Month: March 2009

Disaster Capitalist Humor

by digby

Here’s Jonathan at ATR again:

There’s been a common phenomenon in the third world over the past three decades or so. A country’s financial sector, in collaboration with the larger financial world, would create some type of gigantic economic fuck up. The IMF would then (in collaboration with the local financial elites) step in and provide loans in return for what was called “structural adjustment.” Structural adjustment involved getting rid of any kind of social spending that made life bearable for everyone else. In other words, the country’s financial elites would use the catastrophes they’d created themselves in order to do what they’d always wanted to but couldn’t get away with in normal times. They took the profit, and then imposed all the costs on everyone else. I’ve long believed U.S. elites would attempt to do this for America as soon as they had the opportunity. Here’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner today at the Council on Foreign Relations having a jolly laugh with moderator and investment banker Roger Altman about the process now getting under way—all thanks to propaganda assistance from investment banking billionaire Pete Peterson. For those without a decoder ring, “everyone” being a fiscal hawk means that due to the current financial disaster, they’ll soon be coming after Social Security and Medicare:

GEITHNER: Of course, we are all fiscal hawks now because of Pete Peterson. (Laughter.) There are no doves left on the fiscal side. (Laughter.) ALTMAN: And he deserves credit for that.

Yes, the coming massacre of American lives will be quite funny indeed. (Laughter.)

Hilarious stuff.

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Moderates For Moderation Behaving Moderately

by dday

You have to be something of a Kremlinologist to decipher the true meaning of Senate Democratic statements these days. In all of these matters it helps to focus on actions. For example, Kent Conrad (D-ND). As the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, he has been the most vocal about the widening deficit, the new CBO scoring showing that deficit widening even further, and how President Obama’s plans are simply too ambitious for words. Sounds like the old fiscal responsibility thing, right? Well, the actual budget summary from Conrad is entitled “Laying Foundation for Long-Term Economic Security With Investments in Energy, Education, and Health Care,” and the proposals do track the President’s major long-term goals. And the supposed “cost-savings” in his budget plan are mainly derived from a bunch of gimmicks.

…someone who was genuinely alarmed by the fact that the CBO scored Obama’s plans as leading to large deficits in the final years of his ten year budget would not have “solved” this problem by abandoning Obama’s ten-year budget window switching to a five-year window. Similarly, re-inserting the “let’s pretend will use the AMT to raise taxes on the upper-middle class and then not actually do that” approach to budgeting, though now a time-honored trick of the Bush years, is not an actual deficit reduction measure.

Long story short, Senator Conrad cares about the deficit and is taking some action to make it smaller. But he also cares a great deal about being seen as a deficit hawk, the kind of guy who’s not afraid to take an axe to the president’s proposals. And in this instance the administration rather smartly eschewed a lot of this kind of pain free “virtual” deficit reduction, thus making it possible for interested Senators to deploy favored accounting patches on their own initiative and take credit for more reduction than they actually produced.

The White House seems to have no problem with the changes made, because the changes for the most part are made of air. And in some sense, Conrad actually enhanced the prospect of health care reform, by offering revenue-neutral space for a reform fund and allowing that particular budget item to be scored on a 10-year timeline, so that the savings in the later years can allow for an up-front deficit. And while Conrad deleted reconciliation for health care and energy proposals, because they exist (at least for health care) in the House version, they can be imported at a later date, meaning the threat can still be held over the heads of Republicans.

So Conrad appears to me to be someone who wants to appear like a centrist while facilitating the needs of a progressive budget, in direct contrast to Evan Bayh, Tom Carper and Blanche Lincoln, who want to appear like supporters of the President while obstructing and hacking up his agenda:

We formed our working group because we recognize both the difficulty and the urgency of accomplishing a huge and ambitious agenda. We must act quickly and decisively to repair our financial markets and start to turn the economy around. In addition, we believe that President Obama is correct when he says that we cannot afford to wait any longer to fix health care and transition to a clean-energy economy.

These are titanic and complicated tasks, and we believe that many worthwhile policy solutions can be found in the practical center — ideas that also have the benefit of appealing to vast segments of the American electorate. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership has basically decided to stay on the sidelines to let the Democrats carry the load of reform alone.

