Obama Gets Rolled Again - Or Does He?

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The fiscal deal cliff details are emerging and once again, it looks like Obama has gotten "rolled" on almost everything.

First, Paul Krugman:

Anyone looking at these negotiations, especially given Obama’s previous behavior, can’t help but reach one main conclusion: whenever the president says that there’s an issue on which he absolutely, positively won’t give ground, you can count on him, you know, giving way — and soon, too. The idea that you should only make promises and threats you intend to make good on doesn’t seem to be one that this particular president can grasp.

And that means that Republicans will go right from this negotiation into the debt ceiling in the firm belief that Obama can be rolled.

At that point he can redeem himself by holding firm — but because the Republicans don’t think he will, they will play tough, almost surely forcing him to actually hit the ceiling with all the costs that entails. And look, if I were a Republican I would also be betting that he’ll cave.

So Obama has set himself and the nation up for a much uglier confrontation than we would have had if he had set a negotiating position and held to it.

And then Jon Walker at Firedoglake:

First, it signals to the GOP that Obama simple can’t draw lines in the sand. If Obama says he will not negotiate on something (say, the debt ceiling), any Republicans would be foolish to believe he won’t. Obama has never held firm before, and there is no reason to expect him to in the future.

Second, it again reinforced that the best negotiation tactic with Obama is for the Republicans to be purposely disingenuous. The GOP should pretend to be close to a deal so Obama publicly says what concessions he will make, only to have the GOP predictably blow up the deal. After that, the GOP can start negotiations again but use Obama’s concessions as the new goal posts.

After Obama again reinforced his image of weakness, I shudder to think how the next fight will go when Democrats inherently have significantly less leverage.

Even administration mouthpiece Ezra Klein realizes Obama got rolled:

When these negotiations began, the White House was unyielding on that point, with the president promising to veto anything that didn’t raise tax rates for income over $250,000. Asked by House Speaker John Boehner what he’d trade for $800 billion in revenue — about the cost of the high-income Bush tax cuts — Obama was firm. ”You get nothing,” the president said. “I get that for free.”

To make matters worse for Republicans, the Senate had already passed a bill letting those cuts expire back in July because Minority Leader Mitch McConnell figured it would be too politically damaging to block. If Mitt Romney had won the election, that bill would have died. But after Obama won on a platform that was barely about anything aside from letting those tax cuts expire, it seemed inevitable he’d get it done. It was his due.

To the GOP’s delight, that no longer seems to be the case. In the Obama-Boehner negotiations, the White House offered to raise the threshold from $250,000 to $400,000. McConnell, in his negotiations with Harry Reid and now Joe Biden, has been trying to raise that to $500,000. It’s clear to the Republicans that they will get past the fiscal cliff with a smaller tax increase than they thought. Perhaps much smaller. Huzzah!

That will set up a fight over the debt ceiling. The Republicans plan to say that now that they broke their pledge and voted for a tax increase, they’ll insist on a dollar of spending cuts for every dollar of debt-ceiling increase — the so-called “Boehner rule”. The White House plans to insist that it won’t negotiate over the debt ceiling at all.

Republicans I’ve spoken to laugh at this bluster. Obama is already negotiating over the debt ceiling, they point out. He began the fiscal cliff negotiations by saying he wanted a permanent solution to the debt ceiling. Then it was a two-year increase in the debt limit. Now he’s going to sign off on a mini-deal that doesn’t increase the debt ceiling at all. Does that really sound like someone who’s going to hold firm when faced with global economic chaos? The White House always talks tough at the beginning of negotiations and then always folds at the end. Republicans are confident that the debt ceiling will be no different.

All this raises the tantalizing prospect for Republicans that they could end these negotiations having given up less tax revenue than they ever thought possible — less tax revenue than Boehner offered Obama, even — but still getting their entitlement cuts. Oh, and because there was never a big deal, they won’t have to agree to much stimulus, either. All in all, a pretty big win, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the White House’s baffling inability to stick to a negotiating position.

I have to think that the administration didn't stick to a negotiating position because the man at the top, Mr. We Need To Re-Elect Him Or The World Will End, didn't want the administration to stick to a position.

He wanted to cave on the Bush tax cuts, the inheritance tax, the payroll tax cut, everything.

Obama caved on every contested issue because that's what he wanted to do.

Watch how Obama takes a position in education reform and sticks to it NO MATTER WHAT.

Doesn't matter what evidence comes in to show that Race to the Top is horrible policy, Common Core is common crap, test-based evaluations of teachers are harmful to students, and merit pay doesn't work.

Obama believes in these positions and he sticks to them no matter what.

Of course it helps that in the education reform fight, Obama plays the role of the tough negotiator - the Republican, if you will - while teachers and teachers unions and progressive educators play the part of Obama - the waffling "Oh, what do you want, we'll give it to you if you'll love us more!" role.

Perhaps if the teachers unions and teachers themselves treated Obama with the disdain that Republicans treat him, they might  get some concessions on his privatization agenda out of him.

Of course this won't work post-election, but it surely could have worked pre-election - especially when they were panicking after that first debate.

But instead the NEA endorsed him a year and a half out and well-respected progressive people claimed a Romney presidency was "unthinkable" and so we had to vote for Obama no matter how bad he is and the AFT joined the NEA and other unions in GOTV and other efforts to get their man re-elected.

And he rewarded all of this by selling middle and working class Americans down the river, by giving GOPer's almost everything they wanted in the fiscal cliff deal, and he inevitably will do the same when the debt ceiling fight starts in a few months - only that time, he will be selling us out on Social Security and Medicare too.

