Author Archives: Scarecrow

Nate Silver Rumored for Treasury Secretary or OMB Head

Posted by on November 7, 2012 Comments Off

Rumors are spreading this a.m. that the reality-based number cruncher at the New York Times, Nate Silver, may soon be appointed to a high position in the Obama Administration.**

Silver successfully humiliated the entire D.C. center-right pundit class and Fox News by nailing the polling and the high probability of an Obama election victory by looking at and understanding what polling numbers actually mean. He may now be picked to replace Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner or become head of the White House Office of Management and Budget or some other high advisory position where his skills are sadly missing.

While the White House has made no official announcement, several sources with close ties to the Administration confirmed the matter is under discussion.

“It would vastly improve America’s policies and help restore the economy if the White House began listening to someone with a proven track record and who actually uses and understands facts and numerical relationships, instead of discredited dogma,” a White House adviser who asked for anonymity remarked. “This would be especially good for the economy and the role actual facts, proven mathematical relationships, economic experience, and a commitment to rationality play in setting policies to improve employment, reduce inequality, which has continued it’s 40 year slide over the last four years, supporting growth and creating fairness in the tax code.

Silver is now acknowledged, even among a few Serious People, to have the ability and courage to use actual facts and numbers to predict the probability of events, and not being afraid to express them. These are skills several White House friends saw as noticeably missing in Mr. Obama’s first term and lacking among his key economic and political advisers. They cited several areas in which Silver’s type of reality-based predictions could benefit the country and help frame a more beneficial agenda for the President and Congress over the next few years. For example:

  • Silver would likely note that a policy of austerity, as currently advocated by both parties and the White House, particularly one focused on significant cuts in government domestic spending when the economy was still recovering, would have a high probability, likely 95.4%, of increasing unemployment and reducing GDP while stripping valuable services and needed investments from the federal budget .
  • Silver could read and understand the relevant, fact-based analyses/studies that show that reducing taxes on the rich would just increase the economic and political power of the extremely wealthy to the detriment of the middle class and poor, thus worsening inequality, slowing growth and undermining democratic principles. Probability: about 97.3 %.
  • He would also predict, with 84.7% confidence, that raising taxes on the very wealthy would have virtually no adverse effect on the economy, since all the claims they are the “job creators” driving the economy was just dogma.
  • Silver would do the math to show that proposed changes in the Social Security COLA formula likely to be accepted by Congress and the Administration would adversely impact the economically most vulnerable seniors, for no good reason. Probability: 100%
  • Silver would actually pay attention to, understand and explain the economic studies that show the current deficits are not a crises and that the long-run debt to GDP ratios are not a structural problem except for growing private (not government) health-care costs, and even that issue may be receding if, in fact, those costs are no longer rising at their previously unsustainable course, as recent studies suggest. Probability that most of Congress and the Administration will get this wrong: 82.5%.
  • Silver could use data from Hurrican Sandy, correlated with massive climate science, to predict the absurdity (92.8%) of continuing to pretend that these events are unrelated one-off events that won’t recur or get worse. He might also note, using real numbers, that a policy of “all of the above,” which he’d correctly note are mostly the carbon-based fuels that are creating the problem, would fail. (91.3 % probability.)

In short, paying attention to someone who thinks in a reality-based, rational world would lead to dramatic changes in US public policy. It would argue for a dramatic reversal of the expected (100%) destructive policies likely to be pursued in Washington.

Several pundits and D.C. politicians have already begun to predict that anyone with Silver’s skills, honesty, and attitude toward facts could never be appointed to any position of power or influence. Chris Cilliza noted that the likelihood of this happening was zero, so Serious People shouldn’t think about this further and should continue to be be misinformed by the Washington Post.

Speaker John Boehner said he’d rather the country go to hell and a hand basket before Congress should listen to someone whose statements were reality-based and diametrically the opposite of his members, who live in another universe. A Boehner aide later clarified Mr. Boehner meant that he believed the nation, and particularly the House existed in another universe, and we just had to accept that. Probability he would lose his job if he accepted Silver’s reality-based mindset: 100%.

**Satire probability: 100%

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Little Paul Ryan, 12 Years Old, Has Nightmares About Central Planners, Whose Levees Are Saving New Orleans From Drowning

Posted by on August 30, 2012 Comments Off

Hoover Dam by Ansel Adams, National Archives (Wikipedia)

Paul Ryan’s speech to the Republican National Convention will be praised by unthinking pundits today for its success is revving up the GOP base — and you can only shake your head at what that takes these days. From early reactions, I suspect the speech will be a litmus test for how much of the media made it to adulthood. Those who failed will likely ignore the destructive, infantile message Ryan was sending to the American people, proving how little he understands about a modern economy and how nations become strong and its people prosperous.

At a key moment, his voice rising, Ryan told the nation they should fear the “central planners” who are apparently sapping the the entrepreneurial life juices from the American soul. That got a standing ovation from today’s Republican Party. Meanwhile, a thousand miles away, the Army Corp of Engineers, the epitome of government central planning, was operating the pumps and flood gates along the levees in and around the City of New Orleans desperately trying to keep the city from drowning again.

New Orleans did drown, seven years ago, as the nation and a clueless President watched helplessly from above. Mr. Bush was someone who believed, just as Paul Ryan does, that collective action in the public interest and government-funded public investments done with careful central planning are not an essential part of his job, unless you’re building aircraft carriers to facilitate wars you just lied the country into. As he circled the disaster of a drowning city, the pathetic President may have foreseen his approval ratings tanking as the unchecked flood waters rose, stranding thousands of victims. But that’s not the nightmare little Paul Ryan has.

No, 12 year old Paul Ryan worries that if the government at any level acts in the community interest to further the public good, then “some” *cough* kinds of people will view government programs as a “hammock” in which they will lie back and cease to strive. They will just live off the dole, at the expense of the “real” Americans, who themselves will get lazy and stop building all those small businesses that somehow sprang up in towns whose histories we’ve forgotten, whose streets, and lamplights, and water and sewer systems somehow spontaneously appeared. And we won’t mention the highways that carry goods and customers to and from that I-built-this self-made business, nor mention the small business loans, or the courts that enforce the contracts, or the levees that protect the city, nor the National Guard that helps out in times of crisis.

Today, my 93 year old dad — bless him — will be a passenger in a two truck caravan leaving Sacramento, California, packed with his last belongings, and driven by my little sister and brother in law. They’re headed towards Las Cruces, New Mexico, my home town and where my Dad worked for 45 years before retiring. They’ll be traveling partly on relatively safe highways, part of the Interstate Highway system built by that commie collectivist, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Las Cruces began as a thriving farming community that survived on the controlled waters of the Rio Grande River. Its flows are centrally managed from two modest up-river dams and reservoirs built by government in the Great Depression by a country flat on its back but willing to invest in the nation’s future and realizing it had an obligation to put able men to work to feed their families. [cont'd.]

The town thrived again when it became the location of what is now New Mexico State University, one of those land grant ag colleges authorized by the American government starting a century and a half ago because the American people believe there was a community interest in educating its citizens at low cost to students and struggling families. It’s now a center of knowledge, engineering and agricultural research for all of Southern New Mexico.

Later on, Las Cruces would grow further from defense contractors and military researchers who worked out at the University’s Physical Science Lab or at White Sands Missile Range, just across the pass in the Organ Mountains to the east. That industry has since grown and there’s a NASA facility just up the mesa near the pass.

Today, Las Cruces is also becoming a retirement community, like much of the Southwest, and it’s a nice place to retire. Seniors can do that now, because no matter what else happened, they know — or knew until Paul Ryan’s band of juvenile delinquents came along — that they can count on Medicare covering most of their medical costs and Social Security providing a modest retirement income, even though the private investment markets looted and wiped out their life savings and the unregulated private banksters blew up the home equity they thought they’d have for retirement.

Thank heaven for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, because they too will help make Las Cruces a good place to retire. But don’t thank 12 year old Paul Ryan, because he just flat lied last night about how Medicare is still going to be there, not just for his mom, but for his kids. He’s going to replace it with a voucher system whose funding will grow more slowly that the cost of care, and Medicare beneficiaries will have to make up the difference or go without care. As for those seniors who rely on Medicaid — their security is now at risk because of Ryan’s budget plans.

Social Security may/may not fare better, but if it survives the 12 year olds and the faux adults in the White House and the scoundrels on the infamous catfood commission, it will only be because in 1983, a group of central planners decided they should raise the retirement age and increase taxes to create a multi-decade Trust Fund — now up to $2.7 trillion — that would cover retirees in the post-War baby boom while the federal government let taxes on the wealthy fall. Now it’s time for the wealthy to pay their share of that bargain, but 12 year old Paul Ryan wants to give them even more tax cuts in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” Give little Paul Ryan an “F” in responsible fiscal policy and civics.

Paul Ryan’s entire premise is so juvenile, so ridiculous, so oblivious to the reality of everyone’s everyday life that his speech should go down as one of the most absurd ever delivered at a national convention. But will any of our elite pundits notice?

