Pelosi May Be An Ally In The Fight Against Obama's Privatization Agenda For Schools

The news came yesterday that David Axelrod will be leaving the White House in the spring to begin overseeing the Obama 2012 re-election campaign.

They're already working on the messaging.

The Obama White House is laying blame for the previous two years of failures by blaming Rahm Emanuel.

And they're getting ready to appeal to independents and moderates by compromising on all sorts of liberal sacred cows like extending the Bush tax cuts for really rich people and raising the Social Security retirement age to 69.

No Child Left Behind is up for re-authorization and there has been all kinds of talk from the administration - including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama himself - about all the groovy kinds of compromise we're going to have on education issues.

In fact, the president is expected to spend a portion of the SOTU address on education, calling for a longer school day/year, more charter schools, more rigorous teacher accountability measures based upon test scores and merit pay for teachers.

Now some of that agenda may very definitely appeal to members of the GOP and provide areas of compromise for Obama and Republicans.

But they will still need some Democrats to go along with that agenda.

And let us remember that House Dems just got slaughtered in the midterms and a lot of the Blue Dog Dems who would have been open to that kind of agenda are gone.

Many of the Dems who are left are of the more traditionally Democratic variety and may very well be open to AFT and NEA pressure to stop Obama from rolling the public education system any further in the direction of privatization than he already has.

In other words, Obama can be fought on this.

The unions, of course, have to stop letting Obama and Duncan frame these issues and push back HARD against the pro-charter, pro-testing nonsense the administration is pushing.

If they can do this, Dems in the House and Nancy Pelosi in particular, may become very big allies in the war against Obama's NCLB Jr. policies.

Dems know the White House hung them out to dry on many issues, making them take difficult votes on cap-and-trade and other issues that put many House members at risk in the midterms.

Many House members are going to look to stick it to Obama now that the midterms are over and the White House is already starting to look toward 2012. As Politico put it today:

Pelosi in particular may now be more of an obstacle than the “outstanding partner” Obama dubbed her on Friday. Her supporters in Congress want her to stand up to the president to protect the liberal causes they worry he’ll forsake in the interest of getting re-elected.

It is time to start working on our congresspeople to push back against the pro-privatization, pro-charter, pro-testing agenda that both Obama and Duncan are pushing and the demonization of teachers that Obama engages in periodically.

House members will be open to this and they will listen.

After all, the White House is already signaling through Axelrod's jumping in the spring to work on the 2012 campaign and through it's promises of compromises with the GOP that it is every man and woman for himself/herself now.

Let us remind our House members just who it is who can get out the vote in 2012 and just who it was who didn't work all that hard in 2010 - union members and teachers.

Americans Lose Hope In Hopey/Changey

Ruh-Roh, Rahmbo, better scapegoat some teachers. Americans don't like your boss much anymore:

Americans disapprove of U.S. President Barack Obama’s handling of almost every major issue and are deeply pessimistic about the nation’s direction, offering a bullish environment for Republicans in the November congressional elections.

A majority or plurality disapproves of Obama’s management of the economy, health care, the budget deficit, the overhaul of financial market regulations and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a Bloomberg National Poll conducted July 9- 12. In addition, almost 6 in 10 respondents say the war in Afghanistan is a lost cause.

Almost two-thirds say they feel the nation is headed in the wrong direction, an even more sour assessment than in March when 58 percent felt that way. Two-thirds of independent voters are pessimistic, while just 56 percent of Democrats offer a vote of confidence.

“They don’t see any solutions in sight,” said J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., a Des Moines, Iowa-based firm that conducted the nationwide survey. “They have been hammered by the economy and there is a disconnect between the lives Americans are living and Washington. They seem to have lost hope.”

These problems are largely of their own making there at the White House. A bullshit stimulus package that was much too small and stimulated little other than education deformers' egos, a mortgage relief plan that was a disaster, a policy change on DRILL BABY DRILL that had Obama sanctioning oil drilling as "safe" just two weeks before the BP oil rig blew up and destroyed the gulf, a financial reform bill that is gutted and useless and health care reform that forces 31 million Americans to buy shitty health care insurance they won't be able to afford to use after they pay the premiums and pays for it by levying a 40% excise tax on Americans with employer-provided health care plans.

That's a really, really shitty record of accomplishment.

If the Obama administration were a high school in Rhode Island, Secretary of Education Duncan would shut this shit down and fire the staff.

But the Obama administration is not a high school in Rhode Island and Obama still thinks he can do know wrong.

So they're new strategy is to play to the middle, give up the House (and Pelosi and other House leaders are fuming over this) and triangulate core liberal constituencies like teachers unions in order to save their own incompetent asses comes 2012.)

Doesn't seem to be saving them yet.

They're sinking worse than a BP oil rig in all the latest polls.

Perhaps in the long run, this Rahm Emanuel-sponsored messaging will save them.

But I doubt it.

What would save them is a reviving economy and a falling unemployment rate.

But for some reason Obama and his economic team have decided that 9.5% unemployment is just fine and dandy, and if they can add a few more teachers to the unemployment rolls, it would be even better.

Assholes.

Pelsoi: Obama Committed To Taxing Union Health Care

From Talking Points Memo:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just returned to the Capitol from a health care meeting at the White House. Walking toward her office, I asked her whether the Senate bill's "Cadillac tax" on high-end health care plans, which both the Senate and White House are pushing, would be a hard sell in the House.

"It's not a very popular initiative in the House or in the public," she said. "It's something the President is committed to, and we'll see how it works out."

In case that's not clear, Mr. President.

Pelosi has long-held reservations about the policy, and has even gone as far as ribbing the President for reneging on a commitment not to raise taxes on middle class Americans by supporting it. That said, she's still optimistic that identical reform package will pass the House and Senate.

Great! I get to pay a 40% tax on my health care plan because Obama calls it "high end" even though my union has negotiated many of those benefits over the years in place of monetary compensation.

And this is to fund the piece of #$%^ health care reform bill that forces Americans without health care to buy crappy insurance that will cover little but sure will make the health insurance companies and their stockholders rich.

I can't wait to see Dems get hammered this year in the midterms and Obama thrown out of office in 2012.

Let's be honest here - the only thing worse then getting screwed financially by the powers that be over and over again is getting screwed financially by someone you voted for.

But I won't make that mistake again.

And I wrote the White House today to let them know that.

You should too.