Lets Defund the Vice Presidents Office!!

My previous post made mention of a hilarious and absurd claim the vice president is making in order to keep from following executive orders demanding he open himself and his classification procedures for review (in secret of course).

In order to get around this requirement the vice president has put forward the argument that in fact he isn't really part of the Executive Branch due to his duties as President of the Senate.

It's laughably absurd an argument on its merits, yet the real funny part is that the Vice President argued when it was convenient in order to maintain his secrecy, that his energy task force meetings and notes were classified because of his executive privilege. The rationale being that members of the Executive Branch can receive advice without having to divulge it to the legislature.

.....In other words, he can keep it secret because he is in the Executive Branch.....

Do you see how absurd this is now?

The common theme present in both situations is this: Secrecy. And using any means and rationale possible to maintain that secrecy over anything, no matter how trivial. [And I do mean trivial. No one outside the WH knows who works IN the VP's office!!]

They'll put forward any argument to uphold their wall of secrecy, even if it means contradicting the hell out of itself.

Yesterday, I also noted that Democratic Representative Rahm Emmanual proposed adding an amendment to the bill funding the Executive and Judicial Branches and agencies. It stipulates that the VP's offices funding will be consistent with his legal arguments:

In other words: If he claims he is not in the executive branch, his part of the bill funding the executive branch will be removed....Defunding the Vice President's office so that it cannot operate.

The idea is getting a very warm reception among top Democrats

A top House Democrat has announced his intention to offer an amendment to strip funding from the yearly budget for the Office of the Vice President.

"On the Hill, there's an overwhelmingly positive reaction," a spokesman for Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) told RAW STORY Monday afternoon.

He went on, "This is an important amendment and question, and it's a choice that the Vice President should make. He cannot be allowed to accept executive branch funding and not adhere to executive branch rules. There is no fourth branch of government."

Senator Feinstein seemed positive on the idea. It could get some support on the Senate side too. Of course, it risks being vetoed by the President but....well, the funding bill he would veto is the funding bill that funds the Office of the President...as well as the Executive Branch agencies...and of the Judiciary...well you get my point.

Will the President truly take a stand - risking funding for his own office and many important parts of government - just to allow his Vice President to make dubious claims of NOT being in the Executive Branch. Do they value their secrecy that much? We'll see soon enough...

Blogger Todd Gitlin issues a call to action to help support the amendment over at TPMCafe

Take a look, contact your representative and urge them to support the coming amendment to strip the VP's funding.
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The Immigration Reform Bill

Admittedly, I haven't mentioned the immigration reform bill much in the blog outside of the politics of it, but...honestly there is a lot to dislike about the bill.

It's such a centrist mushy compromise that no side - left or right - is really happy with it.

The conservatives draw the line at the 'pathway to citizenship' that the bill allows for any illegal immigrant that could prove residency in the US for at least 2 years. And us progressives see that very provision as one of the only good parts of the bill.

I had hoped for better from the Democrats - especially given the fact that majorities in the US support the Progressives stance on Immigration Reform and on Illegal Immigrants living in the US. I can't say I'm very enthused about the bill that has been resurrected recently from sure death.

I urge you to give Trapper John - a diarist at DailyKos - a read as he makes the case:

"The Progressive Case Against the Immigration Bill"

We haven't discussed the "grand compromise" immigration bill all that much around here -- and when we have, it's been primarily to examine the political toxicity of the xenophobia oozing out of the Republican body politic as they oppose any reform, however mild, that gives undocumented immigrants a chance to normalize their status. And, yeah, I'll grant you that it's fun to watch the Republicans implode and poison themselves for decades with the most rapidly growing sector of the electorate. But the fact that Tancredo and the Minutemen oppose this bill doesn't make it something worth supporting. It's not. And when you look at it closely, it's a bill that progressives ought to vigorously oppose.

In fact, this immigration bill is an historically bad bill, one that will undermine wage markets and which will permanently cripple skills training in vital sectors of the economy. And -- contrary to Lou Dobbs and the nativists -- the critical problem with the bill has nothing to do with the path to citizenship provided therein. Hell, everyone this side of the Minutemen agrees that there needs to be a humane path to citizenship for those undocumented workers who are living, working, and contributing in the United States. The fact that this bill provides a version of that path is about the only positive aspect of the legislation. No, the fatal flaw in this bill isn't "amnesty" -- it's the euphemistically termed "temporary worker program."

Here is his arguments against the guest worker program:

But the temporary worker program has nothing to do with building American families and American dreams. Under the program, 400,000-600,000 guest workers would enter the country every year on two-year visas. Although the visas can be renewed twice, recipients would be denied any path to permanent residency or citizenship. In fact, the guest workers would be precluded from even applying for permanent residency while here on temporary visas.

In short, the "temporary workers" will be just that -- "temporary," and "workers." Not "immigrants." And they can never be "Americans." Instead, we will have created a permanent caste of non-citizens with no hope of ever becoming citizens. A class of over half-a-million workers without a voice in the political process, here at the sole sufferance of their employers.

And those employers won't have to pay their new indentured servants any more than the minimum wage. See, unlike the existing H-2B visa -- the visa that governs most "unskilled" temporary workers in the US today -- the proposed temporary worker program contains no requirements that employers pay their temporary help the federally determined "prevailing wage" for their occupation and the geographic area

In other words: We create an underclass of workers with no prospect of EVER becoming legal and no voice in the political process, plus the new law will enable those workers to be paid the least possible, as opposed to the "prevailing wage."


