It was pretty clear to anyone who suffered through Bobby Jindal's rebuttal to Obama's speech the other night that Jindal did a horrible job. Even many commenters on FOX panned his efforts. Now, though, the right-wing talk shows who drive and lead the remaining conservative rump of the Republican party are defending him and excoriating any Republican who says Jindal did poorly, according to Digby at Hullabaloo.
Digby does make the point that Jindal was not speaking to the nation, though. His sole purpose for getting on TV in front of the nation was to speak to the conservative activists in the Republican Party who will select the Presidential candidate in 2012. Unfortunately, the Republican Party under conservative domination has become a wild-eyed cult and appears to be doomed to a permanent minority if it continues along this route of placing blind faith in ideology and failing to recognize reality when it slaps them in the face.
They've had a thirty year run of placing the conservative ideology and identity above the good of the nation, and it worked well enough to elect three Presidents and gain control of both houses of Congress for the first time since Eisenhower was elected in 1952. They've convinced themselves that their blind faith in their ideology gave them power, and now that it is being taken back away from them, they think that all they have to do to get the power back is to double and redouble their efforts and profess their blind unwavering faith under all circumstances in conservatism.
Naturally, they can't admit that it was that very conservatism put into practice that has created the current world-wide economic disaster which is now clearly growing worse and sees no indication of turning around. No, instead they are redoubling their support of conservatism once again, depending on it to return them to the power they crave. Admitting that conservatism failed would indicate that they did not have enough faith, and were not "worthy."
The result is a shrinking Republican Party dominated by the whims of unaccountable right-wing conservative talk shows (Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, etc) and similar conservative TV talking heads like Bill O'Reilly.
They see the return of their power as being dependent on the deepening Recession and Obama's failure to deal with it. That leads them to two sets of actions. They are already acting. They will obstruct every effort by Congress and Obama to alleviate the economic problems as much as they can, and they have to demonize Barack Obama.
Steve Benen points out that right-wing polemicist Bill Krystol from the Weekly Standard has published an unusually candid admission of the need to obstruct all efforts to alleviate the problems caused by the Recession. Eric Boehlert writes a good summary showing the effectively instantaneous development of right-wing media hatred of Barack Obama that has developed over the 30 days he has been President. Neither is illogical from the point of view of committed conservative ideologues who are convinced that they can regain power while retaining their group identity if they only display total, unwavering faith in "Conservatism."
It is that unwavering faith and their belief that they can only succeed in imposing it on everyone else if they return to power that is driving the right-wing media to the most extreme lengths.
Like the Great Depression did to similar right-wing economic ideologues in the 30's, they are going to fail. They have been exposed. Supply-side economics has proven to be an utter failure. Tax cuts to give more money to the rich does not create more middle-class jobs, just more mansions and yachts. Deregulated banks cannot be prevented from taking greater and greater risks until they take the entire system down. Unregulated mortgage brokers paid strictly on commission for the largest mortgages will lie and cheat both the customers and the banks supplying the mortgage funds, and the unregulated mortgage banks will sell the dreck the mortgage brokers provide in large bundles to investors who turn a blind eye as long as the money continues to roll in on schedule.
At the same time, other unscrupulous financial managers have been building ponzi schemes and often moving off-shore to facilitate separating the marks from their money. Unregulated food and drug producers are providing poisons instead of food, medicines and medical apparatus. So are unregulated toy manufacturers, especially overseas where they face even less vigilance from governments who want to increase exports and don't care what happens to consumers in other nations. Then retailers like WalMart buy the dreck from the lowest bidder because no one has any control of the poor quality control in production, quality control that was eliminated in an effort to lower costs and compete against better quality producers. Then WalMart markets its stuff to customers who are searching for a bargain because they have not had a real pay raise since 1970. And so on.
Meanwhile, the conservatives, who have made a fetish of obsessing about the glories available in their imaginary heaven created by unregulated markets in which government never interferes, turn a blind eye to the failures of that market as they each present themselves to their supporters as totally faithful believers in conservatism. They are collectively running for power based on their faith in the failed god of conservatism. That will only work as long at the voters will follow the lead of the right-wing extremist spokespersons in radio, TV and in print. The more they fail in the effort, these true-believers will become even more extreme in their efforts.
Thus the clear obstructionism in Congress and the ever-growing hatred of Barack Obama and everything they claim that he stands for.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Many Republicans liked the stimulus bill but feared political repercussions if they voted for it.
The Republicans in the House were unanimous in voting against the stimulus bill, as were all but three Senate Republicans. But that wasn't because they all thought it was wrong or wouldn't work. It was because they feared political repercussions bake n their home states if they voted for it. According to Arlen Spector (via Steve Benen Steve Benen addedI find that encouraging. If the Republicans were either ignorant of the economic conditions that are driving so many Americans to support the unique and massive spending in the stimulus bill, I'd have to consider them all subject to brainwashing by an insane organization. At least they aren't literally insane.
Unfortunately, that still means that the Republican party would, as a whole, rather see America go down the tubes into economic collapse with no effort made by the government to prevent it. They are forcing their representatives in Congress to act for them to damage America.
If what Spector said is true, the powers that run the Republican Party are in the politics business for their own reasons with no interest in the quality of life for most Americans. That frankly is either insane or without conscience, and that means that the ruling powers of the Republican party are anti-American. We have our own home-grown body of extremist domestic terrorists with their representatives being the minority party in Congress.
"When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today," said Specter, "one of my colleagues said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' My Republican colleague said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' I said, 'Are you going to vote with me?' And he said, 'No, I might have a primary.' And I said, 'Well, you know very well I'm going to have a primary.'" [...]
"I think there are a lot of people in the Republican caucus who are glad to see this action taken without their fingerprints, without their participation," he said.
Asked how many Republican lawmakers we're talking about here, Specter said it's a "sizable number."
Unfortunately, that still means that the Republican party would, as a whole, rather see America go down the tubes into economic collapse with no effort made by the government to prevent it. They are forcing their representatives in Congress to act for them to damage America.
If what Spector said is true, the powers that run the Republican Party are in the politics business for their own reasons with no interest in the quality of life for most Americans. That frankly is either insane or without conscience, and that means that the ruling powers of the Republican party are anti-American. We have our own home-grown body of extremist domestic terrorists with their representatives being the minority party in Congress.
Provincial Washington media misses real story of the stimulus bill
Obama is set to sign a massive stimulus bill Monday, which is a major accomplishment any President could be proud of. The fact that Obama got it through Congress only three weeks after he was inaugurated President is nothing short of Amazing. The media generally, however, wants to discuss only the fact that not a single House Republican and all but three Senate Republicans voted against the bill. Somehow the Washington, D.C. media has its priorities all screwed up. Their priority is not the economic disaster that is rapidly engulfing America and the world. Their priority is to report on the failed efforts of Obama, three weeks into his Presidency, to get the Republicans to vote for his bills.
Barack recognizes that even in the face of his stunning achievement of muscling the massive stimulus bill through the legislative meat-grinder and delay-machine we call Congress, he may have made some errors in how he spoke and set expectations inside the beltway.
From Steve Benen:Then Steve concludes:So essentially, the beltway media failed to generally get the real story and to put it into some perspective. [Not completely. The links from this article go to the Washington Post and the New York Times, but not many others followed their lead. That sure isn't where the TV so-called news out of D.C. went. They set the agenda for the national news (after they get it from Drudge.) This was largely a missed story.
Obama was not elected because he was going to draw the Republican Party into a large national unity in the face of the immediate and growing economic crisis. He was elected because he promised to deal with that crisis, and the Republicans for reasons of ideology and incompetence, refused to do so under George W. Bush.
