Robert Reich on The Big Economic Story and how Obama isn't helping

If anything, Obama is playing right into the hands of the Republicans and losing the debate before there's even a debate. Obama and his team somehow think that with a few minor tweaks here and there (mostly on Wall Street) everything will magically bounce back and we will see Clinton-era economic growth. It's not going to happen for quite a few years. Much more on the subject from Robert Reich.

Quiz: What’s responsible for the lousy economy most Americans continue to wallow in?

A. Big government, bureaucrats, and the cultural and intellectual elites who back them.

B. Big business, Wall Street, and the powerful and privileged who represent them.

These are the two competing stories Americans are telling one another.

Yes, I know: It’s more complicated than this. In reality, the lousy economy is due to insufficient demand – the result of the nation’s almost unprecedented concentration of income at the top. The very rich don’t spend as much of their income as the middle. And since the housing bubble burst, the middle class hasn’t had the buying power to keep the economy going. That concentration of income, in turn, is due to globalization and technological change – along with unprecedented campaign contributions and lobbying designed to make the rich even richer and do nothing to help average Americans, insider trading, and political bribery.

So B is closer to the truth.

But A is the story Republicans and right-wingers tell. It’s a dangerous story because it deflects attention from the real problem and makes it harder for America to focus on the real solution – which is more widely shared prosperity. (I get into how we might do this in my new book, Aftershock.)

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Feds tracking American's credit card and travel purchases

And yet some people think WikiLeaks is the problem? No, it's programs like this and an out of control government that is the problem. Transparency and accountability is a good thing. Let's talk about who is the real rogue and who hates freedom.

Federal law enforcement agencies have been tracking Americans in real-time using credit cards, loyalty cards and travel reservations without getting a court order, a new document released under a government sunshine request shows.

The document, obtained by security researcher Christopher Soghoian, explains how so-called “Hotwatch” orders allow for real-time tracking of individuals in a criminal investigation via credit card companies, rental car agencies, calling cards, and even grocery store loyalty programs. The revelation sheds a little more light on the Justice Department’s increasing power and willingness to surveil Americans with little to no judicial or Congressional oversight.

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GOP against internet privacy for consumers

Go figure, another step backwards for consumers. Is it ever possible for them to side with consumers over business?

Republicans, who will control the House of Representatives in January, greeted the idea of Internet "do not track" legislation coolly on Thursday, expressing concern that hindering advertiser access to consumers web browsing habits would slow innovation.

Their opposition bodes badly for the Federal Trade Commission as it promotes a plan to allow consumers to bar data and advertising companies from monitoring what websites they view and what content they download.

Representative Ed Whitfield, the ranking Republican on the House consumer protection subcommittee, expressed concern that the free services now financed by advertising would be hurt, and that consumers would lose access to ads they want to see.

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Krugman: Democrats 'will have to look elsewhere' for leadership

Paul Krugman weighs in on the Cave Week theme. There are a lot of ways to see the message of this column. One way is, Here's what Obama is made of:

After the Democratic “shellacking” in the midterm elections, everyone wondered how President Obama would respond. Would he show what he was made of? Would he stand firm for the values he believes in, even in the face of political adversity?

On Monday, we got the answer: he announced a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking — successfully, it seems — to destroy him.

So I guess we are, in fact, seeing what Mr. Obama is made of.

It gives us exactly no pleasure to acknowledge this stuff.

Another way to slice through this column is via the pay freeze. For Krugman, Obama did exactly the wrong thing, a meaningless gesture that nevertheless conceded the Conservative narrative. "[F]reezing federal pay is cynical deficit-reduction theater. ... The actual savings, about $5 billion over two years, are chump change given the scale of the deficit."

Contrast the meaningless federal pay freeze with the actual hit the deficit will take if (when) Obama caves in on the Big Boy tax cuts: "Meanwhile, there’s a real deficit issue on the table: whether tax cuts for the wealthy will, as Republicans demand, be extended."

In other words, Obama could have used the pay freeze as a way to emphasize the hard line on real deficit reduction. Did he?

[H]e didn’t. Instead, he apparently intended the pay freeze announcement as a peace gesture to Republicans the day before a bipartisan summit. At that meeting, Mr. Obama, who has faced two years of complete scorched-earth opposition, declared that he had failed to reach out sufficiently to his implacable enemies. He did not, as far as anyone knows, wear a sign on his back saying “Kick me,” although he might as well have [my emphasis].

Krugman then asks the inevitable — Why? What on earth is the White House thinking?

He offers several possible answers. For example: It's almost as if Obama's systematically trying "to convince the people who put him where he is that they made an embarrassing mistake". Ouch. (The Professor misses the obvious answer — the White House does what Our Owners want them to do — but hey, we're all guessing here.)

Regardless, for Krugman as for others the new bottom line is the title of this piece. The Democratic party can no longer look to Obama for leadership; it has to look elsewhere. For Krugman, that means Congress, at least for now.

