Month: February 2009

Redux

by digby

Many people ascribe the success of the 1994 Republican Revolution to Newt Gingrich. And he was the public face and driving force behind it, no doubt about it. But it was really William Kristol who made it possible with his famous memo about obstructing health care reform:

[P]assage of the Clinton health care plan in any form would be disastrous. It would guarantee an unprecedented federal intrusion into the American economy. Its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas. And, not least, it would destroy the present breadth and quality of the American health care system, the world’s finest.

He’s making the same arguments today:

Obama intends to use his big three issues — energy, health care and education — to transform the role of the federal government as fundamentally as did the New Deal and the Great Society.

Conservatives and Republicans will disapprove of this effort. They will oppose it. Can they do so effectively?

Perhaps — if they can find reasons to obstruct and delay. They should do their best not to permit Obama to rush his agenda through this year. They can’t allow Obama to make of 2009 what Franklin Roosevelt made of 1933 or Johnson of 1965. Slow down the policy train. Insist on a real and lengthy debate. Conservatives can’t win politically right now. But they can raise doubts, they can point out other issues that we can’t ignore (especially in national security and foreign policy), they can pick other fights — and they can try in any way possible to break Obama’s momentum. Only if this happens will conservatives be able to get a hearing for their (compelling, in my view) arguments against big-government, liberal-nanny-state social engineering — and for their preferred alternatives.

It worked the first time. But Clinton had won with a plurality in an election where the deficit was fetishized as the greatest threat to economic prosperity. The economy turned around quickly from the recession of 91-92 and the tech bubble took off shortly thereafter. Health insurance was still affordable. The Republicans were ascendant, the culture war was in full effect, the decades-long electoral realignment was coming to completion with the old conservative Democratic Lions finally retiring. The cold war was over and nothing had yet emerged to take its place to keep the Military Industrial Complex humming. It was a different world.

Today, nearly all of that is completely irrelevant and we are possibly in the midst of a once in a century economic meltdown and an unprecedented climate crisis. Oh, and there are a bunch of religious fanatics blowing stuff up around the world. We just came off of eight years of Republican governance — and 28 years of conservative dominance — that either created or exacerbated all those problems. Indeed, it’s the reason the Republicans were routed in the election.

But then none of that would be persuasive to Kristol, would it? The man is arguing that Roosevelt should have been obstructed in 1933, so the scope of the crisis doesn’t affect his view and the size of the mandate is obviously irrelevant. He simply seeks to find a way to keep the Democrats from achieving anything that the people might see as a positive in their lives. Like Rush Limbaugh, he is openly advocating failure.

Think about what Limbaugh said:

If I wanted Obama to succeed, I’d be happy the Republicans have laid down. And I would be encouraging Republicans to lay down and support him. Look, what he’s talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the US government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don’t want this to work. So I’m thinking of replying to the guy, “Okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.” (interruption) What are you laughing at? See, here’s the point. Everybody thinks it’s outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, “Oh, you can’t do that.” Why not? Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: “Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.” Somebody’s gotta say it.

He is not saying that he doesn’t think liberalism can succeed. He’s worried that it will. So is Kristol when he writes that Obama can’t be allowed to succeed the way Roosevelt and Johnson did. After all, Roosevelt succeeded in leading the country though two of the worst events of the 20th century. Johnson finally ended American apartheid. These are the successes that Obama must not be allowed to emulate.

It’s primarily politics, of course. Both Limbaugh and Kristol are afraid that Obama’s success would mean decades in the wilderness for Republicans. But by looking for failure of Obama’s policy initiatives they are also showing a tremendous insecurity about their own philosophy.