Either he is one bad poker player or these outcomes are the very ones he wants, only because he is nominally a "Democrat" he has to make believe like he wants something more progressive.

I know a lot of people think he's the former, that he really does have a progressive heart but he just can't stand up to Republicans.

I think it's the latter - he's a moderate Republican at heart and these are the outcomes he wants - lower taxes for rich people, Social Security and Medicare cuts for working people.

Either way, the outcomes are bad for the vast majority of Americans and they will get even worse when the debt ceiling fight starts.

Again I ask, where are all those progressives who claimed they wouldn't let the president sell out progressive principles during the second term?

Sure, they're complaining - but it ain't doing much good, is it?

POSTSCRIPT: A commenter at the Daily Kos puts all this in perspective:

Obama has been very clear in his support of neo-liberal Rubinite economics. He has completely ignored Krugman and Steiglitz. He has kept pretty much the same econ policies as Bill Clinton.

There is no evidence that Obama is a progressive on econ. None.

This whole fiscal cliff performance is theater to get us to accept policies that benefit billionaires and bring cuts to seniors, the middle class and the poor.

That's exactly right.

I think my anger tonight is less at Obama, who is after all acting the same way he has for the last four years, and more at all the progressives and liberals who got their shorts in an uproar over the 2012 election.

This was the guy we had to re-elect?

Hell, he's pushed through more neo-liberal policies than Bush ever dreamed of.

We got food stamp cuts, a health care "reform" law that forces people to buy private insurance, public school privatization programs masking as "reform," - and Social Security and Medicare cuts are coming next.

Just as it took Bill Clinton to end welfare as we know it, it took Barack Obama to sell out what little safety net remains for working and middle class Americans.

Oh, but you know what isn't going to be cut?

The defense budget.

The surveillance state budget.

The drone bomb budget.

Oh no -we just can't cut that stuff.

So shut up and eat your generic dog food from the 99 cents store with the 2009 expiration date, okay!

This is all for your own good.

It's Just A Ride

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The World is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real, because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round, and it has thrills and chills and is very brightly colored, and it's very loud. And it's fun, for a while.

Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they've begun to question, 'Is this real, or is this just a ride?', and other people have remembered, and they've come back to us and they say 'Hey, don't worry. Don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.' and we KILL THOSE PEOPLE.

"Shut him up! We have alot invested in this ride! SHUT HIM UP! Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account, and my family. This just has to be real."

It's just a ride.

But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that. You ever noticed that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because ... It's just a ride.

And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear wants you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead see all of us as one.

Here's what we can do to change the world right now, to a better ride:

Take all that money we spent on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding, clothing, and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and WE CAN EXPLORE SPACE, TOGETHER, BOTH INNER AND OUTER, forever ... in peace.

-- Bill Hicks (1961 - 1994)

Obama Continues Bush Illegal Rendition Practice

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I am so glad we re-elected Barack Obama rather than the "unthinkable" Mitt Romney:

The three European men with Somali roots were arrested on a murky pretext in August as they passed through the small African country of Djibouti. But the reason soon became clear when they were visited in their jail cells by a succession of American interrogators.

U.S. agents accused the men — two of them Swedes, the other a longtime resident of Britain — of supporting al-Shabab, an Islamist militia in Somalia that Washington considers a terrorist group. Two months after their arrest, the prisoners were secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York, then clandestinely taken into custody by the FBI and flown to the United States to face trial.
The secret arrests and detentions came to light Dec. 21 when the suspects made a brief appearance in a Brooklyn courtroom.

The men are the latest example of how the Obama administration has embraced rendition — the practice of holding and interrogating terrorism suspects in other countries without due process — despite widespread condemnation of the tactic in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Renditions are taking on renewed significance because the administration and Congress have not reached agreement on a consistent legal pathway for apprehending terrorism suspects overseas and bringing them to justice.
 
Congress has thwarted President Obama’s pledge to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and has created barriers against trying al-Qaeda suspects in civilian courts, including new restrictions in a defense authorization bill passed last month. The White House, meanwhile, has resisted lawmakers’ efforts to hold suspects in military custody and try them before military commissions.

The impasse and lack of detention options, critics say, have led to a de facto policy under which the administration finds it easier to kill terrorism suspects, a key reason for the surge of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Renditions, though controversial and complex, represent one of the few alternatives.

“In a way, rendition has become even more important than before,” said Clara Gutteridge, director of the London-based Equal Justice Forum, a human rights group that investigates national security cases and that opposes the practice.

Drone bomb strikes, a kill list, illegal renditions and warrantlesss wiretapping - I'm so glad a Democrat is in office so that I don't have to worry my head about any of those things.

Of course if this were Mitt Romney, John McCain or George Bush doing it, I would be screaming about war crimes.

But Barack Obama is my guy, and he's a good guy, so I just let this stuff go by and talk about how crazy those Republicans are instead.

When Barack Obama spoke of the murdered children at Sandy Hook Elementary, he said the following:

"I think anybody who was up in Newtown, who talked to the parents, who talked to the families understands that something fundamental in America has to change," Obama told David Gregory on NBC's "Meet the Press." "And all of us have to do some soul searching, including me as president, that we allow a situation in which 20 precious small children are getting gunned down in a classroom. 

A noble sentiment from our Nobel Peace Prize winning president.

How about a fundamental change to American foreign policy that uses drone bomb strikes against terrorism suspects and kills children in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere?

