Month: September 2009

Barack Obama Is An Acorn

by digby

Susie Madrak coins the quote of the week:

ACORN is just the new wingnutspeak code for the ‘N’ word.

And if you don’t believe it, check this out:

Neiwert sez:

As you can see, the man — who identifies himself as Tim Jones — shouts after them: “ACORN! These people are ACORN!!! They are frauds!!! ACORN is fraud!!! Obama sucks! This woman sells signs for profit of ACORN!!”

It attracts more harassers, and it verges on the point of an outbreak of violence when the D.C. bicycle police show up and break up the scene.

Now, how does Jones claim to know that they are actually ACORN workers? He says he overheard a police officer ask them if they were selling for ACORN and the young woman — who appears to be a young teen — told the cop “yes.” The older woman tells him flatly they’re not from ACORN, but he keeps shouting it anyway.

[…]

The bigger question is: Why target African Americans when there are are hundreds of vendors at these things? And why assume that they have anything to do with ACORN?

Because, to the teabaggers, ACORN is synonymous with scary black people.

Apparently, the new target is Valerie Jarret. The fact that she’s black is entirely coincidental.

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Brief Observation

by digby

Reading through this NY Times poll, one can only conclude that there is a hard core 30 percent of people in this country who are just against anything they think the Democrats and Obama are for. It doesn’t even have to make sense. Fine, no surprise. These are the same people who thought George W. Bush was an appreciated genius.

But even more clear is that most people don’t have a clue about the details of anything. It’s a complicated world and it’s clear that they only have the vaguest impressions of what’s at stake. What they know at the moment is that health care reform is probably good but possibly bad, and that they are sick of being at war. Other than that, you can pretty much fill in the blanks.

I think the most important thing that’s happening right now is an angry, frustrated, frightened zeitgeist. You can feel it in your personal interactions and see it on the news. Society is a little bit unstable. The political factions that are best able to speak to that — for good or ill — are probably going to be the most successful.

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Mr and Mrs Moral Hazzard

by digby

This is just brilliant. For those of you who are wondering what the hell happened and is happening with the banking bailouts,(and why some people who should know are saying the system is “shakier than ever.”) Chris Hayes and Nomi Prins have put it together in a way that anyone can understand.

Here’s an excerpt:

Imagine a couple living in a three-bedroom house outside the Twin Cities. Call them Joe and Katie Hazzard. The Hazzards own a small off-track-betting (OTB) business and have some investments and a mortgage on their house. But business is terrible (no one has extra money to make bets); Katie recently lost her job; their investments have hemorrhaged value; and they can’t make their mortgage, car or credit card payments. So they ask their local bank for a loan. “No dice,” says the bank. “We can’t give you money to pay your debts because you’re no longer a good credit risk for us.” That’s more or less what happened to the banks last fall: they couldn’t and wouldn’t lend to one another.

Capital Injections and Direct Loans

So the Hazzards go to the Federal Bailout Bank, which says, “Here’s some money. Do with it what you want, and someday down the road, if and when you’re out of the woods, you’ll have to pay us back with a little bit of interest.” That’s roughly what the $700 billion TARP was: a direct injection of capital to purchase preferred shares, which is really more like extending a loan than making the investment the government said it was, with some very light strings attached.

But then Joe says that the handout isn’t enough. It turns out that not only does he own a gambling business; he has a bit of a gambling habit. Joe made big money in previous years betting on the New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl and figured he couldn’t go wrong placing the same wager again. But then Tom Brady injured his knee last year, and Joe got creamed. Inveterate gambler that he is, he’s doubled down on the Patriots this year, but he won’t be paid off (if, that is, the Patriots win) until later in the year. But Joe has a boatload of outstanding gambling debts he needs to pay now.

So the Federal Bailout Bank decides it’ll help out…

That’s just the beginning. It turns out that Joe has many more serious problems of which nobody was aware and at each stage of revelation, requires more funds from the government.

