Noem: George W. Bush Not Conservative Enough

The Brits get a taste of Kristi Noem in their Daily Mail. UK reporter David Rose comes to South Dakota to call our Republican candidate for U.S. House "glamorous" and "gun-crazy." He also finds she takes her conservative cues from Glenn Beck, not George W. Bush:

But what sets Kristi apart from the mainstream Republican leadership is when she starts talking about the last Republican President, George W. Bush.

In Britain, people tend to think of Bush as quite conservative. Not Kristi. 'Of course Bush was a good president, but he leaned too much to the middle and created programmes that put too many people on the government payroll. And once the Democrats got control of the House in 2006, he only used his power to veto their legislation once.'

...Beck, a former disc jockey and now a bestselling author, has launched his online 'Glenn Beck university', and among its teachings is that America started to go to the dogs at the time of the First World War, when government expanded far beyond the limits envisaged by the founding fathers with the establishment of institutions such as the Federal Reserve and publicly funded universal education.

In South Dakota, 52 per cent of all voters and 80 per cent of Republicans say they identify with Tea Party values. Kristi Noem says she agrees with Beck's analysis.

'His overall concept of more limited government and the need to go back to what our forefathers wanted is right,' she says.

'There are things that have to change but, as Beck says, not core values' [David Rose, "They see Obama as a hostile, alien force - like Hitler or Pol Pot: The glamorous, gun-crazy women preparing to blow the President away," UK Daily Mail, 2010.10.24].

Kristi Noem thinks George W. Bush wasn't conservative enough... and Bush wanted to privatize Social Security. So did Kristi, back in May, before she had to start thinking about what she was saying.

But a Republican Party moving from George W. Bush to Glenn Beck as font of good governing principles is a scary, scary party.

Bonus photo: If for no other reason, check out Rose's article to see the money shot of Kristi Noem coming to drink your milkshake.

Obama Era Brings Smaller State and Local Government

Socialist power grab, or Bush-Norquist plot?

An eager reader forwards this CNN report that seems to turn conventional wisdom on its head: under President Barack Obama, government is getting smaller:

The layoff ax has hit public sector payrolls with force as states wrestle with massive budget shortfalls. Since August 2008, some 231,000 state and local government jobs have disappeared -- 22,000 last month alone, according to federal data.

The majority of the cuts are on the local level, which at 14.4 million workers is nearly three times the size of the state workforce. Plus, unlike at the federal level, most of these cuts come from the ranks of teachers, cops, firefighters and social service workers.

And more pain is coming down the pike. Some 19 states say they plan to implement layoffs to narrow budget gaps, according to a recent survey [Tami Luhby, "Endangered Species: Government Worker," CNN.com, 2010.06.18].

Remember, when you cut government at the state and local level, you're not striking a blow against tyranny. You're putting your local cops, the men and women in blue who stand between you and the real thugs in our society, out of work.

Note this report highlights cuts at the state and local level. Layoffs are not the case for the federal government workforce. Uncle Sam hired more people in 2008 and 2009:

(click image to enlarge)

Note that the last 50 years have not seen an enormous increase in the number of people working for the federal government. Since 1962, Uncle Sam's total workforce has shrunk 17%. That decline comes entirely from the Cold War peace dividend: the number of uniformed military personnel has dropped 44% since the pre-Vietnam surge. The executive branch has grown 12% since 1962, but compare that to a national population that has grown 64% over the same period, and that growth seems small. Plus, the current executive branch workforce, even with a 3% surge last year under Obama (and under President Bush's last budget, FY2009), is still just about 10% smaller than it was under its peak levels from 1985 to 1992 (remind me again: who ran the executive branch back then?).

For your weekend enjoyment, you can spin two opposing conspiracy theories from this data:

1. Conservative flavor: President Obama and his fellow travelers are weakening state and local governments to remove that check against their expansion of federal power, all the better to forward the Marxist revolution.
2. Liberal flavor: President Bush and VP Cheney used reckless deficit spending and tax cuts to drive government into such dire financial straits that it would collapse to bathtub-drownable size. The federal government has a little more power and wiggle room to continue deficit spending, so the axe is falling on the state and local governments first, but the trend will trickle up.

I'm actually not as confident about the latter: after all, how can neocons establish a global empire if they don't keep the imperial government big?

Blame Deficit on Recession, Russ Olson, LAIC, You, Me....

David Montgomery earns his pay this week with a great blog post on how much of the 2009 deficit can be attributed to Bush and how much to Obama. The short breakdown: Bush is responsible for $600 billion, Obama $350 billion, and the recession $420 billion (economy slowed down, government received less revenue). Montgomery's post gives some useful numbers to deflate Senator Thune's facetiously false claim that Bush's final budget "ran a deficit of just over $400 billion."

