Month: February 2009

No More

by digby

Somebody, please, please stop these idiotic little twerps from writing this crap. I just can’t stand it any more. Here’s Jamison Foser at County Fair:

Politico’s Glenn Thrush, seeing a news report that Hillary Clinton said she likes the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, “decided to fact-check.”

What would make him decide to fact-check the unremarkable statement by a baby boomer that she likes the two most popular band in the history of the world — bands that took the world by storm during her teen years?

Thrush explains:

We decided to fact-check, remembering the ambiguities that swirled around Yankees vs. Cubs, Dubai Ports World and Bosnian snipers.

Look at that first example: “Yankees vs. Cubs.” Let’s be clear here: The only “ambiguities” that swirled around Hillary Clinton’s comments about the Yankees and the Cubs came in the form of reporters and political opponents lying about Hillary Clinton.

Anyway, because a bunch of people lied about Hillary Clinton, Glenn Thrush — who doesn’t indicate that the Yankees/Cubs flap was a made-up smear perpetrated by his colleagues — decided to “fact-check” Clinton’s claim to like the Stones and the Beatles.

Thrush’s fact-checking is an absurd waste of time, premised on previous lies about Hillary Clinton. And it isn’t even an original absurd waste of time. We’ve been down this road before. And it doesn’t go anywhere good.

Foser goes on to remind us a previous sickening case of the trivia police hounding Clinton over her musical tastes, insisting that should couldn’t possibly listen to both the Beatles and the Stones. She’s “calculating” dontcha know. (I’m sure you all recall that the bitch is so calculating that when she calculates how much cleavage she needs to show to pass legislation.)

I don’t know what Hillary Clinton ever did to you boys, but get over it. There’s lots to write about these days. Knock it off.

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Skin Game

by digby

I agree with Jane on this. When did the “liberal” position become “modest tax hikes and benefit cuts on social security” are necessary? That’s just not true. In fact, according to most progressive economists, social security benefits need to be raised. (And after watching this rather huge loss of retirement wealth in the past year, I would think that it’s politically unthinkable to even whisper about lowering benefits at this point.)

I have been saying for some time now that I guessed the administration was going to try to use “entitlement reform” as a way to get to health care. I just don’t think they’ll succeed. The whole point of the villagers “Grand Bargain” is for liberals to have “skin in the game” and the Blue Dogs and Fiscal Scolds want that skin to be the wrinkled epidermis of the social security retirees. They are committed, with many millions of dollars behind them to the destruction of social security. Buying into their “entitlement” theme in any way is playing with fire.

I wrote yesterday that I think this may be a hangover from the transition before they realized the full extent of the economic meltdown — or the political opposition. Let’s hope they realize now just how out of step this is and rethink the idea of using “entitlement reform” as their frame for health care reform. There are better ways to do it that doesn’t put social security on the table as part of the bargain.

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Needs

by digby

Matt Yglesias makes an excellent argument today for the necessity of government spending right now on things that only the government does. I hadn’t thought of it in his exact terms, although I intuitively understood that people need a break from the consumer buying binge of the past few years, which means that we probably aren’t going to find our religion any time soon. There’s too much debt and frankly, people have just shopped themselves out. This hangover is overdue.

And the ramifications of that are stark. Yglesias illustrates this with a comment from The Atlantic:

There’s the rub. My company’s bank loan officer has called frequently asking if we need to borrow. They are begging to lend money. For what? We could buy a nice new machine tool at a good price, but why do that when sales are falling? Put an extension on our building? Buy some failing competitor and strap oneself with debt? Unless you absolutely need a new car or a new television or a new roof, the big ticket discretionary purchases paid for by loans aren’t going to be made. The loans the banks are making now are companies rolling over existing debt, not new debt. Given the “stuff” out there that is discretionary purchases, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see unemployment hit 20% before a bottom is reached.

