Bigger Than Bush
by digby
The Shrill One lays it all out. The modern conservative movement failed George W. Bush, not the other way around. He was, after all, their creature.
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"what digby sez..."
Bigger Than Bush
by digby
The Shrill One lays it all out. The modern conservative movement failed George W. Bush, not the other way around. He was, after all, their creature.
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Read This
by digby
… if you need a primer on the Great Depression.
From Hale Stewart:
This article is the first in a series on the Great Depression. I am writing this with the help of New Deal Democrat (who blogs over at Economic Populist). The purpose of this series is simply to talk about the Great Depression. The reason for writing this article is the emergence of the “FDR made the Depression worse” talking point from the Right Wing Noise Machine — econ division. While none of the stories using this line have any facts to back them up — no charts, no graphs no data — they continue to spew this talking point. So, let’s get some data — as in facts — to see that actually happened.
If you or anyone you know has trouble understanding why the government should intervene to prevent what could be seen as a natural economic even, that article will dispel any confusion. The scope of human suffering is horrible and the instability that something like that engenders is very dangerous. They government is the only institution capable of doing what needs to be done to mitigate these effects.
And lest we think that the wingnuts have learned anything at all from history, this bit is especially instructive:
And one thing the Republicans and the plutocrats of the day were sure of, was that government should do absolutely nothing to help its destitute citizenry. When in 1930 a long summer drought killed cattle and crops in the southwest, Hoover asked Congress to appropriate money for government loans to enable farmers to buy seed, fertilizer, and cattle feed. But when Democratic senators sough to apply the same program to human beings in addition to livestock, Hoover “reaffirmed his unwavering opposition to such proposals.” (Schlesinger, p. 170)
Hoover appointed Walter S. Gifford, president of AT&T, to the “President’s Organization on Unemployment Relief.” Appearing before a Senate committee,“Gifford disclosed imerturbably that he did not know how many people were idle, that he did not know how many were receiving aid, that he did not know that the standards of assistance were in the various states, that he did not know how much money had been raised in his own campaign, that he knew nothing of the ability of local communities to raise relief funds ,, that he did not consider most of this information as of much importance to his job….
But on one question Gifford was clear: he was against federal aid.”…that it would reduce the size of private charity.” His “sober and considered judgment” was that “federal aid would be a ‘disservice’ to the jobless.”
Perhaps someone sent that quote to Mark Sanford.
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Nymphos On The Honeymoon
by digby
I normally find Micheal Gerson to be one of the most sanctimonious jackasses in the Republican Party and always loathed the smarmy speeches he wrote for Junior that made the villagers swoon in breathless delight. But I have to give credit where credit is due for this felicitous turn of phrase:
So far, Obama is attempting to be a unifying national figure — in spite of his most insufferable supporters. “Indeed,” explains Joe Klein of Time magazine, “as the weeks have passed since the election, I’ve felt — as an urban creature myself — less restricted, less defensive. Empowered, almost. Is it possible that, as a nation, we’re shedding our childlike, rural innocence and becoming more mature, urban, urbane . . . dare I say it, sophisticated?” Indeed. Is it possible for a pundit to be more like a college freshman who has just discovered the pleasures of wine, co-ed dorms and Nietzsche — shedding the primitivism of his parents and becoming, dare I say it, an annoying adolescent?
Obama does not need the service of nymphomaniacs on his honeymoon. In 2009, he will require sober supporters — and loyal critics — to get through challenges that will not yield to charm.
(I don’t know why he wouldn’t want a nympho on the honeymoon, actually, but this is Michael Gerson and he’s very straightlaced so maybe he thinks too much pleasure is automatically a bad thing, I don’t know. But it is an evocative phrase until you think too much about it.)
He should have listened to his own advice, however, because let’s face it, stuff like this makes it a little bit difficult to take any Bush supporter’s criticism of starry eyed, hero worship seriously:
Nothing since Reagan has been as good in presidential oratory. The president’s speech writers crafted a luminescent call to arms. It was measured without being weak; it was moving without a trace of melodrama; it was stirring without being jingoist. And there was something about the president’s demeanor that suggested to me at last that he knows why he got this office. To speak of his growth at this point would be to condescend. He gets it. He means it. He knows what this war is fundamentally about. My cherished moment was when he rightly described this threat – and its twisted ideology – with the other great evils that have threatened freedom in the last century and before. “The unmarked grave of discarded lies” is a phrase that resonates deeply and truly. God bless the man and the country he finally indisputably leads.