As I said, this is a litmus test. Let’s see how many of our elite media make themselves look ridiculous by praising little Paul Ryan’s juvenile speech vs how many actually made it to adulthood. God helps us all, god save the central planners, and keep my family safe today.

John Chandley

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Marco Rubio: Mitt Is My Hero and Every Child in America Should Grow Up to Be Like Him

Posted by on August 26, 2012 Comments Off

Mitt Romney’s popularity/approval ratings have been in the dumps since the early primaries, and they’ve remained there or worse through the summer as the American people learned more about him.

So a recurring theme among Team Republican hacks has been that the one thing Mitt needs to do to capture the Presidency is to “tell us who he is,” as if the man who has been running for President since forever would become enormously popular if only he, his wife, and his friends would just reveal the “real” Mitt Romney.

That was the advice given on PBS News Hour Friday by the elite GOP hack David Brooks before the always smiling but incurious Judy Woodruff — who with Gwen Ifill will now be the PBS anchors making theirs the least competent national news team to cover the GOP convention.  But the “if you only knew him” theme was taken to extremes today on CBS’ Face the Nation when Bob Schieffer retired from journalism and handed over the entire program to Fla. Sen. Marco Rubio and a panel of GOP flacks to sing Mitt’s praises in defiance of everything we’ve learned about the man who may well become President of the United States.

Rubio repeatedly pinged the Mitt is my Daddy meter by telling us that Mitt Romney has always been his hero, that Mitt was America’s defining success story, that everywhere Mitt has gone he’s made it better, from private enterprise at Bain to the Massachusetts governorship.  But Rubio’s slobbering was not finished.

When Schieffer asked what Rubio was planning to say in his prime-time speech introducing Mitt Romney to the convention — assuming Mother Nature is more tolerant than the world’s dumbest collection of climate deniers deserve — Rubio restated he intended to define who Romney is.  He then added (paraphrasing), Mitt Romney “is a personal role model for men like me  . . . the kind of person we’d all be proud for our kids to grow up and be like.”

God save the children!  What utter gibberish.

You would think that after spending much of his life either in government or running for the presidency with national media trailing him as he spent tens of millions defining himself, the American people would now have a pretty clear picture of what kind of man Mitt Romney is.  If there are still some pieces missing it’s only because Romney has arrogantly refused to release his taxes, refused to provide specifics for most of his non-credible, math defying policy statements, and barely mentioned Massachusetts except to insist he was a resident and eligible to vote there even while living in Utah.  At the end of his term as Massachusetts governor, Romney’s approval ratings had crashed from above 50% to about 37%.

But it’s his runs for office that have exposed everything Americans didn’t want to hear about any man presuming to be qualified for President.  The fact is, voters have been more thoroughly exposed to Mitt Romney’s character than probably any other candidate in the last half century, and what we’ve learned is deeply disturbing, not only about the man’s character but about the character of any party that would have him as their nominee.

The exposure came first in Mitt’s run for the Senate against Ted Kennedy, where after seeming a likely winner, he was exposed to ads about what Bain actually did to people; he got crushed. It came again against the GOP’s clown show last winter, where various candidates took turns exposing Romney for having taken both sides (and more) of every issue that matters to GOP voters.  He was shown to have condemned or abandoned conservative principles he now claims to hold dear and practiced a brand of “predatory capitalism” at Bain that is better defined as stripping, looting and tax evasion, along with total indifference to what it did to the real people who lost their jobs, their pensions, their insurance, and their futures.

In the last several months, the media has further exposed Romney’s business ethics at Bain: they essentially stripped companies of capital, used their borrowing leverage to extract short run profits for Bain and its investors, fired workers, outsourced jobs to avoid pensions and health benefits, and then extracted management fees and other profits, even when the “saved” firms were headed towards bankruptcy.

More recent exposures regarding Bain practices and Romney’s tax evasion, still largely concealed, show that Mitt Romney became rich not through superior management but through aggressive income concealment and tax avoidance schemes, some legal, some likely not.  We now know, for example, that Mitt likely managed to keep his tax rates low despite huge multi-million dollar annual incomes by structuring Bain deals so that he could classify almost all his huge income, including management fees, as “carried interest” and thus taxed at only 15%, even though millions in management fees should have been taxed as ordinary income at 35%.

And that’s just one of the numerous tax evasion schemes Romney used (and concealed) to enrich himself, his wife and his family and which he further shielded through offshore accounts in the Caymen Islands and elsewhere.  Tell us again, Senator Rubio, why you think a serial tax evader, corporate looter and job destroyer should be the role model for America’s children?

Brooks and others also want Team Romney to tell us about Mr. Romney’s piety, what a decent, generous man he is at a personal and religious level.  Excuse me, but I don’t care if Mitt helped out some couple and called it charity.  What the American people want to know is how his policies will affect millions of people struggling without jobs, without insurance, without higher education, and without hope. He’s running for President, for christ sake, not Vicar.

So far, what we know about Mitt’s economic and social policy proposals is that they mirror almost exactly how the man made his money and evaded taxes. So no one should be surprised that Mitt’s economic policy is to use Paul Ryan’s scams to strip Medicare and Medicaid benefits from the middle class and the poor and use the trillions to lower tax rates for the rich, while promising that tanking federal spending will somehow boost a demand-deficient economy.

Let us not forget that Mitt’s notions of patriotism consist of avoiding the draft, spending a year in France, and making his sons rich enough so they never even think of joining up in America’s wars.  But they’ll all wave the flag on July 4th.

So if Team Romney thinks they can schedule Ann Romney in prime time to tell us what a decent, generous guy her husband is and how he always gives money to his church (so it can fund hate-filled, anti-gay initiatives in California and elsewhere?), just save it.

This election should have been over.  The only reason the Republican candidate is not swamping Barack Obama, who has clearly failed to earn reelection, is because their candidate is a first class jerk trying to lie his way into the Oval Office. The American people have figured this out, they have an accurate measure of the man, even though many in our lazy, elite media can’t bring themselves to see or report on the awful dilemma facing the nation.

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Dick Cheney’s VP Advice to Mitt Romney: Pick Me! Pick Me!

Posted by on July 29, 2012 Comments Off

It seems almost predictable that with Mitt Romney in Israel encouraging their government to start an unnecessary war, that the man whose lies and paranoia led America into a disastrous, unjustified and unnecessary war would have the chutzpah to presume to advise the apparent GOP nominee whom to select as his Vice Presidential running mate.

It’s now generally accepted that Dick Cheney’s advice to George Bush — pick me! pick me! – helped lead to over 4,500 pointless American deaths, tens of thousands of wounded, hundreds of thousands of tragic Iraqi deaths, millions of exiles and untold civil destruction that still makes the front pages of our newspapers. Once you add in the incalculable damage Dick Cheney’s team did to the US Constitution, international laws against torture, the rule of law in general, and American prestige, it’s hard to imagine a more disastrous choice for Vice President in our history.

So it’s astonishing that anyone would ask Dick Cheney for his advice about whom Mitt Romney should choose for a running mate, but ABC is beyond embarrassment on such matters. And their report can’t even explain what’s so absurd about Cheney’s comments about Sarah Palin. From ABC’s Cheney interview:

Cheney would not comment on what he told Romney and Myers, but he was harsh in his assessment of McCain’s decision to pick Palin.

“That one,” Cheney said, “I don’t think was well handled.”

“The test to get on that small list has to be, ‘Is this person capable of being president of the United States?’”

Cheney believes Sarah Palin failed that test.

“I like Governor Palin. I’ve met her. I know her. She – attractive candidate. But based on her background, she’d only been governor for, what, two years. I don’t think she passed that test…of being ready to take over. And I think that was a mistake.”

Well, no, Dick. The problem with John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin had very little to do with her lack of experience, which Cheney equates with “capable of being president . . .” The problem with Sarah Palin was that she was and still is a nitwit. Most sentient beings — and certainly anyone responsible for vetting candidates — would be able to determine she was a nitwit after listening to her for five minutes. No amount of experience was going to cure that, and they knew that. But the desperate and elderly John McCain didn’t care that a clueless nitwit might become President. He just wanted a miracle to help spark and save his candidacy, regardless of the risks it posed for the country. That utter lack of character should disqualify the man from ever being asked for his opinion again.

But the problem is not just McCain’s spectacularly irresponsible judgment. Cheney is merely repeating the standard view that “capable of being President” is primarily about relevant experience — which most candidates never possess because the job is so unique — and not about the character and predilections of the women/men who presume to be qualified. What matters is what values and beliefs they hold paramount and what they’re willing to do to further or protect those values, given the national situation and the challenges it faces.