Meanwhile, Madison's own Jon Hunter grumbled a bit last week about the proposed (and now rejected) bipartisan deficit commission. Hunter grumbled that we don't need a committee to study a problem that we all recognize and know how to solve. Hunter also expressed his pessimism about the prospect of the Administration or Congress actually doing anything about that problem.

Missing from Hunter's grumbling was any mention of the plank in our own eye. Certainly deficits will continue as long as politicians keep promising pork and subsidizing corn and taking us to war without passing taxes to pay for them. but our politicians will keep doing that as long as we keep asking them to. Among the local deficit drivers among us whom Hunter neglected to include in his complaint:

• State Senator Russell Olson and the Highway 34 committee, who have lobbied Washington for earmarks to add lanes to a highway that can get by without them.
• Pat Prostrollo, who really really really wanted more Cash for Clunkers.
• Dwaine Chapel and the Lake Area Improvement Corporation, who are happy to pave and gutter the industrial park with $190K of earmark dough.
  
• The Madison City Commission, which is thrilled to get stimulus dollars to renovate the downtown depot.
• Jan Nicolay and the Brant Lake Sanitary District, which got Senator Johnson to wangle $400K from Uncle Sam for their sewer system.
• Cory and Erin Heidelberger, who certainly aren't sending back our tax deduction for mortgage interest (how about you?).
• Every one of Jon Hunter's elderly subscribers who have let Medicare pay their doctor bills.
  

Go ahead, wag your finger at the people responsible for our deficit. Just be sure to do it while looking in the mirror.

Recession's Green Lining: Energy Conservation!

Maybe George W. Bush really had an environmental agenda: his laissez-faire non-management of the economy led us into recession, but it also led us to real energy conservation. Factory use of natural gas is projected to drop 8.6% this year. Consumption of electricity may fall 2.6% this year, better than last year's 1.6% drop and the first back-to-back declines since 1949. Demand for all petrofuels in the U.S. dropped 7.1% last year.

(Note for Hyperion fans: the drop in gasoline consumption has driven refiner Flying J Inc. to bankruptcy and shuttered its Bakersfield refinery. That same article reports Sunoco is trying to sell a refinery in Tulsa and will shut it down if it can't find a buyer. As many of us saw last year, the market for Hyperion's "green" refinery in Elk Point is shrinking fast.)

Industrial energy usage usually tracks closely with the economic cycle, but this recession has brought an unusual drop in energy usage in the residential and commercial as well. This reduction in energy usage at the individual represents a laudable frugality, a new thriftiness that more observers think will remain the norm even after we fix this recession.

After a decade of SUV-mania, credit-card bingeing, and home-equity hijinks, we needed a good economic kick in the pants to remind us how to manage our fuel and our finances. If we can learn our lesson and leave more resources in the bank for future generations, the Bush recession may actually reflect well on its progenitor.

Save America: Keep President out of Schools

The Right is right: if you let the President of the United States have "a direct channel...into the classroom" to our children, everything will go to hell:



September 11, 2001.

(Hat tip to MB at Understanding Government!)

Thune-Bush Plan to Perpetuate Right-Wing Conservatism: Destroy Trust in Government

I'm listening to Senator John Thune on South Dakota Public Radio make arguments about how Americans just don't trust government. The Senator says similar things in NYTimes.

We don't trust government, so we can't trust government to do health care. How very convenient an argument to make when that trust has been eroded by eight years of a Republican administration that failed to...

• sustain the budget surplus established in 2000,
  
• prevent the worst terrorist attack on American soil in history,
• defend the Constitution against the fear that motivated the PATRIOT Act,
  
• prosecute investigations and war without resorting to torture,
• maintain good relations with foreign allies,
• organize an effective response to Hurricane Katrina and rebuild New Orleans, and
  
• take any real action to check or reverse the trend of more people losing health insurance and going bankrupt from health care costs.

...and I don't even break a sweat thinking up that short list.

If the GOP plan was to do such a bad job of governing that people would never trust government to do anything right regardless of who's in charge, then they did a heck of a job, Brownie.

Don't trust government? Then replace it with people you do trust. That's what 2008 was about. That's what 2010 should be about (any takers yet?). Don't let Senator Thune and the losers trick you into thinking they're still in charge.

Conservative Declares President Obama Among "Greatest Tax Cutters in History"

Some of my best sources are Republicans....

More props to Adam Feser, the half of Aberdeen's Red, Blue & Purple who actually reads things to back hup his blog posts. Mr. Feser points us toward "The GOP's Misplaced Rage," a remarkable Daily Beast essay by conservative Bruce Bartlett. Mr. Bartlett did little things like develop supply-side economics and work for Presidents Reagan and Bush pére (and farther back, Ron Paul!). He earned a spot in the GOP doghouse by calling President Bush fils a Nixonian "pretend conservative" and saying the Bush-Cheney White House displayed "an anti-intellectual distrust of facts and analysis."