(This is the kind of puerile drivel that turns people into cynics.)
It’s not that Klein and other city slickers (like me) don’t have a right to revel a little bit after years of beltway worship for pork rind scarfing Real Americans. There should be a few perks to winning. But as much as Gerson is hardly in a position to say it, his main point is true. Obama will need sober supporters and loyal critics. Just imagine how different things would have been if Bush had had some sober supporters and loyal critics instead of a cadre of sycophantic schoolkids drooling over his masterful manliness and a press corps that followed them around like wallflowers desperate for attention.
Hopeful idealism (and a strong sense of relief) is to be celebrated. But with eyes wide open and a willingness to call bullshit. Presidencies need this or they can become exercises in hubristic egomania inside the DC bubble and we’ve seen how well that worked out. I suspect that Gerson failed to see the irony of him preaching this particular sermon, but that’s just because he’s …. so him.
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Misunderstanding
by digby
My good friend Big Tent Democrat is disturbed by the intellectual errors committed by Jane Hamsher and myself on the Blagojevich case and has called me out for it specifically. So, seeing as this is a dead day in the blogosphere and I’ve just had some very strong coffee, I think I’ll indulge myself and reply. I warn you — this will be boring. (Oh, and I’m “speaking for me only.” Jane can certainly speak for herself 😉
He believes I’m completely wrong when when I write that the AG of Illinois showed a lack of respect for the law when she tried to have Blagojevich removed from office by the Supreme Court and I’ll try to answer that in a couple of ways.
First, the fact that she was one of the people being considered by Blagojevich for the seat (she’s “Senate candidate #2” in Fitzgerald’s complaint) and the fact that the court declined to even ask Blagojevich for a response before turning down her request shows that it was bad political judgment if nothing else and it may very well come back to haunt her as this case goes forward.
But also it showed a disrespect for the democratic process which requires that a democratically elected governor must be impeached by the legislature in order to be removed from office. The idea of unelected judges removing duly elected representatives strikes me as being a very bad idea. Sure, AG Madigan had a legal right to file the motion, but it showed a cavalier disregard for the intent of the law — even if there is a law on the books providing the court the ability to remove someone who is incapacitated (read: in a coma) that doesn’t mean those laws should be loosely applied for political purposes. Having it done by a partisan Attorney General who is involved in the scandal herself strikes me as nothing short of “Gonzalesesque.” (After all, it was perfectly legal for Bush to fire the US Attorneys at his discretion — that didn’t make it right or smart for him to do so. )
Blago has only been accused of a crime, he hasn’t been convicted, and he has every right to be judged according to the rules. Attorneys General, above all others, should respect those processes and not try to use the courts to circumvent them. Prosecutorial discretion is never more important than political cases which could overturn the electoral judgment of the people. Ask Don Siegelman.
As for my supposedly saying that Burris has a better claim to a seat than Lieberman, I implied nothing of the sort. I’ve never argued that Lieberman should be expelled from the Senate or that they should have refused to seat him. But the fact is that nobody elected Lieberman to be the Homeland Security chairman — he was appointed to it by the Democratic caucus — and they can un-appoint him any time they want. That’s party politics for which the rules are quite different than electoral politics.
Furthermore, the fact that the Democrats politically rewarded someone who actually campaigned for the GOP presidential candidate while threatening to lock out this fellow who meets all the requirements and will likely be a much more loyal backer of the Democratic cause, is politically obtuse, particularly with the racial aspect unfortunately being thrust into it as well. (Welcome to big city machine politics, Harry.) But there is no legal comparison between the two cases and I never made one. It’s a political argument.
Finally, far be it for me to even voice an opinion on the lofty constitutional issues regarding the Senate’s right to refuse to seat Burris, not being a constitutional lawyer and all, so I’ll defer to someone who is one. This is from a discussion last night on the News Hour
Dick Durbin: (video) …What we saw today was an act of political defiance despite the fact that the Democratic caucus has stated clearly that they will not seat his choice for that position.