In 2008, the relevant question for John McCain and Barack Obama to answer was what view they had about the nature and causes of the nation’s troubles and what, given our institutions, our history, our capabilities, we could and should do about those problems. It turns out that neither man (nor their primary opponents) had a credible and convincing understanding of what was pulling America apart and most Americans into peril. And they still don’t. (Mitt isn’t even in the right book)

One of the most serious problems America faces in this period is that neither Presidential candidate, neither party, and none of the people in positions of leadership or running for office, let alone those preening to be Romney’s running mate, seems to understand, care, or proposes to address the fact that America’s mega-corporate/financial sectors have inordinate power, have corrupted all levels of American government and which now facilitates the systematic looting of the country with almost no legal accountability. There isn’t a single leader explaining that this combination, and the corrupt billionaires funding the misdirection needed to keep the perpetrators in power, pose an existential threat to the national economy and the security and well-being of ordinary citizens. No one is running on a platform that admits that his pervasive corruption, when harnessed to an exceptionalist justification for American militarism, also poses a threat to the safety of people in many other nations.

The notion that Dick Cheney, the former Halliburton exec, would recommend anyone other than someone who would perpetuate and exacerbate this human calamity is preposterous. Indeed, Sarah Palin’s clueless incompetence might even be a plus, but the last thing we need is another MiniMe.

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Did Justice Scalia Just Encourage the Next Crazy to Aim a Real RPG at the Supreme Court?

Posted by on July 29, 2012 Comments Off

Supreme Court Justice and RPG Enthusiast Antonin Scalia

It is a well know fact that when a right wing zealot is invited onto Fox News, you’re likely to hear the the most extreme forms of right wing nuttiness, while the Fox interviewer barely flinches at the sheer nuttiness. And that rule apparently applies to radical right wing Supreme Court Justices.

Zach Ford at Think Progress caught Justice Antonin Scalia telling Chris Wallace and Fox viewers that under his view of the Constitution’s 2nd Amendment, the “right to keep and bear arms” extends to whatever a man not affiliated with any militia can physically carry and aim at another human being, including a launcher for rocket propelled grenades. From Think Progress:

Scalia admitted there could be [limits], such as “frighting” (carrying a big ax just to scare people), but they would still have to be determined with an 18th-Century perspective in mind. According to his originalism, if a weapon can be hand-held, though, it probably still falls under the right to “bear arms”:

WALLACE: What about… a weapon that can fire a hundred shots in a minute?

SCALIA: We’ll see. Obviously the Amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried — it’s to keep and “bear,” so it doesn’t apply to cannons — but I suppose here are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes, that will have to be decided.

WALLACE: How do you decide that if you’re a textualist?

SCALIA: Very carefully.

Well, gee, Antonin, thanks for leaving that one out there as undecided.

Under Justice Scalia, the 2nd Amendment’s reference to “a well regulated militia” is mostly superfluous; it has no effect on deciding who gets to carry lethal weapons or what manner of “arms” anyone can “keep and bear.” What matters is whether a potential mass murdered can actually hold the weapon and bear it into the vicinity of the target.

Scalia's view of a well armed non-militia? (U.S.Army photo by Gary L. Kieffer)

And since under this right wing quackery, the point has some connection to nut cases protecting their individual notions of personal liberty, and not a “regulated militia protecting the community, then I suppose his view of the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to make sure citizens can be armed with sufficiently lethal weapons, not constrained by 18th century technology, to pose a meaningful threat to whatever institution our now fully armed and freedom loving nut case views as a threat to his/her personal liberty.

We should stop here to recall that the Tea-Party/GOP has consistently maintained the entire Affordable Care Act’s “mandate” is the most serious threat to individual liberty ever conceived in the minds of a Kenyan Socialist, a conservative think tank, or the GOP Presidential nominee. And notwithstanding this serious threat to individual liberty, the mandate was saved by none other than conservative Chief Justice Roberts.

So Justice Scalia’s theory would appear to support the right of any nutcase to purchase rocket propelled grenades and launcher, because you never know when a freedom loving psychopath that any well regulated militia would exclude as unfit for service wants to aim an RPG towards the offices of the Chief Justice of the United States.

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Romney Hints British Anglo Saxons Would Likely Lose if They Retried War of 1812

Posted by on July 26, 2012 Comments Off

After his campaign team insisted Mitt would never say he had a special understanding of our relationship with Anglo-Saxons that the Kenyan Socialist could never get, Mitt Romney continued his foreign policy image building trip to England by first hinting that the Brits weren’t as good at pulling off an Olympics as he was. He then questioned whether the Brits had sufficient pride in their Olympics to show up.

That set off the British media, who are now letting Mitt know how much they appreciate being insulted by a rich America and making Mitt the joke of London. In addition to slap downs from the British Prime Minister, whose government has followed essentially the same economic austerity policies Mitt advocates for America, and with predictable catastrophic results, we get this reaction from a columnist at the Telegraph:

Mitt Romney is perhaps the only politician who could start a trip that was supposed to be a charm offensive by being utterly devoid of charm and mildly offensive.

At this rate, we’ll be lucky if the British have not sent Her Majesty’s Royal Navy to renew the War of 1812 before Mr. Romney escapes to Poland, where he will undoubtedly warn the Poles they should not bend to the will of the Soviet Union.

I find it somewhat reassuring that it took less than 24 hours for the British to realize Mr. Romney is not only an expensive but empty suit, but a cluelessly arrogant one to boot. Their media now know what our media should know but won’t print, that while President Obama has utterly failed to justify his own reelection, and would be turned out of office under any other situation, he may still be President next year if American voters decide that having a spoiled rich bully who made his money looting companies, avoiding taxes, and shipping off jobs will not likely help the country, even if Mr. Obama doesn’t have an adequate plan either.

Meanwhile, we are left wondering if the British will try to burn down Washington again if Mitt stays true to form. The question for the Brits is whether they want to invade the sweltering District swamps in the middle of summer — what sane people would?– just to get even with another clueless American twit.

For Americans, the question is different, having watched the performance of this feckless administration and the worst, most destructive Congress in our lifetimes. We have to decide whether, if the British start to burn down the Capitol, we just watch or help them. God save the Queen!

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Romney Hints British Anglo Saxons Would Likely Lose if They Retried War of 1812

Posted by on July 26, 2012 Comments Off

After his campaign team insisted Mitt would never say he had a special understanding of our relationship with Anglo-Saxons that the Kenyan Socialist could never get, Mitt Romney continued his foreign policy image building trip to England by first hinting that the Brits weren’t as good at pulling off an Olympics as he was. He then questioned whether the Brits had sufficient pride in their Olympics to show up.

That set off the British media, who are now letting Mitt know how much they appreciate being insulted by a rich America and making Mitt the joke of London. In addition to slap downs from the British Prime Minister, whose government has followed essentially the same economic austerity policies Mitt advocates for America, and with predictable catastrophic results, we get this reaction from a columnist at the Telegraph:

Mitt Romney is perhaps the only politician who could start a trip that was supposed to be a charm offensive by being utterly devoid of charm and mildly offensive.

At this rate, we’ll be lucky if the British have not sent Her Majesty’s Royal Navy to renew the War of 1812 before Mr. Romney escapes to Poland, where he will undoubtedly warn the Poles they should not bend to the will of the Soviet Union.

I find it somewhat reassuring that it took less than 24 hours for the British to realize Mr. Romney is not only an expensive but empty suit, but a cluelessly arrogant one to boot. Their media now know what our media should know but won’t print, that while President Obama has utterly failed to justify his own reelection, and would be turned out of office under any other situation, he may still be President next year if American voters decide that having a spoiled rich bully who made his money looting companies, avoiding taxes, and shipping off jobs will not likely help the country, even if Mr. Obama doesn’t have an adequate plan either.

Meanwhile, we are left wondering if the British will try to burn down Washington again if Mitt stays true to form. The question for the Brits is whether they want to invade the sweltering District swamps in the middle of summer — what sane people would?– just to get even with another clueless American twit.

For Americans, the question is different, having watched the performance of this feckless administration and the worst, most destructive Congress in our lifetimes. We have to decide whether, if the British start to burn down the Capitol, we just watch or help them. God save the Queen!

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Rogues and Regimes: America’s Arms Industry Helps Murder Thousands, Privatizes the Profits and Socializes the Costs

Posted by on July 22, 2012 Comments Off

(photo: jonmallard / flickr)

How did it come to be that this is becoming America’s defining characteristic?

A malevolent, pathologically insane operator identifies a group of people as the “enemy” or a threat to the operator’s understanding of American liberty/values. It begins stockpiling an arsenal of lethal weapons. The capabilities of those weapons and their destructive power reveal their primary purpose is not only to kill people but to inflect mass casualties quickly, before anyone can respond. It secretly plots one or more events to take out multiple targets. It conducts surveillance and other actions designed to assist in planning the operation. Without warning, the operative strikes, killing numerous human beings, including many “innocent” bystanders. In the process, and during follow up, it endangers the lives and safety of countless others, including law enforcement personnel, first responders and others merely in the vicinity. The victims, their families and communities are left to mourn and grapple with the aftermath.

