Month: February 2009

Preserving The Privilege

by digby

Greenwald is justifiably up in arms about the gawd awful misunderstanding of the issue surrounding theObama administration’s invocation of state secrets yesterday. It’s hard to believe that people are defending something which we have all been railing about for years, and even worse that they are so crudely misrepresenting exactly what it is that the DOJ did yesterday. If there is any confusion, I urge you to read Glenn’s post today. The simple fact is that the Obama administration has preserved for itself the power to block any lawsuit it chooses, a power created out of whole cloth by the Bush administration.

Here’s how the DOJ explained it to the NY Times:

A Justice Department spokesman, Matt Miller, said the government did not comment on pending litigation, but he seemed to suggest that Mr. Obama would invoke the privilege more sparingly than its predecessor.

“It is the policy of this administration to invoke the state secrets privilege only when necessary and in the most appropriate cases,” he said, adding that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. had asked for a review of pending cases in which the government had previously asserted a state secret privilege.

Well, that’s a relief. Here’s Glenn:

In defending the Obama administration’s position (without beginning to understand it), The Atlantic‘s Marc Ambinder revealingly wrote — on behalf of civil libertarians who he fantasizes have anointed him their spokesman:

It wouldn’t be wise for a new administration to come in, take over a case from a prosecutor, and completely change a legal strategy in mid-course without a more thorough review of the national security implications. And, of course, the invocation itself isn’t necessarily an issue; civil libertarians and others who voted for Obama did so with the belief that his judgment and his attorney general would be better stewards of that privilege than President Bush and his attorney generals (and vice president.)

We don’t actually have a system of government (or at least we’re not supposed to) where we rely on the magnanimity and inherent Goodness of specific leaders to exercise secret powers wisely. That, by definition, is how grateful subjects of benevolent tyrants think (“this power was bad in Bush’s hands because he’s bad, but it’s OK in Obama’s hands because he is good and kind”). Countries that are nations of laws rather than of men don’t rely on blind faith in the good character of leaders to prevent abuse. They rely on what we call “law” and “accountability” and “checks and balances” to provide those safeguards — exactly the type that Democrats, when it came to the States Secret privilege, long insisted upon before January 20, 2009.

The Cheney-ites used to smirk about how the Obama administration would find that they wanted these “tools” when they got into power and a lot was written before the election about how power, once taken, will never be given back. And, indeed, this was the central thrust of many of our arguments about holding the Bush administration accountable for its abuse of the constitution.

Perhaps this will be the only case in which the Obama DOJ will assert this privilege, although it’s hard to see what’s so different about this particular case than any others of its ilk. But even if they do only use it this one time, because they have preserved the power, it will sit there, waiting to be used by leaders who may not be quite as saintly and wise as our current president. It is now no longer a relic of an administration that is widely seen as reckless and out of control. It’s been validated by their successors. You can see how this is a problem.

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Richard Perle Blames His Failure On The Negroes

I get letters:

One of America’s best-known neoconservatives, Richard Perle, doubts we will see much foreign-policy change in Obama’s Oval Office. This is because responsibility for the failures of the last eight years lies with the State Department, not neoconservative plots in the White House. Please join us on Thursday, February 19, 2009, for a discussion of the future of neocon ideology based on Perle’s article from the January/February issue of The National Interest, “Ambushed on the Potomac.” A lunch reception will run from 12 to 12:15 pm; the meeting will start promptly at 12:30 pm and end no later than 2 pm.
 
The event will be held in the conference room of 1615 L St., NW, Suite 1250. Please RSVP by replying to this email. For additional information, please call [underpaid conservative stooge] at 202-xxx-xxxx. We regret this invitation is nontransferable.
 
All best,
Justine A. Rosenthal
Editor, The National Interest

My reply (yes, of course I really sent it):

Dear Justine,

Unless you pay me north of $10,000 to attend, you won’t catch me dead in the same room with Richard Perle.

Love,

tristero

(I know, I know. But there’s a recession on and I thought I’d give them a break on my usual fee to attend neocon blather-fests. And yes, we know what I am, we’re just haggling about the price.)

Now, if you think the title to this post is some kind of joke or hyperbole,if you think Powell and Rice’s race don’t figure in Perle’s blaming State for his crimes, then you don’t know Richard Perle, or the kind of sleazebags he hangs with and who ran this country into the ground over the past eight years. The average dung beetle deserves more respect for its opinions on foreign policy than Richard Perle (in fact, a lot more).

