Morning Email From DCExaminer

Michael Barone - Gangster Government becomes a long-running series
Republicans have been accurately attacking the Dodd bill for authorizing bailouts of big Wall Street firms and giving them unfair advantages over small competitors. They might want to add that it authorizes Gangster Government -- the channeling of vast sums from the politically unprotected to the politically connected.

Timothy P. Carney - Goldman Sachs wants regulation, not laissez-faire
Just as drug companies and insurers used Republicans to kill the public option before using Democrats to mandate insurance and subsidize drugs, big banks are using Republicans to kill a bank tax while using Democrats to erect barriers to entry, to institutionalize bailouts, and to restore confidence in Wall Street.

Susan Ferrechio - Parties feud in public, deal in private on bank bill
Despite Reid's threat to forge ahead without the GOP, he is at the same time working with them on a compromise behind the scenes. His willingness to wait until next week to move a bill to the floor is a clear sign that Democrats have yet to win over a Republican.

J.P. Freire - Is Goldman Obama's Enron? No, it's worse
Campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs employees to President Obama are nearly seven times as much as President Bush received from Enron workers, according to numbers on OpenSecrets.org.

Julie Mason - Obama and GOP both take risks in Wall Street attacks
Both parties are courting political risk by trading sordid accusations over a pending financial services regulations bill -- including the risk of overplaying their hands.

More Stories
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Where in the world is Tony Rezko?

Morning Emails from DCExaminer

Byron York - GOP Obamacare strategy: Try repeal, then cut
There's an ongoing debate among Republicans about what it means to repeal Obamacare. Does it mean abolishing the whole thing? Does it mean nullifying just the most troublesome parts? Repealing and simultaneously enacting a new set of reforms? Or repealing and then starting a new debate on what reforms to make?
"House Republicans will not rest until we repeal Obamacare lock, stock and barrel," Rep. Mike Pence, head of the House Republican Conference, told me from Arizona, where he had gone to campaign for GOP candidates. "I believe that's the uniform position of the Republican leadership."

Susan Ferrechio - Obama nuke treaty has a tough path ahead in Senate
It will take 67 senators to ratify the new treaty, a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which means at least eight Republicans must endorse it, assuming it wins the support of all 57 Democrats and two independents.

David Freddoso - McDonnell’s first serious gaffe
Yesterday, McDonnell added a section on slavery, with an apology for the omission. Good for him.

Gallup: Independents worried about economy, deficit
The economy is the No. 1 concern for a majority of voters heading into 2010’s midterm elections, but the deficit comes in close behind, particularly with all-important independent voters, according to a new Gallup poll.
The economy tops a list of concerns, unsurprisingly, for 57 percent of voters, with health care (49%) and unemployment (46%) rounding out the top three. But when you examine the numbers among just independent voters, the federal budget deficit becomes the second-most important issue at 52 percent.

DCExaminer Morrning Email Blast

Apparently, Henry "Nostrils" Waxman doesn't appreciate someone taking a closer look at this steaming pile of dog excrement. If this doesn't offend your sense of freedom and fairness, you need to move to some other country where politicians are free to bitchslap private companies when they question their government; like Venezuala. If I worked for any of these companies in an executive position, I'd respectfully and firmly advise Nostrils to have winged intercourse with a round mobile pastry.

Byron York - Democrats threaten companies hit hard by health care bill

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has summoned some of the nation's top executives to Capitol Hill to defend their assessment that the new national health care reform law will cost their companies hundreds of millions of dollars in health insurance expenses. Waxman is also demanding that the executives give lawmakers internal company documents related to health care finances -- a move one committee Republicans describes as "an attempt to intimidate and silence opponents of the Democrats' flawed health care reform legislation."

On Thursday and Friday, the companies -- so far, they include AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, Deere, Valero Energy, AK Steel and 3M -- said a tax provision in the new health care law will make it far more expensive to provide prescription drug coverage to their retired employees.

Now, both retirees and current employees of those companies are wondering whether the new law could mean reduced or canceled benefits for them in the future.

The news is an embarrassment for Democrats. As President Obama and Congressional leaders tout the purported benefits of the new health care law, some of the nation's biggest companies are saying it will mean higher costs and fewer benefits -- not exactly what Democrats want to hear in the days after their historic victory.

So Waxman has ordered the executives to explain themselves at an April 21 hearing before the Energy and Commerce Committee's investigative subcommittee. That subcommittee just happens to be chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak

Waxman's demands for documents are far-reaching. "To assist the Committee with its preparation for the hearing," he wrote to Stephenson, "we request that you provide the following documents from January 1, 2009, through the present:

(1) any analyses related to the projected impact of health care reform on AT&T; and

(2) any documents, including e-mail messages, sent to or prepared or reviewed by senior company officials related to the projected impact of health care reform on AT&T. We also request an explanation of the accounting methods used by AT&T since 2003 to estimate the financial impact on your company of the 28 percent subsidy for retiree drug coverage and its deductibility or nondeductibility, including the accounting methods used in preparing the cost impact statement released by AT&T this week.

Michael Barone - Obama slights our friends, kowtows to our enemies
Barack Obama's decision to postpone his trip to Indonesia and Australia -- to a democracy with the world's largest Muslim population and to the only nation that has fought alongside us in all the wars of the last century -- is of a piece with his foreign policy generally: Attack America's friends and kowtow to our enemies.

Timothy P. Carney - Why pot growers favor pot prohibition
If California legalizes marijuana, they say, it will drive down the price of their crop and damage not just their livelihoods but the entire economy along the state's rugged northern coast