All day I see Republicans on television, filled with sanctimony and phony concern, keening about the deficit and reckless spending and fiscal responsibility. Today, they’ve even resurrected the “tax and spend” trope. These are the same Republicans who gave away the budget surplus to to their wealthy friends and who then went on to destroy the financial system. The same people who spent an estimated three trillion dollars on a war based on lies that didn’t need to be fought. Now they are shamelessly publicly lecturing the new president on “responsibility” and obstructing everything they know is necessary for a recovery, but it sounds hollow and strange in current circumstances.(See: Jindal, Bobby)

They will not change. They will wait it out, hoping for failure, trying to figure out some new “branding” and marketing” for their stale, aristocratic philosophy. They will try to keep the Democrats from enacting the kind of programs that will permanently undermine wealthy interests while trying to resurrect their own ideology so that it’s ready for them to ride it to victory once the liberals have cleaned up the mess. It’s a tightrope, but they’ve walked it before, and been successful.

In fact, it’s the way the pendulum swings. And that’s why it’s important that liberals protect the safety net programs and initiate those that are overdue at times like this. They need them to be there in the future when the aristocrats get greedy and screw things up for everyone as they always do. Roosevelt enacted unemployment insurance, welfare for women with children and social security during the depression. Johnson enacted poverty programs like Head Start that are still feeding little poor kids today during this economic crisis. Without all those things, this country would be in much worse shape today after the greedheads drove us off a cliff. Again. One of the functions of the safety net is to give our society a cushion for the times when wealthy criminals use their outsized power and influence to loot the treasury and cause a cascading effect of misery to come down on average peoples’ heads.

It would be pretty to think they will never do it again. But they will. And if they truly believe their own cant about self-interest, they should be hoping that the Democrats pass health care (which is a good for business as it is for individuals), tackle global warming and do all these things that Meteor Blades recommends. Conservatism is a luxury that can only be afforded by a thriving country. It needs a healthy organism to feed on. And they almost killed it this time.

They need to let the country recover and recuperate but they can’t admit that, make amends or pay the price for their perfidy. They are Randian bullshit addicts and they haven’t hit bottom yet.

Update: And by the way, if Kristol and Limbaugh need some further education on whyfFree market Hooverism is so dangerous, this is it. Maybe all the neocons think Roosevelt should have just let the economy correct itself, but human beings are creatures with free will and tend to react when the “correction” destroys their lives and their futures. Bad things were happening in 1933. Bad things can happen again. These are not things to trifle with.

Update II: Limbaugh today:

LIMBAUGH: I am told South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford called me an idiot, not by name. But he said, “Anyone who wants Obama to fail is an idiot.” I don’t anybody else who said it. So, I guess he’s talking about– … Politicians have different audiences than I do and they’ve got to say things in different ways. So, after he said, “Anyone who wants Obama to fail is an idiot,” then went on in his own way to say, “Gosh, I hope this doesn’t work.” … He just had to say, “We don’t want the president to fail.”

Hell we don’t! We want something to blow up here politically. We want something to not go right. … We’re talking about freedom that is under assault!

He just keeps digging.

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Breaking The Conservative Working Majority

by dday

The proposed cram-down provisions that would allow bankruptcy judges to modify terms of primary residences, the way they can on secondary residences and yachts and all kinds of other assets, are a perfectly sensible way to give homeowners who might otherwise be out of the street after foreclosure a modicum of leverage in the process, freeing up lenders to perform loan modifications on their properties. In the end, nobody is served by millions more homes on the market and millions more homeless. But the banksters don’t want to do it. They have spent millions lobbying against it because they would rather pretend that they have larger assets than they do. Perversely, a loan that will go unpaid means more to them than a modified loan that would get paid. So they are desperately trying to add loopholes and conditions and restrictions.

And because we have this group of “New Democrats” who basically parrot whatever corporate lobbyists tell them, it is a successful gambit.

House Democratic leaders have abruptly canceled votes on legislation to let bankruptcy judges reduce the principal and interest rate on mortgages for debt-strapped homeowners.

The measure, backed by President Barack Obama, is the most controversial part of a broader housing package that was expected to pass on Thursday.

It hit a snag after a group of moderates expressed concerns in a closed-door meeting of House Democrats about how the bill would affect homeowners who are still struggling to make their mortgage payments.

The banking industry has lobbied hard against the measure, mounting a successful multimillion-dollar effort last year to kill it. The House is debating the measure and leaders hope to reschedule votes for next week.

