Liberal Media Elite

Frankly, I think the “stunning loss” the Dems suffered in MA could…could…be a good thing.

It seems that it is now in vogue for folks on the left to attack the filibuster rules in the Senate as unconstitutional and blahblahblah. Personally, I love the filibuster. For those Dems that want to kill it, remember, we’ll be the minority party again someday.

What I don’t love about the filibuster is how it’s used by Harry Reid and, indirectly, President Obama. If they have a piece of legislation and cannot get 60 votes they don’t bring it to the floor. They negotiate and water it down and bribe enough moderates to get their 60 votes which, I think, in most cases leads to a dramatically sub-optimal legislative outcome. I don’t blame the Republicans, nor am I pissed at the Blue Dogs. If all I had to do was threaten a filibuster to kill a piece of legislation or to get myself on the pork train, I’d do it.

What’s maddening about Mr. Reid is, given his long tenure in the Senate, he knows filibusters are rare and they are extremely difficult to pull off. You have to get enough Senators willing to rotate 24/7 to keep it going long enough to get the other side to give up. It’s really, really hard to do.

Imagine a filibuster on the stimulus plan. Imagine enough Blue Dogs and Conservatives actively holding up legislation that would have a real, material, and immediate positive impact on their constituents. This isn’t quietly voting against something…it’s actively telling the people who voted for you to go suck wind. Imagine those folks on the fence who wouldn’t filibuster but for various reasons don’t want to vote for the stimulus getting hammered by consituents with real life horror stories of how the Great Recession was killing ‘em. What do you think the likelihood is that they’d vote for cloture? Quite high, I should think.

The problem isn’t the filibuster. The problem is that the mere threat of one forces all meaningful legislation to have a super-majority. That’s not a process or a structure problem…that’s a failure of leadership and courage by Reid and Obama.

No longer having a guaranteed 60 votes may well force them to force Republicans to make good on their filibuster threats. How would you like to be a Republican in an election year and be either directly guilty of or indirectly supportive of bringing legislation, like healthcare, that a majority of Americans want (according to pools, anyway) to a state of complete gridlock? I’m pretty sure the Dems could use that as one hell of a campaign issue. It’s time for Obama and Reid to take off the kid gloves and force the obstructionists to actually obstruct as opposed to theoretically obstruct. And let them live with the consequences.

Tom Tancredo (R-CO.) is already hard at work losing the 2010 vote for the Republicans by alienating all Latino’s (unlike the significant majority he pissed off with his immigration stand) by declaring La Raza to be “the Latino KKK without hoods or nooses”.

Watching the dumber wingnuts scramble over the next few months to make their party trivial is gonna be kind of fun. The Tank doesn’t represent the majority of congressional Republicans but given that the party has no real leader at the moment, with the closest thing to one being Rush Limbaugh, you gotta figure that the boneheads among them are going to run wild. The Tank lives in a district where this kind of stupidity seems to play well. There are other representatives in that category. In improving their own chances in 2010 by issuing such absurdities they are going to drag the rest of their party down farther than they already have.

Good Times!

When I took AP US History in high school I had this giant tome of history. It was the same text used in survey courses at Yale. It was almost 4″thick. I learned some history. Not quite so randomly, here are some things I learned:

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was a major policy initiative of Herbert Hoover. Authored by Senator Reed Smoot (R-Utah) and Representative Willis C. Hawley (R-Ore) was signed into law on June 17, 1930 by President Hoover, and was in fact the law of the land for almost 3 years before FDR was sworn in as president on March 4, 1933.

In 1976, during Gerald Ford’s last year in office, there was a Swine Flu scare leading from the death and hospitalization of several Army recruits at Fort Dix, New Jersey. President Ford ordered nationwide vaccinations beginning the following fall. However the innoculations led to serious health problems, and 30 deaths and were discontinued in December, 1976, roughly a month before Jimmy Carter took the oath of office.