Perle’s loyalty to the US was first called into serious question during the Reagan administration when he was caught putting Israel’s interests above America’s. He further demonstrated his disloyalty to the US, or at least his incredibly poor judgment, by befriending one Ahmad Chalabi, whose embezzling, serial lying and fugitive status was well-known to everyone in government circles. It appears, furthermore, that Chalabi was something close to a double agent acting in Iran’s interests. For years, Perle was smoochy-smoochy with Chalabi, and Perle was among those eagerly angling to install this thief and international criminal as the replacement for Saddam Hussein once Iraq was conquered. Perle, of course, was also the man who famously said there’d be monuments to George W. Bush in town squares throughout Iraq. Most unforgivably, Richard Perle is responsible for formulating and advocating a policy that has directly led to the deaths of more Americans than died on 9/11 as well as hundreds of thousands – if not a million – Iraqis.

Okay, you say, Richard Perle may care more about Israel’s survival than American and Iraqi lives – Okay, you say, Richard Perle may be personally complicit in the planning of the unspeakable and completely avoidable outrage of the unprovoked invasion and wanton destruction of Iraq.* But hey! Perle’s no racist. That’s going too far, tristero! It’s just sheer coincidence that Perle is blaming an African-American-run State Department for the failures of his screwball ideas.

Well, if you think so, let’s set you straight right away about the kind of people the neocons and their pals are. Most of them – Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and so on – would never dare say in public what Richard Perle’s BFF, Norman Podhoretz, actually once wrote about blacks. It’s disgusting to read, but you can bet your bippy NoPod’s friends think his racist rant was thoughtful, brave, and needed to be discussed at their numerous dinner parties or barbies (the neocons like to hang out together; nobody else likes them). Oh yeah, Perle certainly signs on to Podhoretz’s sick negrophobia, not to mention the racial inferiority theories of that paragon of conservative racism, William F. Buckley, Jr. (As for what neocons and their pals say of Arabs and other Muslims, let’s not even begin to go there.)

Let’s get real about the neocons and their extended family, folks. They are positively obsessed with race and racism. It’s not just their own admissions of racism, they project it onto others. If you dare to criticize a neocon, then, well… you don’t risk being called an anti-semite: you will be called an anti-semite. And they’ve pulled that garbage again and again. Just ask Eric Alterman. And Matt Yglesias.

Or rather than a self-hating Jew, Richard Perle will call you a terrorist, as he did the brave and brilliant Sy Hersh. (BTW, Perle threatened to sue Hersh for libel because Hersh published the truth about him. Of course, Perle chickened out, as he did from military service during Vietnam.)

Now you may have noticed that there are no links to back up any of the accusations I’ve made against Richard Perle. That is intentional. Why is that, you ask? Why have I broken with a sacred blog convention, and one I happen to passionately believe in? Simple: I don’t waste my time engaging with traitorous, dishonest, cowardly, racist murderers. You don’t believe what I’ve said about Perle is true? Everything I assert is exactly one Google-click away so go ahead, look it up. And if you do, I hope afterward you have the moral character to feel ashamed of yourself for giving a worthless scoundrel like Perle such a huge benefit of a doubt. I assure you, Perle never would be so generous. Just take a look at his encounter with Josh Marshall in late 2003 or early ’04. Perle all but accused Josh – Josh! – of treason.

The very notion that the State Department failed with Bush/ Iraq and not the cabal – their word, not mine – of neocons in Defense who thought up the batshit crazy idea of invading Iraq in the first place, is ludicrous. If such idiotic notions were advanced by someone with far more credibility than Perle – although I can’t think of anyone with more credibility who would blame State instead of the neocons for the disaster of Bush/Iraq – it would still be beneath notice, not worth the breath or internet storage space to argue over.

And to think there actually once was a time that Josh Marshall felt it somehow would be worthwhile to go to AEI and actually debate this piece of racist scum! Hopefully Perle will crawl back France, where he owns a house, and, as Groucho once famously said, never darken our towels again. Richard Perle is an object of contempt; he deserves scorn and humiliation, and should never again be dignified by intellectual engagement. Did you know Perle once co-wrote a book called “The End of Evil?” Anatol Lieven called the title “insane.” He was right.