Children like the ones described here.https://twitter.com/dronestream/status/279258960916271105/photo/1

Or here.https://twitter.com/dronestream/status/278727931818278913/photo/1

Or here. https://twitter.com/i/#!/dronestream/media/slideshow?url=pic.twitter.com%2F1jKbpuIz

Adam Lanza murdered 20 children at Sandy Hook in a horrific event.

We don't know how many children Barack Obama has had murdered through U.S. drone policy strikes, because the U.S. government is very secretive about casualties.

But it's more than 20, we know that.

We know that the Obama administration specializes in targeting funerals of drone bomb victims with another drone bomb strike, that they also target first responders to drone bomb strikes who attempt to help the victims with another drone bomb strike.

We know the policy causes and is meant to cause terror all across the globe - don't screw with us or this will happen to you.

Now is rendering and detaining suspects without charges, interrogating them without informing them of their rights or giving them legal counsel, and trying them on evidence obtained illegally better than the drone bomb campaign the Obama administration has engaged in?

Absolutely not.

But the Obama administration says that because Congress will not act the way they want on WoT issues, they have no choice but to do one of these two things.

If this were George Bush or Mitt Romney or John McCain doing the rendering, the murders from the sky, the slaughtering of innocent children like the ones pictured and detailed in the above links, liberals and progressives would be screaming holy hell over it.

But because this is Barack Obama engaged in the rendition and drone bomb murder and the slaughtering of innocent children like the ones pictured and detailed in the above links, there is relative silence from those same liberals and progressives.

Barack Obama is a war criminal and a murderer, he belongs in a prison cell block along with Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, John Yoo and Richard Nixon's corpse.

Where is the outrage from the left?

Another Good Reason Not To Support Quinn For Mayor

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From the Post:

Democratic mayoral contender Bill de Blasio yesterday tore into rival Christine Quinn’s decision to keep Ray Kelly on as police commissioner if she is elected mayor later this year.

The public advocate, one of Quinn’s likely challengers, painted the closed-door move as a “backroom deal” orchestrated by Mayor Bloomberg.

De Blasio admitted he doesn’t know whether the mayor was personally involved in conversations between Kelly and Quinn, the City Council speaker.

“But I do know this: The people of this city are sick of backroom deals. They’re sick of the mayor, in particular, trying to exert influence on the next administration, trying to continue to have a role that is not one that should continue after his term is up,” de Blasio said in response to a report about the deal in yesterday’s Post.

Quinn will keep Kelly at the NYPD.

Does that mean she'll keep Walcott at the DOE too?

Does that mean she'll keep most or all of Bloomberg's policies in place?

Does that mean she'll be Bloomberg's fourth term?

Cuomo's Corporate Education Reform Commission

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When you put a corporate guy from Citibank in charge of an education reform commission and load the commission up with corporate education reform shills, it's not too hard to figure out what reforms they will decide to promote to "fix" the public education system.

I could have told you the reforms they were going to suggest long before they actually released their preliminary findings:

Longer school day (in order to get students ready for the 10 hour workday corporations have people doing)

More tech training (in order to get students ready for the technology applications they'll have to use when working their ten hour soul-sucking corporate job)

Full day kindergarten (in order to get kids ready for their 10 hour work day, you want to start them on long school days as soon as possible - the age of five sounds about right)

Teachers unions busting mechanisms (they didn't address teacher evaluations in the report released yesterday but said they will in the next, more detailed report)

Blaming teachers for the alleged problems in the system (bar exam for teachers, change certification procedures, hold teacher preparation programs accountable for teacher performance through the use of test scores)

Add choice (continue down the road to privatization by adding as many "high quality" charters as possible in order to steal resources from the public school system and starve the beast)

The commission did suggest wrap around social services as part of their reform suggestions, which is supposed to be a progressive idea for reform, but you can bet that many of those wrap around services will end up being giveaways to corporate cronies and "nonprofits" linked to the education reform movement.

The whole rationale for public education these days is to get kids "college and career ready" - i.e., to socialize them into a consumerist and corporatized economic and political system with just enough training to be able to do what their corporate masters tells them but not enough critical thinking skills to question their lots in life.

Teachers and teacher preparation programs that still promote social justice stand in the way of this kind of system, and so they must be destroyed - the teachers fired and replaced with TFA Barbie Dolls who do what they're told and the teacher preparation programs with the commie pinko professors replaced by TFA-lite teacher prep programs that use test scores as the sole measure of "effective teaching."

The aim is to break the teachers, break the teacher prep programs, break the system, break the unions and get everybody on board with the corporate agenda.

That Randi Weingarten - the education reformer's favorite labor leader - is on this commission does not mitigate the fact that it has been created to find the system a failure and to push corporate education reform "solutions" through as a result.

Given Weingarten's politics, her presence on the commission underscores what a corporate force it will be.

As NYC Parents blog pointed out, there are no suggestions to reduce class size from this commission - a proven reform that works to improve education for students.

As a commenter on that post pointed out, there are no real teachers or parents on the commission.

Just corporate shills with a corporate agenda looking to instill that agenda into kids as early as possible.

Just another example of how the fix is in.

Results first, commission after - that's what this sham is.

No wonder they stole the name of their report from Michelle Rhee's Students First corporate education reform lobby group.

Farm Bill Is Extended In 'Fiscal Cliff' Deal, Setting The Stage For More Agriculture Battles In 2013

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The 'dairy cliff' is avoided, and crop subsidies will continue; the details of the deal and document downloads for the massive legislation...

By Jerry Hagstrom and Eddie Gehman Kohan

After days of high drama on Capitol Hill, the House late on Tuesday night approved the Senate version of the American Taxpayer Relief Act on a vote of 257-167. Just before departing for Hawaii, President Obama addressed the nation from the White House, and hailed the massive compromise package that saves America from the worst effects of the fiscal cliff--tax increases and spending cuts--as a win for the middle class, because "more than 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small businesses will not see their income taxes go up." 

