This is hilarious

This Youtube video is pretty hilarious:




(Via Crooks and Liars)

Shock, outrage!

To the shock, consternation and outrage of right-wing bloggers everywhere, Hillary Clinton is not familiar with all the miracles of all the patron saints of Christendom:

The Catholic News Agency reports that on her recent trip to Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She left flowers on behalf of the American people.

The Basilica is the second most visited Catholic shrine in the world, and the Lady of Guadalupe is one of the principal symbols of the Mexican nation. The Basilica houses a cloak that belonged to a 16th-century Indian, on which an image of the Virgin Mary miraculously appeared. In the intervening years, no scientific explanation of the image has been forthcoming. Among Catholics (and many others), this is one of the most famous of all miracles...

The Catholic News Agency says that after viewing the cloak, Clinton turned to the priest who was showing her the Basilica and asked, "Who painted it?"

This is one of those stories that seem like it can't possibly be true. Could America's Secretary of State really be ignorant of a central cultural symbol of a country next door? It is as though a foreign minister came to Washington, was shown Stuart's portrait of George Washington, and asked, "Who was he?"

Er... no. It's not. It's as if a foreign minister came to Washington, was shown Stuart's portrait of George Washington and asked: "Who painted it?"

Now, for my money, it's far more disturbing that Hindraker seems to accept the painting's supposed magical origins (OK, miraculous origins... whatever) at face value than that Hillary was unaware of them: "In the intervening years, no scientific explanation of the image has been forthcoming..." ooooh, cue the spooky X-files soundtrack and get me a mass spectrometer. Should be easy enough to determine whether the image on the cloak is made of natural pigments or was instead painted with fairy dust mixed with the blood of Jesus and unicorn tears.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

For Those About to Celebrate

For those who celebrate the death of the newspaper and traditional print media, behold your Brave New World of Cable News:



Welcome to Idiocracy.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

Jaw Dropping (but in a good way this time)

You don't have to be a basketball fan to be left speechless by this:



(Via Huffinton Post)

Fairly unbalanced

Wonkette brings to my attention this jaw-droppingly stupid segment that ran recently on Fox News. In it some minor mob figure named Michael Francese pimps a book that claims to show that the Obama administration is operating like a Mafia crime family. No, I'm not kidding!



Once again, the Right proves immune to parody. How could a Saturday Night Live skit improve on this stupidity? At any rate, I think my favorite moment in the interview is when the supposed Mafia Crime boss says matter-of-factly: "To me I want less government intervention in my life." Yes, I realize this is standard Right-wing mantra, but... he's a friggin' mob boss, people (supposedly), of course he wants less government intervention in his life. Shesh!

At any rate, there's also a little something in it for Jonah Goldberg at the end there when anchor Brian Kilmeade speculates that George Soros may have engineered the current economic crisis for his own financial benefit (no Right-wing paranoia there, eh, Goldberg?).

The first tear-down

Contessa Brewer calls bullshit on the GOP so-called "budget."

Even more pathetic than I imagined

So I've downloaded and skimmed the proposed GOP "budget" (you can get a pdf copy here) I put the word "budget" in quotes because it is immediately apparent, from even the most cursory examination, that the document that the GOP is referring to as a "budget" is, in fact, no such thing. It is basically a propaganda pamphlet that takes swipes at the administration's bailout plan, while presenting vague, unspecific, unsupported, goals as an alternative (an even this it does only sparingly). Here, for instance, is the Republican entitlement reform "plan," as it pertains to health care:

republicans’ solution
Instead of accelerating the demise of our nation’s large
entitlement programs and creating an unsustainable new
government health care program, Republicans seek to
provide universal access to affordable health care and to
address Medicare and Medicaid’s trillion dollar
unfunded liabilities with common-sense reforms that
ensure our children and grandchildren can secure benefits
in the future.
Republicans support leveling the playing field through
policies that will provide tax incentives for millions more
working families and small business owners to obtain
access to coverage.
Republicans also support breaking down the balkanized
barriers within our current health insurance industry,
allowing individuals to shop across state lines to purchase
affordable policies that best meet their needs.
Independent estimates suggest that as many as 12 million
individuals could obtain access to health insurance
through this approach alone—health insurance that
would be more responsive to individual consumers’
needs.
Republicans support reasonable limits on non-economic
damages, along with penalties for trial lawyers who file
frivolous lawsuits, among other reforms necessary to
preserve patients’ relationships with their physicians and
end the unnecessary defensive medicine practices
increasing costs for all Americans.
With regard to entitlements, Republicans support the
notion that wealthy seniors like Warren Buffett and
George Soros can afford to pay $2 per day more for their
Medicare prescription drug coverage. But we would go
further to save Medicare, by simplifying the current
benefit structure in traditional Medicare to include a
catastrophic cap on out-of-pocket expenses for the first
time in the program’s history. And Republicans plan
vigorous efforts to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in
order to make traditional Medicare more efficient.
Republicans also want to restore quality, care, and
efficiency to the Medicaid program and will look to
governors as the laboratories to improve and enhance the
program. A more flexible financing structure will remove
states’ current incentive to engage in what one liberal
advocacy group called “accounting arrangements…
designed primarily to provide a windfall for state
governments.” More importantly, additional flexibility
will allow states to design program improvements for
beneficiaries—for instance, using state dollars to
supplement private health insurance coverage. Unlike
Democrats who continue to block new state-level reforms
in order to expand government-run programs,
Republicans believe that providing beneficiaries with
additional choices will improve quality of care while
slowing health cost growth.

Now, you might be asking yourself: what kind of a budget names George Soros by name? The answer, of course, is: a vaguely worded political tract thinly disguised as a budget. And let me say that I'm being overly generous in this description. This pamphlet is "thinly disguised as a budget" only in the sense that GOP officials are referring to it as a budget. Even the document's cover page does not make that audacious claim, calling itself instead a "road to recovery."

And what's worse, there doesn't appear to be a word in this document that hasn't been GOP shibboleth for the last 30 years. Consider the quoted text above, which claims to be the GOP approach to entitlement reform. The first thing you'll notice is that it promises "universal access to affordable health care." This claim is laughable once you scan the sparse details the document offers. How will it do this? Well: (1) by providing tax incentives. (2) by restricting States abilities to regulate the quality and content of health insurance policies (3) by asking Warren Buffet and George Soros to pay $730 a year in additional medicare premiums. This is the same B.S. the GOP has been selling since before I can remember. Does anyone seriously think that these steps would do anything to slash the ranks of the uninsured in this country?

In sum, the document is an absurd sham. Hopefully we'll see it savaged in the press tonight. If Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and John Stewart don't tear this thing to shreds they'll have missed a golden opportunity to do the nation a service.

Summary: this thing's not a budget. It's a joke.

Pathetic, unfunny joke.

Say what you will about Obama's plans to rescue the teetering economy, at least they're not a sad, pathetic, unfunny joke. Today the GOP finally unveiled it's "detailed road-to-recovery plan" which, interestingly enough, contains no details whatsoever other than a cut in income taxes to 25% for wage earners making over $100,000 a year and 10% for those making less.

Are you going to have any further details on this today?" the first [reporter] asked.
"On what?" asked Boehner.
"There's no detail in here," noted the reporter.
Answered Boehner: "This is a blueprint for where we're going. Are you asking about some other document?"
A second reporter followed up: "What about some numbers? What about the out-year deficit? What about balancing the budget? How are you going to do it?"
"We'll have the alternative budget details next week," promised Boehner. Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) had wisely departed the room after offering his opening remarks. ("Today's Republican road-to-recovery is the latest in a series of GOP initiatives, solutions and plans," he had offered.)
A third reporter asked Boehner about the Republican goal for deficit reduction, noting President Obama aimed to cut it in half in five years. "What's your goal?"
"To do better," said Boehner.
"How? How much?"
"You'll see next week."
"Wait. Why not today? Because he asked you to present a budget."
"Now, hold on," said Boehner. "The president came to Capitol Hill and laid out his blueprint for his budget during the State of the Union. He didn't offer his details until days later."
"In general, where do you see cuts coming?" the Huffington Post asked.
"We'll wait and see next week," he said.

It will be interesting to see what the CBO makes of a budget that annihilates the country's tax base. Either it will balloon the debt beyond the wildest assumptions, or it will include absurd budget cuts that no party in power would ever seriously consider passing into law. Here are my predictions:

1) It will call for an absurdly unrealistic across-the-board spending cut that allows the GOP to avoid singling out specific programs for reduction.

2) It will call for an increase in defense spending.

3) It will make wildly unrealistic assumptions about economic growth to allow for a predicted elimination of the federal deficit in its 5th or so year.

4) It won't be anything like a serious attempt at putting together a budget, but rather, a document for the GOP to wave around at press conferences and claim they can do everything Obama wants to do in half the time at half the cost.

A terrific acheivment

An automotive reviewer tests the $2000.00 Tata Nano and comes off impressed.

As in Basketball: Life

I think there's a Metaphor hiding in Barack Obama's NCAA tournament prognostication. When the president first revealed his bracket, commentators pronounced themselves disappointed with the conservatism of his picks, choosing only four outcomes that might be considered "unsafe bets."

Obama's bracket shows no love for, or belief in, the little guy. Maybe former RNC spokesman Alex Conant was right when he wrote this week that the No. 1 myth about the president is that he's bold.

But guess what? Obama's judgment is once again proving sound:

Louisville made quite a rally. President Barack Obama did, too.

The president's NCAA tournament bracket looked a lot better Sunday when he correctly picked 14 of the 16 teams to reach the regional semifinals.

After the first round, Obama ranked in the bottom 5 percent of the 5-plus million fans who entered ESPN.com's pool. But following a strong showing in the second round, he broke into the top half

Does this situation have an air of famliarity to it? How everyone was discounting Obama's chances against Clinton in the primaries, and yet he came back to claim the prize? How two weeks ago everyone was calling for Tim Geitner's head and now the economic outlook seems to be improving and Getner's a hero and Obama's decision to hire him again seems wise and prescient?

For Nerds Only

For a certain kind of person (you know who you are) an image of a 1/4 scale Colonial Viper surrounded by a dozen Hooters girls is probably a lot like what Heaven looks like.

Two Nations Separated by a Common Language

Andrew Sullivan linked to this clip as a humorous commentary of Sarah Palin's propensity to... er... fib. But I don't get the impression that Sullivan quite understands how incomprehensible this 100 mph cockney motormouth actually is to American ears. See if you can understand one tenth of what this person is saying (I am speaking, of course, to my American readers):

$100 trillion zillion

So the other day I was leaving for work when a political ad came on the Tee Vee. It was from some right-wing group expressing opposition to Barack Obama's budget plans. The ad ended by citing a statistic claiming that Congress was spending "$1 billion dollars an hour."

Now, when you run the numbers, $1 billion dollars an hour adds up to $8.7 trillion dollars in a year. And nothing near that amount has been proposed by anyone. So I was curious where that figure cam from. I think I've figured it out. The figure came from Mitch McConnell.

“In just 50 days, Congress has voted to spend about $1.2 trillion between the Stimulus and the Omnibus,” McConnell says. “To put that in perspective, that’s about $24 billion a day, or about $1 billion an hour—most of it borrowed. There’s simply no question: government spending has spun out of control.”

Of course, this is a pretty stupid way of looking at things. After all, congress isn't actually spending $1 billion an hour. It has merely voted a stimulus plan and a budget within 50 days of Obama taking office. The simple fact is, you can make any budget seem outrageous with shenanigans like these. You could, for instance focus on the amount of time it took to congress to vote on the budget and claim, with similar justification, that in just a few minutes congress voted to spend $600 billion dollars, which amounts to something like $100 trillion zillion an hour.

Quote for the day

Some consider the last stanza of the lyrics, which contain the words “Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum! She breathes! she burns! she'll come! she'll come! Maryland! My Maryland!” offensive.

Mark Newgent, writing from "planet Corner," about a move afoot in the Maryland General assembly to alter the lyrics of the official State Song. Newgent explains, that really, no one should take offense at the epithet "Northern scum" since it is directed only at tyrants (presumably the ones who who sent troops to preserve the Union and dismantle the holy institution of slavery) not at Northerners in general.

For the record, we at Patriots Quill do not consider the lyrics offensive, so much as quaint, ludicrous and stupid.

Scratch That...

... Bush/Cheney were even worse than we feared.