As moderate leaders, it is not our intent to water down the president’s agenda. We intend to strengthen and sustain it. Moderation is not a mathematical process of finding the center for its own sake. Practical solutions are practical because they offer our best chance to make a difference in people’s lives today without forcing our children to pick up the tab tomorrow.

The stakes are too high for Democrats to fear a policy debate. Such debates produce better legislation. On nearly all important votes, a supermajority of 60 senators will be needed to pass legislation. Without Democratic moderates working to find common ground with reasonable Republicans, the president’s agenda could well be filibustered into oblivion.

It’s really not possible to take these people seriously. The whole “practical solutions are great because they are practical” part really gives you the sense of who you’re dealing with here. They live in a magical pony and fairy land where they, only they, can bring the nation together, despite all evidence to the contrary, by just clicking their heels and magically finding those “reasonable” Republican votes for anything but the most watered-down policy. They are also very worried that if Obama passes the agenda on which he ran, moderates who voted for him will be very upset and will throw Democrats out of office in 2010. That’s really their response. And none of them, just like their partner in crime Susan Collins can actually name anything they’d cut, or explain why a 51-vote majority is undemocratic:

“I’m very concerned that the levels of debt that the president’s budget would entail are simply unsustainable and would pose a significant threat to the health of our economy,” said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who plays a pivotal role in Senate negotiations. “I’ve had conversations with several centrist Democrats who have exactly the same concerns I do.”

Well, what would you cut? “One of the areas I would look at are the huge agricultural subsidies,” she said. Those farm payments are one of the few cuts Obama has already proposed, which Collins added was “to his credit.”

Anything else? “I thought I did pretty well coming up with one right off the top of my head,” she said […]

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said she leans no on Obama’s budget because of its size but is open to being convinced. She’s not looking forward to cutting it, however. “That’s always the problem. How to cut back and what to cut back,” she said.

Yet the main change that Landrieu would like to see highlights the political contradiction at work. Tax hikes on independent oil and gas producers, many of whom operate in the Gulf, she said, are a “non-starter.” Removing that tax hike, though, increases the deficit […]

“Reconciliation should not be used to impose a major policy change. It’s unfair to those who hold a minority view,” Collins added.

Isn’t that undemocratic? Collins was asked why she and a handful of senators should wield so much power over the nation’s policy.

“I don’t really think I have all that much power but I’m glad you think so,” she said, laughing.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with the power structure of moderates,” she added. “People want to see healthcare reform, want to see us deal with major issues, but not in an undemocratic fashion. I think people want to see fuller debate and deliberation and more involvement by the minority.”

But isn’t the need for 60 votes undemocratic? Didn’t the nation have a full debate, followed by an election in which people voted for major change?

“I disagree totally with that,” said Collins. “I do not believe the American people voted to short circuit debate and prevent people with a minority view on both sides of the aisle from having the ability to amend a bill.”

Behold the reasonable, responsible moderates who will save us from this crisis and return America to glory again.

Pardon me while I go throw myself in the ocean.

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Seeing The Forest

by digby

I’ve always thought Eric Cantor was a putz, but this piece in The Hill makes me wonder if he isn’t smarter than I thought:

A rising star in the Republican Party has dimmed over the past week.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.), a politically shrewd up-and-comer in the GOP, has broken with his party on two high-profile issues. And the defections on last week’s AIG bonus tax bill and the Obama administration’s troubled assets plan have exasperated some members in the GOP conference.

The grumbling started when Cantor unexpectedly voted with Democrats last week on a measure to recoup the bonuses of AIG executives. Many Republicans called the bill unconstitutional, with more than half of the GOP conference rejecting it. Cantor, who has been labeled “Mr. No” by some Democrats, was one of only two Republican leadership officials who voted for the bill. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.) was the other.

“All the unconstitutional stuff aside, if you don’t believe in raising taxes, why would you vote to raise taxes?” House Republican Conference Secretary John Carter (Texas) said.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) added that supporting the retroactive tax cut “sets a terrible precedent, just terrible.”

But Cantor voted for that retroactive tax, saying that he didn’t want to “reward failure,” meaning the AIG officials would keep their bonuses if the legislation hadn’t passed.

Yet Cantor’s vote last Thursday now looks even worse to some of his GOP colleagues. AIG employees are vowing to give their bonuses back and Democratic leaders say their bill — even if it’s not passed — accomplished its mission. The legislation appears to be dead.