It’s just revolting. The concern of “moderates” is simply a lie. Homeowners who are struggling to make payments would benefit from having their lender be more inclined to give them a lower payment. After all, we practically own the banks at this point. The least they could do is act in the interest of the majority of Americans. It’s not like they’ll be hurting for cash, given what is coming out about the Geithner plans for essentially unlimited refills.

This is a structural problem, where incumbents well-heeled with campaign cash have more to fear from industry and multinationals than their own constituents. A new progressive group called Accountability Now is seeking to change that dynamic.

Some of the most prominent names in progressive politics launched a major new organization on Thursday dedicated to pinpointing and aiding primary challenges against incumbent Democrats who are viewed as acting against their constituents’ interests.

Accountability Now PAC will officially be based in Washington D.C., though its influence is designed to be felt in congressional districts across the country. The group will adopt an aggressive approach to pushing the Democratic Party in a progressive direction; it will actively target, raise funds, poll and campaign for primary challengers to members who are either ethically or politically out-of-touch with their voters. The goal, officials with the organization say, is to start with 25 potential races and dwindle it down to eight or 10; ultimately spending hundreds of thousands on elections that usually wouldn’t be touched.

This will be looked at with an eye toward district realities. There are too many members of Congress representing deep-blue districts who equivocate to powerful special interests. There needs to be a countervailing force, and Accountability Now can become that.

The New York Times has more, although they kind of botch the story. This is a good development for the progressive movement.

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One Week To Go For Tom Geoghegan

by dday

Next Tuesday voters in Illinois will vote to fill the vacant seat of Rahm Emanuel in a special election, with 23 candidates on the ballot. With the, er, spotlight on Illinois politics recently, and the fact that this is Rod Blagojevich’s old seat, the Democratic establishment and Chicago political leaders have largely stayed out of the race. With no front-runner, there is a real opportunity for progressive leader Tom Geoghegan to win. Harold Meyerson writes a great profile:

Little about Tom Geoghegan resembles Ronald Reagan, but his hard-to-decipher last name rhymes with the former president’s. A wry, heterodox liberal intellectual with a lifelong passion for American workers, Geoghegan first burst on to the literary and political scene with a great, slightly crazed ode to Chicago — in the best tradition of Hecht, Algren and Bellow — that ran in the New Republic in the 1980s and then with his 1991 book “Which Side Are You On? Trying to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back,” which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has since written four other books, some on the shambles that is the American legal system. He’s became the go-to lawyer for Chicagoans who’ve lost their jobs through discrimination or who’ve been denied the pay they’ve earned. And now, he’s the congressional candidate who supports single-payer health care, expanding Social Security to compensate for the decimation of private pensions, and government investment to rebuild our offshored manufacturing sector.

I confess that I’m both a friend of Tom’s and a Geogheganologist — a distinction I attained when, for a year, I edited the back-page columns he was then writing for the American Prospect. A typical Geoghegan column combined the sense of outrage that all columnists need with broad historical knowledge and a particularly Chicagoan feel for life as it is actually, grubbily, lived. One column on mass transit cut from scenes of Geoghegan stuck in traffic on the way to O’Hare to Henry Clay’s case for internal improvements (roads and canals) to a discussion of how much easier it is to get from Dublin to Madrid than it is to get from Chicago to Detroit. In another column he wrote before Wall Street’s collapse, Geoghegan lamented the high percentage of elite college graduates who funneled themselves into finance, and he characterized the bank bailout policy of the Bush administration as “the new social contract: In Tribeca, at least, no kid will ever lose his (or her) first (or second) condo.” Another time, he wondered “why, in the party of William Jennings Bryan, is there no one demanding an interest cap on our Visa cards and our MasterCards,” also noting that in Chicago, “payday lenders charge more than the Mob wants for juice loans.” In the collected works of Tom Geoghegan, the value of social and economic ideas and practices is set by the way they play out on the streets […] while the nation is going through its first real systemic economic crisis since the Depression, a guy who can knowledgeably compare public works programs clear back to the Jefferson administration and who can sniff out a bankers’ relief program a mile away seems to me exactly what Congress needs.