Face it. Bush went on vacation for at least the last two months of his Presidency, delegating the economic crisis (which he has never understood, seemed to never take seriously, and clearly did not care about) to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his Treasury secretary Henry Paulson. Obama was elected to do what no one has ever successfully done before, alleviate and possibly reverse quickly the worst financial disaster to hit America since the Great Depression.
He promised to try also to raise the partisan tone of Washington, but except to Washingtonians and perhaps to those who want favors from powerful men in Washington, the partisan tone is a feature of the landscape in that city. That partisan tone is part of the nature of the Republican Party, and it is an essential part of their efforts to maintain and possibly regain power. They represent people who feel that the nation overall is going the wrong way, even now, and to expect them to somehow do that without personal animosity to those who stand in the way of their efforts to change the core nature of America is frankly unrealistic.
Barack seems to have realized that he cannot deal with the conservatives as a national group the same way as he did in the Senate with many of their representatives. OK. So he performed an amazing feat getting the stimulus bill through, and along the way he has learned that he has to change the way he manages the media narrative. That's the real story. For the first time since early 2007 when CountryWide announced that it was having an extremely high rate of mortgage defaults, the government has finally taken cognizance of the economic crisis and started to do something.
The passage of the stimulus bill and the events surrounding it seem to have come to a very good conclusion right now in the early days of the Obama administration, yet the media whines that the Republicans voted against it so somehow Obama has failed. You really have to wonder just how provincial the Washington, D.C media is to have so totally missed the main story here.
Barack recognizes that even in the face of his stunning achievement of muscling the massive stimulus bill through the legislative meat-grinder and delay-machine we call Congress, he may have made some errors in how he spoke and set expectations inside the beltway.
From Steve Benen:
On Thursday night, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel suggested the White House had overdone their initial outreach to Republicans, telling reporters Obama's aides got "ahead of ourselves" when it came to striving for bipartisan comity.
Yesterday, White House staffers were signaling that they wouldn't repeat this in the future.Advisers concluded that they allowed the measure of bipartisanship to be defined as winning Republican votes rather than bringing civility to the debate, distracting attention from what have otherwise been major legislative victories. Although Mr. Obama vowed to keep reaching out to Republicans, advisers now believe the environment will probably not change in coming months.
Rather than forging broad consensus with Republicans, the Obama advisers said they would have to narrow their ambitions and look for discrete areas where they might build temporary coalitions based on regional interests rather than party, as on energy legislation. They said they would also turn to Republican governors for support -- a tactic that showed promise during the debate over the economic package -- even if they found few Republican allies in Washington. [...]
I don't doubt that President Obama will continue to have a dialog with congressional Republicans. He'll keep them apprised of his intentions; he'll hear them out when they have complaints; and he'll maintain a respectful tone. But after the stimulus fight, the president, I suspect, has "learned a lesson" about how to engage a party that has philosophical, practical, and strategic goals that are wholly at odds with his own.
Obama was not elected because he was going to draw the Republican Party into a large national unity in the face of the immediate and growing economic crisis. He was elected because he promised to deal with that crisis, and the Republicans for reasons of ideology and incompetence, refused to do so under George W. Bush.
Face it. Bush went on vacation for at least the last two months of his Presidency, delegating the economic crisis (which he has never understood, seemed to never take seriously, and clearly did not care about) to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his Treasury secretary Henry Paulson. Obama was elected to do what no one has ever successfully done before, alleviate and possibly reverse quickly the worst financial disaster to hit America since the Great Depression.
He promised to try also to raise the partisan tone of Washington, but except to Washingtonians and perhaps to those who want favors from powerful men in Washington, the partisan tone is a feature of the landscape in that city. That partisan tone is part of the nature of the Republican Party, and it is an essential part of their efforts to maintain and possibly regain power. They represent people who feel that the nation overall is going the wrong way, even now, and to expect them to somehow do that without personal animosity to those who stand in the way of their efforts to change the core nature of America is frankly unrealistic.
Barack seems to have realized that he cannot deal with the conservatives as a national group the same way as he did in the Senate with many of their representatives. OK. So he performed an amazing feat getting the stimulus bill through, and along the way he has learned that he has to change the way he manages the media narrative. That's the real story. For the first time since early 2007 when CountryWide announced that it was having an extremely high rate of mortgage defaults, the government has finally taken cognizance of the economic crisis and started to do something.
The passage of the stimulus bill and the events surrounding it seem to have come to a very good conclusion right now in the early days of the Obama administration, yet the media whines that the Republicans voted against it so somehow Obama has failed. You really have to wonder just how provincial the Washington, D.C media is to have so totally missed the main story here.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Republicans don't want bipartisanship. They want control
Ed Kilgore at The Democratic Strategist has the story.
Obama's support as measured by the polls has been unusually high. It has included a large percentage of the Republican voters. The recent drops in his ratings recently have all come from Republican voers in spite to their continued support for Obama's policy goals. There is discussion among Democrats that Obama needs to give up on bipartisanship, Ed concludes, however, that Obama's long term goals will require that he maintains a significant degree of support among Republicans.
Ed, of course, has been a long-time supporter of the Democratic Leadership Council, which has existed to promote bipartisanship and making Progressives more like Conservatives. While his bias is clear here, Ed is also extremely knowledgeable and should certainly be considered in the debate.
Obama's support as measured by the polls has been unusually high. It has included a large percentage of the Republican voters. The recent drops in his ratings recently have all come from Republican voers in spite to their continued support for Obama's policy goals. There is discussion among Democrats that Obama needs to give up on bipartisanship, Ed concludes, however, that Obama's long term goals will require that he maintains a significant degree of support among Republicans.
Ed, of course, has been a long-time supporter of the Democratic Leadership Council, which has existed to promote bipartisanship and making Progressives more like Conservatives. While his bias is clear here, Ed is also extremely knowledgeable and should certainly be considered in the debate.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Right wing talk radio and TV motivated Adkisson to "kill Liberals"
Remember James Adkisson? He's the recently laid off 58 year-old man who Walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee one sunny Sunday morning last July with a rifle and started trying to kill as many Untarians as he could before the police killed him. He murdered two before the other members grabbed and subdued him. He has just been (properly) sentenced to life without parole.
The news vaguely mentioned something about his idea as being out to kill Liberals, and the discovery that his house was filled with books by Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and other right-wing hate talkers. It seemed reasonably clear that his was a hate crime, aimed at Liberals and instigated by right wing pundits on radio and TV. But the press never presented more evidence than just rumors of his speech claiming to be after "Liberals and Democrats."
Well, wonder no more. Now that he has been tried and convicted and sentenced, he has posted his pronouncement (a pdf file) explaining very clearly, lucidly and literately, why he did it. It is also presented in very clear hand printing. I assume from the letter itself that he didn't want people who read it to have trouble with his handwriting, and he was given to access to a word processor. He wen to considerable pains to make himself clear.
Here, courtesy of Sara Robinson, are some choice quoted:
Sara also suggest what Liberals and Democrats (as well as minorities and gays) are going to have to learn from this:
Adkisson is just one, very extreme, example. Now he has told us why. There is no longer any room for doubt. He doesn't appear insane. He has simply been misled.
The news vaguely mentioned something about his idea as being out to kill Liberals, and the discovery that his house was filled with books by Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and other right-wing hate talkers. It seemed reasonably clear that his was a hate crime, aimed at Liberals and instigated by right wing pundits on radio and TV. But the press never presented more evidence than just rumors of his speech claiming to be after "Liberals and Democrats."
