Where did the federal deficit come from?

The Federal Government is now running massive deficits, and is expected to do so for several years into the future. Why is this the case, and how much of it is the responsibility of the Obama administration which took over the reins of power in January of this year? The New York Times has investigated this and reported. Here are some key excerpts from that report.

There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years.

The first is that President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested.

The New York Times analyzed Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II. This debt will constrain the country’s choices for years and could end up doing serious economic damage if foreign lenders become unwilling to finance it.

[...]

The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.

You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.

The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.

About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.

Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.

About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.

If the analysis is extended further into the future, well beyond 2012, the Obama agenda accounts for only a slightly higher share of the projected deficits.

[...]

The solution, though, is no mystery. It will involve some combination of tax increases and spending cuts. And it won’t be limited to pay-as-you-go rules, tax increases on somebody else, or a crackdown on waste, fraud and abuse. Your taxes will probably go up, and some government programs you favor will become less generous.

The Bush administration was terribly profligate with the government's money and the result is that the taxpayers are going to get caught holding the stick. It's really that simple.

What won't be simple will be HOW we dig out of the mess the Republicans have left behind. Two wars and a recession on top of failure to manage government resources has left a horrible residue after eight years. Bush came in and spent money like a drunken sailor in a foreign port. But accountants and tax collectors do not live in the fantasy alternate universe that Rupert Murdoch is so respected for creating on FOX "News" Neither do the rest of us, as is becoming rapidly more clear. The complaints are coming from people who felt happy, war and protected there, but are now being evicted for not paying the rent.

It's long past time for the evictions. It'll be interesting to see what form the Republican Party takes, if any, once the necessary move back to reality is accepted.

Conservative insanity over Mrs. Sotomayor

feministing.com has a screen shot of the cover of National Review. The commentary gets it exactly right.

Those NR people are out of their minds. Since as far as I know National Review has NEVER made a profit, you have to wonder what kind of wealthy funder(s) is hiring those people writing there and what their goal is. Deep pockets and a strong desire to destroy America as a middle class nation, but you have to wonder why?

My bet is that whoever it is lives on inherited wealth, and fears ever having to go to work to replace it. Thus they see all taxes, especially the inheritance tax, as a threat to themselves, their family, and their plutocratic class. That is (again, my hypothesis) true for most of the funders of the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation.

There are two threads, though. The second one is religious. That's why Rev. Moon subsidizes the Washington Times and someone subsidizes the Discovery Institute.

As for FOX News and the Weekly standard owned by Rupert Murdoch, I am not sure what his motivation and psychological drivers are. He did inherit his original stake but he built it to the world-wide empire it is on his own. Great wealth itself may be corrupting, not just inherited great wealth. Is it paranoia? Dunno.

Grasping for economic hope when things are bad

Peter S. Goodman and Jack Healy of the New York Times try to find some ray of positive signs in the new monthly jobs report. It's the kind of economic happy talk from the media I have been objecting to since everyone was saying that the only economic problems were in the mortgage industry and that the U.S. economy would begin to recover in six months. This was late 2007 and early 2008.

Economists* described the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report, released Friday, as an unambiguous sign of improvement, yet also clear evidence of broadening national distress, as millions of households grapple with joblessness and lost working hours.

The fact that a report showing the highest unemployment rate in more than a quarter-century was embraced optimistically testified to the stark fears over the economy in recent months.
[Underlining mine
* note that it is unnamed Economists - Editor]

Atrios points out that

the fact remains that that national distress is still broadening and will almost certainly do so for some time. Unemployment is higher than projections used for the adverse case of the stress tests, and is going to continue to rise, most likely for the next several months if not the rest of the year. States and local governments are cutting spending, hours, and jobs, and another big wave of foreclosures is going to hit the residential market even as commercial real estate is imploding.

Goodman and Healy go on to state:

Home prices appear to have hit bottom in some areas of the country, but construction remains weak. The auto industry and retailing remain in distress. The job market is likely to remain in the doldrums for many months, Mr. Barbera said.

A home foreclosure crisis is growing, thus far unchecked by an Obama administration program aimed at stemming the problem. As more foreclosed properties land on markets, real estate prices are falling further, adding to the losses and uncertainties confronting banks.

[...]

Now, as paychecks disappear and home prices fall, people are increasingly inclined to save — a rough transition in a country in which consumer spending makes up roughly 70 percent of economic activity.

“People are not going to be moving forward based on housing wealth, and they’re not going to be taking on debt,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “They’ve got to get wage growth.”

Yet wage growth has been stagnating even as gasoline and medical costs rise, putting pressure on household finances. Average hourly wages were 3.1 percent higher last month than they were in May 2008, but the month-to-month increases in April and May were just 0.1 percent, to a seasonally adjusted $18.54, from $18.52, according to the Labor Department. Wages for manufacturing workers fell 0.1 percent.

The jobs report presented a statistical puzzle. After shedding an average of more than 700,000 jobs each month during the first quarter, the economy lost 504,000 jobs in April, according to revised data, and the number was smaller still in May. Yet the unemployment rate leapt from an already high 8.9 percent, reinforcing fears it would reach double digits.

[...]

Manufacturers cut 156,000 jobs in May, with worse on the way: General Motors announced plans this week to close or idle 14 American plants, imperiling as many as 20,000 workers.

Construction jobs fell by 59,000, though that was a marked improvement from just a month ago, when employment in that industry sank by 108,000 jobs.

Professional and business services shed 51,000 jobs, though that represented a slower pace of losses than in recent months. Health care remained a rare bright spot, adding 23,500 jobs. Restaurants and bars added nearly 9,000 jobs.

The economy has lost six million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, and some economists anticipate two million more to come. Even after the economy resumes growth — perhaps later this year — businesses will probably be conservative, cognizant that credit is relatively tight, and consumers will be inclined to save. Instead of hiring full-time workers, many may rely on temporary employees or add hours for existing employees.

“The jobless rate is going to continue to rise,” said Bernard Baumohl, managing director of the Economic Outlook Group. “It’s a dismal job market. It’s going to remain awful easily for the balance of this year. Even when the economy begins to recover, we might be witnessing the mother of all jobless recoveries.”

The one month report of only fewer jobs being lost is far from being "an unambiguous sign of improvement." I'd say most of us need not plan on buying a home or new car anytime in the near future. Probably not in 2010 at all. If we are lucky things will start to turn around by early 2011, but it won't be a strong turnaround. There is too much still structurally wrong with the economy.

More than likely the bankers realize that. That's why they haven't increased lending much.

Girding for the health care fight to come

In the House, Pelosi is setting up for the fight to pass health care. Where as recently as January the major health care supporters were not meeting with each other or with outsiders, this has changed. Now they are holding roundtables and hearings. Speaker Pelosi has gotten behind the effort to organize and pass health care this year, and it shows. According to Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic:

The three committees with jurisdiction--Energy and Commerce, Education and Labor, Ways and Means--are working together at both the staff and membership levels. They say they will work together on passing one, unified bill--and doing so by July 31, assuming the Senate can pass its bill by then as well. (If not, I'm told, the House will slow things down, figuring it makes no sense to create a target for critics before the Senate has passed its version.)

But it's not without opposition, even this early.

Last week, the Blue Dogs protested that they weren't having enough influence over the process. Bigger fights will erupt, perhaps in the very near future, particularly given the huge issues still to be decided--how to pay for reform, how to build a public plan, how to assist people struggling to afford coverage, and so on.

But the House has already taken this common effort farther than it did in 1994. Credit the favorable political environment and a more chastened Democratic caucus. Credit, too, the committee chairmen and their staffs, who are working overtime to produce legislation this summer. (That's particularly true in Henry Waxman's office, where they're also cranking out a climate change bill.) But don't forget to credit the leadership, starting with Pelosi.

Cohn's article may look like a Paean to Nancy Pelosi, but if health care gets passed this year then it is going to be as much the responsibility Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as it is of Barack Obama. Obama is responsible for the public opinion; Reid and Pelosi are responsible for 99 and 434 members of their respective Houses. It's going to take all three.

Cheney's AEI speech today: "it's Torquemada or 1984 but only after getting rescripted by Mel Brooks. "

Josh Marshall comments on Dick Cheney's upcoming well-announced speech at the American Enterprise Institute today.

"This is someone who not only organized and seemingly directed a policy of state-sponsored torture. He did it in large part to get people to admit to crankish conspiracy theories he got taken in by by a crew of think-tank jockeys in DC whose theories most even half way sensible people treated as punch lines of jokes. So it's Torquemada or 1984 but only after getting rescripted by Mel Brooks.

