Political Bloviation

Let’s review how we got to where we are:

1. Jan 2001 – Clinton leaves office with an annual budget surplus of $128 billion
2. May 2001 – Congress approves and Bush later signs a $1.35 trillion broad based tax cut that primarily reduces the burden on the wealthiest tax payers.
3. Sept 2001 – Terrorist hijack and crash airplanes into the World trade Center and Pentagon.
4. Oct 2001 – The war in Afghanistan begins.
5. Jan 2002 – Bush’s annual budget deficit $158 billion
6. Jan 2003 – Bush’s annual budget deficit $378 billion.
7. Mar 2003 – The war with Iraq begins.
8. May 2003 – Bush signs $350 billion tax cut, slashing tax rates on dividends and capital gains. Tax payers who don’t own a large pile of stocks or lack unrealized capital gains are out of luck.
9. Jan 2004 – Bush’s annual budget deficit $413 billion.
10. Jan 2005 – Bush’s annual budget deficit $318 billion.
11. Jan 2006 – Bush’s annual budget deficit $248 billion.
12. Jan 2007 – Bush’s annual budget deficit $161 billion.
13. Jan 2008 – Bush’s annual budget deficit $458 billion.
14. Jan 2009 – Bush’s annual budget deficit $1.413 tillion.
15. Jan 2010 – Health reform, which would help reduce the deficit is effectively derailed.
    

Budget data source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2011/assets/hist01z1.xls

So, Obama comes into office with the Detroit bailout and banking bailout already in place. He proposes a health care reform package that’s projected to cut the deficit by $73 billion over ten years. It’s a relatively modest amount, but certainly better than the current reality of ever increasing costs within the Medicare and Medicaid programs which are one of the drivers of increasing deficits.

The Senate, in it’s finite wisdom, decides that cost controls are bad and reduces or eliminates many of the cost control features in the bill, simply because they’re easy to attack. Compromises that weaken cost controls, consumer costs and coverage are made in a vain effort to win Republican support. They get one vote from Sen. Snowe of Maine. You have to love the smell of bipartisanship in the morning, it smells like victory. No that’s not right. Defeat? No that’s not it either. Maybe like an old woman from Maine

Additional budget projections come out showing what I’ve know for quite some time, we’re screwed if we continue down the path laid by the Bush administration. Deficit hawks suddenly appear out of the wood work, blaming Obama for massive deficits and calling for tax cuts at the same time! An ever gullible press amplifies the pronouncements of these self-styled budget hawks.

We are in the midst of a historic economic downturn. Right now is when the government should be running deficits to help get us through this. But, we have the very people who ran up enormous debts telling us that the federal government needs an austerity program to reduce spending. If the goal is to push the country into a new Great Depression, then that’s a fine plan. The GOP mismanaged the economy and the federal government to the point that the ability to do what’s need has been severely constrained by their prodigious ability to spend billions without bothering to actually raise the money thru taxes or spending reductions.

Exactly which party is the party of fiscal and economic sanity? Why does anyone with a grain of sense listen to the GOP?

Update:

Krugman had something similar in today’s NY Times about the sudden budget hubbub:

Why, then, all the hysteria? The answer is politics.

The main difference between last summer, when we were mostly (and appropriately) taking deficits in stride, and the current sense of panic is that deficit fear-mongering has become a key part of Republican political strategy, doing double duty: it damages President Obama’s image even as it cripples his policy agenda. And if the hypocrisy is breathtaking — politicians who voted for budget-busting tax cuts posing as apostles of fiscal rectitude, politicians demonizing attempts to rein in Medicare costs one day (death panels!), then denouncing excessive government spending the next — well, what else is new?

The trouble, however, is that it’s apparently hard for many people to tell the difference between cynical posturing and serious economic argument. And that is having tragic consequences.

OK, am I the only one who finds this to be an extra-constitutional abuse of power? Sen. Selby is holding all nominations up until $40 billion in earmarks for Alabama are passed. Where exactly does the Constitution say one dumbass from Alabama can hold up the entire Senate until he gets his bribe? The Senate rules need reform desperately. This is just abusing the system. This is from a member of the party that claims to be the voice of fiscal restraint.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary “blanket hold” on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

“While holds are frequent,” CongressDaily’s Dan Friedman and Megan Scully report (sub. req.), “Senate aides said a blanket hold represents a far more aggressive use of the power than is normal.” The magazine reported aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were the source of the news about Shelby’s blanket hold.

via Report: Shelby Blocks All Obama Nominations In The Senate Over AL Earmarks | TPMDC.

