1.) NRA says ‘No way’ to a meeting with anti-gun crusaders — “More than two months after the Tucson shootings, the Obama administration is calling together both the gun lobby and gun safety groups to find common ground,” reports the New York Times. The National Rifle Association’s response was short and simple: No. “Why should I or the N.R.A. go sit down with a group of people that have spent a lifetime trying to destroy the Second Amendment in the United States?” asked NRA Chief Wayne LaPierre. According to the NYT, LaPierre sounds a lot like Obama at times. For instance, in his op-ed in The Arizona Daily Star, Obama suggested that law enforcement and legislators “focus on the people, not the guns.” This is basically the imperative form of “Guns don’t kill people, Jared Loughner kills people.” Obama knew the NRA would say no to a sit-down: “Some will say nothing short of the most sweeping antigun legislation is a capitulation to the gun lobby,” he wrote in his op-ed. “Others will predictably cast any discussion as the opening salvo in a wild-eyed scheme to take away everybody’s guns.” Replace “gun lobby” with “Bill of Rights,” and “opening salvo” with “umpteenth volley,” and you’ve nailed it, Mr. President.
2.) Haley Barbour press secretary resigns after questioning whether Janet Reno is actually Will Ferrell — “Gov. Haley Barbour has announced that he has accepted the resignation of Press Secretary Dan Turner today,” reports the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. “Turner, who joined Barbour’s staff in Jan. 2009, made the political blog circuit today after Politico.com obtained e-mails he had sent to staffers with off-color jokes.” The emails were a daily digest meant for the governor’s staff. They included what Turner called a “lagniappe” section (Louisiana speak for “fire me, please”) in which Turner cracked un-PC about the events of the day. “Otis Redding posthumously received a gold record for his single, ‘(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.’ (Not a big hit in Japan right now.),” Turner wrote in yesterday’s issue. “In other e-mails, Turner also joked about former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno’s gender, as well as the Cambodian genocide.” LOL! Welcome to the spotlight, Team Barbour.
3.) California’s CalPERS is FUBAR — “In a scathing report, a former chief executive of the California public employee pension fund was accused of pressuring subordinates to invest billions of dollars of pension money with politically connected firms,” reports the LA Times. “A 17-month investigation also found that Federico Buenrostro Jr. — along with former pension fund board members Charles Valdes and Kurato Shimada — strong-armed a benefits firm to pay more than $4 million in fees to consultant Alfred J.R. Villalobos, who later hired Buenrostro.” The report also said that “Buenrostro earned more than $50 million in placement agent fees.” Luckily for CalPERS’ 1.6 million local and state beneficiaries, the pension fund has $228 billion in assets. Many tens of millions of misspent dollars are just a dimple in a golf ball!
4.) John Kerry volunteers Wall Street to rebuild America’s roads, bridges, other crap like that — “Senator John Kerry is likely to introduce a bill to create a national infrastructure bank,” reports Heidi Moore of American Public Media. “The bank would be seeded with government money. But — and this is unusual — its primary purpose would be to get Wall Street to pick up part of the bill for future construction projects.” Huh! Who knew you could just make banks pay for things like that? “Here’s how it might work: The government would put in as much as $50 billion. Wall Street would add to that and it would have a say in investment decisions. The profits would be split proportionally. Bernard Schwartz, a long-time executive, says that $50 billion could quadruple once professional investors add their own funds.” What could possibly go wrong?
5.) Has Rep. Corrine Brown gone broke defending gerrymandering? — “The campaign of U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown is hemorrhaging money,” reports the Florida Times-Union. “Her campaign reported having just $417 in the bank after November’s election, and it currently has a little more than $4,000 in its war chest, according to Federal Election Commission records.” Brown’s cash on hand puts her in a new minority: “Of the 435 House members, only 12 have less money in the bank than Brown. Five of those are freshman lawmakers who typically have less than established members.” Why has Brown gone broke? According to an analysis by the Times-Union, Brown “paid $35,977 in hotel bills, spent $35,549 for fundraising consultants, $34,192 for catering, $32,242 for media buys and advertising, and $24,266 for media consulting,” during her 2010 campaign. The difficulty she faces replenishing those funds may have something to do with her “fight to keep her gerrymandered district, which runs from North Jacksonville to Orlando,” despite the passage of a constitutional referenda item that “removes politics from the process of redrawing the state’s congressional lines.”
6.) Pell supporters admit problems with the program — “After two years in which Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders expanded Pell Grant funding at every turn,” writes Inside Higher Ed, “the president himself, in the 2012 budget plan he released in February, proposed slashing $8 billion a year from the program by ending a two-year-old practice that allowed students who enroll year-round to get two grants in a single year.” This is rather something, considering that Pell is the young-person equivalent of Social Security: “Pell historically has been impossible to criticize, or even scrutinize. Republicans could not question the program without facing accusations of being anti-student; Democrats and college officials would not, for fear that showing any sign of weakness, or concession of imperfection, would open the door to attack or budget reduction.” But when a program’s spending more than doubles in three years, which has given Pell a $36.6 billion price tag in 2011, it becomes an “almost inevitable target at a time of growing concern about runaway federal budget deficits.”
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