This is an extremely gullible man who has just come off being the driving ideological force in an administration that most people can already see produced more fiascos and titanic, self-inflicted goofs than possibly any in our entire history. By any standard the guy is a monumental failure -- and not one whose mistakes stem in some Lyndon Johnson fashion from tragic overreach, but just a fool who damaged his country through his own gullibility, paranoia and bad judgment. Whatever else you can say about the Cheney story it ain't Shakespearean."

If you disagree with this analysis, then you haven't read Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency by Barton Gellman>

The great Republican defender of torture as American government policy is, in fact, scared to death that he will be blamed for using torture to get fake confessions to support is ridiculous belief that Sadam Hussein and al Qaeda were working together, when in fact they were deadly enemies. But in particular is is now quite clear that Ahmed Chalabi, probably working as an agent of Iranian Intelligence, ran an operation to get Cheney and other top Republicans to commit to attacking Iran's deadly enemy, Iraq. It worked.

Sinceso much of the media was extremely complicit in supporting Cheney's idiocy, it is no surprise that the media is now hyping the sick, cranky old man's idiotic statements with great publicity.

The disaster that is the current Republican party

It is common knowledge that as of the Republican Presidential Primary, the movement conservatives could not get the evangelical conservatives to get on board with either Mitt Romney or with John McCain. Both were conservatives, but neither was acceptable to the social conservatives. The excitement when Sarah Palin was invited to join the McCain ticket was purely among the social conservatives. The fact that she was and remains a wigged out fundamentalist who wants to set America up with a literal reading of the Bible as the fundamental law, overriding the Constitution when necessary, certainly turned off the rest of the conservatives. And that's all INSIDE the Republican party. The Independents are tending very much towards the Democrats.

So the Republican Congressional leaders are trying to mollify the radical conservative base just to keep their jobs. The result is that the Republican continue to lose the weaker seats. It's going to keep going. The head of the RNCC, John Cornyn, has said that the Senate Republicans will not keep the current 40 seats after the 2010 election.

Texas Senator Hutchinson is expected to resign her seat this fall to run for Texas Governor. Here seat will be competitive for the first time in nearly two decades. Arlene Specter has been forced out of the Republican Party by a strong movement conservative, Toomey, who was going to run against him in the Republican Primary in 2010, and although Specter could win the general election, he would have lost the Republican primary.

Now we get Utah Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman who had been considering running for President in 2012 who has resigned as Governor to take the job as Ambassador to China for Democratic President Obama. He is a highly competent and experienced conservative who could have attracted Independents and even some conservative Democrats if he had run for President as a Republican. For him to abandon that shot at the Presidency means he has given up on the radical conservative Republican Party.

There's more, of course. But that should be enough to demonstrate that the National Republican Party is shrinking and still headed downward. It is not going to recover before the next election, and probably not the 2012 election. After that, if the Republican base will allow new more moderate leadership to take over, then the Republicans might begin to recover. But that change in the attitudes of the base is unlikely anytime soon.

America just may begin to recover from the crazies who have been running so much of the federal government since Reagan was elected. Maybe. But it's going to be a slow project even now.

Waldman asks the right questions about Cheney's torture efforts

David Waldman properly describes the torture effort directed by Dick Cheney. This is based on the recent revelations from McClatchy News and from Lawrence Wilkerson.




We now know that the so-called "ticking time-bomb" scenario did not occur. What did occur is that Dick Cheney used his position as Vice President to direct the invasion of Iraq, a nation which was no real threat to the U.S. and which had no capability to threaten the U.S. Cheney's real reasons for directing the invasion of Iraq are not known, unless perhaps it was a symptom of his paranoia.

Cheney could do this because he was the Vice President in a White House in which the person occupying the office of President permitted him to run anything he wanted in the federal government without oversight. He collected many of his acolytes onto the White House staff and ran the White House Iraq Group, pushing the propaganda effort that worked to justify the invasion of Iraq.

It is well known that Bush had no knowledge of national security matters and deferred to Cheney's widely acknowledged greater expertise. Bush himself concealed his lack of knowledge of government operations and his total lack of interest in them behind a wall of supposedly setting goals and then delegating their achievement to subordinates. Apparently no one ever got it through to him as he was handed his Harvard MBA (based on who is father was) that the manager who delegates in that manner has to set goals and hold the subordinates to their achievement with close oversight. Bush certainly never did that. He let Cheney run wild. For that failure, Bush is a failed President.

But for his successful efforts to invade an non-threatening country and then to try to direct the torture of prisoners to obtain confessions to justify that illegal invasion, Dick Cheney is a war criminal.

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Addendum 10:45am
How do we know that the torture was used to justify the war crime after the fact? Dick Cheney knows or should know the truth about torture, which Bob Cesca states very clearly:

"According to multiple accounts and experts, the efficacy of torture is limited to ascertaining what the torturer wants to hear -- rather than information that's actually true. "

Given that fact, the only possible reason for torturing prisoners is to obtain false confessions to justify the idiocy of invading Iraq when the real enemy was al Qaeda, an enemy of Saddam Hussein.

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Addendum II 12:45 pm
Batocchio has written an extremely good analysis of the torture situation and provides links to many good resources.

Re: Pelosi torture briefing - so what?

There's been a lot of talk, primarily by right-wingers who want to defend their support of the use of torture on captives, that then minority leader Nancy Pelosi was somehow briefed that the CIA was using maybe planned to use enhanced questioning techniques to get Intelligence about terrorists and proposed terrorism acts.

Vicki Divoll [*], in an OpEd published in the New York Times, points out that there is no legally constituted body called "The Gang of Four" to begin with. Even assuming that the CIA did actually honestly brief Rep. Pelosi about the proposed use of waterboarding (it's not at all certain that they did) she was restricted from telling any of her colleagues about it. What was she supposed to do with the information if it was actually given to her?

The Constitution gives "...aggregate, not individual, powers to the legislative branch." The minority leader is relatively powerless in the first place. With the restrictions placed on communicating any information actually provided to any other member of Congress, there was nothing she could have done.

I'd also point out that there is no way of showing that the CIA actually told her anything. The so-called memo does not have any credibility since the CIA does not present the person who wrote it and placed it in the files. That could easily have been done last week, and with the CIA very invested in deflecting blame from themselves and also with the CIA populated by people whose normal job description includes large measures lying to the various publics to manipulate political responses, they are innately under suspicion. The fact that Sen. Mel Martinez also says he was not briefed on the use of actual torture techniques adds credibility to Rep. Nancy Pelosi's denial that she was briefed.

But the while the fact that Nancy Pelosi was briefed in a timely manner on the use of torture techniques by the CIA is very much in doubt, that doesn't matter. With the restrictions on her communication to other in Congress even if she was briefed, there was nothing she had any power to do with the information. The whole issue is right-wing deflection of blame from anyone who actually is responsible to someone else who could not have been responsible.

The real question is whether there was a crime committed (almost certain) and if so, who might be prosecuted for such a crime (less certain.)

A second and perhaps even more important question, as become whether Dick Cheney and his evil twin, David Addington, were actually attempting to justify the then proposed invasion of Iraq by torturing false confessions that purported to prove a link between Sadaam Hussein and al Qaeda. It is now well-known that torture does not elicit useful Intelligence. It instead forces the victim of torture to say whatever the torturer wants to hear just to make the torture stop. So while torture is effectively useless as an Intelligence-gathering tool, it is excellent for creating false confessions that can be used to justify actions the torturer wants the public to support.

It now appears that Dick Cheney's defense of torture as a way of gathering Intelligence is actually a cover-up of his office's pressure to torture confessions that justified Cheney's belief that Sadaam was allied with al Qaeda and had nuclear weapons. That makes the torture of prisoners at his clear direction the equivalent of the discredited "Italian Letter" that purported to show that Iraq was getting Yellow cake unranium to build nukes. In fact, the next question that should be revived was whether Ahmed Chalibi was the point-man who the Iranians used to run a highly successful Intelligence scam on Dick Cheney and his right-wing allies like the columnists/propagandists Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer.

Compared to all these real questions, the idea that because Nancy Pelosi might have been briefed on the CIA's use of torture techniques is nothing more than an irrelevant distraction. It is pure right-wing propaganda designed and pushed to prevent the real criminals from being identified and punished.

[*] Vicki Divoli is former CIA CTC deputy general counsel. She knows what she is talking about.

