Month: July 2010

Serious People

Paul Krugman, responding to the stream of lies coming from Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl and other leading Republicans that the Bush tax cuts didn’t cost the US government anything, asks:

How am I supposed to pretend that these are serious people?

Well, frankly, I don’t think you do. Pretending only makes the matter worse. Actual serious people like Paul Krugman and Steve Benen need to get to the point where they can take the last step and call the Republicans liars. It’s not that Republicans possess “invincible ignorance,” it’s that they are liars.

I think calling them liars is actually a charitable reading. It presumes that they are smart enough to recognize both what the truth is and how critical it is to their party’s political success and their friends’ financial success that the truth not get out.  They also know that the mainstream media will never actually call them liars, leaving regular Americans with the sneaking suspicion that something is wrong, but without the economics degree and charts possessed by Krugman.

Alternatively, if you don’t think Republicans are actually smart enough to be lying, rather than praising the grandeur of the their ignorance (after all, isn’t invincibility something we admire in super heroes?), why not just come out and say Republicans are Fucking Ignorant?

The modern Republican Party is not composed of serious people. They are not good faith operatives in government. They have a vested interest in government failing the American people and are working to ensure that failure occurs. Anyone pretending otherwise may be guilty of joining the Republicans in ignorance, though sadly will likely lack the guile possessed by the GOP.

Chuckles the Sensible Woodchuck

ChucklesTheSensibleWoodchuckLast month I mentioned a brilliant cartoon by Tom Tomorrow that effectively lampooned how the American right as bizarrely warped perceptions of the positions held by President Obama. In it, Tom pointed out the irony of the right portraying Obama as a crazed liberal, when in fact most of his actions show he is a centrist with some strongly rightwing views on executive power. At the time, Tom and I got into a back-and-forth on Twitter, as I viewed his toon as showing pretty clearly the same sort of dynamic from the left, wherein the President has taken positions that are similar or even more extreme than Bush on many issues, yet some Democratic supporters gloss over what this means. I tried to highlight the behavior on the left as similar laughable to what Tom described on the right.

I missed it at the time (I was on vacation), but a couple weeks ago, Tom did a new cartoon describing the similar phenomenon of liberal attitudes on Obama. Part of the point that Tom makes so well in this strip (and people like Glenn Greenwald have made repeatedly since early 2009) is that liberals cannot and should not change their assessments of a President’s actions dependent on what party that person belongs to and whether or not you voted for them. If you’re changing your views or apologizing for a politician who has not met your expectations, something is wrong.

The strip definitely worth a read and I hope/imagine the new character, “Chuckles” the Sensible Woodchuck, will be a recurring one in this strip.

Remember When Walking Away Was Immoral?

Well, shock of shocks, it turns out that not only is walking away from properties that are underwater something that businesses do all the time, but rich people are doing it with their homes. The New York Times has a long, detailed analysis of people who are underwater and just walking away from their homes rather than paying more and more. Of note:

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars is seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.

Though it is hard to prove, the CoreLogic data suggest that many of the well-to-do are purposely dumping their financially draining properties, just as they would any sour investment.

So, to put it a different way, homes with mortgages over one million dollars are 75% more likely to be delinquent than homes with values under one million dollars. And if mortgage delinquency is the big underlying cause of the popped housing bubble (see what happened when Wall Street started packaging subprime mortgage backed CDO tranches that couldn’t muster a Triple A rating together to get ones that magically did), then the blame cannot rightly be placed on poor people who took out mortgages they couldn’t pay to buy houses they couldn’t afford. As Duncan Black writes, “As is so often the case, the mainstream media got it completely wrong initially, painting it as a “subprime” crisis due to bad behavior by unworthy brown people.”

Beyond the straight economics of who and what caused this crisis, it’s important to note that there has been a strong push in the media and from the CNBC types to define strategic defaul as inherently immoral (even though businesses do it daily). The morality play targeted largely poor minorities and intrinsically sought to taint anyone who does decide to walk away with the tinge of culpability for nearly bringing down Wall Street. Of course, walking away is neither immoral, nor as we now see, limited to the subprime sector.