For the record the Hoot-Smalley Tariffs are entirely fictional, and sound amazingly like something from an SNL skit featuring (Senator) Franken.

It’s such a relief to see the serious discussion about what Bush, Cheney et al. have done to the soul of this country by authorizing torture. The discussion is painful, it is necessary, and having the strength to engage in it is something America can be truly proud of.

I’m a bit troubled that it seems we are, here on the left, pissed at financial institutions that took bailout money and pissed at those same financial institutions when they decide to pay it back. Can’t really have it both ways, you know? Sure, there is the potential for banks handing back the money when they need it and, as a result, not lending, etc. And there is the potential for troubled banks handing it back because they feel the need to keep up with healthier banks who don’t need it and, as a result, those troubled banks go under (which sucks in the short term but is probably better in the long term). But, either way, either we should pissed when the take the money and, therefore, pleased when they give it back OR we’re pleased when they take it but pissed when they pay it back but right now it appears we’re pissed when they take it AND pissed when they pay it back. Which is kinda fucked up.

I will hold off on any snarky remarks about right wingers wearing native american garb and protesting taxation with representation and referring to it as “teabagging”.

I will point out this quote from one of the West Coast organizers (from the AP…I seem to keep screwing up the link)…

“What is happening now is unfair,” said Alice Broich, who was organizing a protest in Palm Springs. “When you see mom and pop businesses going under and people losing their homes while these big businesses and CEOs are getting bailed out, it’s wrong.”

Apparently, to Ms. Broich, the people going out of business and losing homes are being taxed out…or something.

And, as proof of the wingers assertion that this is the beginning of a new grassroots Republican effort that will rival the Dems…

Several dozen people in Boston rallied, footage from CNN television showed.

That’s right, y’all. Several whole dozen. If that ain’t a groundswell then I don’t know what is.

Checking in after my morning work call, Everyone seemed to be really excited for Iowa. At frist I thought it was Final Four nonsense. Then I realized that Iowa isn’t in the Final Four.

Upon further research, something really, really cool happened there today.

Rock on, Iowa.

As a coda on a discussion at the bar last night, the accomplishments, to date, of our 44th President:

Signed into law:

Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act.

SCHIP

An 800bn Stimulus Bill

The FY 2009 Budget

Omnibus Public Lands Act (I’m a big fan of this one, protecting over 2 million acres of public land, and over 1,000 miles of rivers, and other waterways. Awesome!)

Executive Orders:

Opening Presidential Records.

Banning Torture

Closing Gitmo

Lifting the ban on stem cell research.

Presidential Memoranda, other actions.

Overturning the Mexico City Policy.

Fast-tracking fuel-economy standards to the 2011 model year.

I could go on. The complete list is found at Whitehouse.gov.

More progressive goodness has come from this man’s first 72 days in office than the previous 8 years. And he hasn’t been in the job for a full 3 months. I think all the hand wringing, consternation, doubt and concern are, at this point a little premature.

Let me be clear, I do have concerns. The Geithner-Summers duo have me concerned. They seem to be of the mindset that dragged our economy into this mess, and don’t quite appear to have any good ideas to get us out. Granted, the mess is so completely intractable, I don’t think anyone has all of the answers, but I’d at least like to see a Krugman or a Stiglitz at the table on this one.

I also fail to see how contracts with AIG are somehow infallible, yet contracts with UAW and other unions need to be revisited, revised, and reduced every time corporate America feels their profits being pinched. That seems to be a double-standard the Administration has embraced.

So far he’s accomplished a lot. The big fights are yet to come, and they will certainly take all of us keeping on him and Congress to get the job done right.

Prior to 2008, I didn’t know much about banking, finance and economics. For obvious reasons, I, and many others, have taken a bit of a remedial course in these subjects in attempt to wrap our heads around what’s happening in the world. Now that I done hours of reading on the subject, I’ve managed to find an easy, simple 10 minute primer.

Enjoy

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Here’s a weeks worth of webcam images from Grand Forks, ND. A little visual context for what folks are going through up there.