Matthew Yglesias » Judd Gregg, When Left to His Own Devices, Is an Orthodox Conservative Who Doesn’t Care About the Deficit.

h/t to Ezra Klein who points out that no one who voted for the programs that drive the deficit (Bush Era tax cuts, Medicare Part D, two unfunded wars, financial bail out and the regulatory environment that made the former necessary) can call themselves a deficit hawk now. It’s just smoke for the marks…

The good and bad of iPad pricing.

Mostly the bad IMHO. At $499 for the entry level model sans 3G they’re not doing themselves or their customers any favors. I really fail to see how this is a game changer unless it spawns cheaper open source  competitors.

I’m not an Apple hater, I  have an iPhone 3GS. It’s a decent enough device, but has significant weakness that can be found in any reasonable review. But I do like the idea of carrying a device that allows a little light e-mail, web browsing, music, gaming and, oh yes, a cell phone as well.

Why not front facing camera for video chat? No camera or video support at all? No peripheral connectivity, why not a mini-USB plug or two? No SD slot either. All it sports for connectivity is an Apple 30 pin connector which raises the prices of any accessories. On a happier note, no contract data plans is a refreshing idea, but sadly AT&T is the only US carrier that will have the new mini-SIM cards the device requires, at least for now.

Game changer? No. But it does capture some of what I might find useful, but not enough to out-weigh the value proposition offered by a netbook and open source OS, not yet.

White House Jumps On Unexpected Boost – Touts Obama’s Q&A With GOP | TPMDC.

Whatdayouknow? The public prefers the “leaders” of our country to act like grown-ups and talk to each other rather than act like elementary school recess bullies. Go figure.

Comedy writers everywhere rejoice:

(Apple Fanboys, put a sock in it and grow a sense of humor!)

The iPad Is A Comedy Gold Mine: Pics, Videos, Links, News.

You have to love a headline like that, lol. Did the dog lawyer up and issue a statement proclaiming innocence?

A hunter trying to retrieve duck decoys got a surprise when he was accidentally shot by his own dog.

The accident occurred Saturday when the female Labrador retriever stepped on her owner’s loaded shotgun, causing the safety to disengage and the weapon to fire, according to the Merced County Sheriff’s Department.

The 53-year-old victim was hit in the upper left back with No. 2 shot.

He was hunting with a partner near Los Banos in the area of Highway 152 when they decided to call it a day. The man got out of his hunting blind, set down his shotgun and went to retrieve some decoy ducks about 15 yards away. That's when his dog stepped on the shotgun.

The name and age of the dog were not available. The name of the dog’s owner was not made public. The injured man was treated at Los Banos Memorial Hospital and released.

via Hunter’s dog shoots him in the back; it was an ‘accident’ | McClatchy.

Remember boy and girls, unload the weapon when you’re done with it! Isn’t that like firearm safety 101?

My personal favorite Nobel Prize winning economist has a take on why Canada came out of the recent banking disaster relatively unscathed, while the US economy and financial institutions took a major beat down. It all comes back to the regulatory environment. The US decided, or rather the captains of industry in banking and a bi-partisan group of Washington enablers decided, that stodgy,boring depression era banking regulation was cramping their style. They needed the freedom to innovate us right into a huge recession while capturing obscene compensation for essentially producing nothing but obscure financial instruments designed to hide risk in the most profitable way possible.

Over the past decade the United States and Canada faced the same global environment. Both were confronted with the same flood of cheap goods and cheap money from Asia. Economists in both countries cheerfully declared that the era of severe recessions was over.

But when things fell apart, the consequences were very different here and there. In the United States, mortgage defaults soared, some major financial institutions collapsed, and others survived only thanks to huge government bailouts. In Canada, none of that happened. What did the Canadians do differently?

It wasn’t interest rate policy. Many commentators have blamed the Federal Reserve for the financial crisis, claiming that the Fed created a disastrous bubble by keeping interest rates too low for too long. But Canadian interest rates have tracked U.S. rates quite closely, so it seems that low rates aren’t enough by themselves to produce a financial crisis.

Canada’s experience also seems to refute the view, forcefully pushed by Paul Volcker, the formidable former Fed chairman, that the roots of our crisis lay in the scale and scope of our financial institutions — in the existence of banks that were “too big to fail.” For in Canada essentially all the banks are too big to fail: just five banking groups dominate the financial scene.

On the other hand, Canada’s experience does seem to support the views of people like Elizabeth Warren, the head of the Congressional panel overseeing the bank bailout, who place much of the blame for the crisis on failure to protect consumers from deceptive lending. Canada has an independent Financial Consumer Agency, and it has sharply restricted subprime-type lending.