The vote last week was a tough one for most Republicans amid the public’s outrage over the $165 million in bonuses after the company received $170 billion in bailout funds. Most politically vulnerable Republicans backed the Democratic bill, but there were some conservatives other than Cantor who voted yes, including Reps. Dave Camp (Mich.), Joe Barton (Texas), Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Roy Blunt (Mo.), who is running for the Senate.

A Republican legislator said, “Some members wanted to stick it to AIG — bonuses and recipients — but at some point in time your obligation is to stand in front of the mob and say, ‘Look, we’re going in the wrong direction, let’s think about this.’ ”

Another Republican suggested more members might have voted no if Cantor had.

The GOP legislator who rejected the Democratic bill said sarcastically, “When your whip votes against you, it’s kind of tough to whip for it.”

Cantor’s colleagues in leadership called the bill “a sham.” Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that it was “more than an attempt to cover someone’s rear end because of the political damage that’s out there.”

Boehner told reporters last Thursday that he did not know how Cantor was going to vote on the bill. Boehner voted no early on, while Cantor waited until late to register his vote of yes.

But a leadership aide privy to conversations among GOP leaders said that in the end, Cantor “got spooked.”

Throughout his career, Cantor has made many wise political moves as he climbed the leadership ladder. Some thought he could have supplanted Boehner as GOP leader this year, but Cantor opted to be patient and easily claimed the No. 2 GOP post in the House.

Cantor remains quite popular among his Republican peers, though his handling of the AIG bill has some members believing he has more to learn before he can helm the GOP conference.

[…]

The 45-year-old lawmaker issued a statement that excoriated the administration’s proposal.

Meanwhile, Wall Street and Republican leaders in the Senate embraced the plan as the Dow Jones Industrial Average spiked nearly 7 percent.

Cantor called it a “shell game that hides the true cost of the program from the taxpayers that will be asked to pay for it.”

The top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee labeled it “a genuine and sincere effort.”

Boehner distanced himself from Cantor’s characterization of the assets initiative.

Boehner told reporters on Tuesday that Republicans were going to take a wait-and-see approach before offering an alternative.

“We’ll wait for more details before we prescribe what we think would be a better solution,” Boehner said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Monday that he was willing to “give the secretary of the Treasury credit for finally turning to the real issue here.”

For some reason, Cantor is one of the few Republicans who gets the populist mood of the moment. His votes are actually the smart move for the GOP if they are to get any traction in this environment. Wealthy gasbags like Limbaugh are the ones who are out of touch on this and are taking their party down the wrong path.

But hey, it’s fine with me if they want to follow the plutocrats over the cliff. I’m just shocked Eric Cantor not only has the brains to see it but the guts to act on it. I’m going to take him a little bit more seriously from now on. He could be dangerous.

Update: And yet, he’s still a putz:

There was more than one whip at last night’s Britney Spears concert in Washington DC. Three GOP aides confirm to the Huffington Post that House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) attended the pop star’s event at the Verizon Center, where she appeared on stage brandishing a leather lash. “He went at the request of a fundraiser,” said one GOP staffer.

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Corporate Narcissism

by digby

Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution notices something important:

The Washington Post published an op-ed today by Martin Feldstein. Feldstein explains how Obama’s proposed limitation on the deductibility of charitable contributions by upper-income taxpayers is a horrible idea. He’s identified as “an economics professor at Harvard University [and] president emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research.” One affiliation the Post left out is that Martin Feldstein is a longtime member of AIG’s Board of Directors. He’s also a member of the board’s Finance Committee.

Read the rest for the second punchline. And then read this petulant whine from someone who made a $750,000 bonus from AIGFP and feels so hurt and betrayed by all the mean things that are being said about him that he’s going to quit and give his bonus to charity. No word about whether he thinks he should get his charitable deduction, but I’ll bet he’ll scream bloody murder if he doesn’t get it.
This person said that despite the fact that he worked for AIGFP he was in the commodities division and had nothing to do with the CDOs and is, therefore, blameless. And for all I know, that’s true. But what he seems not to want to recognize is that the whole company would have gone down without the government intervening and he would have been left with nothing. It happens every day. Bonus contracts with bankrupt companies really aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. This crisis in AIG required that people such as this, who admittedly made a ton of money over the years, work for very little for a time until they could get the company back on its feet. They might not be rewarded to the tune of 750 thousand dollars for a years work, but if they made arrangements for deferred compensation down the road, after the taxpayers were repaid, I have little doubt they would have made out very well in the long run. Instead they are having a public tantrum at a time when they should be keeping the lowest possible profile. (Why are we supposed to believe these people are so smart that thes ecompanies can’t do without them, again? I keep forgetting.) I mentioned narcissism in passing yesterday and got an interesting email from journalist and author Tim Hall, who wrote an extremely interesting article for the NY Press on the subject during the Enron scandal. He explains what Narcissistic Personality Disorder is and interviews a well known expert on the subject:

I’m very interested in the concept of corporate narcissism. Many companies are successful without also engaging in criminal behavior. In your opinion, how much of the recent wave of business scandals in the U.S. is attributable to a corporate “culture of narcissism,” and how much to a number of very misguided—and possibly narcissistic—individuals?

The “few rotten apples” theory ignores the fact that affairs like Enron and WorldCom were not isolated incidents—nor were they conducted conspiratorially and surreptitiously. What is now conveniently labeled “misconduct” was an open secret. Information—albeit often relegated to footnotes—was available. The charismatic malignant narcissists who headed these corporations were cheered on by investors—small and institutional alike. Their grandiose fantasies were construed as visionary. Their sense of entitlement—never commensurate with their actual achievements—was tolerated forgivingly. Their blatant exploitation of co-workers and stakeholders was part of the ethos of the virile Anglo-Saxon, natural selection, can-do, dare-do version of capitalism. Everyone colluded in this mass psychosis. There are no victims here—only scapegoats.

In the late 1990s, you couldn’t swing a dead cat on lower Broadway without hitting a dozen Internet “visionaries,” touting companies that then went bankrupt. These individuals seemed to literally come out of nowhere—suddenly everybody was a Genius with a Big Idea. Do you have any thoughts on whether certain business cycles (like the Internet boom) actually create narcissists? Or do they simply attract preexisting narcissists looking for quick and easy wealth? The latter. Pathological (or malignant) narcissism is the outcome of a confluence of an appropriate genetic predisposition and early childhood abuse by role models, caretakers or peers. It is ubiquitous, because every human being—regardless of the nature of his society and culture—develops healthy narcissism early in life. Healthy narcissism is rendered pathological by abuse—and abuse, alas, is a universal human behavior. By “abuse” I mean any refusal to acknowledge the emerging boundaries of the individual. Thus, smothering, doting and excessive expectations are as abusive as beating and incest. Pathological narcissism, though, can be latent and induced to emerge by what I call “collective narcissism.” The way pathological narcissism manifests and is experienced is dependent on the particulars of societies and cultures. In some cultures, it is encouraged. In others suppressed. In collectivist societies, it may be projected onto the collective; in individualistic societies, it is an individual’s trait. Families, businesses, industries, organizations, ethnic groups, churches and even whole nations can be safely described as “narcissistic” or “pathologically self-absorbed.” The longer the association or affiliation of the members, the more cohesive and conformist the inner dynamics of the group, the more shared are its grandiose fantasies (“the vision thing”), the more persecutory or numerous its enemies, the more misunderstood and exclusionary it feels, the more intensive the physical and emotional experiences of its members—the stronger the bonding myth. The more rigorous the common pathology. Such an all-pervasive and extensive malaise manifests itself in the behavior of each and every member. It is a defining—though often implicit or underlying—mental structure. It has explanatory and predictive powers. It is recurrent and invariable—a pattern of conduct melded with distorted cognition and stunted emotions. And it is often vehemently denied. What steps might a corporation take to protect itself from being ruined by this kind of narcissistic contagion? The first—and most obvious—step is screening. Mental health management is often considered a low organizational priority—frequently with calamitous outcomes. Employees on all levels—especially the upper echelons—should be tested periodically and regularly by professional diagnosticians for personality disorders. Those who test positive should be sacked. There is no way of containing narcissism. It is contagious—weaker people tend to emulate narcissists, stronger ones tend to adopt narcissistic behaviors in order to fend off the narcissist’s unwelcome attentions and overweening demands.

I would have to say that this particular virus is contagious among the ruling class in general.

