This is the most unconscionable of Bush’s “midnight regulations.”
The Bush administration, as expected, announced new protections on Thursday for health care providers who oppose abortion and other medical procedures on religious or moral grounds.
“Doctors and other health care providers should not be forced to choose between good professional standing and violating their conscience,” Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of Health and Human Services, said in a statement on his department’s Web site.
The rule prohibits recipients of federal money from discriminating against doctors, nurses and health care aides who refuse to take part in procedures because of their convictions, and it bars hospitals, clinics, doctors’ office and pharmacies from forcing their employees to assist in programs and activities financed by the department.
This will have profound consequences for women’s health. There is nothing here that doesn’t bar doctors from refusing to deliver birth control, for example, or the morning-after pill, or even let someone know where those services or family planning services can be provided. As Hilzoy said, this is a lazy person’s dream.
This is a wonderful rule for slackers, since it provides a legally protected way to get paid while doing no work at all. Here’s the plan:
(1) Get an MD, and a job as a doctor. (2) Become a Christian Scientist. (3) Announce your religious objection to participating in any medical procedure, or to supporting such procedures in any way (e.g., by doing the other doctors’ paperwork. This refusal would be protected under the rule.) (4) When your employer protests, explain that your right to refuse to participate in any medical procedure at all is legally protected under this rule.
If you’re not totally proud of your country right now, I’ll give you another reason:
Alone among major Western nations, the United States has refused to sign a declaration presented Thursday at the United Nations calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality.
In all, 66 of the U.N.’s 192 member countries signed the nonbinding declaration — which backers called a historic step to push the General Assembly to deal more forthrightly with any-gay discrimination. More than 70 U.N. members outlaw homosexuality, and in several of them homosexual acts can be punished by execution.
Co-sponsored by France and the Netherlands, the declaration was signed by all 27 European Union members, as well as Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries. There was broad opposition from Muslim nations, and the United States refused to sign, indicating that some parts of the declaration raised legal questions that needed further review.
It’s a good thing we have a new President who would never validate anyone with beliefs like we see here with the conscience rule or criminalizing homosexuality. Oh wait…
The sponsors of Proposition 8 asked the California Supreme Court on Friday to nullify the marriages of the estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who exchanged vows before voters approved the ballot initiative that outlawed gay unions.The Yes on 8 campaign filed a brief arguing that because the new law holds that only marriages between a man and a woman are recognized or valid in California, the state can no longer recognize the existing same-sex unions.”Proposition 8’s brevity is matched by its clarity. There are no conditional clauses, exceptions, exemptions or exclusions,” reads the brief co-written by Pepperdine University law school dean Kenneth Starr, the former independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton. The campaign submitted the document in response to three lawsuits seeking to invalidate Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment adopted last month that overruled the court’s decision in May that briefly legalized gay marriage in the nation’s most populous state.
So much for the sanctity of marriage.
America’s Pastor Rick Warren says that being gay is kind of like having a bad tempter or immaturity — largely a matter of lack of self control. So why should they be allowed to get “gay married” when they can just grow up and be good heteros?
Now you might think that people wanting to join in monogamous, committed relationships would indicate that it isn’t just a matter of poor impulse control, but Warren clearly thinks that there isn’t any reason for it because they aren’t really gay in the first place. It logically follows that their marriages aren’t real either.
The Muckraker’s Zachary Roth has an interesting post up about Chris Cox and the SEC:
In recent years, particularly under Cox, a former California GOP congressman, the SEC has pursued a policy of de-emphasizing enforcement, part of the broader anti-regulatory philosophy of the Bush years — helping to make Madoff, and perhaps others like him, possible. “[Cox] in many ways worked to dismantle the SEC,” Ed Nordlinger, a former longtime enforcement director in the commission’s New York office, told TPMmuckraker. “He slowed everything down. I don’t think he believed in heavy regulation.” That view has been echoed by several others in a position to know. Ross Albert told TPMmuckraker for a post published yesterday: “Under Cox, SEC had de-emphasized the enforcement program. Cox worshipped at the same altar of de-regulation that the rest of the Bush administration worshipped at.”