Howie Klein gives us the state of the race:

Meyerson follows endorsements in the last couple of days by three of Chicago’s legendary progressive reformer elders, Abner Mikva, Dr. Quentin Young, and Leon Despres, and from one of Tom’s former opponents, Marty Oberman. Many in the Inside the Beltway Establishment have other favorite candidates. Predictably Emily’s List endorsed a woman, basically their only criteria for endorsement these days. And some of the labor unions we’ve grown to trust came out for those who have scratched their backs in the grubby world of backroom politics. DFA, The Nation, Progressive Democrats of America, the American Nurses Association, the Greater Chicago Caucus, the Teamsters and Steelworkers unions and a long list of progressive writers from Katha Pollitt and David Sirota to Thomas Frank. Garry Wills, Don Rose and James Fallows have come out for Tom.

Geoghegan is the real deal and he can win. You can help.

Donate
Volunteer locally
Make calls from home

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Perhaps There’s Some Small Hope For Our Species Yet

by tristero

Pogue in the Times:

One of Google’s geniuses figured out that whenever people get sick, they use Google to search for more information. By collating these searches, Google has created an early-warning system for flu outbreaks in your area, with color-coded graphs. Google says that Flu Trends (google.org/flutrends) has recognized outbreaks two weeks sooner than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has.

For some reason, I found the surprising elegance of this idea extremely satisfying, as in, “Of course! How incredibly stupid not to have thought of that!” to paraphrase Tom Huxley.

And if you click on the link, you’re taken to an incredibly simple graph and equally clear map that illustrates the flu trends and does so in a color-blind friendly fashion.

And Yet, Still Rules Their World

by dday

This is really a jump the shark moment for Matt Drudge, who is only relevant to the Gang of 500, anyway.

The markets opened this morning with a sustained decline, which Reuters attributed to a new “report showing yet more deterioration in the housing market.” Matt Drudge, however, wanted to blame it on President Obama, so he posted an auto updating graph of the Dow Jones Industrial average. Under that, in large block letters, Drudge asked, WAS IT SOMETHING HE SAID? But as the day passed, the market rebounded, and Drudge was left suggesting that Obama was responsible for the rally. Drudge couldn’t let that stand so, several minutes later, he changed the headline: MARKET REBOUNDS. But then, shortly before the closing at 4:00 PM, the market declined again. What did Drudge do? He hurriedly changed it back, typos and all: WAS IT SOMETHING HE SAID?”>WAS IT SOMETHING HE SAID?

We all know that every minute of market activity is dictated entirely by the utterances of whoever is President at that time, so Drudge is surely on solid footing here. So I’m sure this embarrassment is just a temporary setback for him. After all, markets rarely fluctuate over the course of a day.

I’m also fairly certain this will cause approximately no member of the chattering class to reassess their reliance on headlines and news stories hand-picked by someone who today revealed himself to be a complete idiot.

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They Just Love Stale Nihilism

by digby

… they call it “the real deal.”

On his radio show this afternoon, Limbaugh leaped to Jindal’s defense. “I love Bobby Jindal, and that did not change after last night,” he said. Limbaugh then directed this admonition at his fellow conservatives:

LIMBAUGH: [T]he people on our side are really making a mistake if they go after Bobby Jindal on the basis of style. Because if you think — people on our side I’m talking to you — those of you who think Jindal was horrible, you think — in fact, I don’t ever want to hear from you ever again. … I’ve spoken to him numerous times, he’s brilliant. He’s the real deal.

Jindal was playing to the base he needs to get the nomination. And they are living in an alternate universe that is looking forward to a depression for their political revival. Most of them are obviously too dumb to know the particulars, but they know instinctively that it’s not historically unprecedented.

Update: Boehlert does a nice rundown on their crazed reaction to Obama since the inauguration.

I think Atrios has it completely right on this. Jindal and the rest are going to have a problem:

They are now officially a sub-culture and it’s hard to get a majority when you literally speak a different language than most people.