The parable doesn’t cover everything, which the article discusses at some length. But the point is that by propping up these banks they way they did — with little accountability and few requirements at the beginning, we have created a situation where they are doubling down on their bets with the full knowledge that the only risk they bear is on the upside. That’s very scary stuff.

And it doesn’t look like anyone’s likely to do anything to head that off:

Imagine if the Hazzards started using some of their easy money to hire lobbyists to make sure the Bailout Bank maintained its pro-Hazzard policies. Because that’s what’s going on. Banks are lobbying Congress very hard to maintain their setup. Just one year after the crisis, boasting record profits and on track for record bonuses, they are darkly warning that any new regulation could hamper growth.

Given the banks’ newfound publicly sponsored financial health, Washington has little incentive to rock the boat by proposing serious reforms. True, some necessary steps are being discussed by Congress: it’s important to have a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to counteract the damage caused by lax oversight, and higher capital requirements so that banks can pay for their own risk fallout. But the Fed should not be the premier risk regulator, nor should we believe that it will cap extreme bonuses–President Obama doesn’t even support a cap. Parts of the media are already reporting the end of the recession; Obama has moved to reappoint Bernanke, crediting him with keeping the country from a Great Depression, and has given tacit approval to the free flow of bank subsidies. The Treasury, headed by the man who was at the helm of the New York Fed when it nearly went down, is no less culpable for bad decisions.

I saw the Michael Moore film the other night (which I’ll write about later) and Moore was there. In response to a question by someone in the audience about Summers and Geithner he compared Obama to a banker who hires bank robbers to tell them where the security vulnerabilities are. He said he hoped that was the plan anyway.

I actually think it’s something else. I think they simply wanted to get things “back to normal” and trust that the “the market” will fix itself. (Wall street types are probably the world’s greatest believers in the magic of the market.)Booms, busts, bubbles and crashes are not a systemic problem to these people. For the most part, they all survive quite well personally — they have plenty of money to tide them over during the down turns from the times when they are swallowing fire hoses full of money when the markets are roaring. And the institutions they work for, which might possibly take down the entire system, are now 100% guaranteed by the US treasury, so they no longer face any serious risk at all. The risk all rests with the average person whose dreams are derailed when things go wrong and who can’t afford to try anything new because the personal cost is too high. Win win for the MOUs.

Many of these people at the top of the financial food chain are nothing more than gamblers with other people’s money who have a faith-based belief in the “free market” that will always save them in the end — and if that doesn’t work the government will. The problem is that they are also considered to be the experts who will save the system itself. It’s very hard to see why they would even if they could (and I seriously doubt they can.)

You’ll recall that the man who was allegedly the smartest man in the world, the Oracle of Rand himself, only recently found out there was a tiny little flaw in his free market, libertarian philosophy:

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” Mr. Greenspan said.

Referring to his free-market ideology, Mr. Greenspan added: “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”

Mr. Waxman pressed the former Fed chair to clarify his words. “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Mr. Waxman said.

“Absolutely, precisely,” Mr. Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

Problem solved. These banks and financial firms are now “too big to fail,” so their participants’ only self interest is in getting as personally rich as they possibly can. Which is what they always believed anyway. All hail Mistress Ayn.

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Truth In Advertising

by dday

So I’ve been working with Brave New Films on their Sick For Profit campaign, exposing the practices and rewards of the insurance industry. It’s been pretty eye-opening, and we have a lot more stuff coming in the next few weeks. But we also decided to have a light moment. A couple weeks ago Brave New Films asked for submissions to give CIGNA a more appropriate tag line than their current “A Business of Caring” (in the words of Adam Sandler from the old SNL sketch, “Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?”). Over 1,600 entries later, we have whittled them down to a few gems.