Of course he did. He was a right wing employee of the financial services industry. Did people think otherwise? I never got why everyone was so sanguine about Cox in that job. He was known to be one of the worst partisan hacks in the House (this piece of toilet paper being one of his shining moments.) He never met a big money contributor he didn’t like. But he was confirmed unanimously to be the top regulator for Wall Street. If someone repeatedly repeatedly plays the lowest kind of politics and takes huge sums of money from the very people he’s supposed to regulate this is exactly what you’d expect.
I’m afraid this propensity among Democrats to “let bygones be bygones” and blame the victim is a terrible weakness that continuously leads to these results. Accountability is not about revenge, it’s about keeping criminals and hacks like Chris Cox from destroying the country.
Tasers are so harmless cops can even use them on people in hospitals. It might be a good idea to determine if they are patients first or figure out if they are having a human reaction to grief and loss, but in the end, it’s their own fault if they get upset in public. Americans are now subject to being tasered no matter where they are and the police have no obligation to determine what the problem might be before they just start shooting you with electricity. That’s because they are so safe:
A 26-year-old San Jose man died early today after he was zapped with a Taser by a Campbell police officer who was helping quell a disturbance at Valley Medical Center.Santa Clara County Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Don Morrissey did not identify the man, saying that the coroner had not yet given permission because his next of kin had not been properly notified. Morrissey said about 11:20 p.m. Thursday a woman called 911 from Valley Medical Center saying that one of her relatives was involved in a “disturbance.” Sheriff’s deputies arrived to help and were able to “locate the parties involved,” Morrissey said.Moments after they arrived, Morrissey said, the deputies began to struggle with the 26-year-old man who was causing the disturbance.Deputies called for backup.A Campbell officer was at the hospital saw the man fighting with deputies outside the hospital and went to help, said Campbell Police Capt. David Dehaan. He said Campbell Agent Gary Berg fired his Taser, an electric stun gun.The man was taken into custody, but deputies soon realized he was “unresponsive,” Morrissey said.Officers started CPR on the man, who was whisked into the hospital’s emergency room. Efforts to revive the man failed, and he died at 12:11 a.m. today.
The way the law is developing, the authorities aren’t held liable if the person had health problems:
Six people have died in San Jose since 2004 after being stunned with a Taser. Three of these cases highlights the complicated nature of the argument.In May, the daughter of a Mongol motorcycle club member who died after being zapped with a Taser during a naked, drug-fueled struggle with San Jose police in a motel room sued Police Chief Rob Davis, the city and the company that makes the electric stun guns for $20 million. The lawsuit claims that police excessively beat and stunned Steve Salinas, 47, to death on March 25, 2007. But the Santa Clara County coroner’s office concluded Salinas — who was under the influence of a toxic, if not lethal, dose of PCP and had heart disease — died of cardiopulmonary arrest during a violent physical struggle. The medical examiner noted that Taser use was an ”other significant condition,” but did not conclude that it contributed to his death.Just this month, in an unprecedented settlement over Tasers, the city of San Jose agreed to pay the family of Jose Angel Rios $70,000. Rios died in November 2005 after being struck with batons and Tased by police who were trying to calm him down during a domestic dispute. In that case, the coroner determined the primary cause of death on obesity, heart disease and drugs.And yet a another lawsuit was thrown out against the city of San Jose, because the coroner determined that the Taser was not a factor in the August 2005 death of Brian Patrick O’Neal, whom San Jose police were trying to subdue during a fight.
