Conservatives' Seriously Bad Ideas

Like the SBC, today's Republican Party and its conservative allies overseas cling to an outdated - indeed, fairy tale - vision of objective reality and continues to push policies that have been proven to be failures by facts and reality.  Dogma trumps facts and actual experience.  And no admission can ever be made that the policies and those who trumpet them were wrong - terribly wrong.  The result?  Here at home in America we see the GOP still pushing economic and social policies that have the opposite effect of the claimed objectives and which continue to make matters only worse for all except the most wealthy.  The same is happening in Britain where the same Kool-Aid is being consumed.  A column in the New York Times looks at this continued embrace of truly bad ideas.  Here are excerpts:

One thing we’ve learned in the years since the financial crisis is that seriously bad ideas — by which I mean bad ideas that appeal to the prejudices of Very Serious People — have remarkable staying power. No matter how much contrary evidence comes in, no matter how often and how badly predictions based on those ideas are proved wrong, the bad ideas just keep coming back. And they retain the power to warp policy.

So the true story of economic disaster, which is that it was caused by an inadequately regulated financial industry run wild and perpetuated by wrongheaded austerity policies, won’t do. Instead, the story must involve things like a skills gap — it’s not lack of jobs; we have the wrong workers for this high-technology globalized era, etc., etc. — even if there’s no evidence at all that such a gap is impeding recovery.

And the ultimate example of a seriously bad idea is the determination, in the teeth of all the evidence, to declare government spending that helps the less fortunate a crucial cause of our economic problems.

[A]ll these claims of irresponsibility involve rewriting history, because on the eve of crisis nobody thought Britain was being profligate: debt was low by historical standards and the deficit fairly small. Finally, Britain’s supposedly disastrous fiscal position has never worried the markets, which have remained happy to buy British bonds despite historically low yields.Nonetheless, that’s the story, generally reported not as opinion but as fact. And the really bad news is that Britain’s leaders seem to believe their own propaganda.

Nobody fully understands either why this slump has happened or how to reverse it, but surely the combination of a still-weak economy, terrible productivity performance and negative borrowing costs says that this is a time to increase investment in things like infrastructure. (Passenger trains here make rail service in the United States look good, and traffic congestion is getting ever worse.) Yet the Osborne proposal would kill any such initiative.

Now, some readers are probably thinking that I’m giving the likes of Mr. Osborne too much credit for sincerity. Isn’t all this deficit obsession just an excuse to slash social programs? And I’m sure that’s part of it. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. Seriously bad ideas, I’d argue, have a life of their own. And they rule our world.

Virginia Republican Party is Cash-Strapped - Insanity Carries a Price

Apparently the Republican Party of Virginia's embrace of ignorance, religious extremism and general insanity is catching up with it financially.  As the Party Central Committee meets in Richmond, the financial picture is bleak in the wake of a general election cycle in 2013 that saw the Virginia GOP lose every statewide office.  Perhaps the crazies of the Christofascist/Tea Party base at last year's state convention should have spent more time thinking about what the nomination of three extremists might have in the longer term.  Big business saw Cuccinelli as too extreme and now, with the GOP's efforts to block Medicaid expansion, chambers of commerce and the state's hospital associations now oppose the GOP's "party of no" posture.  The Virginian Pilot looks at the situation.  Here are excerpts:

When the Virginia Republican Party's governing body meets today in Richmond, many members for the first time could hear some unsettling news: Party finances are distressed.

The cash-strapped state GOP has shed staff and is scrambling to raise money amid internal strife after November's crushing elections left the GOP without any statewide officeholders. The party faces the loss of its executive director and finance director, who oversaw fundraising.

Varying reasons have been given for the upheaval - personal exhaustion and personality clashes are primary ones - but several party sources say money is part of the problem.

State records show that the GOP closed the year with less than $21,000 in the bank. Federal Election Commission records painted a similarly bleak picture: less than $17,000 available in its federal account.

At the same time, the Virginia Democratic Party had nearly $150,000 in its state account and about $92,000 in its federal coffers.

Republican Party officials publicly downplay the financial situation. They say it's merely a reflection of an elongated 2013 election season that stretched into this year because of the recount in the attorney general's race and several legislative special elections.

Pat Mullins revealed the financial trouble on a recent "emergency conference call" with select party elders, telling those on the call that the party is "a month behind" on its bills, according to sources who participated.

Several factors contribute to the party's money woes.

Losing all three statewide races has left the party without a standard-bearer, a "tent pole around which all the donor giving" can rally, noted Albemarle County Del. Rob Bell, the party's finance chairman.

Running insider conventions to nominate candidates rather than holding taxpayer-funded primary elections costs the party. That remains a divisive issue between warring factions: conservatives who took over in 2012 and the establishment wing trying to regain control.

Other inhibitors to party fundraising efforts include the rise of third-party political committees as competitors for campaign cash; donors can anonymously give to some groups.

Perhaps the biggest factor, though, is donor disillusionment. . . . "This is one of the consequences of the party being taken over by these extreme voices," said one longtime party official, adding that business donors will be scarce "until they believe leadership of the party... gets back to a more mainstream place."

