Month: March 2009

Modern Conservatism Is A Disease, Matthew

by tristero

Throughout his blogging career – which has been highly successful and on many occasions, insightful – Matt Yglesias has often made the fundamental mistake of confusing modern conservatism with an actual philosophical stance that one must consider seriously and with which one should argue. He’s still at it:

I don’t think it makes sense to reason “all conservatives are wrong about important things, therefore all conservatives are equally pernicious.” Tyler Cowen on economics has a lot more to offer than Larry Kudlow on economics, even though I agree with neither of them. I think that’s common sense, and I don’t think it makes one a traitor to progressive politics to point this kind of thing out or to think it’s a good thing when conservatives-who-offer-more replace conservatives-who-offer-less.

Sigh.

Modern conservatives like Kristol bring nothing of substance to the table, Matt. Whether Ross Douthat brings twice the nothing that Kristol does, or ten times the nothing Kristol does, still means that Douthat brings nothing to the table. That’s not only common sense: that’s basic arithmetic.

I would be remiss if I did not also point out that the Katha Pollitt piece which inspired Matt’s post gets off to an extremely asinine start:

Liberal blogger men are thrilled with the New York Times’s appointment of 29-year-old Atlantic blogger Ross Douthat to replace William Kristol on the op-ed page.

Not true. Last I checked, I am a liberal, I’m a blogger, and I’m still male. I’m not thrilled Ross Douthat’s replacing Kristol and for all of the same reasons Pollitt points to, and more. I’m not the only liberal blogger man who thinks this, not by a long shot.

Nor, as Pollitt thinks, do I believe it would have been great to retain Kristol. The Times needs good ideas, not bad ones, on its op-ed pages. There are none to be had in the modern conservative movement, which is not the same as saying that all good ideas are liberal and progressive ones (although most are). Therefore, neither Kristol nor Douthat nor any other rightwing nut deserves regular access to the Times op-ed pages.

Science Education

by tristero

The Obama administration is saying exactly the right thing about science education:

“Whether it’s global warming, evolution or stem cell research, science will be honored. It will be respected and supported by this administration,” [Education Secretary Arne Duncan] said.

Excellent. But what inquiring minds want to know is whether that damn creationist book is still on sale at the Grand Canyon. Anyone happen to know?

UPDATE: They’re still selling that piece of shit.

Thought For The Day

by tristero

Unless it leads to immediate, serious, careful, and comprehensive regulation and oversight of our criminally corrupt financial institutions, the furor over the outrageous AIG bonuses – and the current legislation to tax those bonuses- will be just a tempest in a very tiny teapot, full of sound and fury, signifying exactly nada.

You say symbolism matters, even if the bonuses merely represent less than 1/10th of 1% of all the taxpayer simoleons dumped into AIG’s mattresses? I say, symbols, schmimbols. It’s time for action, real serious action. If I want a good show, I’ll go see some Shakespeare or Buffy. Spare me the cheap cartoon of a Congress (and administration) pretending to confront serious problems when all they’re really addressing is their image problem .

Clerks

by digby

Atrios nails the fundamental issue:

The issue is that Timmeh and friends never distinguished between bailing out the system and bailing out the players. There was a way to do that, and they didn’t do it.

I don’t know whether it’s insecurity,solidarity, ideology or some combination thereof, but they do seem to have believed that the only way they could fix the problem was to acquiesce to the demands of the perpetrators.

Just to remind you of how those people think, I’ll run this again:

Asked about Geithner’s comments and his decision regarding opening the discount window to Wall Street after Bear had been sold for $2 a share and not earlier, [Bear CEO]Jimmy Cayne became spitting angry.

“The audacity of that p—k in front of the American people announcing he was deciding whether or not a firm of this stature and this whatever was good enough to get a loan,” he said. “Like he was the determining factor, and it’s like a flea on his back, floating down underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, getting a h–d-on, saying, ‘Raise the bridge.’ This guy thinks he’s got a big d–k. He’s got nothing, except maybe a boyfriend. I’m not a good enemy. I’m a very bad enemy. But certain things really—that bothered me plenty. It’s just that for some clerk to make a decision based on what, your own personal feeling about whether or not they’re a good credit? Who the f–k asked you? You’re not an elected officer. You’re a clerk. Believe me, you’re a clerk. I want to open up on this f—-r, that’s all I can tell you.”

This is how these Wall Street MOUs see the government. Clerks. And in a way they’re right. That’s the problem.