Of course, coroners have good reason to “lean” in the direction of law enforcement on these things:
Taser International has fired a warning shot at medical examiners across the country. The Scottsdale-based stun gun manufacturer increasingly is targeting state and county medical examiners with lawsuits and lobbying efforts to reverse and prevent medical rulings that Tasers contributed to someone’s death. That effort on Friday helped lead an Ohio judge’s order to remove Taser’s name from three Summit County Medical Examiner autopsies that had ruled the stun gun contributed to three men’s deaths. “We will hold people accountable and responsible for untrue statements,” Taser spokesman Steve Tuttle said earlier this week. “If that includes medical examiners, it includes medical examiners.”Many medical examiners, who are charged with determining the official causes of death, view the Scottsdale-based company’s efforts as disturbing, the spokesman for the National Association of Medical Examiners says. “It is dangerously close to intimidation,” says Jeff Jentzen, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. “At this point, we adamantly reject the fact that people can be sued for medical opinions that they make.” In the Ohio case, the judge said the county offered no medical, scientific or electrical evidence to justify finding the stun gun was a factor in the deaths of two men in 2005 and another in 2006. Taser and the City of Akron sued the medical examiner, saying examiners in the case lacked the proper training to evaluate Tasers. [Taser International is happy to help with that— ed] Chief Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler said that her examiners rightly concluded Taser contributed to the deaths and said county lawyers will appeal the judge’s ruling. “I would not be going forward with this if I did not believe in the rulings,” she said. The judge’s order could have an immediate impact on criminal cases against five Summit County sheriff’s deputies who were charged in the 2006 “homicide” of a jail inmate. Instead of homicide, the judge ordered the cause of death changed to “undetermined.” Before Friday’s verdict, legal experts said Taser’s victory could lay the foundation for other cases against dozens of medical examiners who have ruled that shocks from the 50,000-volt stun gun can be fatal. Medical examiners say they’re concerned that Taser’s aggressive moves could have a chilling effect on doctors, preventing them from blaming Tasers for deaths even when evidence exists.
California’s budget mess got messier Thursday as Democratic legislators approved a package of tax increases and spending cuts, Republican legislators threatened to sue over the package’s questionable constitutionality and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made the issue moot by promising to veto it.Democratic legislative leaders then announced lawmakers are going home for the holidays.That announcement came at the end of a day filled with heated rhetoric, impromptu news conferences and a good deal of waiting around. The $18 billion Democratic proposal – approved without Republican votes – calls for increases in personal income and sales taxes, the substitution of a 39-cents-per-gallon fee on gasoline in place of the current 26 cents in state taxes, and a new tax on oil production.It also makes cuts in education, social services and other state programs and slices $657 million from the state’s payroll.The plan, unveiled Wednesday and the third to be voted on by legislators since just before Thanksgiving, is designed to close a bit less than half of a yawning $40 billion deficit in the state’s budget over the next 18 months.Republican legislators blocked both earlier plans by refusing en masse to vote for anything that contained a tax increase. GOP votes were needed because tax hikes require a two-thirds majority in each house.By concocting a formula that eliminated the gas taxes and replaced them with other taxes and fees, Democrats contended the package could be approved without Republican support.”Democrats passed a responsible plan that reduced the budget deficit by $18 billion,” said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. “I’m damn proud of what the Legislature did today.”Even before the votes were taken, Republican legislators and several taxpayer and small-business groups threatened to take the plan to court if the governor signed it.”This is one of the most brazen political moves in California history,” said Jonathan Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. “It doesn’t even pass the laugh test.”The governor, however, appeared to obviate the need for litigation.”This package they are sending down does only one thing, and that is punish the people of California,” Schwarzenegger told a hastily called news conference. “This fell short on every single level … so I cannot sign this.”
California politics is completely broken and one of the main problems is that we have a Republican party that has been reduced to it’s most extreme members and the system gives them a veto power over the people’s will. That we also have a bucket of warm spit for Governor who thinks he can charm everyone into agreement and inevitably gets rolled and a Democratic party filled with lameass hacks doesn’t help.
Well, the President did not opt for the orderly collapse of the auto industry, finally understanding (and articulating) that no consumer would buy a car from a company in bankruptcy. Instead, he extended $17 billion in loans to the Big 3 automakers, in exchange for major concessions and restructuring.