Frankly, I see little chance of the Virginia GOP returning to a mainstream mindset any time soon.  Indeed, moderates continue to flee the GOP and the strangle hold of the Christofascists and Tea Party therefore continues to worsen.

A National Deficit Decline the GOP May Be Hard Put to Explain

If one listens to the endless verbal diarrhea emanating from far right talk radio and many within the GOP - including some of my former proteges who seem to be imbibing Kool-Aid by the gallon -  you'd believe that the nation's budget is increasing.  Indeed, everything coming from the right describes President Obama as a big spender when not accusing him of being a socialist.  The truth, of course is quite different from the alternate universe inhabited by the Christofascists, Tea Party crowd and Fox News viewers.  Maddow Blog has some information that can't be popular with the far right.   Especially, because it shows the budget deficit exploding in 2009 after the U.S. economy tanked thanks to failed GOP policies and the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan launched by the cretin and sociopath known as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, respectively.  Here's the money quote:

For deficit hawks, all of the news is good news.

The Congressional Budget Office reported Tuesday that the federal budget deficit is declining this year compared to fiscal 2012.

For the first seven months of 2013, the deficit was $489 billion. That is $231 billion less than the budget shortfall for the comparable period last year.
The decrease is almost entirely due to revenue increases.

Not only is this year's deficit on track to be significantly smaller than last year's, to the tune of about $200 billion, it's also on pace to be even better than optimistic projections from February. Hell, we even ran a surplus in April.

All told, the U.S. federal deficit will be about $600 billion smaller than it was in President Obama's first year in office, making this the fastest deficit reduction Americans have seen since World War II.

And with that, let's pause to note what a terrible mistake it is for Republicans to continue to prioritize a perceived problem that's quickly improving.

But let's also note another tidbit of information: one of the main reasons the deficit is shrinking so quickly is the increased revenue from the tax hikes that began in January.

George W. Bush’s Legacy Keeps Getting Worse

With the opening of his presidential library, George W. Bush, a/k/a the Chimperator, is trying to enhance his legacy and somehow drag his sorry ass from the rankings of one of the worse presidents in American history.  But the man remains delusional and has even said he wants his brother Jeb Bush to run for president, a proposal that his mother squashed immediately recognizing that W has poisoned the Bush name for years to come.  Much of the nations continuing fiscal woes track back directly to the feckless Chimperator and his evil partner in war crimes, Dick Cheney.  A piece in the Washington Post reminds us of what George W. and the Republicans brought to America.  Here are highlights:

[A]nyone tempted to get sentimental should remember the actual record of the man who called himself The Decider. Begin with the indelible stain that one of his worst decisions left on our country’s honor: torture.

Hiding behind the euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Bush made torture official U.S. policy. Just about every objective observer has agreed with this stark conclusion. The most recent assessment came this month in a 576-page report from a task force of the bipartisan Constitution Project, which stated that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.”

We knew about the torture before Bush left office  .   .   .   .  the Constitution Project task force — which included such figures as Asa Hutchinson, who served in high-ranking posts in the Bush administration, and William Sessions, who was FBI director under three presidents — concluded that other forms of torture were used “in many instances” in a manner that was “directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation.”   .   .   . It may be years before all the facts are known. But the decision to commit torture looks ever more shameful with the passage of time.

Bush’s decision to invade and conquer Iraq also looks, in hindsight, like an even bigger strategic error. Saddam Hussein’s purported weapons of mass destruction still have yet to be found; nearly 5,000 Americans and untold Iraqis sacrificed their lives to eliminate a threat that did not exist.
We knew this, of course, when Obama became president. It’s one of the main reasons he was elected. We knew, too, that Bush’s decision to turn to Iraq diverted focus and resources from Afghanistan.

Bush didn’t pay for his wars. The bills he racked up for military adventures, prescription-drug benefits, the bank bailout and other impulse purchases helped create the fiscal and financial crises he bequeathed to Obama. His profligacy also robbed the Republican Party establishment of small-government credibility, thus helping give birth to the tea party movement. Thanks a lot for that.

As I’ve written before, Bush did an enormous amount of good by making it possible for AIDS sufferers in Africa to receive antiretroviral drug therapy. This literally saved millions of lives and should weigh heavily on one side of the scale when we assess The Decider’s presidency. But the pile on the other side just keeps getting bigger.

Bush and Cheney with the rubber stamp of the GOP controlled Congress did immense damage to America and cost thousands of young American lives in the quest to satiate their hubris.  This is something that must continue to be underscored over and over again.

 

Will Obama's Failure to Demand a Reckoning On the Part of Wall Street Doom His Re-election?