Alterman & 12 Dimensional Chess

At the end of a long, thoughtful and dare I say, Must Read piece in The Nation on the structural hurdles in American politics and the media that prevent a truly progressive presidency from being realized, Eric Alterman writes:

What’s more, one hypothesis—one I’m tempted to share—for the Obama administration’s willingness to compromise so extensively on the promises that candidate Obama made during the 2008 campaign would be that as president, he is playing for time. Obama is taking the best deal on the table today, but hopes and expects that once he is re-elected in 2012—a pretty strong bet, I’d say—he will build on the foundations laid during his first term to bring on the fundamental “change” that is not possible in today’s environment. This would be consistent with FDR’s strategy during his second term and makes a kind of sense when one considers the nature of the opposition he faces today and the likelihood that it will discredit itself following a takeover of one or both houses in 2010. For that strategy to make sense, however, 2013 will have to provide a more pregnant sense of progressive possibility than 2009 did, and that will take a great deal of work by the rest of us.

In effect, Alterman writes twenty some odd pages of thoughtful analysis as to why Obama is and will continue to be a serial compromiser and throws it out the window. Nothing in Alterman’s analysis suggests previously that Obama is forestalling meaningful change to remain electorally safe and then will act boldly once he is a lame duck. And there’s nothing in the Obama administration’s rhetoric in the first year and half of his term, nor the two year campaign which preceded it, wherein Obama has suggested that he’s simply holding fire until he gets past 2012.

Moreover, not only are we not seeing this plan put forth by Obama, there are no predictions that I know of that suggest that between now and January, 2013, the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate will increase nor that there will be meaningful filibuster reform. In fact, Alterman has already identified filibuster reform as a necessity for political change, while he bemoans that Senate leaders have not gotten behind it. So not only is Obama not out there saying he’s holding fire deliberately, but the congressional landscape he will need to actually open fire is likely to erode from where it was in January, 2009.

Alterman does a tremendous job explaining why realizing progressive change is hard. But it makes absolutely zero sense for any progressive to hold out hope that President Obama is in fact playing twelve dimensional chess and waiting an entire term to do Really Big Progressive Things. Rather than hold out any hope that President Obama will improve his behavior if re-elected, progressives need to focus on (1) improving the political and media landscapes that currently impede change and (2) forcing the Obama administration and Congressional leadership to govern as progressives now.

Um, Really?

Tim Geithner and a dubious talking point:

“We have a pro-growth agenda. Part of the agenda is growing exports. They’re central to our future. … [W]e’re going to be committed to making sure we’re that we’re expanding opportunities for American business everywhere. Now, this president understands deeply that governments don’t create jobs, businesses create jobs. And our job as government is try to make sure we’re creating the conditions that allow businesses to prosper so they can hire people back, get this economy going again.”

Government doesn’t create jobs? Um, really? Sadly, this looks like a bit of the party line coming out of the White House of late. In May, President Obama said:

“Now, government can’t create jobs, but it can help create the conditions for small businesses to grow and thrive and hire more workers,” President Barack Obama said yesterday as he urged Congress to take up new jobs legislation at an event honoring Small Business Owners of the Year. “Government can’t guarantee a company’s success, but it can knock down the barriers that prevent small-business owners from getting loans or investing in the future.”

Um, really? I’d really like the President to go to AIG or Goldman Sachs or Bear Stearns or GM and say, with a straight face, that “government can’t guarantee a company’s success.”

First, the government obviously can create jobs. Infrastructure improvement, school construction, hiring more civil servants to police the streets, stop fires from taking lives, or driving ambulances are all direct ways the government can create jobs. Hell, the Census has been the main driver of job creation over the last three months. So this is a talking point that tests well, but doesn’t have any basis in reality.

Beyond that, our economy is moving forward out of the collapse caused by Wall Street speculators solely because the federal government stepped in and prevented these firms from taking  any losses on their bad bets (bets which were also ignorant, uninformed and just plain stupid). That the Captains of Finance on Wall Street now have the temerity to complain that the administration is “anti-business” only speaks to the true extent to which these buffoons care nothing for the the country on whole and only value enriching themselves.

Government can create jobs. Government can guarantee private companies’ success. The only way out of this depression is unleashing the power of the government spending to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Of course, this can be done in a way that benefits small businesses, though we should be deeply skeptical of blanket tax cuts that will likely only benefit the richest of the rich.