Ray Suarez: Can the senate refuse to seat Roland Burris when the senate convenes next week? And what will be the political implications of taking such an action? For that we turn to political reporter Carrie Budoff Brown and Abner Green, professor of Fordham University of school of Law in New York.
Professor Green, not only has the Democratic caucus been adamant that it will not seat Roland Burris, but a lot of people are wondering, can they do that? What does the constitution say?
Green: I think the best argument is that they have to seat him. He fits the qualifications — he over 35, he’s been a US citizen for over 9 years, he’s a citizen of Illinois, and the 17th amendment process has been followed. The state of Illinois gave the governor the power to make this appointment and he made it, so the strictly formal reading of the constitution is that they have to seat him.
Suarez: Are there ways of reading “qualifications” and are there articles in the constitution that sets out the senate’s ability to regulate its own members that might give Harry Reid and the Democrats some daylight here?
Green: First of all they have a case against them called Powell vs McCormick that involved New York congressman Adam Clayton Powell. The House had refused to seat him because of charges of corruption, and the US Supreme Court held that qualifications only means the age, US citizenship and residency criteria and therefore the House had to seat Powell. So that cuts against what Harry Reid wants to do. The argument in his favor is that the constitution also gives the senate the power to judge the elections and returns of its members. That would clearly apply in cases where an election was corrupted or tainted or a contested election. The question is whether they can apply that language, elections and returns, to a case of an appointment under the 17th amendment. Remember the constitution was written in 1787 and the 17th amendment came about in the early 20th century and so what they’re trying to do is connect up their power to judge elections and returns to their power to judge an appointment in this situation.
Suarez: What grounds are senators talking about as grounds for them refuse to seat anyone appointed by Governor Blagojevich?
Carrie Budoff Brown: It is the fact that the process is tainted and the appointment itself is tainted. And that’s where they’re making their argument that anybody Governor Blagojevich appoints would not be acceptable. And that’s where they’re laying down the marker and that’s why you saw Harry Reid jump out do quickly and so forcefully yesterday. They laid down a marker several weeks ago pretty much vowing not to give Governor Blagojevich credibility and if they had accepted this appointment, they would be going back on what they said several weeks ago so that’s why I think we’re seeing this now.
Suarez: How does this square with the quiet reaction to the indictment and trial of the sitting senator from Alaska, just a few weeks ago?
Brown: Sure, there are quite a few examples of that in the last years of senators running into legal troubles and they have been allowed to stay in the senate. However, here you’re seeing a case of someone coming into the senate vs someone who is already there and in the case of Senator Stevens, until he was indicted, you didn’t see a movement for him to be ousted from the senate. So again, Harry Reid and Dick Durbin, his second in command, they’re talking about the process being troublesome, not so much the person.
Green: If I could jump in on that. They had a little cover with Stevens. They had to wait to see if he was going to be reelected and he wasn’t, so they were spared that. But if he had been reelected and had refused to resign, there’s a separate provision in the constitution that gives the senate the power to expel a member by a two thirds vote, but that provision does not apply to whether to admit a member, separately.
Suarez: This has to do with the only vote that matters, which in Illinois is the vote of Governor Rod Blagojevich. If the senate looks across the landscape and sees that Illinois law was followed, does it have any precedent for not seating a member?
Green: I don’t think so. They have to make this creative argument to extend their power to judge election and returns to a power to judge appointments. I think what they should do is let Patrick Fitzgerald and the Illinois legislature pursue Rod Blagojevich. And if they believe Burris himself is untainted then they should seat Burris.
(I suspect that a lot of people will find this high regard for abstract “process” somewhat bizarre in light of the fact that they blithely allowed Larry Craig to sit in the senate for two years, while this man who has not even been accused of wrongdoing will be barred from the door. The optics are terrible.)