*Does this shrill, hysterical language offend you? Have I no feelings of sympathy, of shared humanity with Richard Perle? Well, no. You haven’t heard Perle respond to the most mild-mannered criticism; he knows absolutely no limits to his hate. This man has no business whatsoever having any influence over anyone. Don’t believe me? Go ahead, check him out. The last I heard Google was free.

Special note: Of course, I’m not saying that either Powell or Rice’s State Department was terrific. In fact, just the opposite. But for someone to blame State instead of the neocons for the disaster of Iraq is simply ridiculous. And, I believe, given Perle’s entire history and milieu, it’s a racist thing to do.

Special note #2: While I do believe that Richard Perle has demonstrated that he would willingly sacrifice an uncountable number of American and Iraqi lives in order to guarantee Israel’s existence, that does not mean that I think Richard Perle’s ideas about Israel are any good. Remember: modern conservatives, especially neo-conservatives, are wrong about everything. If Israel is stupid enough to listen to the likes of Richard Perle – and it looks like they are about elect his pal Netanyahu – then I truly worry about Israel’s future, and the fate of all the innocents who will be caught up in the catastrophe.

Depressing

by digby

This is really disappointing. And it makes me wonder if I was punk’d after all.

The Center For Constitutional Rights has a fact sheet on state secrets ,here. For the administration that has made its most fundamental pitch for change on the basis of transparency, this is really quite a blow.

Update: For those of you who don’t want to believe that the Obama DOJ did this, read this:

“Is there anything material that has happened” that might have caused the Justice Department to shift its views, asked Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, coyly referring to the recent election.

“No, your honor,” Mr. Letter replied.

Judge Schroeder asked, “The change in administration has no bearing?”

Once more, he said, “No, Your Honor.” The position he was taking in court on behalf of the government had been “thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials within the new administration,” and “these are the authorized positions,” he said.”

If this person wasn’t authorized to say this, I would expect that he will be fired for lying to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. I would be quite surprised if that’s the case. The guy isn’t an idiot.

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Press Conference

by digby

Can I just say how refreshing it is to have a president who not only speaks the English language and doesn’t filibuster with repetitive nonsense, but one who actually understands what he’s talking about?

Whatever one thinks of anything else, this, at least, is a tremendous relief.

Update: Oh yeah. Entitlement Reform is definitely on the agenda as a “bipartisan initiative.”

The village is going to love it.

Update II: I should also say that I loved his frequent reference to the Republicans having no credibility on economics. Let’s hope the grand bargain negotiations are undertaken with that knowledge in hand.

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SOS

by digby

As we watch this unpalatable sausage being made in the congress, it does pay to keep in mind that it actually could be worse. Here’s a little moment of deja vu:

April 22, 1993

G.O.P. Senators Prevail, Sinking Clinton’s Economic Stimulus Bill

By ADAM CLYMER,

Senate Republicans killed President Clinton’s economic stimulus program today, maintaining their filibuster until Democrats surrendered and agreed to limit the bill to $4 billion for extended unemployment benefits.

Mr. Clinton’s first serious legislative defeat was marked by complaints from Democrats in the Senate and the White House. But Bob Dole, the Senate minority leader, was satisfied that the Republicans had shown that they deserved to be taken seriously. He avoided gloating, and promised occasional cooperation with the President.

A brief, harsh outburst from Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the Senate Appropriations Committee, served as the eulogy for Mr. Clinton’s original $19.5 billion measure, which was proposed in February. He said Republicans would accept “billions for unemployment, not one cent for jobs.”

A ‘Difference of Philosophy’

On the winning side, Senator Dole quietly argued that Republicans, too, want jobs. But asserting that “a fundamental difference of philosophy has brought us to this point,” the Kansas Senator said his party viewed the plan as too expensive and fatally flawed because it added to the deficit instead of having its spending matched by cuts elsewhere in the budget.

As originally offered, the bill included about $4 billion to extend unemployment benefits, $2 billion for education grants, $6 billion for highways and public improvements and $2 billion for summer jobs. The Republicans were especially critical of $2.5 billion in community development block grant spending, which they said would pay for pork barrel projects.

Senator Dole minimized the ramifications of today’s action. “It’s just a bump in the road for President Clinton,” he said, adding that Republicans would support him on other measures, including the North American Free Trade Agreement.

