How Conservatism Is Destroying America

Posted on by

California is on the brink of financial collapse. Jennifer Steinhauer writes for The New York Times,

The state, nearly out of cash, has laid off scores of workers and put hundreds more on unpaid furloughs. It has stopped paying counties and issuing income tax refunds and halted thousands of infrastructure projects.

This crisis has many causes, but addressing it has been rendered nearly impossible by Republicans in the state legislature who block any form of tax increase. Hilzoy says,

They need three (3) Republican votes in each house. They can’t get them. And this despite the fact that the Republicans who have been negotiating have gotten a lot, including, according to the LATimes, “tax breaks for corporations”.

Really. I am not making this up. With the state budget $41 billion in deficit, Republicans held out for corporate tax cuts, and then aren’t even supporting the resulting bill.

Stopping building projects is costing Californians millions of dollars. Borrowing money to keep the government going is going to cost Californians millions of dollars.

As the stimulus bill becomes law today, we learn that a number of Republican governors are lining up to support it. It may be too little, too late for California. But a number of other states, both red and blue, may be pulled back from the brink of disaster by federal dollars — in no particular order, New York, Virginia, Iowa, Tennessee, Missouri, Ohio, etc. etc. Add your state here.

States are in trouble for a lot of reasons, but an immediate one is the loss of revenue by retailers. City and state budgets are breaking all over America.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist, a Republican, explains,

“It really is a matter of perspective,” Mr. Crist said in an interview. “As a governor, the pragmatism that you have to exercise because of the constitutional obligation to balance your budget is a very compelling pull” generally.

With Florida facing a projected $5 billion shortfall in a $66 billion budget, and social costs rising, the stimulus package “helps plug that hole,” Mr. Crist said, “but it also helps us meet the needs of the people in a very difficult economic time.”

And it appears Americans on the whole are glad Congress came through.

So, who’s not happy? Well, we know, don’t we?

As there weren’t enough Republicans in Washington to provide fodder for the story the New York Times wanted to write – they simply took it on the road to those Republicans Governors who also happen to be the ones most hat in hand when it comes to Federal dollars. Yep, quite a “conservative” bunch this crew. Or so the Times would have one believe. …

… How about if the Feds didn’t suck the money out of states to begin with only to wastefully plow it back in?

If you are wondering how the feds are sucking money out of states, read the comments to the rightie blog post linked above. They’ve noticed that poor New Jersey only gets back 70 percent of what it sends to Congress. Yes, and this is something I’ve written about in the past. The wealthier, more industrialized states (nearly all of which are blue) tend to pay more in taxes than they receive in federal dollars. Poorer, less industrialized states (nearly all of which are red) pay less in federal taxes than they receive in federal dollars.

In other words, for many years blue states have been carrying the load for red states that won’t pay for their own messes.

Now, if the conservatives who run the poor red states want to be real conservatives and stop grabbing money out of the hands of New Jersey taxpayers, I wouldn’t object. Let the freeloaders in Mississippi pay their own bleeping taxes, heh?

Of course, in the real world what would happen is that there would be a belt of states sunken into Third World style poverty by their idiot GOP state government, and this belt would stretch across the southeastern U.S. and reach up to the more rural western states. And in the long run it would hurt the U.S. as a whole more than it would help.

Right-wing economic “theory” is destroying America. It’s doing a bigger job on us that al Qaeda could ever have dreamed.

Two Kinds of Progressives

Posted on by

I continue to be impressed with Nate Silver, and not just because of his number-crunching skills. His post on the “two progressivisms” speaks to why some progressives find other progressives annoying. Go take a look.

Of the two types I’m clearly more rational than radical. I’m not nearly as credulous as I was, um, eight years ago (wonder why?) and I’m also much less of an incrementalist, but I identify more with the rational side.

Rational progressives sometimes regard radical progressives as impractical, self-righteous, shrill, demagogic, naïve and/or anti-intellectual. Radical progressives, in turn, regard rational progressives as impure, corrupt (or corruptible), selfish, complacent, elitist, and too quick to compromise.

I don’t think I identify the radicals as anti-intellectual. It’s more the case that they seem to have an emotional need to stay in attack mode. One wonders if events arranged themselves to give them every policy change they wanted, would they still find something to attack? I suspect so.