Herd Mentality News

In today's New York Times, Gail Collins nails the herd mentality that drives the vast majority pf news coverage in this country:

Tim Geithner — Really cool guy. Super job on that bank bailout thing. Look at the way the stock market jumped. Way better Treasury secretary than last week’s Tim Geithner, who seemed a lot ... shorter.

Barack Obama — Kinda boring. Did you see the news conference? Same thing over and over again. Not that we mind. In these troubled times, we like stability. Thank God we didn’t elect somebody who was all charisma and exciting speeches.

One of the things that really bothers me about the news networks is how much like over-fed house cats they are. Dangle a shiny object before them and it commands their entire attention, distracting them from whatever shiny object they were chasing a few minutes before. This is what happened with the whole AIG bonus non-story. Did $160,000,000 in bonuses really deserve all that coverage with the entire US economy teetering on the edge of mayhem? Couldn't the networks have spent that time better educating the public on the nature of our economic crisis and the potential solutions to it? I realize this is boring stuff, but does anyone seriously believe that the news networks have done a creditable job explaining what credit-default swaps are? What mark to market accounting is? What securitization is? The extent to which Fed monetary policy may or may not have influenced the current crisis? What Keynsianism is? Absolutely not. What we get instead are duelling politicians from either end of a very narrow spectrum of parties and ideologies invited to shower viewers with five minute, disingenuous partisan sound-bites that have very little connection with actual, epirical reality. What can't we have more academic economists on TV describing the true issues at hand?

None of what Collins described would be a problem if we had a new media with actual substance, but we don't. We have a celebrity driven culture of news celebrities. It's a fashion show for these people, and one week crew necks are in and next week they're out. One week Geitner is dawdling (can't he fix the economy already?!) and the next week he's a competent treasury secretary with a workable plan.

Budget Reconciliation Maneuver

David Schuster runs one of his "hypocrisy watch" segments, this time singling out Republicans who criticize the White House for considering passing parts of its agenda through the less restrictive "budget reconciliation process" which is not subject to the minority filibuster. The problem? Republicans used this very maneuver to pass Bush's budget busting tax cuts in 2001 and again 2003, as well as to open ANWR to oil drilling in 2005.

Kudos to Schuster for pointing this out. I suspect that we're going to hear more commentators making this same point in the not too distant future.

Just Because You're Paranoid...

Reporting from "planet Corner" Jonah Goldberg expresses his exasperation at charges that the American Right is prone to paranoia:

...Over at The New Yorker, George Packer, echoing many, rehashes the usual talking points about how conservatives are particularly prone to paranoia and populist hysteria. He trots out Richard Hofstadter and Hofstadter's cribbing of the incredibly flawed work by Adorno. I respect Packer, but I find this all so deeply tiresome.

Look, I think there are examples of conservative or right-wing rhetoric getting out of hand vis a vis Obama. I listened to a video clip of Alan Keyes talking about Obama the other day and he might as well have been talking about Pol Pot. But I think most of the rhetoric has been perfectly legitimate given the times we're in and what Obama is trying to do. In particular, as I noted the other day, I love how liberals — who have been pushing to Europeanize American social policy for generations — are suddenly aghast and contemptuous when conservatives complain that liberals want to Europeanize American social policy, just as the liberal effort starts to succeed.

...and just for fun, here's a clip of Goldberg on Glenn Beck's insane TV show, listening as Beck theorizes that the Barack Obama presidency is the culmination of a communist plot devised by Soviet agents of Nikita Kushchev:

Ever wonder...

Chuck Norris (stop snickering!) wonders why our Border control policy can't be as successful as our Middle East policy.

(via Whiskey Fire, via Crooks and Liars)

Quote for the day II

...I suspect that in the end we will be driven down the road to some form of bank nationalization — and if that is where we are going Paul Krugman is correct to say that it is better to get there sooner rather than later. But unless Paul Krugman has 60 Senate votes in his back pocket, we cannot get there now. And the Geithner Plan seems to me to be legitimate and useful way to spend $100 billion of TARP money to improve — albeit not fix — the situation.

Brad DeLong, arguing for what can be done to help us out of the economic malaise, in contrast to what should be done.

The New Republicans?

Is Meghan McCain the future of the Republican party?



It's hard to say. Listening to that clip I get the sense that McCain would be a Democrat but for the fact that her father is a Republican Senator. But if she is, as she claims, representative of the new, young Republicans then the party is going to have to brace itself for a great deal of change, lest it lose these kids to the Democrats in the years to come. McCain describes herself as socially liberal in that clip, which presumably means that she's a conservative in her economic outlook (and in other interviews she has suggested as much). But currently the GOP is primarily a religious party whose economic stances are a muddle. The party is wedded to the idea of market de-regulation, strongly anti-union and virulently opposed to taxation. But it is a party that is addicted to lavish spending and has never managed to implement (or even propose) realistic policies that might actually help lower the deficit and the national debt. Nor has the party shown that it understands capitalism well enough to implement the sorts of intelligent regulations, transparency requirements and robust accounting rules that can help save the free-market from succombing to its own excesses.

The Republican response to Barack Obama is Bobby Jindal, a Barack Obama doppleganger that the party is pushing under the misguided notion that the only thing holding back it's appeal is the whiteness of its politicians' skin. But discontent with the party runs much deeper than that, and a generation that was raised on Will and Grace is not going to be satisfied with cosmetic changes. They need the party to that is still mired in 19th century backwater fundamenatlism to grow up and get with the 21st century. Bobby Jindal will not save the party from irrelevance. He's just window dressing.

Letter of Resignation

A frustrated AIG executive pens a letter of resignation, which is reprinted in the New York Times. This is likely to be a major topic of conversation today, as bloggers examine, dissect, and mull over its contents. One thing is sure: it paints a picture from within the company as it exists today that has been woefully absent in the media 'till now, and as such it should cast a little light on Tim Geitner's opposition to legislation that would penalize current employees of the company by rescinding, or more recently taxing their bonuses.

One important point the letter makes is that most of the executives who were reponsible for the company's collapse have slithered away into the weeds and are no longer with the company. It's hard to judge how accurate that claim is, but I suspect its likely that a good number of them have left of their own accord. And while it is not easy to feel pity for a guy who's taking home more than $700,000 after taxes, if the author's compensation was indeed negotiated a year ago at a time when the company's terrible financial situation was known, then it's hard to justify tearing up his contract now.

There are three issues that converged in creating this whole AIG bonus tax mess that's transpired over the past few days. The first is a product of Wall Street's habit of providing compensation to executives in the form of bonuses instead of salary. My suspicions are that tax shennanigans are at play here, but the simple fact is that such compensation schemes create the appearance to outsiders that Wall Street is rewarding failure. The second element at play are the outrageous sums that are paid to Wall Street executives to manage money. This naturally creates resentment among the general populace that is struggling to pay tay the mortgage, find affordable health-insurance and feed and clothe the kids. The third element is simple politcal demagoguery. While the previous two elements created conditions that were ideal for an explosion of popular discontent, it was politicians who lit the fuse, hoping to gain political advantage by stoking public outrage.

I don't like the obscene levels of compensation that corporate America rewards its top executives. I think these salaries, bonus packages and golden parachutes create squewed incentives and prioritize short-term gain over the long term viability of our businesses and industries. But I detest demagogic politicians who play to the mob just as much if not more.

Our first order of business must be to repair our economy, set it aright and get it humming again. Once that's done, and before the wounds have healed and people forgotten what got us ere, we need to proceed aggressively to restrain the forces and perverse incentive structures that got us where we are today.

Quote for the day

"Is it the Kindle where you can read a book? I take it that's from a satellite. So the existing statute would probably prohibit that under your view? … If this Kindle device where you can read a book which is campaign advocacy, within the 60- to 30-day period, if it comes from a satellite, it can be prohibited under the Constitution and perhaps under this statute?"

Justice Anthony Kennedy, exposing the depth of his technical saavy during oral arguments at the Supreme Court (it's all satellites these days, people... didn't ya know that?). What do you want to bet that Kennedy does not while away the hours reading Gizmodo?

Appealing to the GOP base

Just when I'd though I'd heard it all when it comes to hateful depictions of Michelle Obama, along comes Right-wing (can I start calling them Reich Wing, yet?) website Town Hall with this doozie:

Take Michelle Obama…please. Every time I turn around, there she is on a magazine cover. Now, normally, like the Mafia, I lay off the spouses, but inasmuch as this particular spouse attended the same racist church as her hubby for 20 years, I’ll make an exception in her case. After all, in spite of the fact that affirmative action got her an Ivy League degree and a $7,000-a-week salary and, moreover, has sent billions of dollars for no particularly good reason to Africa, she insists this is a mean country. The burning question in my circle is: if the First Family gets a female dog, will she be the First Bitch or will she have to settle for second place?

It seems that as much as the racists who make up the Right-wing commentariat despise the thought of a black man in the White House, what really, truly gets their blood boiling is the sight of an uppity black woman as First Lady.

(Found on Stinque)

The most disgusting thing I've heard all year

I have heard and read many awful things about Barack and Michelle Obama over the past few months. There is a seething undercurrent of hatred that is cultivated on the Right, which fuels a murderous rage and reminds us that evil is abiding, enduring and omnipresent in our culture. But few things I have heard or read since the innauguration have shocked me as much as hearing this audio clip, in which a vulgar, pathetic right-wing radio personality named Tammy Bruce, refers to Michelle Obama as "trash." Obama's crime? Encouraging young black children to ignore harmful stereotypes and try to perform well in school.

The audio can be heard here.

Please, if you come across this blog posting, let others know about this audio clip. It is important that people of good will understand just who and what we are up against in this country. Demagogues like Bruce are evil. There is no other way to put it. And they are dangerous. What you have just heard is not your typical partisan hackery. It is an appeal to the lowest, most disgusting and base elements of the human soul. It is an incitement to hatred, which is itself an incitement to violence. Only by exposing these cretins for who they really are can they be stopped.

Quote for the day

"If the person returns the money, I don't think there's a public interest in releasing the names."

New York Attorney General Andew Cuomo, explaining to reporters that nine of the top ten bonus recipients of AIG have agreed to return the money to the company.

I have this mental image of Cuomo on the phone with each executive explaining: "You can keep the bonus, but then I get to keep your kneecaps."

Any way, this is how it's done... not through some silly, potentially unconstitutional, overly broad 90% income tax on bonuses.

Debbie Schultz' Ordeal

Florida Congressman Debbie Wasserman Shultz has just announced that in 2007 she was diagnosed with cancer and has taken radical steps to salvage her health:

Now 42, the mother of three said she discovered a lump in December 2007 while doing a self-examination, and has since undergone seven major surgeries. She kept the illness private while campaigning for reelection and stumping nationwide for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, then Barack Obama. She didn't want the illness to "define" her, Wasserman Schultz said. Most of her staff didn't know about her condition, according to a spokesman.

Wasserman Schultz said that after learning she was at greater risk for the cancer to spread because of her Ashkenazi Jewish descent, she elected to have a double mastectomy, as well as the removal of her ovaries.

I truly hope the disease has been eliminated and Schultz is OK, because she's a dynomite politician and a real firecracker on political shows, and for some time now she's been the person I would most like to see succeed Barack Obama in the Whitehouse when his second term expires in 2012.

Why Obama Mattered

Miopic, nativist conservatives like to scoff at the idea that our global image is, at the end of the day, of any import or real concern. They would just as soon project power through force of arms and keep other nations in line through fear than lead through the respect and admiration that our values and commitment to justice command (when not actively withdrawing from world affairs altogether). This is a dangerous, and ultimately self-defeating view.

One of the great assets that Barack Obama brought to the table when he ran for president was the admiration of hundreds of millions or ordinary men and women throughout the globe. He was seen as a beacon of hope, not just for Americans, but for the citizens of the whole world who for decades admired our nation and spent the last eight years scratching their heads wondering how we could have strayed so far from our ideals. How was it possible that a nation that had once stood for justice was invading non-agressor nations without provocation? How was it possible that a nation that had once been a champion of human rights was now operating clandestine prisons and torturing and murdering detainees while denying them even the most basic juducial protections? Almost over-night, Barack Obama through the sheer force of his personality, his life's story and his genuine idealism, stepped up to the plate and washed away so much of the scum and dirt that had sullied our image abroad due to the actions of the previous administration.

