Month: June 2010

Read Froomkin

Dan Froomkin does a very good job explaining all the ways that last night’s speech on BP by President Obama failed to be the turning point the White House claimed it would be. Froomkin concludes:

As for inflection points, there may have been one on Tuesday night after all, just not the one the White House was hoping for. This week could, ultimately, mark the point at which the public, and the media, start actively discounting what the president says, judging him instead on what he does and doesn’t do.

Why Are We Angry?

The New York Times editorial board captures the main question that I have which speaks to why I and many others are upset with the response to the BP spill by both the administration and BP.

Fifty-six days into the spill and it is not clear who is responsible — BP, federal, state or local authorities — for the most basic decisions, like when to deploy booms to protect sensitive wetlands. It’s not even clear how much oil is pouring out of the ruptured well. On Tuesday, a government panel raised the estimate to as much as 60,000 barrels a day.

These are really fundamental questions, but the President hasn’t been able to adequately answer them.

Moreover, as Jason Linkins at Huffington Post points out, the much-heralded speech last night didn’t attempt to change our understanding of how the administration is responding nor what we can expect moving forward. It just reiterated things that Obama clearly wants to have done, with no vision for the plan that will realize them. Linkins writes:

I mean, don’t get me wrong. Obama really, really wants to stop the oil spill. And he really, really wants to hold BP accountable for the damage they’ve done. And he really, really wants the Gulf Coast to come through this hardship and he really, really wants to wean us from our dependency on foreign oil, and oil in general. But “really, really wants” is not a plan, and only the bitterest and most brain-dead of political opponents would have presumed, going into tonight, that Obama had not yet properly sentimentalized his opinions on any of those matters.

I guess, at the bottom, I don’t understand what the point of the Oval Office address was. The small policy and punitive steps were already announced in days prior to the speech. Only the most cynical opponents and trite journalists think an even more emotional response actually means something. And in the end, the timing of a speech that lacked groundbreaking action of forceful clarity strikes me solely as being driven by goals of changing perceptions than goals of changing reality.

I don’t begrudge the President for using the power of the office to further his agenda and his positioning, regardless of what that it is. Elections have consequences and he’s entitled to make sure the public knows what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. But I just don’t think this speech succeeded in speaking to the real questions of who is in charge, what does that mean, how are resources being marshaled to stop the leak and how are resources being deployed to contain and clean up oil that is out already.  As a result, people will continue to be angry and, at least in my case, fundamentally dissatisfied by the lack of clarity as to who is in charge and what that means.

Tibet’s Third Pole

Uttam Kumar Sinha has an op-ed in the Washington Post today about Tibet and its importance has the watershed for most of Asia. Sinha makes the case that the Chinese government should not be the only stakeholder deciding policies that determine what happens to water originating in Tibet. Sinha writes:

China’s moves to encroach on Tibet’s water need to be countered by downriver solidarity that includes agreement on multipurpose beneficial use of these resources. Downriver states need to work through legal norms of equitable utilization, “no-harm” policies and restricted Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. This pressure and international attention to defining such vital resources as common would go a long way toward preserving and sharing the waters of Tibet. While such redefinition is politically sensitive, as it clashes with national jurisdiction, it merits attention now given the current and future water requirements of South and Southeast Asia. Collective political and diplomatic pressure over a sustained period will be needed to draw in China to regional arrangements on “reasonable share of water” and frame treaties accordingly.

Two things that I can say with some certainty is that the current Chinese regime is unlikely to ever be a good partner with downstream countries. They have their own needs and historic Han nationalism which continues to exist in the current regime makes it unlikely that they will place the needs of people in India, Burma, Bangladesh, Vietnam or anywhere else in Asia ahead of the needs of their restless population. The other thing I’m sure of is that if Tibet were an independent nation state, under Tibetan rule, the challenges facing Asia and water management would be resolved in a way that benefited both Tibet and downstream states.

Add the water needs of 2 billion Asian people as another reason in the long list of reasons why Tibet should and must be free.

Getting Tough?

