Day: March 8, 2013

Yesterday, as I traveled the Pennsylvania mountainside, I listened to all the Rand Paul Filisbuster Aftermath, and I have to say, I contemplated driving myself off a mountain when I realized I agreed with Senators McCain and Graham in what they said in rebuking Paul. First, I must say that I enjoyed the filibuster if for the simple reason that it sparked a good debate on the Senate floor, it was basically theater, and it showed the country and these fucking cowardly traditionalists in the Senate how a good a talking filibuster, a real filibuster, can be. I hope Majority Leader Reid listens to his deputy, Dick Durbin, and revists filibuster reform today. Now. Make the talking filibuster the norm. Now, back to McCain and Graham.....

Or we could call it Kinder Morgan Deal is Dead -- The Fingerpointing. The NJ has another piece up this AM -- Port lease efforts on hold, which has a few more details on this story, but mostly it is additional reaction from some stakeholders. Aaron Nathans gets a key bit wrong -- there wasn't a $200M investment on the table, it was more like $41M. The rest was lease payments to the state. But the more I hear about this, the more I wonder about what we don't know about this deal. Was this lease payment meant to be funneled back to the Port for the automation upgrades talked about for the warehouses? Who knows. I have attached a copy of the letter so you can see it directly.

The economy in February added 236,000 jobs, with the unemployment rate dropping to 7.7% from 7.9%, the lowest the main rate has been since December 2008. The economy would have grown by 10,000 jobs more (246k) if austerity measures had not resulted in the loss of 10,000 public sector jobs. Hopefully the economy will continue to grow so that the impact of the Sequester spending cuts, which will not be overturned. Indeed, in my view, while the cuts are bad and dumb, they at least give the President a rejoinder to the idiocy from Boehner and McConnell whenever they or any Republican says "The President got his tax hikes (or new revenue)." We can say, "Yes, and you got your spending cuts. So if we don't get any new revenue, you don't get any new spending cuts. There, we can be petulant children too."