Well, wonder no more. Now that he has been tried and convicted and sentenced, he has posted his pronouncement (a pdf file) explaining very clearly, lucidly and literately, why he did it. It is also presented in very clear hand printing. I assume from the letter itself that he didn't want people who read it to have trouble with his handwriting, and he was given to access to a word processor. He wen to considerable pains to make himself clear.
Here, courtesy of Sara Robinson, are some choice quoted:
"Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state. Shame on them....This is what O'Reilly, Limbaugh and the other representatives on talk radio and Fox News have been demanding their followers to do. Their excuse on radio is that it is just "entertainment." It's clear that Adkinson did not consider it entertainment. How many other right-wing nutcases are out there who are having personal or career problems and see that "entertainment" as guidance on what to do to cure "society?"
"This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn't get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It's the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence."
"I thought I'd do something good for this Country Kill Democrats til the cops kill me....Liberals are a pest like termites. Millions of them Each little bite contributes to the downfall of this great nation. The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is to kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather. I'd like to encourage other like minded people to do what I've done. If life aint worth living anymore don't just kill yourself. do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals."
Sara also suggest what Liberals and Democrats (as well as minorities and gays) are going to have to learn from this:
Progressives should take three lessons away from Knoxville:Sara's right. The right wing conservative windbags really are initiating a shooting war in this country. Conservatives and hard line members of their audiences to the right wing propaganda those propagandists are peddling feel aggrieved because fewer and fewer people are buying the failed conservative ideology and so they want to go out and kill someone.
One: We are no longer safe, not even in our own houses of worship. It's ironic that progressives—the subgroup of Americans who were most determined not to abandon reason and succumb to overblown fears of Islamic terrorism in the wake of 9/11—now have good, serious reasons to fear real domestic terrorism against themselves.
Two: A significant part of this country's media infrastructure is thoroughly devoted to inciting people to commit horrific acts of violence against us—and now, we know for a fact that people are acting on those incitements. It's time to start taking this far more seriously. What goes out across our airwaves these days isn't all that different from what went out over Radio Rwanda a decade ago, spurring that country to genocide. At this point, it's only a difference of degree.
Three: The right wing has, as usual, grossly underestimated our courage and our commitment. The members of Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist quickly and effectively disarmed and captured this man within seconds after he opened fire. Adkisson expected fear; what we got was determined resistance. It's why he's still alive today, and why more UUs aren't dead by his hand. The TVUUA congregation should be our enduring example of liberal grace under fire.
Adkisson's "manifesto" should end any doubts we ever had about how virulent and dangerous hate talk is, or whether or not that talk will eventually translate into action.
Adkisson is just one, very extreme, example. Now he has told us why. There is no longer any room for doubt. He doesn't appear insane. He has simply been misled.
Good God! Is this a "self-aware" TV pundit?
Watch this short clip.
Is it possible? A self aware TV pundit - a talking head - actually responding to evidence? Not just spouting right-wing ideology and opposition to all things Democrat?
Nah. This is a fantasy. I wonder how they got it on tape?
[ h/t to talking points memo ]
Is it possible? A self aware TV pundit - a talking head - actually responding to evidence? Not just spouting right-wing ideology and opposition to all things Democrat?
Nah. This is a fantasy. I wonder how they got it on tape?
[ h/t to talking points memo ]
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Things have changed, but the D.C. media doesn't get it
It's a Disaster! It's Horrible! The Conservatives are coming back into control of the Government after eight and more years of proven incompetence!! Two weeks into office and Obama has lost control of his Presidency and the government!!!
Or at least that's the conclusion that a lot of people seem to be jumping to, based on the ignorant froth and ranting in the political media.
It seems to me that I recall one or maybe two occasions during Obama's campaign for President when they lost a week or so in the media and everyone was screaming that it was a disaster. Then for no reason that was obvious in the media, the situation was turned around. Obama was a real long shot, but he won.
I think that the Obama campaign specifically eschewed the use of the Bill Clinton-style media-focused warroom rapid response operation in favor of deeper understanding and control of the problem. They were using different, none media-centered levers to manipulate public opinion. And somehow the Obama campaign then seemed to almost effortlessly to turn such "disasters" around.
The same small group of people is still running the Obama operation. They didn't miss much. When they did, they quickly adjusted their focus. And since they operated below the media radar, their opponents did not know what was happening to them and found it difficult to prepare a defense.
Many of the same otherwise sensible anti-conservatives were reacting to the Obama "disasters" during the campaign much as they are reacting to this situation, with much noise, anguish and wringing of hands. Remember when McCain had his Palin-bounce after the Republican convention?
These Obama guys didn't expose their strategy in public to the media. (Or if they did, the media never figured it out. Either way, they didn't see it. Why should that change now? When was the last time a media-generated flap like this one was anything more than the result of the fevered imaginations of people looking for something to write or broadcast about to fill a news hole or empty airtime? I don't think the public is being influenced my the media nearly as much as the media is feeding the public what they want to hear so they can get ratings/advertising revenues. The public is already quite set in its opinions and demands. The Obama camp is trying to change those basic public opinions, and they in the past seem to have learned how to actually get what they want in spite of the media.
I don't think those of us who try to keep informed will have a clue what is really going on until after it has happened. No amount of screaming, wailing, shrieking and rending-of-clothes will make a difference. But the same is true for the conservatives.
The conservatives, now, are (probably) badly misreading the situation. They think (as do the writers of the articles Steve is responding to and as do much of the rest of the political media) that they really do think they have caught up with the Obama juggernaut. That's certainly the talk show conceit. But if the pattern holds true, at some time soon the obstructionists will suddenly find that the situation has changed and they have been outflanked. They, along with the rest of us, will not know in advance how or when.
I suspect that we need to learn more patience. I have little doubt that Mitch McConnell and his compatriots are going to learn a touch of humility - to the extent that they are capable of learning anything. Rush and most of his ilk never will.
[ h/t to Steve Benen at Washington Monthly's Political Animal. ]
Or at least that's the conclusion that a lot of people seem to be jumping to, based on the ignorant froth and ranting in the political media.
It seems to me that I recall one or maybe two occasions during Obama's campaign for President when they lost a week or so in the media and everyone was screaming that it was a disaster. Then for no reason that was obvious in the media, the situation was turned around. Obama was a real long shot, but he won.
I think that the Obama campaign specifically eschewed the use of the Bill Clinton-style media-focused warroom rapid response operation in favor of deeper understanding and control of the problem. They were using different, none media-centered levers to manipulate public opinion. And somehow the Obama campaign then seemed to almost effortlessly to turn such "disasters" around.
The same small group of people is still running the Obama operation. They didn't miss much. When they did, they quickly adjusted their focus. And since they operated below the media radar, their opponents did not know what was happening to them and found it difficult to prepare a defense.
Many of the same otherwise sensible anti-conservatives were reacting to the Obama "disasters" during the campaign much as they are reacting to this situation, with much noise, anguish and wringing of hands. Remember when McCain had his Palin-bounce after the Republican convention?
These Obama guys didn't expose their strategy in public to the media. (Or if they did, the media never figured it out. Either way, they didn't see it. Why should that change now? When was the last time a media-generated flap like this one was anything more than the result of the fevered imaginations of people looking for something to write or broadcast about to fill a news hole or empty airtime? I don't think the public is being influenced my the media nearly as much as the media is feeding the public what they want to hear so they can get ratings/advertising revenues. The public is already quite set in its opinions and demands. The Obama camp is trying to change those basic public opinions, and they in the past seem to have learned how to actually get what they want in spite of the media.