Since his departure, I've missed Frank Rich's column's in the New York Time. Now, in New York Magazine Rich has another must read column that takes Barack Obama to task for his refusal/failure to demand consequences from those who drove the USA into the Great Recessions through their greed and wanton carelessness: Wall Street and the financial industry. These interests have been largely bailed out at taxpayer expense, have shared little or nothing with homeowners and average Americans, and are among those reaping higher and higher incomes while the rest of us face income declines or outright unemployment. I agree with Rich's analysis. Sadly, I do not believe that Obama has the backbone to do what is needed and to properly use the pulpit of the presidency to take on the disingenuous GOP. Here are some highlights:

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What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these. Chronic unemployment remains a constant, painful reminder of the havoc inflicted on the bust’s innocent victims. As the ghost of Hamlet’s father might have it, America will be stalked by its foul and unresolved crimes until they “are burnt and purged away.”
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As the indefatigable Matt Taibbi has tabulated, law enforcement on Obama’s watch rounded up 393,000 illegal immigrants last year and zero bankers. The Justice Department’s bally­hooed Operation Broken Trust has broken still more trust by chasing mainly low-echelon, one-off Madoff wannabes.
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Those in executive suites at the top of that chain have long since fled the scene with the proceeds, while bleeding shareholders, investors, homeowners, and ­cashiered employees were left with the bills. . . . . Rather than purge the crash’s crimes, Wall Street’s leaders are sticking to their alibi: Everyone was guilty of fomenting this “perfect storm,” and so no one is. Too-big-to-fail banks are bigger than ever, and ­Masters of the Universe swagger is back.
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As good times roar back for corporate America, it’s bad enough that CEOs are collectively sitting on some $1.9 trillion in cash—much of it parked out of the IRS’s reach overseas—instead of hiring. . . . But what’s most galling is how many of these executives are sore winners, crying all the way to Palm Beach while raking in record profits and paying some of the lowest tax rates over the past 50 years.
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Obama can win reelection without carrying 10021 or Greenwich in any case. The bigger political problem is that a far larger share of the American electorate views him as a tool of the very fat-cat elite that despises him. Given Obama’s humble background, his history as a mostly liberal Democrat, and his famous résumé as a community organizer, this would also seem a reach. But the president has no one to blame but himself for the caricature.
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He stocked his administration with brilliant personnel linked to the bubble: liberals, and especially Ivy League liberals. Nearly three years on, they have taken a toll both on the White House’s image and its policies. Obama arrives at his reelection campaign not merely with a weak performance on Wall Street crime enforcement and reform but also with a scattershot record (at best) of focusing on the main concern of Main Street: joblessness.
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His failure to push back against the financial sector, sparing it any responsibility for the economy it tanked, empowered it to roll over his agenda with its own. He has come across as favoring the financial elite over the stranded middle class even if, in his heart of hearts, he does not.
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By failing to address that populist anger, Obama gave his enemies the opening to co-opt it and turn it against him. Which the tea party did, dishonestly but brilliantly, misrepresenting Obama’s health-care-reform crusade as yet another attempt by the elites to screw the taxpayer. (The Democrats haplessly reinforced the charge with marathon behind-the-scenes negotiations with insurance and pharmaceutical-­industry operatives.)
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Obama is the chief executive. It’s his fault, no one else’s, that he seems diffident about the unemployed. Each time there’s a jolt in the jobless numbers, he and his surrogates compound that profile by farcically reshuffling the same clichés, from “stuck in a ditch” to “headwinds” (first used by Geithner in March 2009—retire it already!) to “bumps in the road.”
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There’s not much Obama can do to alter the economy by 2012, given the debt-ceiling fight, the long campaign, and nihilistic Capitol Hill antagonists opposed to any government spending that might create jobs and, by extension, help Obama keep his own. But the central question before the nation couldn’t be clearer: Who pays? The taxpayers bailed out the elite; now it’s the elite’s turn to return the favor. Massive cuts to the safety net combined with scant sacrifice from those at the top is wrong ethically and politically. It is, in the truest sense, un-American. . . . You have to wonder why he [Obama] isn’t seizing the moment to articulate and fight for the big picture instead of playing a lose-lose game of rope-a-dope with the Republicans on their budgetary turf.
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To differentiate himself from the discredited Establishment, he will have to mount the fight he has ducked for the past three years. The alternative is a failure of historic proportions. Those who gamed the economy to near devastation—so much so that the nation turned to an untried young leader in desperation and in hope—would once again inherit the Earth. Unless and until there’s a purging of the crimes that brought our president to his unlikely Inauguration Day, much more in America than the second term of his administration will be at stake.

Wall Street Arrogance

I'm beginning to think the leaders of the nations largest banks and financial houses have studied the Roman Catholic Church at the Vatican for leadership style: make all kinds of horrifically bad decisions, allow all kinds of excesses to occur, and then refuse to be held accountable or to change behavior. These folks after all made/allowed decisions that led to billions of dollars of losses and head up companies receiving billions of taxpayer bailout funds. Yet they tacitly deny any responsibility and continue to draw obscene salaries while the average American suffers in the financial nightmare these people helped trigger largely due to greed and failure to perform their jobs responsibly. Why they haven't all been fired or resigned is troubling. Why some of these individuals did not practice what a few are now preaching is the height of hypocrisy. The Washington Post looks at the phenomenon. Here are some highlights:

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The chieftains of eight of the nation's largest banks could receive a tongue-lashing when they testify before a House committee today, but some on Wall Street have moved to preempt the withering criticism by proposing their own solutions to the economic meltdown.