Burris has been appointed by a duly elected Governor (again, who hasn’t even been indicted, much less convicted of a crime) and who has acted fully in compliance of the law. He meets all the qualifications of the office. There’s no good reason to reject him except for what Chicago journalist Jim Warren said was the primary problem — “he’s a lovable loser who won’t be able to keep the seat in 2010” — and pique that Blagojevich has defied them. Those are not principled reasons and they should just take their medicine. If something shows up against Burris on this case, they can expel him, which they clearly do have the constitutional right to do (but which they never actually do once somebody becomes a member of the club.)
This whole thing is a mess and there aren’t any simple ways to clean it up. But nobody’s covering themselves with glory. The legislature could have impeached Blago in a day if they really believed he needed to be gone (and you have to wonder just why it is they aren’t doing that.) They could have also passed a law calling for a special election and even passed it over Blago’s veto if necessary, and they didn’t do that either (partly at the behest of Harry Reid.) Now that Blago is using his power to shape his legal argument (which, after all, rests on the idea that he never intended to sell the seat) everybody’s running around with their heads cut off because he’s not playing fair. Well, boo hoo.
They have handled this badly on the politics and they had better get their act together. The whole Obama gang is from Illinois and I’m surprised that they’ve allowed themselves to be punk’d by Blagojevich — and from what I’m hearing, they are about to make it even worse. Chuck Todd sagely opined yesterday that Reid wanted to draw this out through the courts as long as possible.
That’s sheer political genius. Let’s milk this stupid story by bringing it right into the capitol and the federal courts. Why, if we’re really lucky we can spend a lot of time revisiting the cases of other senators who were actually convicted of crimes but who the senate refused to expel and then we can talk a lot about the last time the congress tried to keep from having to seat a black man and how it relates to their latest efforts to keep the senate lily white. It’s all hot political theatre that will take up precious oxygen and use precious political capital.
Obviously, people differ on the correct interpretations of the law and constitution on this issue. It’s not like there are a lot of precedents. But when it comes to things like this, I always look to the underlying principles, which it seems to me are obvious: when it comes to removing duly elected representatives from office, we should proceed very, very carefully and try not to make new law whenever possible. The last thing you want to do is give politicians more tools with which to usurp the democratic process. Even though this applies to an appointment there is no reason to allow the senate a new “right” to reject members, for any reason.
For the good of the constitution, they should respect the rules as they are clearly written, which as Professor Green says, requires a very “creative” reading of the provision about elections and returns to justify their action. The old document has been battered around quite a bit these last few years. It could use a rest. Instead, as Will Bunch writes here, they should seat Burris and then immediately introduce an amendment to require that all vacant senate seats be filled through special elections. This appointment process is a throwback to the days when the legislatures elected senators and didn’t met often enough to fill vacant seats in a timely manner. There’s no reason for these laws anymore and as we’ve seen with these recent appointment soap operas, it’s time to change the constitution to make sure the people are the ones making these decisions, not judges or governors or senators. The whole spectacle is unsavory and undemocratic and it leads to a lack of legitimacy for our representatives and institutions.
I realize that it’s bizarre that a disgraced governor could legally appoint a senator when he’s accused of trying to sell the senate seat in the first place. But I just don’t see a good political or legal basis for rejecting him. And neither do many legal beagles who, unlike myself, have the standing to weigh in on such important matters. It appears that my understanding of the law and the constitutional principles involved here are pretty mainstream.
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A Liberal Is A Conservative Who Needs A Bailout
by dday
One of the 50 “mini-Hoovers” in the states finally got religion when he couldn’t fix the problem of poor people not having enough to eat with another round of tax cuts. The episode is instructive.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Just hours before the unemployment benefits fund was to run out in South Carolina, the state with the nation’s third-highest jobless rate, Gov. Mark Sanford relented Wednesday and agreed to apply for a $146 million federal loan to shore it up, after weeks of refusing to do so.
The governor’s position had drawn rebukes even from fellow Republicans in the Legislature, one of whom denounced Mr. Sanford as “heartless,” and from newspaper editorial pages. On Wednesday, The State, the daily newspaper here in Columbia, accused the governor of playing “chicken with the lives of the 77,000” who are unemployed in South Carolina.