So what does this describe? Here are your choices:

  • The actions of a single gunman in Aurora, Colorado?
  • The actions of a single gunman in Arizona who shot Gabby Gifford and killed several others?
  • The actions of Mexican drug lords and gun runners in purchasing hundreds of automatic and other lethal weapons in Arizona, Texas, etc — all legal under US and state laws — transporting them across the border, and using them to murder tens of thousands of Mexican citizens, army, and law enforcement persons?
  • Actions directed out of the White House, National Security Advisor, condoned by Congress, protected by courts, in compiling lists of “enemy” targets, including Americans, and authorizing lethal drone strikes on those targets that invariably kill innocent people, whether or not they hit their intended “list target”?

Though these examples have different details and explainations, they seem to share a disturbing set of common characteristics

  1. First, innocent people are being slaughtered by deliberate, calculated actions of the operators, whether rogues or regimes.
  2. All cases involve criminal homicides; they are all conducted outside the framework of any credible rule of law; that means the operators should be subject to the full force of the nation’s criminal laws, but that law has broken down.
  3. In every case, most, possibly all, of the victims are innocent of any offense.
  4. The operations are all enormously profitable to the arms industry. The proliferation of such operations by rogues, or those who may fantasize about becoming “heroic” rogues, and regimes willing to employ this as an extension of national policy all add up to a huge “industrial policy” in favor of manufacturing, selling and defending the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It is America’s most successful and protected industry.
  5. Weapons manufacturers and dealers are given a free legal pass to be accomplices in mass murder. Through intimidation and effective bribery via election contributions, the arms industry enjoys broad-based immunity for the natural and expected consequences of the predictable use of their products. Few other products are so predictably lethal yet enjoy such legal immunity.
  6. All of the costs of dealing with these tragedies are socialized across publicly funded law enforcement, first responders, hospitals, convalescent, and community efforts to deal with victim’s grieving and communities’ trauma.
  7. Both parties and virtually all candidates, including the Congress, state legislatures and governors, the President of the United States and Mr. Romney are jointly complicit in maintaining this profoundly lawless, criminal framework. In Mr. Obama’s case, he is also the directly responsible “operative.”

Are drug lords “terrorists”? What about their arms suppliers? If there were a suspected al Qaeda operation in Mexico, and the US Government knew that arms dealers in US border states were selling massive quantities of arms for delivery to that al Qaeda operation, what do you think the US government would do to those arms dealers? Would it seek to shut them down, and hold the owners criminally liable for material support to terrorists?Would it require financial institutions, credit cards and banks to stop financing the sales? Would it insist on the arrest of buyers/sellers and delivery operations?

It’s simply not credible to claim Mexican/US drug lords are any less of a threat to local populations, governments and law enforcement officials. Yet the US allows the arms industry on our side of the border to legally sell thousands of deadly, war-designed weapons, facilitating drug wars that have killed tens of thousands in Mexico and others in the US and completely undermined government authority in many regions. How can this be justified? How can someone like Darrel Issa and the US House investigate a splinter in our eye when there’s a redwood tree planted in our forehead?

There is a belief that if the US legalized (e.g. reclassify marijuana by assigning it to a different schedule) various illicit drugs, it would radically reduce the strength and threats of the drug cartels. It seems worth trying. But it also blindingly obvious we should treat the flow of lethal weapons legally purchased in the US and slipped across the border as an insane policy inimical to our national security, the rule of law here and there, and any credible foreign policy or economic goals. It simple offends notions of justice for the Mexican people. It’s time to shut down the lethal arms industry in the US and treat them as just another terrorist network, because they are. The rogues and regimes will be even harder to stop.

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Mass Shooting in Aurora, Colo; 12 Dead, 50 Wounded, Suspect Held

Posted by on July 20, 2012 Comments Off

NPR is reporting this morning that a man armed with a rifle and at least 2 hand guns entered a theater complex in a shopping mall in Aurora, Colorado. As audiences were watching the premiere of the new Batman movie, the man threw what may have been a tear-gas explosive inside one of the theaters. He then opened fire with the rifle, and at least one, possibly two handguns. Initial police reports are that he killed 14 [now 12 confirmed] people and wounded about 50 others, some critically. Police have a suspect in custody.

Eye witnesses report the man, who one witness described as dressed in kevlar and wearing a gas mask, began shooting during an “action scene ” during the movie. One witness reported he seemed “very military.” Some witnesses reported they assumed at first that the man’s presence was part of some special effects. When he started shooting, he walked up the aisle and began shooting at random. As people were shot, they soon realized the shootings and tear gas were real, and the packed audiences began to panic. As they rushed towards exits or the lobby, more were shot.

Witnesses report hearing multiple bursts, rapid fire, indicating some type of automatic weapon. While most of the shootings occurred in one theater, witnesses in adjacent theaters report bullets were coming through the walls, causing panic in the adjacent theaters.

Police tell media that the suspect mentioned something about other “explosives” possibly in his residence. So police are still searching there, as well as the the theater complex, the nearby mall and parking lot. As of 5:45 a.m. Colorado time, no further weapons or explosives have been found, and there is apparently only one suspect in custody. At this time, there are no reports from NPR indicating there may be more than one man involved.

A police update indicates that at least 12 people are now confirmed dead, not the 14 originally reported.  Police also report the suspect is 24.   Per NPR, his apartment is reported to be “booby-trapped,” and police are trying to decide how to deal with that.

Updated witness reports from NYT:

“We were watching a scene of the movie — it was a shootout scene, there were guns firing,” he said. “Then loud bangs came from the right of the theater. Smoke took over the entire theater, and it was really thick and no one could really see anything. Me and my sister were sitting there wondering what was going on. Five people were limping, wounded, slightly bloody.”

“I saw a girl who was pretty much covered in blood. It made me think the worst,” the man said. “A cop came walking through the front door before everyone was cleared up and before everything was completely under control holding a little girl in his arms, and she wasn’t moving.”

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Would Someone Please Tell Congress, White House the Economy Is Stalled, and It’s Their Fault

Posted by on July 19, 2012 Comments Off

Wake up! (photo: Michael Haferkamp / wikimedia)

The New York Times delivered an iceberg size wake up call to Mr. Obama and the President’s stunningly inept re-election team. The most recent Times/CBS poll shows Mr. Romney slightly ahead of Mr. Obama nationally, 47 to 46 percent. Those results are worse than the same poll found weeks ago, before the campaign team began hammering on Mitt Romney’s business dealings, his tax avoidance and lack of character.

What the poll is telling us is not just that Mr. Obama is losing, but the American people are coming to the conclusion he does not deserve reelection, regardless of the deeply flawed character of his opponent. It suggests the election is a referendum on Mr. Obama’s stewardship of the economy, no matter how much the re-election team wants to frame it as a choice between their guy and his obviously unworthy opponent. This is what accountability looks like.

Perhaps more telling to the incumbent and his policies, the poll found respondents believe by a 49% to 41% margin that Mr. Romney would do a better job in managing the economy. You would be hard pressed to find any responsible economists not working for Team GOP who actually believe, or could credibly explain how, Mr. Romney’s policies would improve matters. Those policies would do little more than shift more wealth towards the top, hold the middle class stagnant or worse, harm the poor, and dramatically cut public services to the detriment of everyone but the wealthiest Americans. So when a poll tells you Americans think Mr. Obama would do worse in managing the economy, it may seem illogical, but it’s a huge thumbs down on what they expect from an Obama second term.

I’ve always thought Mr. Obama’s team thinks he won in 2008 because of their brilliance and not because the country was overwhelmingly ready to dump George Bush and his legacy and wanted to feel good while doing it with their guy. So how to explain this to the all the Presidents’ men?

First, your guy is a fine campaigner, who in ordinary times would be a shoo-in against the other side’s truly offensive caricature. But these are extraordinarily bad times, with millions of people suffering and more millions losing hope. They simply don’t understand why they’re not being helped when they know both parties leaped to bail out the scoundrels that caused the housing bubble, tanked the financial system and are still looting consumers with little accountability. If your guy isn’t doing — and seen every day to be doing — everything he can to tell the American people how to right the economic ship, there’s no reason for voters to give him another term.

Second, the advantage of an incumbent President is not to be a campaigner but to be President. Anyone can campaign. Any decent campaigner can poke fun at his inept rival. But while it’s fair game for the campaign to go after Mitt’s character, his taxes, his business looting history, etc, the voters expect the President first to lead and run the country. They expect a leader who has a plan that makes sense and that the American people understand. And if that plan isn’t being implemented or passed because it’s obstructed by the most irresponsible and destructive GOP-led Congress in our lifetimes, then the President has to say that flat out and take that case to the people.

And it’s not just “Congress” that has to be held accountable; it’s a specific part of Congress. It’s the opposition party plus everyone in your party (and in your own White House and Treasury etc) who have contributed to the false frames that make their obstructionism possible.