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The banks helmed by Blankfein [Goldman Sachs head] and the other seven chief executives called to appear before the House Financial Services Committee this morning received $165 billion from the $700 billion government bailout. Lawmakers are furious at the executives over accounts of their lavish spending since receiving the taxpayer funds, and have attacked them for hoarding the money instead of using it to boost lending.

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Blankfein, whose firm received $10 billion in the bailout, also called for limits on executive compensation that could be more stringent in some circumstances than President Obama has proposed. Blankfein said senior executives should be paid a large portion of their bonuses in equity that they must retain until they retire. He also said it was critical that companies put a priority on reducing the risk of losses, arguing that it is necessary to prevent another crisis.

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But in previous statements, the executives have tried to strike a careful balance between acknowledging the need for more regulation and being reluctant to have rules stifling innovation. In a speech last year, Citigroup chief executive Vikram Pandit said there was a need for better regulatory oversight of systemic risk.

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These folks have proven themselves incapable of self-over sight and Congress needs to clamp down with new regulations to force a new behavior pattern. As for the banks hording bailout funds rather than make loans, they should be forced to return the bailout funds.

The Canadian Example

There are many in the GOP and the Christianist far right who routinely deride Canada. They deride Canada's health care system that affords some level of protection to all citizens while here in the USA millions and millions lack access to health care. Similarly, they deride Canada for its legal protections for LGBT citizens - including gay marriage - and disingenuously whine that Christians are being persecuted in Canada. All the while these critics in a xenophobic manner act as if the United States is God's favored country and that it can do no wrong. They are, of course, wrong on many fronts and the recent financial crash provides but one example of where the USA could learn from Canada. Fareed Zakaria has an article in Newsweek that looks at the way in which the Canadian banking system has avoided collapse and disarray in the current financial crisis. One would think that part of the USA effort for recovery should include implementing some of the Canadian policies. Here are some highlights:

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Now there is even more striking evidence of Canada's virtues. Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors. Yup, it's Canada. In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada's banking system the healthiest in the world. America's ranked 40th, Britain's 44th.

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Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize. . . . So what accounts for the genius of the Canadians? Common sense. Over the past 15 years, as the United States and Europe loosened regulations on their financial industries, the Canadians refused to follow suit, seeing the old rules as useful shock absorbers. Canadian banks are typically leveraged at 18 to 1—compared with U.S. banks at 26 to 1 and European banks at a frightening 61 to 1. Partly this reflects Canada's more risk-averse business culture, but it is also a product of old-fashioned rules on banking.

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Canada has also been shielded from the worst aspects of this crisis because its housing prices have not fluctuated as wildly as those in the United States. Home prices are down 25 percent in the United States, but only half as much in Canada. Why? Well, the Canadian tax code does not provide the massive incentive for overconsumption that the U.S. code does: interest on your mortgage isn't deductible up north.

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Canada has been remarkably responsible over the past decade or so. It has had 12 years of budget surpluses, and can now spend money to fuel a recovery from a strong position. The government has restructured the national pension system, placing it on a firm fiscal footing, unlike our own insolvent Social Security. Its health-care system is cheaper than America's by far (accounting for 9.7 percent of GDP, versus 15.2 percent here), and yet does better on all major indexes.

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The U.S. currently has a brain-dead immigration system. We issue a small number of work visas and green cards, turning away from our shores thousands of talented students who want to stay and work here. Canada, by contrast, has no limit on the number of skilled migrants who can move to the country. . . . Companies are noticing. In 2007 Microsoft, frustrated by its inability to hire foreign graduate students in the United States, decided to open a research center in Vancouver. The company's announcement noted that it would staff the center with "highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S."

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If President Obama is looking for smart government, there is much he, and all of us, could learn from our quiet—OK, sometimes boring—neighbor to the north. Meanwhile, in the councils of the financial world, Canada is pushing for new rules for financial institutions that would reflect its approach.

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As I have said before, based on my visits to Canada and its enlightened approach to LGBT issues, if I could find a way to emigrate to Canada I would.

More Rotten Fruits of GOP Policies

Even as the members of the Congressional GOP continue to do all they can to delay and undermine Barack Obama's efforts to get an economic stimulus package passed by Congress, the fruits of the GOP's failed economic and deregulation obsession continue to come home to roost in the form of more lost jobs and struggling companies. Despite the deteriorating situation, the GOP's cut taxes mantra seems to be all they know how to parrot. Of course, many in the Christianist base regularly oppose any government programs that would help the unfortunate or down trodden - something I find hard to reconcile with alleged Christian beliefs. As the Washington Post is reporting, yesterday was a blood bath in terms of job cuts and unless something is done quickly to turn the situation around the downward spiral will continue. Also to be considered in this country is the fact that loss of a job also frequently means that one loses health care insurance as well. Here are some highlights on the latest bad news which seems to mean nothing to today's GOP:

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The nation's employers, including some of its largest and most sturdy, announced plans yesterday to slash more than 55,000 jobs, a staggering one-day toll that highlighted how quickly layoffs are accelerating and how widely misery is spreading throughout the labor market.