Here’s how MSNBC covered it just now:

Carlos: Is the angry mob trying to destroy any chance of recovery? JP Morgan Chase says making the financial industry the enemy hurts the chances at a rebound.
Contessa: Across the country, there are angry Americans who I know probably scoff at that but an executive vice president at AIG was so furious at the way he was being treated both by the company and the government that he resigned and had the NY Times actually publish his resignation letter today. Jake DeSantis says (she reads the letter) Let’s talk to Melissa Francis from CNBC. You wrote about it and we talked about it yesterday. A lot of concern from people in the financial industry that “you keep doing this and you’re going to destroy the very people who can help the nation make a comeback..” Melissa:Yeah. This is really the case in point of the danger of mob rule. This is somebody who had already agreed to work for a dollar a year. He was in there unwinding a business this Jake DeSantis that he had built for more than a decade. He had nothing to do with the credit default business that had caused so many problems at AIG and he felt like basically he’s spending ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day away from his family and for what? You know, to be abused, to be abused in the media, to be abused by congress. And now he’s saying, you know,m the ultimate sticking it to everyone, he’s not going to give the money back, he’s going to give it to charity.
Carlos: Melissa can I play the skeptic here? I read the story by executive vice president Jake DeSantis and he writes that he’s an executive vice president, MIT grad, the son of a modest upbringing, and he said, “although I was a vice president I didn’t know what was going on.” I find that hard to believe. This guy was an executive vice president and he was in the company for eleven years, they’re doing literally billions of dollars worth of risky and crazy trades and he’s saying that he doesn’t know what’s going on?Melissa; His division was completely separate from what was going on. And I’m glad you raised that question because, …
Carlos: When you say that his division was separate, I know and you know that when you’re an executive in a large company you sit in those senior management meetings you hear what’s going on in other parts of the business. I find it hard to believe that and I look at the comments on NY Times.com, over 600 comments, and most of the people were a lot like me, saying “come on, you didn’t know what was going on?”Melissa: Yeah. I think that you can hold the CEO and the board of directors to that kind of standard. This is somebody who was in charge of hundreds of people and he knew what his hundreds of people were doing. I don’t think he was in charge of this other group. This is a company, you have to understand, that sprawls nations, I mean across oceans. I mean, it’s an enormous company. You can hold the CEO to that standard and the board of directors, but I think this person was in charge of a lot of people and, you know, the credit default swap unit wasn’t part of that group.
Contessa: And regardless of whether there’s credit to be made from that argument, we do know that letting mob mentality leaves no room for logic.

Kudos to Carlos for at least putting up a fight.

I’m afraid that Melissa is ill-informed. Our boy Jake wasn’t selling life insurance in Mayberry. He was an EVP for the commodities division AIGFP which was where the crimes took place:

Joseph Cassano and Thomas R. Savage helped start the group in 1987. AIGFP businesses specialize in aircraft and equipment leasing, capital markets, consumer finance and insurance premium finance.

AIGFP focused principally on OTC derivatives markets and acted as principal in nearly all of its transactions involving capital markets offerings and corporate finance, investment and financial risk management products. AIGFP played key roles in the acquisition of London City Airport and, in one of the largest private equity transactions announced in 2006, the management-led buyout of Kinder Morgan Inc.

AIGFP’s commodity derivatives and commodity indices helped stimulate the development of this new asset class. AIGFP’s sponsored a major study on the historical performance of commodity futures by professors Gary Gorton and K. Geert Rouwenhorst.[1] AIGFP created a specialized credit business. AIGFP focused its business on structured products like CDO’s. In 2003, it absorbed subsidiary, AIG Trading Group (AIG-TG) which dealt primarily in over the counter derivatives and created the Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index (DJ-AIGCI) from their offices in Greenwich, CT. The DJ-AIGCI is a leading commodity benchmark composed of 19 futures contracts on physical commodities. As of the end of June 2007, there was an estimated $38 billion invested in financial products that track the DJ-AIGCI on a global basis.[2]

From 1987 to 2004, AIGFP contributed over $5 billion to AIG’s pre-tax income. During that period, AIG’s market capitalization increased from $11 billion to $181 billion, and its stock price increased from $4.50 per share to $62.34 per share.

AIGFP’s trading in credit derivatives led to enormous losses. These losses at AIGFP division essentially bankrupted the entire AIG operation, and forced the United States government to bail out the insured.