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism has a really good post on how, finally, Obama is getting tough on BP and more importantly, how absurd BP’s assumption that they would not be held fully accountable by the US government for this spill has been. The upcoming meeting between Obama and BP executives seems to have them actually worried about what might happen – and this meeting will be the perfect opportunity for the president to stop being deferential to a major corporation and hold them accountable for their disaster. Of course, as Smith writes, this hasn’t actually happened yet:

I wouldn’t be optimistic; Team Obama has yet to rough up anyone. But this particular set of circumstances – a monstrous disaster that is not going to be resolved anytime soon and a rich, unpopular, and relatively isolated target – will show whether Obama’s survival instincts will overcome his deep seated deference to corporate chieftains.

Right. And if Obama meets with BP execs and backs off from doing anything substantive, our worst fears for Obama will have been confirmed.

At this point, though, for all the reasons that BP must be held accountable, I find it impossible to think that the administration would not positively try to hold them accountable.

Glennzilla

What Glenn Greenwald said:

What’s going on here couldn’t be clearer if the DNC produced neon signs explaining it. Blanche Lincoln and her corporatist/centrist Senate-friends aren’t some unfortunate outliers in the Democratic Party. They are the Democratic Party. The outliers are the progressives. The reason the Obama White House did nothing when Lincoln sabotaged the public option isn’t because they had no leverage to punish her if she was doing things they disliked. It was because she was doing exactly what the White House and the Party wanted. The same is true when she voted for Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, serves every corporate interest around, and impedes progressive legislation. Lincoln doesn’t prevent the Democratic Party from doing and being what it wishes it could do and be. She enables the Party to do and be exactly what it is, what it wants to be, what serves its interests most. That’s why they support her so vigorously and ensured her victory: the Blanche Lincolns of the world are the heart, soul and face of the national Democratic Party.

Also:

There is clearly a need for new strategies and approaches that involve things other than unconditional fealty to the Democratic Party, which weigh short-term political fears that are exploited to keep Democrats blindly loyal (look over there! It’s Sarah Palin!) against longer-term considerations (the need to truly change the political process and the stranglehold the two parties exert). In sum, any Party whose leaders are this desperate to keep someone like Blanche Lincoln in the Senate is not one that merits any loyalty.

It’s tough being a progressive.

Yesterday Tom Tomorrow, probably the most brilliant political cartoonist of our time, posted a brilliant piece on how the right wing portrays President Obama as a left wing nut, when he is in fact a very center-right president. The irony that I tried to point out in a subsequent exchange with Tom on Twitter is that many, many Democrats and progressives even view Obama as a progressive just like them, and that disconnect is not dissimilar to the one the right wing maintains.

As Glenn points out, the question of who owns the Democratic Party and which factions in it have sway over its direction is becoming a pointed issue under President Obama. The blind support of corporatist senators like Blanche Lincoln or outright Republicans like Arlen Specter is deeply troubling to anyone who thinks the party should be something greater than a mechanism for reelecting any individual with a D after their name in Washington. If this is what the Party is limited to, why would progressive activists, environmentalists, LGBT advocates, civil libertarians, or labor continue to blindly support whoever the Party puts forward?

I’m not big on turning my back on problems. It’s less about finding a way to feel better about ones vote than to force the corporatist center of the Democratic Party outwards and seize control for the base. How can this be done? Progressives need to run for office. Progressives need to support progressive candidates and progressive candidates alone. Donor strikes have to happen. Progressives have to learn to ignore the shiny object (as Glenn points out, this is what Sarah Palin is). Maybe it means in the end there will be some electoral victories for Republicans and some bad legislation will result. But it’s not like the victories won by Democrats has yielded the results progressives have wanted. To say it will get worse before it gets better isn’t saying much, because right now things are not getting better and key parts of the Democratic Party are losing influence they should have over the course of events.

That said, nothing that is happening with the administration’s response to the Lincoln primary victory makes me feel good about the administration or the people running the Democratic Party. Why be loyal to something that isn’t loyal to you?