As he made his remarks, President Obama was flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, who spent hours on Capitol Hill on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day wooing lawmakers in both chambers, working in concert with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. to craft the deal. The bill includes a nine-month extension of the expired 2008 Farm Bill, to September of 2013.

The extension runs 18 pages in the 153-page bill, and was immediately lambasted by critics when the Senate first passed the entire bill at 2:00 AM on Tuesday morning with a vote of 89 to 8.  It comes on the heels of a failed year-long attempt in 2012 to pass a new Farm Bill; last summer, the Senate and the House both approved versions of the legislation, though the House edition never made it to a full floor vote.  It sets the stage for a difficult year ahead as lawmakers attempt to create a new Farm Bill, revisiting the same territory but with changes in membership in crucial committees for the 113th Congress--and with many issues to address that were dumped out of the extension. 

The extension prevents a spike in milk prices, averting the so-called "dairy cliff," but does not protect dairy farmers.  It does not include disaster aid, and keeps intact the crop subsidies that President Obama has been pledging to eliminate since he first ran for the White House: The extension fully extends $5 billion in direct payments to farmers for fiscal 2013.  It is a victory for Southern farm interests.  It also slashes some funding for organic agriculture, clean water initaitives, and beginning farmer projects.

The extension also does not include the dairy market stabilization program that the National Milk Producers Federation and House Agriculture Committee ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., sought, but that the International Dairy Foods Association and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, opposed.  Peterson voted against the bill, while Boehner gave a yea.

On Sunday, three different extension packages were offered; the package that Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., put together was entirely ignored.  It was a shocking turn of events, as was the willingness of the White House and House Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to agree to the extension.  The three lawmakers all voted for the larger bill.

Other food and farming issues seemed to pale in the interest of preventing the spike in milk prices, and President Obama made not a single mention of either agriculture or the Farm Bill extension as he addressed the nation on Tuesday night.  But in the fact sheet the White House issued on Tuesday morning on the Senate bill, there was just one sentence, at the very end, about the extension: "Extends the farm bill through the end of the fiscal year, averting a sharp rise in milk prices at the beginning of 2013."

Though the bill extends the Milk Income Loss Contract program, which should provide some payments to dairy producers, National Milk Producers Federation President and CEO Jerry Kozak said the deal “is a devastating blow to the nation’s dairy farmers.”

“After months of inaction, the plan...amounts to shoving farmers over the dairy cliff without providing any safety net below,” Kozak said.

after she voted for the bill, Stabenow said in a statement early on Tuesday:

“It is critically important that the U.S. Senate has come together to prevent tax increases on middle class families and small businesses, extend unemployment benefits for those struggling to find a job, and end tax breaks for millionaires our country can no longer afford. This agreement accomplishes that, providing certainty for families and businesses and allowing our economic recovery to continue.

“Rather than embrace the Senate’s bipartisan farm bill which cuts $24 billion in spending and creates certainty for our agriculture economy, Sen. McConnell insisted on a partial extension that reforms nothing, provides no deficit reduction, and hurts many areas of our agriculture economy."

Later on Tuesday, during an impassioned speech on the Senate Floor, Stabenow added that it was “absolutely outrageous” that other expired agriculture programs were not included in the extension agreement. 

“Without consultation with me or the chairman in the House, we now have a partial extension,” Stabenow said.   “They not only do not extend all the titles, but they do not include critical disaster assistance.”

Stabenow vowed that when the 113th Congress goes into session, her committee "will once again begin work in the new year to enact a new farm bill that works for our farmers and rural communities as well as American taxpayers."

McConnell spokesman Michael Brumas defended McConnell’s action in the extension deal. 

“Sen. McConnell put forward a bipartisan, responsible solution that averted the dairy cliff and provided certainty to farmers for the next year without costing taxpayers a dime,” Brumas told the Associated Press.

But the National Milk Producers Federation's Kozak had a different opinion.

“These stop-gap efforts [of the extension] don’t even qualify as kicking the can down the road," Kozak said. “Despite the progress made in 2012 on the farm bill, we’re starting 2013 on a bad note."

“We oppose any farm bill extension of any duration that does not contain the Dairy Security Act, and resolve to work this year on achieving that as a long-term goal.” 

Senate Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who voted for the deal, said he was “pleased” that the bill included a farm bill extension through the fiscal year, as well as averted the dairy cliff.

“While this extension is not the best possible bill, I believe it is the best bill possible at this time,” Roberts said. “It provides consumers certainty by avoiding the dairy cliff, and it provides certainty to our producers and their lenders as Congress continues work on a farm bill in 2013.”

At the same time, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), which represents family and smaller, environmentally-minded farmers, declared the extension deal "a disaster for farmers and the American people,” because it is "blatantly anti-reform." In a statement after the Senate vote, NSAC cited the lack of "any workable dairy policy for the next year and any disaster aid for livestock and fruit producers" as particularly bad decisions.

"We are extremely disappointed in the Republican leader for proposing this deal and in the White House for accepting it," NSAC said.  "The message is unmistakable--direct commodity subsidies, despite high market prices, are sacrosanct, while the rest of agriculture and the rest of rural America can simply drop dead.”

“The deal also has the effect of keeping farmers from being able to improve soil and water conservation through enrollment in the Conservation Stewardship Program at the present time."

NSAC did commend the Agriculture committee leadership “for trying to pass a more responsible extension measure, and on behalf of our member organizations and the farmers they represent, we recommit ourselves to getting a true farm and food bill reform measure passed in 2013.”

