Hullabaloo

Sunday, September 18, 2011

 
More of this, please
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

Well, whaddaya know:

President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials.

With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicare and Medicaid.

Mr. Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his proposal the “Buffett Rule,” in a reference to Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained repeatedly that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages.

Does it have a chance of passing the Republican House or the worthless collection of conservative "Democratic" Senators? Of course not. Does that matter? No, it doesn't. It's there to send a political message, communicate Democratic values to the voting electorate, and make Republicans squirm in their chairs. Good. All that is needed now is for Democrats to stand as firm on the Buffett rule as the GOP will stand on cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. If that means no budget gets passed, then fine. Hang it on the Republicans. Cuts to Medicare and Medicaid suck, and Republicans should be blamed for all three: stopping the Buffett rule, trying to cut Medicare and Medicaid, and preventing America from having a budget. A perfect political trifecta. Hopefully the President's advisers can see the obvious.

It would appear that Obama the legislative conciliator has given way to Obama the political campaigner. This is where he is at his best. This is the Obama that cleaned Republican clocks in 2008. Republicans and centrist compromise fetishists in the Democratic Party will no doubt complain about it, and decry that we have moved to the "silly season" of campaign mode in which no legislation can be accomplished.

In reality, this is the mode Obama should have adopted throughout the entirety of his first four years. Conservatives never stop being in campaign mode. That's part of why their message is almost always clear. That's why legislation gets passed that fits their parameters or doesn't pass at all if they can help it, whether they're actually in power or not.

It's Democrats who are so often fooled into believing that when campaign season ends, legislative season begins. There is, in fact, no difference between the two for policymakers who actually want to be successful and implement a vision.

Long live campaign season.


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thereisnospoon 9/18/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Saturday, September 17, 2011

 

Saturday Night At The Movies

Ahhh-CHOO!! Oh, crap.

By Dennis Hartley

Graffiti with punctuation: Jude Law in Contagion

So you say you don’t have enough nightmarish fodder for those racing thoughts that keep you tossing and turning on sweat-soaked sheets every night…what with the economy, the Teabaggers, the pending demise of entitlement programs, the Teabaggers, the rising costs of healthcare, and the Teabaggers? Are you prone to health anxiety? Do you spend hours on wrongdiagnosis.com in a dogged search to confirm your worst fears that your hangnail is surely a symptom of some horrible wasting disease? And there’s no way in hell I can convince you the glass is half-full, not half-empty? Bubbeleh, have I got a movie for you.

Steven Soderbergh has taken the network narrative/pseudo-Cinema verite formula that propelled Traffic, his 2000 Oscar winner about the ‘war’ on drugs, and applied it to similar effect in Contagion, a cautionary tale that envisions profound socio-political upheaval in the wake of a major killer pandemic (which most epidemiological experts seem to concur is not a matter of “if”, but of “when”). In an opening montage (teasingly entitled as “Day 2”), the camera tails the person we assume to be our Patient Zero, an American businesswoman (Gwyneth Paltrow) returning from an overseas trip, as she kills time at a Chicago airport lounge, waiting for her final connecting flight home. She appears to be developing a slight cold. Soderbergh’s camera starts to linger on seemingly inconsequential close-ups, just long enough to pique our interest. A dish of peanuts. A door knob. Paltrow’s hand as she pays her tab. A creeping sense of dread arises. The scenario becomes more troubling when Soderbergh ominously cuts to a succession of individuals in Hong Kong, Tokyo and London who have all suddenly taken extremely ill.

Whatever these people have ‘got’, it works fast. By the time Paltrow is reunited with her kids and her husband (Matt Damon, as the Everyman of the piece), we’ve watched several of the overseas victims collapse and die quite horribly; in the meantime her sniffles and sore throat escalates to fever, weakness and ultimately a grand mal seizure. Within moments of her arrival at the ER, it’s Mystery Virus 1, Doctors 0. It’s only the beginning of the nightmare. An exponential increase in deaths quickly catches the attention of the authorities, which in turn saddles us with a bevy of new characters to keep track of. There are the CDC investigators in the U.S. (Kate Winslet is in the field, while her boss Laurence Fishburne holds the meddlesome politicos at bay) and Marion Cotillard playing a doctor enlisted by the W.H.O. to look into Hong Kong as the possible ground zero. There are the front line researchers doing the lab work to isolate the virus and develop a vaccine (Jennifer Ehle, Demetri Martin and Elliott Gould). Even Homeland Security gets into the act; Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston is a liaison who tosses out a couple possible terrorist scenarios (could this be a “weaponized” virus?). Jude Law portrays an activist blogger with a large following, who claims there is an existing vaccine that works, but that the CDC is withholding distribution for nefarious reasons (something to do with Big Pharma; certainly feasible). Law is also the recipient of a zinger that I am sure print journalists will be falling over each other to quote ad nauseum; Gould’s doctor brushes him off with “A blog isn’t writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation.”