The deal would extend $13.4 billion in loans to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC in December and January, with another $4 billion likely available in February. It also would provide the government with non-voting warrants, although the exact amount was unclear immediately. Ford Motor Co. has said it doesn’t need short-term assistance.
The deal is contingent on the companies’ showing that they are financially viable by March 31. If they aren’t, the loans will be called and all funds must be returned, officials said.
The deal generally tracks key provisions of the bailout legislation that nearly passed Congress earlier this month. But it is relatively lenient in allowing the companies to show their viability. It defines viability as having a positive net present value — a way of gauging the companies’ worth, taking into account all their future obligations.
The “car czar” who gets to determine the viability of the industry is Henry Paulson, for now, but the Obama Administration will get to pick their own official, and as the real decision comes in late March, that position will have more power.
However, what’s not in the WSJ write-up, significantly, is that the Bush plan would mirror the Southern-state union-busting plan by significantly reducing American wages:
Targets: The terms and conditions established by Treasury will include additional targets that were the subject of Congressional negotiations but did not come to a vote, including:
• Reduce debts by 2/3 via a debt for equity exchange. • Make one-half of VEBA payments in the form of stock. • Eliminate the jobs bank. Work rules that are competitive with transplant auto manufacturers by 12/31/09. • Wages that are competitive with those of transplant auto manufacturers by 12/31/09.
These terms and conditions would be non-binding in the sense that negotiations can deviate from the quantitative targets above, providing that the firm reports the reasons for these deviations and makes the business case to achieve long-term viability in spite of the deviations.
In addition, the firm will be required to conclude new agreements with its other major stakeholders, including dealers and suppliers, by March 31, 2009.
In other words, the UAW must take wages and work rules that are the same as non-union plants, and since “wages” include benefits and legacy costs, and the Big 3 have quite a bit more of those than their Japanese counterparts, this would depress wages FAR BELOW non-union plants. Marcy explains:
Remember, the measure the Republicans were using to measure “wages that are competitive with those of transplant auto manufacturers” was the lizard lie number–the $73/hour, the number that includes legacy costs, the payments to retiree pensions. Otherwise, there would be no reason to make this stipulation–because if you use the real wage number, and not the lizard lie number, American manufacturer wages are already competitive with the transplants!!
So what Bush is demanding is that the UAW lower wages plus pensions to the level of Japanese wages plus pension (though since they have very few retirees, their pension number is basically zero). Alternately, they could lower this number by basically picking the pocket of a bunch of seniors, by taking away pension money those seniors already earned while they were still working. But one or the other will have to happen.
Now, Bush did give the Obama Administration an escape hatch: the ability to deviate from the quantitative targets provided that the companies report why they did so.
But as written, Bush’s last major act as President is to demand that workers for American-owned companies work for less than workers for foreign owned companies. American capitalism, at its finest.
Obama praised the decision to actually lend the auto companies money, and suggested that the automakers must not squander the chance to reform their businesses and get back to viability. If that’s done entirely on the backs of American workers, however, I don’t see the point. “Saving” the auto industry while providing worker wages that rival burger-flipping isn’t going to help the economy even a little. We should be working to increase the purchasing power of the middle class, not to reduce it. This could be a situation in the Obama Administration where we will need a strong labor ally in the cabinet to make that case. Good thing we’ll have Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.
Well, Obama may not have pleased his liberal base the last couple of days, but he has made great strides with the Freepers. Pam Spaulding ventured into the slime and came back with this:
I LOVE IT! Nothing so much pleases me as seeing the queerly beloved get angry at Rick Warren over his endorsement of Proposition 8! BRING IT ON!!! “Furious” and “fierce” are two more words that now belong exclusively to the “gay” emotional typology. great isn’t it to see these homo’s get done over, the idiots actually thought he was going to give them marriage right off the bat. maybe they never heard Biden or knew in the black community or the area of chicago homo’s are not well received. Not only that but did they take no notice of the church he went to for 20 years obama is actually pissing the left off more than the right and it is great to see Is B Hussein telling the rumpriders to pound sand instead of each other? Did the gays finally realize what Muslims do to homos? Well, they elected a muzzie. These f@gs are fascists and way over the top. I have always said there is no difference between sex-preference and racism, and the language of sexual-orientation goes right ahead with advocacy of bestiality and other abominable degenerate orientations.