Bartlett guarantees more time in that doghouse by skewering the GOP socialism-criers with these facts and analysis:

According to the CBO, federal taxes will amount to just 15.5 percent of GDP this year. That’s 2.2 percent of GDP less than last year, 3.3 percent less than in 2007, and 1.8 percent less than the lowest percentage recorded during the Reagan years. If conservatives really believe their own rhetoric, they should be congratulating Obama for being one of the greatest tax cutters in history [Bruce Bartlett, "The GOP's Misplaced Rage," The Daily Beast, 2009.08.12].

Bartlett also sees the clear hypocrisy of the GOP suddenly rediscovering budget discipline:

In my opinion, conservative activists, who seem to believe that the louder they shout the more correct their beliefs must be, are less angry about Obama’s policies than they are about having lost the White House in 2008. They are primarily Republican Party hacks trying to overturn the election results, not representatives of a true grassroots revolt against liberal policies. If that were the case they would have been out demonstrating against the Medicare drug benefit, the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, and all the pork-barrel spending that Bush refused to veto [Bartlett, 2009.08.12].

Bartlett also makes a very clear case that both the current deficit and the recession are primarily George W. Bush's fault. Read especially Bartlett's discussion of the recession's origins and his comparison of the performance of the economy under Clinton and Bush.

So if you want to vent your rage in a futile display of patriotic fantasy, go yell at President Bush... and let President Obama keep cleaning up Bush's mess.

----------------
Bonus link! Bartlett is also well-known (and reviled by Neil Boortz sheep) for linking the "Fair Tax" with Scientology.

Green White House: Obama Continues Bush, Clinton Tradition

For my Republican friends who enjoy riffing on the "Change We Can Believe In" slogan, here's another toy to play with: President Obama's greening of the White House continues a recent tradition of environmental innovations at the presidential mansion.

• Mrs. Obama and some friendly fifth-graders helped break ground on the new White House victory garden Friday before last, but former White House chief usher Gary Walters tells AP's Nancy Benac that under the previous couple administrations, the First Lady's garden grew herbs and container gardens on the roof provided tomatoes, peppers, and other veggies.
• President Obama likes to shut off lights that aren't in use around the house. The Bush II Administration made that possible, replacing an old bank-lighting system with better room-by-room controls.
• The ground around the Obamas' new South Dakota Rainbow swingset (quite green itself!) is covered with cushy recycled rubber tire bits. The preceding residents also pushed recycling of paper indoors.

The White House has led home greenification recently in some other ways:

• President Clinton's 1993 Earth Day initiative implemented "improvements in lighting, heating, air conditioning, insulation, water sprinklers and other measures" that saved $1.4 million in six years (that explains the budget surplus ;-) ).
• Clinton's White House started (and Bush continued) the White House switch to compact fluourescent bulbs.
  
• Bush promoted solar at the White House, with solar heating units for the grounds maintenance building.
• The Bush White House switched to low-flow toilets and, in an innovation more lawn-nuts around here need, a automatic sprinkler system hooked to a weather monitor to keep from watering the grass in the rain.

It's good to know that the White House under both parties has been trying to set a good example. Keep up the good work, Mr. President!

Bush Worst President? Not the Point...

What's worse: liver or beets? Judge Judy or infomercials? Warren G. Harding or George W. Bush?

Professor Blanchard's fair reading of the bad and the good from the Bush II years reminds me of the difficulty in arguing that George W. Bush is the worst President ever. How does one measure the good of fighting AIDS in Africa against the bad of pushing bad science? How does replacing Saddam Hussein with a democratic Iraqi government stack up against a six-year occupation, hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, and two million Iraqi refugees who as of last month are still too scared to go home? How does preventing another 9/11 (if it wasn't just luck) make up for not preventing the first one, or for squandering the international political capital that disaster gave us? And how do we measure all of that against the feats and foibles of every preceding President?

Intelligence Squared hosted a debate in December on the resolution "Bush 43 is the worst President of the last 50 years." William Kristol and Karl Rove were able to sway more of the undecideds away from the resolution than Simon Jenkins and Jacob Weisberg could pull toward it, perhaps largely because of the difficulty in establishing that the net harm done by the Bush Administration outweighs the net harm of Vietnam and domestic unrest under Johnson and Iran and stagflation under Carter. (The final vote on the I² December resolution was still 68% to 27% in favor).

Trying to determine whether President Bush performed worse than Carter, Hoover, or other Presidential bêtes noires may provide entertainment akin to debating whether Lincoln was greater than Washington or either Roosevelt. Such parlor games also miss the immediately relevant point that President Bush leaves the country less secure, less wealthy, and less free than when he took office.

