Tag: 2010

Letter to the President

This is how you are perceived:

Even before his unemployment checks ended, Dwight Michael Frazee’s days were filled with the pursuit of any idea that could earn him a buck. But few are working out, and now his nights are filled with dread.

[…]

Frazee, who is married and has a 5-year-old daughter, is in a financial free fall with no safety net.

“My life has been total stress. I sleep maybe four hours a night, worrying about money,” he said. “I understood the president and Congress had to stabilize the banks, get Wall Street going. I figured something would be done for middle-class Americans, that they couldn’t abandon us. But I was wrong.”

“President Obama talks a lot about making the victims of the gulf disaster whole, but what about the victims of this economic disaster?” Frazee said. “Nowadays, he seems mostly concerned with image. Now, he doesn’t want to be seen as a big spender. But people need help.

Please do note that at no point does Mr. Frazee mention the Republicans, "the party of No,” filibusters, Code Brown, and even deficits only come up tangentially.
When you lose control of the House come November, your advisers will most likely hide behind a lot of nonsensical crap along the lines of “the facts are on our side.” If you believe them, even for a second, then this is why you will fail. The facts do not matter; perception is everything.

You needed to be out there every day for over a year now framing the GOP as the obstruction to economic progress and primary engine of pain and suffering in the streets of America. That the GOP wants Mr. Frazee and everyone like him to Go Die in the Streets. Everyone in your party needs to be doing the same thing. None of you are, even now. None of you even seem vaguely aware of the issue in the abstract. This is why you fail.

[You] should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes; surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to – if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that’s what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.

John Kyl, apparently thinking he’s making sense on FoxNEWS Sunday.
So, translating this into the Earth language known as English: spending money on people who just need to suck it up and go die in the streets is always wrong, whether or not the cost of that spending has been offset by equivalent cuts or revenue from elsewhere.
Spending money to lower tax rates, on the other hand, is always right and, in fact, that money should never be offset; or at least an offset should never be an impediment to going right ahead and spending the money.
These people could very well be running the House next January and the whole country come 2012.
(via Ezra Klein)

The other side said no.
They said no to laws that we passed to stop insurance companies from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions. They said no to requiring women to get equal pay for equal work. They said no to extended unemployment insurance for folks who desperately needed help. They said no to holding oil companies accountable when they bring on catastrophe.

Barack Obama, speaking in Vegas.
This is all well and good, and I’m glad to (finally) hear it. But The Democrat needs to be out there, every day in front of every microphone that is switched on repeating this sort of mantra over and over again, day after day, week after week, year after year. Then and only then it might start to seep in.
They choose not to. They choose to ignore the glaring truth that the facts do not matter. They think they have the high ground of those facts which do not matter. They do not. The facts do not matter, and often don’t even enter into the calculus. This is why they fail.

I know at least 7 [GOP] senators, who I will not name, but were made to make a commitment under threat of losing their chairmanships, if they did not support the leadership on every procedural vote, every single thing we did, from the important to the not so important, required (for the first time in modern American history) […] required 60 votes. All the sudden a majority became 60 instead of 50

Joe Biden, reflecting on GOP obstructionism.
I’d argue in a similar vein as Yglesias: it’s not remarkable at all that the GOP extracted this kind of stern loyalty. What’s remarkable is that The Democrat did not. Not even on procedural votes can Democratic Leadership count on the caucus voting in lockstep (and then being free to vote their conscience on final passage).
Likewise, such fealty is also not required on keystone issues such as healthcare insurance reform, or more recently on FinReg. Say what you will about whether or not Feingold is in the right by withholding his vote for FinReg (in favor of some theoretically better but functionally nonexistent “other bill”), the fact of the matter is that in so doing, he’s empowered Code Brown to set the agenda for FinReg, and The Democrat has dutifully sent the bill to the American Taxpayer instead of the largest banking interests in the world. And now will get to take the blame for it. Because, rest assured, the GOP will run on that. And won’t be troubled in the least by the facts that they were directly responsible for that change and many, many others just like it. The facts do not matter.

GOP Reaps No Outrage

jonathan-cunningham:

Let me see if I have this straight: in the last few days members of the GOP have savagely screwed the unemployed, protected the bankstas, trashed Thurgood Marshall, implied rape and incest is part of God’s plan, defended BP, threatened to either end social security or screw over 20 million plus people who have paid into the system for at least 20 years by making them wait until age 70 to see their benefits, and screwed homeless veterans with children. That about it, or is there more?

You can rest assured that there’s more, it’s just not what you may have been expecting. The real outrage? That The Democrat has made an issue of no part of any of this. Not even slightly. Instead, they’ve acceded to the demands of the minority. Over and over and on every issue listed there. And, in so doing, directly contribute to the seeds of their own electoral destruction.