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Food: Michelle Obama Plants A White House Garden

by tristero

This is excellent:

On Friday, Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II. There will be no beets (the president doesn’t like them) but arugula will make the cut.

While the organic garden will provide food for the first family’s meals and formal dinners, its most important role, Mrs. Obama said, will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at time when obesity has become a national concern.

In an interview in her office, Mrs. Obama said, “My hope is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”…

“The power of Michelle Obama and the garden can create a very powerful message about eating healthy and more delicious food,” said Dan Barber, an owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., an organic restaurant that grows many of its own ingredients. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it could translate into real change.”

This is an unalloyed Very Good Thing. But you folks know the drill by now, right? The entire Village will be shouting elitists! Elitists!

Yeah, well, let’s hear what a real fucking Park Avenue- level elitist thinks about food near her home:

Kyu-Sung Choi, a Korean immigrant, thought it would be a good idea to open a 24-hour delicatessen at Park Avenue and 75th Street. Many residents disagreed.

”Do the residents of Park Avenue want to look out the window at vegetables?” asked Shirley Bernstein, a leader of the opposition. ”They most certainly do not.”

Word of Mr. Choi’s plans and the sight of remodeling crews were met with stop-work orders, a complaint filed by the local Community Board, inspectors looking for code violations, and elected officials speaking out against the deli.

Mr. Choi won his case, by the way.

Hearts ‘N Minds

by digby

I have to say that I’m confused by all the Republicans fulminating on television today about “shredding the constitution” because the House voted to tax the TARP bonuses at 90%. Why, you’d think they were endorsing the imprisonment of innocent people for years without evidence or something.

Oh wait:

Thousands of Iraqis held without charge by the United States on suspicion of links to insurgents or militants are being freed by this summer because there is little or no evidence against them.

Their release comes as the U.S. prepares to turn over its detention system to the fledgling Iraqi government by early 2010. In the six years since the war began, the military ultimately detained some 100,000 suspects, many of whom were picked up in U.S.-led raids during a raging, bloody insurgency that has since died down.

The effort to do justice for those wrongly held to begin with, some for years, also runs the risk of releasing extremists who could be a threat to fragile Iraqi security.

As part of an agreement between the two countries that took effect Jan. 1, Iraqi authorities have begun reviewing the cases of the detainees to decide whether to free them or press charges. About 13,300 remain behind barbed wire in U.S. custody in Iraq.

But Iraqi judges have issued detention orders to prosecute only 129 of the 2,120 cases they have finished reviewing so far this year — or about 6 percent, according to U.S. military data. As of Thursday, 1,991 detainees had been freed since Jan. 1.

An Associated Press reporter embedded for two days at Camp Bucca, the largest U.S. detention facility in Iraq, and talked with military officials about preparations to shut it down.

“God willing, God willing,” said Layla Rasheed after learning that her son, a former government worker from Baghdad, was likely to be released. “He doesn’t have anything to do with terrorists. I don’t know why he was picked up.”

The military also expects to release another 600 detainees by the end of March, a spokesman said.

The U.S. detention policy has been unpopular in a country where many feel that thousands have been detained without cause, and where the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal will be remembered for a long time.

Iraq’s biggest Sunni parliamentary bloc has called for the release of virtually all detainees, arguing that even those who were militants no longer pose a threat because so many Sunni groups have abandoned the insurgency.

“It’s very easy to go back and say, ‘Well, you rounded up all these innocent people.’ Well, innocence has different shades,” Brig. Gen. David Quantock, commander of the U.S. detention system in Iraq, said in an interview this week.

One wonders what would happen if American politicians who started a war for no good reason were subject to the same standards (or should I say “shades of innocence.”)

“It’s not like we have a choice — it is prosecute or release. So it’s a huge undertaking right now to try to find as much evidence as we can. We’re not going after all of them, we’re going after a certain amount.”

These people have been mouldering away in prison for years with no due process. I suppose it’s a good thing that the authorities are finally “scrambling” to compile evidence against them but it’s hard to see how that is an example of Jeffersonian democracy.

And there are consequences:

One Camp Bucca imam said the majority of detainees are ready to forgive once they are released — even if they are angry and confused after being held so long.

“Some of them have decided to go outside Iraq to change,” said the imam, who identified himself only as Sheik Abdul-Sattar. “Some can say, we can forgive everyone. The majority are like that. The extremists speak of revenge.”

It only takes a handful. And I would bet that there are more extremists because of this policy than there would have been without it. Injustice tends to make people very testy.

