larger healthcare reform package.
They are doing so in part by using the same type of rhetoric critics of the healthcare bill have used, warning of a government takeover and nationalization of the lending business if Democrats win the day.
Democrats want to end subsidies to private lenders to make loans to students, and are trying to attach the change to the healthcare bill the House may vote on this week.
Anyone who has had to take out a student loan from a bank knows full well that their terms are a lot less generous than one gets from the federal loans. But "our friends" on the other side of the aisle would prefer the 22-year-old brand new college grads start out their careers in massive debt to the banks.
The side benefit of keeping student loans with the federal government is that there is a mechanism for attracting young professionals to critical jobs like nursing, urban teaching, and public service through loan forgiveness.
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Another SCOTUS fight
Here's a bit of Senate history. Once upon a time, the Senate vetted Supreme Court nominees in private. These days, SCOTUS hearings are a chance for political grandstanding, usually at the expense of a sober judge suffering through such nonsense.
Well, we might see another round this year.
Justice Stevens Weighs Retirement Date
Justice John Paul Stevens will soon decide whether he will stay on for another Supreme Court term, the justice told Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker.
"I still have my options open," Justice Stevens said in the interview, which was conducted on March 8. He added that he would make up his mind in about a month.
Justice Stevens is the leaders of the "liberal" wing of the court.
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Sir! Yes, sir!
Usually, when the boss says something should happen, it happens. When the board of directors decides to micromanage, however, you have a problem.
Gen. Petraeus: "Time Has Come to Consider" DADT Repeal
Gen. David Petraeus on Tuesday told a Senate armed services committee that he believes "the time has come" to consider an abolishment of "don't ask, don't tell," but supported an exhaustive review of the policy's effects on recruitment and unit cohesion before either a moratorium or legislative repeal is considered.
The second part of that statement, the bit about an "exhaustive review," is almost assuredly a strategic statement to cater to the more conservative members of Congress who have not figured out that homophobia not okay.
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Renewable energy
Here's a novel idea. If Congress will not pass comprehensive Climate Change legislation quickly, they should at least pass the more popular components.
Governors: clean energy incentives should move without climate piece
Congress should pass a renewable electricity mandate and other incentives to encourage renewable power sources separately from climate change legislation, Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat, said Tuesday. Culver is the chairman of the Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition, which includes the governors of 29 states.
"We don’t want these things to get caught up in the broader debate and discussion that will only slow us down," Culver said.
The coalition released a report (pdf) on Tuesday that made several recommendations to Congress to develop the wind energy sector. The list includes a renewable electricity standard that requires 10 percent of power to come from renewable sources like wind, solar, and biomass by 2012 and tax breaks targeted at clean energy projects.
No it won't do everything we need to do to reverse global warming/climate change, but this is an important piece of the needed reforms and can pass now.
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Who's who
Today, The Most Important News of the Day™ notes that there is a field of scholarship that looks at the management styles of different presidents. The general consensus is that Franklin Roosevelt was one of the most effective since, well, Roosevelt, who made his advisers compete for his attention. One noticeable thread is that Democrats tend to try to replicate FDR's model. Kennedy had his "Best and Brightest," which included Republicans. Clinton ran a collegial style that taxed his time with meetings. Republicans, meanwhile, tend to use a very disciplined and structured model. Dwight Eisenhower, the old war horse, did this and George W. Bush seems to have had a similar model. Ronald Reagan, meanwhile, just let his advisers run the show.
At this point, it is almost impossible to classify Barack Obama's management strategy since most of the data comes from memoirs of the presidents and their advisers.
What we do have is a really cool interactive from the Washington Post that shows Obama's advisers and where they have offices in the West Wing. The deputy national security adviser seems to have the worst office while Rahm Emanuel got the corner office on the opposite end of the hall from the Oval Office.
If that is too boring, there is always Saturday Night Live's take on Eric Massa.
Personally, I don't think it was their strongest effort. You Lie and Geithner sucks were much better.
Happy #breitbartocalypse