[…]

This morning the Democrats, who hold a 57-43 majority in the Senate, failed for the fourth time to break the filibuster; under Senate rules, it takes 60 votes to end debate.

Once again, they failed to get a single Republican to vote to cut off debate. Fifty-six Democrats voted to end debate, while one, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, voted with the 42 Republicans who were present to keep the filibuster going. Senator Alan K. Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, did not vote.

Last Friday Mr. Clinton cut his original $19.5 billion package to $16.4 billion. Then, after today’s vote to end the debate failed, the Democrats offered another version, with $12.9 billion in spending and $5 billion of it offset by cuts elsewhere.

But the Republicans spurned that suggestion and offered a counterproposal of their own, with $6.55 billion in spending, up from the $6 billion plan they offered on Monday.

There were brief talks about each of these schemes, but nothing approaching serious negotiation.

Democrats had hoped that some Republicans who frequently vote with them on other issues would desert their filibuster, and tried to put heat on them at home. But one of their prime targets, Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont, said he fully agreed with the rejection of the Democratic offers. The Republican proposal, he said, was offered in the knowledge that there was “no likelihood it will be accepted.”

That same theme was heard again tonight from Mr. Stephanopoulos, who said other losers were “the good moderate Republicans out there who wanted to come forward with a real jobs package but were prevented by their leadership.”

Moderates Did Not Waver

But at no point during the Easter recess did any of the moderate Republicans in the Senate appear to be wavering. Some may have hoped that a deal would be struck, but none moved to make it happen.

After the Senate voted the unemployment money by unanimous consent, Mr. Dole told reporters that he believed the Clinton Administration would now understand the value of consulting with Republicans on such future issues as health care. “I think the White House may have misjudged the fact that when we stick together, we have some influence,” he said.

But Senator Byrd was unwilling to see the issue that way.

“While the other side is busy congratulating each other on proving that they are a force to be reckoned with, they have only proved to the American people that they are the guardians of gridlock,” he said. “While the champagne corks are popping, millions of Americans will open a can of beans and wonder whether they are going to find a job.”

Clinton had won with a plurality and had nothing like the kind of popular support that Obama has today. And the economy was actually coming out of the recession, although it was still a jobless recovery at that time. The Republicans had about the same number as they have today but they realized that they could simply defy the president. The media of the day had long before declared the honeymoon was over and had been harassing him relentlessly over all manner of trumped up trivia. By the time the president’s larger economic proposal made its way to the congress, he was having trouble with the “centrists” in his own party.

The Gingrich storm troopers went on to pass legislation (stupidly signed by Clinton) that made it unnecessary for the Republicans to filibuster any bill that adds to the deficit since anyone raising the issue could make 60 votes necessary, which is what happened here. (Following California’s sad example, the national Republicans put landmines all over the budget process making it very difficult to act in an emergency.)

Clinton also ran as a bipartisan healer, and as Bob Dole said at the time, the Republicans were anxious to work with him on NAFTA, which they did. (I expect that “entitlement reform” is their bipartisan wet dream this time.)

But it isn’t 1993. Today we have a president who won a decisive victory with an express mandate for change, which I think is logical interpret as being a change from the policies of the other party.(Villagers disagree. They think Obama’s promise of change was that Democrats would stop even pretending to have any differences from Republicans.) Yet, still we have the same old crap, although this time the stimulus will squeak by with three “moderate” Republican votes — which were bought at great price to the efficacy of the plan itself, even though we are on the precipice of an economic catastrophe. (This is probably because of the weakness of the GOP leadership more than anything. Still, only three…)

In case anyone still thinks this talk of catastrophe is hyperbolic, I put the following chart up over the week-end, but now it’s been updated to show all post WWII recessions.

Because of that, Obama will pass this bill, and keeping our fingers crossed, it will get the job done. And if he’s deft, he’ll get other needed legislation passed as well. But let’s not pretend that anything that isn’t a strictly conservative agenda item will be “bipartisan.” Perhaps if we go all the way over the cliff, and have a great depression, we’ll see the Republicans act responsibly. But I wouldn’t bet on it. They never have yet.

Update: CNN keeps citing their new poll that says only 54% of people approve of the stimulus bill and saying that’s why the Republicans are resisting. (I know, but this is the media we’re talking about …) How do they know that some of the people who disapprove of the stimulus do so because it isn’t enough?

