Obama hits McCain HARD on Big Oil Contributions

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Best ad of the campaign, ladies and gents.


“Every time you fill your tank, the oil companies fill their pockets. Now Big Oil’s filling John McCain’s campaign with 2 million dollars in contributions. Because instead of taxing their windfall profits to help drivers, McCain wants to give them another 4 billion in tax breaks. After one president in the pocket of big oil, we can’t afford another.”


Brilliant. This spot not only holds Bush's energy policies directly responsible for record gas prices, it ties McSame to those policies. And the proposal to give each taxpayer $1,000 right out of the pockets of Big Oil is a stroke of genius, forcing McSame to take ExxonMobil's side (which he's already doing) over Joe Taxpayer's.

Democrats have not sufficiently hammered Bush/Cheney on gas prices. President Harken and Vice President Halliburton let Big Oil write our energy policies -- no one should be surprised about the fix we're in. Add that collusion to their brilliant foreign policy of antagonizing oil-rich countries like Venezuela and Russia, coddling the Saudis and launching disastrous wars in the Middle East, and it's difficult to imagine who could've done better for Texaco and Shell.

I hope the Obama camp keeps this up. Take the fight right to them. Put them on defense.

Obama's speech on energy policy, which he delivered in Michigan today, is here. More sticking it to McSame and Bush. Beautiful.

Senate Bill Would Bar Secret Changes to Executive Orders

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The President would no longer be able to secretly modify or revoke a published executive order if a new bill introduced in the Senate yesterday becomes law.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, responds to a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion that was revealed last year by Senator Whitehouse on the Senate floor. According to that unreleased opinion, “There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new Executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous Executive order. Rather than violate an Executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.”

What this means is that any published executive order may or may not actually be in effect. It may or may not correspond to the legal framework that governs the executive branch. The public has no way of knowing.

“No one disputes that a President can withdraw or revise an Executive Order at any time,” said Senator Feingold yesterday. “That is every President’s prerogative. But abrogating a published Executive order without any public notice works a secret change in the law.”

“Worse,” he said, “because the published Order stays on the books, it actively misleads Congress and the public as to what the law is.”

To remedy that problem, the new bill requires notification of any change.

“If the President revokes, modifies, waives, or suspends a published Executive Order or similar directive, notice of this change in the law must be placed in the Federal Register within 30 days. The notice must specify the Order or the provision that has been affected; whether the change is a revocation, a modification, a waiver, or a suspension; and the nature and circumstances of the change.”

“The bill does not require the publication of classified information about intelligence sources and methods or similar information. The basic fact that the published law is no longer in effect, however, cannot be classified,” Sen. Feingold said.

“On rare occasions, national security can justify elected officials keeping some information secret,” he said, “but it can never justify lying to the American people about what the law is. Maintaining two different sets of laws, one public and one secret, is just that–deceiving the American people about what law applies to the government’s conduct.”

See Sen. Feingold’s July 31 introduction of the Executive Order Integrity Act of 2008 (S. 3405).

At an April 30 hearing of Sen. Feingold Senate Judiciary subcommittee, I testified on the various categories of secret law, including the problem of “reversible executive orders.” That testimony is available here (pdf).

McCain Makes Historic First Visit to Internet

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Will Spend 5 Days At Key Sites

In a daring bid to wrench attention from his Democratic rival in the 2008 presidential race, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) today embarked on an historic first-ever visit to the Internet.

Given that the Arizona Republican had never logged onto the Internet before, advisors acknowledged that his first visit to the World Wide Web was fraught with risk.

But with his Democratic rival Barack Obama making headlines with his tour of the Middle East and Europe, the McCain campaign felt that they needed to "come up with something equally bold for John to do," according to one advisor.

McCain aides said that the senator's journey to the Internet will span five days and will take him to such far-flung sites as Amazon.com, eBay and Facebook.

With a press retinue watching, Sen. McCain logged onto the Internet at 9:00 AM Sunday, paying his first-ever visit ever to Mapquest.com.

"I can't get this [expletive] thing to work," Sen. McCain said as he struggled with his computer's mouse, causing his wife Cindy to prompt him to add that he was "just kidding."

Having pronounced his visit to Mapquest a success, Sen. McCain continued his tour by visiting Weather.com and Yahoo! Answers, where he inquired as to the difference between Sunnis and Shiites.