That makes sense to me and it argues for a long and very unpleasant downturn if we depend upon consumer spending to bring this economy back. As Yglesias explains, the government needs to put people to work doing the things that only government can do and which the anti-government experiment of the past few decades have starved in favor of hysterical consumption of disposable goods.

He writes:

It’s not just that we’re prosperous enough that people aren’t starving to death, but over and above that compared to anyplace else in the world we just have a ton of consumer goods stockpiled such that even if purchases of new goods slowed enormously for years we could keep on keeping on at a high standard of living.

But that’s not to say that things are perfect. Compared to other times and other countries, there are a lot of scores on which we’re doing extremely well. But there are other respects in which we’re falling well behind what we know is achievable by contemporary societies.

We have a smaller proportion of our population graduating from college than do some other countries, and we’re making no progress. Relatedly, our K-12 education system could perform better. Our intercity passenger rail offerings are much worse than they could be, and none of our non-NYC metro areas have really top-notch mass transit offerings. We have substantially more violent crime than do other countries or historical periods in the United States. The level of prenatal health care our pregnant women are receiving is substandard, as is the physical fitness of our children. Public libraries are generally worse than they were a generation ago. America’s streets and sidewalks are, in general, not especially clean or well-maintained. And though our highways are plentiful, they’re not well-maintained either.

This all adds up to a lot of fields in which it would be plausible to say that we could enhance human welfare by expending more funds. But these are basically all things in which the private sector could realistically only have a secondary role.

And all of these things are feeders to the private sector in the long run — a well-educated, healthy population and an efficient modern infrastructure are the foundation for private sector wealth. Without these things it’s hard to see how the private economy ever truly recovers.

People have lots and lots of stuff, all the gadgets they can use for a while and a serious case of consumption fatigue. What they don’t have are these important necessities that have been neglected for so long. It’s perfectly logical that this is where spending should go for a while. Indeed, it seems to me that modern capitalism requires it. If its purpose is to fulfill needs, then these are the needs that require fulfilling. And the only entity capable of efficiently and quickly delivering such large scale necessities is the government.

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What’s Happenin’, Blood?

by dday

This reminds me of my dad coming to my room to “hang” with me and check out what “the kids” are into:

Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party’s principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

The RNC’s first black chairman will “surprise everyone” when updating the party’s image using the Internet and advertisements on radio, on television and in print, he told The Washington Times.

Does Clifton Davis from That’s My Mama write Steele’s lines? “Off the hook?” “We are going to cut the capital gains tax, can you dig it to the max, jive turkeys?!?!?” If you want an RNC Chair to relate to youth, it might be good to offer them, and I know this is crazy, policies they like, instead of references ripped off from “The Taking of Pelham 123.”

I think this article was written so TBogg could make fun of it.

…On the flip side, here’s the Attorney General of the United States treating the nation like adults and showing more respect for African-Americans than using a catch phrase.

Every year, in February, we attempt to recognize and to appreciate black history. It is a worthwhile endeavor for the contributions of African Americans to this great nation are numerous and significant. Even as we fight a war against terrorism, deal with the reality of electing an African American as our President for the first time and deal with the other significant issues of the day, the need to confront our racial past, and our racial present, and to understand the history of African people in this country, endures. One cannot truly understand America without understanding the historical experience of black people in this nation. Simply put, to get to the heart of this country one must examine its racial soul.

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us. But we must do more- and we in this room bear a special responsibility. Through its work and through its example this Department of Justice, as long as I am here, must – and will – lead the nation to the “new birth of freedom” so long ago promised by our greatest President. This is our duty and our solemn obligation. read on….

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Principled Obstructionism

by digby

Here’s some good news: according to Jane Hamsher, the Democratic leadership has balked at this nutty White House plan to force a “base-closing” style up or down vote. Jane quotes an unnamed source saying:

“Reid and Pelosi sent back word that Congress doesn’t get bypassed just because Peter Orszag says it does.”

No kidding. Did they really believe that Democratic politicians were going to sit still for social security cuts getting rammed through the congress without amendment during a recession? While they are being asked to repeatedly bail out billionaires on Wall Street? It’s political dynamite of the worst kind.

