Month: May 2010

Happy Days Are Here Again

by digby

Well, not really. If you’re unemployed anyway:

A disturbing new survey from Rutgers University explores the damage in stark terms. Titled “No End in Sight: The Agony of Prolonged Unemployment,” it finds that recent economic growth “has done little to reach millions of skilled workers still adrift in the most severe period of prolonged joblessness in decades.” The details are grim. The survey finds that eight in 10 people who lost jobs in the recession have yet to find new employment. Most of those who have found work have taken pay cuts and/or lost benefits; six in 10 of them say it’s not the job they wanted, but one they took simply to make ends meet. But it’s toughest for those still out. The share of job-seekers who’ve spent more than seven months looking for work has jumped from 48 percent last August to 70 percent today, Rutgers finds. Consider the impacts: – Ninety percent of the unemployed rate their financial situation negatively. Seventy percent are spending money they’d saved for retirement, more than half have borrowed from friends and nearly as many have run up credit card debt. -Four in 10 have skipped medical care, as many have sold personal possessions to make ends meet, nearly a third are using food stamps and one in five reports using a food pantry. A fifth have had to move their home; as many are bunking with family or friends. -In personal responses, 70 percent are under stress, 60 percent report depression, half anxiety and 40 percent helplessness and anger. One in 10 has sought professional help with the emotional fallout. The report, from Rutgers’ John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, puts other data into perspective, including our weekly ABC News Consumer Comfort Index, which despite signs of economic growth – and somewhat less-pessimistic expectations for the future – remains near its record low in 24 years of weekly polling. In our latest CCI results 91 percent of Americans rated the economy negatively, 76 percent called it a bad time to spend money and 56 percent rated said their own finances were hurting – all signs of the painful impacts of the broad, long-term unemployment explored in the Rutgers study out today.

That makes this an especially good time to tell everyone they need to start sacrificing and suffering. See, the stock market’s doing well and everyone who’s anyone is fed up with all this whining from people who refuse to get non-existent jobs:

“You can’t go on forever,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, of Montana, whose panel oversees the benefits program. “I think 99 weeks is sufficient,” he said. “There’s just been no discussion to go beyond that,” said Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat.

Yes, 99 weeks would be sufficient — if the unemployment rate wasn’t sky high. What the hell are these people supposed to do? Emigrate?

If you have the stomach to read the Rutgers study, do it. This has long term repercussions on our economy and our culture and none of them are good. The loss of wealth from the housing and stock market crashes two years ago, combined with long term unemployment for a large number of Americans has changed the future expectations of all of us. The ruling class needn’t worry, of course. They are quite comfy and can’t figure out what the fuss is all about. (“Why don’t these lazy unemployed people just put together a decent portfolio, for crying out loud?”) But everyone who isn’t one of the chosen few, even those who kept their jobs throughout, have been changed by this to one degree or another. Everyone’s expectations have ben challenged and some have had their dreams completely derailed.

It’s a problem that’s going to long outlast the great recession.

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The Refrain

by digby

It always seems to come down to this, doesn’t it?

“There was a big debate under the Bush administration whether or not to require additional oil drilling safeguards but [federal regulators] decided not to require any additional mandatory safeguards, believing the industry would be motivated to do it themselves,” Carl Pope, Chairman of the Sierra Club told ABC News.

What is it going to take to make people rethink this faith-based assumption? I’m stumped. From Wall Street to California to the Gulf of Mexico and everywhere else, it’s been proven over and over again, that this simply doesn’t work. And the country blames the government because it failed to do its job and then makes it ever weaker in the process, thus perpetuating this vicious cycle. Why, heck, you’d almost think the whole thing was rigged

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Caught

by digby

So they caught the Times Square bomber and they did it without invading any other countries or anything. As Niewert says, let’s hear if for good old fashioned detective work.

But I do have to wonder just how lame the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists have become. This was about as amateurish as you could imagine and didn’t even have the usual lethal suicidal element. You can be this sloppy if you don’t worry about being caught. But to do a bad Tim McVeigh imitation and then expect to walk doesn’t show the kind of serious commitment we’ve seen before.

Nonetheless, if the bomb had been better or if people hadn’t been as alert it could have caused some serious mayhem. And strangely, you have to feel a little bit safer knowing that these people are reduced to recruiting these losers to try to commit such attacks. It may not always be true that they are such losers, but clearly people with any brains and ability are getting pretty hard to recruit.