A responsible media, along with voters, should demand this President put the nation’s problems and solutions out front. I don’t know whether doing that will save this President, but it will still be good for the country. There are lots of things that need to be said, and the public may only be able to absorb a few, given the blizzard of distortions and lies bombarding us. But here’s a possible list of things just on the economy that any President should be telling the American people now. Aside from possibly helping the campaign, they have the added advantage of being true and getting our discourse focused on what matters:

  1. The nation’s economy needs a major boost. The US economy has stalled, and there’s little hope we’ll see much if any improvement in employment this year. We gave it a half-size boost in 2009, and that helped for a while, but as some warned back then — and I should have listened — that wasn’t enough. My mistake. But the solution isn’t to do less, repeating the same mistake. We’re going to have to do more, and we need to do it now, not next year (and we shouldn’t be waiting for Europe’s problems to make it worse here, as they easily could).
  2. The states need help, and only the federal government can help them. The radical spending cuts states have been imposing on public services, laying off hundreds of thousands of teachers, police/firemen and other public services are a major drag on the economy. Drastically cutting public services may help balance state budgets, but it makes the overall economy worse. It reduces economic growth and increases unemployment, not just for the teachers and firemen directly laid off but also for those whose local businesses shrink when thousands of workers lose their jobs. We need to reverse that destructive drag on the economy, and only the federal government can do that. Not using federal government resources to help states in need is not just dumb economics; it’s unpatriotic. That’s one reason why we have a federal government.
  3. This is the best time in a century to rebuild the country; it’s financially irresponsible and unfair to our workers not to seize this opportunity. We have trillions of dollars in needed infrastructure repairs, replacement and ungrading that are going neglected. That’s hurting the economy now and it will hurt us in the future. We’re cheating our own kids and their future by not making these investments now. Yet we’ve never had lower costs for paying to get this work done, and we have millions of able-bodied Americans willing to do the work. It’s crazy not to do this. Let’s put Americans back to work doing the jobs Americans needs to have done.
  4. The Republican Party has become the enemy of everyone who needs a job but can’t get one, and that’s hurting business. The Republican Party has been taken over by extremists with radical, unAmerican views. They’ve blocked every effort in Congress to boost the economy and create jobs. And while making the economy worse and preventing millions from getting jobs, the Republican Party and their corporate allies have worked to strip away the safety net programs we have had since FDR to help those who are down mainly because the economy is down. No decent country behaves this way. No moral or religious people can defend this. No decent citizen should tolerate these cruel policies. We need to get rid of this destructive element in this Congress and send a clear message that such views have no place in American politics.
  5. We have to fix the stupid deficit deal we passed in 2011. Back in 2011, the Republican Party was holding the national debt extension and a government shutdown hostage to force agreement to radically and irresponsibly slash government spending, regardless of its effect on the economy and vital public services. It was a shameful business, and I regret going along with it. Now even the Republicans regret half of that deal, and the American people would soon regret the other half; the whole deal was a mistake. It’s obvious to everyone, including independent observers, that imposing draconion automatic budget cuts would do serious damage to the economy. As defense contractors keep reminding us, if you cut government defense spending, you cause unemployment to rise. That argument applies to any government spending during a down economy, as state budget cuts have shown. We need to repeal that stupid legislation and start over on a long-run budget deal that addresses the real needs of the country. But this time we should do this without the blackmail and without the nonsensical claims that America faces some catastrophic debt crisis. We do not. We are a wealthy country behaving as though we’re impoverished with no options. That’s crazy. I was wrong to accept the debt framing, and I intend to call out the scaremongers on all sides that have been misleading the country.
  6. We’re going to have to rein in our largest banks, because too many in that industry have been looting the country. I inherited an economy that was sinking into depression and a financial sector that was collapsing, threating the entire economy. We had to do something, but I made a mistake in believing that we could rescue the essential parts of the banking industry without dramatically changing the incentives that drive that industry to undermine the economy and cheat the public. We’re going to have to do more to rein in this industry, like changing executive pay and incentives and restricting the casino mentality that still drives the largest banks. We’re going to have to fully fund the regulatory staffs and those at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who’s job it is to police the fraudulent policies still prevalent in this industry. By the way, the Republicans in Congress, and too many in my own party, have become dependent on industry donations. They want to weaken regulations and let the financial industry loot the country at will. That’s another reason why America can’t afford to let those elements control Congress.
  7. I’m going to have to clean my own house, because not all my advisers are on board with what needs to be done. I intend to bring in new people who fully understand what needs to be done to get the economy moving and put people back to work. We need people in regulatory positions who fully understand the threat the financial and mega corporate sectors still pose to the stability and fairness of the American economy. And by the way, we’re going to have to reform the Federal Reserve, because it’s not doing its job at any level. More to come . . .

And that’s just on the economy.

To be sure, the President already proposed (last Fall) a Jobs Act, aid to states to rehire public teachers, firemen etc, a bit more stimulus, some more tax breaks for those patriotic job-creating small businesses and so on. I read dday every day. But that’s not what Mr. Obama is running on. Instead, he’s running against Mitt Romney’s character, and he’s left doing his job and solving the country’s problems out of the campaign. So the message to American voters is that Mitt Romney would be awful, but Mr. Obama is not telling the country how he’s going to address the nation’s problems. And that deficient message is losing.

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Would Someone Please Tell Congress, White House the Economy Is Stalled, and It’s Their Fault

Posted by on July 19, 2012 Comments Off

Wake up! (photo: Michael Haferkamp / wikimedia)

The New York Times delivered an iceberg size wake up call to Mr. Obama and the President’s stunningly inept re-election team. The most recent Times/CBS poll shows Mr. Romney slightly ahead of Mr. Obama nationally, 47 to 46 percent. Those results are worse than the same poll found weeks ago, before the campaign team began hammering on Mitt Romney’s business dealings, his tax avoidance and lack of character.

What the poll is telling us is not just that Mr. Obama is losing, but the American people are coming to the conclusion he does not deserve reelection, regardless of the deeply flawed character of his opponent. It suggests the election is a referendum on Mr. Obama’s stewardship of the economy, no matter how much the re-election team wants to frame it as a choice between their guy and his obviously unworthy opponent. This is what accountability looks like.

Perhaps more telling to the incumbent and his policies, the poll found respondents believe by a 49% to 41% margin that Mr. Romney would do a better job in managing the economy. You would be hard pressed to find any responsible economists not working for Team GOP who actually believe, or could credibly explain how, Mr. Romney’s policies would improve matters. Those policies would do little more than shift more wealth towards the top, hold the middle class stagnant or worse, harm the poor, and dramatically cut public services to the detriment of everyone but the wealthiest Americans. So when a poll tells you Americans think Mr. Obama would do worse in managing the economy, it may seem illogical, but it’s a huge thumbs down on what they expect from an Obama second term.

I’ve always thought Mr. Obama’s team thinks he won in 2008 because of their brilliance and not because the country was overwhelmingly ready to dump George Bush and his legacy and wanted to feel good while doing it with their guy. So how to explain this to the all the Presidents’ men?

First, your guy is a fine campaigner, who in ordinary times would be a shoo-in against the other side’s truly offensive caricature. But these are extraordinarily bad times, with millions of people suffering and more millions losing hope. They simply don’t understand why they’re not being helped when they know both parties leaped to bail out the scoundrels that caused the housing bubble, tanked the financial system and are still looting consumers with little accountability. If your guy isn’t doing — and seen every day to be doing — everything he can to tell the American people how to right the economic ship, there’s no reason for voters to give him another term.

Second, the advantage of an incumbent President is not to be a campaigner but to be President. Anyone can campaign. Any decent campaigner can poke fun at his inept rival. But while it’s fair game for the campaign to go after Mitt’s character, his taxes, his business looting history, etc, the voters expect the President first to lead and run the country. They expect a leader who has a plan that makes sense and that the American people understand. And if that plan isn’t being implemented or passed because it’s obstructed by the most irresponsible and destructive GOP-led Congress in our lifetimes, then the President has to say that flat out and take that case to the people.

And it’s not just “Congress” that has to be held accountable; it’s a specific part of Congress. It’s the opposition party plus everyone in your party (and in your own White House and Treasury etc) who have contributed to the false frames that make their obstructionism possible.