Meanwhile, back in the states:

Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. “There are still innocent people there,” Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. “Some have been there six or seven years.”

Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an Internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a “mosaic” of intelligence.

“It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance,” Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather “sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified.”

Of course, we knew that. But it’s still helpful to have it confirmed.

Now I know that the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to a person is to have their million dollar bonus taxed at a confiscatory rate for a year. It sends chills down my spine just thinking about it. But I do think it might be just a teensy bit more convincing if those who are having an aneurysm about this assault on the constitution could spare just a little bit of their self-righteousness for the people who ordered the torture and imprisonment of innocent human beings as well.

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Why AIG Matters

by dday

I didn’t think it was necessary to spell out why $165 million dollars in bonuses for individuals who tore down their companies is probably a bad thing. But there does appear to be a mild backlash against the over-the-top nature of the public anger, including from White House officials. And given that the numbers are a fraction of one percent compared to the bailout money AIG took from the government (that will never get paid back) or the Fed’s huge program to buy up mortgage-backed securities, they may have a point. So, OK.

Obviously there’s a political importance because the nation is following the issue so closely. But far more essential than that is how this is tied to income inequality and the stratifying gap between the rich and poor. Kevin Drum is absolutely correct to note that the standard practice in corporate boardrooms is to call bonuses a reward for performance right up until the moment that the performance tanks, at which point they become necessary for retaining talent.

Of course they got their comp locked down when they saw the storm ahead of them. This is what executives always do. Back during the dotcom bubble, corporations handed out trainloads of cheap stock options even though the practice was heavily criticized. Why? Because the stock market was going up and it was a nearly guaranteed way to make lots of money. After the bust, they suddenly took the criticisms to heart and largely stopped the practice. Why? Because the stock market was going down and it wasn’t easy money anymore […]

What happened at AIGFP is standard practice throughout corporate America. America’s corporate titans like to talk endlessly about performance-based pay and how capitalism rewards risk, but in real life compensation packages are almost always constructed to avoid as much risk as possible. If you work in a growing industry, your bonus depends on raw growth rates. If you work in a declining industry, your bonus is linked to relative growth rates. If the market is up, your bonus is paid in stock. If it’s not, suddenly deferred comp and increased pension contributions are the order of the day. Heads you win, tails you win.

The AIG traders who got this sweetheart deal are nothing special. Management probably didn’t even think twice about it. Of course you switch from performance bonuses to retention bonuses when the market looks stormy. What else would you do?

The decoupling of risk and profit is the issue here. Corporate titans never rise and fall on the merit of their superior intellect, and there has been a great shift to mke sure profits, both personal and corporate, are kept in private hands, while the risk is socialized. When times are flush nobody really cares about or at least pays attention to this; when the same people who wrecked the economy feel entitled to their ungodly profits, people get understandably upset.

And the tone-deafness on this from the Administration, therefore, while striking, does not surprise. The Treasury Secretary is now admitting that he asked Chris Dodd to take out the executive pay caps from the stimulus. His rationale? “We wanted to make sure it was strong enough to survive legal challenge.” Actually, they wanted to make sure Wall Street didn’t pull the pin out of the grenade.

If they did walk out the door, who would volunteer to work at the Chernobyl of the financial world? And what would become of the mammoth portfolio that remains?

“It would become the biggest naked position on Wall Street,” one longtime Financial Products executive said, “and everybody would exploit it.” […]

“Nobody is going to give (the bonus money) back and then stay,” said one of the firm’s employees. “If they give back the money, then they will walk. And they will walk into the arms of AIG’s counterparties.”

The sense of entitlement to a system that rewards them regardless and shovels massive amounts of money and power in their direction. Heck, we learned today that 13 bailed-out companies owe $220 million in back taxes and lied to Congress about it. OF COURSE they did. That’s the system they’ve created – protections for their corporate bottom line, riches for them personally, crumbs for everyone else. Reaganomics basically set this in motion 30 years ago, and the system has been in place for so long that any alternative path is like the true forms on the outside of the cave instead of the shadows on the inside we think represent reality. But the public knows intuitively that they’ve been getting a raw deal for decades, and the bonuses are only a small part of the story.

James Galbraith has an amazing piece about the limitations of the Obama economic team to reinvent a new economic ideal, rewarding work instead of wealth, returning the business of finance to its narrow role of facilitating capital flows, etc.