Forget the HuffPost-y hyperbole or even the 61% of historians who deemed Bush the worst President ever (and that was last April, before the economy really tanked). Let's measure Bush by the Reagan standard: are you better off than you were four (or eight) years ago? The numbers suggest you are making less and owing more now than you did eight years ago.

George W. Bush hasn't made things as bad as 1933 or 1981, but he leaves Americans and America in worse shape than when he started. That's failure in my patriotic book.

Compassionate Conservatism at Work: Bush Expands Community Health Centers

Did you know President Bush expanded not-for-profit government health care? As governor of Texas, Bush saw that the free market just doesn't get the job done in health care. When he became President, Bush followed through on a campaign promise and used federal money to create or expand almost 1,300 community health centers. According to Thursday's New York Times, these clinics, funded mostly by Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and federal grants, provide health care to low-income folks and immigrants in underserved areas. Some highlights:

• These community health centers take pressure off emergency rooms, where the uninsured often go for non-emergency care when they have nowhere else to turn.
• Bush's expansion of the clinics—now serving 16 million patients, up 60% under Bush's watch—is the alrgest boost to the community health center program since it started under LBJ.
• A third of the patients served are Hispanic (yup, we're helping immigrants, also known as our fellow man).
• Far from fitting the Limbaugh stereotype of wasteful government operations, community health centers are a model of efficiency: for an investment of $2.1 billion in current federal funding, these clinics return savings for the health care system of $17.6 billion a year.

More on community health centers' efficiency:

Though United Neighborhood Health Services has more than doubled in size this decade, Ms. Bufwack, its chief executive, manages to run five neighborhood clinics, five school clinics, a homeless clinic, two mobile clinics and a rural clinic, with 24,391 patients, on a budget of $8.1 million. Starting pay for her doctors is $120,000. Patients are charged on an income-based sliding scale, and the uninsured are expected to pay at least $20 for an office visit. One clinic is housed in a double-wide trailer [Kevin Sack, "Bush Has Built Foundation for Improved Health Care," New York Times, 2008.12.25].

The Times notes that these clinics provide great backup for whatever plans President Obama and Secretary Daschle may come up with to help the uninsured. If Obama and Daschle can't win funding for full-tilt health care reform, "a vast expansion of community health centers may again serve as a stopgap while universal coverage waits for flusher times" [Sack]. The community centers are on Obama's radar: this August, Senator Obama sponsored legislation to quadruple funding for these centers. Michelle Obama worked with community health centers in Chicago.

Bob Ellis once echoed some wishful rhetoric from the McCain campaign, saying that the use of community health centers to provide more cost-effective care and take pressure off emergency rooms was just "a liberal's idea of compassionate health care." Who would have thought that liberal was George W. Bush?

I'm man enough to admit President Bush has done some good things during his eight years. Bush's talk of compassionate conservatism was part of why I was willing to cheer his victory in 2000. His expansion of community health centers shows that even Republicans recognize the government can do some things, like health care, right. If Bush had focused more on programs like that, he might have kept a lot more of us cheering for him rather than for his departure.

Bush Turns Universalist Unitarian!

Christmas is great for catching up on my reading... but wait: am I just delirious from my Christmas candy sugar buzz, or did President George W. Bush burn his Focus on the Family guest card earlier this month?

Asked about creation and evolution, Bush said: "I think you can have both. I think evolution can -- you're getting me way out of my lane here. I'm just a simple president. But it's, I think that God created the earth, created the world; I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty and I don't think it's incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution."

He added, "I happen to believe that evolution doesn't fully explain the mystery of life" [AP, "Bush Says Creation 'Not Incompatible' with Evolution," FoxNews.com, 2008.12.09

Now our "simple president" Bush is no more an authority on biology than James Dobson is on theology, but hearing Bush join Pope John Paul II in denying any need to wage holy war against science does my heart good.

Another goodie under the tree: President Bush rejects Biblical literalism!

Interviewer Cynthia McFadden asked Bush if the Bible was literally true.

"You know. Probably not. ... No, I'm not a literalist, but I think you can learn a lot from it, but I do think that the New Testament for example is ... has got ... You know, the important lesson is 'God sent a son,"' Bush said.

"It is hard for me to justify or prove the mystery of the Almighty in my life," he said. "All I can just tell you is that I got back into religion and I quit drinking shortly thereafter and I asked for help. ... I was a one-step program guy" [ibid.].

Is Bush saying that for him, religion is just about practical problem-solving? Amazing what a guy will say when he no longer has to court fundagelical voters.

And the kicker:

The president also said that he prays to the same God as those with different religious beliefs.

"I do believe there is an almighty that is broad and big enough and loving enough that can encompass a lot of people," Bush said [ibid.].

Man oh man! It sounds more and more like George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama have been reading from the same Bible all along!