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Laura Rozen has a very good analysis of all the events that have led to the current attacks on Nancy Pelosi and to her spirited pushback. The entire briefing process and its misuse and the lies apparently told by the CIA go back to the office of the Vice President and Dick Cheney.

Here's a description of insanity

Ian Welsh writes about the current insanity. His article was first published in January 2008, and it is just as true today.

A major difference between the Democrats and the Republicans

Individual politicians desire power, and often take short-cuts to get it. That is a characteristic of politicians, not one that can be attributed to any single political party. What CAN be differentiated between parties is how the party deals with their politician members who are caught taking bribes or selling the services of their offices for personal gain.

Steve Benen points out that the Democrats have found that the Democratic governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, was attempting to sell his appointment to the recently opened Illinois Senate seat, and the Democrats threw him under the bus.

The Republicans have taken a completely different tack with both Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (as guilty of taking bribes as O.J. was guilty of murder) and Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, currently under investigation for taking vast sums of money under the table to support his lifestyle. The Republican approach is to defend these crooks and keep them in government as long as possible.

I choose the Democratic approach, thank you, though I recognize with regret that particularly at the state level the Democrats unfortunately also protect some of their own crooks.

Local governments are a completely different story, of course.

Wilkerson shoots down Cheney's lies

Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson was listening as Dick Cheney shot off his mouth lying about how successful the Cheney-Bush administration was in protecting American lives during seven-and-on-half years after they stupidly allowed the 9-11 terrorists to kill over 3000 Americans. So Col. Wilkerson has written his response. Here it is, along with a short video of Cheney's on-TV statement which prompted it.

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Addendum 5/15/2009 8:48pm
Joe Conason writes about how torture was used to justify the war in Iraq. It was not used to warn of upcoming terrorist activities. I was used to invent evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida.

The Republican Party of "No!"

The Republicans try to make noises like they are working for the American public and to advance their ideology, but they are now just the party of "No!" They demand that government, facing the greatest economic crisis in 70 years, do absolutely nothing.

Want proof? Here is how Brian Beutler describes the Republican Senate behavior after Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) let slip the Republican strategy:

In a 99-seat Senate, 40 votes isn't nearly enough to "get anything done." Not at all. It is rather the bare minimum necessary to make sure nothing gets done. And it explains why so many Republican senators will routinely vote against cloture on major Democratic agenda items. It's called a filibuster--and it isn't typically thought of as way to "get stuff done."

You'll seldom hear Republicans admit that this is their legislative strategy--even though it manifestly is their legislative strategy--but sometimes obvious and uncomfortable truths are hard to deny, and slip out accidentally. And it's an important truth.

This strategy is crucial to understanding the GOP's gambit in the Minnesota Senate race. When that issue is decided, the Senate will have 100 members, and if Franken is declared the winner (as is widely expected) the Republicans' 40 votes will no longer be enough on their own to mount a filibuster.

As destructive as the conservative Republicans have been in the last thirty years, they have been mostly removed from real power, but they still hang on to enough nationally to be very destructive. They are clearly trying to do as much destruction to America as they can before they are completely forced out.

Devastating criticism of Senate Minority Leader McConnell,

Who do you think said this about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell from the state of Kentucky?

“Good God, he wants to run everybody,” ...

“Do you realize that under our dynamic leadership of our leader, we have gone from 55 and probably to 40 (Senate seats) in two election cycles, and if the tea leaves that I read are correct, we will wind up with about 36 after this election cycle.

So if leadership means anything, it means you don’t lose … approximately 19 seats in three election cycles with good leadership.”

This came from Senate McConnell's fellow Kentucky Senator and fellow Republican Jim Bunning.

You know the Republican Party is in a crisis when Republicans are sniping at their fellow Republicans to the media this way. That's especially true when the comment is as accurate as this one was.

One other leader of the current Republican Party should also take responsibility. That is Rush Limbaugh, the one clear and unequivocal leader the Republicans generally now acknowledge and to whom all the Republican Congressional leaders defer.

The Leninist-style right-wing plot to destroy Social Security

Want to understand the reasons for the continual drumbeat of attacks pushing the fake crisis in Social Security? Digby shows how the right-wingers have been undermining the political support for the program. It is a well-organized and well-funded plan by conservatives and libertarians.

Obama is right to be reluctant to investigate Bush admin officials and the torture issue

I am a strong proponent of the Rule of Law as a basic element of the American nation, since without the Rule of Law the Constitution itself, the basis of all American law, is nothing by a fanciful piece of fiction. So I strongly support investigation of the high government officials and prosecution when necessary. No one is above the law. Ever. That is an absolute necessity in America if America is to continue to exist as a democratic form of nation.

That said, Harry Truman considered the need for national health care to be critical back in 1948. It was seriously discussed when Social Security was passed in the 30's. It's been two generations now, and the need has only gotten much worse in the intervening years of conservative obstruction and delay. I also see what appears to me to be a concerted effort by Obama and his administration to clear the decks of anything and everything that would interfere with passing universal national health care in some form this year.

Obama is gathering allies and neutralizing opponents at every step of his administration, and I'd guess that even includes the sacrifice of some things he otherwise considers very, very important. To me that appears a likely explanation for many of the decisions, actions and statements that Obama has been making which have infuriated Progressives. One of those items is, I think, Obama's reluctance to be seen supporting investigation and the potential prosecution of Bush/Cheney officials for their crimes in office. I think that every action, decision and statement out of the Obama administration has to be considered in the light of the question of how it will effect Obama's effort to pass universal health care by October of this year.

My guess is that the Obama effort to avoid a divisive battle over investigating and possible prosecution of Bush/Cheney administration officials is one of the otherwise extremely important things that is being sacrificed to get the health care bill passed. Any such prosecutions will unavoidably be highly divisive and will completely consume the media, sucking wind out of the health care issue. Prosecutions of ex-government officials is "sexy" and easy reporting to the media, just as dead blond girls or the J.R. murder trial are. Health care legislation is not similarly easy to cover. Obama has a unique opportunity to pass health care at long last, and the investigation/prosecution issue threatens that greatly.

That's the kind of balancing act that Presidents must perform. There are two absolutely critical issues that have to be dealt with, and to deal with either means sacrificing the other. If I'm right, then Obama's choice of putting all his effort into the health care fight is, I'd say, the correct decision. Not one I like and not a pretty choice, but certainly the one that I think needs to be made for the long term good of America.

Here's probably why McKiernan has been relieved in Afghanistan

The change in commanders in Afghanistan is probably very good. It should sharply increase our chances of succeeding in what America wants to have happen there. Success is possible, but it may not be easily recognized as "winning."

As one who well remembers the Vietnam war, having been commissioned into the Army then and having studied why we got into it in the first place, the real problem that led to the build-up to half a million troops was Gen Westmoreland. He was a conventional war General fighting an unconventional war, and his solution was - more troops - more troops. The book and movie "We were soldiers..." and the battle it depicted showed the genesis of his obsession. America won that one battle of attrition. But the strategy it led to caused us to lose the war.

Westie mousetrapped LBJ by demanding a massive increase in troop strength that allowed him to fight a war of attrition against the Victor Charlie. Westie's timing was perfect. It was when LBJ wanted to pass Medicare and the Civil Rights Bill. Had he not given Westie his troops, LBJ knew that the conservatives would have shut down the Congress and LBJ would have passed zilch. So Lyndon gave Westie his troops to pass his bills. Lyndon knew we couldn't win in Vietnam when he did it.

Shift forward to the Afghanistan conflict. Again, a conventional general fighting an asymmetric war, and his solution has been what? More troops. Conventional war generals don't like the strange apparent lack of discipline of Special Forces. They never have, as the Rangers will tell us from WW II.

Bringing in the Special Forces Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal is critical to winning in Afghanistan. There is no alternative to winning there, as failure in Afghanistan puts the Pakistani nukes at risk. Leaving a conventional forces general in command is too great a risk to accept

The uselessness of what passes for broadcast news

Jon Taplin wrote Signal To Noise Ratio. It starts:

Even though most of my time is spent writing a book, I've been wondering why I'm blogging less, reading blogs less, watching less cable news and listening to less talk radio and more music. I've come to the conclusion that the whole mediasphere signal-to-noise ratio has been out of whack since the election in November. 2008 was such an historic year for news with a groundbreaking election contest vying for attention with a once in a generation economic collapse. For the managers of media outlets to try to sustain that intensity and interest level past mid November was a fools errand. But that doesn't mean they didn't try.