There are a great number of threads to keep track of in Contagion; fortunately, Soderbergh knows exactly how to bring all the ingredients to a gently rolling boil by the film’s denouement without overcooking the ham, as it were. By reining in his powerhouse cast just enough, and working from a screenplay (by Scott Z. Burns) that largely eschews melodrama, Soderbergh keeps it real (if a tad clinical at times), resulting in an effective and thought-provoking ensemble piece (by contrast, Wolfgang Peterson’s similarly star-studded 1995 thriller Outbreak plays more like an action cartoon). In fact, I can’t help but wonder how many of those folks who flocked to theatres last weekend (and helped make Contagion #1 at the box office for its opening week) were ultimately disappointed by Soderbergh’s relatively unadorned approach to the subject matter. Historically, Soderbergh tends to deliver either sure-fire populist ‘product’ (Out of Sight, Erin Brokovich, Oceans 11 and its sequels), or obscure experiments aimed squarely at the art house hipster crowd (Schizopolis, Full Frontal, Bubble). On occasion, he finds the middle ground (Sex, Lies and Videotape, The Limey, Traffic, and now…Contagion).

Conceptually, Contagion is actually a closer cousin to The War Game, the 1965 film from director Peter Watkins that depicted, in a very stark and realistic manner, what might happen in a ‘typical’ medium-sized British city immediately following a nuclear strike. While the root cause of the respective civic crises in the two films differs, the resulting impact on the everyday populace is quite similar, and serves as a grim reminder that no matter how “civilized” we fancy ourselves to be, we are but one such catastrophic event away from complete societal breakdown. Soderbergh’s film also raises interesting questions, like, are we prepared for an event like this? If the virus were to be a new strain, how long would it take, realistically, to develop a vaccine? How much longer would it take to manufacture 300 million doses (or perhaps a smaller number, give or take the possible attrition rate of, say for the sake of argument, 100 million who might die from the disease by the time the medicine is available). And speaking of piles of corpses, how do you dispose of them, with one eye on public safety? Who gets to be first in line to receive the first batch of vaccine? Who decides? And, outside of Soderbergh’s narrative (just to satisfy my own curiosity), the CDC isn’t one of those pesky government agencies currently targeted for budget cuts by our Republican and Teabagger buds in Congress…is it? I wish I could reassure myself and fellow hypochondriacs with “It’s only a movie.” But I can’t. The best I can do for now is: A gezunt Dir in Pupik! And, er, pleasant dreams.

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Dennis Hartley 9/17/2011 05:30:00 PM |

 
"Republicans like Rick Perry are skeptical of everything the government does—except when it executes people"

by digby

Boy isn't that the truth. Dahlia Lithwick looks at the death penalty and the Republicans and it isn't pretty.

I have to say that this issue really brings out the beast in the right wingnut. When I tweeted about Perry's death toll during the debate (after he fatuously declared "I always err on the side of life")I was inundated with vicious responses that were barely beyond gibberish. Something about being against executing people when you could simply lock them up for life really strikes a nerve. They want them dead and they don't want to hear about anyone possibly being innocent. In fact, the mere idea of it makes them livid.


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digby 9/17/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
If Bloomberg can say it...
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

New York City mayor and centrist third party favorite Michael Bloomberg today:

Mayor Bloomberg today warned there will be widespread rioting on the streets if more jobs are not created.

As it emerged the number of people applying for unemployment benefits in the U.S. jumped last week to the highest level in three months, the Mayor spoke out, insisting that if nothing is done Americans will start revolting.

'That's what happened in Cairo. That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want those kinds of riots here.'

Mayor Bloomberg added: 'The damage to a generation that can't find jobs will go on for many, many years.

'At least he [Obama] has got some ideas on the table, whether you like those or not,' he said.

His comments were in reference to the recent uprising in Egypt, which toppled president Hosni Mubarak, and protests in Spain by people outraged their government was spending millions on a papal visit rather than on dealing with unemployment.

Bloomberg and I would doubtless disagree and probably quite strongly on many of the policies necessary to change the unemployment equation. Bloomberg thinks we need to do something about "the spending side" of the equation, which sounds a lot like more Grand Bargain talk to toss Medicare and Social Security into the jaws of Wall St. And he no doubt thinks that job-killing "free trade" agreements are lovely.