At Sick For Profit, you can pick the best tag line or submit your own. Here are the front-runners so far:

A business of caring less
Walk it off
Coverage to die for
We deny. You die.
Patients try our patience.
Denying care, one patient at a time
We love you… to death
Your pain is our gain
We put the “Hell” in healthcare
Bend over

With the winning tagline, we’ll make CIGNA a new corporate logo, post it on Facebook, and send it to CIGNA execs. Which I’m sure they’ll appreciate.

Vote for your favorite today!

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Just In Case

by digby

Yesterday dday wrote about the now infamous Kyl Stabenow exchange on the finance committee in which Stabenow reminded Kyl that his mother probably could have used maternity coverage in her health policy.

But it’s useful to look at exactly what Kyl said and examine what it says about the Republican definition of insurance:

I don’t need maternity care and so requiring that to be in my insurance policy is something I don’t need and make the insurance more expensive.

At first glance, it would seem that Kyl is saying that anything that applies to women and not men, such things as uterine cancer,breast cancer, child birth etc, should not be in the universal package of benefits because John Kyl doesn’t need it and therefore, shouldn’t have to pay for it. But it’s actually something different.

It’s true that health insurance that covers women’s reproductive health is a little bit more expensive for men, who will not personally use it. One can argue that men are quite involved with women’s reproductive systems, but it would seem that a fair number of them only want to control those systems, not chip in to pay for the healthy functioning of them.

But this is really about something different. John Kyl (and people like Ashton Kutcher, who famously said he shouldn’t have to pay for fat people because he isn’t fat) apparently believe that they can predict the future and should only have to pay for the things from which they personally might suffer. It would be really neat if we could do that, but it’s not how the world — or insurance — works.

The whole point is that while some people are born lucky –Kyl for instance, who doesn’t have a nasty uterus to worry about, or Kutcher, who is blessed with good genes and a personal trainer— everybody, everybody, is vulnerable to catastrophic illness. And the costs of such illness are so great that anyone but the super rich is also vulnerable to financial catastrophe in that circumstance if they aren’t well insured.

It can happen to anyone. Patrick Swayze just died of pancreatic cancer. He was a health nut and an athlete who was never sick a day in his life until it happened to him. You cannot know if it will happen to you and you cannot be smug and self centered and insist that people shouldn’t have to pay for health costs they cannot possibly incur because there are a hell of a lot of diseases and accidents waiting to strike any of us down at any moment.

This notion that everyone who isn’t sick today is somehow morally superior, smarter or just plain better, and shouldn’t have to kick into the collective pool that protects everyone is the worst kind of immature thinking. The whole point of insurance is that there are millions of potential health problems out there, most of which we will not get. But among those millions of possibilities is probably at least one that we will get and more likely quite a few over the course of our lives. We just don’t know which ones. (If we did, this whole thing would be a lot easier to deal with, wouldn’t it?) Therefore, you have to have everybody put their money into a big pool to cover every eventuality.

Certainly, people should be encouraged to live healthy lives and be given as much support in doing that as possible. But there is no guarantee. And as Stabenow pointed out to Kyl, he may not personally need maternity care but everybody has a mother and she certainly does. And even the gorgeous Ashton could get heart disease diabetes, no matter how buff he is today. There are no guarantees in life. That’s why we have insurance (or pay taxes…) Just in case. Or as the Christians say, “there but for the grace of God go I.”

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Oh That’s Good News

by digby

This just gets better and better:

Neil Barofsky is the man who tracks the historic bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. The 39-year-old special inspector general monitors a dozen separate bailout-related programs that now account for nearly $3 trillion in financial commitments.

[…]

During an interview with the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, Barofsky made some striking observations. Among them were:

1. He found hundreds of banks capable of tracking their use of the TARP money – despite claims by the U.S. Treasury that the task was impossible.
2. If the purpose of the TARP rescue was to increase lending, it has failed

Ok. Not surprising. Boondoggle. We all knew it was probably going to be one, right?

But what the hell is this?

