Pistole To Passengers: Don’t Opt Out Of Screening

The Obama administration’s top transportation security official is pleading with holiday travelers to not follow through with a planned boycott of airport body scanners on one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.

In interviews with several television networks Monday morning, TSA chief John Pistole said that an organized mass boycott of the controversial body scanners would “tie up people who want to go home and see their loved ones.”

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DeMint Picks Up Support Of Key Moderate On Earmark Ban

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) announced on Tuesday that he will vote in support of fellow South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint’s proposal to place a moratorium on earmark spending.

Previously, Graham had been hesitant to commit to the ban, citing projects in his home state he had helped fund. But after giving it some thought, he decided to put his initial feelings aside.

“As a long-time supporter of earmark reform, I will vote in support of the moratorium,” Graham said in a statement. “Some earmarks, like the Bridge to Nowhere, have rightfully left Americans angry about how Washington spends their hard-earned tax dollars on projects which serve little, if any, purpose. The earmark moratorium will help ensure projects like these are not allowed to slip through the Congress again.”

“However, I maintain the right to seek funding to protect our national security or where the jobs and economy of South Carolina are at risk.  If the Obama Administration and their bureaucrats in the federal agencies take action against the best interests of South Carolina, I will take swift action to correct their wrongs.”

Sanders Says No To Proposed Comcast-NBC Merger

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has asked the Federal Communications Commission to block the planned merger of NBC Universal and Comcast.

“At a time when a small number of giant media corporations already control what the American people see, hear, and read, we do not need another conglomerate with control over the production and distribution of sports, news, and entertainment,” Sanders said in a statement. “In my view, we need more media diversity, more local control, more points of view – not more media concentration.”

Sanders is pointing to a study conducted by former FCC chief economist William Rogerson, who determined that customers would pay $2.4 billion in added rates should the merger occur.

“I would think it an obvious conclusion that ‘public interest, convenience, and necessity’ would not be served by a regressive wealth transfer of $2.4 billion from ordinary citizens to what would be one of the largest corporate entities in the United States,” Sanders wrote.

Orszag Perplexed By Democrats’ Unhappiness With Debt Commission Report

A key former member of President Obama’s economic team said Friday that he is confused by attacks waged by some on the left against a draft report issued by Obama’s fiscal commission.

Peter Orszag, the president’s ex-OMB Director-turned senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview that the social security reform proposals advocated by the commission’s co-chairs, such as increasing the cap on payroll taxes and altering the method by which benefits are awarded, should be celebrated by liberals for containing “progressive” elements. Moreover, Orszag advises left-leaning politico’s to trumpet the report’s omittance of any proposals to privatize Social Security.

“Private accounts as part of Social Security are definitively dead for now,” he writes. “So I don’t fully understand why the left is not eager to lock in that victory.”

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Group Decries Debt Commission Draft For Omitting Wall Street Tax

The organization Public Citizen says President Barack Obama’s fiscal commission must target Wall Street in its attempt to find ways to reduce the nation’s debt.

The group is upset with the commission’s co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson for failing to propose a tax on financial speculation in their 50-page report released earlier this week.

“The draft recommendations…were both disappointing and highly suspect when they blatantly omitted a speculation tax on Wall Street and the financial industry,” said Craig Mehall with Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division.

In the report, a draft which the co-chairmen must now get a large percentage of the commission to support, Simpson claimed to “have harpooned every whale in the ocean - and some minnows.”

However, that assessment is being met with skepticism by some who allege that the panel would prefer not to draw the ire of the financial sector.

“It is worth noting that one of the co-chairs, Erskine Bowles, is literally on Wall Street’s payroll. He earned $335,000 last year for his role as a member of Morgan Stanley’s (MS (one of the bailed out banks) board of directors. Morgan Stanley would likely see a large hit to its profits from a financial speculation tax,” wrote Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.