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The cuts extended to companies that were once considered bright spots in the U.S. economy. Construction equipment maker Caterpillar, whose business last year was bolstered by strong exports, said it would cut 20,000 jobs. Pfizer, one of the giants of a health-care sector that had until recently seemed immune from the downturn, said it would cut 8,000.

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In all, 22 of the 30 companies that are part of the Dow Jones industrial average have announced job cuts since the economy took a nosedive in October. Analysts say they've been surprised by just how quickly those cuts have added up. The number of people receiving unemployment insurance benefits now stands at 4.6 million, the highest level since 1982.

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"These are not just numbers on a page," President Obama told reporters at the White House yesterday, as he urged Congress to pass his economic stimulus package. "These are working men and women whose lives have been disrupted. We owe it to each of them, and to every single American, to act with a sense of urgency and common purpose."

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The job cuts announced yesterday "are the predictable consequence of a quickly unraveling economy affecting all sectors and segments of the workforce," said Lawrence Mishel, the president of EPI. "Unfortunately, the rise in unemployment we've already had may only be halfway to where we're heading."

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While layoffs by big names attracted the most attention yesterday, workers at thousands of smaller firms are losing their jobs as well. Small companies with 1 to 49 employees shed 281,000 jobs in December, according to a report released this month by payroll services firm Automatic Data Processing. Medium-size firms with 50 to 499 employees cut 321,000. Large companies with more than 499 workers lost 91,000.

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For the next six months, many economists do not expect the pace of layoff announcements to let up much. "There is nothing in the economic tea leaves that suggest someone is going to be hiring. This is a broad-based economic slump. From pharma to industrial to housing to telecommunications, every aspect of this economy is in a free-fall," said Richard Yamarone, director of economic research for Argus Research in New York. "There is no safe haven."

GOP Bad Faith Economics

The efforts of the GOP members of Congress to obstruct meaningful legislation aimed at halting the nation's economic free fall continue with no apparent concern about the negative consequences to rank and file citizens who are losing their jobs in huge numbers. I have condemned this efforts previously and two good columns today look at the unconscionable behavior. The first is a piece in the New York Times by Paul Krugman. The second is a column in the Washington Post by E.J. Dionne. In each case, the columnist look at the actions of the GOP who care nothing about average citizens unless they are unborn fetuses or wealthy high rollers. Here are highlights from Krugman's column:

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As the debate over President Obama’s economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: many of the plan’s opponents aren’t arguing in good faith. Conservatives really, really don’t want to see a second New Deal, and they certainly don’t want to see government activism vindicated. So they are reaching for any stick they can find with which to beat proposals for increased government spending.

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So as a public service, let me try to debunk some of the major antistimulus arguments that have already surfaced. Any time you hear someone reciting one of these arguments, write him or her off as a dishonest flack.

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First, there’s the bogus talking point that the Obama plan will cost $275,000 per job created. Why is it bogus? Because it involves taking the cost of a plan that will extend over several years, creating millions of jobs each year, and dividing it by the jobs created in just one of those years.

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Next, write off anyone who asserts that it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money. Here’s how to think about this argument: . . . it’s clear that when it comes to economic stimulus, public spending provides much more bang for the buck than tax cuts — and therefore costs less per job created (see the previous fraudulent argument) — because a large fraction of any tax cut will simply be saved.

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But here’s the thing: Most Americans aren’t listening. The most encouraging thing I’ve heard lately is Mr. Obama’s reported response to Republican objections to a spending-oriented economic plan: “I won.” Indeed he did — and he should disregard the huffing and puffing of those who lost.

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E. J. Dionne goes further and states in part as follows about the obstructionist GOP:

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Beneath the warm pledges of bipartisanship and the earnest calls for cooperation in the midst of a grave crisis lurks an unpleasant fact: From the moment it loses power, the opposition party turns to the task of getting it back.

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On Friday, Gallup released a devastating report, based on 30,000 interviews over the course of 2008. It found that last year an average of 36 percent of Americans identified themselves as Democrats and only 28 percent called themselves Republicans. Gallup noted that this was the largest advantage for the Democratic Party in more than two decades.

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Both Thiessen and Hensarling reflect an important undercurrent in Republican thinking: that the GOP should place its bets on the prospect that Obama's policies will fail, knowing that if the president succeeds, he and the Democrats are likely to gain ground no matter what Republicans do. This is hardly in keeping with the bipartisan spirit the White House seeks to foster. But it's a lot easier than coming up with new ideas.