A responsible media, along with voters, should demand this President put the nation’s problems and solutions out front. I don’t know whether doing that will save this President, but it will still be good for the country. There are lots of things that need to be said, and the public may only be able to absorb a few, given the blizzard of distortions and lies bombarding us. But here’s a possible list of things just on the economy that any President should be telling the American people now. Aside from possibly helping the campaign, they have the added advantage of being true and getting our discourse focused on what matters:

  1. The nation’s economy needs a major boost. The US economy has stalled, and there’s little hope we’ll see much if any improvement in employment this year. We gave it a half-size boost in 2009, and that helped for a while, but as some warned back then — and I should have listened — that wasn’t enough. My mistake. But the solution isn’t to do less, repeating the same mistake. We’re going to have to do more, and we need to do it now, not next year (and we shouldn’t be waiting for Europe’s problems to make it worse here, as they easily could).
  2. The states need help, and only the federal government can help them. The radical spending cuts states have been imposing on public services, laying off hundreds of thousands of teachers, police/firemen and other public services are a major drag on the economy. Drastically cutting public services may help balance state budgets, but it makes the overall economy worse. It reduces economic growth and increases unemployment, not just for the teachers and firemen directly laid off but also for those whose local businesses shrink when thousands of workers lose their jobs. We need to reverse that destructive drag on the economy, and only the federal government can do that. Not using federal government resources to help states in need is not just dumb economics; it’s unpatriotic. That’s one reason why we have a federal government.
  3. This is the best time in a century to rebuild the country; it’s financially irresponsible and unfair to our workers not to seize this opportunity. We have trillions of dollars in needed infrastructure repairs, replacement and ungrading that are going neglected. That’s hurting the economy now and it will hurt us in the future. We’re cheating our own kids and their future by not making these investments now. Yet we’ve never had lower costs for paying to get this work done, and we have millions of able-bodied Americans willing to do the work. It’s crazy not to do this. Let’s put Americans back to work doing the jobs Americans needs to have done.
  4. The Republican Party has become the enemy of everyone who needs a job but can’t get one, and that’s hurting business. The Republican Party has been taken over by extremists with radical, unAmerican views. They’ve blocked every effort in Congress to boost the economy and create jobs. And while making the economy worse and preventing millions from getting jobs, the Republican Party and their corporate allies have worked to strip away the safety net programs we have had since FDR to help those who are down mainly because the economy is down. No decent country behaves this way. No moral or religious people can defend this. No decent citizen should tolerate these cruel policies. We need to get rid of this destructive element in this Congress and send a clear message that such views have no place in American politics.
  5. We have to fix the stupid deficit deal we passed in 2011. Back in 2011, the Republican Party was holding the national debt extension and a government shutdown hostage to force agreement to radically and irresponsibly slash government spending, regardless of its effect on the economy and vital public services. It was a shameful business, and I regret going along with it. Now even the Republicans regret half of that deal, and the American people would soon regret the other half; the whole deal was a mistake. It’s obvious to everyone, including independent observers, that imposing draconion automatic budget cuts would do serious damage to the economy. As defense contractors keep reminding us, if you cut government defense spending, you cause unemployment to rise. That argument applies to any government spending during a down economy, as state budget cuts have shown. We need to repeal that stupid legislation and start over on a long-run budget deal that addresses the real needs of the country. But this time we should do this without the blackmail and without the nonsensical claims that America faces some catastrophic debt crisis. We do not. We are a wealthy country behaving as though we’re impoverished with no options. That’s crazy. I was wrong to accept the debt framing, and I intend to call out the scaremongers on all sides that have been misleading the country.
  6. We’re going to have to rein in our largest banks, because too many in that industry have been looting the country. I inherited an economy that was sinking into depression and a financial sector that was collapsing, threating the entire economy. We had to do something, but I made a mistake in believing that we could rescue the essential parts of the banking industry without dramatically changing the incentives that drive that industry to undermine the economy and cheat the public. We’re going to have to do more to rein in this industry, like changing executive pay and incentives and restricting the casino mentality that still drives the largest banks. We’re going to have to fully fund the regulatory staffs and those at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who’s job it is to police the fraudulent policies still prevalent in this industry. By the way, the Republicans in Congress, and too many in my own party, have become dependent on industry donations. They want to weaken regulations and let the financial industry loot the country at will. That’s another reason why America can’t afford to let those elements control Congress.
  7. I’m going to have to clean my own house, because not all my advisers are on board with what needs to be done. I intend to bring in new people who fully understand what needs to be done to get the economy moving and put people back to work. We need people in regulatory positions who fully understand the threat the financial and mega corporate sectors still pose to the stability and fairness of the American economy. And by the way, we’re going to have to reform the Federal Reserve, because it’s not doing its job at any level. More to come . . .

And that’s just on the economy.

To be sure, the President already proposed (last Fall) a Jobs Act, aid to states to rehire public teachers, firemen etc, a bit more stimulus, some more tax breaks for those patriotic job-creating small businesses and so on. I read dday every day. But that’s not what Mr. Obama is running on. Instead, he’s running against Mitt Romney’s character, and he’s left doing his job and solving the country’s problems out of the campaign. So the message to American voters is that Mitt Romney would be awful, but Mr. Obama is not telling the country how he’s going to address the nation’s problems. And that deficient message is losing.

Share This icon 

Would Someone Please Tell Congress, White House the Economy Is Stalled, and It’s Their Fault

Posted by on July 19, 2012 Comments Off

Wake up! (photo: Michael Haferkamp / wikimedia)

The New York Times delivered an iceberg size wake up call to Mr. Obama and the President’s stunningly inept re-election team. The most recent Times/CBS poll shows Mr. Romney slightly ahead of Mr. Obama nationally, 47 to 46 percent. Those results are worse than the same poll found weeks ago, before the campaign team began hammering on Mitt Romney’s business dealings, his tax avoidance and lack of character.

What the poll is telling us is not just that Mr. Obama is losing, but the American people are coming to the conclusion he does not deserve reelection, regardless of the deeply flawed character of his opponent. It suggests the election is a referendum on Mr. Obama’s stewardship of the economy, no matter how much the re-election team wants to frame it as a choice between their guy and his obviously unworthy opponent. This is what accountability looks like.

Perhaps more telling to the incumbent and his policies, the poll found respondents believe by a 49% to 41% margin that Mr. Romney would do a better job in managing the economy. You would be hard pressed to find any responsible economists not working for Team GOP who actually believe, or could credibly explain how, Mr. Romney’s policies would improve matters. Those policies would do little more than shift more wealth towards the top, hold the middle class stagnant or worse, harm the poor, and dramatically cut public services to the detriment of everyone but the wealthiest Americans. So when a poll tells you Americans think Mr. Obama would do worse in managing the economy, it may seem illogical, but it’s a huge thumbs down on what they expect from an Obama second term.

I’ve always thought Mr. Obama’s team thinks he won in 2008 because of their brilliance and not because the country was overwhelmingly ready to dump George Bush and his legacy and wanted to feel good while doing it with their guy. So how to explain this to the all the Presidents’ men?

First, your guy is a fine campaigner, who in ordinary times would be a shoo-in against the other side’s truly offensive caricature. But these are extraordinarily bad times, with millions of people suffering and more millions losing hope. They simply don’t understand why they’re not being helped when they know both parties leaped to bail out the scoundrels that caused the housing bubble, tanked the financial system and are still looting consumers with little accountability. If your guy isn’t doing — and seen every day to be doing — everything he can to tell the American people how to right the economic ship, there’s no reason for voters to give him another term.

Second, the advantage of an incumbent President is not to be a campaigner but to be President. Anyone can campaign. Any decent campaigner can poke fun at his inept rival. But while it’s fair game for the campaign to go after Mitt’s character, his taxes, his business looting history, etc, the voters expect the President first to lead and run the country. They expect a leader who has a plan that makes sense and that the American people understand. And if that plan isn’t being implemented or passed because it’s obstructed by the most irresponsible and destructive GOP-led Congress in our lifetimes, then the President has to say that flat out and take that case to the people.

And it’s not just “Congress” that has to be held accountable; it’s a specific part of Congress. It’s the opposition party plus everyone in your party (and in your own White House and Treasury etc) who have contributed to the false frames that make their obstructionism possible.

A responsible media, along with voters, should demand this President put the nation’s problems and solutions out front. I don’t know whether doing that will save this President, but it will still be good for the country. There are lots of things that need to be said, and the public may only be able to absorb a few, given the blizzard of distortions and lies bombarding us. But here’s a possible list of things just on the economy that any President should be telling the American people now. Aside from possibly helping the campaign, they have the added advantage of being true and getting our discourse focused on what matters:

  1. The nation’s economy needs a major boost. The US economy has stalled, and there’s little hope we’ll see much if any improvement in employment this year. We gave it a half-size boost in 2009, and that helped for a while, but as some warned back then — and I should have listened — that wasn’t enough. My mistake. But the solution isn’t to do less, repeating the same mistake. We’re going to have to do more, and we need to do it now, not next year (and we shouldn’t be waiting for Europe’s problems to make it worse here, as they easily could).
  2. The states need help, and only the federal government can help them. The radical spending cuts states have been imposing on public services, laying off hundreds of thousands of teachers, police/firemen and other public services are a major drag on the economy. Drastically cutting public services may help balance state budgets, but it makes the overall economy worse. It reduces economic growth and increases unemployment, not just for the teachers and firemen directly laid off but also for those whose local businesses shrink when thousands of workers lose their jobs. We need to reverse that destructive drag on the economy, and only the federal government can do that. Not using federal government resources to help states in need is not just dumb economics; it’s unpatriotic. That’s one reason why we have a federal government.
  3. This is the best time in a century to rebuild the country; it’s financially irresponsible and unfair to our workers not to seize this opportunity. We have trillions of dollars in needed infrastructure repairs, replacement and ungrading that are going neglected. That’s hurting the economy now and it will hurt us in the future. We’re cheating our own kids and their future by not making these investments now. Yet we’ve never had lower costs for paying to get this work done, and we have millions of able-bodied Americans willing to do the work. It’s crazy not to do this. Let’s put Americans back to work doing the jobs Americans needs to have done.
  4. The Republican Party has become the enemy of everyone who needs a job but can’t get one, and that’s hurting business. The Republican Party has been taken over by extremists with radical, unAmerican views. They’ve blocked every effort in Congress to boost the economy and create jobs. And while making the economy worse and preventing millions from getting jobs, the Republican Party and their corporate allies have worked to strip away the safety net programs we have had since FDR to help those who are down mainly because the economy is down. No decent country behaves this way. No moral or religious people can defend this. No decent citizen should tolerate these cruel policies. We need to get rid of this destructive element in this Congress and send a clear message that such views have no place in American politics.
  5. We have to fix the stupid deficit deal we passed in 2011. Back in 2011, the Republican Party was holding the national debt extension and a government shutdown hostage to force agreement to radically and irresponsibly slash government spending, regardless of its effect on the economy and vital public services. It was a shameful business, and I regret going along with it. Now even the Republicans regret half of that deal, and the American people would soon regret the other half; the whole deal was a mistake. It’s obvious to everyone, including independent observers, that imposing draconion automatic budget cuts would do serious damage to the economy. As defense contractors keep reminding us, if you cut government defense spending, you cause unemployment to rise. That argument applies to any government spending during a down economy, as state budget cuts have shown. We need to repeal that stupid legislation and start over on a long-run budget deal that addresses the real needs of the country. But this time we should do this without the blackmail and without the nonsensical claims that America faces some catastrophic debt crisis. We do not. We are a wealthy country behaving as though we’re impoverished with no options. That’s crazy. I was wrong to accept the debt framing, and I intend to call out the scaremongers on all sides that have been misleading the country.
  6. We’re going to have to rein in our largest banks, because too many in that industry have been looting the country. I inherited an economy that was sinking into depression and a financial sector that was collapsing, threating the entire economy. We had to do something, but I made a mistake in believing that we could rescue the essential parts of the banking industry without dramatically changing the incentives that drive that industry to undermine the economy and cheat the public. We’re going to have to do more to rein in this industry, like changing executive pay and incentives and restricting the casino mentality that still drives the largest banks. We’re going to have to fully fund the regulatory staffs and those at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who’s job it is to police the fraudulent policies still prevalent in this industry. By the way, the Republicans in Congress, and too many in my own party, have become dependent on industry donations. They want to weaken regulations and let the financial industry loot the country at will. That’s another reason why America can’t afford to let those elements control Congress.
  7. I’m going to have to clean my own house, because not all my advisers are on board with what needs to be done. I intend to bring in new people who fully understand what needs to be done to get the economy moving and put people back to work. We need people in regulatory positions who fully understand the threat the financial and mega corporate sectors still pose to the stability and fairness of the American economy. And by the way, we’re going to have to reform the Federal Reserve, because it’s not doing its job at any level. More to come . . .

And that’s just on the economy.

To be sure, the President already proposed (last Fall) a Jobs Act, aid to states to rehire public teachers, firemen etc, a bit more stimulus, some more tax breaks for those patriotic job-creating small businesses and so on. I read dday every day. But that’s not what Mr. Obama is running on. Instead, he’s running against Mitt Romney’s character, and he’s left doing his job and solving the country’s problems out of the campaign. So the message to American voters is that Mitt Romney would be awful, but Mr. Obama is not telling the country how he’s going to address the nation’s problems. And that deficient message is losing.

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The GOP Right Wing Brings Out the Long Knives …for Mitt Romney

Posted by on July 19, 2012 Comments Off

Brokered?

I have been wondering why the calls for Mr. Romney’s tax returns have become so numerous and insistent, especially from those on the right, who usually don’t give a fig about disclosure in every other case.

The accepted media frame is that there is a deeply respected American tradition that Presidential candidates shall voluntarily, without whining, release several years of tax returns as a good faith assurance the candidate has nothing to hide. Since we have this respected American tradition, no rational person would ever seek the presidency unless they were fully prepared to release multiple returns and had little or nothing to fear from their disclosure.

Since this is the accepted convention, the media reports that “even” many conservative Republican leaders are now calling on Mr. Romney to quickly disclose multiple years of his tax returns. They assume that whatever there is that might be embarrassing can’t possibly be as bad as the negative publicity he’s getting by refusing. As George Will and others so thoughtfully add, whatever it is, it’s always better to get it out sooner, while the candidate and his backers still have months to explain it away or the voters time to forget why it mattered.

This seems a plausible story line for the mainstream media. I don’t hear it being challenged by the MSNBC evening types, though they may secretly hope whatever it is is extremely embarrassing.

But I put to you a different case. While the demands for Mr. Romney’s tax returns are coming from various quarters, it’s coming very stridently from the right. Indeed, I believe that if this were coming mostly from the left, the right would be united in condemning this effort as a liberal witch hunt and distraction to draw attention away from Mr. Obama’s failed stewardship of the economy. Instead, the story remains alive, because the right wants it alive.

Why would conservatives want this? I suspect the reasons have nothing to do with principles of public disclosure — after all, this is the party that just voted unanimously against even debating the popular DISCLOSE Act to make public the rich donors who secretly give to political SuperPacs — or giving the candidate time to get his story straight. That’s not the timing that matters.

I think this is the conservatives’ latest and most virulent effort at “extreme vetting,” in which the candidate either survives the right’s gauntlet with a disclosure that turns out to be a non-event (and thus potentially harmful to Democrats for hinting it would be otherwise), or — and this may be the preferred outcome — he’s further damaged and wiped out quickly, before the convention. Doing this now, before the convention, would allow the conservatives to replace Romney safely and victoriously with whatever “first team” conservatives the GOP claimed they had that did not run in the primaries. [cont'd.]

Several facts support this theory. First, it’s always been true that the so-called party leaders viewed Mitt Romney as an empty suit, an insincere usurper who could win the nomination only because he could bury his lesser known opponents with money. And that was possible only because the real “first team” of natural conservative leaders chose not to run.

However, those first teamers’ choices can now be questioned because of the second fact: despite all the claims that Mr Romney has suffered a very bad, no good, horrible week or two of adverse publicity and distractions, while Mr. Obama has been on relentless attack, the race remains effectively tied.

The Obama campaign appears to be having some success in painting Mitt Romney as a greedy, out-of-touch, even heartless corporate looter who enriched himself by putting people out of work while businesses failed, and thus the wrong man to fix the economy, but even that image is not enough to allow Mr. Obama to sustain any significant lead over such a villain. If that is true against a damaged, exposed and highly unattractive Mitt Romney as the opponent, then every one of the so-called “first team” wannabes must be telling themselves, “damn, I guessed wrong; I could have won this.”

Third, I see nothing on the horizon that may lead to a significant improvement in the economy before the election. The “first teamers” likely assumed the economy would be clearly recovering by now; they, like Mr. Obama’s advisers, guessed wrong. If Mr. Obama is lucky, the economy will limp into November not significantly worse than today. But any of several things could easily make matters worse, and there is a major force working every day to make it much worse.

It’s now beyond dispute that the Republican Party is deliberately tanking the economy — not just preventing a recovery by refusing to vote for any expansionary means that might boost growth or reduce unemployment, but knowingly tanking it. And they’re not doing it merely to doom Mr. Obama’s reelection.

More ominously, the GOP has proved, through the success of it’s most radical state governors, that depression-like conditions in their states can be used to dismantle huge portions of the New Deal and its progeny. Safety nets, public health systems, public services that can be privatized, unions, environmental and safety regulations, expansive voting rights — every public policy can be curtailed, defunded, disempowered or ended at the state level with the excuse they have no money. Meanwhile the federal government, though capable of helping, is prevented by conservative obstruction from doing so. Congress has been paralyzed; the Federal Reserve has been intimidated and is now self emasculated. It’s effectively a coup.

Once upon a time, liberals might have assumed, and moderate Republicans would privately agree, that no responsible opposition party would knowingly hollow out the economy just to regain power, because once in power, they would become responsible for fixing the mess. The problem with this assumption is that it’s no longer accepted: the current breed of conservatives do not want to fix these problems; they want to dismantle the public sector and prevent it from rising again. It doesn’t matter that millions remain unemployed, or without health insurance or adequate public services. Present day conservatives want those services destroyed, downsized or at least privatized. We’re in Norquist’s bathtub, drowning.

It may be that some of the conservatives’ calls for vetting Mr. Romney’s tax returns are influenced by some now quaint notions of traditional fair disclosure. But I think it more likely that what we’re watching now is a major play to take down Romney and replace him at the convention, to allow the demolition — only slightly set back by Justice Roberts — to continue. After all, none of them believes Mitt’s one of them, and if they succeed, they’ll just claim they did it for the country.

