Webb's Plans for the Senate

Senator-elect Webb was interviewed yesterday for the Daily Press. Here's the story:

New Virginia senator calls Bush a `failed president'
By David Lerman
Newport News (Va.) Daily Press

WASHINGTON - Virginia Sen.-elect Jim Webb said President Bush is a "failed president" who should use his last two years in office to repair America's image abroad by ending the Iraq war through intensive diplomacy.

In an interview Tuesday with the Newport News Daily Press, Virginia's newly elected Democratic senator made clear his antipathy toward Bush and his determination to help set a new course in Iraq.

Webb, an early and outspoken critic of the Iraq war, ousted Republican Sen. George Allen last month by a razor-thin margin that tipped control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats. A decorated Vietnam veteran and former Navy secretary, Webb has a 24-year-old son now serving in Iraq as a Marine.

"He's a failed president," Webb said, when asked what he thinks of Bush. "He has two years to try to show some true leadership when it comes to rehabilitating the image of the United States around the world.

"I warned three months before we went into Iraq that we were squandering an historic opportunity to keep almost the entire world with us in the war against international terrorism. And we have failed utterly to do that. It is now up to us and that hopefully includes the president to try and remediate the situation in a way that will enhance the stability in the Middle East and rehabilitate our relationship with countries around the world."

Webb's coolness toward Bush first surfaced last month, after an icy exchange between the two men at a private White House reception was leaked to the media.

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, Jimmy.

"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb replied.

"That's not what I asked you," Bush shot back. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said in ending the conversation.

The incident underscored Webb's reputation as a fiercely independent operator who will not easily be constrained by Washington standards of decorum or party orthodoxy. A Democrat-turned-Republican-turned Democrat, Webb served in Ronald Reagan's Pentagon before becoming a best-selling author and then launching his improbable bid for a Senate seat.

Webb confirmed the exchange with Bush Tuesday, but said he was not trying to insult the president and would be willing to work with him next year.

"I have declined to answer personal questions about my son in a political context," Webb said in explaining his response to Bush. "All I was doing was trying to curtail a conversation. I said nothing publicly about it at all until the story was leaked, I think by the White House. I'm happy to go over and have breakfast with President Bush, if he wants to have breakfast."

The White House has declined to discuss the incident, saying it does not comment on private receptions.

Bush critics have cheered Webb's feisty exchange as evidence of his willingness to challenge the president and fight for policy changes. But some conservatives have faulted Webb for an impolitic tone toward the president and questioned his fitness for the clubby Senate, where collegiality and compromise are considered essential.

Webb dismissed the criticism, saying, "I think people who are worried about that are going to be pretty surprised. I have friends on both sides of the aisle. I am looking forward to working with people."

Outlining his priorities for next year, Webb said he would seek a new course for Iraq, more generous education benefits for recent military veterans, and legislation aimed at narrowing the economic disparity between rich and poor.

During the campaign, Webb often spoke about the growing divide between the rich and the poor, a divide he said risks tearing American society apart. He said Tuesday he hopes to begin addressing the problem through measures such as increasing the minimum wage and examining the fairness of corporate tax breaks.

He is also drafting a bill that would offer full college tuition and benefits to qualified military veterans who have served on active duty since Sept. 11, 2001.

"I'm really hopeful we can move that bill this year," he said of the initiative, which he pushed throughout his campaign.

But it is on Iraq that Webb will undoubtedly spend most of his time as a freshman member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. The newly appointed Democratic chairmen of those panels have already called for extensive Iraq hearings beginning next month.

"I want to hear the administration and the military leadership articulate the endpoint in their strategy," Webb said. "How do we know when we are done?"

While urging diplomacy and a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops, Webb has declined to endorse a timeline for withdrawal.