Stimulus Plan Meets More GOP Resistance

As I have commented before, the GOP seems Hell bent on driving the nation into another Great Depression not being content with the damage done to date by the thankfully finished regime of the Chimperator. The GOP apparently learned nothing from the administration of Herbert Hoover which had a similar mindset - and disastrous results for the country. Rather than contribute anything positive or proposing constructive programs, the GOP seems focused solely on screwing the Democrats with no cares at all as to the damage their games may cause to the country. Once again, it is hard to believe that the GOP once actually had some positive ideas. In my opinion, the Democrats need to forge ahead without GOP support and when the programs prove effective hang the GOP obstructionist tactics around the necks of the GOP members of Congress. The nation wants Obama and the Democrats to deliver change and they need to do so. Here are some highlights from the Washington Post:

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Just days after taking office vowing to end the political era of "petty grievances," President Obama ran into mounting GOP opposition yesterday to an economic stimulus plan that he had hoped would receive broad bipartisan support. Republicans accused Democrats of abandoning the new president's pledge, ignoring his call for bipartisan comity and shutting them out of the process by writing the $850 billion legislation.

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The first drafts of the plan would result in more spending on favored Democratic agenda items, such as federal funding of the arts, they said, but would do little to stimulate the ailing economy.
The GOP's shrunken numbers, particularly in the Senate, will make it difficult for Republicans to stop the stimulus bill, but the growing GOP doubts mean that Obama's first major initiative could be passed on a largely party-line vote -- little different from the past 16 years of partisan sniping in the Clinton and Bush eras.

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As House panels considered the $850 billion legislation this week, no Republicans from the Appropriations or Ways and Means committees supported it. Pelosi said she would bring the bill to the full House by Wednesday, regardless of whether the Cantor group has met with Obama by then.

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Republicans hold 41 Senate seats, requiring total unity to block the stimulus plan by a filibuster. Democrats and Republicans have said that at least a few GOP senators will probably back the economic recovery plan because the financial crisis has become so grave. But some key Democrats are pushing to add pieces that would result in fewer Republican votes.

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Pelosi and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2 Democratic leader in the Senate, support including changes to bankruptcy laws that would allow judges to modify loans on primary residences, which they say would help alleviate the housing crisis. Republicans and the banking industry have vehemently opposed this because it might cause mortgage interest rates to rise.
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Obama would not be the first president to promise a bipartisan tone and find a much different attitude on Capitol Hill. Democrats chafed under the iron-fist rule of Republicans for most of 1995 to 2007, during which the toughest tactics were deployed after George W. Bush took office promising to be a "uniter, not a divider."

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Some Democrats said the goal should be passing legislation that deals with the largest financial crisis in 70 years, with or without much Republican support. "If it's passed with 63 votes or 73 votes, history won't remember it," Durbin said.

How Bush and the GOP Helped Stoke the Mortgage Bust

I have had a number of Republicans - many of whom are in reality the most concerned only about what they pay in taxes and to Hell with the best interests of the country - try to blame Bill Clinton, Congressional Democrats and many others for the mortgage industry collapse and accompanying credit market melt down. An article in the New York Times that I bookmarked a while back helps reveal the lack of substance of these arguments made by GOP apologists and shows that the Chimperator's policies (which were rubber stamped by the GOP controlled Congress) helped set the stage for the residential mortgage market collapse. Here are some highlights:

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The global financial system was teetering on the edge of collapse when President Bush and his economics team huddled in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for a briefing that, in the words of one participant, “scared the hell out of everybody.”

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[H]is Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., told him [Bush] that to stave off disaster, he would have to sign off on the biggest government bailout in history. Mr. Bush, according to several people in the room, paused for a single, stunned moment to take it all in. “How,” he wondered aloud, “did we get here?”

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There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk. But the story of how we got here is partly one of Mr. Bush’s own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials.

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[H]is housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards. Mr. Bush did foresee the danger posed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants. . . . And the regulator Mr. Bush chose to oversee them — an old prep school buddy — pronounced the companies sound even as they headed toward insolvency.

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As early as 2006, top advisers to Mr. Bush dismissed warnings from people inside and outside the White House that housing prices were inflated and that a foreclosure crisis was looming. And when the economy deteriorated, Mr. Bush and his team misdiagnosed the reasons and scope of the downturn; . . . The result was a series of piecemeal policy prescriptions that lagged behind the escalating crisis.

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For much of the Bush presidency, the White House was preoccupied by terrorism and war; on the economic front, its pressing concerns were cutting taxes and privatizing Social Security. The housing market was a bright spot: ever-rising home values kept the economy humming, as owners drew down on their equity to buy consumer goods and pack their children off to college. *

But for much of Mr. Bush’s tenure, government statistics show, incomes for most families remained relatively stagnant while housing prices skyrocketed. That put homeownership increasingly out of reach for first-time buyers . . . . So Mr. Bush had to, in his words, “use the mighty muscle of the federal government” to meet his goal. He proposed affordable housing tax incentives. He insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meet ambitious new goals for low-income lending. . . . And he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for federally insured mortgages with no money down.

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The president also leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations. “Corporate America,” he said, “has a responsibility to work to make America a compassionate place.” And corporate America, eyeing a lucrative market, delivered in ways Mr. Bush might not have expected, with a proliferation of too-good-to-be-true teaser rates and interest-only loans that were sold to investors in a loosely regulated environment.