But at least somebody with "independent" media credibility is putting the jobs crisis in the stark emotional terms it deserves while supporting Obama's jobs program.


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thereisnospoon 9/17/2011 03:00:00 PM |

 
Will to win

by digby

Huh.

A snapshot of the Republican Party, four months before the first primary ballots are cast, shows that voters are evenly divided between preferring a presidential nominee who can defeat Mr. Obama or one who aligns with them on most issues. A majority of voters who support the Tea Party movement place a higher priority on winning back the White House.

And here I thought the Tea Party people were non-partisan idealists who only cared about the issues. It turns out they just want to beat the Democrat. Go figure.

The NY Times poll is pretty interesting. People are very, very depressed about the economy, for obvious reasons. But I have to say that considering just how awful it is, Obama's not doing that badly. Still, Democrats are getting frustrated. They are, after all, the ones who believe that government is supposed to step in and help fix these sorts of problems and they aren't seeing any action. Not that they necessarily blame Obama alone for that, but they are nervous.

The Republicans are all over the place, but I'm quite sure they'll coalesce quite nicely now that it appears that the president may be vulnerable. They just want to win. The big question mark is the vaunted independents who aren't leaning one way or the other. But the truth is that most of them will vote for the party they usually vote for, regardless of what they call themselves. The very small slice of the electorate that are true swing voters are fairly likely to swing to the GOP, in my opinion, just because they are unhappy and figure they might as well give someone else a chance. Clearly they aren't ideological and don't care much about the discrete issues that do separate the parties and which often constitute the reason a voter identifies with one over the other. They just try politicians on until one feels comfortable.

One thing is clear. It's not going to be a blow out unless the Republicans nominate the Bachman/Gingrich ticket and it's not looking good for that. Both Perry and Romney are credible candidates. We'd better start paying attention to all those voting restrictions they've been feverishly passing all over the country since 2010 because it's going to be a close one.



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digby 9/17/2011 01:30:00 PM |

 
Naming names and calling out the cheap lies

by digby

Chris Hayes' new show debuted this morning and it's really good, a very welcome change from the usual cable news fare and especially welcome on a Saturday morning, recapping the week's horrors.

This was his closing monologue:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I hadn't heard that sick comment from CNN's Erick Erickson. But I can't say I'm surprised.

You can see the whole show here if you missed it. Tomorrow will be a new one.

I'm actually looking forward to a Sunday morning talk show.

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digby 9/17/2011 12:30:00 PM |

 
Dontcha know that you can count him in (out)

by digby

Andrew Breitbart thinks the shit is coming down, man:

This is the same guy who practically burst into tears when James Hoffa said "let's take the sonsabitches out" in the November elections.


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digby 9/17/2011 11:30:00 AM |

 
Blue America Chat: Chris Donovan

by digby

From Howie

Last July Chris Donovan, Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives, wrote a guest post for us, It's long past time to start rebuilding America. At the time, we pointed out why Chris is the kind of leader progressives long for.
He's not just good on the issues, he understands the mechanisms of power that create public policy. He's not the kind of progressive that sits around being right and not getting anything done. That's why he holds the top position in the Connecticut legislature, and that's why the Connecticut legislature has been taking such cutting-edge positions on issue after issue at a time when reactionaries like Scott Walker, Rick Scott, Rick Snyder, Rick Perry, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Tom Corbett, Paul LePage, Bob McDonnell, etc. are dragging their states backwards.

Chris is running for the U.S. House seat in the western and central part of the state (CT-5) being given up by Senate-bound Chris Murphy. It looks like his opponent will be a crazed teabagger, Mark Greenberg, a firm believer in ending Social Security and Medicare so corporate taxes can be further cut and the estate tax on multimillionaires can be eliminated. He's wrong on every single issue-- from the environment and women's Choice to gun control and national security.

But Chris is not just right on every issue; he's been a leader on every issue. He led the successful fights in the Connecticut House to pass 12 minimum wage increases, implement the strongest campaign finance reform legislation in the country, allow all Connecticut students to pay instate tuition rates through the CT DREAM Act, create the first statewide paid sick leave legislation in the country, ensure marriage equality, end discrimination based on sexual preference and gender identity, decriminalize marijuana, and implement a municipal pooling of health care and prescription coverage that will save both the state and its cities and towns money-- the first step on the path to a public option for Connecticut. Dream candidate? Absolutely-- and very much worth helping elect to Congress!