I’m very glad he was caught in the US by civilian officials. That means they probably won’t be able to torture him, at least to the extent they would have been if caught overseas, and they might actually get some useful intelligence. So, this is a very good show by the government I think and done without a lot of silly theatrics or subsequent fear and paranoia, which is very good. Causing fear and paranoia is what these people want after all.

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Hilarious Torture

by digby

I don’t think I’m going to write anything about tasers anymore. The ship has sailed and it’s clearly a waste of time. Since I started writing about them they’ve officially become a form of entertainment, where sick pieces of work scream “tase him, tase him!” and laugh uproariously at the sight of a security guard police officer administering electroshock torture to some kid who runs onto a baseball field.

Here’s a sample of the comments from the Youtube:

Randalrister thanks for postin the video, only thing us cards fans got to see was closeup video of molina laughing at him. 53 minutes ago

rustytrombone1027 Tazed his ass! Nice. 20 minutes ago

r1rav3n me and my boy were in sec 145 left field front row seats to the action. this was the greatest thing we ever seen 27 minutes ago

SavageJon123 Only a Btown kid. lol go Steve 35 minutes ago

DallasWillAlwaysSuck phuckin’ hilarious, CBP rules!!!!! 45 minutes ago

StLouisKing05 this was the funniest thing i have ever seen! i sat in section 307 so i saw him hop over the wall and start running!! 49 minutes ago

CheetoSantana The smile on Molina’s face was awesome 54 minutes ago

MatthewMitchell3434 I go to school with the kid hes 17

This culture is morally hopeless.

And its people apparently just can’t wait to become a real police state:

The overwhelming majority of Americans think the country’s immigration policies need to be seriously overhauled. And despite protests against Arizona’s stringent new immigration enforcement law, a majority of Americans support it, even though they say it may lead to racial profiling.

Real Americans don little tri-corner hats and carry on about “freedom” and “the constitution” but all they know about either one is what they learned at Disneyland. They are paranoid about a non-existent invasion of killer immigrants and are freaking out about a non-existent plan to send gun owners to Fema camps. They threaten to kill census workers who ask them how many times they flush their toilets.

But torture? Not a problem. Whether it’s administered by the CIA or some minimum wage security guard, they seem to think electric shock, waterboarding or any other sick form of coercion worthy of the worst low rent dictator in the world is just ducky. But only if the subject is unarmed. If anyone tried this with a guy who was packing, the screams of horror at “the government” trying to disarm a law abiding citizen would be heard for miles around. I give up.

h/t to half a dozen readers.

Safety

by digby

“The recent tragedy in the Gulf Coast shows how dangerous and toxic the practice of offshore drilling is and how it has no place in America’s future,” said Justin Ruben, Executive Director of MoveOn.org. “The only thing that benefits from offshore drilling are oil company profits and today, we’re urging President Obama to finally give Americans what we deserve–an energy policy that puts our safety above oil company interests.”

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The Little People Don’t Understand

by digby

This is damning stuff:

As top Federal Reserve officials debated whether there was a housing bubble and what to do about it, then-Chairman Alan Greenspan argued that the dissent should be kept secret so that the Fed wouldn’t lose control of the debate to people less well-informed than themselves. “We run the risk, by laying out the pros and cons of a particular argument, of inducing people to join in on the debate, and in this regard it is possible to lose control of a process that only we fully understand,” Greenspan said, according to the transcripts of a March 2004 meeting.

Only he now says that he was the one who didn’t fully understand:

“I have found a flaw” in free market theory, Greenspan said under intense questioning by Representative Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the Government Oversight Committee of the House of Representatives. “I don’t know how significant or permanent it is,” Greenspan added. “But I have been very distressed by that fact.””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,” Greenspan said.Waxman pushed the former Fed chief, who left office in 2006, to clarify his explanation.”In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Waxman said.”Absolutely, precisely,” 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.”

After listening to the BP executives pretty much say the same thing, can we now see the pattern of elite corruption and malfeasance? How about the Catholic Church? Or the CIA? It’s not like there aren’t, in every case, people who dissent:

At the same meeting, a Federal Reserve bank president from Atlanta, Jack Guynn, warned that “a number of folks are expressing growing concern about potential overbuilding and worrisome speculation in the real estate markets, especially in Florida. Entire condo projects and upscale residential lots are being pre-sold before any construction, with buyers freely admitting that they have no intention of occupying the units or building on the land but rather are counting on ‘flipping’ the properties–selling them quickly at higher prices.” Had Guynn’s warning been heeded and the housing market cooled, the financial collapse of 2008 could have been avoided. But his comment was kept secret until Friday, when the central bank released the transcripts of Federal Open Market Committee meetings for 2004 and CalculatedRisk spotted it. The transcripts for 2005 to the present are still secret.