For weeks, Mr. Sanford, newly elected as head of the Republican Governors Association and known for being a fierce free-market foe of government spending, stuck to his stand, questioning the probity of the South Carolina Employment Security Commission and demanding a new audit of the agency.
It just couldn’t be that the state had so many jobless that the fund was broke. There had to be some big gubmint mismanagement, or they were lying about their bookkeeping. He kept asking for a strict audit of the unemployment office to “cut the fat,” although they have received a clean bill of health every year. But some freeloader at the agency had to be ruining it for everyone. The fact that the economy is in the shitter and South Carolina in particular has had their industrial base shipped overseas for the last 30 years had nothing to do with it.
I think Sanford’s problem with the unemployment agency is that poor people get money for not working. Their running out of cash wasn’t a bug, but a feature. But the inevitable outcome of conservative “ideas” in a crisis is people collapsing of starvation in the streets, and for some reason the public won’t tolerate that. These lily-livered cowards must have never heard of something called “work ethic.” And those rat-bastard bleeding heart reporters just ruin it for everybody.
Mildly rebuking the news media here, he said that “you can find any number of people, particularly around the holiday season, who have the most unfortunate circumstances, they’ve lost their job, and those are compelling personal stories.”
How dare they have an ounce of concern for their fellow man. Can’t they let Governor Scrooge a moment’s peace?
It goes without saying that Sanford is considered a leading candidate for the Republicans in 2012. But after this weak-kneed capitulation, he’s obviously hurt his chances as a paragon of freedom and liberty. It really mucks up his campaign slogan “Sanford: No To Lucky Duckies!”
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The Duke Of Dallas
by digby
Alberto Gonzales doesn’t have any idea what he did that was so fundamentally wrong. Yes, it’s pathetic, but I think he’s mostly making an appeal to the village (and perhaps George W. Bush…) that he’s been punished enough — he says he can’t get a job because people think he’s going to be indicted. Poor Alberto.
There is a long list of things Gonzales did wrong, of course, not the least of which was his involvement in the torture and spying regime. But I suspect the most serious crime for an Attorney General is the abuse of the constitution and fundamental principles of American law. Reader Brian sent me this note yesterday in response to my post about the villagers’ consensus that investigations and prosecutions of the Bush war crimes would be the wrong thing to do, that I think speaks very well to that point:
Judging by the apologias of Taylor and Marcus, for torture and sundry other criminal enterprises, one is overwhelmingly compelled to conclude they would say literally the exact same thing in response to those items of grievance against King George specified by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.
“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good…”
“He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers…”
“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior
to the Civil power.He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws ; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:…
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences…”
Taylor and Marcus would obviously have been happy licking the bootheels of that other King George, and they would have condemned Jefferson as a lefty extremist.
The Bush administration’s crimes are many, and none more repugnant than the torture, spying and indefinite detention scheme. But the fundamental, underlying crime was the one against the principle that the United States is a country of laws not men. Investing supreme and unaccountable power in the president, even if that power resides in a particular person for only four or eight years at a time, is a crime against the foundation of American ideals (however tarnished they are in practice.) And Gonzales, a justice of the supreme court of Texas, white house counsel, Attorney General, not only never questioned that, he worked hard to help the administration perpetrate it. He and his fellows clearly believed in the royalist model of King George, which is about as unamerican as it gets.
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The Dead-End Kids
by dday
Eve Fairbanks has an important piece about the deepening conservatism in the Congressional Republican caucus. They have been emboldened by their little model Congress stunt on offshore drilling in August, which led to a predictable capitulation from Democrats and the prospect of oil rigs on the California coast within a couple years. Despite the will of the voters at the polls, Republicans learned the lesson of 2008 is that if they stamp their feet and scream loud enough, there is no limit to what they can achieve.
The episode was the happiest moment of the House Republicans’ two years in the minority. But, for House conservatives, the energy insurgency provided far more than mere satisfaction: It became a blueprint for the future. Forget the self-flagellating remedies proposed by white-flag Republicans like David Frum or the Sam’s Club crowd. The House right-wingers concluded from the drilling victory that conservatism needn’t compromise ideologically in order to win–just the opposite. It’s a lesson they’re eager to apply to Barack Obama’s economic schemes, like health care reform and the huge infrastructure stimulus package. Rather than accepting the implications of John McCain’s recession-driven loss–that Americans, perhaps, might be growing weary of Republican economics–the conservatives intend to trigger a popular revolt, like the one they provoked over drilling, against Democrat-led socialism itself.