Actually, that's exactly what some end-timers believe. Unfortunately, some keepers of the Rapture watch proceed to draw the flatly counterfactual conclusion that Bush and Obama aren't Christians.

"George Bush, Barack Obama, and Tony Blair... deadly enemies of true Christians." Uff da. Not a terribly loving Christmas spirit... and just plain silly. If the fundagelicals keep nattering about the fringes like this, they might find Bob Barr and Ralph Nader out-polling Sarah Palin in 2012.

Bush Pushed Mortgage Meltdown

While Ken and I try to figure out who's trying to balance whom, the New York Times jumps on a point I made—well, actually, that a right-wing blogger made and I simply Googled: if the push for increased minority home ownership had anything to do with the mortgage meltdown, you can't pin the blame "mostly with liberals in the Press and their conjoined twins in Congress," unless you count George W. Bush as a liberal:

There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk.

But the story of how we got here is partly one of Mr. Bush’s own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials.

From his earliest days in office, Mr. Bush paired his belief that Americans do best when they own their own home with his conviction that markets do best when let alone.

He pushed hard to expand homeownership, especially among minorities, an initiative that dovetailed with his ambition to expand the Republican tent — and with the business interests of some of his biggest donors. But his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards [Jo Becker, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and Stephen Labaton, "White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire," New York Times, 2008.12.20].

Now let me be clear:

1. Expanding home ownership, for minorities and everyone else, is darn good idea.
2. Home ownership promotes economic security (Bush said that).
3. Real economic security comes from increasing income (your money), not from loosening credit (the bank's money).

The President's chief economic advisor Keith Hennessey is thinking along a similar line:

Today, administration officials say it is fair to ask whether Mr. Bush’s ownership push backfired. [Treasury Secretary] Paulson said the administration, like others before it, “over-incented housing.” Mr. Hennessey put it this way: “I would not say too much emphasis on expanding homeownership. I would say not enough early focus on easy lending practices” [Becker et al.]

Becker et al. find blame to be laid at everyone's doorstep: Congress, corporate lenders, lobbyists, and the current and past administrations (don't forget dumb borrowers!). They note that a Bush administration official, Armando Falcon, Jr., then head of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, was ready in February 2003 to sound the alarm on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

Mr. Falcon’s report outlined a worst-case situation in which Fannie and Freddie could default on debt, setting off “contagious illiquidity in the market” — in other words, a financial meltdown. He also raised red flags about the companies’ soaring use of derivatives, the complex financial instruments that economic experts now blame for spreading the housing collapse.

...[A]s Mr. Falcon was in New York preparing to deliver a speech about his findings, his cellphone rang. It was the White House personnel office, he said, telling him he was about to be unemployed.

His warnings were buried in the next day’s news coverage, trumped by the White House announcement that Mr. Bush would replace Mr. Falcon, a Democrat appointed by Bill Clinton, with Mark C. Brickell, a leader in the derivatives industry that Mr. Falcon’s report had flagged [Becker et al.].

Tonight's dinner
table question:
~ ~ ~
Which has done more damage to your personal security: al-Qaeda or the mortgage meltdown?
~ ~ ~

February 2003. Five years before the stimulus checks, the Bear Stearns buyout, and every other crisis maneuver this year that hasn't worked. One month before the president (with, yes, the approval of a majority of Congress and, at the time, even me) marched our troops into Iraq, where Bush now admits al-Qaeda was not.

My point is not that President Bush deserves all the blame. My point is that if you are going to play the blame game, you'll have a hard time pinning it on just one side of the aisle. A lot of us had our eyes on the wrong ball.

Minorities Root of Mortgage Collapse? Blame Bush

That crashing sound you heard in the middle of the night was the good Professor Blanchard going off the rails again. He begins with a reasonable bemoaning of our economic peril and the absence of trust. He rightly cites as an example the greed of Bernard Madoff and the negligence of President Bush and his federal watchdogs.

But then Blanchard sails right past that real problem and decides to blame those darn minorities and their enablers in the Democratic Party and the liberal press for originating the subprime lending crisis.

Feel free to review why minority lenders and the Community Reinvestment Act are not to blame. That should be enough to put your attention back on the real problem: deregulation, free-market fundamentalism, and gambling on Wall Street. As Bernard Madoff proves, one bad rich guy can do much more damage to your life savings and the economy as a whole than a couple dozen lazy Mexican families (though the Mexican fellas I see are all busting their humps building our houses and roads for us).

But just in case you can't resist dabbling in the Rush-Limbaugh infused multiculturalismophobia that drives victims to blame all of the country's woes on poor non-white people, try out this argument from a raging anti-immigrationist who pins the blame for minority subprime lending on the political machinations of Geroge W. Bush and Karl Rove:

And the primary political goal of President George W. Bush's political strategist: to bring Hispanics into the Republican Party.