Like every candidate Blue America has endorsed this year, Chris has told us that jobs is the single most important issue voters in his district are concerned about. If you listen closely, though, Chris isn't using Republican Party/Inside-the-Beltway framing to discuss it. He's very much an advocate for public sector jobs and for the government playing a vital role in the general welfare of the nation. "Our private industries and small businesses need customers," he told me yesterday, "at the same time that our towns and cities need teachers, nurses, and public safety workers. Instead of calling for more jobs to be cut, Republicans and pundits in Washington and Hartford should join progressive Democrats in investing in quality jobs with strong benefits that benefit our communities. We need more teachers, more firefighters, more construction workers, and more nurses. The Republicans in the House claimed to be running on a jobs agenda in 2010-- more than 240 days and zero jobs bills later, it’s time for them to honor their promises."

Below is a video of Chris announcing his campaign last week. He went right to protecting Social Security and Medicare from ravenous Republican class war fanatics. "When I hear that the Inside-the-Beltway crowd is talking about cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, I am outraged. These programs make America what it is, a country that cares-- about our seniors, about our children, about our people. That’s what I’m going to fight for in Congress-- to protect our future, to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and to make sure they are around to protect our grandparents and our grandchildren."

Chris will be joining us for a live blog session at Crooks and Liars today at 2pm (ET). I hope you'll come over and meet the Speaker and our newest candidate. And, if you can, please consider giving him a hand in the only district in New England Republicans are targeting for a blue to red switch. You can contribute to his campaign here.

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digby 9/17/2011 10:10:00 AM |

 
Toxic Sludge Champ Rick Perry
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

This story hasn't received nearly as much press as it deserves:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry tried to remove a state commissioner who opposed expanding a West Texas nuclear waste dump run by one of his largest political donors, Reuters reports today. When it became clear that Bobby Gregory of the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commission might be able to block the dump from accepting out-of-state nuclear waste, Perry's office offered him an alternative job—a prestigious post on the board of regents of a state university.

The news is certain to fuel the longstanding political scandal over the dump, which was licensed in 2008 by Perry's top environmental regulator, Glenn Shankle, over the objections of his staff, three of whom resigned rather than sign off the on the deal (Shankle later left to become a lobbyist for the dump's parent company, Waste Control Solutions). WCS is owned by Harold Simmons, a billionaire corporate raider who has given Perry's campaigns at least $1.2 million.

This is an especially big deal, since Rick Perry has fueled his political career on the backs of just a few big donors. Of particular note is one Harold Simmons, nuclear waste dump kingpin of west Texas. Per NPR:

In his career as governor of Texas, a state where millionaires are plentiful and contribution limits are lax, Perry has raised about half his campaign cash from just 204 big donors, according to an analysis by the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice. And his administration has helped many of those donors, even when it comes to disposing of radioactive waste.

Perry donor Harold Simmons, an 80-year-old billionaire, is a political player. He gave millions of dollars to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, financing ads that knee-capped Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

For Perry, Simmons has anted up roughly $3 million worth of support over the past decade — some of the money going to Perry's campaign committee, other dollars going to the Republican Governors Association when Perry was fundraising for it.

Simmons also owns Waste Control Specialists LLC, working in the heavily regulated industry of radioactive waste disposal.

Craig McDonald, of Texans for Public Justice, says those two facts go together.

"There has been no secret that Harold Simmons' direct self-interest lies in building, permitting and operating his hazardous waste dump and low-level nuclear waste dump in West Texas," he says. "And the wheels have been greased at every turn."

n 2003, the Texas Legislature took the state-run radioactive waste program and made it a private monopoly for Waste Control Specialists. Simmons later bragged about the lobbying that accomplished that.

Waste Control Specialists owned the site in West Texas. But it needed an environmental review. A panel of eight state employees fended off corporate lobbyists and the Perry administration for four years to produce their report.

"We knew from the beginning that this permit was intended to be issued," says Glenn Lewis, who was on the panel.

And they understood why.

"The realization that Harold Simmons was a top campaign contributor to Gov. Perry," Lewis says.

Recall that when George W. Bush was selected President, there was a sense that things wouldn't be so bad, because Bush had a record of cooperative with Democrats in the legislature, and no terribly onerous scandals involving outright corruption. He was, until he moved into the Oval Office, the sort of Republican who could take up the mantle of the "compassionate conservative" and people would believe him. There had been indications of Bush's absence of character throughout his life, but his record as a politician did not suggest that he would be the most corrupt and hyper-partisan president in America's history.

Rick Perry's record, by contrast, is incontrovertibly and ostentatiously corrupt and incompetent. It's all on the record:




If a majority this nation elects Rick Perry president, its citizens will deserve every moment of suffering they receive. There will be no excuse.


