Since I recently wrote a post dissing the GOP’s commitment to managing the budget I want to offer a modest atonement by acknowledging the White House for taking a position to reduce the cap on how much farm subsidy one entity can receive. Regarding the proposed Farm Bill One White House proposal is to deny crop subsidies to anyone with an adjusted gross income above $500,000 a year, compared to the current limit of $2.5 million AGI. That Democrats propose such high subsidies, and the GOP may...

Today I received a solicitation for funds from the Republican Leadership Council – representing the moderate wing of the GOP. The central plea was to help stop the Democrats from raising taxes. While it may be appropriate to inflame party regulars by appealing to stereotypes it doesn’t appeal to me as an independent. I am more interested in supporting leaders who will have mature conservations with the voters about what are the necessary amounts of taxes to achieve some minimum standard...

Mayor Bloomberg and Gov Schwarzenegger agree that the policy difference that makes the biggest difference is to make elections more competitive and drive candidates away from ideological extremes. Imagine how each of our most controversial public issues would be handled by a deliberative legislature that was less concerned about hyper partisan voters and donors. I can’t imagine a better use for the celebrity and money of these wise leaders. Mayor Bloomberg is contributing $250,000 toward passing...

Perhaps these maneuvers are what Senator Obama had in mind when he said he wanted to negotiate with the Republican Nominee on a fair campaign finance agreement. I also imagine that the FEC might have something to say about these tactics if they had a quorum. The new structure allows up to $70,000 in individual contributions by channeling the money into different McCain-centric funds. My thinking about campaign finance is constantly evolving, trying to balance freedom of speech with preventing special...

High up on the controversy meter is Carter meets Hamas chief over Israeli, US objections. I don’t believe that President Carter’s intention is to legitimatize the tactics of Hamas but rather to legitimatize some of the issues that motivate Hamas and the people who voted them into power. That Hamas is belligerent and refuses to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist is a major hurdle in advancing peace. But the Israeli response is to provocatively expand settlements in land seized...

Jay Mandle, an economics professor on the board of the reform group “Democracy Matters”, made this analysis of A Small Donor Democracy? He discovers that the majority of political donations under $200 still seem to come from those who are relatively well off. And so the Obama rationalization that his small donor army is comparable to a publicly financed campaign is dubious. Prosperous donors are still more influential than the poorer classes and such a system is not a reasonable substitute...

Last night PBS aired Sick Around the World Can the U.S. learn anything from the rest of the world about how to run a health care system? I learned that proven solutions exist with broad popular support. And while these programs are far less expensive than US health care, the savings comes from eliminating most profit and administrative costs, and adding aggressive cost controls and standardization by the government. Now all we need are representatives willing to ignore the financial influence...

Bill Moyer’s had an infuriating show on PBS about the current debate on the Farm Bill Reauthorization A case of good intentions used to obscure greed, the farm bill ostensibly helps to protect the agriculture industry from damaging circumstances. But it also hides widespread corruption by creating a mechanism for politicians to trade unneeded and undeserved subsidies for votes and campaign donations. This bipartisan scam brings together all politicians representing farm intensive communities...

LobbyDelegates.com offers a way to reach out to Democratic super delegates who may not know that there is a hot race for which their vote is critical. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

The New York Times has an editorial on Quality Care at Bargain Prices that noticed the wide range of cost for end of life treatment cross the nation. Few will be surprised to discover that doctors in high-expenditure institutions are typically paid on a fee-for-service basis, which means they earn more if they do more. Mayo Clinic doctors, by contrast, are on salary and have no financial incentive to do anything more than the patient clearly needs.

I have to admit that I am torn by the notion that Obama may bypass public financing It backs out of an agreement while also respecting the intention behind the agreement. For me the intention behind the public financing of campaigns is to minimize the disproportionate influence of special interests while reducing the amount of time a candidate needs to spend pandering for money. Obama has achieved this with his unprecedented internet collections from over 1.2 million donors. John McCain’s...

It is gratifying to hear so many politicians celebrate the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. to expand freedom to all people. For many years the most obvious disenfranchised community was African American. But there were also Women, Children, Immigrants and the Handicapped who stood (and stand) in line to be free from discrimination. And in much the same way that a large fraction of our neighbors did not see African-Americans as fully human, today a similarly large fraction do not see those with...

