Austerity R Us
by digby
The good news is that the US hasn’t been pursuing an austerity program.
The really good news is that we’ve had such a robust recovery that it’s all good.
And hey, even that looks good if you don’t notice what the unemployment rate was in 2008…
I gotcher disaster capitalism for ya richeeyah
by digby
The only answer is privatization:
The Long Island Power Authority should be converted into an investor-owned utility to end poor management practices that exacerbated slow and halting repairs of blackouts from October’s Hurricane Sandy, a New York state investigative panel said today.
Privatization would make management of the state-owned electrical system answerable to the New York Public Service Commission, which should be empowered by the legislature with stronger sanctions including the ability to revoke a utility franchise, the panel told Governor Andrew Cuomo today in a preliminary briefing.
Cuomo, a Democrat, convened the so-called Moreland Commission in November with the power to subpoena witnesses, after more than two million homes and businesses lost electricity from the storm, some for as long as 21 days. Some of the panel’s recommendations will need legislation and Cuomo said he’s waiting for its final report. No date was given for its release.
“The key to problems at LIPA was a fundamentally dysfunctional management structure,” Benjamin Lawsky, the commission co-chairman and superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, said at a meeting in Albany that was broadcast on the Internet. “The commission found that the only solution is for fundamental change at LIPA and how power is delivered on Long Island.”
Yeah, we went down that road in California a decade ago. Privatization of electricity was going to solve every problem from high energy costs to male pattern baldness. It was so exciting. Especially for Grandma Millie:
This is Bob Badeer (a trader at Enron’s West Power desk in Portland, CA, where all these tapes were recorded) and Kevin McGowan (in Enron’s central office in Houston,TX, as he mentions in the transcript):
KEVIN: So,
BOB: (laughing)
KEVIN: So the rumor’s true? They’re fuckin’ takin’ all the money back from you guys? All those money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?
BOB: Yeah, Grandma Millie, man. But she’s the one who couldn’t figure out how to fuckin’ vote on the butterfly ballot.
KEVIN: Yeah, now she wants her fuckin’ money back for all the power you’ve charged right up – jammed right up her ass for fuckin’ 250 dollars a megawatt hour.
BOB: You know – you know – you know, grandma Millie, she’s the one that Al Gore’s fightin’ for, you know? You’re not going to –
BOB: Grandma Millie –
That worked out great for us. I can certainly see why New York would want to privatize as well.
(Obviously, this is not exactly the same sort of privatization, but the concept is the same: privatization as the panacea. It’s not. In fact, most of the time it makes things worse. For Grandma Millie anyway.)
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Blue America Chat 11pst/2est: Candidate Debra Cooper!
by digby
When the Netroots first appeared in the middle of the last decade, there were a few people who instantly joined up as supporters, benefactors and activists who “got it.” But no one got it more clearly than our good friend Debra Cooper, a long time champion of women’s rights, New York NARAL board member and Democratic Party activist. From the very beginning Debra understood the power of this new force in American politics and embraced our work and enthusiastically participated in our activities, often to the befuddlement of other experienced organizers who failed to see the potential of our new medium. Debra has been a stalwart supporter of Blue America since its inception and we are thrilled to return the favor by making her our first endorsee of 2013.
Blue America doesn’t normally get involved in local races, but a New York City Council seat is not the usual local race … and Debra is not the usual candidate.
As she says:
I have been an unabashed progressive my entire life. And I have been around long enough to see that it matters is we move forward as progressives and not react backward. If we aren’t pushing forward on our agenda, the right wing is pushing us backward. And it goes from everything from women’s reproductive rights to social security to the safety net to the issue of gun control. Those issues all matter. We have to push forward, we have to enlarge the conversation to include our solutions and not just react to their solutions.
I have been asked about my lines in the sand. Actually I have lines in quick drying cement. And those lines are about principles — progressive and democratic principles. Lines in the sand are for tactics and for strategy. They are moveable and they are erasable. Principles are not. They are firm and they are clear. You use lines in the sand to negotiate. And over the long term, as a progressive , if we want to move the conversation in the right direction, we want to make the lines in the sand the same as our lines in cement.
A couple of years back Debra wrote a piece that I’ve often quoted because it’s so important. She talked about abortion in the language of freedom, which is frankly something I’d never heard anyone do before, at least in a way that was persuasive:
For women ALL Roads to freedom and equality – economic equality and most particularly the ability to avoid poverty START with control of their bodies. If they can’t control how they get pregnant and when they will have a child then poverty is the result.
There is theory about something called the Prime Mover – the first action or the first cause. Well for women it IS reproductive rights. It precedes everything. It really is simple. Without the abilty to control your own body then you are a slave to everything else.