[...]

Maybe we don't need four hundred channels of TV. Maybe we don't need 346 million blogs. Maybe the careful (and expensive) editing of the New York Times and The New Yorker actually count for something.

I get an interesting insight from Taplin's article.

I am online looking for information, insight and some degree of understanding of the communities I live in, but what I am getting is useless "news." What passes for broadcast "news" today is in fact faux news designed to fill an ever-expanding and inadequately indexed (useless?) news hole. That total news hole is already much larger than anything that will ever be useful to me. The concept of "signal-to-noise" ratio on the broadcast media is the perfect catalyst for understanding. My surprise is that there appears to be such a massive distinction between what passes for "news" and actual useful and informative "information."

My utter disgust at the crap provided by useless "reality" shows that do nothing but offer a cheap product for the business organizations that broadcast uninformative and useless data is high. They are time-wasters intended to deliver ignorant passive and frightened consumers who know nothing except how to buy - buy -buy to advertisers. It saddens me that so many people actually waste their valuable time searching for some form of entertainment in the crap that is broadcast on TV. That's not surprising, though, in a society in which most people are trained to function as ignorant and isolated economic consumers rather than as intelligent actors working in a community of similar people.

The result of the insight is that spending a lot of time attempting to "consume" what is in fact faux news and entertainment is a fool's errand. It is a trap designed for passive and ignorant consumers who provide markets for big businesses. People need community with a lot of organized, useful information, with education and perhaps even insight than they need to simply be consumers of goods and services someone else produces. Broadcast news had the opportunity to provide people with a lot of what they needed, and it abdicated that opportunity because entertainment and faux news presented greater financial profit and political power.

Maybe we really don't need all that broadcasting power. All we really need is some good editors and investigative reporters and scientists working diligently at explaining what is really happening. If so, we damned sure aren't getting it. The existing conceptual "free and unregulated market" as distorted by power-hungry individuals and religious leaders^* certainly isn't providing what we need.

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^* An explanation of my views of how the concepts of an economic free market distorts reality by ignoring the effects of power because the economic effects can be roughly measured mathematically to some extent reliably while power effects cannot will be available upon request if time permits.

Right-wing extremism - is American politics full of it?

What is political extremism? Ed Kilgore describes it as including "...the approval of violence as a means to achieve political goals." This definition appears quite accurate to me, and it would apply to left-wing, right-wing or any other "wing" extremists. That includes religious extremists.

Ed goes on to point out that "Underlying all extremist political ideologies is one central idea – the vision of “politics as warfare”." Again, this seems quite accurate to me. But it does not in itself make the individuals using that metaphor into extremists. They may well be demagogues, but they are not necessarily extremist demagogues. He goes on to point out, however, that "...political extremists mean it in an entirely concrete and operational way. It is a view that is codified in the belief that political opponents are literally “enemies” who must be crushed...."

He then goes on to describe the growth of right-wing extremism in American political life. His major political insight, though, is to provide a definition of extremism that focuses on what right-wing extremism really is and what it is not. Rep. Michelle Bachman, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck should be pinned down regarding their advocacy of violence to achieve their clear demagogic political goals.

After describing the recent history of the political rhetoric espousing violence, Ed includes this very illuminating statement:

What distinguishes “political extremism” from other concepts like “the radical right” or “hard-right conservatism” is the following:

1. The two ideological pillars on which genuine political extremism rests are the notions of “politics as warfare” and of political opponents as “enemies”. Groups which reject these notions are not political extremists,

2. Political extremism becomes dangerous and violent whenever and wherever these two notions are taken literally.

These points make it very clear what the problem in American politics is today. It is the idea that one's political opponents are "enemies", not just respected individuals with whom we disagree, combined with the rhetorical espousal of violence as the "solution" to dealing with those "enemies." There are individuals out there who do not understand rhetoric and metaphors. Instead that take what is being said as instructions regarding how to act. Thus we get individuals like Chattanooga's Jim Adkisson who was encouraged by right-wing extremist rhetoric to solve his own personal problems by killing members of the Chattanooga Unitarian Universalist Church.

One more point - no one significant on the political left is seriously advocating violence as so many right-wing demagogues, some in political or religious leadership positions, currently are. At this time, all the talk of violence is coming from the right wing of American politics, and it is having some unfortunate effects as it encourages the crazies to take action.

Ford's interesting strategic success

What has Ford been doing right recently? While most of the automotive news has been about the poor prospects for the American auto industry with the current severe recession, the focus has been on Chrysler with some news of General Motor's plans for restructuring. Ford has been quietly chugging along, selling fewer vehicles than in previous years, but not taking reductions in sales as bad as most automotive companies worldwide. While Chrysler is on life support and is being taken over by Italian Fiat and the Federal Government and General Motors does not yet seem to have decided what kind of automotive company it will be beyond just "Much Smaller", Ford has pushed past Toyota this year to regain its position as the second largest car company in America.

Roland Jones of MSNBC has a good story that explains what has given Ford its strength in this current severe bear market. It comes down to the fact that they went into this recession in a very good cash position (must not have been suckered into borrowing big bucks by fee-happy Wall Street bankers who just want to line their own pockets) and have an extremely competitive attractive and fuel-efficient product line.

Both advantages are the direct result of far-sighted top strategic managers who observed the trends and prepared Ford to ride the right ones. They built on their strong points and protected their weak ones. They built on existing models, developing models like the Ford fusion and Mercury which are at the top of the automotive pack for fuel efficiency, stylish and comfortable to passengers without spending too much, and at the same time built up a strong cash position back before the irresponsible over sized banks went south and brought down the world financial markets. Now, when the market is headed down for automakers worldwide, Ford is in the process of gaining market share from its less-prepared rivals such as GM, Chrysler and Toyota.

All is not rosy, however. Jones sees a somewhat difficult possible future since Ford is "counting on a significant recovery in sales at the end of this year" while analysts anticipate the actual numbers will be significantly lower than Ford's apparent expectations. That may well be the case, but considering Ford's successes at preparing for the current economic downturn better than almost any other car maker, what do you want to bet that Ford's strategic managers are prepared to ride out lower-than-publicly-anticipated sales better than their rivals?

This article at MSNBC is quite interesting. I am not an automotive analyst so I am summarizing what Jones wrote, But I wonder how many other worldwide automakers are doing better than the others as Ford seems to be? Is Fiat, for example, really doing better than most, or are they expanding world-wide and biting off more than they can chew? And who else is doing well?Anyone? It seems very probably that the world wide automotive industry very soon will look quite different from what it has and the broad outlines of that new industry are just now coming into focus. Right now it looks like Ford will be one of the leaders in that new industry.

Specter's calculations for reelection working - maybe

Arlen Specter switched to the Democratic Party because the conservatives who dominate the Republican Party in PA would never nominate him to run for Senator again. He has made no bones about that. It appears that his calculation was quite accurate according to a new Quinnipiac poll. As a Democrat he would as of right now handily defeat the Republican Pat Toomey who he could not defeat in the Republican Primary.

But all is not rosy for Specter's political future. Moderate former GOP Gov. Tom Ridge might well defeat him, as he trails Specter by only 3 percentage points. The numbers are Specter 46% to Ridge 43%.

What that tells me is that the conservative Republican brand in Pennsylvania does not go over very well, but the Republican Party itself is not nearly so tarnished.

The Conservatives have for years wanted to get a more ideologically pure conservative party. I can remember when Bill Buckley used to rail that the problems for conservatives was that the political parties were not ideologically pure. Well, it looks like movement conservatism achieved Buckley's desire, and the current 25% identification of the voting public with conservative Republicans shows that the old saying "Be careful what you wish for." has really come back to haunt the Republican Party. The result has been a recognition that conservatism is a disaster in government.

Will Specter get reelected in 2010? That's a looong way off. But it will say a lot about the future of conservatism in America.

Specter switched parties to win reelection, not to support Democrats

When Arlene Specter switched from Republican to Democrat last week, it looked like the Democrats might get their 60 vote filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Apparently not. It looks like Specter switched parties merely to win reelection in 2010, not to be a Democrat.

Here's Steve Benen with the story. The Pennsylvania Democrats need to let a real Democrat run against Specter in the Democratic Primary. If Specter switched just to use Democratic voters to support his run for reelection but won't support Democratic issues, then there is no reason why Democrats should support him. There are better candidates available.