The deepest belief of the modern economist is that the economy is a self-stabilizing system. This means that, even if nothing is done, normal rates of employment and production will someday return. Practically all modern economists believe this, often without thinking much about it. (Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said it reflexively in a major speech in London in January: “The global economy will recover.” He did not say how he knew.) […]

Geithner’s banking plan would prolong the state of denial. It involves government guarantees of the bad assets, keeping current management in place and attempting to attract new private capital. (Conversion of preferred shares to equity, which may happen with Citigroup, conveys no powers that the government, as regulator, does not already have.) The idea is that one can fix the banks from the top down, by reestablishing markets for their bad securities. If the idea seems familiar, it is: Henry Paulson also pressed for this, to the point of winning congressional approval. But then he abandoned the idea. Why? He learned it could not work […]

The government must take control of insolvent banks, however large, and get on with the business of reorganizing, re-regulating, decapitating, and recapitalizing them. Depositors should be insured fully to prevent runs, and private risk capital (common and preferred equity and subordinated debt) should take the first loss. Effective compensation limits should be enforced—it is a good thing that they will encourage those at the top to retire. As Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut correctly stated in the brouhaha following the discovery that Senate Democrats had put tough limits into the recovery bill, there are many competent replacements for those who leave.

Ultimately the big banks can be resold as smaller private institutions, run on a scale that permits prudent credit assessment and risk management by people close enough to their client communities to foster an effective revival, among other things, of household credit and of independent small business—another lost hallmark of the 1950s. No one should imagine that the swaggering, bank-driven world of high finance and credit bubbles should be made to reappear. Big banks should be run largely by men and women with the long-term perspective, outlook, and temperament of middle managers, and not by the transient, self-regarding plutocrats who run them now […]

This cannot be made to happen over just three years, as we did in 1942–44. But we could manage it over, say, twenty years or a bit longer. What is required are careful, sustained planning, consistent policy, and the recognition now that there are no quick fixes, no easy return to “normal,” no going back to a world run by bankers—and no alternative to taking the long view.

The AIG scandal represents a reminder of the way things WERE, when Masters of the Universe ruled the world and dared anyone to challenge them. There are raw economic benefits to getting executive compensation under control – the economic burst that would come from a steep reduction in the inequality gap, with a concurrent stronger middle class, reindustrialization, and the rise of labor unions. But there are even bigger implications. It means wresting control over our country away from the ones who ruined it, who are trying to threaten, cajole and intimidate their way into maintaining control. For two years a campaign captivated America with the promise that the people have power, that mass collective action can create change. But we don’t. And the bonus babies have proved it. Now there’s a choice, that policymakers will eventually have to make but which can be pressured from the bottom.

Who runs this country?

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Discordant Lines

by digby

Yesterday, Rahm Emmanuel was quoted saying that the AIG bonus scandal was a distraction and today David Axelrod says,“people are not sitting around their kitchen tables thinking about AIG, they are thinking about their own jobs.”

I don’t think this is correct. I have personally heard people talking about this all over the place. Tune into any radio show — and not just talk radio, but regular music shows — and it’s being discussed. The polls show that people are outraged. I know that Emmanuel and Axelrod aren’t stupid so it’s surprising to me that they would fall into the trap of minimizing something that has clearly become the symbol of the wealthy fat cats continuing to exploit the average person even after they wrecked the economy. It’s remarkably tone deaf.

I know that it’s unpleasant to think about all the hatred pouring forth against wealthy, powerful people. It could, after all, very easily spill over into the political class, who are … wealthy powerful people. But you can’t deal with it by acting as if it isn’t happening.

To his credit, Obama has been saying the right things although the Republicans are reaching back to the campaign to try to resurrect the inexperienced celebrity charge and imply that Obama isn’t working hard enough (which is rich considering the last president.) I don’t honestly think people see it that way, but if they get the impression that he is being dismissive of the anger at AIG, it might be problematic.

Meanwhile, you have the press giving unctuous jerks like Mike Pence hours to flounce about superciliously pretending to be shocked by the rapacious Wall Street greedheads when just a couple of months ago they were saying any socialistic meddling in the magical goodness of private enterprise was tantamount to treason. It’s quite the show.

Not that the Democrats are doing any better. Charlie Rangel and Norah O’Donnell just did a full Saturday Night Fever-worthy version of The Hustle in which they both huffed and puffed and danced around each other pretending not to know what the other was talking about. It’s quite clear that the Dems are protecting the administration — and the media knows it. But everything is putting on an act — the press “insisting” on knowing who put the carve out in the bill and the Democrats responding as if they speak a foreign language and are getting a bad translation.

