Jonathan Weisman

“Liberal” New York Times Serves as GOP House Budget Plan Accomplice (March 21, 2013)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

NYT-Ryan

An increasingly rare event since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2010, the party of “no” is generating headlines for doing something other than antagonizing the President of the United States at every opportunity. It’s easy to forget with this bunch that they were ostensibly hired by the American people to legislate and keep our great democracy functioning.

In fact it has become such a novelty to see the House doing any business as usual, that when we encounter a headline such as “House Passes Plan to Avert Federal Shutdown,” it is found on the front page of The New York Times as breaking news. Apparently learning a small lesson from New Gingrinch’s hubris and folly circa 1995, Speaker John Boehner and his ilk passed a measure that will keep the government afloat through September. Well done, ladies and gentlemen.

But before we host a national ticker tape parade in honor of the House’s decision to do one of its’ most fundamental jobs, theTimes piece by writer Jonathan Weisman informs readers that allowing the government to continue operating was not all the busy GOP did today. They also, “passed a Republican budget blueprint that enshrined the party’s vision of a balanced budget that would substantially shrink government, privatize Medicare and rewrite the tax code to make it simpler and flatter.” Am I alone in my cynical view that the GOP is quite content with this example of lead burying?

Will we as a voting republic ever be free of the Ryan budget plans? Did we not reject this fraud masquerading as “responsible” government in November of 2012? Most vexingly it appears that the GOP is rather proud of its pass-and-run trickery. According to Weisman, “With a final flurry, Republican leaders sent the House home before noon Thursday for a two-week recess, confident that they had outmaneuvered President Obama and the Democrats in the running fiscal fight from the last redoubt of Republican control in Washington.”

Yes, they certainly deserve a rest after this latest example of disingenuous legislation. Another time-wasting maneuver from a group who seems last to understand that the majority of Americans are disinterested in its fiscal platform. That the revised Ryan plan has zero shot of being signed into law appears not to perturb this gang of thieves. Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, called the plan “an uncompromising, ideological approach to our budget issues,” and went on to observe, “The American people voted, and they resoundingly rejected the direction this budget has taken for the third year in a row.”

Tell that to the increasingly insulated and hearing-impaired Republican leadership. However in this instance, my anger is better directed at Weisman himself, as well as his superiors at the Times. We have all been subjected to GOP complaints of a “liberal media bias” that favors President Obama. We have collectively audited this whining ad nauseum. Yet the supposedly liberal-leaning Grey Lady has bestowed the gift of cover for House charlatans who would like you to forget they continue to serve the same warmed over plate.

When the story becomes “This just in! The House is kind enough not to hold the country hostage while offering the same old sh*t,” there is something very wrong with our nation’s investigative journalism apparatus.

Boehner Attempts to Leverage Newtown Tragedy Distraction in Fiscal Cliff Negotiations (December 18, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Nancy Pelosi

The terrible events surrounding last week’s semi-automatic killing spree at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newton, Connecticut stopped the nation in its tracks. Quite understandably, we took a collective pause to consider the implications of a disturbed man, armed to the teeth, who could just walk into a primary school and kill small children and staff with abandon. The circumstances are saturated with a heightened sense of pathos given the time of year. The holiday season is a multi-cultural, multi-faith time of family and celebration and last week’s news did not ask much of us in the way of empathy. Who can imagine walking in the shoes of those who lost a child or family member in this tragedy? How isolating and painful must it feel for those burying a loved one against a backdrop of communal food preparation, ritualistic gift procurement and the repetition of well-loved Christmas Carols? There are few of any political stripe who can’t locate common ground in grieving for these devastated souls.

At a time when we are reminded anew of the frailty of human life and  the technical advances in modern weaponry that render it ever easier to claim, perspective should be relatively easy to locate. Petty partisan squabbles ought to take a backseat to the the recognition that something is deeply broken within the American system. Children of any socioeconomic class should be able to go to school without encountering a madman carrying guns. We need to take a new look at what the Second Amendment actually protects. Does a right to bear arms revoke the right to set limits on how that liberty is exercised?

And somehow Sandy Hook has cast Republican recalcitrance in the face of the looming fiscal cliff in the base light in which it deserves to be viewed. While perusing the New York Times this morning, I encountered a post on the paper’s “Debt Reckoning” blog by writer Jonathan Weisman. In the piece, entitled “Boehner Intends to Pursue a ‘Plan B’ on Taxes,” Weisman writes:

“House Speaker John A. Boehner, playing hard ball only days before the nation heads into a fiscal crisis, will tell fellow House Republicans that he will move forward with his own tax plan in the coming days to increase tax rates only on income over $1 million, then shift the fight on spending cuts to early next year when the nation runs into its borrowing limit.”

The timing for this sort of pathetic gerrymandering could hardly look worse. Does this group care about its current and future reputation whatsoever? The GOP has become almost synonymous with tone-deaf, small picture thinking. Our President displayed the calming, sober leadership we have come to expect from him. He emotionally addressed the tragedy while traveling to Newton to offer direct comfort to the community. Boehner and Company continue to look for a lifeline for a drowning, unpopular platform; one  that protects the wealth of the very few, even as they scream about the immorality of deficits.

It seems as if the deficit is being used as a bargaining ploy by the Republicans. This ploy is being used against a president who is being distracted by the growing crisis of mass public executions. Something that is largely stoked by the continuous rollback of firearm regulations from an NRA-loving Republican party. While Obama’s attention is focused elsewhere, let’s paint a fake portrait of compromise  then should the President hold his ground, tar him with accusations of misplaced priorities.

The White House should not let this happen. For over 12 years now, Republican positions have been responsible for; one fiscal, foreign policy, domestic agenda, middle class welfare catastrophe one after another. Then while Obama is busy cleaning up assorted messes, they try to make a new one unchallenged. It’s pathological.