Update II: The above chart is misleading. From Kevin Drum:

[T]his one shows employment decline in percentage terms, not as raw job losses. This is a better way of doing it since the population of the U.S. has grown substantially since 1974. But it still looks plenty bad. Right now we can say that this is the worst recession since 1981, but by summer it’s almost certain that we’ll be saying it’s the worst recession since World War II.

h/t to pinkopunko

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Breaking Their Backs

by dday

Simon Johnson has a really interesting aricle at TPM Café that puts the next massive economic decision to be made by the Obama Administration – what to do with insolvent banks – into an international perspective.

There comes a time in every economic crisis or, more specifically, in every struggle to recover from a crisis, when someone steps up to the podium to promise the policies that – they say – will deliver you back to growth. The person has political support, a strong track record, and every incentive to enter the history books. But one nagging question remains.

Can this person, your new economic strategist, really break with the vested elites that got you into this much trouble? The form of these vested interests, of course, varies substantially across situations, but they are always still strong, despite the downward spiral which they did so much to bring about. And fully escaping the grip of crisis really means breaking their power.

Not only is this a standard way of thinking about crisis resolution in many developing and post-communist countries, it also turns out to be a good guide to thinking about the US today. We have a powerful banking industry that has mismanaged its way into deep trouble. Yet these banks obtained an initial bailout – the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP – on generous terms, and have consistently failed to use the opportunity provided by this government support to turn their operations around. Not only that, but they have flaunted their power – and their arrogance – through paying themselves large and largely inappropriate bonuses.

We come now, this week, to the podium.

You’ve doubtless heard some reports about what Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner plans to say at that podium, and he is sadly more likely to protect elites and offer them welfare than do anything to admit their insolvency and break their power. In fact, he’s likely to rely on private money from hedge funds and private equity firms to buy the toxic assets from the banks – no doubt with substantial favors from the government in return (like guaranteeing a floor value for the securities). The inescapable fact is that here, as it is in banana republics and oligarchies throughout the world in similar crises, no progress can possibly be made as long as the same people who caused the problem remain in control.

Mr. Geithner wants to use taxpayer dollars to keep bankrupt banks in business. In effect, he wants to tax teachers, fire fighters, and Joe the Plumber to protect the wealth of the banks’ shareholders and to pay high salaries to their top executives. No readers of this piece would understand that this is the process being described.

The Post editorial page carried on with this deception. An editorial on saving the banks dismissed nationalization because it would involve the government in running the banks. Then it discusses the idea of buying bad assets and warns, “but there is a huge risk that the government would badly overpay in the first place.”

Actually, this is not a risk, this is the point. If the government paid the market price for these assets the banks would be bankrupt and we would be back to step 1, nationalization. The point of buying the bad assets is to pay too much, so that the banks can get enough money to stay solvent.

Barack Obama plays the populist well on TV on occasion, whether by railing against executive pay bonuses or, today, backing the cram-down provision that would let bankruptcy judges modify mortgage terms for those facing foreclosure. But ultimately, his pretensions to populism, his belief that he has the best interests of the people in mind, will face the pressure from elites to make whole the banking system, the executives and the shareholders, and to use taxpayer funds to do it. The banks played casino night in unregulated markets for decades, racking up huge gains on paper and accruing enormous amounts of financial and political power. They practically bankroll most election campaigns, certainly at the Senate and Presidential level, and they used this leverage to wall themselves off from any assault on their power and influence from inside the Capitol. As Johnson says:

Ending the financial crisis is relatively straightforward – a forced recapitalization and change of ownership/management in the banking system – although this will not immediately lead to an economic recovery (more on that here). But seen in deeper political terms, decisive action to restructure large banks is almost impossible. Such action would require overcoming perhaps the single strongest interest group in the United States today.

How can you do it? The answer must be by splitting this powerful interest group into competing factions, and taking them on one by one. Can this be done? Definitely, yes. In particular, bank recapitalization – if implemented right – can use private equity interests against the powerful large bank insiders. Then you need to force the new private equity owners of banks to break them up so they are no longer too big to fail. And then… there is always more to do to contain the power of a lobby that is boosted by any boom and which, the more it succeeds, the more likely it is to ruin us all.

I see this as an unlikely scenario, but one way to reduce elite power is to give sunlight to arrogance like this in the hopes that popular anger will box in elites and their enablers in Washington so that they are unable to do anything but offer concessions. That’s basically how the New Deal came about, although it was fought tooth and nail at every step.