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thereisnospoon 9/17/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Friday, September 16, 2011

 
Don't kill this man

by digby


Just this:





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digby 9/16/2011 07:45:00 PM |

 
Bad investments
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

As the Solyndra non-story picks up steam in the news media, it might be worth remembering this:

Osama al-Nujaifi, the Iraqi parliament speaker, has told Al Jazeera that the amount of Iraqi money unaccounted for by the US is $18.7bn - three times more than the reported $6.6bn.

Just before departing for a visit to the US, al-Nujaifi said that he has received a report this week based on information from US and Iraqi auditors that the amount of money withdrawn from a fund from Iraqi oil proceeds, but unaccounted for, is much more than the $6.6bn reported missing last week.

"There is a lot of money missing during the first American administration of Iraqi money in the first year of occupation.

"Iraq's development fund has lost around $18bn of Iraqi money in these operations - their location is unknown. Also missing are the documents of expenditure.

"I think it will be discussed soon. There should be an answer to where has Iraqi money gone."

And maybe more importantly this:

U.S. taxpayers spent a lot of money on the soldiers, but the Pentagon paid Halliburton to do the work. The company billed the military top dollar knowing that the brass would look the other way. The gravy train finally ground to a halt when two brave members of Congress inquired about the results of the internal audit.

Two, almost none of the money that American taxpayers provided for reconstruction was spent because the rules were too stringent for the CPA's taste.

And three, we dished out Iraqi money to companies like Halliburton like it was going out of style because the United States government knew that neither Congress nor the United Nations would ask us difficult questions about what we were doing with other people's money. Equally importantly, Bush officials were worried that the new Iraqi government might ask us difficult questions about their money once they gained any modicum of power. So they were eager to spend the money while they could.

Or this:

Excess billing for postwar fuel imports to Iraq by the Halliburton Company totaled more than $108 million, according to a report by Pentagon auditors that was completed last fall but has never been officially released to the public or to Congress.

In one case, according to the report, the company claimed that it had paid more than $27 million to transport liquefied petroleum gas it had purchased in Kuwait for just $82,000 - a fee the auditors tartly dismissed as "illogical."

A few lessons to learn from this:

1) Republicans scaring up the Solyndra "scandal" while supporting the Iraq War, Vice President Cheney, and no-bid Halliburton contracts are pretty much tied for history's biggest hyopcrites; and

2) This is what happens when the government subcontracts private companies in the free market. Sometimes things go bust. Sometimes companies go under. Sometimes there may even be fraud involved, although there is little indication that deceit and fraud were operant in the Solyndra case.

3) We have learned what Republicans are willing to invest money toward. Perhaps the media might want to ask Republicans if the freedom to fail is also part of the free market. Evidently, big banks are allowed to implode the economy while getting free money from the government, but the government is not allowed to invest in green technology firms that might fail from time to time at a tiny fraction of the cost. When the NHS subsidizes testing for new pharmaceuticals that don't end up working, is that also a boondoggle of "government waste and abuse"?

God forbid any of the oil companies currently receiving lucrative tax-free subsidies go bankrupt. That would be waste on top of waste.

This sort of thing is probably where the media fails most to do its job: asking follow-up questions based on the implications of certain assumptions and talking-point-based attacks. Asking probing questions is part of my job description as a focus group moderator. It comes fairly naturally. Attorneys are even better than researchers at identifying logical contradictions or reductio ad absurdum implications of certain statements. But whatever they teach in journalism school these days, it isn't how to how hold people accountable for the sum total of their political worldview.

You can't talk about the Solyndra story while ignoring the epic scale of the Halliburton story that dwarfs it both financially and especially morally. You can't talk about the Solyndra loan without asking why the government is forced to invest in risky private companies to do the jobs that need doing in the first place. And you can't talk about the Solyndra loan without asking how and in what ways it fundamentally differs from government investments in risky industries that conservatives do support.


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thereisnospoon 9/16/2011 03:15:00 PM |

 
School for scandal

by digby


Ok. After having just watched the fourth breathless "Solyndra" piece on cable TV, I guess I have to just give up and accept that this stupid, trumped up, pseudo-scandal has got the typically braindead press corps all hot and bothered and it's not going away. There's just no end to this nonsense.

So, it's time to get educated on the damned thing because we're going to have to talk about it whether we want to or not. Here's a timeline of events from ThinkProgress, the five biggest lies about Solyndra by Dave Johnson and Joe Conason on Solyndra vs Whitewater.

And here's Kevin Drum's pithy explanation which serves as an excellent starting place:

Basically, Solyndra was working on a solar technology that promised to be cheaper than silicon, and at the time of the loan it looked really promising both to DOE and to private investors. But then the market turned: Silicon prices dropped, and China started producing super low-cost silicon PV. That spelled doom for Solyndra. They had a good idea, but it didn't work out.