Still, social security terminator Pete Peterson is going to be the big star at this thing and both Obama and Biden are going to speak,so there will be super high level validation of the notion that “entitlement reform” is on the agenda to “pay” for Bush’s misbegotten wars and Obama’s necessary stimulus. Why they want to do this, I still cannot fathom. It’s a zombie theme they are very stupidly reanimating and it’s going to take precious political energy to put it back in the ground.

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High Wire Act

by digby

A handful of Republican governors are considering turning down some money from the federal stimulus package, a move opponents say puts conservative ideology ahead of the needs of constituents struggling with record foreclosures and soaring unemployment.

Though none has outright rejected the money available for education, health care and infrastructure, the governors of Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alaska, South Carolina and Idaho have all questioned whether the $787 billion bill signed into law this week will even help the economy.

“My concern is there’s going to be commitments attached to it that are a mile long,” said Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who considered rejecting some of the money but decided Wednesday to accept it. “We need the freedom to pick and choose. And we need the freedom to say ‘No thanks.'”

[…]

In fact, governors who reject some of the stimulus aid may find themselves overridden by their own legislatures because of language Clyburn included in the bill that allows lawmakers to accept the federal money even if their governors object.

He inserted the provision based on the early and vocal opposition to the stimulus plan by South Carolina’s Republican governor, Mark Sanford. But it also means governors like Sanford and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal — a GOP up-and-comer often mentioned as a potential 2012 presidential candidate — can burnish their conservative credentials, knowing all the while that their legislatures can accept the money anyway.

I guess these people are placing their political bets on the economy not being sobad that they get blamed, but still bad enough that they can blame Obama. It’s quite tight rope they’re walking.

If the Democrats were as ruthless and reckless with other people’s lives as the Republicans are, they wouldn’t have put that clause in the legislation and would have let the Republicans pay the price for this nonsense. You know if the shoe were on the other foot, the GOP kamikazees would have forced the Dems to bear the brunt of such a decision. But then, that’s the reason why the country is in this catastrophic mess in the first place isn’t it? The Republicans just don’t give a damn about the people they are supposed to be representing.

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No He Cantor

by digby

I have to say that I’m really thrilled that the Republicans have found a fresh new face of congressional leadership in the person of Eric Cantor. He’s got the wingnut shining: a perfect blend of whining sanctimony and sociopathic malevolence combined with a winsome, youthful appearance. Rick Warren meets Joe McCarthy meets a long lost Jonas brother. He could end up surpassing Newtie in the pantheon of Republican kamikazees.

And like all Republicans, he’s up to his ears in hypocrisy and corruption. Here’s Julia at FDL:

The whole government bailout thing just… bothers him.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) holds up House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement while speaking to the media after the vote failed on the bailout on Capitol Hill on Sept. 29, 2008. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, a rising star in the Republican party, has been a prominent voice demanding accountability in how the government doles out hundreds of billions for bank bailouts.

“I think most American taxpayers now are sort of scratching their head,” Cantor told CNN in December, “wondering when all this bailout stuff is going to end. And probably thinking, ‘You know, when is my bailout coming?'”

Rep. Cantor is not one of those confused taxpayers

This Thursday, Cantor cast a high-profile vote opposing release of another $350 billion in bailout funds. Unpublicized until now was a recent development: The Treasury Department used $267 million of taxpayer funds to buy preferred stock in a private banking company that employs Cantor’s wife.

The bailout for New York Private Bank and Trust (NYPBT) came earlier this month as part of a Treasury Department program to boost “healthy banks” with extra capital. NYPBT is the holding company for Emigrant Bank, a savings bank with 35 branches in and around New York City. Diana Cantor runs the Virginia branch of Emigrant’s wealth-management division, called Virginia Private Bank & Trust, which targets an ultra-rich clientele.