Sen. McCain said that he had embarked on his visit to the Internet to allay any fears that he is too out-of-touch to be president, adding that he plans to take additional steps to demonstrate that he is comfortable with today's technology: "In the days and weeks ahead, you will be seeing me rock out with my new Walkman."

Courtesy of Borowitz Report.

Taxes!

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Having watched the Obama campaign for the last six weeks, I can tell you two things for certain about this election:

First, Issue #1 for the Obama campaign is the economy. Duh.

Second, Issue #1 for the majority of the electorate is also the economy. Duh.

Why then does the McCain camp seem so intent on dodging the subject; forever trying to make this election about military/foreign policy experience (probably a bad idea) and the Iraq war ?

I think I have a few ideas:

Those signs are all over Ohio right now. So are these:

Americans are feeling the sting of this economic downturn. Gas prices are increasingly unbearable, the housing situation remains dire, lending institutions are hanging on by a government financed thread; things are not going well. Besides the fact that McCain is not so well versed in economics, what does he have to fear from whiny American voters?

Well, his tax policy.

Courtesy of the Washington Post.

This spiffy graphic comes from the Washington Post, based on data from a study done at the Tax Policy Center. The juicy entirety of the findings can be found here, and they are actually interesting even to those of us not well versed in economics.

If I were an economist, I could make all sorts of informed inferences about what this graph and the full study means. Maybe Kevin can help us out with that. For now, all I want to do is to point out some very clear points:

While both candidates aim to mostly reduce taxes, McCain’s most drastic decreases are on the top 1% of Americans, while Obama’s only increases affect the same people. The difference between them tops $1 million.

Stances on taxing the rich are a rather fundamental element of most voters’ political psyche and are not likely to change over the course of one debate. McCain wants to drastically lessen the progressive nature of our tax code, while Obama wants to deepen it at the highest tiers. It is pretty simple and I’ll leave the merits of either stance to our readers to debate. The point is that this dichotomy is pretty typical of a Presidential race. Republican wants to tax the rich less, Democrat more. Whoopee.

The next point is the big one: After you account for the richest 1% of Americans, every other bracket would actually see a tax reduction in Obama’s plan. This goes against conventional wisdom for 99% of Americans that Democrat=higher taxes. This brings me back to the signs in Ohio. With Obama’s plan, 95% of Ohioans would see at least a $1,000 decrease in their taxes. I daresay that helps out average Americans with spending, fuel consumption and other life expenses more than any relief package (of which Obama believes we need another, by the way).

I won’t go into whether or not one tax plan is actually better than the other, because again, I’m not an economist. However, I’ll venture a guess as to what most Americans are interested in hearing about. As you move down the income scale, Obama’s tax cuts are more substantial than McCain’s. As you move down the income scale, the number of American’s fitting into the bracket is much higher as well. And I’ll tell you what, with the breadth and effectiveness of the Obama campaign’s voter registration and get out the vote efforts, this is something for the McCain camp to seriously worry about. People are listening.

Fewer taxes is always a welcome element to any politician’s platform in the eyes of most voters. However, when you are coming into office during an economic downturn, during a long term war investment and one of the most serious national debt situations in the nation’s history, the government has to make money somewhere, doesn’t it? China already holds over $1 trillion in reserve, I don’t think they want much more of our debt. I’m not so sure the gold standard is the answer yet either, but maybe Dr. Paul can sell me on that one on Sept. 2nd.

I don’t have answers, but I think its pretty clear why McCain isn’t keen on discussing the economy. Obama is driving the issue hard, and has the policies to actually compete and really out do McCain on an issue that is traditionally a strength of the Republicans. “It’s the economy, stupid” isn’t enough for the Obama camp. They are pointing that slogan at their rival and backing it up with some real ideas. We’ll see how that works out for them.

Meanwhile, hold on to your hats kids, the economy is going to be it this year.

AP's Washington Bureau Chief, Ron Fournier, exposed as a McCain shill

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On Tuesday Michael Calderone at Politico produced definitive evidence of Ron Fournier's bias in favor of John McCain. He did it by linking the Associated Press Washington Bureau chief directly to the McCain presidential campaign. Over a period of several months during 2006, Fournier discussed taking a high-level communications job with the McCain campaign. Apparently Fournier turned down the job offer in the end.

I say 'apparently' because often it is difficult to tell from the reporting produced by Fournier and his Bureau whether or not he views himself as a campaign operative.