This is encouraging Doctors support universal health care: survey More than half of U.S. doctors now favor switching to a national health care plan and fewer than a third oppose the idea, according to a survey published on Monday. The survey suggests that opinions have changed substantially since the last survey in 2002 and as the country debates serious changes to the health care system. Now all we need are capable leaders to make this happen. And I don’t think that the main source of resistance...

Ross Douthat writes in the Atlantic.com blog about Lieberman Democrats and the challenge of finding, and staying in, the political center …the American “center” moves around a lot (and varies wildly on an issue-by-issue basis), and thus a party that moves leftward or rightward on the hot-button issues of the day can sometimes find a new center that nobody realized was there. This tends to leave the inhabitants of the old middle – the Rockefeller Republicans in the ’70s...

I participated in one of the largest Texas County delegate conventions and I am mystified by media reports that the gatherings were contentious No doubt there are examples of conflict and rude behavior but in no way did these exceptions define the overall tone and conduct of the gatherings. Our Travis County gathering of 8,000 was important enough to attract dozens of speeches by local candidates, elected representatives and included Terry McAuliffe of the Clinton Campaign. State leaders of the...

We have had the benefit of two major addresses on foreign affairs by two leading candidates Today’s Senator McCain To The Los Angeles World Affairs Council and yesterdays remarks of Senator Barack Obama and The World Beyond Iraq I read both of them and to me they are much more aligned than different. Except for a few pointed comments by McCain about Russia and the need to stay in Iraq until the government is stable, the text could have been read by either Candidate. The differences between...

E.J. Dionne writes in Righting the Right that the path of the Conservative movement is in need of a correction. “There is emerging within the Republican Party a very interesting debate about whether we need to change our approach, or just reassert the policies we already have,” Frum said in an interview. Frum would like the heretical Republicans to come together to create their own version of the Democratic Leadership Council. The GOP sure could use something. A Pew Research Center survey...

At the Center for Competitive Politics, which is a leading champion for the equating of speech and money in politics, is an interesting commentary that the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act has resulted in the weakening of the influence of the two major Parties. Money is diverted to third-party groups that may have different agendas than Party leadership. I think this is a good thing and levels the playing field for other points of view.

Katharine Seelye writes on Broad Concerns about Internet Voting It has been used, apparently successfully, for Democrats living abroad and a Michigan Democratic Primary. Moving in that direction might make elections more frequent, less expensive, and improve voter participation. Some of the weakness may be resolved over time as biometrics improve. Perhaps we can use online voting, but if the results are not statistically decisive then a physical ballot would be used to validate the results. This...

At Think Progress Bravo!

The new group is Change Congress and the story about it is in Stanford University Law Professor Lawrence Lessig Sets Sights on Corruptive Influence of Money in Politics This new organizaton intends to coordinate with the existing groups focused on reforming Congressional Campaigns and Elections. The distinction of this new entity is that internet campaign guru Joe Trippi is heading it up (formerly of the John Edwards and Howard Dean campaigns). And he intends to concentrate on identifying candidates...

Liberals to spend $150 million on ’08 A loose coalition of liberal and labor organizations expects to spend about $150 million this fall to push its causes and help Democrats win the White House and strengthen their grip on Congress… While the groups cannot coordinate with candidates, they can coordinate with each other — a change from 2004 when top Democratic donors relied on newly formed groups to influence the presidential election. …Liberal and labor strategists say an animated...

Supreme Court Upholds Washington’s ‘Open’ Primary The Supreme court voted 7 to 2 to allow Washington to go forward with its new electoral structure, under which the top two vote-getters in the open primary advance to the general election, regardless of party. That means two Democrats or two Republicans could end up facing each other in November in a gubernatorial or congressional contest, with the other party left on the outside looking in. Both the state Democratic party and the...

This is Sunshine Week 2008 Regardless of your partisan leanings, if you support a more transparent government consider checking this out and even encouraging your representative to do the right thing.

I was scanning headlines on realclearpolitics and my blog aggregator and noticed that I was becoming irritable. The conservatives level this charge about the liberals and the liberals level that charge against the conservatives. Or, Democratic Party loyalists level this charge about Obama while unaligned bridge builders level that charge against Clinton. Or the NYT tries to heighten a charge of influence peddling against McCain by alleging an unproven sexual angle. While there are meaningful...