There’s more if you can stomach it. (The sad truth is that most of this is just a cruder version of what Rick Warren said.)
I think Ezra got exactly why this hits such a nerve:
The going explanation for Warren’s presence on the inauguration podium is that “this aims to be the most open and inclusive inauguration in history,” as Linda Douglas, a spokeswoman for the inauguration committee, told Politico. It’s a peculiar definition of “open and inclusive.” Warren, after all, is the only preacher giving the invocation. He will not share the stage with a rabbi, an imam, a monk, and an episcopalian. And Warren is not being chosen because he himself is open and inclusive. He thinks abortion a “holocaust” and urged his flock to vote for Prop 8. He compared gay marriage to incest and polygamy and pederasty, and when asked if he really thought those things “equivalent to having gays getting married,” he replied, “Oh, I do.” The tolerance Obama is asking for, in other words, is not from Warren. It’s from the LGBT community, and women. He is asking them to be tolerant of Warren’s intolerance. It’s a cruel play, framed to marginalize the legitimate anger of those who Warren harms and discriminates against.
And Jesse at Pandagon nails what else about this is so frustrating to those of us who’ve been out here battling with these people for years:
It’s the wholehearted embrace of the old right-wing complaint that calling out intolerance is the actual intolerant act …
The right has just had their phony victimization validated by the new Democratic president and as you can see from the Freepers, they are thoroughly reveling in it.
I also came across this little tid-bit about Obama’s relationship with Warren from Mark Ambinder, which I found quite astonishing:
The good pro-life theologian first met Obama in 2006 at a Saddleback AIDS forum in California. Obama used the occasion to press the evangelical pastors present to embrace “realism” when they considered the issue; preach abstience, yes, but preaching against contraception can kill. (Here’s some of what Obama said that day: “I know that there are those who, out of sincere religious conviction, oppose such measures. And with these folks, I must respectfully but unequivocally disagree. I do not accept the notion that those who make mistakes in their lives should be given an effective death sentence.”)
When I interviewed Obama last year, he told me that the moment was integral to his decision to run for president; when was the last time, he had asked himself, when a Democrat had had such dialog with pastors about AIDS?
I’m sure Obama doesn’t really think he invented this Democratic “outreach and dialog” stuff with the evangelicals. That would be bizarre (and more than a trifle egotistical .)
Here’s an excerpt from Jim Wallis’ Sojourner Magazine from 1996:
Nationally known religious leaders are being invited who don’t agree on everything, but who have important things to say about faith and political responsibility during this election year. Both Republican and Democratic leaders will be discussing politics and morality and the need for new solutions that lead us beyond our present impasse. Leaders from the evangelical world, the Catholic Church, the black churches, and the mainline denominations will discuss their efforts to offer an alternative to both the Right and the Left and to create a movement for a new and more spiritual politics in this country. We will profile some of the most effective groups who are already doing that and providing critical leadership in areas such as transforming poverty, protecting the environment, healing our racial divides, rebuilding families and communities, and restoring moral values. And we will be uplifted by some of the best gospel music in the country. Speakers will examine fresh ideas for forging new partnerships between religious communities and all levels of government, for the sake of our children and the poor. Members of Congress from both parties will reflect on the moral and spiritual challenges they face. We’ll hear from organizations that are already working to create a new politics—from the Christian Community Development Association and Bread for the World to the Children’s Defense Fund and the Ten Point Coalition. Prominent journalists have been invited to discuss the role of the press in covering politics and religion. We’ll all have the chance to talk with other activists, organizers, pastors, and community leaders from around the country.
Sound familiar?
