My Republican Friends

My Republican friends e-mail me almost every day with some new “old” complaint about the President. He is so different from their model, so different from what they expect an obedient, “do what we tell you” President ought to be. They just can’t understand this guy. Here is a President who actually thinks before he answers a question, who actually listens to others, who believes in the true separation of powers, and in using all three branches of government to govern. It’s just a bit much for them to get their brains around.

They do not yet see that the auto industry WILL be entirely something else in eight years; they do not see that America WILL be a whole lot less dependent on fossil fuels to drive its cars in eight years; they do not yet see that financial markets WILL have new supervision and oversight; they do not see that health care WILL be reformed and universal health care WILL be accepted, indeed, embraced even by Republicans.

I advise them to get ready for an economy that will grow at a healthy rate for at least another 25 years. This is the kind of paradigm shift that impacts all facets of our lives. (Wait until nanotechnology hits computers in your office and automobiles in your garage with its full potential. You will be witness to real growth!)

Our President is just getting started. The credit card bill – a measure we have sorely needed for 30 years – is just the beginning. I tell my Republican friends, “If you can’t understand what is happening, if you think it is too much for us to handle as Americans, if you think we can’t or shouldn’t do any of these ambitious things, you best stand back because you will be run over by people who see ‘yes’ where you see only ‘no.’”

PS Keep you Blackberry fully charged if you want even a slim chance of keeping up.

Can the Ends Ever Justify the Means?

Former Vice President Cheney said yesterday President Obama makes “pretty speeches” but that “pretty speeches” do not leave our adversaries in awe of us. In other words, you can talk about being a nation of laws, but if you want to be effective in this “war against terrorism” you have to ignore law and do what you must, including torture. That sort of rationalization could have been used by bin Laden himself by simply saying he hated to do it, but slamming planes into the WTC was effective and thus a fine thing to do.

Mr. Cheney, I urge you to read the speech President Obama delivered yesterday. It was a sober, serious and yes, patriotic speech – perhaps the most important speech of his tenure. It did not lay out a plan in the sense that it did not say, “Tuesday, we will deliver Guantanamo inmates 1-20 to federal prison x.” No, it was far more important than that. It was designed to help Americans understand – again – basic precepts upon which this government was founded and has been governed for 233 years. Much of what President Obama said has been forgotten or ignored in recent years.

President Obama framed his approach to combating terrorism in both American law and values. He outlined the problems as they exist and the challenges to solve them. Most important, he elevated the issues above the current debate. “I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we also cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values,” he said. “…Time and again, our values have been our best national security asset.”

But it is clear Mr. Cheney will never understand that. When he opened his speech, he gave us an indication of the total disdain he has for our President when he said, "It's pretty clear the president served in the Senate and not in the House of Representatives because, of course, in the House, we have the five minute rule." Cheney was complaining about the length of President Obama’s speech. I suspect he did not listen to it. Mr. Cheney, get a copy….please.

BTW, the Obama speech was 6,000 words and the Cheney speech was 5,500.

Another BTW, if there was any doubt about who was President during the last administration, it has been brushed away with Cheney’s full blown attempts in the media to defend actions of the Cheney/Bush administration. Now we know, CHENEY WAS the President. As Cheney would say, “The fact of the matter is, I was the President, and if you will, I liked it.”

Give the Speaker a Break

I worked on Capitol Hill for nearly 19 years -- all of it on the Senate side of the Hill -- and it was generally known among Senate staff that the CIA altered its briefings to members depending on who was receiving the briefing.

The CIA often found excuses NOT to brief certain members of Congress at all for fear of seeing the information in the newspaper the next morning.

Some members, for the same reason, were given only partial information at briefings.

Some members of Congress may have been intentionally mislead on occasion.

And, of course, some members were briefed completely, accurately and honestly because the CIA trusted those members to use the information supplied properly.

So this business of saying, as Newt Gingrich did last night that "The CIA is prohibited by law from lying to Congress, and thus would never do that" is ridiculous -- and Newt knows it.

I have my own view of what Speaker Pelosi might have been told but it is not relevant so I won't offer it here. What is relevant is that the facts have not changed: Torture is illegal and the Bush/Cheney Administration authorized it it. It makes no difference what the CIA told or did not tell Speaker Pelosi. Soon the focus will return where it rightfully belongs -- not on the people who wrote the justifying memos, rather on the people who made the decision to torture in the first place.

And even if there is no prosecution of these individuals, history will "prosecute" by recording the truth for future generations to read and not repeat.

If Only Peter Could Pay Paul...

The Obama Administration has proposed a budget of $3.6 trillion for FY 2010 which starts October 1, 2009. It is $1.84 trillion more than the government will take in from all sources.

The numbers are so large it is difficult for ordinary citizens to comprehend them, but almost every citizen worries about where the numbers might take us. Most of us see the deficit numbers piling up and worry that inflation will likely be used to pay for most of the spending we are doing today.

$3.6 trillion.

It is enough to take your breath away no matter your political leanings. Democrats will tell you it is a lot of money and it is necessary to (1) meet the demand for government programs and services from the people (everything from defending the shores to making sure beef is safe to eat), (2) restore some semblance of normalcy to the economy (stabilize the banks, secure the insuring entities), and (3) invest in our future in ways only government can. I repeat: …in ways only government can.

In short, there is a role for government in our lives. Dismiss any who say we need less government because it is too late. What we need, what we ask for, what we demand cannot be done with less government. If you know someone who believes otherwise, tell them to “get real.”

$3.6 trillion.

That IS a lot of money. Surely, we don’t need all of it. Surely, there is waste we can cut out and balance our federal budget. Why can’t we just cut those crazy programs at universities that do useless research like the one studying the sex lives of Australian slimy toads? When someone comes up and starts talking about such, I hope you will tell them, as politely as you can, to “please stop.” Such conversations, while they may feel good to the one complaining, do not reflect even a basic understanding of where we are….or, more importantly, where we are going.

Here’s where we are: Fully 65 percent of the federal budget is COMMITTED to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Interest on the National Debt, and Defense of the nation. That’s two of every three dollars – gone. Can’t be touched. You wouldn’t want to cut a dollar from any if you had the responsibility. Obama does have the responsibility and he was able to cut only $17 billion from the Pentagon’s budget for next year. He cut the entire F-22 Raptor program and other major line items but only cut $17 billion from the DOD budget.

OK, OK… so, two of three dollars are committed; what about the remaining dollar?

That last dollar supports every agency and department in the Executive and Judicial branches of government as well as a tiny amount for the Legislative branch. That last dollar goes to Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Justice, Labor, State, Energy, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, NASA, Veterans, Treasury, and Congress.

The deficit for the coming year will be around $1.84 trillion, according to a new projection released by the White House today, and that’s more than half of the $3.6 trillion budget proposed.

So, what’s a responsible government to do? It can slow down the rate of growth in entitlement programs, for one thing. It only takes political will. That means you and I have to give our elected officials the freedom to address these issues responsibly without threatening them with dismissal at the next election. It also means we have to give government the freedom to do some risk taking on our behalf, as the Obama Administration is attempting to do by investing in health care reform (control the rate of growth in health costs while improving health care), investing in new energy sources (lead us to energy independence), investing in environmental innovations (slow climate change and improve the quality of air we breathe), invest in infrastructure (improve roads, bridges, transportation, and communication, to name a few).

In other words, we can pay for the deficits of today with inflation if we do nothing or we can pay for the deficits by growing the economy in real terms through investing in the full potential that exists in the human mind. I don’t know about you, but I prefer the latter.