3. The U.S. financial system, now dependent on bigger and fewer banks, is shakier than ever.

We knew they were just throwing as much money at the problem as they could, forcing institutions to take it even if they didn’t want it to obscure which ones were solvent and which ones weren’t, with the idea that even though there would be tremendous waste and fraud, it would stop the avalanche and allow the system to get back on track. Naturally, one would have assumed that they would have passed serious financial reform immediately in order to prevent a similar problem from happening again and that the whole sector would sober up (at least for awhile) and behave like responsible citizens.

But instead, it’s now “shakier than ever?” “Far more dangerous than it was before?” I guess that didn’t work out so well, did it?

Of course that makes perfect sense if the masters of the newer, bigger financial institutions go right back to gambling like a bunch of video poker addicts at an Indian Casino, knowing that if they were too big to fail before, they are definitely too big to fail now. Why wouldn’t they? The payoff is huge no matter what they do. Except the tens of million average working dopes whose dreams have been derailed and delayed, nobody paid any real price — and who cares about them?

The good news is that the congress is finally on the case with much needed oversight — they defunded ACORN.

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Just (Some Of) The Facts

by digby

I noticed a new ad on CNN today by a group called Americans For Stable Quality care, featuring the president’s health care message. He explains “what health care reform will mean to you.” He says you will not lose access to your doctor and you can keep your current insurance if you like it. He says that there will be no denial of coverage due to previous medical history, no dropping coverage if you get sick, no watering down of coverage. He says there will be no caps on the amount of coverage you will receive. And there will be a limit on out of pocket expenses. Policies must cover check-ups and preventive care. And “if you don’t have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform.”

I think the most interesting thing about it is that it says at the bottom of the screen “Read the plans: Whitehouse. gov and FactsAboutReform.org . Oddly, it also featured this: Senate.Finance.gov, the only committee that has not yet voted out a plan, unlike help.senate.gov, waysandmeans.house.gov, edworkforce.house.gov , energycommerce.house.gov, which have. But, of course, all those plans include good subsidies and a public option, and apparently this group doesn’t think you “need to know” since they don’t mention them.

So, who is Americans for Stable Quality Care?

The TruthAboutReform.org is a project sponsored by Americans for Stable Quality Care (ASQC). We represent doctors, nurses, technicians, manufacturers and health care consumers. Our organization is supported by the American Medical Association (AMA), FamiliesUSA, the Federation of American Hospitals and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). Our mission is to communicate the facts about health care reform.

Well, some of them, anyway.

I don’t know if this ad has the administration’s blessing, but you would certainly assume it does if you watch it. The whole thing is just Barack Obama looking straight at the camera speaking directly to the audience.

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What Is The Job?

by digby

Howie sez:

Digby, who recounted a 1964 conversation between McGeorge Bundy and President Lyndon Johnson about the futility of American policies in Vietnam, seemed aghast that “Democratic strategist” Donna Brazile was on CNN yesterday seemingly reading some leftover talking points from Karen Hughes about the need to stay in Afghanistan and “get the job done.” Then last night Daily Kos’ most prescient Afghanistan blogger, Meteor Blades, highlighted the controversy over Andrea Mitchell’s report on the 500,000 troops needed to do the job in Afghanistan. But as Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), our No Means No guest today, asked me this morning, “What is the job?”

Blue America’s friendship with Eric Massa goes back to the very beginning of our PAC and he was one of the first candidates we ever supported. Ultimately it was his character that moved us to endorse him, although his championing of issues impacting the real lives of working families (like “fair trade” over so-called “free trade”), his dogged support of single-payer health care, and his spot-on analysis of the war in Iraq based on experience as a Naval officer are what first drew us to him. He came close in 2006 and he triumphed in 2008– in one of the only districts in New York that Obama didn’t win! Obama tool 48% in NY-29 while Massa scooped up 51% against a multimillionaire incumbent and Bush tool.