Clinton held the first white house conference on AIDS in 1995 and invited many religious types to talk about it. (In those days the religious right was appalled and disgusted by AIDS. It was only when it presented conversion opportunities in Africa that they got interested.)
And everyone was always whining about civility. Always. Here’s an article about the Wallis event with a quote from a prominent Democrat:
Senator Bill Bradley (D., N.J.), who is retiring at the end of the year, told Call to Renewal that he finds “a yearning out there in America that is deeper than the material [things] in our life” but also, at times, “an unwillingness to hear the message.” Americans, he said, are tired of the “mind-numbing shouting match between two opposing parties” and of a politics controlled by special interests, the ambition of politicians and the political slogans that emerge from focus groups.
Plus ca change and all that.
It’s not a crime for Americans to disagree on important issues and a political party can’t possibly be all things to all people no matter how big the tent. Some things are irreconcilable. A belief in the right to choose abortion vs those who believe it is murder is one of them. The right for gays to marry vs those who think it’s comparable to pedophilia is another. That’s ok. We have a political system and a wider culture that can accommodate that. But no single political party can and it’s a fools errand if Democrats think their majority can be enlarged by appealing to people who believe so differently.
Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition was made possible by the agreement that he would not pursue civil rights. And we all know that the New Deal coalition fell apart because of it. I would hope that we’ve come far enough as a country that Obama’s new majority is solid without having to make a similar soulless compromise. We may be looking at an economic crisis of 1932 proportions, but there’s no need to accommodate people who would take the culture back to 1932 as well.
Update:Here’s an interesting little piece I turned up from the New Yorker about Bill Clinton’s relationship with Billy Graham — and his son Franklin. It’s very telling.
Update II: Joan Walsh makes the case against Warren on a whole host of issues, including some of which I was unaware:
I tried to keep an open mind when Obama began courting Warren three years ago; Salon sent a reporter to cover the popular young Democrat’s first visit to Saddleback Community Church, to talk about its laudable AIDS work, in 2006. I believe in seeking common ground, and I was curious to see what Warren – and Obama – were up to. I watched carefully when Obama went to Saddleback for a presidential forum in August, along with John McCain. As I wrote at the time, I think Obama got punked; Warren spent an inordinate amount of time at the forum on issues like abortion and gay rights, and the promised focus on poverty reduction and social justice got short shrift. At Saddleback services the next day, Mike Madden didn’t find one worshiper planning to vote for Obama. One day after that, a self-satisfied Warren told Beliefnet he couldn’t say for sure whether Obama could compete for the evangelical vote, but he insisted that an antiabortion voter backing a pro-choice candidate would be like a Holocaust survivor voting for a Holocaust denier.
…. to Chuck Todd for his new post as Chief White House correspondent at NBC. This is is addition to his job as political director at NBC, so I’m relieved that we won’t be denied more expert analysis like this:
When Liberals Attack: Axelrod and Gibbs have to be smiling this morning with the news that gay-rights groups are angry that Obama has announced that conservative evangelical Rick Warren will give the invocation at Obama’s inauguration. Why are they smiling? Because it never hurts — at least when it comes to governing or running for re-election — when you sometimes disappoint/anger your party’s interest groups (in this case, People for the American Way and the Human Rights Campaign).
Just asking, but is anyone but People for the American Way and the Human Rights Campaign surprised that Rick Warren is going to give a prayer at the inauguration? Where was this outrage when Obama appeared at Warren’s Saddleback forum back in August? The difference may be that the forum came before Proposition 8 passed in California. As for the pure politics of this, when you look at the exit polls and see the large numbers of white evangelicals in swing states like North Carolina, Florida and Missouri, as well as emerging battlegrounds like Georgia and Texas, you’ll understand what Obama’s up to.
Yep. But I must have missed all the times when Todd applauded Bush for reaching out to liberals and annoying his most ardent supporters. Oh that’s right, that’s because Bush never did it. In fact, I’m pretty sure he was given plaudits by the political establishment for years for his strong convictions and principled loyalty to his supporters — those very same white evangelicals. Everyone knows they are the only slice of the American electorate worth having.