Conservatives may have dwindling ranks, increasing illegitimacy and the headwind of a very well-liked incoming President eager to implement a popular agenda to deal with. But that is simply not what they gained from the election season. Their take was that McCain was insufficiently conservative (!) and that, besieged on all sides, they must stand up for the people and put the brakes on this whole “change” fad. They have nothing left but ideology, and the Drudge/Fox/talk radio megaphone that it still able to mainline that ideology into the public opinion stream. The years of groupthink have proved to BOTH sides in Washington that only conservative populists are the holders of the popular will, regardless of, you know, election returns.
By the time Pence and his pro-drilling confederates stormed the House floor on August 1, Republicans were primed to accept the ensuing battle’s lessons: One, dramatic gestures pay; two, conservatives don’t have to compromise to capture the people’s imagination. “When [Pelosi] and other Democratic leaders felt the force of America against them … Americans let their voices be heard, and they were enraged, and it affected the way the [energy] bill was put before the House,” explains Representative Louie Gohmert, a bald, cheerful judge from Texas who got swept up in the August excitement.
Soon, as Lehman Brothers melted down and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson rushed around the Hill begging representatives to do something, a new menace ripe for attack emerged: government intervention in the free market. Psychologically rejuvenated by the energy fight, conservatives turned their newfound taste for melodrama against government bailouts. Hensarling derided the September $700 billion plan to rescue the financial industry as a “slippery slope to socialism,” and Thaddeus McCotter, a conservative from the Detroit suburbs, exclaimed that “it was no mistake that, during the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the slogan was ‘Peace, land, and bread.’ Today, you are being asked to choose between bread and freedom. I suggest that the people on Main Street have said they prefer their freedom!”
All 17 House Republican freshmen rejected Boehner’s tearful pro-bailout appeals and signed up with Hensarling’s mutiny against the first bailout vote. And the enthusiastic response from constituents confirmed the conservatives’ view that, while America (perplexingly) might not be planning to vote for them, it stood with them. As Culberson posted proudly on Twitter: “Texans core belief =leave me alone: gov’t stay away from my home, my family, my church, my school, my bank account & my guns.” Even Boehner became a believer. After the GOP’s loss on Election Day, its second in a row, he promoted Pence, his old rival, to the leadership team and mailed a letter to House Republicans praising the conservatives and vowing to use the energy episode as his battle plan.
The bailout bill was ideologically muddled by the fact that it was designed to funnel money to giant investment banks at least partially responsible for the financial meltdown, and as such is not the best example. But what’s significant is the language used, the simplistic shibboleths of “freedom” and “socialism”. These didn’t work during the Presidential campaign, but when they are channeled into populist proposals that Democrats haven’t successfully pushed back on, the result could be dangerous.
Gohmert, the conservative Texas judge, had the brainstorm for his own contribution to the coming wave as he emerged from anesthesia a few days before Thanksgiving. He’d just undergone surgery to repair his anterior cruciate ligament, torn in the annual House softball game, and, as he lay recovering, he was possessed with the germ of an idea. He dropped an e-mail to Newt Gingrich. “He wrote, ‘Do you realize that the amount of money they want [in the remaining, as-yet-unused $350 billion of the Wall Street bailout fund] is so great that you could actually give every American a tax holiday for two months?'” Gingrich remembers: “I looked at it and I thought, wow, what a great way to quantify it.” Newt shot back a message predicting that a two-month holiday on both income and Social Security taxes–proposed by Gohmert as a conservatively populist, don’t-let-Big-Brother-take-your-money alternative to the bailouts–would be “brilliant.” “I don’t get a lot of e-mails from anybody, especially somebody as smart as Newt, saying ‘This is brilliant,'” Gohmert modestly admits.