I don't think those of us who try to keep informed will have a clue what is really going on until after it has happened. No amount of screaming, wailing, shrieking and rending-of-clothes will make a difference. But the same is true for the conservatives.
The conservatives, now, are (probably) badly misreading the situation. They think (as do the writers of the articles Steve is responding to and as do much of the rest of the political media) that they really do think they have caught up with the Obama juggernaut. That's certainly the talk show conceit. But if the pattern holds true, at some time soon the obstructionists will suddenly find that the situation has changed and they have been outflanked. They, along with the rest of us, will not know in advance how or when.
I suspect that we need to learn more patience. I have little doubt that Mitch McConnell and his compatriots are going to learn a touch of humility - to the extent that they are capable of learning anything. Rush and most of his ilk never will.
[ h/t to Steve Benen at Washington Monthly's Political Animal. ]
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Auto sales off sharply - not just Detroit cars, either
It was expected that auto sales for January would drop, but not like this.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Auto sales tumbled 38% in January, plunging even more than expected to their worst levels since 1982 as a pullback in purchases by rental car companies became the latest problem for the troubled industry.This was NOT the fault of union labor. This was a result of the Recession.
General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) reported that its sales plunged 49% from a year ago. Ford Motor (F, Fortune 500) said sales fell 39% at its Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands, and 40% overall when including sales at Volvo, which Ford is trying to sell. Chrysler LLC reported a 55% drop in sales.
But it wasn't just the U.S. automakers reporting sharply lower sales. Toyota Motor (TM) reported a 32% decrease in its U.S. sales, while sales at Honda Motor (HMC) tumbled 28%. Nissan (NSANY) sales fell 30%.
"We are facing unprecedented times in the industry, and no auto company is immune from current market conditions," said Dick Colliver, executive vice president of sales for American Honda, in a statement.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
The reality of sexual orientation and human gender has a "Liberal Bias."
More has come out on Reverend Ted Haggart, the evangelical Pastor of the fundamentalist Christian New Life Church who had to resign in 2006 because he was having an affair with a male prostitute. Apparently he was also involved in a relationship with a young male member of his church, and the church is now paying compensation to the young man.
Haggard is describes his current status thus:
Haggard not only bought the line that homosexuality is a total sin, but he also preached it, was surrounded by others who preached it and enforced it. One of the best social techniques for instilling a belief system in someone else is to have them go out and evangelize for it. Haggard has done that in spades. Yet his own body is telling him that the sex objects he is attracted to are male, not female. His apparent confusion is from cognitive dissonance between public recognition of his sexual nature and his strong beliefs about how unacceptable it is. He has found that he is himself - by birth - attracted to other members of his own gender.
He has been forced to accept the truth of his own attraction to others of his own gender, but the utter repression of that truth by extremist conservative fundamentalist religion and his own society has left him, as he says, with his sexual orientation "hard to pin down." Of course it has.
Society has a very simplified idea of gender identity and sexual orientation. There is a general very fundamental belief that a person is born either male or female, and that if your body is one or the other your personal identity and your sexual orientation must fit the stereotypical male - female images. Then, using that assumption, the doctor can look at a child at the moment of birth and determine if that child is male or female, and the assumption is that the child's sexual identity and the sex objects to whom that child will be attracted MUST fit the stereotype. That's fine for most of us because most of us DO fit the stereotype. That's why it is a persistent stereotype.
But the body is much more complicated than that. Gender is more behavior than anatomy, and learning which gender a person is sexually attracted to is a process that does not display itself clearly (except perhaps to a few experts) until puberty. All the social repression in the world is not going to deter the body from forming the sexual orientation it demands. That is also true, by the way, of the gender identity of the personality. That, too, is more variable than is commonly believed, and gender identity may not conform to the anatomy OR to the sexual identity, either. Gender identity may also be fixed before birth the way sexual orientation is, but since there is no clearly overt behavior (that is, not clear to others) that results from it, it is even less identified that sexual orientation differences. The fact that this also forms a strong personal drive is demonstrated by the number of individuals who have had gender reassignment surgery.
The difficulty is that people with such out-of-the-mainstream difficulties matching society's stereotyped sexual behaviors are different from the rest of us in ways that appear quite fundamental to the outsider. Most people are frightened by such apparent basic differences which have no obviously discernible cause. So traditionally they have been shunned. Religions are inherently organizations designed to maintain an accepted, traditional set of rules to make society function safely in easy-to-understand ways. They have always been responsible for organizing the practice of shunning outsiders and malcontents. If your idea of creating the ideal society is to find the traditions that have persisted and training everyone to follow them, then you are going to be attracted to religions that do that.[*]
I would speculate that Ted Haggart is a person with an attraction - that is, a sexual orientation - towards other men, and that his family and friends find his desired sexual orientation unacceptable. To keep that family and those friends, he joined a fundamentalist religion that taught "the rules. No Exceptions. Keep it simple." He is clearly also a person, probably with a male self-identity, who has a strong sex drive. A strong sex-drive is one of the factors that drives many men into leadership positions.
In order to become a leader and rise in leadership roles, a person has to identify with those he or she leads and direct them in those directions. Otherwise, they will reject him. So he had to not only learn among other things) the gender and sexual mores of his fundamentalist Christian Church and impress their importance on other people. His success at doing this is obvious from his position as Pastor of the New Life Church and his wider reputation in the evangelical community.
His internal conflict between what he had been taught and then taught to others about sexual identity and sexual orientation drove him to great success. The energy he had from repressing his sexual orientation so strongly was displayed in his behavior, but that very energy from that conflict also reached out and destroyed his behavioral repression mechanisms.
Now he is left,exposed to his former parishioners, as a hypocrite and one of those very homosexual individuals that he spent years decrying and repressing. He is also (and again I speculate) an individual who focuses on behavior as the method of control of himself. If he thinks something should not be done, he doesn't do it, and in fact will ostentatiously attempt to do the very opposite in public to help get public assistance in controlling himself. If he believes that the behavior is wrong, he does not want to analyze it and (horror) find some core rationality in that behavior.
So that has left him with no mental and emotional tools to help him adjust to his newly publicly exposed "weakness." The concepts of gender identity and sexual orientation are not found in the Bible except to decry those who are out of the mainstream. Even if now the concepts are presented to him, the personal barriers he has set against accepting them must be tremendous.
It should be no surprise, then, that the closest he has been able to come to understanding why his coreligionists are now shunning him is his quoted statement "The stereotypical boxes don’t work for me," he said. “My story’s got some gray areas in it. And, of course, I’m sad about that, but it’s the reality.” He accepts that he was "weak" (meaning that his self-repression methods could not hold down his built-in sexual orientation permanently) and is now disgraced. He is that close to comprehension, but he literally can't accept his own personal reality yet.
[*] Another type of religion is less focused on controlling the behavior of others and more on understanding what the inherent social situation is and adapting the best practices from tradition to what works. These denominations are also rooted in tradition, but apply research and logic to the social effects of that tradition. The behavior they enforce is more closely related to social reality than is that of fundamentalist rule-givers. This is harder work, and most people just want clear, simple rules and to not have to bother talking about them.
Haggard is describes his current status thus:
In an interview with The Associated Press this month, Mr. Haggard said he was selling insurance and debt-reduction software and that his sexual identity was hard to pin down. “The stereotypical boxes don’t work for me,” he said. “My story’s got some gray areas in it. And, of course, I’m sad about that, but it’s the reality.”A person I know who has gender identity issues and has investigated the situation with therapists says Haggard's case is pretty clear. Ted Haggart is a homosexual male - a male person who is sexually attracted to other males. His confusion comes from the extreme religious pressure and his won beliefs that say homosexuality is a total sin.