In June Eric was one of only 32 Democrats to vote against the supplemental war budget– of the 90 who had pledged to vote no. It was an incredibly courageous political act, particularly in a district with a daunting R+5.48 PVI (one of the most Republican districts in the country represented by a progressive Democrat). This morning Eric told me in no uncertain terms that he would “continue to vote against any supplemental.”

We’re not going to fund any wars in a way that no one knows about. The Republicans gave the wealthiest Americans the largest tax cut in history and then launched two wars without any idea of how to pay for them. It was the most fiscally irresponsible action they could take– and they took it.

Eric is fired up and full of fight, as always. He loves his job and told me he;s absolutely committed to it. “I’m in the right place in my life doing the right job for the right congressional district. And I’m just getting started.” Right now, you hear the lifelong military man in him when he says he’s very supportive of what he calls “the president’s strategic pause to formulate whatever strategy his administration will implement (in Afghanistan).”

For instance, is this about fighting the Taliban or fighting al-Qaeda– two distinctly different groups– or is it about creating a democracy, or is it about protecting the Afghan people? These are very different missions that require very different resources. And until we know what we’re doing, we cannot begin to get it done. The first thing a military officer asks is ‘What is the mission?’ And as of right now, that is a very legitimate question.”

Today at 3pm PT (6pm back East) Eric will be joining us for a live blogging session at Crooks and Liars.

[…]

Eric Massa is in a unique position to help us figure out a progressive strategy for dealing with this dilemma. He’s adamant that if the President asks for more funds for the war, he do it through a normal budgetary process that includes a “clearly articulated strategy with an end game. The Republicans say they’re all about fiscal responsibility? Then they should agree we should apply those concepts to wars.”

Head on over to Crooks and Liars at 3 O’clock for the live blogging session on Afghanistan. And if you have a couple of bucks to spare, you can donate here to Congressman Massa at the “No Means No” campaign.

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MoveOn Joins The Fray

by dday

The big progressive groups hadn’t yet spoken on the question of escalation in Afghanistan – their silence was pronounced. MoveOn finally broke that silence today, appealing to the President to commit to a clear exit strategy. It’s a pretty big step.

U.S. policy in Afghanistan has reached a pivotal moment. President Obama is poised to make a critical decision about the Afghanistan war in the next few weeks. And there’s a big debate happening right now about what to do.

Pro-war advocates both inside and outside the administration—including John McCain and Joe Lieberman—are calling for a big escalation. The general in charge of Afghanistan is expected to request tens of thousands more troops, and that may just be the beginning. They’re cranking up the pressure for an immediate surge.

But other powerful voices are urging caution: Vice President Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have raised real concerns about the idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan without a clear strategy, as have Democrats in Congress. And a majority of Americans oppose increasing troop levels.

Can you write to the White House and tell them we need a clear exit strategy—not tens of thousands more US troops stuck in a quagmire? You can send the President a message by clicking below:

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51843&id=&t=1

Some administration officials are arguing for a smaller, nimbler approach with a narrow focus on the threat from al-Qaeda. But cheerleaders for the war refuse to acknowledge that there could be any viable strategy other than more and more troops. So they’re trotting out the same tired old lines and questioning the motives of those who disagree with them.

They figure they can cut off any debate about our ultimate goals in Afghanistan and the region. But President Obama has consistently shown a willingness to stand up for his more thoughtful approach to foreign policy, and that’s what he needs to do here, too.

The hawks are making their position heard. Now, the majority of Americans—those of us who are for as quick and as responsible an end to the war as possible—need to make our voices heard, too.

With Democrats opposing escalation by more than two to one, MoveOn is just reflecting the opinions of their membership. They’re a bit late to the debate, but better than ducking it entirely.

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The Argument Between The Parties, In Short

by dday

Debbie Stabenow and Jon Kyl:

KYL: “I don’t need maternity care. So requiring that on my insurance policy is something that I don’t need and will make the policy more expensive.”

STABENOW: “I think your mom probably did.”

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