Frankly sexism, the need to control women’s lives by controlling their bodies and the things that arise from it, are endemic to any social structure. It is ever enduring and even when it seems to be quashed it returns in another form. That is the story in the modern era of women’s rights. One step forward after a long struggle – suffrage and then a step back. (And no way do I say that women are not complicit in their own subjugation. We are.)
I am reading The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin. In the epilogue he makes a point of saying that the loss of power and control is what the elite and the reactionary fear the most. More than a specific loss itself the fear the rising volcano of submerged anger and power. And for them it is most acutely felt compulsion for control in the “intimate” arena. That is the most vexing and disturbing of all.
It is why they want to control women.
And controlling their reproductive lives is the surefire way to control them.
It is why abortion rights are absolutely central to every other kind of freedom.
Wouldn’t it be great to have someone who thinks like this in elective office? She is one of us, a stalwart progressive who has been inspired and motivated by our work — and your commitment — to throw her hat into the ring and represent our shared values in elective office.
John, Howie and I are proud to support her and we hope you will too.
Hopefully everyone had a chance to rest up during the holidays and take a breather. But the reactionaries never sleep. As Debra says, if we aren’t pushing our agenda, the right wing is pushing us backwards. It’s time to start pushing.
Please join Debra for our first Blue America chat of the year chat at 11pst/2est over at Crooks and Liars.
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GOP signaling weakness
by digby
I hope Greg Sargent is right about this:
It’s true that Boehner insists above that Republicans won’t back down from the demand that spending get cut by the same amount as the debt ceiling rises. But all that really means is that they will use the size of the debt ceiling hike as a metric to set the amount of their spending cut demand — not that the threat of default will be used to extract those cuts. Remember, GOP leaders well know that if they do that, the entire business community will join with Obama and Democrats to tell them to back off or take the blame for cratering the economy, leaving Republicans further isolated. So Boehner is letting it be known that Republicans don’t see the debt ceiling as their primary leverage point in the battle to come.
Boehner does this by threatening to only agree to “monthly” debt ceiling hikes. But this should be read, if anything, as a sign of weakness. It’s essentially a concession that the debt limit has to be raised; Boehner is merely threatening to drag his feet as he allows the inevitable to happen. But it’s just nonsense. The business community is not going to go for such a course of action, to put it mildly. And it risks dragging the country through monthly threats of default, a terrible thing to inflict on the American people.
Ultimately, what this highlights is the utter incoherence of the GOP position on the debt ceiling. Republican leaders know they have to raise the debt limit — they know the threat not to do this isn’t credible, and they need to signal to the business community that they don’t view this option seriously — yet they want to continue to use it as leverage to get what they want, anyway. Hence Boehner’s above dance. And Boehner isn’t the only one: On Face the Nation yesterday, when Mitch McConnell was asked directly whether Republicans would really withhold support for a debt ceiling hike if it weren’t paid for by spending cuts of equivalent size, he repeatedly refused to answer.
Boehner’s and McConnell’s equivocations will only embolden the White House and Democrats to stick with their strategy of refusing to negotiate over the debt ceiling, and treating the Republicans’ refusal to commit to raising it up front as their problem, and their problem only.
It sure sounds like Boehner and McConnell are hedging to me. If they are,then that means any more “offers” from the Democrats to make a “big deal” are offers the Democrats want to make, not ones they have to make.
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Biting the hand that feeds
by David Atkins
When the history books are all written, this may turn out to be most darkly comedic episode of our new Gilded Age.
Fresh from paying back a $182 billion bailout, the American International Group Inc. has been running a nationwide advertising campaign with the tagline “Thank you America.”
Behind the scenes, the restored insurance company is weighing whether to tell the government agencies that rescued it during the financial crisis: thanks, but you cheated our shareholders.
The board of A.I.G. will meet on Wednesday to consider joining a $25 billion shareholder lawsuit against the government, court records show. The lawsuit does not argue that government help was not needed. It contends that the onerous nature of the rescue — the taking of what became a 92 percent stake in the company, the deal’s high interest rates and the funneling of billions to the insurer’s Wall Street clients — deprived shareholders of tens of billions of dollars and violated the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the taking of private property for “public use, without just compensation.”
…
Some government officials are already upset with the company for even seriously entertaining the lawsuit, people briefed on the matter said. The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted that without the bailout, A.I.G. shareholders would have fared far worse in bankruptcy.
“On the one hand, from a corporate governance perspective, it appears they’re being extra cautious and careful,” said Frank Partnoy, a former banker who is now a professor of law and finance at the University of San Diego School of Law. “On the other hand, it’s a slap in the face to the taxpayer and the government.”
Most of AIG’s executives, particularly Joe Cassano and everyone in his division, are extremely fortunate not to be languishing in prison right now. That AIG’s creditors are receiving even a dime is also fortuitous.
