Much like we saw at the McCain-Palin rallies last year where crowds were baited with cries of ’socialist,’ ‘communist,’ and where the birthers movement was born – these mobs of extremists are not interested in having a thoughtful discussion about the issues –  but like some Republican leaders have said – they are interested in ‘breaking’ the President and destroying his Presidency.

The NRCC, via spokesman Ken Spain, fired back:

What Democrats call ‘mob rule’ the average American calls “democracy” … These kinds of despicable characterizations of middle class Americans, who oppose trillions in mounting government debt, as elements of the partisan ‘fringe’ smacks of elitism.

This begs the question: if town hall applause-o-meter contests are “democracy,” what are elections for? Undeterred, based on the friendly-fire interviews that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) gave to The Huffington Post, it sounds like Democrats are trying to define the coming wave of made-for-TV town hall outbursts as fringe lunacy along the lines of the Code Pink protests that dogged Republicans in the Bush years.

Current U.S. law requires the homeowner to be convicted of a smuggling-related crime before federal agents can seize the house, and ICE agents have complained this makes seizure too difficult.

Schumer’s idea, which is reportedly supported by the Obama administration, is nothing new. Back in July 2005, the Government Accountability Office suggested giving federal agents this civil forfeiture authority, which it already has to confiscate things like boats used to smuggle drugs.

The problem with the proposal, though, as the GAO noted in its report and testimony to Congress, is that most of these houses are rented by smugglers, who themselves often take off before the feds can arrest them, and they become fugitives. It’s not clear what good seizing the house does at that point. Moreover, it’s often not clear whether the owner of the home even knows how it’s being used by its tenants. Presumably that’s why the current law only allows the government to seize the house after proving the homeowner knowingly facilitated the smuggling operation.

“This policy needs to be fixed right away,” Schumer told The Associated Press on Wednesday after a meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. “It can put a serious dent in the operations of the Mexican cartels that deal in human trafficking.”

It could also put a dent in the Southwestern rental market, particularly for Mexican renters.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) co-sponsored a measure today that would modestly increase the “clunker” requirement of the program and significantly raise the fuel-efficiency mandates.

The House measure would give a $3,500 voucher to a driver who trades in a car that gets 18 miles per gallon or less for one that gets at least 4 mpg more. The Senate proposal, on the other hand, sets the upper limit for the clunker at 17 mpg and requires that the new vehicle get at least 24 mpg. It would set a sliding scale, whereby a trade-in that achieves a 7-mpg improvement would earn a driver $2,500, while a 10-mpg gain would yield $3,500 and a 13-mpg increase would garner $4,500.

And while drivers could receive a voucher for a 1-mpg improvement in their trucks under the House plan, the minimum under the Senate proposal is 3 mpg.

“The ‘Cash for Clunkers’ proposal that I’m putting forward with Senators Collins and Schumer would place a greater emphasis on fuel economy improvements than the House compromise — which could allow for the scrapping of perfectly adequate vehicles in return for federal incentives to purchase gas-guzzling vehicles,” Feinstein wrote in a press release. “That’s unacceptable. Our proposal, on the other hand, would achieve between 32 to 38 percent greater oil savings, save drivers 176 gallons of gasoline per year, and cut greater greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent more than the House compromise. In short, this would accomplish the dual goals of stimulating car sales and requiring more efficient vehicles. We believe this is a much better deal for American taxpayers.”

Ordinarily, I’d say that such an ambitious proposal would have little chance of passing, but with bipartisan sponsorship, it could actually shift the debate. The differences between the House and Senate measures will likely be reconciled in conference — that is, if the Senate is able to pass its version of the Waxman-Markey bill several months down the road. And as anyone who’s kept an eye on Washington recently can tell you, that’s a big if.

–

TWI is on Twitter. Please follow us here.

It’s telling how a Republican politician thinks he can get his people to ignore an anti-Semitic remark by dogwhistling something about Obama.

(h/t Kleefeld.)