Asked about proposals for a short-term surge in troop levels, Webb said, "I'm willing to hear them out. I don't see a clear reason for it. I want to see what they're talking about." Webb calls Bush a "failed president"

Looks like Senator-elect Webb will hit the ground running and is taking his new responsibilities seriously. On Saturday I went to the party at Aldo's Italian Restaurant for Webb volunteers and the other Democratic candidates. Jim Webb showed up early before the speeches and spent considerable time talking to every single person who approached him. After all the speaking was done and most people had cleared out, he remained and continued to shake hands and meet with everyone. I don't believe a single person was turned away of the dozens who approached. During his speech he made it clear that he appreciates the efforts made on his behalf and reiterated his promise to campaign strongly for all Democratic candidates in the upcoming General Assembly elections.

It's clear from the President's press conference today that he will reject any real attempt at diplomacy and is preparing to order a "surge" into Iraq of troops for "one last push" to stabilize the situation. Historically speaking last pushes, last stands, and last surges have a dismal record. Those who advocate this surge cannot articulate what exactly such a surge will accomplish and how, but it's as if they feel the need to "do something."

When asked about talks with Iran, Bush replied that he would only agree to it if Iran would cease its nuclear enrichment program. Why Iran would agree to do so when there is absolutely no incentive on the table is beyond me, but that's what he said.

Senator-elect Webb and company will have their work cut out for them when they start work next week.

Attempted cross-posting at VA-Sen Progressive Wave

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

From TPM Muckraker comes this charming article listing all the stuff the Bush Administration doesn't want you to know: Bush Admin: What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Us, by Paul Kiel.

Among items the Bush Administration has decided to stop publishing or to reclassify as secret:

the Department of Defense has suddenly classified the numbers of attacks in Iraq for September through November of this year -- after providing the figures for every month since the war began. Why classify the information now? If there's a good explanation, we don't know it, and the Pentagon isn't returning our calls.

As others have noted, it's far from the first time that the administration has tried to deep-six data that was unhelpful to its goals. Over the years, they've discontinued annual reports, classified normally public data, de-funded studies, quieted underlings, and generally done whatever was necessary to keep bad information under wraps.

Wouldn't it be great to have all those examples in one place? Thankfully, Steve Benen at the Carpetbagger Report has started us off on that goal ...

Steve's list is quite helpful and constantly under revision as readers add their own stories of the Bush Administration's obsessive secretiveness. The theory appears to be that no news is better than bad news, so in the face of government incompetence, or mis, mal or nonfeasance, and in the face of unfortunate ecological consequences of present policies or disparate income impacts on ordinary people of Bush's tax cuts, the Administration's best option is to simply declare it all secret or to stop publishing the information. This is called the "Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil" approach to public information, or the Sergeant Schulz Two-Step.

Here's the link to the Carpetbagger report: Keeping Iraq attack numbers under wraps

The New Inequality

Here's a report in the New York Times magazine which tells us that recent economic figures show that income inequality, which has been increasing for thirty years among blue collar workers in this country, now extends to white collar, college educated workers, too.

Over the last five years, the average pay of college graduates grew at only a little better rate than inflation. For now, most holders of bachelor’s degrees appear to be on the wrong side of the inequality divide, which suggests that the slice of the American work force on the right side of the divide has become extremely narrow. Even families at the 90th percentile of the income distribution (now earning about $110,000 a year) have received only a marginally bigger raise over the last decade than those in the middle of the distribution.

... two economists in their mid-30s, Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, have ... discover[ed] that at the very highest levels of the income ladder, inequality has indeed continued to accelerate. The top 0.1 percent of earners — that’s one out of every 1,000 families — made 6.8 percent of the nation’s pretax income in 2004, up from 4.7 percent a decade earlier and about 2 percent in the ’60s and ’70s.

... From World War II through the 1970s, while most Americans were getting solid raises every year, the incomes of the richest 1 percent were doing only a little better than inflation. Since the 1980s, the two groups have switched places. The affluent have received huge gains, and everyone else’s pay growth has slowed down. For the last six decades, in other words, the American economy has been much more of a zero-sum game than we might like to believe.

Looks like Jim Webb and the progressives are not far off base when they talk about the rising inequalities in our society. Whatever the causes are, and I think it's only logical that they be tied to rampant deregulation, globalization, tax advantages for outsourcing, illegal immigration, abuse of the H1-B visa process, the "winner take all" mentality present in our nation's boardrooms, it's time to start taking this problem seriously.


The New Inequality