The only good news for the reform minded:  If Congress passes a new Farm Bill before next October, the $5 billion in subsidy payments that are included in the extension will not be made.  

In an odd way, the extension is also a victory for anti-hunger advocates and a failure for the many critics of the Food Stamp program. The extension appears to make no major changes to Food Stamps, officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, even though the Senate had proposed a small cut and the House Agriculture Committee had proposed a much larger cut in the Farm Bill legislation each chamber approved last summer.

Anti-hunger advocates and the White House opposed those cuts to Food stamps, which make up more than 70 percent of the Agriculture Department's budget.  Enrollment in the program for September hit an all-time high of more than 47.7 million people, and the Obama Administration regards it as a critical way of keeping people out of poverty as well as an economic booster for farmers and others in the food supply chain.

Making matters more complicated for the next Farm Bill: Mr. Obama's 2012 campaign to remain President seemed to prove that rural Americans are out of sync with the rest of the country: Polls showed that 59% had voted for Republican challenger Mitt Romney.  

In early December, in his first major speech after President Obama's re-election, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack warned that rural America is on the brink of becoming irrelevant.

“Why is it we don’t have a farm bill?” Vilsack asked. “It isn’t just differences of policy, it is because rural America with its shrinking population is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of the country.”

Other items in the legislation...
In addition to preventing tax increases for most Americans, the legislation will delay automatic budget cuts to agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control.  Embedded in the massive bill are many other issues and perks, including for the food/farming supply chain.  

Restaurants will receive tax credits to update their infrastructure.  There is $222 million for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, through returned excise taxes collected by the federal government on rum produced in the islands and imported to the mainland.  Algae growers will receive $59 million through tax credits to encourage production of “cellulosic biofuel” at up to $1.01 per gallon.  

Besides the Farm Bill fight, there's more drama looming on the even horizon between President Obama and Congress.  The legislation does not address the debt ceiling, and could add as much as $4 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released Tuesday night.  Most of that is attributed to lost revenues or payments on refundable tax credits.  President Obama attributed the failure to address theses issues in the fiscal cliff deal to running out of time.

"Unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough support or time for that kind of large agreement in a lame duck session of Congress," President Obama said.  "And that failure comes with a cost, as the messy nature of the process over the past several weeks has made business more uncertain and consumers less confident."

Since the bill delays automatic spending cuts for two months, the next showdown will be over replacing those cuts, raising the debt ceiling and funding the federal government.  President Obama asked for "a little less drama and a "little less brinskmanship" from the members of the 113th Congress, who will be sworn in on Thursday.

President Obama has no public events scheduled during his stay in Hawaii, which is expected to end on Jan. 6.  He departed for the second half of his winter vacation at midnight on Tuesday, and was expected to land in Honolulu at 4:30 AM local time, rejoining the First Family, who have remained at their rental compound in the town of Kailua.  The President previously spent Dec. 22-Dec. 27 in Hawaii, before returning to Washington to deal with the fiscal cliff.

*H.R. 8 - The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, as amended and passed in the Senate, Jan. 1, 2013

*White House Fact Sheet: The Tax Agreement: A Victory For Middle Class Families & The Economy

*Congressional Budget Office: Estimate of the Budgetary Effects of H.R. 8

The Congressional Budget Office Score for the one-year extension

*Joint Committee On Taxation Analysis of the bill

*Roll call vote in the House

*Roll coll vote in the Senate 

*Transcript, President Obama's remarks

 

##
 ______________________________
Jerry Hagstrom, founder and editor of the best online, subscription-only agriculture and policy newspaper The Hagstrom Report, cross-posts at Obama Foodorama.  If you're not a subscriber to The Hagstrom Report, you're missing crucial coverage. 

*Pool photo 

Mayor Bloomberg King's Game 911 Tech System CityTime Mega-Crimes

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http://mayorbloombergkingofnewyork.blogspot.com/2012/06/suzannah-troy-note-to-press-activists.html  King's Game Danish film -- from Albany under the reign of andy cuomo to mike bloomberg and mrs. bloomberg Christine Quinn his mini-me -- the 2 get off playing good cop bad cop we have the largest mega corruption EVER and no one seems to notice...

Don't forget mega-corrupt MTA SAIC deal -- oh yeah and than the MTA and it's board got integrity?  Even less now that Andrew Cuomo stabbed the people of NYC in the back and sent a message go ahead and be violent towards women and get rewarded as well re: Dave Paterson silencing his 6 foot 9 best friend Dave Johnson's girlfriend in to silence.

Johnson fled.  The only honest folks with integrity resigned from their jobs in Albany as the corrupt Paterson and Johnson stayed on.  Finally paterson was forced to fire johnson who did plead guilty!

Judge Judy Kaye is a political fixer and betrayed all decency folks to do Cuomo's political fixing and it is is because of Paterson's daddy Basil who has powerful connections so from Albany to City Hall the most corruption EVER.

I had hoped Cuomo might change things but he has clearly signaled he is now part of the problem.

9-11 a nightmare I still can't believe but this too seems like a bad dream -- really mind blowing they are getting away with the largest tax payer abuse -- billions upon billions and no one seems to notice or care and the most corrupt players are all above the law while the little people are falsely arrested ticketed etc.