In any case, Solyndra is a tiny fraction of DOE's green-energy loan program, and Solyndra's loan guarantees are dwarfed by those of both fossil fuel and nuclear companies, which range into the multiple billions. There was no scandal in the loan process, and there's nothing unusual about having a certain fraction of speculative programs like this fail. It's all part of the way the free market works.

This is one of the many ways the right --- with the help of well-meaning reformers and the press -- have managed to make any kind of government spending a huge risk for anyone who undertakes it. It started with the "fleecing of America" reports, in which stories about the government funding "the sex life of honeybee studies" and the like became common shorthand for government inefficiency and waste. Over time these stories took on a life of their own creating an image of liberal government run amock even to the extent that Bobby Jindahl mockingly referred to "volcano monitoring" as a ridiculous waste of government money.

This problem was obvious when the stimulus was being proposed. The administration was desperate not to have any of the money go to projects that didn't pan out because this kind of hissy fit would be the obvious result. (Remember all the shrieking that some of the money was going to public health programs and fixing the grass on the Washington Mall?) They weren't wrong to be worried and it's actually surprised me that something like the Solyndra failure hasn't come to light earlier. Of course some of the money was going to go to failed projects, particularly when the free market fetishists insist that they go to private enterprise, the very definition of "risky." Nobody bats a thousand and the fact is that the "success" of the program isn't the most important thing about economic stimulus in any case. Getting the money into the economy is.

So this goes, once again, to the problem of right wing tropes being the default standard because liberalism is the ideology that dare not speak its name. If people understood the role of government in economic crises as being something other than "please save us by cutting spending" this would not be the problem that it is. Unfortunately, the entire population has been indoctrinated into this concept (which I recognize is easy to do) and so they are extremely skeptical of something like stimulus to begin with --- and are quite ready to believe that the whole thing is a crooked game.

What makes it most delicious for the Republicans is their ability to manipulate the press into focusing on alleged Democratic corruption (not that it doesn't ever exist, mind you) while successfully obscuring and stonewalling the very serious, high dollar corruption of the GOP. It all works together like a well oiled machine to paralyze liberal action. And the centrists, like vultures, are there waiting to leap on whatever opening either side gives them to portray themselves as the "pragmatic" "moderate" "common sense" alternative, which somehow always seems to end up being that which benefits the wealthy status quo.


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digby 9/16/2011 02:00:00 PM |

 
Plane authoritarians

by digby

I haven't written about this awful "flying while brown" incident from last week-end, but James Fallows has covered it in depth and I highly recommend you read about it. It reminded me of an incident the last time I flew a couple of months ago.

I was standing on the boarding line, long after all of us had passed through security, when a group of four TSA agents in uniform walked up and began examining the line of about 30 people, walking up and down, looking at us and our luggage. They pulled this young kid (looked about 17) in front of me out of the line and marched him over to the desk where they talked to him at length and looked all through his luggage. When he came back he was pretty shaken. His girlfriend asked what it was about and he said, "I don't know, but it's all pretty weird considering I'm Jewish." The guy standing right in front of him, who hadn't gotten any attention at all turned around and said, "and I'm Muslim." We all shared a nervous laugh and boarded the plane.

I only relate this to show how crude profiling is. In the case Fallows writes about, the plane had already landed and the only thing the people involved had done to raise suspicion was be seated together to precipitate a SWAT team style boarding of the plane and the suspected passengers being hustled off in handcuffs. It's the kind of thing I used to think of as an authoritarian scare tactic designed to make the populace paranoid and anxious. That couldn't happen here, right?

Just in case, I won't be laughing with my fellow suspected passengers anymore, though. This stuff works like a charm.

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digby 9/16/2011 12:30:00 PM |

 
Tim's Bay of Pigs

by digby

Perhaps you've seen this already:

A new book offering an insider's account of the White House's response to the financial crisis says that U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner ignored an order from President Barack Obama calling for reconstruction of major banks.

According to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind, the incident is just one of several in which Obama struggled with a divided group of advisers, some of whom he didn't initially consider for their high-profile roles.

Suskind interviewed more than 200 people, including Obama, Geithner and other top officials for "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and The Education of A President," which will be released Sept. 20. The Associated Press purchased a copy on Thursday.

The book states Geithner and the Treasury Department ignored a March 2009 order to consider dissolving banking giant Citigroup while continuing stress tests on banks, which were burdened with toxic mortgage assets.

In the book, Obama does not deny Suskind's account, but does not reveal what he told Geithner when he found out. "Agitated may be too strong a word," Suskind quotes Obama as saying. Obama says later in the book that he was trying to be decisive but "the speed with which the bureaucracy could exercise my decision was slower than I wanted."

