Safe Democracy Foundation - Safe Democracy

George F. Will
10/7/2010

Representative Jeb Hensarling is serving on Obama’s Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and its 18 members are approaching their fiscal goals rather like Sumo wrestlers: with a lot of mutual staring but no contact as yet. Budget-balancing (excluding debt service) and finding ways to “meaningfully improve the long-run fiscal outlook” are the commission’s main goals. But Hensarling says this creates a harmful distraction from the real problem: long-term debt incurred from Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. A record number of American citizens are concerned about deficits. Thus, when the commission gives its report in December, Congress will be populated with members potentially emboldened–but not legitimized–by their lack of political future.

Will is a twice-weekly columnist for The Post, writing about foreign and domestic politics and policy.

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Thomas L. Friedman 10/6/2010 Two Texas oil companies, Valero and Tesoro, are financing a campaign in California this election year, Prop 23, to roll back laws to slow global warming and promote clean energy because it would require their refineries to install new emission-control tools. The issue is not about jobs, but about enhancing the coffers of the oil companies, since financing has come primarily by billionaires outside the state. Friedman says California’s laws are the best thing we have in America to stimulate clean-tech. Fighting these oil companies at the ballot box is a worthy cause.

Friedman is a New York Times columnist.

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Daniel Gross
10/6/2010

Despite stories about consumer savings on the rise, the nation’s total indebtedness has also continued to rise, as have some measures of consumer debt. Gross points out that any decline in personal debt is “driven less by Americans giving up on credit cards than on credit card issuers giving up on Americans.” Lenders are writing off some debt as uncollectable. Still, the recovery is maturing, powered not merely by government stimulus and business investment, but also by increasing total consumer credit. This will be the root of our short-term salvation from the recession.

Gross, author of  “Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation”, is the economics editor and columnist at Yahoo! Finance.

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John Bartels, Peter Bensinger, Francis Mullen, Jack Lawn, Robert Bonner and Tom Constantine
10/6/2010

The authors consider the implications of California’s initiative to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. The “Pot Initiative” would violate federal law and nobody is going to be paying state taxes on marijuana when doing so would be a confession to a federal felony. Each of the authors, upon becoming administrators of the DEA, swore to uphold and defend the Constitution. It is in this spirit that they call on the Department of Justice (DoJ) to provide a legal position on California’s ballot initiative and to do so before the November election. They conclude that it would be helpful if the DoJ made it clear that if Proposition 19 passes, it will violate federal law and the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

The writers served as administrators of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration from its inception in July 1973 through November 2007.

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Bob Herbert
10/5/2010

The fact that John Boehner has a real chance to be Speaker of the House of Representatives is astonishing, Herbert says, because he is one of the more sleazy politicians in Washington. In the 1990s he was doing the bidding of big tobacco and funneling money to his colleagues when it was legal. In addition, he is known to be at the bidding of several corporations, which Herbert lists. He says Boehner has always been willing to stick his neck out for the elite, and he is one of the people responsible for the state of affairs today, where ordinary working Americans have been left behind in the recession.

Herbert is a New York Times columnist.

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Richard Cohen
10/5/2010

The tragedy of the Kent State shootings was preceded by hateful rhetoric from Ohio governor James Rhodes. He compared the protestors to communists and Nazis, agitating and poisoning the political atmosphere until American soldiers chose to shoot American students. The current political atmosphere is no less charged, with Glenn Beck calling the president a racist and conservative commentators engaging in anti-Muslim and anti-homosexual bigotry. We would do well to pause and consider where this path has already led so we do not repeat the sins of a previous generation.

Cohen is a weekly columnist for The Post, writing on domestic and foreign politics.

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