The whole thing is lame. The specific reasons for protecting the bonuses is still unknown, but we know they did it. At this point it’s seems to me that the most logical supposition is that the Big Money Boyz are extorting the US Government, threatening to take the house of cards down with them if they don’t get a payoff. Either that, or the Fed and the administration actually believe that the alleged masters of the universe who destroyed the financial system are in great demand at other companies somewhere and will leave the US government without the “skills” it needs to lead the economy out of the crisis if they aren’t compensated with million dollar bonuses. And if they actually believe that we are in bigger trouble than we realize.

Update: Jane Hamsher details more of the same in this post. She cites a Roll Call article (subs req.) in which it’s revealed that the banking lobbyists are swarming the hill trying to derail any restrictions on compensation. She notes that the lobbyists stand to personally gain from many of these bonus plans, which may explain why they are so energetically engaged.

But there’s also a passage in the article that supports the “gun to the head” theory:

The swelling anger on Capitol Hill comes as the Obama administration is expected to roll out its plan to purchase toxic assets from the banks in a public-private partnership.

But any move to slap bonus restrictions on private investors that are part of the partnerships could scare them off, lobbyists said.

“If there is any hint that people investing in [Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility] are subject to those rules, they won’t raise any money,” said Ken Kies, a tax lobbyist and managing director of Federal Policy Group.

And to think we liberals were called treasonous when we opposed the invasion of Iraq. These people are not only unpatriotic, they are running a protection racket.

These asses can’t compromise for a short period of time to stabilize the system that’s made them millionaires and will make them even more money in the long run unless they can turn an immediate profit at it at taxpayers expense? While the average American worker is losing their jobs and homes, foregoing raises and health care and being asked to dramatically lower their expectations? They’re sewing the seeds of their own demise. By being so recalcitrant about these bonuses, they may be making it impossible for Obama to maneuver short of nationalization. That’s fine with me — but I don’t think that’s what they want.

These people are believing their own hype. Apparently, they think they actually produce something when, in fact, they are simply deal makers, middle men, gamblers and paper pushers. Those things are often useful and always present. But the idea that they are indispensable may be just a tad overstated. And they may just find that out.

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Teenage Motherhood

by tristero

Due in good part to widespread and taxpayer-financed right wing efforts to suppress information, teach lies and advocate a specious morality – aka, so-called “abstinence-only education” – teenage birthrate has increased for the second consecutive year. Surprise, surprise. Remember: The right is wrong about everything.

There’s something enormous missing from this article and it’s this: while everyone agrees teenagers having babies is a serious problem, no one in the article explains exactly what the problem is. Why not just “roll with it,” as one of the teen mothers in the article suggests?

Here’s why. Despite what Republicans would have had you believing during the campaign, teen motherhood in the US is not Bristol Palin. Even though she has a set of truly bizarre parents, Bristol Palin and her baby will always have access to the kind of healthcare, education, and employment opportunities that the typical teen mother can’t even imagine. The Post article states:

Experts noted that the U.S. rate remains far higher than that of other industrialized nations.

This is a far reaching, exceedingly tragic problem – it’s hardly a lifestyle “choice” – that demands serious attention. The last thing this issue needs is the funding of cartoonish and dangerously ineffective social meddling designed by the worst, and most incompetent, elements of modern American society.

Hate

by tristero

This brain-killing column by Gail Collins defines the meaning of “stupid” way, way down. Since it is literally content-less – and in an idiotic way – there’s nothing striking about the op-ed except the ritualistic repetition of the word “hate,” which is very striking indeed – but probably not in the way Collins meant, assuming she meant anything coherent at all.

During the Bush presidency, when he was constantly lying through this lying teeth, it was only towards the end that Paul Krugman and others were permitted by the Times to use the words “lies” and “liars.” And, to the best of my knowledge, no major op-ed columnist, at least in the Times, ever talked about hating fellow Americans, even in jest.

There was one notable exception. Throughout this great land of ours, mainstream bullshit artists commentators heaped mocking contempt on those always mockable, contemptuous hippies (of the dirty fucking variety) who suffered from Bush Derangement Syndrome because we irrationally hated Bush so much. Never mind that there has never been a more hateful and hatable president – even Nixon was better, as Krugman noted, with not a small amount of wonder – than George W. Bush. No, “hate,” like “liar,” was an unmentionable in the mainstream for discussing Americans.

Interesting how the permissible vocabulary for mainstream discourse has changed under a Democratic president.