What’s really frustrating is that a persuasive communicator could get past the binary that has been presented by conservatives for decades of Business vs Government. But this administration buys into this dichotomy whole-heartedly and, even worse, repeats patently wrong conservative talking points.

Look, I don’t care how deeply you bow before Wall Street and the GOP, they’re never going to like you guys. And while you pursue the support of people who slur you regardless of whatever you do for them, the economy gets worse and working Americans suffer ever more.

Exactly Right

Markos, in looking at polling that shows while Democrats are very unpopular in Ohio, Republicans are even worse, writes:

By all rights, Democrats should get crushed in November. They took office promising change, and their actions have been, at best, weak tea. Hostile corporatist interests have successfully watered down every bit of legislation passed. The job picture is dismal, with zero apparent urgency in DC to do something about it. Democrats have actually convinced themselves that voters care more about deficits than they do about job creation. We’re still myred in unwinnable wars. And remember, this was all with super majorities in both chambers of Congress.

So yeah, there’s plenty of motivation to punish Democrats for their ineffectiveness and timidity in the face of dramatic challenges.

But Republicans, as effective as they’ve been in blocking much of the change Democrats could’ve delivered, have utterly failed in presenting an alternative. And in that vacuum, voters can only assume the GOP agenda is exactly what they delivered in the eight years of the Bush Administration.

So one party is hated, the other one is seen as ineffective. What’s a voter to do? We’ll see, but it’s clear as this cycle has shaped up, that the biggest impediment to massive Republican gains this November is the GOP itself.

This is exactly right and a big part of why I highly doubt that, as of now, Democrats will suffer large-scale loses in November. The alternative is utter crap and the American people know it.

At War

Reading Glenn Greenwald’s latest posts on the war in Afghanistan and the bizarre place the rule of law currently stands in America (viz. no longer existing in a meaningful form), I can’t help but think that Hunter S. Thompson was 100% right and utterly prescient when he wrote this on the morning of September 12th, 2001 on ESPN.com:

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

It’s truly saddening that Thompson continues to be proved right, day in and day out, five years beyond the end of his life.

Grim’s Look At the White House

Ryan Grim’s piece yesterday on the role the political team in the White House has played in shaping the administration’s policy agenda over the objection of policy experts is pretty startling. It puts together a narrative that explains why the White House continues to eschew emphasizing job creation and stimulus spending, while favoring talk of deficits and cutting entitlements.

There’s clearly and rightly a concern in the White House about winning elections. What is remarkable, though, is the complete lack of recognition that good policies lead to good political results. Further, by pushing good policies and building public support for them, there’s an opening to make them politically even more valuable. That is, the White House has the ability to help make electing candidates that support their agenda easier.

What’s particularly bizarre is how wrong the White House political team is when it comes what the public sentiment is on the economy, jobs, and deficits. Grim notes:

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod told the New York Times recently that “it’s my job to report what the public mood is.” The public mood, said Axelrod, is anti-spending and anti-deficit and so the smart politics is to alleviate those concerns. “I’ve made the point that as a matter of policy and a matter of politics that we need to focus on this, and the president certainly agrees with that,” said Axelrod of the deficit hawkery that the administration has engaged in over the last several months.

But the public isn’t primarily concerned about deficits and spending! They’re most concerned about jobs and the economy! The polling is really clear on this and yet it doesn’t seem to penetrate the Beltway Bubble. In one of the most crucial moments of this administration’s political life, they are buying Republican and Blue Dog spin. The result will be conservative policies that present the administration and Democrats as nothing more than Republican Lite. That it is coming from this White House is depressing, but not surprising.

At the end of the day, I’m not sure why leaders of the Democratic Party think having 9.7% unemployment is acceptable or that it’s something that voters will forget when they go to vote in November. Even if the deficit was the top public concern (it isn’t), eliminating it by fiat tomorrow would not change that at least one in ten Americans do not have jobs. Someone who does not have a job isn’t going to have their rent or food bills paid by a lower deficit. Decisions about who to support politically will be made in light of the factors in peoples’ lives, not abstractions that aren’t lived day to day by unemployed or under-employed Americans. It’s hard to believe that the political team at the White House thinks otherwise, but then again, it isn’t.