Geithner says in the book that he did not recall that Obama was mad at him about the Citigroup decision and rejected allegations contained in White House documents that his department had been slow to enact the president's plans.

"I don't slow walk the president on anything," Geithner told Suskind.

"The Citbank incident, and others like it, reflected a more pernicious and personal dilemma emerging from inside the administration: that the young president's authority was being systematically undermined or hedged by his seasoned advisers," Suskind writes.

I haven't read the book but Susskind is a highly reputable reporter with a strong record. I have no reason to suspect his facts. So what would this mean? So far, as one would expect, liberals are gathering into factions. The defenders are saying it's all hogwash, don't believe a word of it and the super critics are saying it's a whitewash, excusing the President's leadership by saying it's his advisers who have led him astray.

As I said, I haven't read the book although I plan to. But if this passage is correct, I don't think it excuses the President at all. What it does is paint him as somewhat weak in his early days in office, which I don't find surprising. It's reminiscent of another young president who got swept along by the existing hierarchy and approved a fateful assault called the Bay of Pigs. The question is what happened next. In Kennedy's case, he learned to be extremely skeptical of the establishment and he relied on different advisors before making such decisions in the future.

It must mean something that Tim Geithner is almost all that's left of President Obama's original economic advisers. The only logical answer is that in spite of the above anecdote the President came to depend on Geithner to the exclusion of the others --- and that is very different from how Kennedy reacted. I'll be fascinated to read the book to get a sense of how that happened.



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digby 9/16/2011 11:00:00 AM |

 
That was the week that was

by digby

This came out yesterday, but it was so depressing that I didn't want to post it:

The number of people applying for unemployment benefits jumped last week to the highest level in three months. It's a sign that the job market remains depressed.

The Labor Department said Thursday that weekly applications rose by 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 428,000. The week included the Labor Day holiday.

Applications typically drop during short work weeks. In this case, applications didn't drop as much as the department expected, so the seasonally adjusted value rose. A Labor spokesman said the total wasn't affected by Hurricane Irene.
Still, applications appear to be trending up. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose for the fourth straight week to 419,500.

Applications need to fall below 375,000 to indicate that hiring is increasing enough to lower the unemployment rate. They haven't been below that level since February.
The economy added zero net jobs in August, the worst showing since September 2010. The unemployment rate stayed at 9.1 percent for the second straight month.
The job figures were weak because companies hired fewer workers and not because they stepped up layoffs, economists said. Business and consumer confidence fell last month after a series of events renewed recession fears.

The government reported that the economy barely grew in the first half of the year. Lawmakers fought over raising the debt ceiling. Standard & Poor's downgraded long-term U.S. debt for the first time in history. Stocks tumbled — the Dow lost nearly 16 percent of its value from July 21 through Aug. 10.

Businesses added only 17,000 jobs in August, which was a sharp drop from 156,000 in July. Government cut 17,000 jobs. Combined, total net payrolls did not change.
Unemployment benefit applications are considered a measure of the pace of layoffs.
The total number of people receiving benefits dipped 12,000 to 3.73 million, the third straight decline. But that doesn't include about 3.4 million additional people receiving extended benefits under emergency programs put in place during the recession. All told, about 7.14 million people received benefits for the week ending Aug. 27, the latest data available.

More jobs are desperately needed to fuel faster economic growth. Higher employment leads to more income. That boosts consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of economic growth.

Higher gas and food prices have cut into their buying power this year. The economy expanded at an annual rate of just 0.7 percent, the slowest growth since the recession officially ended two years ago.

So, what to do? Well, even the IMF has weighed in on the lunacy of creating contractionary policies in this environment, so anyone with any sense would not propose that the government would do that. So naturally, the millionaire lunkheads in the Senate are gathering their forces:

Saxby Chambliss’ Gang of Six has grown to 38 U.S. senators from both parties, who on Thursday urged the debt reduction “supercommittee” to aim high and secure $4 trillion in budget savings.

The Georgia Republican was joined by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and a group too large to fit on the news conference stage to send a message to the 12-member joint committee created in the summer’s deal to raise the debt ceiling. The committee must devise a plan by November to reduce future deficits by at least $1.2 trillion, on top of $917 billion in already agreed-upon savings. Chambliss and his gang want to nearly double that, as most budget experts say a $4 trillion course correction is necessary to lasso the nation’s rising debt.

“As you can see, our numbers have grown significantly,” Chambliss said. “We’re not only bipartisan, but we stretch on both sides of the spectrum in our respective caucuses. That’s how serious we know this debt is.”

