Nation-Building

An editorial in the Washington Post argues, counter-intuitively, that Barack Obama's fundraising success over the internet is not a death-knell for the public financing system, but rather all the more reason to reform it: According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute of the fundraising totals through August 2008, the percentage of people whose total donations to Mr. Obama aggregated to $200 or less was 26 percent. That almost matches President Bush's 25 percent in the 2004 election. But Mr. Obama relied less on donors who gave $1,000 or more (47 percent) than Mr. Bush (60 percent). [...] Mr. Obama must lead a serious conversation about the role of the public financing system and how Internet fundraising should affect its structure. In an op-ed last month in The Post, Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer championed a new campaign finance system centered around the Internet. He proposed matching funds for small donations up to $200 per donor, incre...

Wow - I knew that Gov. Blago had ethical issues and was under investigation, but this is just disgusting if true - he was just arrested this morning by the FBI on suspicion of trying to sell President-Elect Senator Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder: From the complaint we have some details. Most intriguing, perhaps, those involving Blago seemingly trying to sell off President-elect Obama's Senate seat. (Read the complaint HERE and the press release HERE .) "The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering," said U.S. Attorney Patrick "The Untouchable" Fitzgerald in a statement. "They allege that Blagojevich put a 'for sale' sign on the naming of a United States Senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism." [...] Ultimately, it appears that neither PEBO n...

This is a fascinating map of Federal land ownership percentages by state. I love how the states are rendered to scale to represent the proportion visually. I find the comparison between California and Texas quite interesting as well. For one thing I had no idea so much of CA was federally-owned; likewise I had no idea so little of Texas was. This is probably a reflection of the amount of protected land and natural resources between the two states. I think there's a lot more in Texas that should be protected but probably isn't.

Obama certainly has hit the ground running, but as he pointed out himself, we only have one President at a time. That's why Obama did not attend the G20 summit last week, for example. Still, it seems that the media is trying to paint a picture of a co-presidency anyway. This story is long on the speculation but short on teh evidence: America has never seen anything quite like this: The president and president-elect acting like co-presidents, consulting and cooperating on the day's biggest crises. "It's pretty unusual," said George Edwards , a presidential expert at Texas A&M University, in College Station . What Princeton University professor Julian Zelizer calls "the split-screen presidency" is the result of several historic forces converging this fall: — The 24-7 nature of the global economy, which demands timely reaction. — Incoming and outgoing presidents who have personal and political reasons to show that they can manage a crisis. —...

Paul Krugman writes about the prospect of Obama doing a grand FDR-style New Deal to stimulate the economy, then does some back of the envelope calculations on his blog, and frets that an Obama stimulus package might be too small (by design), and explains why that's a bad thing. In a nutshell, you don't want to lowball a stimulus - you need to err on the side of caution by being bold. As Krugman notes, you need about $600 billion to close a 7% output gap, but the Obama people seem ot be leaning towards a stimulus package half that size.

This is a ridiculous argument : Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean is not a serious contender to be secretary of health and human services in the new Obama administration, sources said. Dean’s name has appeared on short lists for the Cabinet post circulating throughout Washington, based largely on his party chairmanship and career as a doctor. Dean also passed health care reforms while governor of Vermont. And his allies said the Obama transition team has had some informal discussions with him about the job. But the chief attributes President-elect Barack Obama is seeking in his HHS secretary will be an ability to work with members of Congress and shepherd reform legislation through the House and Senate. That job description has turned out to be a particularly ill-suited one for Dean, given his partisan background and lack of congressional experience, sources inside and outside the transition offices say. Dean never served in Congress and spent his Washington career try...

While this news has already made its way around the liberal blogsphere, it's worth making a note of it here for posterity's sake, given this blog's origins and history. Howard Dean's tenure at the DNC is drawing to a close , and the future of the 50-state strategy seems to be in doubt . Chris Bowers has been following the story at OpenLeft and summarizes: People inside the DNC are telling me that the program is not dead. This doesn't surprise me, because it is a popular program and I imagine that many of the remaining staffers at the DNC are committed to the program. At the same time, all of the organizers--who were chosen by local state parties--have been fired . That effectively kills the program, no matter the messaging and commitment of the remaining staffers. The best bet is that the remaining staff at the DNC will try to push for a continuation of the program once the new administration is in place. In the meantime, many of the large donors who always want...