Update: Someone asked me who made the invocation at Bush’s inauguration. It was supposed to be Billy Graham, but he was sick so his son Franklin stood in. And it was controversial, because the invocation had always been ecumenical before but Graham made it explicitly Christian for the first time.
Franklin Graham’s a wonderful fellow:
I believe that God created one man and one woman. He gave sex to us, God did, and sex is to be enjoyed and is to be used within the bounds that God created…. In sexual behavior outside the parameters that God created, we’re at high risk, and we’re seeing the evidence of this with HIV/AIDS. We’re outside of these parameters, and we have a huge global problem now.”[5]
“And I think we’re going to have to use every — and I hate to say it, hellish weapon in our inventory, if need be, to defeat these [terrorists]. But let’s use the weapons we have, the weapons of mass destruction if need be and destroy the enemy.”(CNN, September 14, 2001)
That’s not much different from Warren, who believes in assassinating foreign leaders and compares gay relationships to pedophilia. But it’s hard to find a Christian minister who some people believe is responsible for genocide like Franklin Graham. That’s why Warren is a middle of the road right wing pastor: he didn’t commit genocide. It’s an unusual standard but when it comes to the religious right, it’s probably pretty fair.
Dday has been blogging the nuclear meltdown that’s going on in California’s capital right now, with the government a hairsbreadth away from bankruptcy. It’s very, very ugly and if you don’t think the bankruptcy of the most populous state in the union will impact your life, think again. The cascading of this problem is a serious danger to everyone. To those of us who live here, it’s a nightmare.
At this moment, it looks like they may pass enough of a small placeholder budget to get through a couple of weeks. But there’s no way of knowing if the Governor will sign it if it hits his desk. The government is both dysfunctional and broke, not a pretty scenario.
For those of you who are econ geeks, this is a story worth following. The best place to do that is at Calitics. They are, as far as I know, the only California progressives following this in detail.
George Bush was asked about the auto industry rescue today during a speech at the American Enterprise Institute. He said that he hasn’t made up his mind yet. But the signs are clear that he’s looking at an “orderly” bankruptcy for the automakers.
The Bush administration is seriously considering “orderly” bankruptcy as a way of dealing with the desperately ailing U.S. auto industry.
White House press secretary Dana Perino said Thursday, “There’s an orderly way to do bankruptcies that provides for more of a soft landing. I think that’s what we would be talking about.” […]
“Under normal circumstances, no question bankruptcy court is the best way to work through credit and debt and restructuring,” he said during a speech and question-and-answer session at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. “These aren’t normal circumstances. That’s the problem.”
So we’ll force them to go bankrupt anyway, but it’ll be done very nicely. That’s not going to freak out consumers and keep them from purchasing an American car, worried about their warranties and service contracts.
This was floated the day before in a Bloomberg piece, but there it was assumed that bankruptcy would be forced by a “car czar” if the cash infusion didn’t work out after March 31. This makes it much more sudden. By the way, that “car czar” looks to be Henry Paulson at this point. I don’t think he’ll show the same sympathy for blue-collar industry that he did for his financial buddies.
This is insane. Both GM and Ford are retooling themselves for the 21st century, and were on the road to profitability before the economic meltdown. Nobody can buy a car, that’s the bottom line, it has nothing to do with what cars are being offered. The ripple effects have begun. Chrysler is shutting down all of its plants and GM is halting its Chevy Volt plant. You’re talking about 3 million jobs at risk, and even an orderly bankruptcy is going to shake consumer confidence. It’s exactly the wrong thing to do.
I know a lot of people thought that when Bush was left holding the bag after Senate negotiations produced no auto rescue, that the auto companies would end up with a better deal. Doesn’t seem like it. Obama’s transition could do a lot right now to save the industry and make his job a lot easier, but outside of the odd press release he’s been strangely silent.