Oh how we’ve all grown tired of hearing the same rhyming statements that defenestrate the GOP on any one of these issues every time a microphone has been switched on. Right? Oh how we’ve grown tired of the GOP repeatedly being forced to vote against jobs, or bank reform, or Wall Street reform, or BP reform, or the notion that rape isn’t part of God’s plans, or any of the rest of it. Right?

This is why we fail. Every time.

GOP Reaps No Outrage

Won’t Somebody Think of the Fatcats?

FinReg Conference Committee headed back to the table:

In an extraordinary move aimed at winning over reluctant Republican senators, the top Democratic negotiators on the Wall Street reform bill will reopen the conference committee Tuesday to swap out a controversial $19 billion tax on big banks, according to House and Senate aides.

Yes, you read that right. Fresh off nearly destroying the global economy, fresh off being bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars, fresh off the entire affair being compared to “an ant” by Boehner, the GOP is again moving the goalposts (and being allowed to do so by Democrat asshat enablers, which on this occasion includes Russ Feingold (D-Wis.); thanks a lot, and I hope you enjoy your years in the minority).
The banksters just can’t be held accountable for any amount money, no matter how small, no matter how justified, no matter how directly related to their own future operations. Not even a relatively paltry $19 billion that’s intended to bail their sorry asses out in the not-too-distant future. Nope. That’s also coming out of your ass, American Taxpayer. Hope you enjoy it. The GOP got it just for you. Because you’re special. See you in 2010.

The Plan

Ezra Klein notes the outcome of some polling on what the average American thinks should be done:

1. Raise the limit on taxable earnings so it covers 90% of total earnings.
2. Reduce spending on health care and non-defense discretionary spending by at least 5%.
3. Raise tax rates on corporate income and those earning more than $1 million.
4. Raise the age for receiving full Social Security benefits to 69.
5. Reduce defense spending by 10% – 15%.
6. Create a carbon and securities-transaction tax.

I don’t see any of these that are antithetical to the broad strokes of Democratic policy, at least as it has played out under Obama. Plus, these are the popular ideas. So steal them. This should be the Aims for a Renewed America (or whatever). You run on it across the board. Individual candidates may feel free to leaven in some Wall St. Fatcat mentions such that they can play down #4.

You’ve already allowed the Republicans to devestate whatever recovery there was…you’d damned well better have a platform that, in a stroke, both recognizes that we have a serious problem and outlines real, substantive, measurable ways to address it. Starting our First Day back in the Congress.

You got a better idea, Reid? Didn’t think so.

southpol:

The Third Depression:

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

I’d agree with all that Krugman says above (and in the editorial), but take small issue with this part:

In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery.

I think the GOP leadership realizes all too well that not enough has been done. They have chosen to use the crisis for short-term political gain. There is no other explanation for the withdrawal of unemployment benefits. None. They just want to maximize pain to the citizens out there that may be inclined to vote come 2010 and, more urgently from the GOP perspective, in the 2012 follow-on when they could well be poised to take power in both branches.

Then, of course, they’ll fix it all with a rigorous program of tax cuts for the wealthy. Which is touched on in the closer:

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

Yep.

Blather in the Wild

Bob Somerby notes it too:

Question: Have you seen any stories about the way the heat wave proves that global warming is happening? We ask because of the lunacy that occurred when it snowed in D.C. this year.

[…]

There has been no nonsense this week—and that, of course, is good. But in these well-twinned weather events, we can’t help seeing the shape of American politics over the past forty years. One tribe has broadcast well-known bits of nonsense: Socialized medicine has failed wherever it’s been tried! The Social Security trust fund has already been spent! If we lower tax rates, we get extra revenue! In the absence of active attempts at rebuttal, such nonsense has been quite effective. Claims of this type have driven American politics, as in the past year’s debate about the Obama health plan.

Many people believed what they heard about that unusual snow in D.C. This week, it’s been very hot in D.C. Thankfully, not a word has been said.

I tend to agree up to a point, in that it is intellectually comfortable to see a lack of foolishness in the discourse. But, by the same token, you cannot win a the larger game you refuse to play the smaller one. And, let’s face it, The Democrat categorically refuses to use a convenient heat wave (or, for that matter, any other politically useful event) to make the GOP an object of derision; the GOP and its media enablers have no such compunction about using a convenient snow storm, oil spill, natural disaster, and or terrorist attack. It’s all about messaging and inoculation. The first thing low information voters should think about when faced with some future snowstorm-related attacks on Democrats should be some Democrat pointing out the fact that it’s hot today in an amusing way that demeans and debases some particularly idiotic, utterly predictable GOP talking point.
Neither today’s heat or last winter’s freak snowstorms have much if anything to do with global warming per se; but you cannot simply grin and bear an attack, no matter how ridiculous, and hope that the truth will out because you have the facts on your side.

The facts do not matter.