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Mr. Bush populated the financial system’s alphabet soup of oversight agencies with people who, like him, wanted fewer rules, not more. As for Mr. Bush’s banking regulators, they once brandished a chain saw over a 9,000-page pile of regulations as they promised to ease burdens on the industry. When states tried to use consumer protection laws to crack down on predatory lending, the comptroller of the currency blocked the effort, asserting that states had no authority over national banks.

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The bottom line is that for all the GOP efforts to blame others for the current financial crisis, they and the half-wit Chimperator are largely to blame for the crisis in which the country now finds itself.

The Economist Endorses Obama

The Economist has long been a respected and conservative British business journal - I suspect that Sarah Palin has not only never crack the cover of an issue, but that she probably doesn't even know what The Economist is. It cannot be called socialist or liberal by any of the typical definitions thrown out by the GOP and far right in the USA to demonize Democrats. Thus, it is all the more noteworthy that The Economist has endorsed Obama as the best pick to lead the USA back to a sounder business/financial footing. Worse yet, it slams McCain/Palin. Here are some highlights:

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The United States is unhappy, divided and foundering both at home and abroad. Its self-belief and values are under attack. For all the shortcomings of the campaign, both John McCain and Barack Obama offer hope of national redemption. Now America has to choose between them. The Economist does not have a vote, but if it did, it would cast it for Mr Obama. We do so wholeheartedly: the Democratic candidate has clearly shown that he offers the better chance of restoring America’s self-confidence.

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At the beginning of this election year, there were strong arguments against putting another Republican in the White House. A spell in opposition seemed apt punishment for the incompetence, cronyism and extremism of the Bush presidency. Conservative America also needs to recover its vim. Somehow Ronald Reagan’s party of western individualism and limited government has ended up not just increasing the size of the state but turning it into a tool of southern-fried moralism.

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[T]he Candidate McCain of the past six months has too often seemed the victim of political sorcery, his good features magically inverted, his bad ones exaggerated. The fiscal conservative who once tackled Mr Bush over his unaffordable tax cuts now proposes not just to keep the cuts, but to deepen them. The man who denounced the religious right as “agents of intolerance” now embraces theocratic culture warriors. . . . Meanwhile his temperament, always perhaps his weak spot, has been found wanting. . . . The choice of Sarah Palin epitomised the sloppiness.

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Is Mr Obama any better? Most of the hoopla about him has been about what he is, rather than what he would do. His identity is not as irrelevant as it sounds. Merely by becoming president, he would dispel many of the myths built up about America: it would be far harder for the spreaders of hate in the Islamic world to denounce the Great Satan if it were led by a black man whose middle name is Hussein; and far harder for autocrats around the world to claim that American democracy is a sham. America’s allies would rally to him.

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There is no getting around the fact that Mr Obama’s résumé is thin for the world’s biggest job. But the exceptionally assured way in which he has run his campaign is a considerable comfort. It is not just that he has more than held his own against Mr McCain in the debates. A man who started with no money and few supporters has out-thought, out-organised and outfought the two mightiest machines in American politics—the Clintons and the conservative right.

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On the financial crisis his [Obama's] performance has been as assured as Mr McCain’s has been febrile. He seems a quick learner and has built up an impressive team of advisers, drawing in seasoned hands like Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. Of course, Mr Obama will make mistakes; but this is a man who listens, learns and manages well.

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[T]his cannot be another election where the choice is based merely on fear. In terms of painting a brighter future for America and the world, Mr Obama has produced the more compelling and detailed portrait.

Taxes and Financial Reality

No one enjoys paying taxes, but at some point some shred of reality needs to kick in if the monies needed to provide services and needed debt service are going to be found. Both McCain and Palin whine incessantly about cutting and/or not raising taxes, yet meanwhile ignore the huge deficits piled up by the Chimperator and his enablers in the Congress which the GOP controlled up until January, 2007. Do they simply propose printing money? The sad truth is that the USA's infrastructure is crumbling, the national debt has ballooned, and huge deficits are continuing - and that's without factoring the cost of the $700 billion bailout or the decline in revenues the economic recession will bring. Thomas Friedman has a column in today's New York Times that looks at the disingenuousness of the McCain/Palin mantra. Here are some highlights:

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Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”

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I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.

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How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now? We are in the middle of an economic perfect storm, and we don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. People all over the world are hoarding cash, and no bank feels that it can fully trust anyone it is doing business with anywhere in the world.

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And we have not yet even felt the full economic brunt here. I fear we may be at that moment just before the tsunami hits — when the birds take flight and the insects stop chirping because their acute senses can feel what is coming before humans can. At this moment, only good governance can save us. I am not sure that this crisis will end without every government in every major economy guaranteeing the creditworthiness of every financial institution it regulates.

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But putting the country in the position where a total novice like Sarah Palin could be asked to steer us through possibly the most serious economic crisis of our lives is flat out reckless. It is the opposite of conservative. And please don’t tell me she will hire smart advisers. What happens when her two smartest advisers disagree? And please also don’t tell me she is an “energy expert.” She is an energy expert exactly the same way the king of Saudi Arabia is an energy expert — by accident of residence.