Last month, Theresa Hatt died at 52, after a brief struggle with cancer.

Hatt, who lived in Portland, Maine, and worked for the city of Scarborough, had had several credit cards in her name. So, shortly after her death, Hatt’s son, Paul Kelleher, began the sad task of calling his mother’s creditors, to inform them of her passing.

The calls were uneventful, if depressing, until Kelleher got to Bank of America. Here is how he says his conversation with a representative of the company’s estates unit went:

Paul Kelleher: Yes, I’m calling to inform you that my mom died on the 24th of January.

Bank of America Estates representative: I’m sorry. Oh, it looks like she never even missed a payment. That’s too bad. Well, how are you planning to take care of her balance?

PK: I’m not going to. She has no estate to speak of, but you should feel free to just go through the standard probate procedure. I’m certainly not legally obligated to pay for her.

BOA: You mean you’re not going to help her out?

PK: I wouldn’t be helping her out — she’s dead. I’d be helping you out.

BOA: Oh, that’s really not the way to look at it. I know that if it were my mother, I’d pay it. That’s why we’re in the banking crisis we’re in: banks having to write off defaulted loans.

Right now, on the issue of the banks Obama is paying lip service to the populists and siding with the elites. The kind of people who try to con the bereaved and blame their own troubles on the dead. There is mass anger around this kind of buck-passing, anger that can be channeled into action. Another bailout for the wealthy and connected would do that.

…CNBC reports no bad bank plan in the mix. That’s good, though of course the rest of the details matter too.

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Scum And Proud Of It

by digby

On Blitzer this afternoon:

Alex Castellanos: I know Krugman won the Nobel Prize, but so did Al Gore. It can’t be that hard. (laughter.)

And if economists were that good, they’d all be rich and they’re not. So let’s take all this with a grain of salt here.

What the Democrats are telling the country now is, they’re having a debate, “we’re gonna take a big pile of money and set it on fire. we’re going to borrow it, make a big pile and set in on fire. And the argument is that the pile of money is not big enough.

You remember Castellanos. He’s the guy who made Jesse Helms’ infamous “Hands” ad. He is, in fact Karl Rove’s biggest rival for most negative campaigner in the GOP, which is quite a feat:

One characteristic that sets Castellanos apart from some of the nondescript Washington-based political consultants is that he’s a red-meat ideologue, who offers no apologies for his assertive — some would say crude — attacks.

“Other consultants create hard-hitting ads but tend to be more apologetic about it,” says Dan Schnur, a California Republican strategist who served as communications director for Sen. John McCain’s presidential run in 2000. “Most consultants like what they do, but they also want to be invited into polite society. He creates sharp-edged stuff and will admit it. That’s made him some enemies and earned him attention.”

“He doesn’t just make the ads and say, ‘It’s just a business and somebody has to do it,'” says Hickman. “He makes the ads and really believes them. He’s not above politics, which is admirable in a way.”

Castellanos is also not above spreading disinformation. In 2002, trying to turn the Enron scandal against the Democrats, Castellanos appeared on CNN and ABC, insisting that Enron CEO Ken Lay had slept in the Lincoln Bedroom at the invitation of President Clinton. The tale was reported far and wide, but it was completely false.

This person was on CNN throughout the presidential campaign, which makes some sense since he was in the capacity of “Republican campaign consultant.” But he has no business being on television commenting on anything but dirty campaign tactics, which is where his expertise lies. He is a professional liar who admits to doing anything necessary to back his team and who even village “polite society” is squeamish about cable.

Why is CNN still giving this jerk a platform from which to do this kind of dirty work for the GOP? He should be on Fox where he belongs, alongside the other creepy political sociopaths.

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Making It Worse

by digby

Matt Yglesias explains why you don’t want the Goldilocks centrist faction making policy:

Nelson and Susan Collins (R-Maine) took a look at a huge bill, and zeroed-in with laser-like efficiency on one of its least-controversial and most highly-stimulative provisions, deciding that that was a good place for “adjustments downward.” And while doing this, Nelson and Collins left in place the least-stimulative elements of the House package and added new non-stimulative stuff like an AMT patch extension and a tax break for people who buy homes. Consequently, as CAP’s Will Straw explains, the Senate “centrists” managed to come up with a bill that creates fewer jobs while increasing the deficit by a greater amount.