They didn’t want to spoil the party. After all a lot of people were making a lot of money. And nobody wanted the “little people” who don’t understand how the world works interference. Like the congress:

In little-noticed statements to reporters over the last few weeks, Pelosi has alleged that the Bush administration knew well in advance of its intervention that the financial crisis would hit, and that Congress would need to authorize a historic and unpopular bailout – but that top officials, including then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, told her that they had been barred from briefing Congress about true extent of the crisis. If accurate, the allegation could constitute a major indictment of the Bush administration, which may have worsened the crisis and resulting economic fallout by delaying the call for congressional action. Pelosi says the admissions from Bush administration officials that they had kept Congress in the dark came in private conversations between her and those officials in person and by phone. None of the other parties to those conversations would comment for this story. Nor is it clear if the Administration’s alleged decision not to brief Congress earlier was a calculated strategy to avoid spooking the already shaky financial markets thus hastening the crisis or, as Pelosi suggests, a political calculation in advance of the 2008 presidential elections, or a combination of the two.

Read on.

But whatever we do, let’s not look in the rearview mirror and hold anyone responsible for anything. That would be counterproductive. Accountability is for the little people.

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Who’s Picking Up The Tab Again?

by digby

Huzzah:

President Obama visited Louisiana yesterday afternoon to observe the response effort to the BP oil spill, which he called a “potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.” “Your government will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to stop this crisis,” he pledged. But Obama said taxpayers would not be on the hook for the cleanup, saying “BP is responsible for this leak — BP will be paying the bill.”

Really?

The federal government has a large rainy day fund on hand to help mitigate the expanding damage on the Gulf Coast, generated by a tax on oil for use in cases like the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Up to $1 billion of the $1.6 billion reserve could be used to compensate for losses from the accident, as much as half of it for what is sometimes a major category of costs: damage to natural resources like fisheries and other wildlife habitats.

Under the law that established the reserve, called the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, the operators of the offshore rig face no more than $75 million in liability for the damages that might be claimed by individuals, companies or the government, although they are responsible for the cost of containing and cleaning up the spill.

That fund is a drop in the bucket. The lost revenue and damages are going to add up to much more than a billion. And the fishermen and other actual humans (as opposed to “corporate persons”) are not going to be able to sue BP for much (75 million is chump change) — that drop in the bucket fund is supposed to cover all those costs and more. And when it’s gone, either the taxpayers pick up the rest of the tab or that’s it.

Once more with feeling. Quoting from the financial advisory I blogged about below:

This will be a financial calamity for many firms, not just BP and its partners and service providers. Their liabilities are immense and must not be underestimated. The first estimate of $12.5 billion is only a starter.

Wrong. The law caps BPs liability at 75 million (plus costs of clean-up, which will be substantial.) Everyone else is going to have to line up for that paltry 1 billion, which nobody thinks is going to be enough.

This sheds some light on just how efficacious that 50 billion dollar bank fund they are all so havey-cavey on will actually be, doesn’t it? TBTF is always TBTF.

BTW: BP made $163 billion in profits from 2001-2009. It made $5.6 billion in the first quarter of this year alone.

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Political Geniuses

by digby

The predictable and understandable backlash from Latinos is quickly emerging:

Adam Bustos, a third-generation Mexican-American, has voted Republican since Ronald Reagan ran for president. But he has been reconsidering his party affiliation since Arizona State Gov. Jan Brewer signed the nation’s toughest immigration law last month.

“I’ve been thinking I might leave the party,” said Mr. Bustos, a 58-year-old Arizona native. “A lot of my Latino Republican friends have been talking about it after this law.”

But the Republicans don’t have to fret too much. The Democrats, with their usual perspicacity and impeccable sense of political timing, have decided to chase teabaggers and do the GOP’s work for them:

The Democrats’ legislative “framework” includes a slew of new immigration enforcement measures aimed at U.S. borders and workplaces. It would further expand the 20,000-member Border Patrol; triple fines against U.S. employers that hire illegal immigrants; and, most controversially, require all American workers — citizens and non-citizens alike — to get new Social Security cards linked to their fingerprints to ease work eligibility checks.