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Patriotic is offering a plan to build our economy — not by tax cuts or punching more holes in the ground, but by empowering more Americans to work in productive and innovative jobs.

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The sad truth is that by picking Palin, McCain threw the best interests of the nation under the bus in his craven desire to win no matter what the long term consequences. By doing that, McCain committed a subtle form of treason in my view.

Will Retirees Be Forced Back to Work??

The market forces so loved by John "Deregulation" McCain have surely not worked for millions of Americans who will be faced with shock and dismay when they open their next retirement account statement. According to the head of the Congressional Budget Office, Americans' retirement plans have lost as much as $2 trillion in the past 15 months. One heck of a job Johnny and Chimpy!! God help us all if these clowns do any more great work for us average Americans. Of course, with Cindy McCain's rumored $100 million net worth, even a horrific loss in vale would leave the McCains in a position most Americans will never know even in their dreams. Between my horrific divorce and the financial market melt down, as of now, I figure I will likely die at my office desk. Here are some story highlights:

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Americans' retirement plans have lost as much as $2 trillion in the past 15 months, Congress' top budget analyst estimated Tuesday. The upheaval that has engulfed the financial industry and sent the stock market plummeting is devastating workers' savings, forcing people to hold off on major purchases and consider delaying their retirement, said Peter Orszag, the head of the Congressional Budget Office.

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"Unlike Wall Street executives, America's families don't have a golden parachute to fall back on," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the panel chairman. "It's clear that their retirement security may be one of the greatest casualties of this financial crisis." More than half the people surveyed in an Associated Press-GfK poll taken Sept. 27-30 said they worry they will have to work longer because the value of their retirement savings has declined.

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Orszag indicated the fear is well-founded. Public and private pension funds and employees' private retirement savings accounts—like 401(k)'s—have lost some 20 percent overall since mid-2007, he estimated. Private retirement plans may have suffered slightly more because those holdings are more heavily skewed toward stocks, Orszag added.

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A new AARP study found that because of the economic downturn, one in five workers 45 and older has stopped putting money into a 401(k), IRA or other retirement savings account during the past year, and nearly one in four has increased the number of hours he works.

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The country seriously CANNOT afford another four years of the Bush/McCain/Palin lunacy and refusal to face reality.

Who Is Responsible for the Financial Crisis?

In the home stretch of the presidential election, sound bites are flying as to who is to blame for the USA's current financial train wreck. Newsweek has a good article that looks at the various arguments and also relies on information from factcheck.org. Personally, I have maintained for over a year that the failure to regain stability in the housing/mortgage market was going to lead to a disaster. Here are some highlights that look at some of the true contributing factors of how things got so screwed up (only by recognizing the real cause - and that lack of regulatory oversight WAS a big factor - can a real solution be achieved.):

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As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

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The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

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Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

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Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

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Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

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The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and down payment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

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Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

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Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

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Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

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The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

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An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

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Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

White House Caught Napping on Financial Crisis

I am gaining a new respect for Campbell Brown who seems to be growing a set and willing to be more that a mere parrot for sound bites issued by others. Now she's going after the Chimperator for being asleep at the wheel on the financial debacle that has occurred on his watch and mostly under a Republican economic model. Would that more in the media would remind the public that the ground work for the crisis and lack of regulation occurred under a GOP White House and GOP controlled Congress. Despite his stunts and theatrics, McCain is part and parcel with the group that allowed this mess to occur. Many of the problems in this country can be traced to a failure of the media to do its job and ask hard questions, expose lies and demand accountability. Here are highlights from Brown's recent commentary on CNN:

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NEW YORK (CNN) --

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"I have great, great confidence in our capital markets and in our financial institutions. Our financial institutions, banks and investment banks, are strong. Our capital markets are resilient. They're efficient. They're flexible."

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, March 16, 2008

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"Our policy in this administration -- laws shouldn't bail out lenders, laws shouldn't help speculators."
President Bush, May 19, 2008

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"Our economy has continued growing, consumers are spending, business are investing, exports continue increasing and American productivity remains strong. We can have confidence in the long-term foundation of our economy...I think the system basically is sound. I truly do."

President Bush, July 15, 2008

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Those were the words of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and President George W. Bush just a few months ago. Today, of course, they have been proven completely wrong. They are now telling us we are in a dire crisis, and that we must hand over hundreds of billions of dollars so they can lead us out of this mess.

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What's amazing to me is that the administration seems a little surprised that Congress and the American people are not marching in lockstep with them on this and not fully appreciating the urgency. Well here's why, in one word: accountability.

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This administration missed the boat on this crisis. They didn't see it coming. That's why when Bush goes on TV in a few minutes, he will face a very wary audience. And Secretary Paulson, frankly, you didn't help the situation with your initial, imperious request to Congress that you be handed this money and that your decisions "may not be reviewed by any court of law or administrative agency." Seriously, what were you thinking?

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We need serious scrutiny and debate, and that should happen whether we are talking about a giant piece of legislation that is going to affect us all, or whether we are talking about presidential and vice presidential candidates.