Haggard not only bought the line that homosexuality is a total sin, but he also preached it, was surrounded by others who preached it and enforced it. One of the best social techniques for instilling a belief system in someone else is to have them go out and evangelize for it. Haggard has done that in spades. Yet his own body is telling him that the sex objects he is attracted to are male, not female. His apparent confusion is from cognitive dissonance between public recognition of his sexual nature and his strong beliefs about how unacceptable it is. He has found that he is himself - by birth - attracted to other members of his own gender.
He has been forced to accept the truth of his own attraction to others of his own gender, but the utter repression of that truth by extremist conservative fundamentalist religion and his own society has left him, as he says, with his sexual orientation "hard to pin down." Of course it has.
Society has a very simplified idea of gender identity and sexual orientation. There is a general very fundamental belief that a person is born either male or female, and that if your body is one or the other your personal identity and your sexual orientation must fit the stereotypical male - female images. Then, using that assumption, the doctor can look at a child at the moment of birth and determine if that child is male or female, and the assumption is that the child's sexual identity and the sex objects to whom that child will be attracted MUST fit the stereotype. That's fine for most of us because most of us DO fit the stereotype. That's why it is a persistent stereotype.
But the body is much more complicated than that. Gender is more behavior than anatomy, and learning which gender a person is sexually attracted to is a process that does not display itself clearly (except perhaps to a few experts) until puberty. All the social repression in the world is not going to deter the body from forming the sexual orientation it demands. That is also true, by the way, of the gender identity of the personality. That, too, is more variable than is commonly believed, and gender identity may not conform to the anatomy OR to the sexual identity, either. Gender identity may also be fixed before birth the way sexual orientation is, but since there is no clearly overt behavior (that is, not clear to others) that results from it, it is even less identified that sexual orientation differences. The fact that this also forms a strong personal drive is demonstrated by the number of individuals who have had gender reassignment surgery.
The difficulty is that people with such out-of-the-mainstream difficulties matching society's stereotyped sexual behaviors are different from the rest of us in ways that appear quite fundamental to the outsider. Most people are frightened by such apparent basic differences which have no obviously discernible cause. So traditionally they have been shunned. Religions are inherently organizations designed to maintain an accepted, traditional set of rules to make society function safely in easy-to-understand ways. They have always been responsible for organizing the practice of shunning outsiders and malcontents. If your idea of creating the ideal society is to find the traditions that have persisted and training everyone to follow them, then you are going to be attracted to religions that do that.[*]
I would speculate that Ted Haggart is a person with an attraction - that is, a sexual orientation - towards other men, and that his family and friends find his desired sexual orientation unacceptable. To keep that family and those friends, he joined a fundamentalist religion that taught "the rules. No Exceptions. Keep it simple." He is clearly also a person, probably with a male self-identity, who has a strong sex drive. A strong sex-drive is one of the factors that drives many men into leadership positions.
In order to become a leader and rise in leadership roles, a person has to identify with those he or she leads and direct them in those directions. Otherwise, they will reject him. So he had to not only learn among other things) the gender and sexual mores of his fundamentalist Christian Church and impress their importance on other people. His success at doing this is obvious from his position as Pastor of the New Life Church and his wider reputation in the evangelical community.
His internal conflict between what he had been taught and then taught to others about sexual identity and sexual orientation drove him to great success. The energy he had from repressing his sexual orientation so strongly was displayed in his behavior, but that very energy from that conflict also reached out and destroyed his behavioral repression mechanisms.
Now he is left,exposed to his former parishioners, as a hypocrite and one of those very homosexual individuals that he spent years decrying and repressing. He is also (and again I speculate) an individual who focuses on behavior as the method of control of himself. If he thinks something should not be done, he doesn't do it, and in fact will ostentatiously attempt to do the very opposite in public to help get public assistance in controlling himself. If he believes that the behavior is wrong, he does not want to analyze it and (horror) find some core rationality in that behavior.
So that has left him with no mental and emotional tools to help him adjust to his newly publicly exposed "weakness." The concepts of gender identity and sexual orientation are not found in the Bible except to decry those who are out of the mainstream. Even if now the concepts are presented to him, the personal barriers he has set against accepting them must be tremendous.
It should be no surprise, then, that the closest he has been able to come to understanding why his coreligionists are now shunning him is his quoted statement "The stereotypical boxes don’t work for me," he said. “My story’s got some gray areas in it. And, of course, I’m sad about that, but it’s the reality.” He accepts that he was "weak" (meaning that his self-repression methods could not hold down his built-in sexual orientation permanently) and is now disgraced. He is that close to comprehension, but he literally can't accept his own personal reality yet.
[*] Another type of religion is less focused on controlling the behavior of others and more on understanding what the inherent social situation is and adapting the best practices from tradition to what works. These denominations are also rooted in tradition, but apply research and logic to the social effects of that tradition. The behavior they enforce is more closely related to social reality than is that of fundamentalist rule-givers. This is harder work, and most people just want clear, simple rules and to not have to bother talking about them.
Friday, January 30, 2009
These I find interesting
Just a few interesting items for your information
- McConnell: GOP becoming 'regional party' Politico, 1/29/09
- Labor Group's Radio Ad Hits GOP Leader: Rush Limbaugh TPMDC 01/30/09 - "Every Republican voted with Limbaugh, and against creating 4 million new American jobs," the announcer says, referring to the House Republicans' unanimous vote against the stimulus package.
- Latest Micro-Madoff TPM 01/29/09 - "Disgraced ex-Congressman Wes Cooley (disgraced for lying about his military record) indicted for defrauding investors out of over $10 million in a scam right out of an episode of the Sopranos ..."
- Organizing For America Takes First Action For Obama Agenda The Huffington Post 01/30/09 - Organize for America is Obamas updated version of his state-by-state Internet coordinated political operation. That organization is not going to waste once he got elected, and it will get around the anti-Democratic bias of the media pundits and the obstructionism of the Congressional Republicans.
- Obama Versus the Republicans: Chill Out, He's Got This The Huffington Post 01/28/09 - Cesca essentially agrees with what I wrote yesterday at Why is Obama caving to the Republicans so much?. He's playing Rope-a-dope with the Republicans.
Evaluating the Reagan era
It's been a while since St. Ronny was elected in 1980 and the conservatives used that opportunity to really begin what they called "the Reagan Revolution." It was revolutionary, and it has had a long run dominating American national politics, but the banking crisis last Fall led Forbes magazine to declare "R.I.P. the Reagan Revolution. The announcement that the Recession started in December 2006 was the final nail in the Reagan Revolution's coffin.
Now it is time to evaluate the effects of the Reagan Revolution. Sam Pizzigati at uture.org/blog-entry/2009010205/final-report-card-reagan-years">Campaign for America's Future has done a good job at doing that.
Go read it at the link.
Now it is time to evaluate the effects of the Reagan Revolution. Sam Pizzigati at uture.org/blog-entry/2009010205/final-report-card-reagan-years">Campaign for America's Future has done a good job at doing that.
Go read it at the link.
If you want to become a terrorist, just disagree with the government and tell them you do.
Here's how one man became a terrorist. J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Michele Bachmann, Bill O'Reilly and Jonah Goldberg would all be very proud.
This is frankly Unamerican.
This is frankly Unamerican.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The NY Times needs an economics text
The NY Times gets the analysis of Obam's stimulus wrong. What did they get wrong? All of it.