The significance and importance of the global good will that Obama has cultivated and harnessed is nowhere so evident as in the current economic crisis. Yesterday Obama penned an editorial that ran in no fewer than thirty newpapers around the globe, urging significant, concerted action to prevent the current financial malaise from metastesizing into a full blown cancerous depression. There is no guarantee that Obama's plea will have the desired effect, but it seems inconceivable that a similar plea from another politician (John McCain, for instance) would carry anything near the same moral authority nor be received with the same degree of throughtful respect. If anyone can get the world to join hands and act in concert to save us from disaster, it is Obama.

Our nation is very lucky to have elected this man to see us through the present turmoil. Of that I have no doubt.

Poll Taxes and Literacy Requirements

It used to be that the monied classes sought to impose poll taxes and literacy requirements on voters in an effort to suppress the vote of the socialistically inclined working class. Today the imposition of a literacy requirement would just as likely inconvenience our political class. Readers will recall that Sarah Plain, for instance, when interviewed by Katie Couric, was unable to name even one newspaper that she reads regularly. Now voters in Texas can feel proud to call their own a State Representative who might just give the Alaska Governor a run for the money in the contest for dumbest Republican politician now serving:

Give state Rep. Gary Elkins some credit for being honest.

At a hearing Thursday of the House Committee on Human Services, Elkins and other members of the panel considered more than two dozen bills related to Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.

Three hours into the hearing, Elkins asked: "What's Medicaid?"

The Houston Republican continued: "I know I hear it — I really don't know what it is. I know that's a big shock to everybody here in the audience, OK."

He could have kept quiet. He could have asked an aide. He could have Googled it. Instead, he asked the question into the microphone in the middle of a public hearing.

Medicaid, for the record, is the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people and people with disabilities. Elkins is new to the Human Services Committee. However, he's served in the House since 1995, where one of the main tasks is crafting the state budget.

A quarter of the state budget is Medicaid.

— Corrie MacLaggan

(Via Wonkette)

What were they thinking?

Was running google searches and stumbled across this interesting New York Times article from 2005. It gives a good idea of the sort of thinking that was going on at the Federal Reserve and in Washington at the height of the housing bubble.

Laurence H. Meyer, a former Fed governor and now a principal at Macroeconomic Advisers, said the evidence of risky lending practices was abundant. Even though mortgage rates remain at their lowest point in decades, more than half of all new mortgages are either interest-only loans or adjustable-rate loans that start out cheap but can become very costly if rates rise.

"These kinds of mortgages are feeding higher prices but they are also the kinds of loans that are most vulnerable to distress," Mr. Meyer said.

The issue of a possible housing "bubble," where prices become inflated by unrealistic expectations of even higher prices in the near future, poses difficult issues for the Fed.

Mr. Greenspan and other officials have long argued that it is not their job to influence the price of assets whether stock prices or real estate. Rather, they contend, the central bank's job is to keep inflation low and to promote the maximum sustainable growth without fueling inflation.

It's a myth that no one saw this coming. Plenty of people were warning that the loans that were fueling the bubble were risky ones, with very high probabilities for default. But the Federal Reserve was wedded to the idea that intervention to stymie bubbles was bad policy.

Here's Ben Bernake in 2002:

If we could accurately and painlessly rid asset markets of bubbles, of course we would want to do so. But as a practical matter, this is easier said than done, particularly if we intend to use monetary policy as the instrument, for two main reasons. First, the Fed cannot reliably identify bubbles in asset prices. Second, even if it could identify bubbles, monetary policy is far too blunt a tool for effective use against them.
...
Although neither I nor anyone else knows for sure, my suspicion is that bubbles can normally be arrested only by an increase in interest rates sharp enough to materially slow the whole economy. In short, we cannot practice "safe popping," at least not with the blunt tool of monetary policy. The situation is further complicated if, as is usually the case, the suspected bubble affects only a specific class of assets, such as high-tech stocks. Certainly there is no way to direct the effects of monetary policy at a single class of assets while leaving other financial markets and the broader economy untouched. One might as well try to perform brain surgery with a sledgehammer.
...
Understandably, as a society, we would like to find ways to mitigate the potential instabilities associated with asset-price booms and busts. Monetary policy is not a useful tool for achieving this objective, however. Even putting aside the great difficulty of identifying bubbles in asset prices, monetary policy cannot be directed finely enough to guide asset prices without risking severe collateral damage to the economy.

A far better approach, I believe, is to use micro-level policies to reduce the incidence of bubbles and to protect the financial system against their effects. I have already mentioned a variety of possible measures, including supervisory action to ensure capital adequacy in the banking system, stress-testing of portfolios, increased transparency in accounting and disclosure practices, improved financial literacy, greater care in the process of financial liberalization, and a willingness to play the role of lender of last resort when needed. Although eliminating volatility from the economy and the financial markets will never be possible, we should be able to moderate it without sacrificing the enormous strengths of our free-market system.

Bernake may or may not be right to insist that a change in the Federal funds rate is too blunt of an instrument to employ in tamping down an economic bubble. He is certainly right to suggest that the government should have made use of the other tools at its disposal, also. There is no question that lax regulation contributed to fiasco, for instance, and attempts by libertairans to blame the economic meltdown solely on the Federal reserve are little more than articles of faith by those who refuse to accept that bad results are possible from an unregulated market.

Roger Cohen

Roger Cohen is fast becoming one of my favorite columnists on foreign affairs. His attempt to bring a little sanity and reason back into our Middle-east policy and our national debate about Iran is quite refreshing, and perhaps predictably, he's been savaged in the press as a result. But the simple fact is that whenever a small cadre of right-wing ideologues gets a seemingly unshakable grip on one aspect of U.S. government policy and furthermore, get to dicatate all terms and bounds of our national discussion on their pet issue, the results are usually very bad for the country. This is true whether we're speaking of the gun lobby, the right-wing Cuban expatriate anti-Castro lobby, or the right-wing, Likudnik so-called "Israeli lobby." Today Cohen again speaks truth to power and notes that if we are to move ahead in the Middle East, the U.S. is going to have to play a role of honest broker, as opposed to Israel's muscle:

where, I asked [a Senior Israeli official], is Israel’s red line? “Once they get to 1,500 kilos [of enriched Uranium], nonproliferation is dead,” he said. And so? “It’s established that when a country that does not accept Israel’s existence has such a program, we will intervene.”

I think there’s some bluster in this. Israel does not want Obama to talk, talk, talk, so it’s suggesting military action could happen in 2009, within nine months.

Still, this much is clear to me: Obama’s new Middle Eastern diplomacy and engagement will involve reining in Israeli bellicosity and a probable cooling of U.S.-Israeli relations. It’s about time. America’s Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy has been disastrous, not least for Israel’s long-term security.

Dumbest show on television

It has all the production values of an infomercial (and I think some of the cast are infomercial regulars, too). And, of course, it's on Fox.

New (old) GOP strategy

Crooks and Liars brings us a "Hypocrisy Watch" piece that David Shuster did on Minnesota congresswoman Michelle Bachman. My only problem with Shuster's piece is that what he highlights isn't so much hypocrisy, as it is a flat out lie on Bachmann's part. Judge for yourself:



It's easy enough to make yourself look "above the fray" if you simply lie about your record. If reality doesn't fit your ideology, just improvise a new reality.

Quote for the day II

Why doesn’t Barack admit that he is just no damn good at bowling and leave it at that. Just because he bowls like a kid with cerebral palsy is no reason he must insult children and adults with cerebral palsy.

Larry Johnson, insulting kids with cerebral palsy while attacking Barack Obama for insulting kids with cerebral palsy.

Bonuses and Tax Codes

A reader alerts Josh Marshall to the regressive bonus tax rate:

Late Accountancy Update: One reader points out that there are big tax benefits to the companies to paying compensation in the form of bonuses as opposed to ordinary salary income, which is no doubt the reason why, for many in the finance industry, the bonuses totally dwarf the base salaries.

Maybe this will get more people focused on this, as yet, mostly unnoticed element of the present scandal.

Joke of the day

Sarah Palin, Governor of the state with the largest, most ravenous appetite for Federal dollars of any in the Union, is proclaiming her intention to turn down Federal stimulus money. The onetime Mayor of Wasilla, who raised taxes and floated a $14.7 million bond to pay for a new hockey rink and wound up leaving the small town $22 million dollars in debt is worried that by accepting stimulus funds aimed at improving Alaska's educational system she would leave the state with finacial liabilities long after Federal stimulus money had run out.

So, just in case you're keeping score:

Hockey Rinks: good
Schools: bad

Quote for the day

...the reality is that we can punish the bankers or we can save the banking system, but we can't do both at the same time.

Steven Pearlstein reacting to the recently passed bonus killing tax bill in congress.

Hitting your thumb with the hammer

Nate Silver is dismayed by the recent Tax Bill congress passed with the aim of recouping bonuses paid to under-performing AIG executives:

The bonus tax, which passed the House earlier today, applies not only to AIG but also to some 12 other firms that received substantial levels of government assistance. This includes both financial institutions like AIG and nonfinancial ones like General Motors; it includes banks that are preforming poorly, like Citibank, and those that are holding up fairly well, like JPMorgan Chase and PNC. The government has dictated that nobody at anybody of these companies is deserving of incentive-based compensation, unless their household income is less than $250,000 per year.

Just think about some of the implications of this.

A senior engineer at General Motors, who shepherds the production of a new hybrid vehicle that will turn out to be a best-seller, shouldn't get a bonus for that. Really?

Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan, who has managed his company's assets adeptly and kept it mostly off the taxpayer's dole, is no more deserving of a bonus than an AIG crook. Really?

What you're seeing now is the ugly intersection of the technocrats at Treasury trying do their job, with the blind, populist rage of the mob. The folks at treasury could give a damned about the bonuses if addressing the fairness issues they raise stands in the way of rescuing the financial sector. Meanwhile the general public is understandably outraged by the enormous sums (compared to their own earnings) that are being thrown at the very executives who got us into this mess in the first place.

The sensible thing to do, of course, would be to let the technocrats do their job and not fan the flames of popular anger that might lead to precipitous decisions and bad legislation. A few weeks ago GOP pols seemed more concerned about government interference with the internals of business operations than they were with bailed out executives receiving scandalous compensation packages. But the issue proved too enticing to a party still reeling from electoral defeat and aching to put some chinks in the current administration's armor. And so once the issue started gaining some traction you had GOP politicians and their media shills all hitting the airwaves to express shock, shock that AIG executives were taking home big bonuses.

In fanning popular sentiment, however these Republicans put themselves in an awkward spot, seemingly committing themselves to vote for a punitive tax that they had earlier decried as government meddling in the affairs of business. So you got what we saw yesterday: when Democrats called their bluff and proposed just such a tax, over half the Republicans in congress voted for it.

What remains to be seen is what actually becomes of the bill. If it's as bad as critics maintain, it could ultimately come back to hurt the Obama administration when the President is forced to intervene and veto it. That seems unlikely, however. A more realistic outcome would be for the problematic provisions to be sufficiently watered down in the reconciliation process between House and Senate that they cause no real damage to recovery efforts while still allowing legislators to claim that they voted for a bill that curbed these sorts of pay abuses.

I'm still curious as to why no one has picked up on the larger issue of the 25% tax rate for $1,000,000 bonuses. Either there are provisions in the tax code that I'm unaware of that make this a non-issue, or this is the great un-examined scandal of the Wall-Street bonus-frenzy.

Social Security

Eariler yesterday, Andrew Sullivan (who still displays his conservative tendencies from time to time) highlighted a study that showed that fullly 50% of workers would opt out of Social Security if given the chance.

Later in the evening he published one of his "dissent of the day" pieces (letters from readers who disagree) in which the foolishness of respondents to the study was highlighted:

But the survey also found that 33% of adults over 60 would give up their benefit to be able to opt out now.

To save 6.2% on their taxes for the next few years, they are willing to give up 10+ years of future benefits worth about $12,700 per year (average benefit is currently $1056/month).

...

This survey suggests that 1/3 of our soon-to-retire population has questionable financial judgement. If that isn't an argument FOR mandatory social security, I don't know what is.

And this is precisely "the rub" as it were. I realize that conservatives like Sullivan recoil at what opponents like to call the "nanny state," that is, a government that functions paternalistically, making decisions for citizens it doesn't trust to make the "right" decision. But who can doubt that if 50% of the populace were allowed to forego SS payemnts that it wouldn't wind up costing the government more in the long run.