Retired Admiral Joe Sestak, currently the Representative in Pennsylvania district 7, has been sounding a lot like a potential candidate. We need to support his effort.

Why the new H1N1 flu is important

This new flu is beginning to look like it is not the new "killer flu" like the 1918 flu was, but it has a real problem anyway. It is genetically novel, and humans have no immunity to it based on previous experience. Here is an explanation of the danger from an expert:

What's important about this virus is its genetic novelty. As far as we know, the human population doesn't have any natural immunity to it. But what people perceive about the virus is its lack of novelty. Clinically it seems a lot like what they are used to with seasonal influenza. It's not (so far) the monster of 1918 and doesn't have the virulence of H5N1. What they are forgetting is what the genetic novelty might mean.

Because there is no natural immunity to this virus, even though clinically it appears to be like garden variety flu to the individual, with respect to the population it has the potential to spread faster and many more people sick than seasonal flu. And remember, seasonal flu is not a walk in the park. It kills an estimated 30,000 people a year.

A bad flu season can fill hospital emergency rooms and in patient beds to the bursting point. We currently have fewer staffed hospital beds per capita than we did in the last pandemic, 1968 (the "Hong Kong flu"). There is no reserve capacity. We can't just add physical beds. Beds don't take care of patients. Nurses and doctors do.

Now take a bad flu season and double it. To each individual it's the same disease but now everybody is getting it at once, in every community and all over the world. In terms of virulence, it's a mild pandemic. It's not a lethal virus like 1918. But in terms of social disruption it could be very bad. If twice as many people get sick, the number of deaths could be 80,000 in the US instead of 40,000. Gurneys would line the hallways of hospitals and clinics. And absenteeism amongst health care workers would compound the problem. Infrastructure would probably survive intact. No need to have your own water supply or electricity generator. But it would be a very rough ride.

All of this could plausibly happen from this virus without it causing anything more than the usual case of influenza. We are pouring tens of billions into infrastructure. I'm a big fan of high speed rail. But the public health and social services infrastructure -- good, job producing infrastructure -- needs attention and needs it right away because of this virus.

We are not in any position to back off of preparations for this flu. We don't want our current health care system to be overwhelmed. How many other medical problems would go untreated if we back off of protective actions and this becomes a mild pandemic?

A great many private health insurance plans don't protect your finances

A major reason for getting health insurance is so that you can have access to health care regardless of your employment status. That's important because is the case of severe illness, you may not be able to work so insurance is essential. The second reason is to protect your personal wealth from the unexpected and, in the case of many severe illnesses, extremely high costs of health care. So when you get laid off, one of the first things you need to do is get individual health care in the individual insurance market.

Consumer reports has recently investigate the health insurance offered in the private health insurance market for people who do not have employer-connected insurance. What they have found is that the private health insurance market offers policies which are either unaffordably expensive or which are so riddled with co-pays and limitations that they leave the insured on the hook for a great deal of the cost of health care which would have been covered by good employer or government insurance policies.

Here is the beginning of the report from Consumer Reports:

Hazardous health plans
Coverage gaps can leave you in big trouble

Many people who believe they have adequate health insurance actually have coverage so riddled with loopholes, limits, exclusions, and gotchas that it won’t come close to covering their expenses if they fall seriously ill, a Consumer Reports investigation has found.

At issue are so-called individual plans that consumers get on their own when, say, they’ve been laid off from a job but are too young for Medicare or too "affluent" for Medicaid. An estimated 14,000 Americans a day lose their job-based coverage, and many might be considering individual insurance for the first time in their lives.

But increasingly, individual insurance is a nightmare for consumers: more costly than the equivalent job-based coverage, and for those in less-than-perfect health, unaffordable at best and unavailable at worst. Moreover, the lack of effective consumer protections in most states allows insurers to sell plans with "affordable" premiums whose skimpy coverage can leave people who get very sick with the added burden of ruinous medical debt.

The rest is quite worth reading so click through.

You may remember that the private insurance market was John McCain's and the Republican party's solution to the rising costs of health care. As this CR study shows, that may get you into the door of a hospital in the case of a major emergency, but it won't cover the costs. If it does, you are broke from paying the premiums before you got sick and you'll very likely be bankrupt when you get out in either case.

The rational solution to this is mandated universal health care financed by the federal government. It needs to be federal because both people and illnesses easily move anywhere in the nation. The problem is national so the solution needs to be national. Also, as medicare and medicaid have proven, they can pay out benefits with an administrative cost less than 10%, while the very best private insurers have an administrative cost of 25% or more. Much of that cost is caused by the fact that the private insurer has to make sure that they do not insure unhealthy individuals and also do not pay for care for individuals who are not paying for their insurance to the insurance company who pays for he services.

Mandated universal health care will lower some of the costs for the federal government because a lot of the administrative expense is involved in just making sure that uninsured and ineligible individuals are covered for health care. That would also lower costs for private insurers, as they could always determine how the individual was covered before they accepted them. The federal government, by dint of its size, also can negotiate the lowest costs for medications and health services. In Germany the similar solution is federally financed and state administered.

This program at minimum would cover catastrophic medical costs, the costs of chronic health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, and perhaps the wide-spread causes of illness like obesity. I'd like to see it pay for universal dental care, also, since untreated dental problems cause a lot of other health problems like heart trouble and such. Services above and beyond those items like chiropractic care as well as vitamin therapy and alternative medicines which are not well researched could then be covered by private health insurance or by fee for service.

If the government offered this alongside private insurance plans through employers and private insurance, then the difference in cost between the private insurance and the government would have the majority of people move to the government plan because they got equal health care at significantly lower costs and with a lot less hassle and surprise bills or denials of service.

Health care providers (operating as private contractors) would all understand the rules of the major health care financer and be able to focus on providing medical care instead of having to hire three or four medical insurance clerks to deal with differing insurance regulations and with fighting with insurance companies to get various services covered for their patients. Appeals for denials of services would be public record and available to the press, unlike similar "appeals" to private insurers, so the public could be made aware of unfair financing practices. Note the several private health insurers in California were sued for waiting until someone got expensively sick, then going back and determining ways to cancel their policies and merely refund their premiums instead of paying benefits. This unfair process (which is probably widespread) only comes out against a private insurer after expensive and lengthy law suits, and then only if the currently declining media covers it. A government appeals process can be made separate from the issue of making a profit, unlike for private insurers.

Most average workers simply want access to needed health care for themselves and their families. Middle class workers want medical care access and protection of their family wealth, such as their home and retirement funding. Only a universal health care mandate properly designed will provide that. It clearly is not here for a great many people right now, and what is happening to the auto workers demonstrates how uncertain even employer-provided health care is.

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Addendum 10:39 CDT

Here is a link to a story of how the employer insurance is abused by employers. Fired Zales worker recovers. My thanks to the commenter "anonymous" who left this link as a comment to my April 10th post on Social Security and Medicare Notes.

Jon Stewart explains the Jane Harman wiretapping story

OK. We've Got Rep. Jane Harman who wanted to be the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, an alleged Israeli spy who wanted two accused AIPAC members accused of spying on America gotten off the hook and ... Oh heck. Just watch the Jon Stewart video. It's too complicated for me to write about.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Your Government Not at Work - Jane Harman Scandal
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

Add to all that, there is a question regarding why this whole story is being pushed out right now. Josh Marshall suggests "keep an eye on the developing reporting and commentary pointing to a lot of this being tied to former DCI Porter Goss's personal axe to grind with Harman."

This is just another day at the office for the Courtiers in Versailles Washington D.C. Villagers. Maybe if, like in the days of the Bourbon monarch's court, the Courtiers Villagers are sufficiently tied up in meaningless intrigues then they won't bother the rest of us much or successfully organize a coup.

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Addendum 9:06 pm
Zachary Roth at TPM Muckraker adds to the evidence that the attacks on Jane Harman are coming from people aligned with Porter Goss, the former CIA director.

The Swine Flu in Mexico and in the U.S.

There are a lot of questions about Swine Flu, but a really big one is "Why is the death rate from the flu so high in Mexico and not anywhere else? The Wall Street Journal offers an interesting analysis. Here's a fast summary of the factors the Journal reports:

• The virus is the same in both Mexico and in the U.S., so the difference is NOT the virus itself.
  
• The virus started in Mexico, so that country is further into the development of the spread of the flu.
  
• Mexico city sits at a high altitude and has smoggy air. The early development and spread of the flu was masked by normal frequent winter colds with fever and throat infections that occur there.
  