You know what’s interesting about Virginia Private Bank and Trust? It’s a brand new initiative for NYPBT, which appears to consist largely of Ms. Cantor

Diana Cantor runs the Virginia branch of Emigrant’s wealth-management division, called Virginia Private Bank & Trust, which targets an ultra-rich clientele.

…

The Virginia Private Bank & Trust, a satellite opened this spring, is still getting off the ground. On Thursday, when ProPublica visited its small Richmond office in an office park not far from the Cantors’ home, a sheet of white paper taped to the door served as its sign. One of the two employees there said the office had yet to serve a client since it opened last spring. She referred further queries to the bank’s main office.

In an April interview with Private Wealth magazine, NYPBT executives said that Virginia was the first of several regional locations planned for the bank’s division concentrating on wealthy investors. The New York branch opened in 2005, concentrating on New York City area clients wanting to invest more than $50 million.

Diana Cantor comes to the job with many years of financial experience. She was hired in early 2008 after a long tenure running the Virginia College Savings Plan. Rep. Cantor’s personal financial disclosure shows that she received a “consultant fee” from NYPBT in 2007 as well

Mrs Cantor claims she knew nothing about the bailout of her wealthy benefactors. But it’s pretty hard to believe that her wealthy benefactors didn’t know their neophyte employee wasn’t married to a rising star in the Republican party.

I would hate to see Cantor be ousted from his assignment as General of the Imperial Republican Congressional kamikazees. His whining is so unctuous and insincere that I think even hard core Republicans are hard pressed to keep their lunches down once he gets on a roll. (I’m sure you recall his breathless press conference after the failure of the first TARP vote, screeching that the Republicans couldn’t vote for it because Nancy Pelosi’s comments during the debate hurt their feelings.) But this could be trouble for him. Even wingnuts don’t like crooked bankers these days.

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Why California Lay Dying

by dday

Just to update everyone on the meltdown out here in California – last night the Republicans in the State Senate engineered a putsch, deposing their leader in the dead of night because he was insufficiently unconcerned about the welfare of the state.

Around 11 p.m., a group of GOP senators, unhappy with the higher taxes that Senate leader Dave Cogdill of Modesto agreed to as part of a deal with the governor and Democrats, voted to replace him in a private caucus meeting in Cogdill’s office. Shortly before midnight, it was still unclear who would replace him.

Cogdill’s ouster could be a major setback to budget negotiations. Cogdill was a lead negotiator on the budget package and had committed to voting for it. If he were removed from his leadership post, a new Senate minority leader would likely try to renegotiate the deal, which lawmakers spent three months forging.

Zed Hollingsworth (I’m calling him Zed because, like the recently excavated mammoth at the La Brea Tar Pits of the same name, he’s a prehistoric elephant) is indeed trying to reopen budget talks and take taxes off the table, and if there’s not a breakthrough in a couple days, he may succeed. Darrell Steinberg, the Democratic leader, is vowing to hold out, but he doesn’t have much left to offer the holdouts, as they remain 1 vote short in the Senate.

Meanwhile, 20,000 state employees are getting pink slips, and continued delay will make the state ineligible for federal transportation dollars because they can’t provide matching funds, costing the state billions. The Republican obstructionists have cost the state untold amounts in shutdown/start-up costs, higher rates of borrowing due to the uncertainty, etc.

Given all this, I have to wholeheartedly agree with Robert Cruickshank’s take on how this all does nothing but highlight the need for fundamental reform and a return to democracy in California. He did an admirable job going over the history and the menu of options, but I want to make the more emotional argument for a return to majority rule. Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money did the best and most concise job of explaining why, despite the essential truth of the Republican Zombie Death Cult, it’s the process-based enabling that is the original sin.

Although Krugman is of course right to blame a “fanatical, irrational minority” for the current crisis in California, it can’t be emphasized enough that what really matters is the incredibly stupid institutional rules that empower this minority: namely, the idiotic super-majority for tax increases and an initiative system that both created that supermajority requirement and provides incentives to vote for every tax cut while mandating certain kinds of spending because the issues are isolated. Fortunately, the federal level (while it has too many veto points) is not quite at this level yet, and at least the stupid filibuster rule doesn’t apply to budgets.