Consider that in the past decade or so, Americans have been spending more than they've been taking in as income, ralying on now collapsed home values to prop up their debt to assets ratio. Are we really to suppose that this 50% would actually take their SS payments and put them in private retirement plans when they've already shown a marked inability to save as things stand? Or would they instead use this money to bump up the trim level on their next SUV purchase?

More likely whe'd simply end up, after a few decades, with a large pool of elderly paupers who would wind up costing the government more in poverty programs of some sort than if we'd merely kep them on Social Security to begin with, in much the same way that uninsured patients who use hospital emergency rooms as doctors of last resort end up costing the medical system a whole lot more than if they'd merely been supplied with some sort of basic medical insurance to begin with.

Americans as a people aren't willing to let helmetless motorcycle accident victims die on the sidewalk, unattended as a result of their foolishness. We rush them to hospitals and treat them for their injuries in much the same way, but at much greater cost than those who showed good judgment in taking safety precautions. We're not willing to let the uninsured die at the door of hispitals for lack of insurance coverage. And for the very same reasons we wouldn't be willing to let elderly paupers be evicted from their apartments and die of starvation and cold in the streets. Therefore, the only thing to do is to recognize that a government mandated retirement savings plan / safety net is the cheapest way of avoiding these costs.

ATTN: Michael Steele

Dear Micheal Steele,

This is why everyone thinks your party is stupid:

In the Senate, GOP leaders reacted to the ongoing tax controversy with their most caustic criticism of the Democratic administration since President Obama was sworn in Jan. 20. They mocked Obama as a chief executive who is not paying enough attention to the economy, instead making campaign-style trips such as his current swing through California.
...
"He's even found time to fill out his NCAA bracket," added Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), the No. 3 Republican leader.

Love,
Patriot's Quill

It's On!

The House is set to vote on a measure to impose a 90% tax on bonuses given out by firms that received government aid. Republicans are criticizing the measure, as one might expect (and as Democrats planned?)

This is a smart move on the part of the Democratic leadership, as it might well shift outrage toward a party that has hypocritically attacked the Obama administration for doing the very thing its leadership was recommending earlier in the crisis. The public doesn't much care what needs to be done to get this money back, and if the GOP is seen as standing in the way of it, or even blocking it altogether, they'll find themselves in a very uncomfortable position vis. a vis. the voters. It's a hard-edged gambit. Let's see if the GOP accepts it, or declines.

A Moral Outrage

The Catholic Church hierarchy in Brazil makes it explicit: yes, they fully intended for the 9 year old rape victim to die in pregnancy rather than have an abortion. From a letter published in the Osservatore Romano and signed by four priests and their lawyer:

4. We do not agree [with Archbishop Fisichella] that the "decision is hard... for the moral law itself". Our Holy Church continues to proclaim that the moral law is exceedingly clear: it is never licit to eliminate the life of an innocent person to save another life.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

Dumb People Jump To Dumb Conclusions

On planet "Corner" Jonah Goldberg is paranoid certain that the only reason Rep. Gary Ackerman wants to know the names of AIG executives who have refused to return bonus money is that he wants to see them murdered by the angry mob.

Couldn't it be, rather, that he wants to publicly shame them, Jonah?

Maybe the whole idea of shame is just too alien a concept to a guy like Goldberg.

Picture of the Day

Picture of the day:



Explantion: an undersea volcano erupts off the Tongan coast. The Washington Post has the story.

Hurrah!

Hurrah for Bill Richardson! The abolishing of the death penalty is one of the milestones of an enlightened society.

Dumb Metrics

Ridiculing conservatives' obsession with gauging the Obama presidency based upon the performance of the DOW Jones index, Nate Silver notes that the market is now above where it was when Obama took office.

Well, two can play that game, of course. So here's another one for you. How much money would you have today if you'd placed $1000.00 in the DOW when Obama recommended buying stocks, on March 3 of this year?

(answer following the graphic)



The answer: $1112.99

Following Obama's advice you'd have made a 11% return on your investment in just over two weeks. Not bad. I think we've found Jim Cramer's replacement should the Mad Money guru decide to call it a day.

On the Case

The Huffington Post is on the case, and it looks like Mitch McConnel was not the only high ranking Republican to object to limitations on executive compensation before he was outraged that the Obama administration hadn't done more to prevent it.

Blogger Sam Stein nails Hank Paulson, G. W. Bush, Richard Shelby, Mel Martinez and Eric Cantor as all opposing Federal limits on executive pay as conditions for taxpayer bailouts.

Rush Limbaugh is like Herpes

Rush Limbaugh is truly the gift that keeps on giving:

Anger at American International Group knows no party lines. But one top Republican isn't joining in. On Monday and Tuesday, Rush Limbaugh defended the insurance giant and their bonus payouts:

"A lynch mob is expanding: the peasants with their pitchforks surrounding the corporate headquarters of AIG, demanding heads. Death threats are pouring in. All of this being ginned up by the Obama administration."

It's good to see that the de-facto chairman of the GOP is the only guy in the country standing up for these crooks' right to steal taxpayer money. Should play well in Peoria.

Hypocrisy alert

The GOP Minority Leader was against limiting compensation for executives of bailed out companies before he was for it.

Who'd a thunk it!?

Nice Try, No Cigar

According to the New York Times, the head of AIG, in hopes of quelling public anger, is expected to announce a deal in which AIG executives agree to return 50% of their bonus in hopes of averting congressional action to tax it down to nothing:

Edward M. Liddy, the embattled chief of American International Group, is expected to ask employees who received lucrative bonuses to give half the money back.

According to a person briefed on Mr. Liddy’s plans, the A.I.G. chief will announce this plan during his testimony this afternoon before a Congressional committee that is investigating the problems at company.

Nice try, but I'm afraid that train has left the station. If $6 mil was an unreasonable amount to compensate an executive for destroying his company, I don't see how the public is going to be satisfied giving him only $3 mil.

The Obama administration is in a tough spot on this one. My suspicions are that the administration was hoping this issue would just pass under the radar and go unnoticed. The only thing that Rick Santelli had right in his latest rant is that $165 mil is pickles compared to the real money that's being thrown at AIG. But interms of public sentiment, the sum dwarfs everything the government has spent so far. Unlike Santelli the public is willing to spend what it takes to get the economy back on its feet. But the public has no tolerance for rewarding those who brought us to this point. A wooden nickel is more than they deserve in the eyes of the American poeple and I suspect a good chunk of the public sees no real difference between these guys and Bernard Madoff.

If anything good comes of this, perhaps it will be a change in our nation's permissive attitude towards obscene executive compensation. What possibly could one man do for a company that's worth a $6 million dollar yearly compensation package? Is that one guy really $5,950,000 smarter than the average school teacher, or fry cook?

There needs to be a revival of the millionaire tax to discourage these sorts of excesses and help fund a more just society for average working Americans. Maybe this latest chapter in the Wall Street culture of greed and corruption will see to it that we get one.

Globalization is not a Suicide Pact

If I might borrow a rhetorical turn of phrase from Bush's torture apologists: "Globalization is not a suicide pact." It is simply unacceptable for our nation to enter into lopsided trade agreements with China that strip our industry of any competitive advantages while easing Chinese access to our markets. The Economist has more on the blocked Coca Cola deal:

After the decision was announced, investment banks were left wondering, in the words of one employee, whether “a key plank in their business had just blown up.” Coke has spent years developing its presence in China, and has invested heavily, presumably making it one of the world’s more acceptable buyers. It is also one of the few companies able to finance a big deal in today’s difficult circumstances. If Coke was not acceptable to the Chinese authorities, then who is? The rejection will inevitably be used as evidence of non-reciprocity, and the collusion between the country’s state and private sectors, by anyone opposed to China’s recent efforts to buy companies abroad.

Act I Is Over

Act I: Bernard Madoff is largely over.

Act II: The Accomplices is just getting started.

NEW YORK -- Bernard Madoff's longtime accountant was arrested on fraud charges Wednesday, accused of aiding the man who has admitted cheating thousands of investors out of billions of dollars in the past two decades.

The charges against David Friehling, 49, come as federal authorities turn their attention to those who they believe helped Madoff fool 4,800 investors into thinking that their longtime investments were growing comfortably each year. Friehling is the first person to be arrested since the Madoff scandal broke three months ago.

Let's hope Act II is long and satisfying. Personally, I'm betting on some close family members playing a role in this one. I've always been suspicious of the Madoff sons, for instance, who all to conveniently were the ones to turn their father in to the authorities once it became apparent that the Ponzi scheme he was running was on the verge of collapse. Why didn't Madoff himself go to authorities once he knew the jig was up? Was he merely trying to provide cover for them by instructing them to seemingly rat him out?

End of the Bi-partisan Fairy Tale?

Republicans are warning that if the Obama administration uses the budget reconciliation process to push through legislation it wants, it could just spell the end to the bi-partisan honeymoon that Obama currently enjoys.

"That would be the Chicago approach to governing: Strong-arm it through," said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who briefly considered joining the Obama administration as commerce secretary. "You're talking about the exact opposite of bipartisan. You're talking about running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River."

Oh, please can we?

Seriously... the GOP might have a better argument if more than a grand total of three, count 'em three Republican legislators had voted for the President's stimulus package. Less than one and one half percent of GOP legislators were willing to reach across the aisle and show a little bi-partisanship at the time. So for the GOP to accuse Obama of threatening bi-partisanship? Give me break!

Un-American Activities

Noah Pollak of the neo-con rag Commentary chides Andrew Sullivan for not noting that Pat Buchannan called AIPAC "un-american" before Commentary called Buchannan's magazine "un-American."

I wonder if Andrew feels a similar incredulity at the headline of Pat Buchanan’s latest column: “UnAmerican Activities: The Israeli Lobby’s Assassination Of Chas Freeman.”

But daddy... she did it first!!!

God, it's nice to be watching this one from the sidelines.

At any rate, Pollak continues:

In my opinion, a magazine that attempts to undermine the democratic legitimacy of the contribution of Jews to the public debate by repeatedly referring to them as a “fifth column” is indeed an un-American publication.

Yeah, excuse me but when did AIPAC, Commentary and a bunch of right-wing Likudnicks become synonimous and co-extensive with the term "Jews"? Last time I checked, the only requirement for being a Jew was that one's mother be a Jew. There's no "membership in AIPAC", "Commentary subscription," or "enthusiastic warmonger" requirement that I know of. Indeed, polls show that most American Jews abhorr the Likudnik ideology that AIPAC and its ilk promote. This attempt by AIPAC and its supporters to claim the mantle of Jewsihness, to say that they speak for all Jews in America is simply an illegitimate power grab, and a lie.

Free Trade, Fair Trade... Either Way It Doesn't Matter

The Chinese authorities have just blocked the Coca Cola company's bid to purchase a local beverage maker.

Observers had not expected the Chinese authorities to reject the transaction outright. Instead, many had anticipated that approval would come with some conditions attached, especially since Coca-Cola had developed good links with Chinese policy makers and improved its reputation and visibility through its sponsorship of the Olympic Games in Beijing last year.

Wednesday’s decision underscored how hard it is for non-Chinese companies to make acquisitions in China.

By contrast, there has been a flurry of multi-billion dollar transactions abroad by state-controlled companies in the past few weeks.

You can argue all day about free trade vs. fair trade, but how do you justify a permissive trade policy with a nation that respects neither of the two?

I understand that the theory of free trade maintains that it is the Chinese who are hurt by protectionist practices (law of competitive advantage, blah, blah, blah), but you've got to wonder whether theory truly meets practice in the actual global market.

What it looks like to the layman is that our manufacturing base is being annihilated by cheap foreign labor, while our intellectual product is a victim to lackluster enforcement of anti-piracy law and those areas in which we have proven our competitive mettle (such as soft drinks) we are being blocked by protectionist policies.

We seem to be getting the short end of the stick from both ends.

At least that's how it looks to the layman.

Santelli: Worthless Hack

Rick Santelli tries to defend himself:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Let's face it: Santelli is simply trying to foment populist outrage and channel it against the Obama administration, which is propping up AIG in order to avert a world depression. We were brought to the brink of this financial disaster by Santelli's Republican pals in Washington, the financial "geniuses" he worships, and by a complacent financial media apparatus that's more interested in pushing toss-of-the-dice stock picks than uncovering the bad governance, lack of transparency, and outrageous business practices that led us here. It's a nice two-for-one: provide cover to your buddies and their million dollar bonuses while attacking Obama for trying to fix the mess you contributed to. I don't think it's going to work, certainly not in an era in which John Stewart commands far more respect than any "real" news broadcaster.