I don’t think anyone has invalidated that “let the people have their own money” approach. Obama’s transition team is talking about reducing withholding taxes to give tax cuts to working Americans (which is a behavioral economics scheme based on the idea that people will spend an extra $20-$50 they get every two weeks instead of a lump sum of $500 or $1,000, which would just go to paying down debt). Traditional media still foregrounds ideas like “sales tax holidays” forwarded by lobbying groups like the National Retail Federation. And conservative economists can still credibly view the stimulus choice as one between tax cuts and public spending, and call on 40 years of demonization of government to trot out tax cuts yet again as the solution. After all, Obama’s proposed it, so it’s just a matter of more of them and less of that nasty big-spending liberalism.
The goal will be to end or moderate the recession. According to the textbooks, government spending raises the demand for goods and services. Tax cuts also spur demand by putting more income in the hands of consumers or more after-tax profits in the hands of businesses.
Is a fiscal stimulus good policy? The answer is no if the stimulus consists of increased spending. The stimulus may be good policy, though, if it consists of lower taxes.
See? They’re just the same, only lower taxes lets YOU keep YOUR money, and big gubmint spending steals your money for pork. Pork!
There really is nothing left for conservatives to argue beyond “that way lies socialism.” As Fairbanks explains, this is the same strategy they used in the 1930s to try and slow down the New Deal. They argued to themselves that Roosevelt was just a charismatic leader and his policies were abhorrent to the majority of the public. They tried to corner the 1930s version of Blue Dog Democrats to get them to flip their votes. They believed the country was center-right and that by holding to their convictions, they could not fail. What else could they do, other than disband? The strategy wasn’t very successful then. Nowadays, there is the constant hum of the noise machine and a right-wing movement well-practiced in the art of obstruction. Not to mention a Democratic majority that fetishizes bipartisanship and timid in the face of these cries from the other side.
(I’m wondering about the connection between dead-ender conservative populists and the “Lost-Cause” mythmakers of the South. Michael Lind calls for a “Third Reconstruction” of the South to save the US economy, while Ed Kilgore has a contrarian view, while acknowledging that “first-wave” economic strategies of low wages, deregulation and the absence of unions have taken hold in the South in the Bush era.)
A lot of commenters and writers in the blogosphere thinks that we should just dismiss the conservative populists and let them play their little games, that the elections have rendered them irrelevant. I don’t subscribe to this point of view. We still have a media inclined to promote conflict, one that loves a conservative comeback story, as well as a steady stream of right-wing operatives ready to get their position into the discourse. Further, the imbalance between extreme partisan warfare on one side and the desire to play nice on the other persists. Past history of Congressional capitulation is not promising here. Not to mention that so many of the initiatives the incoming Administration wants to implement need to happen fast to maximize their effectiveness, giving the dead-end kids a piece of leverage that they are sure to use.
Cranks like this are present in virtually every new Administration, but in our current media/political age I think they are uniquely equipped to succeed. And I don’t see a real strategy to counteract them yet.
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Control The Team
by digby
The Illinois legislature had their chance to strip Blago of his appointment power and call a special election, but the Democrats got cute and decided they didn’t want to risk losing the seat (Reid sent a letter opposing a special election). So they made this particular bed. Now the Senate Democratic Caucus have said they will not let Burris join their exclusive little club. Really? As The Christian Progressive Liberal notes over at Jack & Jill Politics, that’s a rich one:
Harry Reid, as well as the President-Elect, needs to explain why Traitor Joe Lieberman was allowed to keep his Senate seat, his committee assignments and his privileges when the man all but joined the Republican Party by publicly dissing PE Obama, and actively campaigning for Obama’s opponent, Sen. John McCain – thereby signing off on all the race-baiting inherently involved in McCain’s campaign, brought with an assist from the Moose Queen Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. Reid needs to explain what the difference is in keeping Lieberman the Weasel vs. seating Roland Burris, the near-squeaky clean former AG from Illinois.
I would add that the little end run by the Attorney General to have Blagojevich removed by the state supreme court and the Senate’s clearly unconstitutional assertion that they can refuse to seat anyone they choose doesn’t exactly reassure me that the Dems are going to be all that much more respectful of the law than the Republicans were. There are proper ways to handle this stuff and these are not among them.