What Markos Said

What Markos said:

The GOP establishment tries to nominate electable candidates, and gets sabotaged by the teabaggers. We’re trying to nominate electable candidates, and we get sabotaged by the Democratic Party establishment. We won in Pennsylvania, lost in Arkansas. You can’t win them all. But make no mistake — we made the politically smart move. [Emphasis added]

An advantage to primarying a sitting politician is that the primary can be an impetus for them to be a better Democratic elected official. In the case of Blanche Lincoln, this was undoubtedly true. She introduced tough derivatives reform language that goes farther than anything else in the Senate (or House) and unlike many times when progressive champions introduce great language that goes nowhere, Lincoln’s (for now) is actually likely going to be something the Senate votes on and passes (with the caveat that this was a cynical political ploy and it is unlikely to survive her nomination). Regardless, the strength of Halter’s campaign wasn’t merely a moral victory or a warning shot (though it was both those things). It actually forced Lincoln to stop sucking for a little while.

Markos is also right when he writes:

How much do you think the Chamber of Commerce and its corporatist allies will spend on behalf of Blanche Lincoln through the fall? Zero. Suddenly, you’re going to see Lincoln quite friendless.

Those evil “out of state” unions and progressive groups sure won’t lift a finger to help her. The only question is how much the DSCC wastes on the losing effort.

In a just world, Lincoln will be forced to continue her populist binge and will have to be good to have a shot at reelection. She would continue to be a better senator, even in the general election. I’m not optimistic that it happens, though. I think she will revert to being a conservative corporatist, whose vote is for sale to the highest corporate donor. Undoubtedly the DSCC will do exactly what the White House accused labor of doing and spend millions of dollars which could be better used to protect seats in more reliably blue states, or be redirected to holding the House.

I hope labor stays the hell away from Blanche Lincoln, after the shots she took at working Americans during the runoff. And yes, her new best friends at the Chamber of Commerce will be nowhere to be seen for the rest of the cycle. Actually, that’s not true. I’m sure they will dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into electing John Boozman to Senate in Arkansas.

Last thing: primaries matter. Elections matter. Voters should always have a choice and the act of saying, “We are unhappy with our current representation,” is always a fruitful one that should not be looked down upon. Money isn’t wasted when it’s made making a powerful statement. Belittling efforts to reflect popular dissatisfaction within the party is offensive and speaks to a pure lack of understanding of both today’s political and economic climate and the nature of progressive commitment to the Democratic Party.   The continued failure of the White House to understand the how and the why of Bill Halter’s primary challenge to Blanche Lincoln will only result in lost seats in the House and Senate, alienated base activists, and even the loss of the White House in 2012. I’m obviously frustrated by the White House’s attacks on labor last night, but I’m even more concerned that the speak to an arrogance and disconnect from reality that will prove to be a fatal electoral combination.

Austerity

There are much more appalling examples of wasteful military spending, but I have to imagine $300,000 for a go-kart racing track in Guantanamo Bay is going to be held up as an example akin to thousand dollar wrenches for some time. I don’t expect anyone to be asking members of the military to practice austerity while stationed overseas. But someone is going to have to explain a go-kart track.

And just so I’m clear, working families need to feel the impact of this recession through austerity.  State governments need to cut the salaries and void contracts of state employees, ensuring that those workers in particular must resort to austerity to survive. But the Pentagon budget is totally off-limits in discussions as to how we reduce the all-important deficit.  Got it.

Responding To BP Isn’t About Politics

On TPM, Theda Skocpol is given space to respond to Robert Reich’s case for President Obama putting BP America in receivership so the company would be forced “to use all its available resources and submit itself to full federal oversight and control.” Skocpol’s response is purely taken from a political standpoint:

When a huge private corporation makes a mess and cannot fix it, it is sheer lunacy to take direct charge of that mess unless you can fix it right away.

This is not about politics. It’s about fixing a cataclysmic disaster in the Gulf. That actually matters to some people, but apparently not Skocpol. Sure, BP is saying nothing can produce the results needed to stop the leak until August at the earliest. But Skocpol is a political science professor, not a scientist. Her answer is based entirely on politics and not on any knowledge of what is and is not possible beyond what BP has told her.