It’s very hard to believe that this person knew nothing of the CDO business since it was the focus of the division in which he worked. I’m sure it’s very embarrassing for him to be associated with the criminal side of AIG, but he is, whether he likes it or not. It’s just a good thing he made many millions of dollars over the past decade so that he might be comforted through this time of terrible unfairness and injustice.

The smart move for all of them is to shut up rather than whine publicly at a time like this. But corporate narcissists can’t help themselves. All you have to do is think of names like Kenny Boy Lay, Jeff Skilling, Bernard Ebbers,Bernie Madoff, Joseph Cassanno and the list goes on, to know that this personality type is rampant among our Masters of the Universe. Rather than being the rational heroes of their Randian dreams (who would be smart enough to STFU at this moment) they are actually seriously screwed up human beings who found the perfect outlet for their disorder in our millennial gilded age.

Risk and growth are absolutely necessary for a dynamic capitalist economy. But this isn’t that. This is an organizational and cultural disease and it’s landed the economy on life support. These people either need to submit to the cure or be quarantined in their gated communities.

Update: I should be clear that I’m not saying DeSantis was involved in the credit default swaps. But he was Executive VP in the AIG division that did it. It is not reasonable to believe that he didn’t know about it — or profit from it. And even if he didn’t, the fact that he worked in the unit that put the entire world financial system at risk and stands to cost the US taxpayers trillions of dollars means that he is going to suffer for their sins. It’s the way the world works. Look at Arthur Anderson– they ceased to exist because of their role in the Enron scandals, and a lot of employees, good and bad, lost their livlihoods. I’m sorry people are being rude about all this but these people need to man up and realize that they are going to take some heat. Maybe they can distract themselves from their troubles by counting their money.

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Here We Are Now, Entertain Us

by dday

Jamison Foser and Eric Boehlert are hammering the press for their lazy, idiotic reporting on Barack Obama’s press conference last night. Apparently the new meme is that the President was “boring” last night. I mean, he didn’t juggle flaming bowling pins or play the spoons ONCE! How dare he ruin the evenings of the White House press corps with all that talk of “issues” and deficits in the out years. Foser and Boehlert are right, this is journalism as theater criticism.

And their biggest complaint is that they weren’t chosen for the pick-up game and had to sit on the bench with all the losers.

In one Baker-Nagourney sentence, even a compliment is only a prologue to a dig that, come to think of it, might help explain why they’re so petulant:

“He showed his usual comfort with a wide array of subjects, even as he excluded the nation’s big newspapers from the questioning in favor of a more eclectic mix.”

My italics but their pique. Take that, Barack Obama, you pompous pedagogue, stringing together whole sentences and indeed paragraphs as if Americans were entitled to hear a line of reasoning. Take that if you dare to exclude “the nation’s big newspapers” even as they prove less big every day.

Contrast, for a moment, NYT coverage of George W. Bush’s first press conference, on Feb. 22, 2001, a month into his first term. Bush, wrote Frank Bruni in the operative clause of his lede, “sought to redirect public attention to, and amass public support for, his proposed $1.6 trillion tax cut.”

That is, Bush had a political goal and pursued it. He was purposeful. His style of pursuing it wasn’t Bruni’s prime subject. The fact that some of his statements made no sense, or worse, was not worthy of notice.

If you wonder why America seems grounded, unable to move forward on bold initiatives for the past 30 years, without the vitality or innovativeness necessary to tackle major challenges, look no further than this petulant, spoiled, anti-intellectual group of children that represent the modern Fourth Estate, who think that politics exists for their personal amusement. Serious times call for… well, anyone but these people. Here’s the close to one of Foser’s posts today, and you can substitute “Mr. Malcolm” with just about anyone else in the traditional media:

So here’s a suggestion, Mr. Malcolm: Quit. Do it now. Hand in your press pass. There are plenty of out-of-work and soon-to-be-out-of-work-reporters who actually give a damn and who won’t have any trouble staying awake for a presidential press conference and who are capable of producing a substantive article that will actually help readers understand what is happening in the world, instead of simply whining that they are insufficiently stimulated. Let one of them have your job. Take up skydiving or running with the bulls or whatever it takes to get you sufficiently excited, and let serious people do your serious job.

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A Short Lesson

by dday

The original headline for this story was “Congress to cut $400 tax credit”.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., announced a budget blueprint Tuesday that would scrap Obama’s signature tax cut after 2010 while employing some sleight of hand to cut the annual budget deficit to a sustainable level.