Or as Krugman says:

What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?

A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.

Even if the original Obama plan — around $800 billion in stimulus, with a substantial fraction of that total given over to ineffective tax cuts — had been enacted, it wouldn’t have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years.

Yet the centrists did their best to make the plan weaker and worse.

It’s quite interesting that these “centrists” never seemed to manifest themselves to mitigate the excesses of the Bush administration, even when the Senate was split right down the middle. In fact, if I recall correctly, the last time the “centrists” flexed their muscles it was to stop the Democrats from filibustering the extremist Federalist Society pets, Roberts and Alito.

Collins and Nelson and the rest of their enablers are not actually centrists. They are typically incoherent conservatives, and particularly pernicious ones because they pretend to be sober, realistic “grown-ups” mediating between the two extremes which creates a false equivalence between someone like Barney Frank and the mendacious fool, John Kyl.

Norah O’Donnell interviewed the somewhat thick Ben Nelson today:

Norah O’Donell: The first test, of course, from this compromise proposal comes this evening, when the senate begins the procedural vote on your proposal so far, only three Republicans have signed on. Can we expect any more?

Nelson: Well, I don’t know. When we actually take the vote we’ll find out. But there were more Republicans involved in putting this action together. We had six in almost every drafting or negotiating session as well as with a dozen Democratic senators. So, it had a lot more bipartisan input than might meet the eye when perhaps there are only three who are committed to vote for it.

O’Donnell: No doubt you have been working hard on some of the cuts to this plan. But they’ve ben criticized, including by the president today. I want to play what the president said about those education cuts, take a listen.

Obama : The Senate version cut a lot of those education dollars. I would like to see some of it restored. And over the next few days, as we’re having these conversations, we should talk about how we can make sure that we’re investing in education. (applause)

O’Donnell: What about that Senator? You’ve beegn working hard on making all these cuts and now the president says he doesn’t like what you guys did. Maybe he’s closer to the House version.

Nelson: Well, I think it’s important to point out that we left in the 13 billion dollars plus for special education. [big of them. ed.]

Actually, when it comes to education in this bill and investment in the future, it’s about 60 billion dollars. And when you realize that the US Department of education’s total budget for the year is 40 billion dollars, this is one and a half times more than their regular budget, plus the Omnibus bill will be passed in the very near future and that’s on top of the 60 billion. So when you look at a hundred billion for education in the days ahead, that’s a sizable commitment that I’m comfortable with. We’d like to do more, we’d like to do a lot of things. But you have to balance the cost vs what you are able to do.

That’s very convincing.

O’Donnell then read Krugman’s column today.

O’Donnell: What about that Senator? They said that centrist like yourself, Paul Krugman says you’ve ruined this bill.

Nelson: I don’t know where he’s from, but in Nebraska 60 billion dollars for education on top of 40 billion, that’s a pretty big commitment nationwide. Now this is on top of what the states are able to do. The Governors have the opportunity within their special fund that they can put more money into school construction and other areas of education, so I’m not going to take a backseat to anybody on what we’ve done here. The president said something in the 800 billion dollar range, we gave him 780. We want to hold to that.

I think at some point we have to be able to put together bipartisanship and there was a lot of effort put into hold the line on the top line part of this package.

O’Donnell then asked if anything is added back in from the House package would the plan lose Collins, Snow and Specter and Nelson said yes. In the spirit of bipartisanship, of course.

Nelson: You have to recognize that this is a consensus. I didn’t get everything I wanted and they didn’t get everything they wanted. You never do. If there’s give and take you can put things together. That’s why it’s truly a bipartisan effort.

Right, if bipartisanship means a dozen Democrats helping six Republicans cut the guts out of the president’s necessary emergency stimulus bill for no good reason (and for which only three of the Republicans are voting after they already destroyed it!)

Nelson clearly doesn’t get the point and doesn’t understand the problem. He thinks that this is just another bill and he’s exerting himself as the power broker with no real insight into what this bill is supposed to accomplish. These details actually translate into something real for real people, and have specific purposes. He proves his ignorance with his comment that Governors could use their “special fund” to fund education if they want to. That means, naturally, that they have to take it away from something else, which are already going to be squeezed from other vital services. He seems to think that Obama is blathering about raising test scores or something and simply can’t seem to grasp that education is a government function to which the government can quickly direct cash to stave off terrible cuts. Here in California we have reached a crisis stage in public education where teachers are being laid off, they are talking about shortening the school year and worse. Federal money is vital to prevent a total disaster here.