Me, I'll need to see it; after all, it is Cave Week.

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What was the President thinking?

In the six weeks that Marine Commandant General James Amos has been on the job, he has twice publicly embarrassed his commander in chief over his (Amos') opposition to the repeal of DADT. How did the President choose a new Marine commandant who is so violently opposed to one of the President's own top priorities? Did no one in the White House, the President included, understand how weak it continues to make the President look having his military commanders undercut their own boss on national TV, over and over again? They couldn't have chosen a Marine Commandant who agreed with the President on this issue? And more generally, do they not see how weak it makes the President look to constantly be challenged by others, and have them get away with it, time and again?

I think re-election is going to be very difficult if the public starts to believe that the President is a pushover. Yet that is the theme that this White House seems intent on promoting. At some point, this is going to catch up with them - and it just did, a few weeks ago, during the elections. Americans don't vote for people they think are weak. Read More......

WikiLeaks domain name goes offline, then moves to Switzerland

Is that Joe Lieberman again destroying freedom of the press or would that be others in power who are unhappy about American citizens knowing more about their democracy? The Guardian:

Everydns.net said that the attacks – which have been going on all week, and led the site to temporarily host its services on Amazon's more resilient EC2 "cloud computing" service – "threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites".

WikiLeaks was given 24 hours' notice of the termination, and everydns said: "Any downtime of the wikileaks.org website has resulted from its failure to use another hosted DNS service provider."

The move comes after several days of WikiLeaks coming under a determined DDOS attack, apparently from hackers friendly to the point of view of the US government, which has disparaged the site's leaking of thousands of US diplomatic cables.

After the initial disruption, WikiLeaks has now moved the domain to Switzerland. Read More......

'Disappointing' job growth as unemployment rate increased to 9.8%

November job numbers are out and they're not as good as expected:

In a significant setback to the recovery and market expectations, the United States economy added just 39,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, the Department of Labor reported Friday.

Included in the latest report were revisions from previous months. The agency now says that the economy added 172,000 jobs in October, instead of the 151,000 jobs previously reported.

November’s numbers were far less than the 150,000 jobs forecast. More than 15 million people remain out of work, and 6.3 million of them have been unemployed for six months or longer.

Not good. Yet, Republicans, who created this crisis won't help the unemployed. It's sickening. Read More......

Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Round 2 of Senate Armed Services Committee on the Pentagon's DADT report. Today's witnesses are the Service Chiefs. Over the past couple days, Secretary Gates has said the Service Chiefs are more "sanguine" about the report. And, Marine Corps Commaandant, General Amos, has been particularly outspoken. John McCain is salivating at the opportunity to get the Service Chiefs on his side. Boy, McCain put on a show yesterday. What an ass. A homophobic ass. Watch the Jon Stewart segment on it, which I posted here. We'll have a livechat going on the hearings at AMERICAblog Gay, beginning at 9:00 AM ET. - It's live now.

All day yesterday rumors were flying around about the White House cutting a deal with Senate Republicans on the tax bill, START and other key issues, like funding the government. The thing is: No on is surprised or shocked by rumors that the White House will cave. It's sadly expected.

The Catfood Commission will vote on its report today. The panel needs 14 of its 18 members to support the report for it to get a vote in Congress. That's apparently not going to happen.

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WikiLeaks: Afghan VP arrived in Dubai with $52 million

Yet another reason why we need to declare victory and move on. Immediately. Especially with all of the financial problems at home, Afghanistan (and Iraq) are little more than money wasters. Whether it's the leaked cable about the Afghan VP or others in power, the story remains consistent. What American would prefer throwing more cash at Afghanistan than helping fellow Americans through a very challenging economy? As for the US political leaders who are complaining about WikiLeaks, doesn't the public have the full right to know about this alleged corruption? It may not be good news or comfortable news, but the taxpayers who are funding this ought to know.

It's a massive cash grab and we're footing the bill.

The cable adds: "Many other notable private individuals and public officials maintain assets (primarily property) outside Afghanistan, suggesting these individuals are extracting as much wealth as possible while conditions permit."

Two other cables provide graphic detail of such "wealth extraction" on the part of the governors of key provinces in eastern Afghanistan. Usman Usmani, governor of Ghazni, and Juma Khan Hamdard, governor of Paktiya, are accused of systemic corruption, theft of public funds and extorting money from construction contractors on a regular basis.

"Credible sources indicate that some of the most senior government officials in [Ghazni] province have chronically engaged in significant corrupt acts: embezzling public funds, stealing humanitarian assistance, and misappropriating government property, among others," one cable says, basing its conclusions on interviews with a wide range of law enforcement officials and other citizens.

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Nigeria to file bribery charges against Dick Cheney

Now this is shocking. Not the charges, but that someone is serious about pressing charges against Cheney and that Interpol will issue a warrant.