Conrad promises to reduce the deficit from a projected $1.7 trillion this year to a still-high $508 billion in 2014. Along the way, the Senate plan would have Obama’s “Making Work Pay” tax credit, delivering $400 tax cuts to most workers and $800 to couples, expire at the end of next year. Those tax cuts were included in Obama’s stimulus package.

But Obama paid for that tax cut in his budget. It was tied to revenue from a cap and trade plan. The reason the tax cut is out has nothing to do with expense, but because cap and trade has been excised. Kent Conrad and the Axis of Centrism just don’t want to deal with climate change in a meaningful and substantive way, which will lead to more extreme weather, loss of snowpack, more hardship for farming, the loss of a great deal of the American coastline, and untold disaster funding needs.

This is how the government spends money in the name of saving it. And this is how “fiscal responsibility” is used as a cover to block progress.

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Press Conference

by digby

All I can say is that it’s a vast relief that the DC press corps is focused like a laser on the most important issue of the moment — the deficit ten years down the road. All hail Pete Peterson.

What do you think the highly paid celebrity Chuck Todd should be asked to “sacrifice,” do you suppose?

My stock tip of the day: cat food. The baby boomers area large demographic.

Other than that, I don’t have a lot to say. Obama was fine and sounded reassuring which is the reason they did it.

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Out-Chuck Todd Chuck Todd

by dday

We have a pretty terrible media. The press conference featured question after question of irrelevant, puerile, ill-formed half-thoughts that was about as depressing as reading a Twitter feed. President Obama was game, but I think he might want to ditch the news conference part and just go Perot, whipping out charts and graphs and delving deep into explanations of what the country faces and what we need to move forward. The media filter just stifles thought.

That said, perhaps opening the Q&A process up to adults – namely the general public – can yield better results.

Today, the President invited everyone to use a new feature on WhiteHouse.gov called “Open for Questions” to ask a question about the economy and rate other questions up or down. Then, on Thursday morning, the President will conduct a special online town hall on the economy and answer some of the most popular questions and the event will be streamed on WhiteHouse.gov.

“Open for Questions” is a new experiment for WhiteHouse.gov, the President’s latest effort to open up the White House and give Americans from around the country a direct line to the Administration.

This first round will deal with a chief concern for all of us: the economy. We’ve created a few categories to better organize the questions, and encourage you to search for a specific question before you submit your own in case it already exists.

To get started, head over to http://WhiteHouse.gov/OpenForQuestions and set up your account. Then follow the simple instructions to start voting on questions or submit your own (we encourage you to include a link to a published video of the question being asked, although this is not required).

If this means I never have to listen to Ed Henry or Chip Reid or Major Garrett again, then thank you, White House. I’m sure you can think of a few good questions for the President, so have at it if the spirit moves you.

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Feed The Hungry Cobra

by digby

All of us are hopeful that Obama can pass some kind of universal health care program within the next year or so, but nobody is hoping more for it than those who are uninsured or hanging on to their insurance by a thread. When recession hits and people lose their jobs or have a hard time piecing together enough temprorary and short term work to pay for their insurance (if they are lucky enough to even have it) this issue becomes life or death for some people.

Our friend and fellow blogger Susie Madrak is one such person. She needs to keep her expensive COBRA going (new insurance not being possible for “pre-existing conditions” dontcha know) and is having some trouble raising the scratch to do it. If you have a couple of bucks to spare, she could use a little help.

It’s pretty insane that anyone should be in this position in the richest nation in the world, but that’s where we are. And it’s why I want to throw the remote through the TV when people start kvetching about how Obama will have to put off his “big plans” because we have to bail out the bankers to the tune of several trillion dollars. For people like Susie and many millions of others, this isn’t some vague dispassionate policy argument or a debate about whether or not they should get to keep their million dollar bonuses. Their lives literally depend upon fixing this.

It’s unconscionable and outrageous.

Go-To Source

by dday

I know that whenever I seek guidance on whether a policy is Catholic or anti-Catholic, I hit up the twice-divorced guy who was committing adultery while chastising the President for doing the same, thus breaking two of the Ten Commandments at the same time.

I mean, he seems like the best judge to me. After all, he’s going to become a Catholic on Saturday, meaning it’s all fresh in his head.

I apologize in advance for giving a crap what Newt Gingrich says or thinks.

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