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The GOP Right Wing Brings Out the Long Knives …for Mitt Romney

Posted by on July 19, 2012 Comments Off

Brokered?

I have been wondering why the calls for Mr. Romney’s tax returns have become so numerous and insistent, especially from those on the right, who usually don’t give a fig about disclosure in every other case.

The accepted media frame is that there is a deeply respected American tradition that Presidential candidates shall voluntarily, without whining, release several years of tax returns as a good faith assurance the candidate has nothing to hide. Since we have this respected American tradition, no rational person would ever seek the presidency unless they were fully prepared to release multiple returns and had little or nothing to fear from their disclosure.

Since this is the accepted convention, the media reports that “even” many conservative Republican leaders are now calling on Mr. Romney to quickly disclose multiple years of his tax returns. They assume that whatever there is that might be embarrassing can’t possibly be as bad as the negative publicity he’s getting by refusing. As George Will and others so thoughtfully add, whatever it is, it’s always better to get it out sooner, while the candidate and his backers still have months to explain it away or the voters time to forget why it mattered.

This seems a plausible story line for the mainstream media. I don’t hear it being challenged by the MSNBC evening types, though they may secretly hope whatever it is is extremely embarrassing.

But I put to you a different case. While the demands for Mr. Romney’s tax returns are coming from various quarters, it’s coming very stridently from the right. Indeed, I believe that if this were coming mostly from the left, the right would be united in condemning this effort as a liberal witch hunt and distraction to draw attention away from Mr. Obama’s failed stewardship of the economy. Instead, the story remains alive, because the right wants it alive.

Why would conservatives want this? I suspect the reasons have nothing to do with principles of public disclosure — after all, this is the party that just voted unanimously against even debating the popular DISCLOSE Act to make public the rich donors who secretly give to political SuperPacs — or giving the candidate time to get his story straight. That’s not the timing that matters.

I think this is the conservatives’ latest and most virulent effort at “extreme vetting,” in which the candidate either survives the right’s gauntlet with a disclosure that turns out to be a non-event (and thus potentially harmful to Democrats for hinting it would be otherwise), or — and this may be the preferred outcome — he’s further damaged and wiped out quickly, before the convention. Doing this now, before the convention, would allow the conservatives to replace Romney safely and victoriously with whatever “first team” conservatives the GOP claimed they had that did not run in the primaries. [cont'd.]

Several facts support this theory. First, it’s always been true that the so-called party leaders viewed Mitt Romney as an empty suit, an insincere usurper who could win the nomination only because he could bury his lesser known opponents with money. And that was possible only because the real “first team” of natural conservative leaders chose not to run.

However, those first teamers’ choices can now be questioned because of the second fact: despite all the claims that Mr Romney has suffered a very bad, no good, horrible week or two of adverse publicity and distractions, while Mr. Obama has been on relentless attack, the race remains effectively tied.

The Obama campaign appears to be having some success in painting Mitt Romney as a greedy, out-of-touch, even heartless corporate looter who enriched himself by putting people out of work while businesses failed, and thus the wrong man to fix the economy, but even that image is not enough to allow Mr. Obama to sustain any significant lead over such a villain. If that is true against a damaged, exposed and highly unattractive Mitt Romney as the opponent, then every one of the so-called “first team” wannabes must be telling themselves, “damn, I guessed wrong; I could have won this.”

Third, I see nothing on the horizon that may lead to a significant improvement in the economy before the election. The “first teamers” likely assumed the economy would be clearly recovering by now; they, like Mr. Obama’s advisers, guessed wrong. If Mr. Obama is lucky, the economy will limp into November not significantly worse than today. But any of several things could easily make matters worse, and there is a major force working every day to make it much worse.

It’s now beyond dispute that the Republican Party is deliberately tanking the economy — not just preventing a recovery by refusing to vote for any expansionary means that might boost growth or reduce unemployment, but knowingly tanking it. And they’re not doing it merely to doom Mr. Obama’s reelection.

More ominously, the GOP has proved, through the success of it’s most radical state governors, that depression-like conditions in their states can be used to dismantle huge portions of the New Deal and its progeny. Safety nets, public health systems, public services that can be privatized, unions, environmental and safety regulations, expansive voting rights — every public policy can be curtailed, defunded, disempowered or ended at the state level with the excuse they have no money. Meanwhile the federal government, though capable of helping, is prevented by conservative obstruction from doing so. Congress has been paralyzed; the Federal Reserve has been intimidated and is now self emasculated. It’s effectively a coup.

Once upon a time, liberals might have assumed, and moderate Republicans would privately agree, that no responsible opposition party would knowingly hollow out the economy just to regain power, because once in power, they would become responsible for fixing the mess. The problem with this assumption is that it’s no longer accepted: the current breed of conservatives do not want to fix these problems; they want to dismantle the public sector and prevent it from rising again. It doesn’t matter that millions remain unemployed, or without health insurance or adequate public services. Present day conservatives want those services destroyed, downsized or at least privatized. We’re in Norquist’s bathtub, drowning.

It may be that some of the conservatives’ calls for vetting Mr. Romney’s tax returns are influenced by some now quaint notions of traditional fair disclosure. But I think it more likely that what we’re watching now is a major play to take down Romney and replace him at the convention, to allow the demolition — only slightly set back by Justice Roberts — to continue. After all, none of them believes Mitt’s one of them, and if they succeed, they’ll just claim they did it for the country.

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Tim Geithner’s Libor: Where Was the Barking Dog?

Posted by on July 14, 2012 Comments Off

Libor Tim Geithner alooone (photo: Center for American Progress / flickr)

It has occurred to members of the Congress of the United States that this Libor bid rigging thing might be a good opportunity to remind the banking industry that it’s election time. So the House Banking Committee, whose members are placed there to assure privileged access to Wall Street campaign donations, will hold a hearing to ask Tim Geithner what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it.

When all this stuff was going down, Mr. Geithner was the head of the New York Federal Reserve, and from that position of Wall Street oversight responsibility, the New York Times tells us today, he was privy to reports and rumors of bid rigging to affect the Libor rates. So what did he know and what did he do?

The Times tells us it has obtained documents and e-mails from that period (from Treasury? or from the Committee?), and those documents assure us that when Mr. Geithner found out about those illegal bidding schemes back in 2007-2008, he expressed his concerns to counterparts at the UK Bank of England and others and suggested ways to “improve” the reporting of rates that go into the Libor composite. The Times DealBook headlines this story as ” Geithner tried to curb rate rigging in 2008.” How reassuring.

We seem to be missing a barking dog or two in this story. The thing that has apparently shocked so many people in the last few weeks since the story broke on Barclays’ bid rigging settlement with US and UK regulators is that no one seems to have warned the victims that the entire structure for setting interest rates on consumer loans, mortgages, municipal bonds, insurance swaps and everything else in the economy — literally trillions of dollars in transactions — was rigged. It’s 2012, and they just found out, so now there are hundreds of entities lining up to sue the worlds largest banksters for one the largest frauds in history.

We have to be careful, though. It’s not helpful that the Times story fails to distinguish too different periods. There was the pre-financial-crisis period in which the banksters’ traders merely colluded with each other to push rates both up and down to cash in on their derivative positions and make themselves rich — that’s just the Enron mentality taking over Wall Streets banksters, and we’re likely see that next in electricity markets and every other commodities market.

But then there was the 2008 period, in which the banksters are accused (and Barclays has admitted) of deliberately rigging the rates downward to avoid appearing to be in trouble, to fool investors and regulators about the extent of their internal crisis that was about to take down the whole system. This is the period in which regulators should have been warning the public but were instead focused almost entirely on propping up and then shielding the system.

So, what exactly did Geithner and other US regulators do to warn consumers and state/local governments that they might be victims of the biggest fraud ever? And did their desire to prop up the bank system affect what they were willing to tell the bankster’s victims?

One hopes there are satisfactory answers to this, but for now, this looks like another chapter of Treasury’s “extend and pretend,” the game Geithner and Treasury/others have been playing to make sure the banksters appear to clean up their act and get healthy but never face the full accountability that their victims might demand if they knew the full truth. We can’t have that, because the Administration’s number one economic principle during Tim Geithner’s tenure has been that the health of the economy does not depend on the number of unemployed or the condition of state and local budgets and services; it depends on the health of the nation’s banks. What’s good for the banks is good for the economy, even as dozens of state and local governments slash public services and even face bankruptcy.

It’s not surprising that once again we read that the Administration was trying to play the well intentioned boy scout with the banks to get them to behave, but failed to be Marshal Dillon while the banks continued looting the country and regulators watched. Unfortunately the chance of the House Banking Committee getting to the bottom of this are not good. We’ll have more coverage as the hearings progress.

More: The Times story has been updated; Barclays was warning the Fed in April 2007.

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