The New York Times Christine Quinn's Campaign Manager Protest Dress! by Suzannah B. Troy

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Protesting tonight and I will wear my red wig!!!!!
Wait until you see the back!   I accuse The New York Times of killing news stories on behalf of Christine Quinn!


http://christinequinnminime.blogspot.com/2012/07/christine-quinn-chuck-meara-locked-out.html


I wrote at the very bottom of the back of the dress.....Thanks Carolyn Ryan, We owe you....xoxox Christine Quinn, Emily Giske!

NYPD Jose Ramos Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly's Albatross

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Wiczyk, O. 3297/2011 Pt. H60 12/13/2012	Jose Ramos	Ramos, a New York City Police Officer, is charged with crimes stemming from more than half a dozen different incidents that occurred between March 10, 2009 and November 11, 2009. Ramos has been charged with attempted robbery, attempted grand larceny, transporting what he believed to be a shipment of heroin for drug dealers, selling counterfeit CDs and DVDs in his barbershops, and disclosing the identity of a confidential informant who was providing information on a series of shootings and homicides.
Wiczyk, O. 2047/2012 Pt. H60 12/13/2012	Jose Ramos and Wanda Abreu	Ramos, a New York City Police Officer, and his wife Abreu have been charged in a new indictment with conspiring to hire a “hit” man to murder a witness in a criminal case against Ramos. It is alleged in court papers that the defendants from September 15, 2011 and continuing through May 7, 2012, attempted to arrange the contract killing through face to face meetings and telephone calls, some of which were recorded at a detention facility on Rikers Island, where Ramos is awaiting trial.

http://suzannahbtroy.blogspot.com/2012/09/httpbronxda.html



This link will take you to docket of legal cases Bronx with NYPD cops listed!
The list -- the last one is a shocker the NYPD cop accused of trying to hire a hit man to kill witness -- one case in a series of nypd fixes and favors scandals that involve PBA -- my point is the corrupt NYPD are not effectively being weeded out and something is really really wrong.


Aren't you glad there is not fixing or favors by the NYPD and PBA anywhere but the Bronx including City Hall.....


http://suzannahbtroy.blogspot.com/2012/11/murray-weiss-on-shrinking-nypd-forgets.html?m=1

Bloomberg's Scandalous CityTime Trial Delayed & SEC Head Quits!

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Bloomberg's Scandalous CityTime Trial Delayed & SEC Head Quits!

http://suzannahbtroy.blogspot.com/2012/12/bloomberg-bharara-citytime-trial-pre.html
Note;  Preet is delaying the pre-trial blaming Hurricane Sandy to some degree so folks this means the trial will be delayed as well which at this point may allow Mike an exit as mayor as his "service" I prefer rule/abuse of power to make him and his puppets and pals far richer is over -- although he wants to extend his rule via Christine Quinn.


If New Yorkers grasped what he is guilty of he would be forced to resignnot that we have any leaders to step up.  (From the White House to Albany to City Hall from the right and left we are doomed....they run it like a corrupt corporation not a government....)

Follow the links:



http://mayorbloombergkingofnewyork.blogspot.com/2012/04/citytime-saic-scandal-washington-post.html?m=1


http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/26/business/la-fi-sec-schapiro-quits-20121127

Head of SEC quits -- does that mean SEC going to come out of coma and go after SEC for role in CityTime (screwing over robbing NYC tax payers -- yes folks that is you -- if someone robbed your wallet or smart phone but you don't seem to care we were robbed on CityTime and ECTP the 911 tech system and we are not getting the proper responses of the authorities including the SEC.    http://suzannahbtroy.blogspot.com/2012/11/saic-sec-in-bernie-madoff-like-coma.html

Preet Bharara refuses to go back in Time CityTime and re-do the indictment.  It seems like he is protecting top SAIC officials and NYC Gov officials.   His office claims they are swamped with millions of pages of paper work but SAIC shareholders suing SAIC agree with my theory about SAIC robbing us way back before Denault was even hired.  The Richard Valcich letter proves it.

http://youtu.be/ARFIl0hxTGw  My vid of me reading only part of the letter has almost 9,000 views.

http://bloombergnewzzz.blogspot.com/2012/11/ny-post-editors-911-son-of-citytime.html

http://nyciloveyoubigtime.blogspot.com/2012/11/michael-bloomberg-mayor-in-thief.html
Documentary Film Maker on Mike Bloomberg explaining how he makes millions of dollars a day as mayor -- since this film was made Mike's private fortune as grown even more.


http://mayorbloombergkingofnewyork.blogspot.com/2012/07/rumor-preet-bharara-avoiding-career.html

http://mayorbloombergkingofnewyork.blogspot.com/2012/12/mayor-bloombergs-911-tech-software.html

SAIC the Artful Dodger
http://suzannahbtroy.blogspot.com/2012/11/saic-artful-dodger-repost.html

POSTED BY SUZANNAH B. TROY ARTIST AT 8:27 AM LINKS TO THIS POST

3 Farm Bill Extension Measures Filed In House - UPDATE: CBO Releases Score For One-Year Farm Bill Extension

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Congress has run out of time to pass new Farm Bill, says House Ag Chair Lucas; measures seek to avert a dive off the "dairy cliff," provide drought relief to farmers...Senate Ag Chair Stabenow supports extension...
*Update at bottom of post

By Jerry Hagstrom 
Founding Editor, The Hagstrom Report

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., is urging passage of a one-year extension of the 2008 Farm Bill, but the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said on Sunday that House Republican leaders had filed three different versions of an extension on Saturday night, and that each is problematic.  In addition to Lucas' One-Year Farm Bill Extension, a Temporary One-Month Farm-Bill Extension was filed, as was a One-Month Dairy-Only Extension.

In a statement on Sunday, Lucas said the one-year bill is a result of “discussions” with House Agriculture Committee ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., and Senate “colleagues,” but he did not say specifically that the others were backing the bill.