The opponents of the measure gloomily predicted that by unshackling banks and enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.

”I think we will look back in 10 years’ time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930’s is true in 2010,” said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ”I wasn’t around during the 1930’s or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980’s when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.”

Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had ‘’seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes.”

”Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,” Mr. Wellstone said. ”Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.”

Source: NY Times, 11.5.1999

Great (and sad) photo series by two french photographers.

Un-frickin’-believable. From the Financial Times, we get this gem:

Jack Welch, who is regarded as the father of the “shareholder value” movement that has dominated the corporate world for more than 20 years, has said it was “a dumb idea” for executives to focus so heavily on quarterly profits and share price gains.

and

Mr Welch last week said he never meant to suggest boosting a company’s share price should be the main goal of executives.

“It is a dumb idea,” he said. “The idea that shareholder value is a strategy is insane. It is the product of your combined efforts – from the management to the employees”.

Ooopsie Daisy, I guess.

Matthew can’t pimp work he does elsewhere.  That would be a smidge gauche.

But I can pimp it for him.

A great read.  Doubly so because I found while browsing the job listings.

Ladies and Gentlemen: The Republican Apology Machine.

(Where is everyone?)

Anyway, thought this was funny for a lazy Sunday morning:

AS A book reviews editor at New Scientist, I often come across so-called science books which after a few pages reveal themselves to be harbouring ulterior motives. I have learned to recognise clues that the author is pushing a religious agenda. As creationists in the US continue to lose court battles over attempts to have intelligent design taught as science in federally funded schools, their strategy has been forced to… well, evolve.

UPDATE (03/16/09): Good grief. The New Scientist pulled the article:

New Scientist has received a legal complaint about the contents of this story. At the advice of our lawyer it has temporarily been removed while we investigate. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Actually, this one is for Matthew:

The European commission is preparing itself for a membership bid, depending on the outcome of a snap general election expected in May. An application would be viewed very favourably in Brussels and the negotiations, which normally take many years, would be fast-forwarded to make Iceland the EU’s 29th member in record time, probably in 2011.

Olli Rehn, the European commissioner in charge of enlargement, said: “The EU prefers two countries joining at the same time rather than individually. If Iceland applies shortly and the negotiations are rapid, Croatia and Iceland could join the EU in parallel. On Iceland, I hope I will be busier. It is one of the oldest democracies in the world and its strategic and economic positions would be an asset to the EU.”

Its strategic and economic positions….interesting.

I was gonna write a long screed about the state of the economy, but after a pass through the mainstream press today, particularly the New York Times, I was overwhelmed by the stupidity of the journalistic community.

Before getting to that, here’s the skinny on the economy…remember back in November when the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) told us we’d been in a recession since December of 2007 and all of us were, like, “no shit…it took you 11 months to piece that together?”

Okay…sometime in June the same rocket scientists are gonna tell us we entered a depression in November of 2008. Trust me. It’s coming. There are various mathematical indicators that lead me to this conclusion and I’ll go into them in a later post just for the geeks that care about such things…but the biggest leading indicator is that rich guys are throwing themselves in front of trains or off ledges or whatever. When rich guys (and by rich I mean worth 100’s of millions or billions) start killing themselves specifically because they are now poor, the economic shit has officially hit the fan…which is as good a description of a depression as any other I’ve come across.

On to journalistic idiocy…

Toxic Assets: Okay…can we kill this term? Please? No, really, I’m begging. It’s such a wonderfully misleading mix of drama (Toxic…poisonous…a cloud over a suburb that kills small children and the elderly) and sideways passive voice let ‘em all off the hook crap. It sounds like there’s something inherently wrong with the asset. “See that house over yonder, Clem? Fucker’s toxic.” Let’s call these things what they are: bad loans; bad investments; bad choices. Toxic assets makes it sounds like some unsuspecting friendly neighborhood banker gave someone a loan for a commercial building and it turned out to be riddled with asbestos. It wasn’t. Only thing wrong with the building is that there were too goddamn many buildings and not enough people to put in ‘em. Bad. Fucking. Loan. Which changes the image in one’s head to smugly arrogant 30 something Manhattan investment banker buying up a bunch of loan packages he didn’t really understand, making a few million a year, and then looking kinda confused and as dumb as he actually is when it all crashed down around his ears.