Nigeria will file charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and officials from five foreign companies including Halliburton Co. over a $180 million bribery scandal, a prosecutor at the anti-graft agency said.

Indictments will be lodged in a Nigerian court “in the next three days,” Godwin Obla, prosecuting counsel at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said in an interview today at his office in Abuja, the capital. An arrest warrant for Cheney “will be issued and transmitted through Interpol,” the world’s biggest international police organization, he said.

Peter Long, Cheney’s spokesman, said he couldn’t immediately comment when contacted today and said he would respond later to an e-mailed request for comment.

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AFSCME defends public workers

AFSCME is pushing back against the right wing attacks on public workers.

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VIDEO: Cat plays on stairs

(H/t to our seriously warped friends over at HuffPost Hill.) Read More......

Meet TSA's Miss December

Oh là là ! More of the TSA pin-up calendar from Towleroad. Read More......

Will DREAM lead to more illegal immigration?

Sen. Jeff Sessions opposes the Democrats' lame-duck push for the DREAM Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for foreign-born children of undocumented immigrants if they attend college or enter into the military. Politico reports:

None of the bills has been reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee or undergone a cost analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, wrote Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

“This shell game makes it nearly impossible for members of this body, and their constituents, to properly review and consider the legislation prior to a vote,” he said. “It is an abuse of the process and on that basis alone members ought to oppose cloture.”

What's most frustrating about this sort of "process argument" from Republicans -- It's not that I don't like what you're doing; it's the way you're going about it I don't like -- is that it's entirely disingenuous. Republicans only care about things like reconciliation when it's not them employing it (it was okay when it was used to pass the Bush tax cuts, but not health care), and their problem with the DREAM Act isn't that Democrats are going about it the wrong way. Later in the Politico story, you get to the real reason Sessions is making such a fuss about vetting the DREAM Act: "by rewarding illegal behavior, [it] will encourage future illegal immigration."

That's what Republican opposition to immigration reform is all about (besides an excuse to exclaim their favorite word, "amnesty!"): being "tough" on those who live in the country without authorization. When it comes to DREAM, they think providing citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants is amnesty by proxy -- and fear it will encourage more parents to cross the border illegally to provide their children the opportunity to become citizens.

One can see how Republicans might see this as an incentive. Many parents do come to the United States hoping to provide their children a better life -- and they've been willing to work low-wage jobs in construction, agriculture, and the service industry without health care, Social Security, or any chance of participating in civil society -- to do it. However, the DREAM Act would only provide current residents under a certain age -- not new ones -- with the ability to earn citizenship.

But it's actually quite telling that Republicans are afraid of the possible incentive giving college grads and military members citizenship would provide for people to cross illegally. Anti-immigrant activists like to pretend that those who are here illegally have just chosen to hop the fence instead of going through a straightforward immigration process. But what this says is that getting a college degree or fighting on a battlefield are actually easier than going through our immigration system -- otherwise, why would it be such a draw? Now that seems like something "immigration reform" should focus on. Read More......

Peter 'Save Social Security' Orszag is negotiating his next job – Citigroup

Via Digby, we discovered this little love note in the business press:

Citigroup Inc., recovering from its $45 billion bailout in 2008, is in advanced talks to hire former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Orszag, 41, may take a job in the New York-based firm’s investment-banking division, the people said, declining to be identified because the discussions are private. An announcement may come as early as today, one of the people said.

So let's see, the sequence is:

2005 Peter Orszag, already at the Brookings Institute, proposes the Diamond-Orszag Plan, "Saving Social Security" (pdf; intro here; comment here). He wants (surprise) benefit cuts. The Diamond-Orszag Plan is now incorporated into the Bowles-Simpson (Mr. 310-Million Tits) Deficit Commission Proposal.

2006 Orszag is picked to direct The Hamilton Project, created by Robert Rubin "to think about what a future Democratic administration would do" in the economic sphere. Senator Obama attends the opening.

2007 Orszag goes to the Congressional Budget Office, where his specialty was analyzing the effect of health care costs on the federal budget.

2009 Orszag runs OMB for President Obama, where he makes Deficit Fear his specialty. During the run-up to the health care bill:

Orszag ... had meetings with insurance executives and health experts as the White House made health reform its top legislative priority after enacting the $814 billion stimulus.

2010 Orszag leaves OMB in August and immediately raises his head in September with a NY Times editorial arguing for extension of the Bush tax cuts.

November 3 Orszag writes a NY Times column arguing again for "saving Social Security" by cutting benefits.

It's now barely December, and Orszag has already been spotted negotiating his earthly reward. (Psst: The record is 30; I'd go for 31.)

From Rubin to Obama to Bowles-Simpson to Citi. Not bad for a guy who had to climb his way up from Exeter. As Groucho once said, "Clip me off a piece of that."

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