As you'll recall, Rove's best-known tactic to appeal to Latino voters was repeatedly pushing "comprehensive immigration reform" (i.e., an amnesty for illegal immigrants).

Rove, though, had other arrows in his quiver. One was a plan to turn Hispanics into Republicans by providing them with loose credit so they could become homeowners.

... As part of this plan, George W. Bush made several speeches rallying enthusiasm for his October 15, 2002 White House Conference on Increasing Minority Homeownership. For instance, there was his classic Bushian effort on June 18, 2002:

"The goal is, everybody who wants to own a home has got a shot at doing so. The problem is we have what we call a homeownership gap in America. Three-quarters of Anglos own their homes, and yet less than 50 percent of African Americans and Hispanics own homes. … So I've set this goal for the country. We want 5.5 million more homeowners by 2010—million more minority homeowners by 2010. (Applause.) … "

...Bush and Rove didn't have a plan for helping minorities earn more. Instead, they had a plan for helping minorities borrow more.

Bush went on in his June 18th speech:

"Well, probably the single barrier to first-time homeownership is high down payments. "

... CNN reported after Bush's June 17 speech at the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church in Atlanta:

"Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the federal Home Loan Banks—the government-sponsored corporations that handle home mortgages—will increase their commitment to minority markets by more than $440 billion, Bush said."

[Steve Sailer, "Karl Rove—Architect of the Minority Mortgage Meltdown," VDare.com, 2008.09.28]

I by no means endorse this foul-tasting stuff, this raving anti-immigrant baloney. My point is simply that even scaping that bogus goat doesn't clear the Republicans.

Y'all have fun blaming minorities for your problems. It doesn't seem very Sarah Palin/Main Street/Real America to blame the small-potatoes working man for the economic mess.... but that's exactly what the rich white guys behind the Wall Street curtain want you to do.

Bush Agrees with Kucinich: GM Needs Govt Funds

Wednesday evening, I heard two interesting sound bites on NPR. They were covering the House debate on the doomed automaker bailout bill. Republican Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia took the floor to argue against the bill. He asked why Congress should invest public dollars in GM and Chrysler when private investors were unwilling to put their money in those companies. Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio responded that the loss of 3.3 million jobs tied to the American automotive industry was simply "untenable."

The bill passed the House, but failed in the Senate. Now President Bush appears to be taking Rep. Kucinich's position, reversing earlier opposition and looking for a way to direct some TARP money toward GM—not much, maybe $4 billion and change, just enough to keep them afloat until Inauguration Day, when Bush can wash his hands of the problem.

Two ironies here: one, that George W. Bush is agreeing with Dennis Kucinich, and two, that I, a diehard Kucinich supporter, am not sure either man is right. I actually have some sympathy for Rep. Cantor's argument, as the free market still holds great appeal for me. The automakers' plans for restructuring were discussed publicly at the Congressional hearings; if those plans were so great, Wall Street should have responded, right? The market would have recognized the automakers' plan as a winner and started pouring private capital back into the automakers' coffers. That didn't happen (although we can argue chickens and eggs here: GM's stock did tick up on Monday, but investors were more likely betting on government aid, not faith in GM's vision).

Cantor's argument is free market fundamentalism at its finest: if the free market says die, let it die. And for the most part, when it comes to these greedy, mismanaged, short-sighted corporations, I agree. Workers and homeowners have to live and die by the market; why not corporations?

But let's remember: the free market isn't the final arbiter of value. Like Kucinich and now President Bush, Adam Smith saw the free market as a means to some but not all ends. Adam Smith recognized that government has a proper role in doing what the free market cannot. Among other things, the government has in Smith's economics a duty to support those great public works that the free market cannot, things like roads, bridges, and parks.

So the question is not simply "Can GM survive in the free market?" The question is, "Is GM not just a corporation, but a great public work?" Does GM serve such an important public purpose—providing useful jobs, benefits, and products—that we should invest public dollars in it?

President Bush seems to be coming around to Rep. Kucinich's position that yes, GM is so worthy. Will wonders never cease?

Bush Leaves Legacy of Economic Decline

I've stated elsewhere that the housing bubble caused the current economic mess. But new data from the Census Bureau shows that for most Americans, the economy was going sour before the housing market collapsed. According to data gathered beween 2005 and 2007, here's how the economy fared under President George W. Bush compared to where it stood in 2000:

• 77% of cities and towns saw median income drop.
  
• Nationally, median income dropped 4.3%.
• 70% of cities and towns saw poverty increase.
  
• Nationally, poverty increased from 12.4% to 13.3%.
• 71% of cities and towns saw unemployment increase.
  
• Nationally, unemployment increased from 4% to 6.6%.
• 92% of cities and towns saw median home values increase—nationally, median home value went up 26% to $181K...
  