That's very impressive in its bipartisan idiocy, I'm sure.

But never let it be said that the House of Representatives is going to be left out of the insanity:

Two separate but related Republican efforts are increasing the odds that the government will shut down at the end of September, despite repeated assurances from both GOP and Democratic leaders that neither party has an appetite for another round of brinksmanship.

In a Thursday letter, over 50 House Republicans, led by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), pushed Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to make steep cuts to discretionary spending in the next fiscal year, reneging on the agreement the parties struck to resolve the debt limit standoff. That legislation set a cap on discretionary spending at $1.043 trillion and both Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) are committed to funding the government at that level for the coming year.

But many House conservatives want to go lower, and if they defect then House Democrats will have to pitch in to make sure it passes and avert a shut down.

It doesn't get any better than that for sheer foolishness. Setting aside the bad economics, you have to wonder if the Republicans are just hoping to suppress turnout to zero in the coming election with gambits like this.

Recall:

It is important to recognize how fragile economic perceptions were headed into the final stretch of the debt-ceiling negotiation. Along with Hart Research [Associates], we have been doing economic tracking roughly every quarter from 2007 through today for CNBC. Workers’ perceptions of their likelihood to get a raise, Americans’ confidence in the stock market, and homeowners’ perceptions of their home value were as weak or weaker in June 2011 than they have been at any point during this four-year period.

Americans’ attitudes about the debt ceiling are not only based on the actual outcome but are primarily derived from the manner in which this issue was debated and resolved. Their views about this process are clear, and are overwhelmingly negative.” McInturff contends, “The perception of how Washington handled the debt-ceiling negotiation led to an immediate collapse of confidence in government and all the major players, including President Obama and Republicans in Congress.

So let's start talking about another shutdown!

Oy. Thank God it's the week-end ...

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digby 9/16/2011 09:40:00 AM |

 
Using the Pulpit
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

Digby had a fantastic post yesterday about how the media doesn't even try to analyze whether claims made by various hacks are right or wrong, but simply does its stenographic duty and then reports on the public's perception of the misinformation they blithely helped provide:

Yes, he's accurately reporting what people inaccurately believe. He just forgets to present the real facts and correct their misapprehensions. And then goes on to praise presidential candidates for being savvy enough to flog the same misinformation.

We have a very serious problem with epistemology in this culture and a huge part of it is due to the press. I don't know how to fix it. But until we do, our politics are going to be distorted and dysfunctional.

That's true. Nor can we expect the media to change its stripes. What is going today is a partisanization of the media, rapid on the Right but also slowly gaining steam on the Left. That trend, while better than the misinformation masquerading as objectivity on display in the traditional media, isn't going to solve our epistemology problem. I know there is a cadre of strict deconstructionists who believe that true epistemic objectivity is impossible, and that only the exposure of isms and political agendas in all texts can hope to provide clarity. Thankfully, no one outside of an ivory tower actually believes that. (That sort of thinking is why I left academia.)

There is an actual reality out there. That reality happens to have a liberal bias most of the time. It would be nice if journalists attempted to stand by it and call out peddlers of misinformation, regardless of whether it meant that the journalist appeared to have a liberal slant. Objectivity is defined by adherence to the facts, not the artificial rejection of ideological appearance.

But the media is not likely to provide that. A few corporations dominate the media world; those who aren't bought off are afraid to upset colleagues or readers; there's a general culture of pseudo-objectivity; and an increasingly partisan media isn't really helping solve the problem.

But that's where the much-maligned "bully pulpit" comes in. When the facts are made increasingly irrelevant by a conservative opposition that simply doesn't care if it peddles outrageous lies to a pliant media, the only option left is to tell an alternative story. The truth lies not in attempting to refute the conservative's story through a dispassionate resort to facts, but rather in weaving the facts into a narrative that fits an ideology that makes sense in the context of the universe that actually exists.

That is why the President must be a partisan. A Democratic President's job is first and foremost to explain issues in the context of a progressive narrative. The job is to show why the conservative narrative fails to account for reality.

Telling that story in turn influences the media, who are forced to scribble down notes and dutifully act as stenographers for that story.

In a world where epistemology is dead, all that is left is competing narrative. The narrative that most closely fits the facts should win the day, so long as it is communicated emotionally and effectively. And that's what the bully pulpit is there for. No sane believes that the bully pulpit will help convince Senator X or Y to pass a specific piece of legislation. But it should be able to tilt the media playing field in a specific direction that makes the job of convincing Senator X or Y behind the scenes, easier to accomplish.


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thereisnospoon 9/16/2011 07:30:00 AM |