But Nelson and Collins don’t seem to think that is something they need to worry about and they are the deciders. Those of you who pra should probably do so. Our economy is in free fall and the centrists in charge are actually making it worse.

Update: From Atrios, here’s a bit of good news among all the dreariness. Obama mentioned the cramdown legislation today and it’s perhaps a good indication that we are going to see it come through in the housing crisis legislation that’s yet to be introduced. The Republicans will rant about “moral hazar”: and all manner of other nonsense, but Obama should insist on this one. It’s a vital part of fixing the housing crisis.

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Fisk, Interrupted

by tristero

I had heard that the Forbes evolution issue was bad, that it gave succor to christianist arguments against science. But I had no idea it was this bad. I started in and quickly reached this atrocity:

The evolution of evolutionary theory is no exception. Heated arguments between its advocates and those who believe in creationism or intelligent design are but blips in a massive, craggy landscape of controversy that has accumulated over two centuries.

Totally incompetent bullshit. First of all, intelligent design is creationism. That is what Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District demonstrated. Secondly, there is no scientific controversy over the fact of evolution and hasn’t been since shortly after the publication of The Origin of Species. (There is much healthy disputation within the field of evolutionary biology, of course.) And third, the only controversies that have ever raged about evolution are the social/cultural rightwing attacks which use the same tired arguments Darwin debunked 150 years ago.

More questions than we’d like were raised long ago, and remain unanswered [What you mean, “we,” Hana?]. Two of the biggest: If humans are no different than animals, what is the status of free will, of morality borne from the brain, not the body? Can and should we apply ideas about the “survival of the fittest” to economics, to population control, to law, to love?

Alright, that’s it. I’ve had it. There aren’t enough billions of years left in the universe to address this hapless writier’s seemingly bottomless ignorance. Evolution has nothing to do with concepts of free will. Evolution is biology, free will is, what? Philosophy? Theology? Obsolete, oversimplified poppycock that predates modern theories of mind and volition? Whatever it is, it ain’t biology. I have no idea what the fuck “morality borne from the brain, not the body” could mean. The last time I checked in with my pancreas, it told me it had no moral sense at all, either good or bad. And how many times must those of us who understand evolution reply that “survival of the fittest” is a caricature that so grossly distorts an incredibly simple idea so that it ends up meaning nothing? And what is this nonsense about “applying” Darwin’s evolutionary ideas, which are deeply rooted in biology, to economics? Why not use the theories behind TCP/IPinstead? That’d make just as much sense. And let’s not neglect to mention the writers malicious, stupidly inaccurate reference to eugenics. “Population control…” yeah, whatever.

I skimmed through the rest of the pieces. Mixed in with occasional commentary from knowledgeable folks like Michael Shermer is sheer garbage from nutcases like Jonathan Wells and Ken Ham. Ken “Creation Museum” Ham? Yes, Forbes Magazine has absolutely no shame whatsoever. My advice: Don’t bother reading any of it. The little good in here doesn’t seem worth the effort. Instead, just pick up a copy of Darwin’s thoroughly readable book and enjoy yourself.

Enuf.

Fortunes

by digby

Chuck Todd asks:

With Obama’s aggressive courtship of Republicans (meeting with them in private, having them over to the White House for cocktails, appointing three of them to his cabinet), did anyone think that just three Republicans (Collins, Snowe, Specter) out of 219 GOP senators and congressman would so far support the stimulus?

I thought there might be a few more, but basically I knew they would vote against it en masse. The conservative movement owns the GOP. Their leader Rush Limbaugh speaks for them and he wasn’t lying when he said he wants Obama to fail.

On a brighter note, the public seems to be hanging in with Obama, which is very good news:

President Obama receives a 67% approval rating for his handling of the government’s efforts to pass an economic stimulus bill, compared to 31% for the Republicans in Congress. A majority of Americans (51%) agree that passing such a bill is critically important to improving the nation’s economy.

I would imagine this is because, unlike the Republicans, whose personal fortunes are all tied up in the economy failing, the rest of the country is quite anxious that the economy bounce back and they see Obama as being the best hope to lead that effort. And watching the Republicans acting like clowns, I have a feeling that impression is solidifying.

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