Above all, Canada’s experience seems to support those who say that the way to keep banking safe is to keep it boring — that is, to limit the extent to which banks can take on risk. The United States used to have a boring banking system, but Reagan-era deregulation made things dangerously interesting. Canada, by contrast, has maintained a happy tedium.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Good and Boring – NYTimes.com.

I’ve said this many times and it bears repeating, markets are only as good as the framework they operate within. They are not magic. They may produce efficient allocation of resources under a specific set of conditions, but are prone to manipulation by powerful players and are prey to many forms of market failure. They can be gamed and abused in ways that put the larger economy at risk. Our banking disaster is a case study in regulatory capture, where the industries to be regulated came to control the agencies designed to oversee them.

Since we still have Ben Bernanke at the Fed, Tim Geitner at Treasury and Larry Summers as director of the National Economic Council, we have apparently learned nothing. These are people who were directly part of the the failure and came from Wall Street or were part of the effort to deregulate banking that was the part of the reason we are where we are today. We are:

1. Rewarding massive failures
2. Failing to learn from past mistakes
3. Listening to those who’s advice got us to where we are

Couple that with a recent political history of being institutionally incapable of making hard choices and the road ahead doesn’t look pretty. I’m not optimistic that we can do what’s necessary, particularly in light of the recent Supreme Court decision to strike down campaign finance laws designed to limit corporate influence in federal elections.  Look for Wall Street to dump money into and provide advertising support for Congressional candidates who oppose new regulation on banks. They’ll probably use some Orwellian named astroturf front goups with names like “Citizens for Responsible Banking”. Candidates might mouth the right words in front of cameras, but who do you think they’ll listen to? The public or those who have the power to ensure they maintain their position of privilege and power in Washington?

Maybe there should be a truth in advertising law for front goups and the names they chose. Would you believe an ad if it was paid for by “Billionaires for Bank Failures” or “Citizens for Future Taxpayer Bank Bail Outs”? While we’re at it can we re-name the TARP (Toxic Asset Relief Program) and call it something more appropriate, like BARF (Bad Asset Relief Fund). That’s much more evocative of how it makes me feel.

Krugman is not happy about Obama’s non-defense discretionary spending freeze. I agree that it’s counter-productive in the midst of the biggest downturn in since WWII to talk about cutting spending when that spending is what’s standing between us and another great depression. It’s also counter-productive to adopt the rhetoric of the right’s worst demagogues. If congressional republicans were truly interested in cutting the deficit, why weren’t they squawking during the last 8 years when they, abetted by Bush, were digging this hole?

The answer, presumably, is that Mr. Obama’s advisers believed he could score some political points by doing the deficit-peacock strut. I think they were wrong, that he did himself more harm than good. Either way, however, the fact that anyone thought such a dumb policy idea was politically smart is bad news because it’s an indication of the extent to which we’re failing to come to grips with our economic and fiscal problems.

The nature of America’s troubles is easy to state. We’re in the aftermath of a severe financial crisis, which has led to mass job destruction. The only thing that’s keeping us from sliding into a second Great Depression is deficit spending. And right now we need more of that deficit spending because millions of American lives are being blighted by high unemployment, and the government should be doing everything it can to bring unemployment down.

via Op-Ed Columnist – March of the Peacocks – NYTimes.com.

I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning. Smells like… irony.

Sadly, No! » Awesomest Teh Schadenfreude EVAR!!!!1!.

The FBI, alleging a plot to wiretap Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in downtown New Orleans, arrested four people Monday, including James O’Keefe, a conservative filmmaker whose undercover videos at ACORN field offices severely damaged the advocacy group’s credibility.

Obama pivots to the right and adopts a faux spending freeze. Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money comments:

…Democrats continue to play the sucker, believing that they have to “fiscally responsible” so that Republicans can take a better fiscal picture and piss it all away on upper-class cuts. The most charitable construction, reflected in a couple of Matt’s scenarios, is that he’s trying to expose “deficit hawks” on both sides of the aisle as frauds. The obvious problem is that the actions of Bayh and Conrad, and 6 years of united Republican rule, have already demonstrated that they’re complete frauds. It doesn’t matter. To the Fried Hiatts who care about this stuff being a “deficit hawk” is about inflicting pain on Democratic constituencies, not reducing the deficit.

via Lawyers, Guns and Money: The Hoover Gambit: More Reviews In.

First we had Pat Roberson’s much quoted statement saying that Haiti suffers from natural disasters because they “made a past with the devil”. Now we have Hugo Chavez trying to up the ante on stupid:

Chavez says US ‘weapon’ caused Haiti quake.