• A lot of flu victims thought they had a normal winter cold, so they delayed a day or so going to the doctor. Then the doctors, with no warning that a flu was going around, often misdiagnosed the illness. The delays allowed it to develop into pneumonia.
  
• Since the medical profession in Mexico did not have advance warning that there was a flu going around, it was not diagnosed early. The U.S. has the advantage that our medical professions have had an earlier warning of the flu, so it will likely be diagnosed earlier. The higher mortality rate in Mexico may be largely because neither the medical profession nor the patients were aware of the level of the threat
  
• The problem may also be cultural. Many Mexican, especially the poor, depend on public hospitals, so they wait for a few days after getting ill to see of it really is severe enough to require going to a doctor. In the meantime they medicate themselves. This is easier since antibiotics are available without a prescription. This allowed the flu to develop and spread more widely before being recognized.
  
• Then there is the fact that going to one of Mexico's public hospitals takes hours or even days to get to see a doctor. The public health care simply isn't funded as well as it would be in a more developed country.
  
• Once inside a hospital, the hospital workers complain that they don't have the safety equipment necessary to deal with highly infectious patients.
  

It's an interesting analysis of the problem. Overall the set of problems that have led to the size of the flu problem in Mexico is a combination of the fact that Mexico is the first nation to be struck by it, the public health care system in Mexico is poorly funded so it did not quickly recognized the problem (the public health Intelligence system is clearly not as developed as in a developed nation with decently funded universal health care) nor did it have all the resources needed to contain it, and the general public simply does not have a close attachment to the medical system except in clear cases of more extreme illnesses for both cultural and financial reasons.

I notice that the Wall Street Journal's article does NOT address the fact that the death rate among working age individuals age 16 to 45 is especially high. This is worrisome, since these individuals are expected to be the most healthy, and this is a pattern followed by the extremely deadly 1918 Hong Kong flu.

It's my speculation that here in the U.s. we have the advantage of the a early warning that came out of Mexico about the existence of the flu, the further advantage that our public health Intelligence system is much better funded and quite a bit larger with respect to our population, and the U.S. has stronger medical regulations so that patients are more certain where and how they can get medical help when they feel they need it.

We will probably see the flu strike largely in the uninsured American population first, incubate there because patients don't have the funds or the time to seek medical help, then it will spread to the more affluent population. Texas, with it's border on that of Mexico and with its 25% of the population without health care will be hit worse by the flu than other states with better medical systems. But just as the flu spreads from Mexico into the American border states and finds unprotected populations there, it will then spread within the U.S. to the more medically advanced states. That's the development pattern I will expect.

If that sounds like I am making an argument for universal U.S. healthcare, you read it correctly. But I don't think it is so much me making that argument as it is the Swine Flu.

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Some additional information about the Swine Flu.

• MSNBC reports that there are presently 91 cases of swine flu reported in 10 states. One toddler has died from the flu. The CDC is considering raising the pandemic alert to phase 5. The pandemic alert is a measure of how rapidly an infectious disease is spreading. The highest level is phase 6.


• MSN Health reports that the possibility that Swine flu is incubated in factory farms is being taken seriously by the experts and is being investigated.


• MSN Health also has an article posted that debunks some common rumors floating around about the Swine Flu. It's worth reading.

Welcome to the conservative Republican fantasy world

Steve Benen caught a beautiful example of conservative Republican fantasy.

This afternoon, Sanchez was interviewing Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), arguably the chamber's most conservative member, about the shrinking Republican Party, and whether the GOP's hard-right agenda is driving away mainstream voters. "Quite the opposite," DeMint said. "We're seeing across the country right now that the biggest tent of all is the tent of freedom."

"What the hell does that mean?" Sanchez asked. "The 'biggest tent' is 'freedom'? Freedom? You've got to do better than that!"

In response, DeMint argued that Americans are actually embracing the Republican message: "Americans who are normally not even political are coming out to 'Tea Parties' and protesting." This, DeMint suggested, is proof of the Republican message connecting with the electorate.

He wasn't kidding. The future of the GOP is Tea Baggers and the tent of freedom. It sounds like the message you might read in a greeting card written by Joe the Plumber.

Right. DeMint and his similar extreme conservatives are the same people who really don't realize that Steven Colbert is laughing at them.

About 300,000 people who came out to locations literally next door to their homes nation-wide. BIG turnout! Right. And "Freedom" is a word that has whatever meaning the speaker wants it to mean, often not the same meaning twice from the same person.

The public has spotted the scam the conservatives have been pulling, and only the most extreme hard cases even bother to come to their events now. Conservatism as we have known it since Reagan is toast, and the most extreme conservatives are blinding themselves, much like tobacco executives blind themselves to the dangers of smoking because their income depends on it and because those who do smoke are deeply addicted to the weed. Conservative leaders are similarly addicted to the perks of their leadership positions and most of them have no place to go if they lose that.

We are watching the end of the conservative movement.

The media is being polite. They are describing the collapse of the conservative control of the Republican Party as the "evolving of the Republican Party." What we are watching is really the death throes of conservative control of the Republicans, at least nationally. The fact that Specter has been forced to switch to the Democratic Party is just one more dead canary in the conservative coal mine.

The mechanism is, I suspect, that the conservatives have used the issue of "Who is more conservative?" as an election tool for years, much as they used the cry "Who lost China?" for years during the Cold War. They've used the cry "Who is more conservative?" since Reagan, in fact. The result is that they have elected the strongest right-wing extremists possible because they think that is the route to electoral success. It certainly mobilizes the base, especially after they allied with the evangelical religious conservatives of the Christian Coalition.

Suddenly (from their point of view) the public has realized the disastrous consequences of letting the conservatives run government and turned their back on conservatives. All except the strongest conservatives, in fact, have backed away. So have many of the evangelical conservatives. But as the moderates flake off from the Republican brand, the remaining conservatives still think this is just a bad patch and that conservatism is still the route to electoral success. Since things are going bad for them with the public, they are retreating to their strongest point - be more conservative. So the most extreme conservatives are being concentrated in the party and they are becoming more desperate, much as soldiers fighting a losing battle will.

The result is that extremists are running the party now, not the politicians. Limbaugh never compromises, and always goes for the most extreme position. So do the other talk show hosts, as do the extreme writers like Coulter. The good politicians are recognizing that won't work, but the base won't keep them in office if they don't adhere to the most extreme conservatism.

What we are watching is the death throes of the conservative movement, and they won't go quietly. They can't. Conservatism is inherently an extremist quasi-religion.

I'm at last enjoying the show. I suspect I am feeling a lot the way my parents did in 1944 when both the Germans and the Japanese were in retreat on all fronts. Neither fascist nation gave up, either. Both, if anything, became more extreme. The Kamikaze pilots are only one example of the extreme measures they took. So was the German enlisting of teenagers from the Hitler youth to defend Berlin and the German homeland behind the Rhine. So was the desperate German offensive of the Battle of the Bulge.

I do expect conservative extremism to get even worse in the near future, though. That will last until the talk show conservatives are dethroned as the effective leaders of the conservative movement.

At least, that's my current best guess.

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Addendum 6:30 pm
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell thinks that Arlen Specter's switch to the Democratic Party is a threat to the country.

I guess that as an extremist conservative McConnell can't distinguish between a threat to the Republican conservatives and a threat to America.

Roubini on the prognosis for the economy

Dr. Nouriel Roubini, the guy who predicted that the economic bubble was going to burst over two years ago, has more to say about how long the technical Recession is going to last.

Weymouth: What do you believe is happening to the economy today?
Roubini: The rate of economic contraction you have seen in the last two quarters—6 percent annualized—is going to slow down. The optimists are already talking about the "green shoots" of spring, about economic activity becoming positive. [They say] we will have positive growth in the third quarter, and in the fourth quarter we will grow 2 percent over the previous quarter. They expect that next year, growth will go back to above 2 percent.

Compared with this optimistic consensus, I believe that the rate of economic contraction is going to slow from minus 6 percent in the last two quarters to minus 2 percent by the fourth quarter. Next year, I believe that the growth rate is going to be 0.5 percent for the U.S. average. Even if we are technically out of a recession, we are going to feel like we are in a recession. The bottom of the economy is not going to be in three months, but rather toward the beginning or middle of next year.

That was my gut feel on the subject as I perused the statistics. But I also feel that the more the talking heads provide happy talk predictions, the more contrarian it seems I should be. They are snake oil salemen and they have been repeatedly wrong. Worse, they just want to start getting people to buy whichever product they are touting this week.