I agree with Will Bunch. They should just seat Burris. It’s not the end of the world, he’s a good Dem who, as the Jack and Jill poster Jane excerpts above says, is far likelier to support Obama’s agenda than the backstabbing Joe Lieberman. They blew it and they shouldn’t make it any worse by refusing to seat someone who mets all the legal requirements of the job. (And anyway, this could be a dangerous precedent. Suppose senators in the future decide that in a time ‘o war, they won’t seat someone who calls himself a socialist — like Bernie Sanders? It could easily happen.)
I have to say that I’m a little bit disappointed in the Obama political team. I have absolutely no problem with their response to the ignoramuses in the press or the way they conducted their internal investigation. But the stupidity about the special election, the AG filing that idiotic suit, letting Reid and the senate Dems run around like a bunch of hysterical Victorian spinsters — it’s not good. They need to get control of the Democratic political professionals in a hurry or they’re going to screw them before they even get started.
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Defining The Argument Down
by digby
A couple of weeks a go I wrote a long piece about “legal scholar” Stuart Taylor’s arguments against prosecutions against the war crimes regime called, Don’t Defend It, Don’t mend It, Just End It and speculated that his thoughts on the matter would be the default position of the villagers. After all, everyone in the village agrees that there should be no pursuit of those who tortured, spied and used the constitution as toilet paper, for essentially the same reasons: the right wing will tear the country apart if anything is done about this and those who perpetrated the crime of torture have already suffered enough by being embarrassed at being found out. They all make the same absurd argument about lawyers’ advice being the determining factor as to whether a law was broken.
But after reading Ruth Marcus’ somnambulant “let’s not play the blame game” piece today in the Washington Post, which validates my thesis in nearly every respect, I realize that I was wrong in one fundamental way: there will actually be two versions of the villager talking points which will define the contours of the “argument:” those who lean right and say that the new president should continue to torture, kidnap, illegally spy on and imprison innocent people and those reasonable “centrists” like Marcus who say he probably shouldn’t unless he absolutely has to. (The left, needless to say, are a bunch of shrieking extremists who insist that these things are so wrong they should be repudiated and punished.)
The frame shifts, the goalposts move, the argument narrows and the conservatives get away with murder. And yet Marcus, like a dewy eyed debutante writes something like this with a straight face:
Second, the looming threat of criminal sanctions did not do much to deter the actions of Bush administration officials. “The Terror Presidency,” former Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith’s account of the legal battles within the administration over torture and wiretapping, is replete with accounts of how officials proceeded despite their omnipresent concerns about legal jeopardy. “In my two years in the government, I witnessed top officials and bureaucrats in the White House and throughout the administration openly worrying that investigators acting with the benefit of hindsight in a different political environment would impose criminal penalties on heat-of-battle judgment calls,” Goldsmith writes.
Well, they certainly won’t spend any time worrying about that in the future will they? (And I’m pretty sure that those who had any knowledge of how Washington works understood very well that the likelihood of them ever being held liable for these crimes was nil.)
So, it has already been agreed upon by all sides (except those annoying DFH’s) that these poor torturers have suffered enough what with all their fretting about being punished for their misdeeds and embarrassment at having been publicly revealed to be sadists and all. And everyone knows that the wingnuts are holding a gun to the country’s collective head threatening to go postal if anyone is held liable for these crimes, so we’d better not rock that boat or all hell will break loose. The only argument left is whether or not the new president will commit the same crimes.
The danger in this, aside from the implications for a future lawless administration, is that the “compromise” position in such an argument is to do exactly what Stuart Taylor suggests be done with the torture and spying regime: mend it don’t end it. And this is one issue where there is absolutely no room for compromise — the world is watching and our national security depends upon Obama completely and without reservations ending these programs, closing Guantanamo, following the Geneva conventions and standing firm against any kind of lawless and unproductive anti-terrorism measures. Investigating and exposing the full extent of what went on is also, in my view, a necessity if we are to restore any kind of credibility around the world. If he doesn’t do these things, this moment will be as squandered as the world’s sympathy was squandered by Bush after 9/11. The world will be unlikely to give us a third chance at getting this right.
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