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Congratulations

by digby

High five to to my pal and fellow blue American John Amato. Crooks and Liars was named one of the Best 25 blogs of 2009 by Time Magazine:

When professional musician John Amato launched the Crooks and Liars political blog in September 2004, it featured something that was quite novel in those ancient pre-YouTube days: video clips. Today, Crooks and Liars is among the most widely read political blogs on the Web, and Amato — now known in blog circles as “the Vlogfather” — is recognized as a pioneer of video blogging. The video selections — snippets from government press briefings, Congressional hearings and TV talk shows — are the sort of clips that Jon Stewart uses for fodder, but this is a chance to see the video in its original unintentionally humorous context. Amato leans liberal, but his blog is an equal opportunity attack dog, taking a bite out of the crooks and liars on both sides of the aisle.

Sample Crooks and Liars post: I’m afraid Bill O’Reilly’s Fox show is something of an existential threat to the existence of the universe.

Entry you’ll never see: Congressman Barney Frank said something incredibly stupid on MSNBC last night, but I forgot to record it. Sorry.

Shout out to TPM, HuffPo and Krugman’s “Conscience of a Liberal” blog too, which also made the list. It’s not necessary to receive MSM accolades, but it is nice to see that they are at least honoring progressives for a change.

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Making Them Do It

by digby

The liberals made them do it and the conservatives aren’t happy. And that’s just as it should be:

The GOP liked a lot of what it heard in President Obama’s address Tuesday night about deficit reduction and personal responsibility. But Republicans didn’t like what they didn’t hear: talk about Social Security reform. Obama zipped past the issue with a one-line reference, saying, after a few lines about reforming health care, that “we must also begin a conversation on how to do the same for Social Security, while creating tax-free universal savings accounts for all Americans.” The way to kill an issue in Washington is to suggest we begin to talk about it. Republicans took notice. After hoping that Obama might be open to some sort of bipartisan reform that would reduce benefits and raise the eligibility age — and perhaps plant the seeds for private accounts — Republicans are now less hopeful that he’ll come their way. “I was not happy,” Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told the Huffington Post. “That was the one area of his speech I was not happy with. He appears to be backing away from what I thought was an earlier commitment to tackling Social Security reform.” McConnell said that when Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, had previously spoken to Republicans, they struck a tone that indicated a willingness to work on Social Security. “That was the place that I hoped, based on what both he and the chief of staff had said earlier, we’d be able to move on a bipartisan basis. He kind of brushed over that issue” in his speech, said McConnell. He said he has noticed a change in the administration’s rhetoric over the last few weeks. “They seem to be kind of back-pedaling some,” he said. The back-pedaling McConnell sees comes after several weeks of intense lobbying from liberals concerned that Obama might be opening a door to weakening Social Security. And if the GOP isn’t happy, it means the lobbying campaign has had an impact.Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) noticed the shift in rhetoric, too. “I think they’re getting pressure from the left,” he said. “They’re just going to have to look some of the unions in the eyes and some of the other groups and say that everything’s on the table: benefit recalculation for high income Americans and realistic age adjustments.” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) likewise heard the silence. “I would say from what I’m not hearing is, I’m not hearing a commitment to make Social Security more actuarially sound. They’re talking a lot about health care,” said Sessions. “Maybe because President Bush tried to do it and was met with a stonewall from the Democrats. They wouldn’t even meet him in the room, much less halfway.” Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) said he wished there had been more talk about entitlement reform. “There’s more of an opportunity for a Democrat president to deal with entitlements, because Republicans will join a Democrat president,” he said. “I’m hoping that they’ll get back to it.” (Otherwise, said Ensign, the speech was “terrific.”) Graham, who was in Obama’s Social Security breakout session on Monday at the White House, wished that the focus Obama put on health care had been given to Social Security. “I was very disappointed it wasn’t mentioned more… It’s the one entitlement reform that’s achievable,” he said. “There were a couple of applause lines: ‘We’re not going to delay health care reform any longer.’ I wish he’d said, ‘We’re not going to put off Social Security solvency any longer,'” Graham said.