I'm gonna trust Roubini.

Is Bush a criminal?

McCain, speaking to Bob Scheiffer on Face the Nation yesterday said that Bush is a criminal on the same level as the disgraced Richard Nixon.

Is McCain right?

Conservatives are inherently short-sighted and cheap.

Remember when, back in February, three Republican "centrists" pulled the $870 million from the Economic Stimulus bill because "It didn't belong there?"

Typical conservative thinking. It wasn't happening right then and the rather ignorant trio didn't understand it, so don't prepare for it. It looks a bit different now, doesn't it?

One thing government does that private enterprise cannot afford to do is to essentially stockpile individuals with in-depth training and expertise in anticipation of a foreseen but not yet current need. That is the exact reason why back in the 15th century is became clear to governments that a trained, long-term professional army would almost always defeat mercenaries who were called up only during an emergency. How long does it take to train a special forces soldier, for instance?

Xe (renamed from Blackwater) doesn't do it. They wait until the government has selected and trained the soldiers, then they go hire them when they have a contract and let them go after.

The CDC is another government function that is set up in anticipation of a major life-threatening set of threats that we hope is not current, but have to be ready for when it does occur. That's a major reason why modern industrial nations suffer less from pandemics than do third-world and developing nations.

And yes, it can be overdone. You can't be ready for every eventuality. So there is a balance, but the trio were too conservative with money and foresight. Disease and epidemic is almost as easy to predict as someones death (a certainty.) It pays to be ready.

Another scam by the bankers/money lenders

Gee. The bankers don't want to give up charging 391% interest annually from desperate poor people who get hooked on payday loans. What a surprise!

Shawn Zeller at CQ Politics writes about the status of legislation to regulate the PayDay Loan Industry.

Payday loans are just a scam to fleece low-income workers when they get into financial difficulties, and for a large number of those workers, the loans become a major part of their financial difficulties. The lenders, of course, push the loans hardest at the most desperate and least savvy. That's where the profit is.

It's like the story of Budweiser Beer. The story some two decades ago was that 5% of their customers represented 50% of their business and their profits. That left Budweiser with the interesting strategic problem that they generated massive amounts of profit that they did not know how to invest. They were pikers compared to PayDay lenders.

We used to court-martial soldiers who practiced payday lending in the military. The government has limited the interest that can now be charged of soldiers to 36% per year. The rest of America needs the same consumer protections.

Here's some interesting articles about the economy and the banking system

The first one is by an automotive columnist in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram named Ed Wallace. He provides some of the clearest descriptions of the banking system I have read, and what he writes is confirmed by the other, more technical things I have been reading. This one is entitled False Prophets vs. Real Profits: What Wall Street Is Not on Main Street. It gives an interesting picture of (in part) how we got to the current economic mess. Ed has clearly ranged a bit far from reviewing the new cars that are coming out. And he gets it right.

A sample from his article:

Nobody is saying or even acknowledging it, but there’s only one set of economic numbers that will prove that this downturn has reached its bottom, that the long climb back to financial health has started in earnest. Those numbers will not be found in the nightly news concerning where the Dow Jones or the S&P 500 ended the day. Nor will we find them in the closing price of West Texas Intermediate Crude, accompanied by commentary explaining why oil should be that high – or that a high price is the looked-for indication that things will pick up in the last half of the year.

No, what those three indicators actually show is that far too much cash in our financial system is still chasing paper profits. Money is sitting on the sidelines waiting to be plowed back into the markets, where other investors and groups then pour their money back in and the rising tide of equities and commodities makes even more money – for a relatively small group of Americans.

The second is a description of how the current Secretary of Treasury, Timothy Geithner, thinks. He is probably the most critical man in the economy today, and he is willing to try extreme measures. This current situation is way out there in unknown land, so he is exactly what Obama and the nation needs. It's entitled Member and Overseer of the Finance Club .

Here is a sample from the article:

In a pair of recent interviews and an exchange of e-mail messages, Mr. Geithner defended his record, saying that from very early on, he was “a consistently dark voice about the potential risks ahead, and a principal source of initiatives designed to make the system stronger” before the markets started to collapse.

Mr. Geithner said his actions in the bailout were motivated solely by a desire to help businesses and consumers. But in a financial crisis, he added, “the government has to take risk, and we are going to be doing things which ultimately — in order to get the credit flowing again — are going to benefit the institutions that are at the core of the problem.”

Then we get the story of what is happening politically in Iceland because the banks collapsed there. Not really very different from what happened here, but on a much smaller scale.

REYKJAVIK, Iceland — It is a tale of light and dark — of a small but rugged country far from anywhere that has suffered as severely as any in the developed world at the hands of buccaneering free-marketeers, but which is now slowly digging itself out from the financial wreckage.

An important milestone was reached on Saturday, when the country’s voters went to the polls to elect a new government, three months after riotous street protests over the country’s banking collapse forced the country’s conservative-led administration from office.

With about a third of the final vote counted late Saturday, it seemed that the country’s leftist caretaking government would be formally voted into power, with the Social Democrats projected to gain 22 seats and their partners, the Left-Greens, appearing to gain 13 seats in the 63-seat Parliament. The conservative Independent Party, ousted after a wave of demonstrations in January, was projected to gain just 14 seats with less than 23 percent of the vote, down considerably from its total in 2007. Final results are to be announced on Sunday.

The conservatives were one of the first governments anywhere to lose office because of the global financial crisis, and it seemed clear Saturday that voters in this country of 320,000 were imposing a further reckoning.

Obama's rapid actions and his multiple balancing acts

Obama has had a breathtaking first 100 days as President. Is he trying to start tackling all the major problems that the Bush administration ignored for 8 years? Could be. The worst Recession (very probably the direct result of Bush administration policies and lack of government action) since the Great Depression has clearly made such a breathtaking pace necessary.

But don't listen to me. Robert Reich has an excellent post in which he describes many of the Obama initiatives and lays out some of the most risky balancing acts that Obama is having to take.

It's a very good compendium of where the Obama administration is right now. Go read it.

Why are the Republican leaders so irrational?

What we are watching is a battle between conservative True Believers and social scientists. The True Believers trust great leaders who decide things in secret, then impose their decisions. The believers in the social sciences like us believe that the modern social sciences working openly and publicly, coupled with good historical research of the economy and with government experiments in social engineering is a better way to operate.

Why is government the center of the battle?

I contend that the U.S. Constitution is a blueprint for government by social scientists. One indicator that I am right is the way that the Bush administration has violated the Constitution and side-tracked the Rule of Law that works to enact the provisions of the Constitution.

So we all are asking why the Republican leadership is so clearly irrational and so obviously ignore clear indisputable facts. Let me offer a reason, one I consider likely.

Who are these irrational conservative leaders?

The Republican leaders are deeply committed conservatives. They believe in their very bones that the worldview pushed in conservative propaganda is TRUE.

I think they see the current economic downturn as normal and inevitable. It is a real bad patch for the holders of the conservative worldview because their worldview includes faith that there simply is nothing that can be done to prevent such downturns, and that in fact efforts to stop the economic downturn or even to alleviate its effects will be counterproductive.

Why do the conservatives think they should enforce their views on the rest of us?

The current conservative leaders see themselves as leaders who are right. They know they understand what is really happening better than the rest of us do. It's just that they are unpopular and being relegated to the wilderness. Since they are True Believers and know they are right, they are certain that if they stick to their faith, events will in the end justify them and they will return with more power than ever before. Because they are RIGHT and they know it.

What leads them to believe that this is an effective way of acting?

Traditionally, many Christian Saints achieved their sainthood for such clear unwavering strength of character to hold onto their faith.

It looks to me as though the current Republican leaders consist of both religious and secular strong believers with this view. They live in mostly self-isolated groups of their own kind and reinforce each other. Socially I would guess that the conservative movement resembles movements like that of the Catholic Franciscans or the Jesuits. [Both of those were externally financed, as are the modern conservatives.] [Historical analogies are always very imperfect, but they provide an explanatory narrative not otherwise easily obtained. Use with great care.]

So what's next? How do we react to the conservatives?

I don't think that we can expect rationality and fact-based thinking from the conservative leadership. They are the product of the conservative "mob" and they have to cater to that mob to continue in their leadership positions. That's as true of Limbaugh as it is of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R - OK) or Rep. John Boehner (R - OH).