Rod Blagojevich is out as Ill. governor
The Senate voted today to remove Rod Blagojevich as governor of Illinois. They also voted to bar him from ever holding public office in Illinois again.
The vote to convict was 59 to 0. The minimum vote to convict him was 40 or more. It wasn't even close.
The vote to convict was 59 to 0. The minimum vote to convict him was 40 or more. It wasn't even close.
Why is Obama caving to the Republicans so much?
I think that Obama is playing a subtle PR game on the Republican Congressional leaders and their followers and on the American public at the same time. He is attempting to differentiate himself positively from the Bush technique of writing a totally partisan bill, even larding it up with poison pills that the Democrats are forced to vote against and then cramming it through Congress in brute force (Rovian) style. The Obama's game includes caving on some issues that don't effect his poll standing, but holding relatively firm on the core of what he needs. The fact that so many liberals are clearly upset by his surrenders helps him achieve this by suckering in the conservatively biased media. The result is that he is getting the most publicly popular things he needs while the Republicans in Congress are painting themselves into a corner and looking ridiculous doing it. That it is a long-term game. It's a long term strategy.
Obama has the polls in his favor and he has just been elected as a direct rejection of George Bush. The estimated 1.8 million crowd that went to Washington for the inauguration sent a signal that the Republicans could not have missed, although the media appears to have missed it. The media has had to put Obama's inauguration crowds into the memory hole. But he also has to get health care through, and I seriously doubt that Obama has given up on his promise to do that this year. He needs to husband his power to accomplish that.
The Congressional Republicans are coming out of this stimulus vote looking very bad, while Limbaugh and the right wing talk jocks are coming off looking desperate. The talk show host's control of the Republican Congressional party is also being laid bare to the public. Again, this is something the media has to bury in the memory hole.
I don't think Obama ever thought the Republicans in Congress were going to be reasonable. They can't. While they are from red states and congressional districts and seem to have life time sinecures, that is only as long as they toe the line with their constituencies in the Republican Party. If any of them actually start cooperating with Obama, they will face the wrath of Limbaugh, et al. now and a primary challenge next year. As for the next general election, Obama's Internet-based social and political organizations (which have become part of the DNC) are going to be putting pressure on them from their home districts and states. If the Republicans who are targeted that way survive a primary challenge, they will face much stronger Democratic opposition in the next general election. They don't dare cooperate with Obama and breal with their leadership and the Talk Show hosts, or they becoem more vulnerable to losing their seat in Congress. It'd s s two-pronged attack that depends on Obama's base of supporters.
I'm pretty sure that team Obama has taken lessons from what happened to Bill Clinton in 1994. Obama really doesn't want to lose his Democratic Party majorities in Congress. The team is going to need those majorities when the depression gets much worse. It is quite clear now that it will, a fact that the Congressional Republicans and talk show hosts are depending on to rebuild Republican Congressional power.
Through all this, of course, we can expect the media to continue to attack the Obama administration because that's what they are trained and organized to do. Obama is going to also have to avoid the media sniping while letting them look so partisan that they cease to be as effective as they were against Gore and Kerry. Generally the media conservative bias will be an even longer term problem for Obama, but he got elected without them. He can deal with them.
That's my best guess regarding "What Obama thinks." He is still holding his cards close to his chest, and we'll have to discern his thinking from his behavior and his results. So far he has done well.
Obama has the polls in his favor and he has just been elected as a direct rejection of George Bush. The estimated 1.8 million crowd that went to Washington for the inauguration sent a signal that the Republicans could not have missed, although the media appears to have missed it. The media has had to put Obama's inauguration crowds into the memory hole. But he also has to get health care through, and I seriously doubt that Obama has given up on his promise to do that this year. He needs to husband his power to accomplish that.
The Congressional Republicans are coming out of this stimulus vote looking very bad, while Limbaugh and the right wing talk jocks are coming off looking desperate. The talk show host's control of the Republican Congressional party is also being laid bare to the public. Again, this is something the media has to bury in the memory hole.
I don't think Obama ever thought the Republicans in Congress were going to be reasonable. They can't. While they are from red states and congressional districts and seem to have life time sinecures, that is only as long as they toe the line with their constituencies in the Republican Party. If any of them actually start cooperating with Obama, they will face the wrath of Limbaugh, et al. now and a primary challenge next year. As for the next general election, Obama's Internet-based social and political organizations (which have become part of the DNC) are going to be putting pressure on them from their home districts and states. If the Republicans who are targeted that way survive a primary challenge, they will face much stronger Democratic opposition in the next general election. They don't dare cooperate with Obama and breal with their leadership and the Talk Show hosts, or they becoem more vulnerable to losing their seat in Congress. It'd s s two-pronged attack that depends on Obama's base of supporters.
I'm pretty sure that team Obama has taken lessons from what happened to Bill Clinton in 1994. Obama really doesn't want to lose his Democratic Party majorities in Congress. The team is going to need those majorities when the depression gets much worse. It is quite clear now that it will, a fact that the Congressional Republicans and talk show hosts are depending on to rebuild Republican Congressional power.
Through all this, of course, we can expect the media to continue to attack the Obama administration because that's what they are trained and organized to do. Obama is going to also have to avoid the media sniping while letting them look so partisan that they cease to be as effective as they were against Gore and Kerry. Generally the media conservative bias will be an even longer term problem for Obama, but he got elected without them. He can deal with them.
That's my best guess regarding "What Obama thinks." He is still holding his cards close to his chest, and we'll have to discern his thinking from his behavior and his results. So far he has done well.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Who was Bernie Madoff?
Julie Creswell and Landon Thomas Jr. at the New York Times attempted to answer that question. Here is an excerpt from the article:
That seems likely to me to be a set of personality traits that are well-rewarded on Wall Street, and similarly rewarded in politics.
For more information on who Bernie Madoff is and his history, here is a link to the Wikipedia article on Bernie Madoff. It contains an interesting technical description of his alleged investment strategy (it helps to know that ITM means In The Money, ATM means At The Money, and OTM meants Out of The Money. For good, brief explanation of those term, see this wikipedia article.)
It is now coming to light that Madoff probably used the strategy described in the wikipedia article, known as collar trades to bamboozle people who wondered how he was making his profits. It is not clear if he started using it and it failed, leading him to move into the ponzi scheme or he simply didn't use it except as a bamboozlement tool. In addition, he had a sophisticated marketing plan that targeted charitable foundations that are required to pay out 5% of their capital every year. By doing that he had a stable set of buyers who could not withdraw everything at once, and only had to offer that 5% return. This avoided the short term problems that normally cause a ponzi scheme to collapse quickly. Then he sold the investments through his country club connections in an affiliation swindle. The article also goes into how the so-called sophisticated investors and the regulatory agencies were bamboozled. For the latter, the general attitude of laissez faire deregulation that has been predominant both on Wall Street and in Washington helped a great deal.
It has been a Hell of a scheme conducted by a an immoral master schemer, and if the entire structure of unregulated banking on Wall Street had not collapsed, it probably would have continued until Madoff died.
So who was the real Bernie Madoff? And what could have driven him to choreograph a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, to which he is said to have confessed?This seems to be the view that is coming out from the investigations into Bernie Madoff's scheme. In a nutshell, Madoff is a psychopath with a real sense of grandiosity and a well practiced ability to lie, a pleasure in deception, no sense of shame and no sense of regret at what he does to the people he manipulates and steals from.