• ...but all that got us, says economist David Wyss, was "a binge of living beyond our means.... We were financing our spending habits by treating houses like giant ATMs," which resulted, according to the AP article, in "an unsustainable housing market that ultimately fueled the current economic crisis." [see Stephen Ohlemacher, "Economy Bad All Over—Even Before Current Crisis," AP via Yahoo News, 2008.12.09.]
  

Heck of a job, Brownie. Following a performance like that, Obama could do nothing but chew his pretzels properly, and he'd still go down in history as a better President than Bush.

But Obama can't afford to take it easy in the White House, not when his predecessor is leaving him eight solid years of proven economic mismanagement.

Bush Easing EPA Rules on Feedlots

Realizing deregulation got a bad name this year, President Bush is busy pushing a rash of new regulations... which really just translate into more favors for corporations at the expense of common folks and common sense. Here's what appears to be another example:

The EPA is implementing new rules for confined animal feeding operations—CAFOs, those big factory farm feedlots that can become environmental nightmares when not properly managed and regulated. This press release, apparently from the EPA and posted in an industry newsletter, makes it sound like the new regulations will prevent all sorts of water pollution. Come December 22, the EPA will require CAFO operators to submit a nutrient management plan with their Clean Water Act permits to address nitrogen and phosphorus from manure.

Now that sounds great... if the CAFO operator is filing a Clean Water Act permit. Check out this paragraph from the press release:

The regulation also requires that an owner or operator of a CAFO that actually discharges to streams, lakes, and other waters must apply for a permit under the Clean Water Act. If a farmer designs, constructs, operates and maintains their facility such that a discharge will occur, a permit is needed. EPA is also providing an opportunity for CAFO operators who do not discharge or propose to discharge to show their commitment to pollution prevention by obtaining certification as zero dischargers [Dave Ryan, EPA, "Manure: EPA Finalizes CAFO Rule," Water and Wastewater.com, 2008.11.17].

"...a CAFO that actually discharges...." How do we know if a CAFO requesting a permit will discharge any waste? Why, they'll tell us, of course:

... [EPA Region 7 Administrator John] Askew described two major provisions of a new agricultural strategy that flows from the Clean Water Act.

One would allow owners of livestock farms to opt out of discharge permit requirements if they can certify that they are not at risk of run-off emergencies....

Tony Corbo of Food and Water Watch is troubled by an approach that allows large livestock farms, known as confined animal feeding operations, to certify that they don’t need discharge permits because they say they are not at risk of discharging.

As far as he can tell, there’s no provision made for EPA to verify those certifications.

“That’s our problem,” Corbo said, “that there’s no oversight over this self-certification. So that’s a major issue" [Art Hovey, "Livestock Operations Await New Rules for Manure Pollution," Lincoln JournalStar, 2008.11.28].

Despite my frequent manure spreading here on the blog, I don't raise cattle and can't claim expertise on feedlot operations. But allowing factory farms to opt out of environmental permitting on their own good word sounds like letting me opt out of getting a building permit just because I tell Zoning Officer Deb Reinicke, "Oh, don't worry, Deb, I'll build it so it won't fall over."

Next up from the Bush Administration: formal USDA recognition of foxes as henhouse guards.

No Time to Waste: President Obama Now!

While President Bush takes up his tattered pom-poms again to schlep mostly ignored from conference to conference and cheer "Free markets! Free markets! Free-ee-ee-ee Markets!", Thomas Friedman wishes the inaugration could happen now:

What we can do now, though, said the Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein, co-author of “The Broken Branch,” is “ask President Bush to appoint Tim Geithner, Barack Obama’s proposed Treasury secretary, immediately.” Make him a Bush appointment and let him take over next week. This is not a knock on Hank Paulson. It’s simply that we can’t afford two months of transition where the markets don’t know who is in charge or where we’re going. At the same time, Congress should remain in permanent session to pass any needed legislation.

This is the real “Code Red.” As one banker remarked to me: “We finally found the W.M.D.” They were buried in our own backyard — subprime mortgages and all the derivatives attached to them.

Yet, it is obvious that President Bush can’t mobilize the tools to defuse them — a massive stimulus program to improve infrastructure and create jobs, a broad-based homeowner initiative to limit foreclosures and stabilize housing prices, and therefore mortgage assets, more capital for bank balance sheets and, most importantly, a huge injection of optimism and confidence that we can and will pull out of this with a new economic team at the helm [Thomas Friedman, "We Found the W.M.D.," New York Times, 2008.11.22].

President Bush has two months left. He could take bold action to fight the economic downturn. Forget replacing his Cabinet with Obama's; fire Dick Cheney, appoint Barack Obama Vice-President, get Congress's approval tomorrow, and then resign.