Those conservative leaders see their role as leaders who hold the banner of their faith high as they trudge through the wilderness. They expect that the (uncontrollable) events will turn around and justify them. Then they will return to national leadership with greatly enhanced reputations for having suffered to expose The Truth. The secular conservative leaders look back to their myth of the way Winston Churchill was rehabilitated by the crisis of WW II. Their supporters want them to do exactly that.

So we have to convince the so-called Independents that they are simply wrong. Then we have to battle back against the True Believers who are trying to impress their views on all the rest of us. We aren't going to reach or convert the True Believers.

The True Believers are waiting for Obama to fail. They are convinced that Obama's failure is inevitable because he is attempting the impossible. They know that government cannot successfully prevent, ward off or shorten a Recession or Depression, and when the current one returns, so will they.

We better have an Army of Economists and researchers figuring out what really is happening. Knowledge, not Great Leaders, is the key to dealing with this. [Of course, Obama will be considered a Great Leader if he can orchestrate the knowledge and appropriate reactions to the current economic crisis.] History of the Great Depression is important. But so is modern economic model-making. Both must be accompanies with real, wide-open scientific discussion which is not hobbled by conservatives who refuse to listen to opposition.

Social Science better come through with some answers that work, or the True Believers will be back to enforce their ideologies on the rest of us.

Why are the conservative Republican leaders acting so irrationally?

They can't act any other way and have their conservative political base keep them in their leadership roles. If they act rationally and try to actually govern instead of trying to use government to impose Conservatism on America, then their base will replace them. And some of them have drunk the Kool Aid and actually believe this stuff. But it comes down to the fact that they simply are not being permitted to act rationally.

They are in the same position as the Republican Party was in the 1930's. And for the same reasons. That's why.

The Republicans are to pay a big price for refusing to support Obama's stimulus program.

Obama came into office with the expressed intent to work with the Republicans to get important legislation passed. The first real test of Republican cooperation in return to Obama's outreach was the stimulus package. So Obama and the Democrats crafted a bill that included much that was intended to get Republican Senators to vote for it.

As Steve Benen points out, Obama has not forgotten being stiffed by the Republicans after he and the Democratic Congressional leadership watered the stimulus bill down badly so that Republican Senators could vote for it and explain their vote to their constituencies at home. Instead of working with Obama, they then followed Limbaugh and provided zero Senate Republican votes for the stimulus bill.

They are going to pay for that. That's what the reconciliation plan is all about. The Republicans can still work with Obama and get some of what they want in Health care, and pass a universal healthcare bill within the next six months. If they don't cooperate, then the Democrats go the reconciliation route and pass an all-Democrat plan.

My bet is that the Republicans are so crazed that they will follow Rush Limbaugh instead of work for the good of the American people and work with Obama.

There is a reason why the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chair Senator John Cornyn has said he did not think that the Republicans were going to keep a 40 Senator minority in 2010. Their radical conservative base won't let them compromise conservative principles even if that is politically suicidal. The marginal Senators who are up for reelection have a choice, much as does Senator Arlen Spector. They can run to win the general election but lose the primary and never get there, or they can cater to their conservative base, get the nomination, and be defeated by the Democrats supported by the Independent voters.

In my example, Senator Spector's other choice is to turn Democrat and see if he can win the nomination there. If he could win that, he can probably win reelection in the general election, but the Republicans still lose the Senate seat.

Why are all the newspapers collapsing?

David Love has some ideas what's wrong. Here are some of my favorites:

I would suggest some additional reasons that some newspapers have failed. Too often, they simply have not served their readers, and the product, like a GM car, has lost its appeal. Many news companies— not just papers, but TV as well—are owned by corporate conglomerates and entertainment companies. This reality is reflected in the softball, celebrity gossip orientation of many so-called news outlets. Governed by the bottom line and cost-cutting measures, these papers have eliminated their City Hall beat reporters, and other reporters who are in tune with the pulse of a given city. In the absence of seasoned journalists who can actually report on anything, because those people were already laid off, these newspapers become a collection of news wires and press releases, in a pamphlet. And who is paying for that when you can read it online?

The damage has been done in terms of the giant pass that the news media have taken on the important issues of the day. During the Iraq War, the mainstream media took the opportunity to act as nationalistic cheerleaders, the propaganda arm of the Bush White House— beating the drums of war and almost celebrating the thousands upon thousands of deaths that would inevitably occur.

As cheerleaders for corporate America, the mainstream press fell asleep on the Wall Street crisis. Over-caffeinated blowhard snake-oil salesmen posing as business journalists were in abundance during the heyday of the financial sector. But where were the probing exposés on the problems of deregulation, and the thoughtful analyses on the consequences of gluttony on Wall Street?

Even as we speak, what about coverage on the thwarted assassination plots against President Obama? Or a meaningful discussion on the malicious and deleterious effects of U.S. drug policy? How about a substantive debate in the mainstream news about the madness that represents America’s gun policy, and the lethal combination of gun proliferation, economic recession and untreated mental illness—of individuals and of the society— that plays itself out in communities throughout the country?

Well, many newspapers and other corporate news venues will not offer and have not offered such valuable content. Their game is trifling and sloppy. So if they die, it wouldn’t be too soon, as they provided us little benefit in the first place. That is why people increasingly turn to independent news sources

One that David mentions that I suspect may be a really critical component is the fact that the papers I know of did quit doing City Hall and around the town coverage and replaced it with stuff like E! TV coverage of entertainment. As David says "Governed by the bottom line and cost-cutting measures, these papers have eliminated their City Hall beat reporters, and other reporters who are in tune with the pulse of a given city."

I think this became a lot worse when the Reagan administration stopped enforcing anti-trust and explicitly permitted local city newspapers to buy out and shut down their competitors. The result was no competition. Newspapers no longer had to spend money providing news their readers really wanted about their towns and cities. Instead they became boosters for whichever developers had taken over city hall during the last election and the newspapers pushed the latest great economic development plan - usually tourism or bringing conventions to town.

The result is that we are rapidly losing the journalistic expertise those newspapers built up over the years, what few elements of it their corporate masters had left to them after the last rounds of cost-cutting.

It's a dammed shame. It really looks like Capitalists and their accountants cannot manage a successful newspaper.

It's time to proscute the war criminals who approved and conducted torture.

Glenn Greenwald has been through the torture memos which were released yesterday as a result of a freedom of information lawsuit in which the government lost. Glenn displays some of the most egregious parts of the memos, then states:

Needless to say, I vehemently disagree with anyone -- including Obama -- who believes that prosecutions are unwarranted. These memos describe grotesque war crimes -- legalized by classic banality-of-evil criminals and ordered by pure criminals -- that must be prosecuted if the rule of law is to have any meaning. But the decision of whether to prosecute is not Obama's to make; ultimately, it is Holder's and/or a Special Prosecutor's.

I agree. For the Rule of Law in a Constitutional America to be continued, the Americans who authorized and conducted these war crimes must be prosecuted for their crimes. Otherwise, the American Republic given to us by the Founding Fathers (who wrote the Constitution to be the basis of law by which is would be governed, depending on the courts to guarantee the enforcement of the law and the Constitution) is gone.

Bush didn't know what he was doing, but he turned the government over to Dick Cheney who does not want the America the founding Fathers gave us. Cheney directed that the torture be carried out. Bush also appointed his old family attorney, Albert Gonzales, as Attorney General to enforce the law. Three of the memos were written in the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel under Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. The fourth was written in 2002 in the Office of Legal Counsel in the CIA under CIA Director George Tenet. The actual memos are posted on the ACLU site:

• 18-page memo, dated August 1, 2002, from Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA.
• A 46-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA.
• A 20-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA.
• A 40-page memo, dated May 30, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA.

The names I have highlighted above are criminals. They should be prosecuted.

By not prosecuting the attorneys who justified the clear War Crimes and not prosecuting the individuals who carried out the crimes justified by John Yoo and his fellow lawyers, the Bush administration will have destroyed the Constitutional Republic of America given to us and fought for by Veterans through two centuries. We have to act to save our national legacy.

The first step is to appoint the public prosecutor. The time for that step is now!

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The ACLU has posted the torture memos on their website.

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Adendum: April 16, 2009 11:15 PM Digby has a blog post on Hullabaloo That provides a great deal more information on the Bush Administration torture program. Among other things, it reminded me that the John Yoo authored and Jay Bybee signed the 2002 memo that unleashed the CIA torture program. She also goes into its use on Zubaydah as well as how effective it was.