An easy answer is that Mr. Madoff was a charlatan of epic proportions, a greedy manipulator so hungry to accumulate wealth that he did not care whom he hurt to get what he wanted.
But some analysts say that a more complex and layered observation of his actions involves linking the world of white-collar finance to the world of serial criminals.
They wonder whether good old Bernie Madoff might have stolen simply for the fun of it, exploiting every relationship in his life for decades while studiously manipulating financial regulators.
“Some of the characteristics you see in psychopaths are lying, manipulation, the ability to deceive, feelings of grandiosity and callousness toward their victims,” says Gregg O. McCrary, a former special agent with the F.B.I. who spent years constructing criminal behavioral profiles.
Mr. McCrary cautions that he has never met Mr. Madoff, so he can’t make a diagnosis, but he says Mr. Madoff appears to share many of the destructive traits typically seen in a psychopath. That is why, he says, so many who came into contact with Mr. Madoff have been left reeling and in confusion about his motives.
“People like him become sort of like chameleons. They are very good at impression management,” Mr. McCrary says. “They manage the impression you receive of them. They know what people want, and they give it to them.”
As investigators plow through decades of documents, trying to decipher whether Mr. Madoff was engaged in anything other than an elaborate financial ruse, his friends remain dumbfounded — and feel deeply violated.
“He was a hero to us. The head of Nasdaq. We were proud of everything he had accomplished,” says Diana Goldberg, who once shared the 27-minute train ride with Mr. Madoff from their homes in Laurelton, Queens, to classes at Far Rockaway High School. “Now, the hero has vanished.”
If, in the end, Mr. Madoff is found to have been engaging in fraud for most of his career, then the hero never really existed. Authorities say Mr. Madoff himself has confessed that he was the author of a longstanding and wide-ranging financial charade. His lawyer, Ira Lee Sorkin, declined to comment.
During the decades that Mr. Madoff built his business, he cast himself as a crusader, protecting the interests of smaller investors and bent on changing the way securities trading was done on Wall Street. To that end, like a burglar who knows the patrol routes of the police and can listen in on their radio scanners, he also actively wooed regulators who monitored his business.
That seems likely to me to be a set of personality traits that are well-rewarded on Wall Street, and similarly rewarded in politics.
For more information on who Bernie Madoff is and his history, here is a link to the Wikipedia article on Bernie Madoff. It contains an interesting technical description of his alleged investment strategy (it helps to know that ITM means In The Money, ATM means At The Money, and OTM meants Out of The Money. For good, brief explanation of those term, see this wikipedia article.)
It is now coming to light that Madoff probably used the strategy described in the wikipedia article, known as collar trades to bamboozle people who wondered how he was making his profits. It is not clear if he started using it and it failed, leading him to move into the ponzi scheme or he simply didn't use it except as a bamboozlement tool. In addition, he had a sophisticated marketing plan that targeted charitable foundations that are required to pay out 5% of their capital every year. By doing that he had a stable set of buyers who could not withdraw everything at once, and only had to offer that 5% return. This avoided the short term problems that normally cause a ponzi scheme to collapse quickly. Then he sold the investments through his country club connections in an affiliation swindle. The article also goes into how the so-called sophisticated investors and the regulatory agencies were bamboozled. For the latter, the general attitude of laissez faire deregulation that has been predominant both on Wall Street and in Washington helped a great deal.
It has been a Hell of a scheme conducted by a an immoral master schemer, and if the entire structure of unregulated banking on Wall Street had not collapsed, it probably would have continued until Madoff died.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
There's nothing wrong with stimulus projects that don't start immediately.
The Wall street Journal today has a breathless article bemoaning the fact that the stimulus bill may not stimulate jobs right away.
So What? The fact that it may take a while for the highway projects and such to kick in is a feature, not a bug. That's not to say that shovel-ready projects that can start very quickly are not needed, but they mustn't be the only projects considered, and even those will have some delay as they get ramped up to start.
This recession is going to last a while, at least two more years and I am betting even longer. The stimulus won't prevent the recession and bring us back to the status quo ante. It can't. There is too much damage that has already been done to the economy. But a lot of the stimulus is already targeted at social safety net projects through existing agencies anyway and other short term expenditures. Perhaps not enough, but those will hit the economy quickly. The thing is, the stimulus has to also keep on providing stimulus over time because the market is not going to be back - no matter what the government does - to where it supports itself for quite a while. Two years from now would be a highly optimistic projection.
That means that there has to be long term stimulus built in, and not just for individuals. Jobs have to be created and maintained. That's what the highway and infrastructure investments will do. By the way, the problem for businesses is demand for what they produce, not money to meet that demand. Any tax cuts given to businesses that aren't making a profit anyway are wasted. They won't get anything. Similarly, tax cuts and grants to businesses that are making a profit will not help them. They still need increased demand. That demand will largely be government contracts. The assistance to business has to be provided by creating a demand for their products. And for it to start in the future gives them time to ramp up, arrange financing and capital and get contracts.
Remember, no business is going to see that there is a one-time stimulus hitting the economy and ramp up to hire employees and go to work on that basis. They know that the one-time stimulus like last May hits, has a short term effect, and then dies out. If nothing else, no sensible bank will loan money for a business that cannot assure a long term stream of revenue. That's what the infrastructure expenditures will do.
The fact that they will not kick in soon means they can be planned for and businesses can be built based on those plans. Fast, short-term stimulus by itself is close to useless.
So What? The fact that it may take a while for the highway projects and such to kick in is a feature, not a bug. That's not to say that shovel-ready projects that can start very quickly are not needed, but they mustn't be the only projects considered, and even those will have some delay as they get ramped up to start.
This recession is going to last a while, at least two more years and I am betting even longer. The stimulus won't prevent the recession and bring us back to the status quo ante. It can't. There is too much damage that has already been done to the economy. But a lot of the stimulus is already targeted at social safety net projects through existing agencies anyway and other short term expenditures. Perhaps not enough, but those will hit the economy quickly. The thing is, the stimulus has to also keep on providing stimulus over time because the market is not going to be back - no matter what the government does - to where it supports itself for quite a while. Two years from now would be a highly optimistic projection.
That means that there has to be long term stimulus built in, and not just for individuals. Jobs have to be created and maintained. That's what the highway and infrastructure investments will do. By the way, the problem for businesses is demand for what they produce, not money to meet that demand. Any tax cuts given to businesses that aren't making a profit anyway are wasted. They won't get anything. Similarly, tax cuts and grants to businesses that are making a profit will not help them. They still need increased demand. That demand will largely be government contracts. The assistance to business has to be provided by creating a demand for their products. And for it to start in the future gives them time to ramp up, arrange financing and capital and get contracts.
Remember, no business is going to see that there is a one-time stimulus hitting the economy and ramp up to hire employees and go to work on that basis. They know that the one-time stimulus like last May hits, has a short term effect, and then dies out. If nothing else, no sensible bank will loan money for a business that cannot assure a long term stream of revenue. That's what the infrastructure expenditures will do.
The fact that they will not kick in soon means they can be planned for and businesses can be built based on those plans. Fast, short-term stimulus by itself is close to useless.
Obama has reversed much of Bush/Cheney's secrecy effort
This is pretty neat, if it works as Zack Roth at TPM suggests it might. Watch the video.
I seem to recall that Bush's previous Presidential Order on keeping documents from being released went at least as far back as Bush 41's Presidency, and perhaps included Reagan's. If so, then the Freedom of Information requests from journalists and historians are going to be flying thick and fast.
I'll leave the legal implications to the lawyers and to people like the TPM crew and Emptywheel at Firedoglake. But it seems obvious even to me that stonewalling is going to get a lot harder.