The most striking thing about this story is what is absent. Although he oversees reporting on the presidential race for the purportedly unbiased and nonpartisan AP, Fournier has never disclosed to the public his close contacts with the McCain campaign. And though he doesn't deny the contacts, when asked about them Fournier declined to discuss the matter and referred Politico to an AP spokesman (who issued a bland statement). If Fournier has had nothing to hide, then why the secrecy and evasiveness? Who would argue that the public does not have a right to know that the AP Washington Bureau chief considered working for a presidential candidate?

Here are details from Politico:

In October 2006, the McCain team approached Fournier about joining the fledgling operation, according to a source with knowledge of the talks. In the months that followed, said a source, Fournier spoke about the job possibility with members of McCain’s inner circle, including political aides Mark Salter, John Weaver and Rick Davis.

Salter, who remains a top McCain adviser, said in an e-mail to Politico that Fournier was considered for "a senior advisory role" in communications.

"He did us the courtesy of considering the offer before politely declining it," Salter said.


Discussions with McCain's top aides lasting months don't constitute a mere 'courtesy' no matter how Salter tries to spin it. If Fournier had not been interested, he would have rejected McCain's advances at the outset.

After entertaining this job offer, Fournier should not have been covering the presidential campaign, certainly not while keeping his contacts with McCain secret. That's not a hard call, ethically.

This is just the latest in a series of controversies surrounding Fournier, from his unseemly attention to John McCain's donut-gustation at an interview, to his eager embrace of Republican talking points, to the extraordinary changes he introduced at AP encouraging the freer expression of opinion in news stories. His predecessor at the AP Washington Bureau, Sandy Johnson, sees Fournier's policies as a threat to it.

"I just hope he doesn’t destroy it."

Fournier's ties to the Republican establishment were exposed garishly earlier this month by a House Oversight and Government Reform report. Discussing the Bush administration's political response to Pat Tillman's death in 2004, it cited emails sent to the WH offering political advice. This exchange stood out.
Karl Rove exchanged e-mails about Pat Tillman with Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier, under the subject line "H-E-R-O." In response to Mr. Fournier's e-mail, Mr. Rove asked, "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this," to which Mr. Fournier replied, "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."

Fournier tried to explain away his seemingly cozy relationship with Karl Rove.
"I was an AP political reporter at the time of the 2004 e-mail exchange, and was interacting with a source, a top aide to the president, in the course of following an important and compelling story. I regret the breezy nature of the correspondence."

However he convinced almost none of his critics that his Rovian correspondence was appropriate. For one thing, Fournier has never written about Tillman. So what was the need to contact Rove in the first place? The episode gives the impression that Fournier was just worshipping at Rove's altar.

Even before that email correspondence came to light (almost accidentally), Fournier had long been notorious both for carrying water for John McCain in particular, and for savaging McCain's rivals. Among other things, under Fournier's leadership AP reporting this year has consistently downplayed or suppressed information about McCain's many contradictory, false, and otherwise embarrassing statements. Last week at Media Matters Eric Boehlert surveyed Fournier's long and tawdry record of partisanship:

In two "Analysis" pieces and a column, Fournier questioned whether John Edwards was a "phony," announced the Clintons suffered from "utter self-absorption," and claimed that Barack Obama was "bordering on arrogance." That's the right of a pundit. But at the same time, Fournier avoided raising any doubts about Sen. John McCain, and in fact rushed to his aid in print during the senator's time of campaign need.

That ethos seems to have been adopted by the larger AP political team, which, honestly, writes as if it's completely in the tank for McCain...

Fournier wrote those pieces in which he routinely unloaded on the leading Democratic candidates -- Edwards, Clinton, and Obama -- while thoroughly questioning their motives and their character.

Yet I have searched in vain for a single example from the primary season in which Fournier raised a column's worth of uncomfortable questions about McCain's motives and his character...

In fact, one of the few times that Fournier dedicated a column to the Republican primary battle was following the Michigan contest, which McCain lost to Mitt Romney. The win presented Romney with his one brief window of opportunity to knock McCain from his front-runner perch. Fournier unleashed a wild column targeting Romney and practically threw his body in front of McCain to protect his beloved candidate.


Boehlert highlighted a series of reports and columns in which Fournier has advanced unfounded assertions and used flagrantly biased language to promote McCain or belittle his rivals. He concluded, as many others had already, that Fournier has a man-crush on McCain.
The fact is, Fournier's McCain love runs deep and goes back years.

The Associated Press desperately needs to find a new Washington Bureau chief.