Yeah, well, wish away Huckleberry.I’ve said before that I think the administration made those promises before they had fully assessed the horrifying state of the economy and realized that talking about “entitlement reform” at a time of great economic insecurity would not be helpful to the recovery or be politically wise. (It was also before they understood that the Republicans had adopted the Kamikaze strategy.)
I do not believe that it was unhelpful to push hard on this and those that did were not being disloyal or hysterical in getting out front and making noise about it. There is clearly a faction in the administration who see social security “reform” as either something centrist technocrats believe they can take credit for “fixing” (Gene Sperling) and others who want to use it as a legislative bargaining chip (Rahm Emmanuel) . It’s important that those who believe that there has never been a less propitious moment for mucking with the safety net (indeed, we think it should be expanded) are also part of the mix.
This idea that activists should just trust that their point of view is shared by the administration is naive. The administration is a collection of various points of influence and power, complicated by the need to compromise, bargain, punish and reward. It’s not static and the views of one or two people you might know or see in the media are not capturing the whole picture, which doesn’t even exist until a bill is signed or an order is executed. It’s the way most organizations work, none more so than political bureaucracies.
The thing is, this isn’t over. It’s never over. Despite its fiscal soundness, “reforming” Social Security is still considered by villagers to be one of the main roads to “fiscal responsibility.” (Even if the Obama team is now saying ‘entitlement reform is health care reform,” that isn’t going to change as long as there are enemies of the system like Pete Peterson out there lying about it.)
Here’s Michael Sherer, in a Time article from this week, writing about Obama’s ambitious plans to banish fiscal irresponsibility once and for all.

The reasons for those unfulfilled promises are no secret. At bottom, entitlement reform means one of two things: less spending on things voters like, such as medical treatment or retirement checks, or unpopular higher taxes to pay for those things — and quite possibly it means both. Blocking each of those routes are powerful lobbies ready to whip supple members of Congress: antitax ideologues, liberal New Deal defenders, retiree groups, patient advocates, pharmaceutical companies and medical providers, to name a few. To make matters worse, while the financial crisis is both real and terrifying, it is not always apparent. Even as our fiscal position deteriorates, the world continues to buy U.S. government debt, allowing for magically low interest rates in spite of enormous deficit spending. It is on this inhospitable terrain that President Barack Obama now plans to accomplish the impossible: reverse the trajectory of the political universe and make real progress on reforming Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

[…]
The effort to reform Social Security, which is generally seen as a less complex problem, is likely to take a backseat over the coming months to health-care efforts. This is partly because of resistance by many House liberals to the idea of reducing Social Security benefits. This group includes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was able to take over the reins in Congress in part because of the resentment caused by Bush’s failed reform effort. Although Administration officials don’t like discussing the problem on the record, the White House has not yet ruled out the idea of establishing an independent commission (outside the congressional committee structure) to look at creating a specific reform plan, an approach supported by many experts as the best way to break the political deadlock. Tennessee Representative Jim Cooper, a centrist Democrat, recently discussed his proposal for such a commission during a White House meeting with Obama and other moderate, so-called Blue Dog Democrats. “We have to approach the topic very gingerly,” Cooper said in an interview, noting the concerns of certain congressional leaders that they will lose jurisdiction with an independent commission. “The key is going to be a required congressional vote, so we can’t duck the problem any longer.”

So the fight continues. And that’s ok. But it is a fight — it’s always a fight.

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So Let’s Talk About Spending

by dday

Today House Republicans are going to engage in an extended whine about the omnibus federal spending bill, which they claim is being pushed through in the dead of night even though the bills have been written and available for over a year. This is a leftover from FY2009 because George Bush constantly threatened to veto the bills. But be sure to hear plenty of Republicans clamor about “runaway spending” today. They’re even planning on calling for a spending freeze in the midst of a recession where government spending is practically the only economic activity available. But if they want to yammer on about waste, they might want to look in the mirror.

Republicans are expected to deliver a daylong rant Wednesday against Democratic spending legislation, yet the bill is loaded with thousands of pet projects that Republican lawmakers inserted.

Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, included $142,500 for emergency repairs to the Sam Rayburn Library and Museum in Austin, Texas. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., joined state colleagues to include $1.425 million for Nevada “statewide bus facilities.” The top two Republicans on Congress’ money committees also inserted local projects.