Nationalization: Oh, sweet Jesus. The Paper of Record ran an article today with the headline “Rescue of Banks Hints at Nationalization”. Fuck me. Just fuck me now. No. It does not hint at nationalization. The government taking a 6% ownership stake in Bank of America in exchange for somewhere in the neighborhood of $120 Billion is not nationalization. It’s a bailout of a bunch of fuckups. In exchange for bailing out a bunch of fuckups who put the entire national economy at risk through their poor choices, the government, like any owner, makes a few demands. That’s not nationalization. Nationalization would be the government taking over the bank, all of it, with little or no compensation to the shareholders, and running the damn thing. There is no “hint” of nationalization in this. But…they found some bonehead banking analyst who said…

“We are down a path that this country has not seen since Andrew Jackson shut down the Second National Bank of the United States,” said Gerard Cassidy, a banking analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “We are going to go back to a time when the government controlled the banking system.”

Um…no. We’re going to nothing like that. We’re going to an era where the government is bailing out jackasses like Gerard (hey, Gerry…did you see this recession/depression coming? I just combed through some of your analyst reports and it appears you thought shit was doing just fine…so forgive me if I think I don’t need to pay attention to you ’cause you’re kinda dumb) and taking a radically undervalued ownership stake just so jackasses like Gerard can’t pull all of us down the tubes with them. Ain’t nothing being nationalized up in here. What’s happening is the government is taking on the risks that the financial institutions shouldn’t have taken on in the first place. The nationalization talk is a way of subtly applying political pressure in the form of “don’t start making demands in exchange for your ownership stake” that would result in a giveaway to these institutions with no limits on what they can do with it or how they can operate…no other major shareholder would accept those kind of limitations. The government shouldn’t.

Other Passive Voice Abominations: The one that’s up my ass today is referring to financial institutions that talk about large banks that cannot function as “the sinking economy erodes their capital”. Again…passive voice bullshit. It’s like the economy is sinking on its own…as if some weird form of gravity heretofore unknown to us has grabbed hold of the economy and is pulling down into quicksand. The sinking economy that is eroding their capital is entirely of their own making. Take away the housing and commercial property bubbles, the easy credit, the credit to people who shouldn’t have been given credit, the utter lack of fiscal responsibility, the buying and selling of debt instruments that the buyers and sellers didn’t understand, the huge upswing in risk profiles of these institutions and the greed of executives and shareholders that looked the other way, and you don’t have a fucking sinking economy.

Thank you for letting me vent.

You knew at some point, some Republican airhead would decide they needed to get on Fox News by stoking the outrage over their “disenfranchised votes” due to the alleged (but not proven nor even supported by bad evidence) double counting in the Minnesota Senatorial race.

Not wanting to let some good manufactured outrage go to waste, that’s just what some dimwits are doing in St. Paul. Money quote…

Though the group acknowledged that it had few concrete examples of actual double-counting, its attorney said he believes there “could be hundreds” of double-counted votes. At a late-morning news conference, the group said it would launch a website in hopes of getting other Minnesotans to join them. “My vote was disenfranchised” because of the double-counting, said Scott Walker, a Republican activist from St. Paul. “I am furious about that.”

It is truly heartening to me that the same bullshit tactics that cost Republicans the last two election cycles are still enthusiastically employed by those who have yet to come to grips with the fact that it ain’t 2003 anymore. My liberal brethren…do not get pissed about this stuff. Encourage it. ‘Cause 2010 is just around the corner and the dumber these guys make themselves look the better it will be for us.