The measure supported by The Times, sponsored by Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in the Senate and Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) in the House, would give drivers up to $4,000 for a car that gets 18 miles per gallon or less, if they trade it in for a vehicle that is 25 percent more fuel-efficient than the average in its class. The alternative, sponsored by Rep. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio), requires that the new vehicle get just 27 mpg. (The national average for 2011 vehicles, according to new regulations, will be 27.3 mpg.)

A cash-for-clunkers program would have two main goals: stimulating the flagging American auto industry and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Sutton’s bill favors the former, and has therefore won much more support in Detroit, because it stipulates that only American vehicles can be bought under the scheme. The Schumer-Israel plan, on the other hand, emphasizes the latter, with higher fuel-economy standards and no buy-American clause.

Yet in the long run, the Schumer-Israel bill could actually do more to get Detroit back on its feet. By encouraging the production of fuel-efficient cars, the measure could help Detroit retool for a new auto economy that will favor smaller cars and hybrids. The Sutton bill does nothing to dissuade Detroit from continuing to produce the gas-guzzlers that helped get the American auto industry into its current fix.

In related news, The Michigan Messenger reports on a similar plan to get people to trade in their old household appliances.

According to The New York Times, the two senators are drafting a letter to President Obama suggesting that the $1.7 billion in unemployment benefits that six governors have threatened to reject be used for a cash-for-clunkers program, which would offer financial incentives for people to trade in their old gas-guzzlers for new, fuel-efficient cars.

The governors of Alaska, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas have signaled that they will not accept the portion of federal stimulus funding allocated for state unemployment benefits. However, if the rejected funds would otherwise be used for a liberal environmental cause (rather than deficit reduction or another conservative goal), it’s easy to imagine that some of these governors might go back on their pledge.

Feinstein and Schumer, along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), sent a letter to Obama today that encouraged a cash-for-clunkers program but made no mention of the funding method that Feinstein and Schumer seem to be advocating independently of Collins.

Obama has indicated his support of cash-for-clunkers, but it remains to be seen whether he’ll fund it in a way that could easily antagonize GOP governors.

–

TWI is on Twitter. Please follow us here.

But even so, it appears that, as my friend Eli Lake reports today for The Washington Times, that Freeman’s alleged financial ties to China and Saudi Arabia are under investigation by the DNI’s inspector general. It’s unclear what, if anything, Freeman actually did wrong, but that’s how these things go.

Now Greg Sargent reports for the Plum Line that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has expressed unspecified concern about Freeman’s views on Israel to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. This will get serious if Schumer makes a public statement. Sticking with Freeman is entirely at Blair’s discretion. But it’s an open question how much criticism the White House wants to take over an obscure retired ambassador who’s already under official investigation.

What’s also unclear is what the, uh, I don’t know what to call them, diplomatically — American-Israel-hardliners-plus-Jon-Chait actually have in mind for their strategy here. Freeman is small potatoes. On the horizon are very dicey U.S.-Israel negotiations with a far-right Israeli government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and a progressive U.S. administration that put George Mitchell, whom the, uh, American-Israel-hardliners-and-who-knows-about-Jon-Chait think is too “even-handed” (!) in charge of Israel-Palestine negotiations. That’s a massive battle, in which Netanyahu is going to want to tell President Obama “no” on all of these important issues without seeming to say “no.” Do Netanyahu’s supporters really want to spend political capital on Freeman with that on the horizon? What do they think their influence on Obama will be if they go all-out on one of his intelligence director’s officials?

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) became the latest Democratic leader to tread carefully around using the term, telling MSNBC that the possibility of the government taking controlling ownership of some of the largest banks would not constitute nationalization.

It’s easy to throw words around like “nationalization.” I think that the American taxpayer needs some protection. That’s why, in the original part of the stimulus — that is, the bailout, the TARP, that we made sure that the American taxpayer had a way of being paid back for their investment. That’s all this is — that’s what this is all about. And it’s the right way to go. It’s not nationalization. It’s protecting the taxpayers’ interests.