It’s very easy to get people excited and motivated about a PERSON. Not so much about a process. And yet, as we all know, without the process, the villains in this melodrama would be sidelined, a fact which actually serves both parties.

We on the left often obsess over whether the electorate can figure out who to blame in these crises. This 2/3 requirement for budgets and tax increases in California is a powerful enabler for that confusion. Because the elected representatives of the majority party are not allowed to impose their will on how the state is to be run, they cannot be held to account. Because the elected representatives of the minority party are in the minority party, they cannot be held to account. Therefore we have a political cycle that mirrors the economic cycle resulting from the inevitable bad policies. The powerful stay powerful, the voiceless stay voiceless, people lose faith in the process, leading to more entrenched power and more voiceless, and so on.

Greg Lucas at California’s Capitol makes the moral case for a majority-vote budget along these lines, that it is the only way for true accountability in the system.

If the huckstering of the President’s Day Weekend demonstrated anything at all, it’s that the majority party should be able to pass the budget it considers best for California.

If its awful the governor, should he or she be of a different political party, can slice-and-dice it through the miracle of the veto process.

Should the governor be of the same political party and warmly endorse the spending plan well he or she can be thrown out by voters.

And, if the non-partisan commission created by Proposition 11 last November to draw new legislative boundaries does its job it will be possible to throw out members of the party that passed the budget as well.

I don’t agree about the panacea of redistricting – the available data shows virtually no link between gerrymandering and political polarization – but on balance Lucas is right. It’s not a marketplace of ideas unless citizens can buy one idea or the other and make their decision based on the evidence. Democracies work when ideas are allowed to stand strong or wither on the strength of results. We do not have that here in California. This is also true on the national level. Senate leaders string their constituents along with the need for more Democrats to overcome a self-imposed hurdle of the filibuster.

The extreme version of this madness is here in the Golden State. The 2/3 rule is the prime mover for all the dysfunction we see. It was actually put into place in the 1930s to stop the New Deal from reaching these shores. It was modified in the 1960s and in 1978, Prop. 13 added a 2/3 barrier for tax increases to the budget. We’ve been feeling the effects ever since, as taxes are flattened and ratcheted down and the state is governed for the sake of people in gated commnunities and not the least of society. It creates an artificial conservative veto over policy. The expressed goal was to save homeowners money – the actual goal was to destroy government. California is the house that Grover Norquist built, and the results are predictable.

As to my point that this serves both parties? Greg Lucas:

Just to sweeten the majority-vote budget pot a little, there’s a fairly hefty number of folks who work both in and around the Capitol who assert that whichever team wins the power to run roughshod over the minority party will be so scared of exclusive blame for any badness in the budget being exclusively their fault that they won’t do anything real drastic.

This is what they are scared of CURRENTLY. There are lots of checks and balances in political systems. There is no need for an artificial veto. Democrats will remain timid to stick their necks out (they’re politicians), but at least they would have no excuses. And who knows, maybe they would realize they have a little bit of power and they would use it!

Arnold Schwarzenegger is irrelevant and a failure. State Democrats are spineless jellyfish. The death-cult Republican Party is a collection of flat-earthers bent on destruction. All well and good. Yet all of these discrete groups are enabled by a political system that does violent disservice to the people of the state and the concept of democracy. We must have a return to majority rule as soon as possible. For the sake of accountability.

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Moles

by digby

I understand why the administration is doing this, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea:

With all the controversy surrounding the Bush administration’s firings of several U.S. attorneys, the question for the Obama administration became: What now?

And with all the muck that the hard-charging Chicago-based U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has stirred not only in Chicago, but also in Washington, the question became: How now?

The Obama White House has effectively, and somewhat quietly, answered that question — for now: With Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explaining that the Justice Department has allowed all the chief federal prosecutors who have not already left in the changing of the presidential guard to remain at their posts, at least temporarily.