Any time you hear Santelli and his ideological bretheren on CNBC decrying the billions we're spedning in hopes of averting financial catastrophe you can basically turn the channel to nickelodeon or cartoon network. You'll learn more about world affairs from watching 10 minutes of Scooby Doo than ten hours of these idiot rants on CNBC.

Am I reading This Right?

The Washington Post, reporting on the AIG bonus scandal notes:

In the House, Reps. Steve Israel (N.Y.) and Tim Ryan (Ohio) introduced the "Bailout Bonus Tax Bracket Act" to create a 100 percent tax on bonuses over $100,000 that are distributed to employees of financial firms receiving federal bailout funds. Currently, the IRS withholds 25 percent from bonuses less than $1 million and 35 percent for bonuses more than $1 million dollars.

If I'm reading this correctly (and hunting around the internet I'm finding confirmation) bonuses, which form a substantial portion of Wall Street employees' compensation packages, are taxed at 25% instead of the 35% they'd normally be assessed for income above $357,000. If I'm not missing anything then this would explain why Wall Street traders take so much of their compensation in the form of a bonus. It's a way to pay less in taxes than they otherwise would.

So it's just another way that the rich in this country evade paying taxes. Is this not the real scandal here?

Santelli: AIG bonuses no big deal

Rick Santelli, who thinks that middle class "losers" shouldn't receive Federal assistance to help keep them in their homes, thinks that our outrage over bonuses paid to AIG traders for wrecking the world economy is "misplaced."




With these people it's only a bad thing when it's the government helping the little guy.

(Media Matters)

GOP Wars (continued)

The internecine war ripping the GOP to shreds from the inside continues. One the neo-con right vs. paleocon right we've got Commentary Magazine referring to The American Conservative as un-American.

And in Catfight Corner there's Laura Ingraham / Megan McCain spat that revolves around the pressing question of of whether McCain is thin enough to be a Republican (there seens to be no question she's blond enough).

It's a shame we can't just give them some chariots, spears and nets, put them in an arena and sit back and watch teh show from on high.

It's Legal

I think I'll start a new feature of this blog titled: "It' Legal." I'll be highlighting things that are legal in this country but shouldn't be. Fist off, the credit card companies:

Did you know that a credit card company has the legal right to lower the credit limit on your card to below your outstanding balance, thus triggering over-limit penalties?

Paul Pensabene of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., received a statement from HSBC on Dec. 8 that said he had a $359.99 balance and remaining available credit of $8,640. But when he went online to pay the bill several days later, his online account showed that same balance put him over his newly-reduced credit line of $300. And that didn't include the $35 over-limit fee. Pensabene grappled with customer service until they agreed to remove the fee, and then paid the balance in full. "All I could think was, 'Good lord, what if this is happening to someone that couldn't pay their balance off in one shot?'" he says. "They'd end up in default with these fees piling up."

HSBC cut this guy's credit line from over $8000.00 to just $300.00 and in so doing, triggered an over-limit penalty. The credit card companies, of course, are notorious for this sort of thing. From extortionate, usurious interest rates, to summarily raising rates on customers with perfect payment records, Credit Card companies enjoy seemingly unlimited discretion to wreak havoc on their customers' lives and ruin their credit ratings.

The good new is this sort of thing will be illegal in 2010. Still, one wonders why it was ever legal in the first place.

(Hat Tip: Crooks and Liars)

Contractual Obligations

"A.I.G. executives say that they are contractually obligated to pay the bonuses to their executives, including those who are part of the A.I.G. division where the company’s crisis originated." (New York Times, 3/16/09)

What does it say about this country that powerful plutocrats build careers by criticizing teachers and teachers unions for opposing merit based pay scales, while the oligarchs who put these plutocrats in office enjoy contracts that mandate enormous bonuses even for those employees whose actions and decisions destroyed their own companies?

Our teachers fear merit pay proposals for many reasons. For one, they see it as a back-door mechanism for suppressing their already meager wages. For another, the outcome of their educational efforts all too often is affected by factors over which they have no control: from the crumbling physical infrastructure of our public schools, to the strained social fabric of families and communities beset by poverty, crime, unemployment and drug abuse.

Teachers sometimes struggle to cling to a middle-class lifestyle and while so doing often find themselves spending their own money to buy adequate school supplies for their students. And in the meantime, on the other side of the tracks, top executives of financial giants enjoy obscene salaries and bonuses which are in no way correlated to or connected with actual performance... they see them as entitlements, not as a reward for a job well done.

Something needs to be done about a corrupt culture of greed that insists that private companies must be allowed to pay million dollar salaries and multi-million dollar bonuses in order to attract the best talent, while at the same time slashing educational budgets, insisting that "throwing money at the problem" does nothing to solve our educational woes, and informing our nation's public school teachers that from here on out they must learn to do more with less.

Forced to Re-live the Nightmare

This is just too funny: Thanks to the now notorious John Stewart/Jim Cramer dust-up, Tucker Carlson, a guest on Howrd Kurtz's Reliable Sources, is forced to relive the nightmare of when John Stewart wiped the floor with his career.

The best part of the segment: Carlson wants us to know that, unlike himself, Stewart is an unfunny partisan hack.

Shepherd Smith: Sleeper Agent?

Here are some clips of Fox News Shepherd Smith ridiculing the network's newest wingnut sensation: Glenn Beck.



It's as if Smith is a sleeper agent --the only sane guy at Fox-- and just can't take the secret identity and has decided to out himself. And this isn't the first time Smith has shown himself to be Fox News' only eminently reasonable journalist.

(Hat Tip: Crooks and Liars)

Stewart v. Cramer: Just Devastating

Just devastating. That's my take on John Stewart's evisceration of Jim Cramer on last night's Daily Show, and it's pretty much every intelligent observer's take, also. James Fallows declares Stewart the new Edward R. Murrow. The Chicago Tribune calls Stewart the "thinking man's Rick Santelli," which, I believe was meant to be a compliment. On the other side of the aisle, Diane Bray, writing in Businessweek seems stunned that Cramer didn't put up a better defense:

At this point, I fully expected Cramer to jump up and shout his point of view: the best calls he made, what his audience wants from him, how easy it is to find 45 damning seconds of tape when you go back through hundreds of hours of footage. He could have debunked Stewart’s conspiracy theory. After all, why would anyone in the hyper-competitive TV news business ever keep quiet if they were aware of wrongdoing or heard rumors that a company was going to collapse? The financial turmoil has been ratings gold for CNBC precisely because viewers can’t tear their eyes away from the crisis as it unfolds. News networks often thrive on bad news.

Bray, of course, missed the point entirely. A list of good stock picks he'd made would have seemed a glaring non-sequitor in the context of last night's interview. Stewart didn't go after Cramer for being bad at projecting the direction of the market or even individual stocks. That would have been too easy. It would have been a cheap shot, which is why the right-wing media have focused most of their attention on that aspect of Stewart's original critique of CNBC. What Stewart was most focused on, rather, were the back door dealings and lack of transparency that give the big guys in the market such an advantage over the little guy. The Daily Show host was merciless in his dissection of an interview Cramer gave some time back in which Cramer bascially admitted to market manipulation during his days as a hedge fund manager. When Cramer sought, rather meekly, to justify the interview by suggesting that he was merely trying to shed light on what goes on on Wall Street, Stewart stopped him, rolled tape and showed the rest of the segment in which Cramer goes on to encourage other fund managers to do the same. The visibly shamed Cramer didn't even try to mount a defense after that point.

Stewart's anger was righteous, and his pointed analogies savage. Bank executives, he told us, burned through their companies like Sherman marching through the South, and they did it with our money. They left us impoverished while making millions for themselves. On this point Cramer did not disagree, defending himself instead by insisting that business executives he had known for years lied to him when he interviewed them for his pieces. The Chicago Tribune described Cramer's attitude during the interview this way:

Cramer, the usually peripatetic host of CNBC's "Mad Money," sat and took it, mostly, like a schoolboy willing to let the teacher go on in hopes of still being allowed to graduate.

This is a fair assessment of Cramer's demeanor, but I think it's a little unfair in the personal judgment it levels. One of the reasons that Stewart was able to eviscerate his guest so completely last night was that, unlike Rick Santelli (for whom Cramer was an unfortunate proxy), Jim Cramer obviously has a conscience. It's impossible to imagine Cramer lashing out at over-extended homeowners in an unhinged rant and referring to them as "losers" while a room full of stock brokers cheers him on. To that extent, last night's interview was unfortunate, if not unfair. It was really Rick Santelli we wanted sitting in tha chair last night, along with Larry Kudlow, Maria Baritromo and the whole gang of big-money sycophants who allowed the markets to trample over ordinary Americans like schoolboys stomping on ants and who scoff every time a Democratic president proposes measures that would help the sorts of people who work from 9 to 5 selling life insurance policies, paving roads, flipping burgers. These hansomely compensated media personalities woship at the feet of industry titans who are worth even more than they are and scream "where's the moral hazard?!" every time the government promotes measures that would better the lives the bottom 95%. Supply side economics may be a cruel joke everywhere else, but it's the Gospel According to Jesus at CNBC. Instead of doing what an honest news gathering operation should be doing, and rooting out corruption in our markets, the lack of government oversight that makes it possible and pushing for more transparency, for a more even playing field for ordinary investors, the hosts at CNBC and most of the business media are all players in the filty, dishonest, incestuous orgy of power that made the last decade possible. They don't speak truth to power, rather they idolize that power and help enable its crimes.

It was bittersweet watching Cramer take the heat for all those guys with tears vsisbly welling up in his eyes as Stewart lectured him as from on high. Someone from the financial media needed a dressing down for their complicity in the sheer madness an untrammelled greed that gutted our economic house over the past 8 years. I just wish it had been execrable figures like Santelli, Kudlow, and Alan Greenspan, who even now justify their despicable behavior and deification of ruthless greed by blaming completely incidental social policies that were meant to help the poor --when they're not overtly blaming the working poor themselves. In many ways what we saw last night was the unwinding of a Shakesperean tragedy, but it was the jester who paid the price for the King's hubris... not the King himself. So there is still work to be done.

Warning

Warning: this New York Times story on child malnutrition in India includes some of the saddest pictures you'll ever see.

Where is Rove getting his numbers?

In a Wall Street Journal Editorial today Karl Rove again repeats the falsehood that George W. Bush only added $2.9 trillion to the national debt over his 8 years in office. In fact, Bush added nearly $5 trillion to the national debt since he took office, essentially doubling it during his time in office. Rove has produced this $2.9 trillion figure on numerous occasions, and I have yet to see him being called on it. What's more, I've done some web searches and have yet to find any justification for this figure. Rove simply repeats the figure, no one calls him on it, and the show moves on. It's the classic Big Lie technique. I'm sure Rove has some disingenuous justification for his claim, but it's rather sad that no one has yet challenged him to produce it.

Number of the day: 46

46%: those are the annual returns that scam-artist Bernard Madoff promised some investors to his fictional hedge fund. Numbers like those should be a tip-off to any savvy investor that the fund in question is a pyramid scam. No one can realistically promise such returns, and the chances of a fund producing similiar returns on a reliable basis is basically nil. I have to assume that these were rates Madoff promised widows and orphans and other unsophisticated investors. Anyone with any financial sense who heard such promises and didn't immedately run for the exit was simply blinded by his own greed.

More on Sanford

The BLS has released unemployment data, and South Carolina is now officially into the double digits with a 10.4% rate, and ranks second only to Michigan in the depth of its woes.

Confession time

I have a dark confession to make: I really like both John Stewart and Jim Cramer. That I enjoy Stewart should come as no surprise to anyone who's read my blog and knows my politics. As for Cramer, I've always enjoyed his brand of nutty info-tainment, and when I learned that the guy was a life-long Democrat I let myself go. To me there's something tremendously reassuring about learning of sucessful businessmen who are left-of-center in their politics. It seems to hold out promise for a society that is both productive and compassionate. I am not a proponent of centrally planned economies (is there anyone left who is?). Like most American liberals (whether they realize it or not) I broadly agree with the sentiments and goals that John Rawls laid out in his Theory of Justice: that ecomonic inequalities are justifiable in somuch as the poor would be worse off without them, and that a regulated market economy is the most likely mechanism for acheiving economic prosperity that is in keeping with this ideal.