In my case, my ultimate goal is not so much to enact progressive policies (although that would be nice) as it is to create a nation in which the people received factual information and could have rational, substantive debates about issues. And then if well-informed voters, after a thorough airing of a problem, express a preference for conservative solutions, so be it. I am just damn tired of living in a nation in which it’s a near-impossible task to lift facts over all the bullshit and demagoguery.

I Bet They Have Secret Handshakes, Too

Posted on by

Lest you think this is an exaggeration,

Four Tennessee state representatives, all Republicans, have signed up to be plaintiffs in a lawsuit against President Barack Obama, aimed at forcing him to prove he is a United States citizen by coughing up his birth certificate.

After the November elections, the rightie blogosphere smugly declared that, yeah, maybe they lost, but at least they weren’t going to get crazy like loony liberals and their Bush Derangement Syndrome. So all this weekend the righties were in a state of hysterical meltdown because President Obama chose to return a bust of Winston Churchill on loan from Britain.

Update: This is, of course, not the least bit deranged.

Conservative Economics: Let’s Make Sense!

Posted on by

Sean Paul Kelly of The Agonist found this video clip from August 2006. As Sean Paul says, I don’t know anything about Peter Schiff, but he was right, and econoclown Arthur Laffer is, um, not. The word “fool” doesn’t even come close.

BTW, I understand Laffer has come out against any sort of stimulus package, but I can’t find a direct link to anything he’s written since last fall. Maybe he’s not well; he’s too big a fool to actually shut up.

Dennis Waldman, aka Kagro X, at Congress Matters has a look back at what Republicans said about Bill Clinton’s economic policies in 1993. Give it a look; it’s a hoot.

Republicans: Let’s make sense!

Let’s Make Sense!

Posted on by

“Let’s Make Sense!” is the name of a game I’ve just invented. I’m still working on the rules, but the basic idea is to sniff out bits of public discourse that don’t make sense. By this I don’t mean bits I disagree with, or even bits that are not factual (although there are plenty of those, and they are not ruled out). I mean things that are just plain disconnected from standard human cognitive processes.

Tim F. at Balloon Juice found a great example. There’s a provision in the stimulus bill that would cap the pay of financial institution executives.

The provision, inserted by Senate Democrats over the objections of the Obama administration, is aimed at companies that have received financial bailout funds. It would prohibit cash bonuses and almost all other incentive compensation for the five most senior officers and the 20 highest-paid executives at large companies that receive money under the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

That makes sense, yes? But here’s an objection coming from an adviser to President Obama:

“These rules will not work,” James F. Reda, an independent compensation consultant, said on Friday. “Any smart executive will (a) pay back TARP money ASAP or (b) get another job.”

As Tim F. says, what’s not to like about either (a) or (b)? If the institution can survive without TARP money, then let it do so. Taxpayers don’t need to be propping up companies that don’t need propping up. On the other hand, if the company is sliding into bankruptcy, why is it such an all-fired tragedy if the CEO quits?

Mr. Reda: Let’s make sense! And Obama Administration, let’s make even more sense and stop listening to Mr. Reda.

That’s More Like It

Posted on by

Headline at WaPo: “Obama Scores Early Victory of Historic Proportions.” Story by Michael D. Shear and Alec MacGillis. Lede:

Twenty-four days into his presidency, Barack Obama recorded last night a legislative achievement of the sort that few of his predecessors achieved at any point in their tenure.

In size and scope, there is almost nothing in history to rival the economic stimulus legislation that Obama shepherded through Congress in just over three weeks. And the result — produced largely without Republican participation — was remarkably similar to the terms Obama’s team outlined even before he was inaugurated: a package of tax cuts and spending totaling about $775 billion.

Well, yes, that is what happened. Amazing that anyone at WaPo noticed. I still expect some editorials tsk-tsking Obama for not getting more Republican support, but whatever. Oh, wait, here it is in paragraph 3:

As Obama urged passage of the plan, he and his still-incomplete team demonstrated a single-mindedness that was familiar from the campaign trail. That intensity may have contributed to missteps in other areas, as the president’s White House stumbled repeatedly in the vetting of his Cabinet and staff nominees. And high-minded promises of bipartisanship evaporated as Republicans accused the president and his Democratic allies in Congress of the same heavy-handed tactics that Obama, in his campaign, had often demanded be changed.