Some of his concluding words:

There's no question that we need immigration reform in this country. We need to find a way to bring the millions of immigrants laboring in the shadows into the light, and into our American family. And to the extent that we have bona fide labor shortages in this country, we need to address them through an expansion of legal immigration. But the price of immigration reform cannot be a temporary worker program that exploits foreign workers, limits real immigration, and guts wages for American workers. (snip)

Tancredo and his ilk are plainly wrong about immigration. Immigration is a fact of life, and immigrant workers who are extended the right to organize and the right to become citizens will fight for better wages and conditions alongside their native-born co-workers. Immigration, you could say, is good for America. But this bill isn't just about immigration, and we ought not support it simply because the bad guys oppose it. This is not a progressive bill. And if we can't get a progressive bill now, it would be better to wait till January 2009 to try again than to pass a bad bill now.

Give the whole thing a read!
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Finally!! Someone gives Democrats the credit they deserve.

FIRST GUN CONTROL, now fuel economy. Congressional Democrats still have a lot of work ahead to get their groundbreaking bills past both houses and the president's desk, but you can't say they're not leading a radical change in direction.

On June 13, the House passed what could become the first major gun-control law in a decade, a bill aimed at strengthening a federal database used in background checks for gun buyers. A week later, the Senate approved an energy bill that would improve mileage for the nation's automotive fleet for the first time in nearly 20 years. Democrats still haven't forced a troop reduction in Iraq or put their stamp on the nation's backward immigration policies, but their surprising success in other areas is worthy of praise.

But the LA Times Editorial correctly notes that Democrats have yet to force the President to bring the troops home. This is a serious failing, and one the main reasons that poll respondents have given for their disapproval of this Democratic-led Congress.

Congress will have another shot at reducing troop levels in Iraq after the July 4th weekend and after passage (or not) of the Immigration Bill.

If the Democrats do not stand firm against the President on Iraq this time around...It will (deservedly) be a very difficult case to make to the American people that Democrats should keep their majority. I suspect that Democrats will keep it even if they cave (again!), but they will lose a lot of respect from me.
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Bush and Iraq

High School Presidential Scholars urge Bush to ban use of torture

President Bush was presented with a letter Monday signed by 50 high school seniors in the Presidential Scholars program urging a halt to "violations of the human rights" of terror suspects held by the United States.

The White House said Bush had not expected the letter but took a moment to read it and talk with a young woman who handed it to him.

"The president enjoyed a visit with the students, accepted the letter and upon reading it let the student know that the United States does not torture and that we value human rights," deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.

ouch

Key Republican publicly breaks with President over Iraq policy - Good of him but...where was Senator Luger's voice (and vote for that matter) during the important Iraq funding standoff a few weeks back? Still, good for him.

Center for American Progress Report: Stop training Iraq security forces and redeploy US forces out of Iraq.

But Strategic Reset charts a new course, arguing that this approach is actually contributing to the violence in Iraq:

First, the United States is arming up different sides in multiple civil wars that could turn even more vicious in the coming years. Second (and more important to America’s strategic interests) billions of dollars of U.S. military assistance is going to some of the closest allies of America’s greatest rival in the Middle East — Iran. The Shi’a-dominated Iraqi national army and security forces could quite quickly turn their weapons against American troops and allies in the region. […]

Training and skill-building are not crucial for Iraq’s security forces. In fact many of them have more training than hundreds of U.S. soldiers being deployed as part of this surge. Rather, the Iraqi forces’ problems are related to motivation and allegiance. In the past three years, the size of Iraq’s security forces and the levels of violence have both grown steadily, even as the U.S. troop presence remained constant.

I haven't read the whole report myself...but I will after I'm done here.
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Atrios and Mathew Yglesias on egos of old elites and the refusal to consider leaving Iraq

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An excellent discussion in TPMCafe Book Club over the book Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World

In the book, Kurlantzick argues that China has been quietly building it's international prestige by building relationships around the world with soft power. He argues that unless this "charm offensive" is noted and responded to, China will become an international power to rival the U.S. in relative short order.

In my view China poses little threat militarily and the threat of its economic power is way overblown. Viewing China as a "threat" is a problem in itself in that it may lead to policies that make both nations strategic adversaries (ie self-fulfilling prophecy).

Of course, it would be foolish us to ignore that the US does stand to lose its influence in various regions given China's increasing and sophisticated use of soft-power. The problem isn't so much that China is getting so good at its "charm offensive" but that the US has seemingly forgot what charm even means anymore.

A big gap in US foreign policy these past 7 years has been the large decline and deterioration of US soft power, and the increase of its hard military power. Both which have helped turn many nations around the world increasingly away from the US. Iraq, Abu Ghraib, its warmongering rhetoric towards Iran, it's tendency to ignore and overlook regions like Southeast Asia and Latin America, all have contributed to a steady decline in US prestige and influence in many regions of the globe.

The author I believe is correct to note this failure on the part of the US. The US would indeed be well served to acknowledge China's new "charm offensive," and to undertake policies to improve its own image and prestige globally. The US used to be the master of soft-power...it needs to relearn those lessons.