I seem to recall that Bush's previous Presidential Order on keeping documents from being released went at least as far back as Bush 41's Presidency, and perhaps included Reagan's. If so, then the Freedom of Information requests from journalists and historians are going to be flying thick and fast.
I'll leave the legal implications to the lawyers and to people like the TPM crew and Emptywheel at Firedoglake. But it seems obvious even to me that stonewalling is going to get a lot harder.
The Marc Rich pardon: some background
When Eric Holder was nominated to become Obama's new Attorney General, the question of his involvement in President Clinton's last minute pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich was raised by the Republicans in the Senate. This post is about Marc Rich and the alleged crime for which he was pardoned, and does not consider Eric Holder's involvement.
Marc Rich was an extremely successful (according to Forbes magazine he was the 242d richest man in America in 2006) commodities trader who, with his partner Pincus Green bought and sold international commodities, including Iranian oil. Rich and Green were indicted for tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran in 1983 by then U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani. At the time of the indictment both Rich and Green were located in Switzerland, and they never returned to America to answer the charges. The charges were brought under the RICO statutes. The Justice Department stopped using the RICO statutes for tax cases of this type in 1989.
Interestingly, "Scooter" Libby, the aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted of giving the CIA undercover Officer Valerie Plame's name and affiliation with the CIA to the media for political purposes. Libby told Congress during hearings after the pardon that in his legal opinion, Marc Rich had not violated U.S. tax law, but could be criticized for trading with Iran even while the Iranians were holding the American hostages.
So Rich's guilt was never tested in court before the Clinton pardon, the RICO law under which the charges were made have ceased to be a basis for such charges, and a case can be made for his innocence even if it had gone to court.
But why did Clinton make the pardon at all? Bill Clinton wrote a New York Times OpEd published 02/18/2001in which he explained his reasoning.
Marc Rich was an extremely successful (according to Forbes magazine he was the 242d richest man in America in 2006) commodities trader who, with his partner Pincus Green bought and sold international commodities, including Iranian oil. Rich and Green were indicted for tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran in 1983 by then U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani. At the time of the indictment both Rich and Green were located in Switzerland, and they never returned to America to answer the charges. The charges were brought under the RICO statutes. The Justice Department stopped using the RICO statutes for tax cases of this type in 1989.
Interestingly, "Scooter" Libby, the aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted of giving the CIA undercover Officer Valerie Plame's name and affiliation with the CIA to the media for political purposes. Libby told Congress during hearings after the pardon that in his legal opinion, Marc Rich had not violated U.S. tax law, but could be criticized for trading with Iran even while the Iranians were holding the American hostages.
So Rich's guilt was never tested in court before the Clinton pardon, the RICO law under which the charges were made have ceased to be a basis for such charges, and a case can be made for his innocence even if it had gone to court.
But why did Clinton make the pardon at all? Bill Clinton wrote a New York Times OpEd published 02/18/2001in which he explained his reasoning.
(1) I understood that the other oil companies that had structured transactions like those on which Mr. Rich and Mr. Green were indicted were instead sued civilly by the government; (2) I was informed that, in 1985, in a related case against a trading partner of Mr. Rich and Mr. Green, the Energy Department, which was responsible for enforcing the governing law, found that the manner in which the Rich/Green companies had accounted for these transactions was proper; (3) two highly regarded tax experts, Bernard Wolfman of Harvard Law School and Martin Ginsburg of Georgetown University Law Center, reviewed the transactions in question and concluded that the companies "were correct in their U.S. income tax treatment of all the items in question, and [that] there was no unreported federal income or additional tax liability attributable to any of the [challenged] transactions"; (4) in order to settle the government's case against them, the two men's companies had paid approximately $200 million in fines, penalties and taxes, most of which might not even have been warranted under the Wolfman/Ginsburg analysis that the companies had followed the law and correctly reported their income; (5) the Justice Department in 1989 rejected the use of racketeering statutes in tax cases like this one, a position that The Wall Street Journal editorial page, among others, agreed with at the time; (6) it was my understanding that Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder's position on the pardon application was "neutral, leaning for"; (7) the case for the pardons was reviewed and advocated not only by my former White House counsel Jack Quinn but also by three distinguished Republican attorneys: Leonard Garment, a former Nixon White House official; William Bradford Reynolds, a former high-ranking official in the Reagan Justice Department; and Lewis Libby, now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff; (8) finally, and importantly, many present and former high-ranking Israeli officials of both major political parties and leaders of Jewish communities in America and Europe urged the pardon of Mr. Rich because of his contributions and services to Israeli charitable causes, to the Mossad's efforts to rescue and evacuate Jews from hostile countries, and to the peace process through sponsorship of education and health programs in Gaza and the West Bank.Later in 1981 Bush 43 released transcripts of a phone call between Bill Clinton and then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak that demonstrates a lot of the pressure that Clinton was receiving. Remember that Bill Clinton ended his Presidency with an all-out push to achieve Peace in the Israeli - Palestinian conflict. On August 18, 2001 Josh Marshall discussed the transcripts in his then very new Talking Points Memo blog. This timing is interesting. The Rich pardon was big news at the time, and totally disappeared from the news less than a month later when it was eclipsed by 9/11. There is no working link I have found to the original Newsweek article by Isikoff which Marshall quotes.
Isikoff editorializes thus:As I look at this history two things jump out at me. First, the pardon itself had many factors that could easily justify it. Second, it is extremely doubtful with all the high level outside pressures on Clinton that anything that Eric Holder might have done except perhaps the criminal act of destroying the paperwork at the last minute might have changed Clinton's decision to pardon Marc Rich. Today this is nothing but a Senate Republican ploy to throw red meat to the extreme Clinton-hating elements in the Republican right-wing and to tar the Obama administration with elements of that irrational Clinton-hate that remains so active the much of the extremist elements of the Republican party. I doubt we'll be hearing more about it from now on. It's now just yesterday's news.The transcripts offer no “smoking gun” showing that the former president was motivated by large donations to his presidential library or by generous campaign contributions. But the conversations do show that, in sharp contrast to the picture painted by some of his former aides, Clinton was keenly aware of details of the Rich case, and appeared determined to grant the highly questionable pardon even though, as he admitted to Barak, there was “almost no precedent in American history.”No smoking gun? I'll say. The transcripts don't seem to contain anything even touching on this point.
Say whatever you will about the wisdom of the Marc Rich pardon, but the transcripts themselves seem to confirm a key component of Clinton's story -- that Ehud Barak, then Prime Minister of Israel, was lobbying heavily on Rich's behalf because, as he says in the transcripts, the fugitive financier had “[made] a lot of philanthropic contributions to Israeli institutions and activities like education" and because "it could be important (gap) not just financially, but [because] he helped Mossad [the Israeli intelligence agency] on more than one case."
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
A new era for America begins
Today at 12:00 pm noon Eastern time, Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as President of the United States of America. Here is a video of the swearing in.
This is only symbolic. Obama earned the right to become President, and we as Americans have given him the office through the procedures set down in the U.S. Constitution. But for being "only" symbolic, it still is a powerful symbol of what America is.
We have given him the office in trying times. We can only wish him the very best in the ways each of us sends out such wishes and prayers.
This is only symbolic. Obama earned the right to become President, and we as Americans have given him the office through the procedures set down in the U.S. Constitution. But for being "only" symbolic, it still is a powerful symbol of what America is.
We have given him the office in trying times. We can only wish him the very best in the ways each of us sends out such wishes and prayers.
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