The plan’s emphasis on “securing the border first” before taking steps to allow many of an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States to pay fines and apply for legal status was plainly a gesture to Republicans. Even so, no Republican is supporting it, not even Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who has been working with Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in bipartisan talks over the issue for months.

The Democrats’ shift underscores how, in the struggle between enforcement advocates and legalization backers, the former seem to be gaining, experts said.

Ideas that were hotly contested in ill-fated Senate debates in 2006 and 2007 seem now to be taken for granted, said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “You’ve seen a lot of movement, and in partisan terms mostly movement on the Democratic side toward Republican positions,” he said.

Even the conservadem corporatists have no good reason to do this. They can serve their Galtish masters freely by demanding comprehensive reform that ensures undocumented workers are treated humanely. And any Democrats who likes to think he or she has a conscience can certainly hold the line. There is only one reason to do this and it’s purely political and it’s even wrong on that basis: if the Democrats actually think they are going to be able to compete for the nativist/racist vote with this kind of thing they are very sadly mistaken. The teabaggers aren’t ever going to vote for the party with the Kenyan Muslim president and the San Francisco feminazi speaker of the House.

On the other hand, they might have been able to make a case to Republican Latinos that their interests are better served by a party that doesn’t think it’s a good idea to stop every dark skinned person on the street to determine whether or not they are Real Americans. Unfortunately, Democrats are running like rats deserting a sinking ship on this issue, so the fastest growing demographic in the country doesn’t have any obvious place to go. Well played.

Update: Did I say that Democrats had bad timing?

New Jersey Would Gain $2 Billion From Offshore Drilling
From Chris Prandoni on Friday, April 30, 2010 9:30 AM

“All of the benefits associated with offshore drilling, increased economic output, well-paying jobs, new tax revenue, remain locked up in America’s oil reserves. Although a majority of Americans support offshore development, the Obama administration has put forth a plan that inhibits New Jersey’s economic recovery and ability to grow over the coming years,” said Grover Norquist, President Americans for Tax Reform.

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Last Call For Barenaked Ladies

by digby

May is a big month for primaries and this week is the kick-off with two tomorrow, one in North Carolina and one in Ohio. (Blue America has endorsed Elaine Marshall in the first and Jennifer Brunner in the second.)

Howie gives the lowdown these two races on the eve of the elections:

North Carolina is likely to result in a runoff, although Elaine Marshall, despite Menendez’s attempt to decide this race for North Carolina voters, is ahead. National Democrats have starved Jennifer Brunner’s campaign of cash. She’s getting huge grassroots support, but Menendez has managed to shut off all institutional money from her campaign, making it very difficult to get out her inspiring message. In North Carolina grassroots organizations like DFA and local bloggers like Pam Spaulding have endorsed Marshall. Meanwhile the clueless and divisive Menendez couldn’t be doing a better job at re-electing Burr if he were on the GOP payroll. Last Sunday, despite the noises from Inside the Beltway, the Charlotte Observer also endorsed Marshall...

The Ohio blogosphere has largely gotten behind Jennifer Brunner both because she is more progressive on the issues and because she is far more electable in a general. And women’s organizations feel very strongly about this race and about the DSCC’s very strange positioning.

Here’s Brunner:

Howie also issued a last call for our Blue America May primary contest

Blue America is running a kind of contest around the five May Senate primaries by which we’re giving away an RIAA-certfied multi-platinum Barenaked Ladies award disc to the campaign that gets the most votes on this page, a vote being defined as a campaign contribution of at least one dollar. Front-runners have been Jack Conway of Kentucky and Bill Halter of Arkansas. The contest ends at midnight today, so there’s still an opportunity to vote. Please do.

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Two Simple Answers To Two Simple Questions

by tristero

John Quiggin:

…I’d like to end with the rhetorical question of whether, given the extent to which the US rightwing movement relies on the deliberate promotion of ignorance, anyone, regardless of their philosophical views on conservatism, libertarianism and so on, can associate with this movement and maintain any intellectual integrity.

No.

The converse question for the left, is whether there is any benefit in engaging intellectually with anyone who is, in the end, promoting ignorance and dishonesty by virtue of their affiliations.

No.