So watching the recent on-air brawl between John Stewart and Jim Cramer has been a bit like watching mommy and daddy fighting. Kinda painful. It's heartening, then to learn that Stewart is something of a hero to Cramer. I have a sneaking suspicion that tonight's on air cage match is going to turn into something more of a kiss and make up. At least I hope so. I'd hate to learn that daddy is moving into an apartment on the other side of town and I'll mostly be seeing him on weekends from now on.

America's Worst Governor

Who is America's worst governor?

I nominate South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who has decided to let his constituents suffer disease, hunger and deprivation in the name of ideology. If the civil rights movement handed the South to the Republicans in the decades following the 1960s, maybe despicable Republicans like Sanford will help start an opposite trend in the years to come:

...in few places is the nonprofit sphere being tested as profoundly as in this Southern city -- the capital of a state where, figures released yesterday show, the unemployment rate is now the second worst in the nation and conservative political leaders believe that charities, and not the government, should bear primary responsibility for people in need.

Gov. Mark Sanford (R) eschews the prevailing view in Washington that government money should be used as a salve to the economy and to people who have lost jobs. "At some level, government steps in to fill the void," Sanford said in an interview, "but we ought to be the lender of last resort, not the first."

Sanford and the Republican-led General Assembly have cut the state's budget three times since last summer by a total of $871 million, or 13 percent -- among the deepest reductions in the nation.

The cuts have limited state agencies' ability to help the growing numbers of people in need. The state's Medicaid program, for instance, is reducing mental health counseling, cancer screening and dental coverage.

The reductions are constricting the private sector's capacity, too. The Department of Social Services has pared its contracts to nonprofit groups by an average of 10 percent, reducing funding for emergency shelters and employment training programs.

While other states have looked to Washington for assistance, Sanford has been a foremost critic of the federal economic stimulus package. Yesterday, he challenged the law's intent, announcing that he will ask the White House for a waiver to use $700 million -- the part of South Carolina's share of the money over which he has direct control -- to lower the state's debt, instead of putting it toward new spending.

Asked whose mission it is to help the widening pool of people in financial pain, the governor said that such aid "has to be leveraged through church, civic and private hands. . . . If you take care of the need in government circles, you dissipate the ability of civil society to take care of that need."

The simple truth is that the people of South Carolina would have been better off with Rod Blagojevich as governor than Mark Sanford. Blagojevichmay have been a crook, but Sanford is merciless ideologue who's happy to see widows and orphans suffer if it will help his political career.

More light needs to be shed on South Carolina. This is what could become of America's working people if the GOP regains some measure of national power.

No one, but two (count 'em) two hookers.

Don't look to the GOP for salvation from sleazy Chicago politics if the recent case of Cook County GOP chair and onetime aide to Gov. Jim Thompson, Gary Skoien, is any indication. Skoien recently had a restraining order taken out against his wife when she beat him senseless with his electric guitar after finding him in the kids' playroom frolicking about with not one, but two prostitutes.

Avid followers of Chicago politics will recall that our esteemed President in part owes his political success to Jack Ryan, his 2004 GOP challenger for the U.S. Senate who had a nasty habit of dragging his reluctant wife to sex clubs and insisting she bump uglies with him while strangers stood around and watched. Ryan departed the race soon after his divorce papers were made public and was replaced by Alan Keyes... who is certifiably insane and stood no chance against Obama.

(Via Huffington Post)

A looming PR disaster for the GOP? (Yes, another one)

As if things weren't bad enough for the Republican brand right now, the GOP is facing the very real prospect that the party's first African American chairman may be unseated within weeks of taking office by a white South Carolina politician who boasts that the event that drove him into politics was the desegregation of his high-school. Let us not forget that Michael Steele's most visible faux-pas was criticizing talk-radio hate-monger Rush Limbaugh and insisting that he, as GOP party chairman, and not Limbaugh was the leader of the Republican party.

Good times, people... good times.


(Via: Wonkette)

Behold: Your Socialist Commissars!

One of the most common talking points among the American Right is that Barack Obama is trying to turn the United States into a Socialist nation. The talking point is absurd on the face of it, but the U.S. media, being what it is, still treats the charge as if it were a point of contention that deserves serious consideration (as opposed to scornful ridicule).

But just how absurd is the notion? Well, let's examine the biography of a few of the very top Administration officials who will, supposedly, be overseeing America's transition from Capitalist economy to a Dictatorship of the Proletariat:

Head: National Economic Council, Larry Summers:

As a researcher, Summers has made important contributions in many areas of economics, primarily public finance, labor economics, financial economics, and macroeconomics. Some of Summers' early papers concluded that corporate and capital gains taxes are an inefficient form of taxation.[citation needed] Cutting the capital gains tax rate, Summers found, could help the economy grow.[citation needed] Later, while working in the Reagan and Clinton White Houses, Summers was able to lobby successfully for cuts in both corporate and capital gains tax cuts.[citation needed] One of Summers' prominent findings in labor economics is that unemployment insurance and welfare payments are a major contributor to unemployment, and therefore should be scaled back. [3]

Secretary of Treasury, Tim Geitner

After completing his studies, Geithner worked for Kissinger and Associates in Washington, D.C., for three years and then joined the International Affairs division of the U.S. Treasury Department in 1988. He went on to serve as an attache at the US Embassy in Tokyo. He was deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy (1995–1996), senior deputy assistant secretary for international affairs (1996-1997), assistant secretary for international affairs (1997–1998).[8]

He was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (1998–2001) under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.[8] Summers was his mentor,[10][11] but other sources call him a Rubin protégé.[11][12][13]
Treasury Secretary designee Geithner meets Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus on November 25, 2008

In 2002 he left the Treasury to join the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in the International Economics department.[14] He was director of the Policy Development and Review Department (2001-2003) at the International Monetary Fund.[8]

In October 2003, he was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.[15] His salary in 2007 was $398,200.[16]

Commerce Secretary (nominee), Gary Locke:

Democrats criticized Locke for embracing the Republican Party's no-new-taxes approach to dealing with Washington's budget woes during and after the 2001 economic turmoil. Among his spending-reduction proposals were laying off thousands of state employees; reducing health coverage; freezing most state employees' pay; and cutting funding for nursing homes and programs for the developmentally disabled. In his final budget, Locke suspended two voter-passed, pro-school initiatives while cutting state education funding. That same state budget, though, had record-high allocations for construction projects.

Supported by the state's political left, former Washington Supreme Court Justice Phil Talmadge announced his plans to challenge Locke in the 2004 Democratic primary. Talmadge ended his campaign early for health reasons.

Defense Secretary, Robert Gates:

Gates has been a member of the board of trustees of Fidelity Investments, and on the board of directors of NACCO Industries, Inc., Brinker International, Inc., Parker Drilling Company, Science Applications International Corporation, and VoteHere, a technology company which sought to provide cryptography and computer software security for the electronic election industry.[21] A White House spokeswoman has said Gates plans to sell all the stock he owns in individual companies and sever all ties with them if confirmed by the Senate.[22]

I could go on, but there's really little point in it. Can anyone seriously believe that a president determined to bring Socialism to the United States would appoint those guys to his cabinet and advisory team? It's just a laughable suggestion.

The simple fact is that only a propagandist with complete contempt for the truth could suggest that Barack Obama has plans to turn the United States into a Socialist country. And the sad truth is that the mainstream media refuse to treat the charges with the contempt that they deserve.

Interesting thought for the day

Nate Silver writes:

...today, the threshold where the top tax bracket kicks in isn't $75 million, or $5 million, or even $1 million ... it's a mere $357,700. The progressivity of the tax code stops there.

This is actually a pretty stunning observation: all income over $357,700 is taxed at the same rate as income over $1,000,000, which in turn is taxed at the same rate as income over $10,000,000 and so on.

I remember in Junior High reading that Huey Long had once proposed taxing income over $1,000,000 at a rate of 100%. It's not an idea that would gain any traction today, and most likely should not. However, it is peculiar that in a country with a system of progressive taxation, we don't ask more from those whose yearly income would allow a person to live a lavish lifestyle and never work another day in his life.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

This is your brain on GOP

Let us add Victoria Jackson to the pantheon of morons representing the GOP. Sean Hannity had her on his show recently, and it was like watching a houseplant with an annoyingly high-pitched voice try to make sense of string theory.

Crooks and liars has the video.

Hi, My Name is Jim and I Got Bitch Slapped by John Stewart.

What would a 12-Step support group for pundits who'd gotten their asses handed to them by John Stewart look like? Probably a lot like this:




BTW, Scarborough: if you've got video of stuff John Stewart said on his show that would be embarrassing to him in retrospect, then show it. Don't just whine like a wounded puppy.


(TPM, Via Wonkette)

This is your brain on Sharia-Law.

A 75 year old woman in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 75 lashes and deportation (she is of Syrian descent) for having her nephew and his business partner bring bread to her apartment.

I will concede the to world's popes, bishops, imams, shamen and rabbis all the dominion that they wish to claim for themselves in the afterlife. They can have it. Let them have full jurisdiction over the shadow world of death. Let them impose any sentence they wish upon my soul. But when they begin mingling in the worldly laws of living men, their influence all to often proves nefarious, contrary to reason, contrary to life, remorseless and savage. No nation that allows itself to be governed by superstitious old men in robes stands a chance in the 21st century. They doom themseves to living in the shadow of ignorance, poverty, violence and fear. Only Saudi Arabia's vast oil reserves prevent the place fom looking like Afghanistan: a barren desert of stone-aged tribes with rifles. And America, too, could could just as easily fall victim to this madness if we allow ourselves to be seduced by the ignorant rantings of our own power hungry, semi-literate, superstitious, puplit pounding, prophets of hatred.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

This is your brain on Pro-Life.

In Brazil, a 9 year old girl was raped and impregnated by her step father. When she had an abortion, the local Bishop had her mother (who arranged for the procedure) excommunicated. The Vatican has now upheld that excommunication.

Think about it: a nine year-old, is raped by her step father. If the Vatican had it's way, she would be forced to endure the entire pregnancy and give birth.

I remind you: this is the same Catholic hierarchy that routinely condemns pro-Choice, Catholic Democratic politicians.

It's a textbook case for the need for the separation of Church and State.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

Falling off the Tightrope?

Here is a question I'd like to pose to conservatives who are starting to lay blame for the current economic crisis at the feet of Barack Obama:

I understand that you and some of your fellow conservatives have begun laying blame for the current economic crisis at the feet of Barack Obama. Barack Obama has been president less than 60 days. When America was attacked by Al Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001, George W. Bush had been president already for about seven months. Are you ready to accept that America's vulnerability on September 11 was George Bush's fault, given that he had been in office more than three times as long as Obama?

Of course, you're not likely to see today's mealy mouthed journalists ask such a question of a Republican guest, but, still it would be nice to see someone like Chris Matthews or Rachel Maddow do so.

This is not to say that there is no legitimate criticism of Obama's handling of the current economic crisis. There is. But there is none coming from the GOP side of the aisle. Quite the contrary, it's clear that those most responsible for the worsening of the current economic crisis are also those who stand the most to gain from it. A quick look at the economic prescriptions that the GOP is putting forward reveals quite clearly that what the opposition party proposes are not measures to fix the economy. Instead, they stand before us as a witch who has taken a more seductive form and is holding out a poisoned apple meant instead to hex us. The notion that freezing spending in the midst of the severest economic downturn in four generations is a prescription for economic recovery, for instance, is beyond absurd. Likewise, the idea of responding to a liquidity crisis with a tax break for upper income earners is just dumb. In a faltering economy dominated by a crisis of confidence handing out tax breaks to upper income earners merely stimulates saving on their part, and that's not what we need now. What we need is for the government to fund projects that businesses will bid for. You don't stimulate an economy in a crisis such as this one by giving people money to stuff into their mattresses. You want people to have to go out and earn that money, and the only way to do that is to fire up your business and compete for it.

The criticisms of Mr. Obama's plan that hold more weight are those coming from the left, such as the criticisms of Paul Krugman, for instance. In Today's New York Times Krugman worries that Obama has not taken full advantage of the political capital he earned through the campaign and the elections to ram through the sorts of radical measures that Krugman feels are necessary to pull the economy out of its funk:

Sooner or later the administration will realize that more must be done. But when it comes back for more money, will Congress go along?

Republicans are now firmly committed to the view that we should do nothing to respond to the economic crisis, except cut taxes — which they always want to do regardless of circumstances. If Mr. Obama comes back for a second round of stimulus, they’ll respond not by being helpful, but by claiming that his policies have failed.
...