He believes that the US caused the earthquake using some sort of seismic super weapon. Why anyone would think the US would want another hot spot to send troops to is beyond me. I guess the belief is we had a few hundred million laying around and no other pressing military engagements to deal with.

YouTube – Balls Beer for Health Care Reform, the Full Version.

What democrats desperately need, Balls!

Happy birthday. I love you and I miss you sis…

Krugman puts a stake in the ground on HCR:

Op-Ed Columnist – Do the Right Thing – NYTimes.com.

A message to House Democrats: This is your moment of truth. You can do the right thing and pass the Senate health care bill. Or you can look for an easy way out, make excuses and fail the test of history.

Republican Opposition to Obama Plan for Deficit Panel – NYTimes.com.

Well of course they oppose a panel for deficit reduction, they created it. It came from unfunded tax cuts and benefit increases (think Medicare Part D), coupled with two unfunded foreign wars. They see Democrats retreating on HCR and are pressing their advantage. Democrats still lack leadership to create a sustained, disciplined message or even articulate goals. Obama needs to get his hands dirty on the poltical side if he ever wants to get anything done.

Since his election Obama seems to want to remain above the fray and do rational policy from the White House. Great policy means nothing if you lack the will to implement it politically. Basic ideas are sound, but implementation sucks! The willingness to concede ground for no advantage seem tone-deaf. They managed to do less with a greater majority than Bush ever had. Then they managed to lose the Kenndey Senate seat in Mass. in a massive display of political incompetence, both locally and nationally. A year in and Obama still doesn’t seem to understand the job or how to be effective in it. We don’t have a lot of time and he’s blowing his biggest window of opportunity to get things done. What a waste…

“The appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy,” the Supreme Court said

via Ezra Klein – Goldman/Exxon 2012.

They are correct, the electorate had already lost faith in democracy.

Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate

The Village Voice nails it. See the GOP won, let’s all just give up and go home now.

They elaborate:

The lesson, as always, is that when Democrats win, they lose, and when they lose, they are obliterated.

The Supreme Court knocks down limits on campaign contributions allowing special interests to further savage the democratic process. Ain’t that grand?

Further reading here: Justices Overturn Key Campaign Limits

If we’re determined to treat corporation the same as natural persons, then they need responsibilities to go along with all those rights. Perhaps the first should be a sense of responsibility for the public good that you so greedily feed from? How about basic morality? All that corporations are responsible for now is to turn a profit for investors, nothing else. Until that changes substantially, I think they have more than enough rights already.

Kevin Drum takes on the notion that there are Republican votes to be had for a more conservative approach to HCR:

This fantasy that there are Republican votes for a more moderate bill really needs to end. There are no Republican votes for healthcare reform, no matter how moderate or conservative it is. They’re opposed to healthcare reform. They’ve always been opposed to healthcare reform. They’e Republicans! There’s nothing wrong with them being opposed to healthcare reform. And they are. Full stop.

Going down this path would be dangerously delusional. It would waste time, piss off voters even more, and accomplish nothing. It's time for House liberals, labor unions, lefty activists, Blue Dogs, Democratic pro-lifers, and fence-sitting centrists to all face reality: the only way to pass healthcare reform of any kind is for the House to pass the Senate bill as is and then work to improve it later during the budget reconciliation process. It's not perfect, but it will work. Nothing else will.

via Facing Reality | Mother Jones.

I think he’s dead on, pass the Senate version of HRC and fix what you can in reconciliation and with future legislation. There’s really no point or percentage in it for Democrats to abandon the entire project when the goal line is literally in sight. They’ll lose a considerable amount of support from progressives and the Democrats can’t win based on the president’s ever waning popularity or his leadership.

Obama has not led on any of this. He’s been the careful centrist he always was.  Let’s not get all wobbly over the loss of one seat in the Senate, that’s 1% of 1/2 the legislative branch, which is 1/3 of the 3 branches of government (to paraphrase last night’s Daily Show).

As for the intra-party food fight over who’s to blame for Coakley’s loss of what should have been an easy win, there’s plenty to go around. She was an awful candidate, but no worse than many an empty suit currently existing in Congress (editors note, I considered “working” instead of “existing”, but that seemed to bit of a stretch). The national part didn’t seem to pay any attention to the special election in Mass. until the final week and that was just too little and waaay too late. The president didn’t do much until the last minute either. Plus, there was absolutely no message prepared in case of a lose, just a lot of surprised people winging it. They’ve yet to recover balance.