What’s most appalling about all of this is the fact that everyone is behaving as modern capitalism demands. AIG “innovated” financial products to meet shareholder expectations of quarterly profits as the market demanded. When those products went belly up, the government couldn’t let AIG go bankrupt without destroying the entire economy. With AIG back on its feet due entirely to government largesse, the faceless, soulless corporation is once again doing its job in attempting to maximize value to its shareholders.
Everything is working exactly as the system is designed to, actually. And it will keep working this way until we overthrow it in favor of a new system that doesn’t prioritize short-term profit over long-term stability, corporate persons over real persons, and shareholder return over wage growth.
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If only everyone were armed
by digby
This wouldn’t happen. Oh, wait:
A gun went off inside a Kitsap County store after a man dropped it, but no one was injured.
The Kitsap Sun reports that a 58-year-old Poulsbo man told deputies he had removed the .38-caliber, two-shot Derringer pistol from a holster on his belt before he entered the Cost Plus World Market in Silverdale on Saturday afternoon.
He put the gun in a coat pocket, but when he was in the middle of the store, he bent over — and the pistol fell out and discharged.
Sheriff’s spokesman Scott Wilson says there were about 35 customers and workers inside, and staff used the public address system to tell everyone to evacuate.
I can’t figure out why somebody wasn’t quick enough to pull out his own gun and drill the guy on the spot. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?
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It’s not just the Republicans we have to worry about
by digby
Elias Isquith has a good piece up today about how alone liberals are in this fight for reality. Even among other self-identified members of the left side of political spectrum:
Greg Sargent has a report on the White House’s “no negotiation” mantra when it comes to the debt ceiling that I think is supposed to be reassuring to liberals; but it only reminds me how very, very alone we* really are:
Fortunately, it’s becoming clearer that the White House and Democrats really don’t intend to play along. Chuck Schumer reiterated today that Dems will not negotiate around the debt ceiling. Harry Reid has privately told Obama that he will support it if the president utilizes a way to get around the debt ceiling that doesn’t involve Congress. While the President is unlikely to opt for that route, the support for it among Dems suggests they are in no mood to see any concessions made in response to GOP debt ceiling hostage taking.
Isquith goes on to kindly hat tip my absurdly obsessive attention to this subject over the past year and a half, showing just how unbelievable these claims are in light of the history everyone seems to ignore:
It bears repeating that, in 2011, Barack Obama chose to embroil his country in a debt-ceiling showdown. Here’s the smoking gun of a report, seemingly little-remembered by much of the pro-Obama Left (a group among which I’d ultimately count myself) and yet utterly essential toward understanding how we got here:
“I’m the President of the United States,” Obama told Boehner [in 2011]. “You’re the Speaker of the House. We’re the two most responsible leaders right now.” And so they began to talk about the truly epic possibility of using the threat, the genuine danger of default, to freeze out their respective extremists and make the kind of historic deal that no one really thought possible anymore — bigger than when Reagan and Tip O’Neill overhauled the tax code in 1986 or when Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich passed welfare reform a decade later. It would include deeper cuts in spending, the elimination of all kinds of tax loopholes and lower income tax rates for all. “Come on, you and I,” Boehner admitted telling Obama. “Let’s lock arms, and we’ll jump out of the boat together.”
My point is not to re-litigate the summer of 2011 — easily the nadir of the Obama Presidency — but rather to emphasize that this atmosphere of fear and anxiety that’s currently permeating through the liberal sphere is unnecessary. There never was a situation in which Obama had to negotiate over the debt ceiling; and there won’t be one now. He only negotiated before because he wanted to.
Read the whole thing, please. Unless people recognize this simple fact, the next round of negotiations are not going to work. It’s up to the progressive coalition of unions, liberal activists and progressive politicians to understand that they are being triangulated against or we’re going to hit a wall and this deal will happen.
Roger Hickey at campaign for America’s Future wrote a good cris de coeur today that should get your blood pumping. We’re all tired of this nonsense, I know. But both parties are hoping they can wear us down so they can pass some awful package of cuts to vital programs (and possibly some phony “tax reform”)under the guise of yet another “crisis.” It’s important that we don’t give up. After all, we’ve been winning. So far.
Update: Krugman. Cutting is counter-productive. But you knew that.
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QOTD: James Dobson
by David Atkins
Focus on the Family leader and hatemonger James Dobson:
Now let me share my heart with you. I’m sure many of you are discouraged in the aftermath of the National Elections, especially in view of the moral and spiritual issues that took such a beating on November 6th. Nearly everything I have stood for these past 35 years went down to defeat.