Reid went on to defend federal interventions in private industry as a “stabilizing” necessity in times of economic distress.

For decades the federal government — American federal government — has been involved in the private sector. We did it with the railroads. We did it with highways.

So I think what we’re doing in banking now, at a time of distress, is the right thing to do. And we’re getting very close to stabilizing the banking industry.

Reid is hardly alone in his care for choosing language. Last week, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Banking Committee, told Bloomberg the government may have to take over some banks, adding, “I don’t welcome that at all.”

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told The Huffington Post that he’d support a short-term nationalization of the country’s “zombie banks,” but “it should be the last arrow in the quiver.” Schumer went out of his way to emphasize that he was making “just a general comment about a general situation … I don’t have any specific institution in mind.”

Just one question: Why, after the “greatest financial minds” on Wall Street just spent the last decade running their firms into the ground, would the country still prefer that these same folks be in charge of rectifying the mess?

The infamous former attorney general’s name has haunted Holder’s confirmation hearing, and been invoked by almost all of the senators as an example of what they don’t want to see again at the department.

Holder, for obvious reasons, has committed himself — if confirmed — to turning the department around:

One of the things, I think, as attorney general I’m going to have to do, in short order, is to [...] basically do a damage assessment and understand, in a way that I do not now, how has the institution been harmed by the activities that were uncovered by these inspector general reports.

In his answers to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Holder said that he is “very disturbed” by what he’s read about the most recent IG report, particularly the finding that false testimony was given to the committee. He emphasizes that he will review the controversial decision not to pursue charges against the former head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Brad Schlozman.

These are big steps forward — and it looks like the special prosecutor appointed to look into the inspector general reports, Nora Dannehy, will have Holder’s support.

A trio of senators introduced legislation today allowing owners of gas-guzzlers to trade their vehicles in for thousands of dollars in credit on a more fuel-efficient car.

The temporary “cash for clunkers” program would work like this: Owners of vehicles that get less than 18 miles-per-gallon would be able to turn in those cars for $2,500 to $4,500 in credit toward the purchase of a more efficient model. The gas guzzler would be scrapped, getting it off the road forever.

Sponsors of the bill — Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) — say the four-year program would retire up to one million gas guzzlers in the fourth year while saving up to 80,000 barrels of fuel per day. From Collins’ statement:

Taking these cars and trucks off our roads and highways would help reduce our dependence on foreign oil, decrease greenhouse gas emissions, and stimulate the economy. In addition, it would help boost demand for manufacturers of newer, efficient models and bring in new business for car dealers who are struggling in the current economy.

In the House, the same bill was introduced today by Reps. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Dennis Moore (D-Kansas).

The lawmakers aren’t the only ones pushing cash for clunkers as part of the Democrats’ yet-to-be-released economic stimulus proposal. Writing in the Detroit Free Press earlier this month, Brookings Institution economist Jason Bordoff laid out both the economic and environmental advantages of such a program:

Cash for clunkers can provide timely economic stimulus by giving people money quickly to spend on cars. Each stimulus dollar would also have high bang-for-the-buck because it would be directed toward the purchase of a newer car, and thus less likely to be saved, used to pay down debt or applied in other ways that do not boost consumer spending. Since low-income people are more likely to own older cars, the program is also targeted at those most in need.

With new car sales plunging, the stimulated demand for new cars would pep the auto industry and assembly lines. Even the purchase of a used car would indirectly boost new cars sales because the scrapping of each old vehicle from the U.S. fleet paves the way for more.

Cash for clunkers would also reduce carbon emissions, local pollution and oil consumption. Older cars emit far more local pollution. A California study, for example, found that in 2010, vehicles from model year 1998 or earlier will be responsible for 25 percent of miles driven but 75 percent of local pollution.

Sounds like a way to kill a few birds with one stone. But while the proposed program may be worthwhile for someone driving a 20-year-old gas-guzzler, how do you entice the driver of that $50,000 Escalade to scrap it for $4,500?