In all, an estimated $3.8 billion worth of specific projects, called “earmarks,” are in the $410 billion spending bill that the House of Representatives is to vote on Wednesday. Easy passage is expected. The Senate is expected to act soon, too, since federal agencies will run out of money a week from Friday unless new funds are enacted.

It should be noted that the earmarks are less than 1% of the overall spending. And increases for appropriations like the Congressional budget, for example, are a cause of the GOP wanting to keep the same number of staffers despite having 20% less members of Congress, turning the whole concept of welfare on its head.

The strongest part of Obama’s speech last night, in my view, was when he identified the hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars in the federal budget that are entirely a consequence of corporate welfare, contractor fraud and a host of other methods that the GOP has been using for decades to funnel cash out of the Treasury to their contributors. They want to have a conversation about “fiscal responsibility” that slashes any worthwhile investment in people, while keeping intact the flows into executive bank statements and massive trust funds. They have played budget games for years, hiding the true costs of their giveaways to the rich, and this is the reckoning. We don’t have a spending problem, we have a priority problem. And President Obama is vowing to fix it.

In this budget, we will end education programs that don’t work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don’t need them. We’ll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use. We will root out the waste, fraud, and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn’t make our seniors any healthier, and we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.

Our job is to hold the President to this rhetorical flourish, as he’ll doubtlessly be under a lot of pressure to do the opposite. But what this said to me is that Republicans and fiscal scolds are being called out. If they want to talk about runaway spending, they have to be willing to talk about where the waste actually is. There’s been a class warfare in this country for 30 years and the rich have won. This is the blueprint to turning that around.

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Bobby, We Hardly Know Ye, But We Damn Well Better

by tristero

I was sickened reading Michael Gerson’s clinically insane profile of Jindal that Digby linked to. I’ll focus on just one sentence:

Jindal has the ability to overwhelm any topic with facts and thoughtful arguments — displaying a mastery of detail that encourages confidence.

Oh, really? Confidence? We talking about this Bobby Jindal?

…in an essay Jindal wrote in 1994 for the New Oxford Review, a serious right-wing Catholic journal, Jindal narrated a bizarre story of a personal encounter with a demon, in which he participated in an exorcism with a group of college friends. And not only did they cast out the supernatural spirit that had possessed his friend, Jindal wrote that he believes that their ritual may well have cured her cancer.

Reading the article leaves no doubt that Jindal — who graduated from Brown University in 1991, was a Rhodes Scholar, and had been accepted at Yale Law School and Harvard Medical School when he wrote the essay — was completely serious about the encounter. He even said the experience “reaffirmed” his faith.

Just what the world needs: Another seriously disturbed world leader. People, this is the kind of extremism that begs comparison with the likes of Osama bin Laden, and Jindal does not come across as the more rational of the two.

But of course, Jindal doesn’t stop with exorcism. He’s also a creationist whose grasp of science is alarmingly stupid:

don’t think students learn by us withholding information from them. … I want them to see the best data. I personally think human life and the world we live in wasn’t created accidentally. I do think that there’s a creator. … Now the way that he did it, I’d certainly want my kids to be exposed to the very best science. I don’t want any facts or theories or explanations to be withheld from them because of political correctness.

This is called by those in the biz “teach the controversy” creationism, ie the notion that since there’s a controversy over evolution, public schools should teach “intelligent design” creationism as well as evolution by natural selection. There’s just one teensy weensy problem with this position: there is no controversy over evolution.

And Gerson thinks this clown shows a mastery of detail and uses “thoughtful” arguments! (Oh, how that word has been perverted by the right wing; I’ve seen defenses of the KKK described as “thoughtful.”)

Clearly, an ignorant, unstable extremist like Jindal belongs nowhere near the levers of political power. Equally clearly, Michael Gerson has no business foisting his deranged opinions from the pages of a major metropolitan daily. We need to remember this, folks: despite the enthusiasm with which once-respectable media treat these people, modern conservatives are not responsible actors. They should never be taken seriously for to do so is dangerous: see Perle, Richard and the Bush/Iraq War.