I don’t dispute that from a purely political perspective, the administration taking ownership and responsibility for stopping this disaster by deposing BP  is risky if the government doesn’t actually produce better results than BP is saying they can (and to this point, they have produced no results). And yes, as Skocpol says, the administration should be doing a lot to hold BP financially and criminally accountable, while simultaneously dealing with the on-surface consequences of the oil spill in the Gulf. This isn’t a two-front war, it’s a three-front war and ignoring the third front only ensures that the job is harder on the other two fronts. And that the Gulf is turned into a wasteland for decades.

I really don’t care about the politically expedient response from the government. I care about the morally necessary response and the ecologically required urgency that action be taken. All of BP’s efforts have failed and while I am not a geologist or oceanographer or deep-sea drilling expert and therefore do not myself know what else can be done, I believe the size, power, and treasury of the US government is capable of finding another way to try to solve this problem.

Stay Out of Primaries

Chris Bowers:

The lesson for the White House here should be to stay out of primaries. These stories are costing them a lot of news cycles, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dollars they sunk into Arlen Specter’s campaign.  Further, these primary challenges are actually helpful to the administration’s legislative agenda, as they do a lot more to prevent defections on big votes from Specter and Bennet than any backroom deal ever will.  If the White House had just let these campaigns play out, they would be a lot better off right now.

This strikes me as self-evident, but evidently it needs saying. Beyond the White House, I’d say the DSCC and DCCC should stay out too, but that is less relevant to Bowers’ point.

We’re Not Greece

Sam Seder has a great video, calling bullshit on the conservative fears that the US is going to be the next Greece to leverage reduction of deficit spending. In the economy we are in, with 10% unemployment, the best way to get things on track is with a steady diet of stimulating federal dollars. But conservatives just don’t want to see the government spend money helping people who aren’t Wall Street tycoons or insurance CEOs.  The stalking horse for conservative opposition to stimulating expenditures is the deficit. You’d think that if the deficit was a major concern for the markets and for people who make money in the finance industry, that they would be reacting accordingly, driving up the US government’s bond rates and betting against the dollar.

But you’d be wrong. Paul Krugman noted on Monday that conservatives are pushing for austerity and measures to calm the markets from fears of inflation, there is no inflation and no fear of inflation in the markets.  And in yesterday’s Washington Post, there was a long expose on the gap between DC Conventional Wisdom that says the debt is going to turn the US into Greece shortly, while bond traders are heavily investing in the US government. Neil Irwin writes, “they can’t both be right.” And as is so often the case, Conventional Wisdom is wrong.

So why the massive shift in Washington from concern about fixing the economy through job growth (last year) to doomsday proclamations about the growth of the deficit (now)? Brad DeLong addresses this question:

But whenever I wander the halls of Washington these days, I can’t help but think that something else is going on—that a deep and wide gulf has grown between the economic hardships of Americans and the seeming incomprehension, or indifference, of courtiers in the imperial city.

Have decades of widening wealth inequality created a chattering class of reporters, pundits and lobbyists who’ve lost their connection to mainstream America? Has the collapse of the union movement removed not only labor’s political muscle but its beating heart from the consciousness of the powerful? Has this recession, which has reduced hiring more than it has increased layoffs, left the kind of people who converse with the powerful in Washington secure in their jobs and thus communicating calm while the unemployed are engulfed in panic? Are we passively watching an unrepresented underclass of the long-term unemployed created before our eyes?

Digby answers DeLong:

To coin a patented DeLong phrase — Simple Answers To Simple Questions: Yes.

At the bottom line, it seems that Washington, particularly Republicans, but also conservative and “moderate” Democrats, are no longer seeing the financial difficulties of working Americans. At a moment of economic crisis, they are looking past the challenges Americans are facing and towards policy prescriptions that will slow recovery and not help unemployment. This is going to hurt people. It’s going to prolong the unemployment crisis. And American families will suffer as long as Washington isn’t serious about creating jobs and growing the economy.

I’ve often said that if there is a disconnect between how you would want your elected officials to behave and how they actually behave, it’s most likely that they are not behaving how you would want because they don’t believe in the same things you believe in. What’s becoming clear is that decision-makers are, in bipartisan fashion, showing that they do not believe there is a jobs crisis and they do not believe that the government has a major role to play stimulating the economy to create new jobs.

And if you think things are bad now, wait until there is a push to cut Social Security again.