Yes, after Obama and his team politely solicited GOP input, and the GOP bit his hand. And when he realized they were trying to block him, he went around them, and they’re mad about it. On what universe does this make the partisanship Obama’s fault? Oh, wait …

At Balloon Juice, DougJ posts an example of early bipartisanship under George W. Bush, from the same article. I’m going to post a longer quote:

President George W. Bush was similarly without a major achievement by the week of Feb. 8, 2001, three weeks after his inauguration.

Bush had begun selling his $1.6 trillion plan to cut taxes, and he had announced a plan for a big investment in new weaponry for the military. He was preparing for his first international trip, to Mexico, and gave a speech to military units warning against “overdeployment.”

Unlike Obama, by this point Bush had not yet held a prime-time news conference. Like Obama, Bush made an early gesture to encourage bipartisanship: inviting members of the Kennedy family to the White House to see the movie “Thirteen Days.”

Bush’s efforts at bipartisanship largely failed, but not until after he had launched a war in Iraq and pursued controversial efforts to expand the power of the executive branch.

Sort of a mine field of howlers, don’t you think?

Other stuff: It’s so hard to pick one Howler out of all the Howlers, even though Bob Somerby has been doing it since 1998. But I think I’ll nominate this Hot Air post. Just read it. You will howl.

The “Stim”

Posted on by

The final (probably) stimulus bill passed the House today with no Republicans votes, and it is expected to pass in the Senate this evening with three Republican votes. Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin write in The Politico that

Emboldened by his victory on the stimulus package — but chastened by the pothole-pocked road that got him there — -President Barack Obama and his aides are plunging ahead on a large and expensive agenda that virtually assures 2009 will be marked by intense partisan battles about the size and role of government.

OK, so the GOP does nothing but say no, so the bill will be passed without them. And since it’s clear they are not going to participate in government, as opposed to playing partisan games, the President and his team are going ahead and doing what they want to do, and the hell with the Republicans. There’s nothing to be gained by offering them concessions. But Allen and Martin say it’s the President and his team who will virtually assure future intense partisan battles. OK.

I’m hearing Rachel Maddow point to a Republican congresswoman who said she didn’t vote for the stimulus bill because it included improvement on mass transit infrastructure. Republicans hate mass transit. Mass transit is socialism, you know.

Meanwhile, Charles Mahtesian writes for The Politico that Republicans have been emboldened by Judd Gregg’s withdrawal from the Commerce Secretary nomination.

… the New Hampshire senator’s surprise decision to remove himself from consideration as President Barack Obama’s commerce secretary Thursday has provided the GOP with a new rallying cry, and a new hero against a foe who just a few weeks ago seemed almost unassailable.

Uh, as a “victory” Gregg’s flip flop doesn’t even qualify as symbolic or moral. It’s just odd. And I doubt the American people give a bleep. The Republicans in Congress are becoming a weird roll-playing cult. I bet they all have fantasy personae and cool costumes. They meet in basements and play a game in which they pretend to be legislators.

Eating Their Own (Friday the 13th)

Posted on by

You probably heard that Sen. Judd Gregg withdrew his nomination as Commerce Secretary. You are probably happy about this. I know I am.

What’s going on? I think Andrew Sullivan is right. One, the Republican Party has declared total war on the Obama Administration. Never mind that Americans are suffering. Never mind that the economic meltdown has replaced terrorism as the number one threat against America. All that matters to the GOP is that President Obama fails badly enough that they can win some seats back in Congress in 2010.

The BooMan thinks the current unified front against Obama will crack and crumble soon enough. He may be right; I hope he is. But it appears the GOP chose to destroy Judd Gregg’s political career rather than quietly stand by and allow him to take the Commerce Secretary position.

The story that’s current at the moment is that originally it was Judd Gregg who approached the Obama team and asked to be part of the administration. Not long ago Sen. Gregg had spoken out in favor of the idea of a big stimulus bill. But the Republican Party, as Andy Sullivan says, made Gregg’s position untenable. He recused himself on the stimulus bill vote, which managed to piss off everyone on the political spectrum. He’s so bruised up now he’s saying he won’t run for re-election to the Senate in 2010, although I understand he has left himself room to change his mind.

By all appearances, Gregg must have caught hell from his party for considering a cabinet position. It’s the most likely explanation for his behavior.

For more commentary, see No More Mr. Nice Blog, Tom Edsall, and Michael Tomasky.