And good riddance. Progressives may feel under constant assault on the economic and civil liberties fronts, and rightly so. But on social issues we’re winning hands down and overwhelmingly, relegating the archaic and hateful views of the James Dobsons of the world to the dustbin of history where they belong. It’s hard to see why anyone would dedicate their life to standing athwart history yelling “stop!” and trying to keep persecuted minorities in their place. But hey, if they want to do that to the eternal shame of their descendants, so be it. The most fitting fate for James Dobson is to die irrelevant and despised by history insofar as he is remembered at all.
Of course, those victories are easier won: two gay people getting married threatens a lot of bigots and powerful religious organizations, but the real big money boys don’t care much so long as they keep getting their tax cuts. Still, it’s important to celebrate where celebrations are due.
Not that regression isn’t possible. It certainly is. For all its faults, the Roman Empire was a far more socially progressive place than the Dark Ages that followed. An appreciation for the history of social regression in the wake of the collapse of empires and civilizations is part of why I don’t buy into devolutionary, local-control anti-state progressivism. It never ends well.
h/tSteveningen
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On picking your battles
by digby
Glenn’s commentary on the Brennan nomination for CIA is predictably sharp and he notes all the good reasons why Brennan is as poor a choice today as he was in 2008. He also makes special note of the fact that while liberals were adamantly opposed back then, as with so many national security issues, they are largely silent now. But I think he hits on one of the main reason for that with his own admission, here:
Although I actively opposed Brennan’s CIA nomination in 2008, I can’t quite muster the energy or commitment to do so now. Indeed, the very idea that someone should be disqualified from service in the Obama administration because of involvement in and support for extremist Bush terrorism polices seems quaint and obsolete, given the great continuity between Bush and Obama on these issues. Whereas in 2008 it seemed uncertain in which direction Obama would go, making it important who wielded influence, that issue is now settled: Brennan is merely a symptom of Obama’s own extremism in these areas, not a cause. This continuity will continue with or without Brennan because they are, rather obviously, Obama’s preferred policies.
This is the same feeling a lot of liberals have about fighting Obama’s policies, particularly on National Security where there is such a strong bipartisan consensus. You just feel as if it’s pointless and so you pick another battle where you think you might have a slight chance of mitigating whatever horror show is on the horizon. It’s shocking that we feel we have to fight to keep a Democratic White House from cutting Social Security and Medicare, but at least there’s a big constituency out there that could possibly be mobilized in our favor. (And the Republicans have their own reasons for wanting the Democrats to do the dirty work, which gives liberals more leverage.) On national security and civil liberties it is a very heavy lift when you have the president, at least half the Democratic party, all the Republicans (except for Rand Paul) and the entire Village on the same page. So, you fight when you think you have a chance, as we all did at the beginning of Obama’s first term, and once you see the lay of the land you marshal your energy for the fights you might be able to win.
This is the perennial problem, as one sees quite clearly in Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States. In fact, it’s the story of the American Empire since WWII — no matter what happens, we always seem to revert to the mean. This bipartisan foreign policy consensus had led us down the garden path over and over again and the best we can do most of the time is mitigate the very worst excesses (if we’re lucky.) I don’t have an answer, but I do know that it’s vitally important that we be smart enough to see when we might have an opening and fight like hell. Like Glenn, I think the Brennan appointment isn’t one of them.
Update: I agree with Greg Sargent on this. It’s the very least we can expect:
The hearings may be able to establish whether we see a real accounting into the legacy of Bush era torture programs. He’ll likely be pressed on how forthcoming he believes the agency should be when it comes to a massive report Senate Democrats have prepared examining those programs. The CIA needs to approve that report for release, with redactions; Brennan will be asked to detail how he’d handle it. “Will he assure us that he’s not going to stand in the way of the American people understanding what the U.S. government did when it engaged in torture, rendition, and secret prisons?” asks Laura Murphy, a senior official at the American Civil Liberties Union, in an interview with me.
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The most annoying conservative Democrat? Starts with E and ends with Rendell
by digby
This is who the Democratic Party has representing them on MSNBC, day after day, after day. I give you Ed Rendell:
Rendell: Look, even if it means there are a few more Republicans in the Senate and the Congress, if they’re reasonable Republicans who are moderate-conservative then that’s a good prescription for America.
John Amato posted the whole daft exchange and adds some tart commentary, here. He notes:
Did it ever cross his mind to maybe mention that electing many more progressive Democratic politicians would be the best solution to the crisis?
No. Because, hippies and cheetos.
Now, I don’t much care about the partisan aspect of this per se. If the Republican Party boasted even one person who was as progressive as a progressive Democrat I’d be happy to endorse them. But it doesn’t. Electing more “moderate” Republicans (whatever that is) and conservatives will not help anything. In fact, our biggest problem at the moment is the the fact that we’re electing too many “moderate” and conservative Democrats. People like Ed Rendell.
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