Of the 93 U.S. attorneys who served under the previous administration, Gibbs said aboard Air Force One en route to Phoenix with President Barack Obama, 51 remain.

The White House also says that, at the start of the administration, all 93 were allowed to serve temporarily. Thirty resigned before Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20, and 12 more have left since then. And the 51 still serving are technically there on a temporary basis — Obama hasn’t decided that all will remain.

They understand that if they ask any of these prosecutors to resign, the right wing will immediately go into a full-on hypocritical fugue state and start keening about how Obama is “politicizing” the Justice department. It’s hissy fit 101. They have no shame. But unfortunately, if they subsequently find out that they have some burrowed, hardcore wingnuts in their midst (which wouldn’t be surprising, considering that Rove tended to have the honest ones fired) it will be nearly impossible to fire them individually because the hissy fit will be even more overwhelming.

This was always going to be a mess. The Bushies very successfully set this trap because the investigations petered out upon the resignations of Gonzales, Goodling and Sampson. (The Democrats seemed to think that was more than enough.) I don’t think the public ever understood that the firings of the US Attorneys for refusing to prosecute for political purposes necessarily put all of those who weren’t fired under suspicion. It’s not to say they were all guilty, of course, but how likely is it that the only US Attorneys appointed by Bush who were pressured to participate are the ones who refused and were fired for it?

So, the administration is stuck either way. As I think with all these issues pertaining to the Justice Department and civil liberties, that the best policy is to pull the band-aid off and simply do the right thing. Trying to finesse this stuff rarely works out.

Unless, they know somehow that all the bad apples are those who’ve already resigned, it seems to me that with all the flurry of activity going on and the recent memories of the Bush administration abuses, that they would have been better off just asking for resignations across the board, keeping those who are career Justice Department types like Patrick Fitzgerald — and taking the heat from the wingnuts. It’s never going to get any easier and the stakes for the future are pretty high. The last thing they need are a bunch of political operatives in the Justice Department undermining everything they want to do.

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I’m Smart, Not Like Everybody Says, Like Dumb, I’m Smart, And I Want Respect!

by dday

I am sad I missed Roland Burris’ press conference:

Roland Burris is on TV giving a speech defending himself against allegations he lied about his role in being solicited and then trying to help raise money for Rod Blagojevich to help get the senate seat. And it’s basically identical to a series of speeches Blago himself gave when he was swirling around the bowl: How dare you give me any crap for lying about that fundraising stuff when, my god, I just helped pass the Stimulus Bill, SCHIP and the Lily Ledbetter bill.

A-Rod’s presser was less excruciating. Where do they get these guys in Illinois?

It was obvious from the moment anyone accepted an offer from Rod Blagojevich to be appointed that they had only a passing familiarity with ethics and standards. And now it appears the dam is going to burst. The Senate Ethics Committee is opening a probe into Burris’ possible perjury, and Illinois Rep. Phil Hare is calling for resignation:

“Senator Burris’ story has now evolved several times since he testified before the Illinois House Impeachment Committee in December. The only logical conclusion is that he is not being entirely straight with the people of Illinois.

“A cloud of corruption has hung over our state and its leaders for too long. The impeachment and removal of former Governor Blagojevich was a step in the right direction. But just as it looked like a new era in Illinois politics was possible, we suffer yet another setback. It is like a recurring nightmare.

“Given this latest revelation, I believe it is in the best interest of all Illinoisans that Senator Burris resigns. Our state and its citizens deserve the whole truth, not bits and pieces only when it is convenient.”

Citizens also deserve to have a full say in who is their representative in Washington. If Burris doesn’t survive and removes himself from the Senate, there ought to be a special election. The new Governor can ask the legislature to approve one. This only highlights how broken the appointment process is for vacancies. It’s not the exception, it’s the rule. And instead of trying stalling tactics to stop Burris from being seated, Harry Reid and Dick Durbin could have stood up for the greater principle. It certainly would put them in a better position now.

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