McCain Was Right: Obama Meets Dictator Without Preconditions

President George W. Bush speaks with President-Elect
Barack H. Obama in the Oval Office November 10, 2008.
[Photo credit: AFP/White House: Eric Draper]
[Joke credit: TPM's Josh Marshall, who got the idea from a reader.]

Who Caused the Recession?

Discussing Mike Ditka's empty bromides on the American job market, I ascribed this week's layoffs at Gehl (46, not 45) to the "Bush Recession." As expected, a couple commenters raged back (I paraphrase), "Well, what about your Democrats? They're in charge of Congress; it's their fault!"

Quick intellectual honesty check: If you believe that the Democrats who have controlled Congress for the past 22 months are responsible for the current recession*, do you also believe that the Republicans who had controlled Congress from 1995 to 2001 were responsible for the 2001 recession?

Ah, now we have to start thinking. Let's float some alternative theories on the cause of the current economic mess:

Neocons Did It: The War in Iraq

THE Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

The former World Bank vice-president yesterday said the war had, so far, cost the US something like $US3trillion ($3.3 trillion) compared with the $US50-$US60-billion predicted in 2003.

...The spending on Iraq was a hidden cause of the current credit crunch because the US central bank responded to the massive financial drain of the war by flooding the American economy with cheap credit.

"The regulators were looking the other way and money was being lent to anybody this side of a life-support system," he said.

That led to a housing bubble and a consumption boom, and the fallout was plunging the US economy into recession and saddling the next US president with the biggest budget deficit in history, he said [Peter Wilson, "Iraq War 'Caused Slowdown in the US," The Australian, 2008.02.28].

Bush Did It: Tax Cuts and Funding War with Foreign Credit

With China and other foreign countries absorbing Treasury securities directly, and U.S. corporations still coming off of their late-90's investment binge, the beneficiaries of the tax cuts absorbed newly issued securities primarily in the form of mortgage obligations and the bulk of the real investment was spent to build residential homes to excess. We are now seeing the results of that overinvestment.

So the policies of recent years have indeed been stimulative. But stimulative to what? Primarily to unproductive investment and poor credit. There is nothing wrong with debt that is incurred to obtain productive assets, legitimate national security, or the relief of suffering. In this instance, there is little to show but liabilities. The U.S. is now saddled with a burdensome federal debt, a deep current account deficit, reduced competitiveness, a weakened financial system, a tragic and needless loss of life on both sides of the war, and a growing indebtedness that allows major U.S. companies to be picked away by foreign hands like apples from a tree [John P. Hussman, "How the War, Tax Cuts, and the Swaps Market Debased the U.S. Financial System," HussmanFunds.com, 2008.07.21].

We Did It: Consumer Debt

There's no magic bullet, says Steven Fazzari, economics professor at Washington University in St. Louis. The root cause of the current economic slowdown in the U.S. goes back several decades. There has been a concurrent wave of increasing consumer spending and rising consumer indebtedness. In the past, consumer spending actually helped the economy as it raised firms' sales and encouraged more hiring. But the associated rise in household debt, most obviously in the recent housing bubble, has come back to haunt the U.S. [Shula Neuman, "Recession's Root Cause Is Consumer Debt, Expert Says," Washington University in St. Louis News & Information, 2008.03.31]

Commenters, feel free to join the link war. Post your favorite articles, fix the blame... and let us know who can fix the problem.

By the way, if you think Presidents have anything to do with the economy (and both McCain and Obama argue that they do), it's worth noting that during the last 50 years, the best economic growth has happened under Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton. Next come Reagan and Carter in a tie, then Nixon and Ford. Both Bushes are at the bottom of the list. As I've said, if nothing else, vote your pocketbook... and vote Dem!

Recession: Last week's GDP numbers showed the economy shrank 0.3% during the third quarter. Some economists will say it's not a recession until we get two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction. The National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as a "significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. Take your pick.

Bush to Banks: Spread the Wealth!

America would never elect a President who would spew such socialist nonsense as "Spread the wealth!" It's inconceivable that any patriotic American in the White House would ever advocate any sort of redistribution of anyone's hard-earned money....

WASHINGTON – An impatient White House served notice Tuesday on banks and other financial companies receiving billions of dollars in federal help to quit hoarding the money and start making more loans.

"What we're trying to do is get banks to do what they are supposed to do, which is support the system that we have in America. And banks exist to lend money," White House press secretary Dana Perino said...

Said Perino: "The way that banks make money is by lending money. And so, they have every incentive to move forward and start using this money" ["White House Tells Banks to Stop Hoarding Money," AP via Yahoo News, 2008.10.28].

I have never lived in more interesting, more exciting, or, on occasions like this, more hilarious times.

Birds do it, bees do it, even educated G-O-P's do it! Let's do it, let's spread the wealth!



Alanis Morissette sings Cole Porter to the Avengers: makes as much sense as anything John McCain has said this month. Readers and commenters, enjoy! :-D