“Clearly, it is no longer possible to enact a five-year Farm Bill in this Congress,” Lucas said.

“Given this reality, the responsible thing to do--and the course of action I have long encouraged if a five-year bill was not possible is to extend the 2008 legislation for one year. This provides certainty to our producers and critical disaster assistance to those affected by record drought conditions."

The measures also attempt to avoid America going over the so-called "dairy cliff," which would cause an increase in milk prices.  Without a new Farm Bill or an extension of current law, milk prices could revert to levels set in 1949, per the last "permanent" farm legislation in the US.  Retail milk prices could potentially spike to between $6.00--$8.00 a gallon without an extension; current price levels are about $3.50 per gallon for non-organic milk.  The spike would happen gradually, a Department of Agriculture spokesman told Reuters.

An extension also means that farmers might get crop subsidies for another year; at certain levels, these were eliminated when the Senate passed a new five-year Farm Bill last June, and the House Agriculture Committee followed with its own version in July, though it never received a full House vote.

“The legislation posted is the result of discussions with ranking member Peterson and my colleagues in the Senate," Lucas said.  "It is not perfect--no compromise ever is--but it is my sincere hope that it will pass the House and Senate and be signed by the President by January 1."

In a statement issued on Sunday afternoon, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., Chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, firmly laid the blame for no new Farm Bill on the shoulders of House Republican leadership, while voicing support for an extension. 

“While the Senate passed a bipartisan five-year Farm Bill in June that cut subsidies and reduced the deficit, the lack of action by the House Republican leadership has put us in a situation where we risk serious damage to our economy unless we pass a temporary extension,” Stabenow said.

“If a new Farm Bill is not passed in the next few days, Agriculture Committee leaders in both chambers and both parties have developed a responsible short-term Farm Bill extension that not only stops milk prices from spiking, but also prevents eventual damage to our entire agriculture economy." 

Stabenow added that a new Farm Bill is "crucial," and said "if a new Farm Bill doesn’t pass this Congress we’ll soon hold another mark-up and just keep working until one is enacted next year.”

There has been no indication about when the extension measures will be brought to a vote.

Ferd Hoefner, head of the NSAC office in Washington, said in an email that the extension bills are problematic.

“The House Republican leaders filed three different versions of measures to extend the 2008 farm bill, a one-year version and two one-month versions, with the one-year version including disaster assistance funding and a new dairy stabilization program, and the two short-term measures delaying the so-called ‘dairy cliff.’ ”

“All three draft bills are sorely lacking and should be significantly amended or defeated,” Hoefner said.

“All three fail to take the minimum steps required to allow USDA to run the Conservation Stewardship Program for 2013. All three fail to provide 2013 funding for beginning farmer, minority farmer, rural jobs, farmers markets, and specialty crop research programs,” he said.

“The one-year version does provide funding for renewable energy programs and some but not all organic agriculture programs, but as with the two one-month versions, leaves the other critical farm bill programs that lack 2013 funding high and dry. Leaving out the newer, innovative, job and opportunity-creating programs from a farm bill extension is unacceptable.

“No one who cares about new farmers, healthy food, or rural job creation should agree to the packages as drafted,” Hoefner said.

Both the House and Senate Farm Bills passed over the summer had cuts in funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), popularly known as Food Stamps, which has remained a stumbling block to getting a new bill passed.  The number of Americans enrolled in the SNAP program has continued to rise monthly throughout the Obama Administration, with the number for September at an all-time high.

##

Update, 6:30 PM:

The Congressional Budget Office on Sunday released its score for an extension of the 2008 Farm Bill until September 30, 2013.  Download the CBO score here [PDF].

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition also issued a revised statement of its views on the bill.

The NSAC said the score “shows 2013 funding being provided for many of the programs that received mandatory funding in the 2008 farm bill and that received mandatory funding in the Senate-passed and House Committee-passed versions of the now defunct 2012 farm bills.”

“While we question the way the bill was drafted, we are delighted it provides 2013 funding for beginning farmers, rural development, minority farmer outreach, specialty crop and organic research, direct farmer to consumer markets, and a variety of other programs,” said policy director Ferd Hoefner in a statement.

“We are still awaiting word as to whether the bill would also allow USDA to resume sign-ups and sign contracts with farmers for the Conservation Stewardship Program and the Conservation Reserve Program-Transition Incentive Program,” Hoefner said. “In our view, those are critical pieces that need to be included in a farm bill extension measure.”

_______________________________
Jerry Hagstrom, founder and editor of the best online, subscription-only agriculture and policy newspaper The Hagstrom Report, cross-posts at Obama Foodorama.  If you're not a subscriber to The Hagstrom Report, you're missing crucial coverage.

White House Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses To Speak At TEDx Manhattan Conference

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Yosses will discuss Let's Move! and "Changing The Way We Eat" on Feb. 16...
On the heels of First Lady Michelle Obama celebrating the third anniversary of her Let's Move! campaign in February, Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses will speak about the initiative at the TEDx Manhattan 2013 conference. Though best known for stunning desserts and gorgeous creations like his Gingerbread White House, Yosses is deeply involved with the First Lady's national childhood obesity initiative and is a riveting public speaker.  He has given lectures on molecular gastronomy and Let's Move! at Harvard, as well as at culinary conferences around the US.  (Above, at the White House)

Titled "Changing The Way We Eat," the TEDx conference will be on Feb. 16 in New York City.  Tickets are $135 to attend, and audience members will be "curated"--selected by the organizers after applying--but the entire conference will be webcast for free.