So here’s the picture that scares me: It’s September 2009, the unemployment rate has passed 9 percent, and despite the early round of stimulus spending it’s still headed up. Mr. Obama finally concedes that a bigger stimulus is needed.

But he can’t get his new plan through Congress because approval for his economic policies has plummeted, partly because his policies are seen to have failed, partly because job-creation policies are conflated in the public mind with deeply unpopular bank bailouts. And as a result, the recession rages on, unchecked.

One of my chief worries about Barack Obama is that he may take the whole notion of "bi-partisan cooperation" a little too seriously. Bi-partisanship is a slogan... or at least that's all it should be in this political and economic climate. It most certainly is to the GOP, and has been for as long as one can remember. The term "bi-partisan cooperation" is a weapon. The Republicans know this. It is not an ideal in any real sense, but rather, the lack of it is a charge to be leveled against the opposition regardless of the reality of the situation or the GOP's own recent history of rigid ideological hegemony. To conservatives the term "bi-partisan" is simply one more bullet in a veritable arsenal of disingenuous rhetorical bullets. When the party that instituted an illegal, ideologically motivated purge of the Justice Department and packed the Federal Judiciary with dangerous ideologues charges the Democrats of not acting in a bi-partisan fashion, one knows that the words have no real meaning beyond their intended rhetorical impact.

I am heartened when Nancy Pelosi snaps back at GOP hypocrites who shamelessly play the "bi-partisan" card by reminding them that Democrats won the last election, not the GOP, and that they "should be thankful for what [they] have." I am heartened when Obama notes that before there can be true bi-partisan consultations, the opposition must have something constructive to add to the debate. The implicit message is that the President understands that current GOP talking points are aimed at undermining our nation's economic recovery, and are not a serious attempt at improving our situation. I am less heartened, however, by what Krugman and other commentators see as overly cautious half-steps that will only lessen the impact of, but not fully avert the impending, serious, economic crisis.

There are, two ways, it would seem, to walk across a tightrope*. You can either size it up and attempt to leap across it in a few swift bounds, or you can take it slow and easy, gauging every deliberate step while trying to maintain your balance through intense concentration and self-control. Barack Obama seems to be taking the latter course as he tackles the nation's problems. Rather than taking advantage of a national crisis and substantial political capital tp ram through passage of his agenda as Bush did after 9/11, the Obama team is carefully and deliberately sizing up the problem and making outward signs of bi-partisan outreach. It is not entirely clear why he is doing this. Perhaps his team is studying the complexities at hand in an attempt to devise politically feasible solutions to our problems. Perhaps he has a genuine hope that the GOP will come through with a genuine attempt at constructive bi-partisanship. It's hard to say which is the answer, but one hopes it is the former and not the latter. It would be quite shocking, to be perfectly honest, to discover that the saavy political player who defeated the formidable Hillary Clinton in the primaries and crushed John McCain in the general election, was at heart so naive.


*No, I've never walked across a tightrope. Yes, I'm completely making this up.

Qute of the day

And your quote of the day:

...it’s getting truly serious when the House minority leader — essentially, the nation’s second-ranking Republican (after Rush Limbaugh) — declares that the answer to the economy’s downward spiral is a spending freeze That’s not a retrogression to Herbert Hoover; even Hoover knew better than that.

Paul Krugman, commenting on the latest insane GOP proposal, which is that government spending be frozen even as the country stands on the edge of an economic precipice brought on by a financial liquidity crisis. If any further proof were needed that the GOP is not serious, is merely playing partisan games, this surely is it.

Disingenuous argument of the day

Michael Ledeen, radioing in from planet "The Corner" is upset that New Yorker contributer Hendrik Hertzberg accuses him of labelling Barack Obama a fascist:

I wrote that Newsweek was wrong to say “we are all socialists,” because Obama et. al. aren’t at all interested in abolishing private property. But they are very interested in controlling large sectors of the economy, and of creating public-private partnerships and joint ventures, just as Mussolini was. It’s what the “corporate state” was all about.

I said that this similarity with the fascist state did NOT extend beyond the economic sphere.

What Ledeen doesn't mention in this response, however, is that he basically defines "fascism" as anything lying to the left of Laissez Faire Capitalism and to the right of Communism:

Socialism rests on a firm theoretical bedrock: the abolition of private property. I haven’t heard anyone this side of Barney Frank calling for any such thing. What is happening now–and Newsweek is honest enough to say so down in the body of the article–is an expansion of the state’s role, an increase in public/private joint ventures and partnerships, and much more state regulation of business. Yes, it’s very “European,” and some of the Europeans even call it “social democracy,” but it isn’t. It’s fascism.

Silly me, and all this time I though Hitler had lost the second World War.

At any rate, what Hertzberg wrote in the New Yorker and what seems to have irked Ledeen is the claim that once a movement (in this case U.S. conservatism) starts spotting "facists" hidden under every rock it turns over, chances are that movement is in decline. So it's rather peculiar for Ledeen to defend himself against such charges by claiming that pretty much every modern, industrialized economy is a fascistic one.

The Obama Tax Plan

Daniel Gross has a very astute observation about the re-setting of the top marginal rates under Obama's tenure:

...this return to 2001's tax rates was actually part of the Bush tax plan. The Republicans who controlled the White House and the Republicans who controlled the Congress earlier this decade decreed that all the tax cuts they passed would sunset in 2010. They put in this sunset provision to hide the long-term fiscal costs of the cuts. The Bush team and congressional supporters had seven years to manage fiscal affairs in such a way that they would be able to extend the tax cuts in 2010. But they screwed it up. Instead of controlling spending and aligning tax revenues with outlays, the Bush administration and its congressional allies ramped up spending massively—on two wars, on a prescription drug benefit for Medicare, on earmarks, etc. Oh, and along the way, they so miserably mismanaged oversight of Wall Street and the financial sector that it required the passage of a hugely expensive bailout. Even before the passage of the TARP, the prospect of extending all the Bush tax cuts was a nonstarter. Once Bush signed the $700 billion bailout measure into law, extending tax cuts was really a nonstarter. The national debt nearly doubled during the Bush years. So if you want to blame someone for raising taxes back to where they were in 2001, don't blame Obama. Blame Bush, his feckless Office of Management and Budget directors, his economic advisers, and congressional appropriators like Trent Lott and Tom DeLay.

This is all too true. If the GOP hadn't dropped the ball on the economy then they might have a legitimate argument against allowing the tax rates to reset as per the original Bush plan. But they did drop the ball, and even without the necessary stimulus spending, we're currently on an unsustainable fiscal policy that must be changed. Supply side cultists cannot be allowed to argue ad nauseum that tax cuts increase long-term government revenues without showing tangible results.

Should dishonest people be given a platform?

Earlier today I blogged about the idiocy that passes for informed commentary on CNN's American Morning show, specifically with regard to a discussion of certain earmarks that are found in the current proposed Federal budget. I noted the extent to which the CNN anchors seemed blissfully unaware and proudly ignorant of the purpose of research conducted to ameliorate the odors that emanate from pig farms.

Now, searching through CNN.com I've come across a video segment in which Rick Sanchez interviews a spokesperson for Taxpayers for Common Sense, an anti-tax "good government" watchdog group that never saw a disingenuous characterization of a spending program it didn't fully and warmly embrace. Observe how the spokesperson characterizes the research in question:



Once thing that I find interesting is the way the TFCS spokesperson unfairly ridicules and then later amends her characterization of the program:

"If you see $1.7 million for pig odor research it's impossible not to say: really, were going to spend $1/7 million to find out whether pigs smell? Because I think I can answer that without spending a dime."

But then she immediately adds:

"That said, is there a big problem with factory farms full of thousands and thousands of hogs? There might be, but then why isn't the industry paying to figure out how to solve that problem?"

The first paragraph quoted above is a cheap shot, and it's one of the main reasons I have a problem with these groups. The spokesperson clearly understands the purpose of this research, as we can see from the second paragraph, and yet she opens her discussion of the earmark in question with a completely dishonest and asinine attack upon it.

There is, indeed, a case to be made that the hog farming industry should be paying for this research and that's the true argument to be had. That's the argument that we'd be focusing on if we had anything even remotely resembling an intelligent, informed, and inquisitive press in this country. But instead what we get is stupid banter about how the government is funding research to determine whether pigs are stinky or not. Anchors like Rich Sanchez and John Roberts let these sorts of comments slide, instead of calling them out, and of course this is the story that gets told and retold in hair salons, barber shops and bars across the country. The result is a further cementing of the idiot notion, promulgated by Conservatives, that the government is a bumbling, stupid, corrupt organism that wastes taxpayer dollars on absurd studies and offers little if any return on our investment... in other words, that government is the problem, not the solution.

Should Stupid People Be Allowed To Anchor?

Question of the day: should stupid people be allowed to anchor the news?

What occasioned this question was a discussion that took place this morning on CNN. I was driving into work, listening to CNN's American Morning on Sirius when I heard the show's hosts discussing the issue of budgetary earmarks --those reviled funding requests that make up a miniscule portion of the Federal budget, but which receive out-sized criticism from "good government" groups. One of these groups, Taxpayers for Common Sense, has called out a number of projects in the Congress' latest budget and marked them for ridicule, and on CNN this morning, the hosts were particularly tickled by a $1.7 million request for "pig odor research" in Iowa. The CNN crew were falling over themselves to point to the absurdity of the funding request with one of them opining, as the segment closed, that farmers should just learn to use an air freshener.

Now maybe I'm the Edward Gibbon of the historical news cycle, or maybe CNN's hosts are just a pack of full-blown retards who are irretrievably memory challenged from all the pot they smoked while hosting MTV's Headbanger's Ball, but I for one seem to remember a time when the issue of the horrible smells produced by large factory pig-farms dominated the news cycle and was the subject of many an investigative report. It was just a few years ago, after all, and I'm sure CNN covered the issue just as did all the major news outlets.

I don't want to get into the question of whether factory farming of this sort is an advisable practice. I don't want to argue whether we should be studying technologies that might allow for an expansion of this sort of intensive industrial meat production. But I do wish, for just one moment, that our nation's TV anchors were not a pack of intellectually incurious morons too dimwitted to connect a research project on pig odor amelioration with a series of news story about pig odor that they were intensely covering in the relatively recent past.

I expect neither honesty nor intellectual rigor from Taxpayers for Common Sense. They're just another pack of right-wing shills who spotlight budget items based upon how easy it is to launch a cheap shot attack against them, as opposed to their true merits. But from our news media... well... there was a time I expected more from them. Now I just settle for venting my disgust with them from time to time.

Self Restraint

My hat's off to the Republican rank and file. For I have to admit that they have showed amazing self-restraint in waiting six whole weeks before blaming Barack Obama for the state of our economy:

As the markets continue to falter, Republicans are becoming more confident in their criticisms of the president — some have already taken to using the phrase "the Obama economy."

After all, let us not forget that their capo di tutti capi, GOP Grand Poobah, Rush Limbaugh had, between hits of Oxycontin, already labelled this the "Obama recession" on November 6th, mere days after the Presidential election.

Choosing your enemies wisely...

First it was Rush Limbaugh, now Tonya Harding is angry at Barack Obama. If choosing your enemies wisely is half the battle, one has to wonder: Is Barack Obama the Sun Tzu of contemporary American politics?

Quote of the day

From a distant planet also known as "The Corner":

"It is more reminiscent of a third-world banana republic than the United States of America."

Hans A. Von Spakovsky, opining that the effort to investigate and prosecute individuals who authorized torture is more reminiscent of a third world dictatorship than the practice of torture itself.

Fair Weather Globalization?

If Globalization is to have any merit whatsoever, surely it must obey one uncontroversial principle: we stick together, through the good times and the bad. If not all countries are willing to stimulate their economies to help drag the world out of its mess, then why in the Hell should the ordinary citizen accept the price that globalization often asks him to pay when times are good?

Time Magazine's "Curious Capitalist" blog shows that among wealthy nations, only the U.S., China and Spain and to a lesser extent Japan are spending significant resources on economic recovery. This speaks ill of most of our European partners who, clearly, should be doing more to pull their own weight. The U.S. cannot be expected to bail out the whole world all by itself.