Other speakers from the White House orbit include Chef Ann Cooper, a longtime school lunch activist who is one of the partners in the Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools project, with her nonprofit Food Family Farming Foundation; and Gary Hirshberg, the chairman of Stoneyfield Farm, who  was appointed by President Obama in 2011 to serve on the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations.  Among his many advocacy efforts, Hirshberg is chair and a founder of Just Label It, We Have the Right to Know, the national campaign to label genetically engineered foods.  The full speakers list.

Mrs. Obama will kick off the third anniversary celebration for Let's Move! during the week of February 9th, and will have a busy schedule, according to a White House aide.  More details will be released closer to the date.

CLICK HERE for links to all posts about Yosses, and CLICK HERE for links to all Let's Move! posts.  Visit LetsMove.gov for more information about the campaign.

*Photo by Eddie Gehman Kohan/Obama Foodorama

State-level data on children's poverty and nutrition programs

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The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center this week released new resources about breakfast and lunch participation in Massachusetts schools.  A chart pack (.pdf) illustrates data describing the extent of take-up of nutrition benefits, and a summary graphic (.pdf) traces a wide variety of nutrition assistance programs from the federal funding sources to the state and local implementation level.

More generally, the Kids Count data center from the Annie E. Casey Foundation has a wide variety of state-level data resources for all states.  For example, here is an interactive map showing children's poverty levels by regions within Massachusetts (you can mouse over selected counties to see specific statistics).

Pork checkoff funds lobbying alliance

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The federal government's semi-public checkoff programs collect mandatory assessments from producers.  Of course, it is illegal to use these funds for lobbying.

Yet, the National Pork Board (the pork checkoff program), overseen by USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, is listed as an "Alliance Partner" for a National Pork Producer Council lobbying organization.  The NPPC is a private-sector pork industry trade association.  The NPPC's alliance web page explains the lobbying goal:

Pork Alliance dues are used to fund outreach for critical legislative and regulatory industry priorities, including foreign trade access, environment, food safety and animal welfare issues.

The dues mentioned in the web page are large.  The application form (.pdf) on the NPPC website says that the dues for becoming an "Alliance Partner" are $20,000.

I am not surprised that the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has filed a legal complaint with the USDA Inspector General.  The mandatory assessments are being funneled to a lobbying organization.  No matter what you think of the HSUS, it seems wrong for the federal government to use its power of taxation to place a finger on the scale of the public debate.

Pretty much everything you read about cancer from authoritative sources is likely to be worth taking seriously

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Here is my paraphrase of the most important results from a study by Schoenfeld and Ioannidis in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

• Meta-analyses do fairly well at correctly stating their conclusions.  Meta-analyses are quantitative literature reviews that combine results from across studies, essentially increasing the sample size and breadth.
• For example, Schoenfeld and Ioannadis looked at 9 meta-analyses showing an association between consuming particular foods (I think of foods such as fruits and vegetables) and reduced risk of cancer. For all 9, the results were statistically significant at conventional levels (p<.05).
• Schoenfeld and Ioannadis looked at 4 meta-analyses showing an association between consuming particular foods (I think of foods such as processed meats) and increased risk of cancer.  For 3 of the 4, the results were statistically significant at conventional levels (p<.05).
• While the meta-analyses did well at reporting results, individual studies sometimes report results in their abstracts even when they were not statistically significant.  Some of these reported results may be attributed to random happenstance rather than real cancer effects. This is why it is unwise to change eating habits with every new study.  It is wiser to rely on the balance of scientific evidence connecting particular foods to cancer risks and benefits.

Based on these results, you may be interested in the excellent collections of meta-analyses and systematic literature reviews available from a well-respected source such as the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute of Cancer Research. The new paper by Schoenfeld and Ioannadis reflects fairly well on the type of research posted by the WCRF and AICR.

But, journalists will report the conclusions of the new study to say something completely different from the above.  In the endless search for novelty, journalists write each day that everything you previously believed about diet and health is mistaken.

For example, Sarah Kliff at the Washington Post's Wonkblog writes today under the headline: "Pretty much everything you eat is associated with cancer. Don’t worry about it." 

Food industry public relations folks will love this message.

To make things worse, Kliff garbles the statistical material (see the comments to the Wonkblog post):

Don’t panic yet, though: The vast majority of those studies, Schoenfeld and Ioannidis found, showed really weak associations between the ingredient at hand and cancer risk. A full 80 percent of the studies had shown statistical relationships that were “weak or nominally significant,” as measured by the study’s P-values.

This description seems to ignore the meta-analyses and also it seems to describe perfectly fine statistically significant results (p<.05) as if they were "weak or nominally significant."

Perhaps the authors share some of the responsibility.  Kliff quotes the author:

“I was constantly amazed at how often claims about associations of specific foods with cancer were made, so I wanted to examine systematically the phenomenon,” e-mails study author John Ioannidis ”I suspected that much of this literature must be wrong. What we see is that almost everything is claimed to be associated with cancer, and a large portion of these claims seem to be wrong indeed.”

As with climate change skepticism, people twist genuine heterogeneity in scientific results to cast doubt on both marginal claims and widely accepted claims alike.  I wish that neither journalists nor authors would cavalierly say that most of the literature is wrong, when even the new study shows quite trustworthy results for the authoritative meta-analyses that actually merit attention from the public.

Just for example, the balance of scientific evidence from WCRF and AICR suggests that fruits and vegetables reduce risk and that red meats and processed meats increase risks of certain cancers.  Such conclusions based on meta-analyses fare well in the new AJCN study.