Australia 0.9%
Brazil 0.2%
China 6.9%
France 1.3%
Germany 1.6%
Italy 0.3%
Japan 2.3%
Russia 1.1%
Spain 8.1%
United Kingdom 0.9%
United States 5.5%

The world economy runs the risk of falling prey to the classic free rider problem if some rich nations seek to escape the economic downturn on the backs of other wealthy nations' stimulus. Here again, the world must stand together, or it will surely fall apart. The only question is how do we provide a mechanism to avoid the free rider problem? Ordinarily the free rider problem is solved by a government through taxation of citizens who share in the common good. But there is no world government to speak of. A different option, then, might be a coordinated post-recovery scheme of punitive tariffs levied against nations who were seen to have shirked their responsibility throughout the crisis.

(hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Let Them Eat Ideology

The New York Times has an interactive map showing U.S. unemployment figures by County. What's shocking is to note that, South Carolina, headed by a Republican governor who has threatened to turn away federal stimulus dollars, boasts of two counties with unemployment rates above 19 per cent, and an additional four counties where unemployment is above 15 per cent.

If you're wondering why Rep. James Clyburn pushed through a measure that would allow state legislatures to bypass their governors in requesting Federal stimulus funds, this is precisely why.

Meanwhile, Bobby Jindall's Louisiana, while not as bad off as South Carolina, does boast six counties where unemployment is in double digits. Jindall also has stated his intention to turn away Federal stimulus dollars aimed at providing unemployment benefits for out-of-work Louisianans.

Lamest "Explainer" ever...

Slate.com has this feature called "The Explainer." Basically, it's a column devoted to answering questions about topics of the day in ways that might enlighten and surprise the average reader because the explanation is often so gosh darn unexpected and counter-intuitive: Golly willikers, I would never have guessed the origins of the modern helicopter can be traced to a drawing of Leonardo Davinci's!

Today the topic is "Were There Sex Shops in the Time of George Washington?" and let me warn you before you keep on reading, spoiler alert, spoiler alert! OK, so the answer is:

No, there were no sex shops in Washington's day, as you probably assumed up to now, but there were prostitutes, which you probably also knew, given that it's the world's oldest profession and all.

The end.

Logan's Run

National Review contributor and 62 year-old John Derbyshire just can't imagine why anyone would want to live into his 80's.

If these humongous health insurance premiums I'm paying every month are caused by whining dotards demanding hip replacements, I say bring on the Soylent Green.

It'd be interesting to check in on Derbyshire again when he's 79, hand him a pistol and ask him if he's ready to "take one for the team" because I'm sick of paying high health insurance premiums.

The Corner Goes There.

National Review's "The Corner" blog defends the indefensible by printing a series of e-mails by readers claiming to be businessmen and professionals who say they'll fire half their employees, start smoking crack and leave the country for Andorra if, as under the Obama tax plan, they have to start paying 39.6 cents on every dollar they earn above $250,000 instead of the 35 cents they do now.

Some come up with convoluted justifications for a radical down-sizing of their businesses that seems only tangentially related to Obama's tax plan.

I have a few thoughts concerning your Corner post titled Bracketology. My wife and I are both Pediatricians. We own our own practice together. We have one PA and 7 other employees. We each gross about $200 K a year. We have 3 young children at home, 2 of which are not in school. We also employ an in home Nanny. My wife has been torn for years about not being at home for these children, which are our biggest investment in the future. We operate parallel S corperations (sic.) as PC's, with a 50/50 ownership of the LLC that is our business. We file taxes jointly. After crunching some numbers concerning the President's tax hike proposals, I have come to the following conclusions. If the President's plan is inacted (sic.), we will do the following:

1. My wife will become a stay at home mother.
2. At least 3 of my 7 employees will be released.
3. The practice will downsize to a smaller office space, i.e. less rent.
4. The number of patients cared for on a daily basis will drop by 40%.
5. My wife will come out of the forced ER call schedule for good.
6. I will gross $249,999.00 a year, exactly.
7. The net income of our personal home will decrease by less than $10 K a year from where it would have been if we changed nothing.

Of course all of the above could be done right now under the current tax system with similiar results, and with Obama's tax plan adding exactly $5000 to someone earning $400,000 per year, you've got to wonder if the missus was merely looking for a reason to stay home with the kids and the couple's hatred of Obama provided just the excuse they needed to take that step? After all, they are sacrificing $10,000 in income in order to avoid paying half that much in taxes.

Other readers are more honest in saying that they intend to stop making money just to spite Barack Obama:

I am a tax accountant, don’t consider myself to be an idiot, and I am right in Obama’s income target range. I will be joining those looking to limit hours worked so as not to enter that 60% territory. Part of the motivation will be the self satisfaction of not contributing to the socialist cause.

One concerned reader even included the following useful parable of Jesus anecdote from Ronald Reagan to illustrate the problem:

Reagan used to tell the story about how when he was a movie actor he'd make 2 pictures a year, which would take maybe 8-9 months, then lay on the beach for the rest of the year. The reason was by the end of the second picture he was in the 90% tax bracket, and it wasn't worth all that effort to get another 10 cents on the dollar.

It didn't hurt him, he said, as he made plenty of money anyway. But what it meant is that the cameramen, set designers, sound people, etc had to go out and look for part time work the rest of the year.

Because you know what the directors all used to say back then: "If I can't have Hollywood's biggest star, Ronald Reagan, I don't want to film the movie!"


(UPDATE: A commenter Media Matters notes that another way for employers to reduce their take home pay would be to simply pay their employees the difference between what they now make and $249,999... you know, if they're really all that terrified of jumping into a higher tax bracket and all.)

New GOP Startegy: Lie... Just Lie.

So apparently, the latest GOP strategy to counter the Obama stimulus package is to simply lie about what is in it. We saw this when LA governor Bobby Jindall claimed that the stimulus package included $140 million for volcano monitoring (it doesn't: that $140 million funds the US Geological Survey which does a whole lotmore than just volcano monitoring) and now Republican hacks, with the enthusiastic aid of Fox News are claiming that the Federal Budget includes funding for a rairoad line connecting Dinseyland with the Bunny Ranch brothel in Las Vegas. The problem is, such funding is no where in the bill, and the GOP knows it. Think Progress notes:

ThinkProgress was unable to find such an earmark in the omnibus spending bill. When asked to point to the specific provision, Franks’ office would only tell ThinkProgress to contact Reid’s office.

Reid’s office confirmed that Franks is referring to a proposal to refurbish a historic railroad line between Gold Hill, NV, and Carson City — hardly a direct line from L.A. to the “doorstep” of a brothel.

See the video of the exchange at ThinkProgress.org.

Pelosi.... er... rulz?!?!?

I think I'm starting to like this Nancy Pelosi gal.

Eureka! I've just figured it out!

I've just figured out how the GOP has managed to hold on to power for so many years. The answer is this: there are a lot of stupid... no, strike that... incredibly stupid people out there. Media Matters for America examines a story reported on by ABC News:

ABC News reports on "upper-income taxpayers" who are trying to reduce their income so they avoid proposed tax increases on those earning more than $250,000.
...
This is stunningly wrong.
...
In reality, a family earning $255,000 will pay the higher tax rate only on its last $5,001 in income; the first $249,999 will continue to be taxed at the old rate. So intentionally lowering your income from $255,000 to $249,999 is counter-productive; it will result in a lower after-tax income.

And this is from the ABC News story itself:

A 63-year-old attorney based in Lafayette, La., who asked not to be named, told ABCNews.com that she plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law.

...

"We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00," she said.

"We have to find a way out where we can make just what we need to just under the line so we can benefit from Obama's tax plan," she added. "Why kill yourself working if you're going to give it all away to people who aren't working as hard?"

Would you hire this attorney to fight a traffic ticket? No, let me rephrase that: would you hire this attorney to mow your lawn?

Cartoon

A cartoon comment on the day's events:

Slow Mo Train Wreck

You can now watch the GOP train wreck unfold in slow motion. Watch as LA Governor Bobby Jindall gets his foot caught in the tracks, is chewed up by the wheels of the locomotive and spit out the side like roadkill as the whole thing goes careening off a cliff:

The Party of Limbaugh

This is just incredible:

The new chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, apologized to Rush Limbaugh on Monday after describing him in a television interview over the weekend as an “entertainer” who made incendiary and sometimes ugly remarks, party officials said.

Mr. Steele called Mr. Limbaugh after the radio host belittled Mr. Steele on his show, questioning his authority and saying the new Republican leader was off “to a shaky start.”

If Rush Limbaugh did not exist, the DNC would have to invent him. The guy's ego is the size of a overloaded freight train, and he has no idea how destructive he is to the GOP in its quest for relevance in the post housing-collapse world.

The sad thing, of course, is that Steele has just made Democratic critics' points for them. The GOP, right now, is a party whose actual head is Rush Limbaugh, a guy who's actively rooting for an economic depression to take hold so that Obama might be defeated in 2012.

And something just as disturbing emerges when we broaden our outlook and examine the Right's other contemporary heroes. Every one of them is a vulgar, sloganeering, intellectual lightweight. We've got Sarah Plain, former beauty queen turned fiscally irreponsible mayor of a small town, turned dishonest governor of a large, though sparsely populated state. You've got Joe Wurzelbacher, an unlicensed plumber and right-wing radio aficionado who was thrust on to the national stage when he challenged candidate Barack Obama on the merits of his tax plans by lying about his own economic situation. You've got a nameless mass of right-ring radio and TV commentators like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly who add nothing to the national debate but empty slogans and mean-spirited vituperation.

The right-wing blogs, meanwhile, are nothing but a collection of specious conspiracy theories regarding Barack Obama's citizenship and unhinged frothing at the mouth about the government's supposed turn to Communism in the face of an economic collapse that was occasioned by the very economic policies they've been mindlessly championing over the years.

And the others?

Bobby Jindal? FAIL: He was the great brown hope of the Republican party, the Barack Obama doppleganger who would, in one fell swoop, prove that the GOP was not a party of old, crotchety racists. Instead he delivered a laughable respone to Obama's State of the Union Address that was panned by commentators on the left as well as the right and was so riddled with misinformation and outright lies that one wonders: is Jindal Obama's evil twin or Sarah Palin's fraternal twin? So far it looks like Jindal is shaping up to be 2009's Fred Thompson.

Rick Santelli? FAIL: It really speaks to how out of touch the party faithful are that so many would hitch their wagon to a guy who's so politically tone-deaf that he hoped to spark a revolution by riling up a group of stock brokers against Barack Obama's mortgage rescue plan. After all, these are the people who, along with hedge fund managers and subprime mortgage originators, are probably the most reviled individuals in the nation what with their insatiable greed and the key role they played in destroying our once vibrant economy. Let's not even mention the $700 billion taxpayer dollars that flowed into their pockets after the first Wall Street bailout. They got theirs and now they want the rest of us to rise up against a president who has a plan to help keep ordinary Americans in their homes?

Joh Boehner? FAIL: This horse-faced, dour, sourpuss of a House Minority Leader has a personality that makes John Kerry look as wacky and fun loving as Spongebob Squarepants. Listening to him grumble about Obama's legislative agenda is about as compelling and informative as listening to your old grandpappy grumble about the poor job the dry-cleaners did the last time they cleaned his suspenders.

Mitch McConnell? FAIL: One word explains his FAIL, and that word is... "who?" I had to goole the phrase "Senate Minority Leader" just to remember who was leading the Senate GOP these days. Enough said.

Newt Gingrich? FAIL: Witnessing the complete evaporation of the intellectual core of the GOP, some of the party faithful are turning back the clock and dusting off old Newt Gingrich in hopes that the onetime wunderkid of the Right can put the spark back into their movement. But really, it's just like a particularly unwatchable VH1 nostalgia show. Remember the 90s? Remember when the GOP had the wind at its back and this guy Gingrich was leading a revolution that he himself would soon torpedo with his single minded and completely hypocritical sexual vendetta against a president who was even more popular than he was? And how many wives has he had since then, anyway?

So Limbaugh it is. He's the gasbag that rushed in to fill the vaccum created by the GOP's spectacular loss at the polls last year. He's the guy leading the GOP show. And the GOP is now oficially nothing more than the party of right-wing hate radio.

Enjoy your stay at the margins of political discourse, fellahs. It looks like you're in for a long stay.

If the GOP were a spce ship...

If the GOP were a space ship, this would be the scene where alarm sirens are blazing, a bright red flashing countdown timer is ticking down, and the last survivors are rushing for the escape pods. Because the party seems to be in full self-destruct mode.