Category: Featured

The predictable president

~ susie ~ 14 Comments

Charlie Pierce sums up the compulsive compromising of the Obama administration:

There was never any doubt that, in a great many instances, Barack Obama was going to accommodate and compromise because that’s the way the man’s built. He took a dive on telecom immunity in July before he was elected. That should have been a caveat emptor moment for everyone.

While running for his first term as president, on a campaign speech in Columbus, Ohio, FDR said:

“It was the heyday of promoters, sloganeers, mushroom millionaires, opportunists, adventurers of all kinds. In this mad whirl was launched Mr. Hoover’s campaign. Perhaps foreseeing it, a shrewd man from New England, while in the cool detachment of the Dakota hills, on a narrow slip of paper wrote the historic words, ‘I do not choose to run.'”

I can’t recall Barack Obama’s ever saying anything that direct or harsh in 2008, either about the incumbent, or about the situation in which the incumbent was handing over the country to him. (I don’t recall him saying anything that harsh and direct about anything or anyone, ever.) The moment of that election desperately needed — hell, demanded — an FDR, but there was no FDR on offer. Anyone who was listening to Barack Obama and thought they heard FDR was tuned into his own private frequencies. Handed an economic catastrophe a month before his election, and then governing through the worst of it in the early days of his administration, he sought consensus because that’s the most basic instinct in him, and, alas, consensus was that claque of Wall Street Magi whom he brought aboard. Not good, but entirely predictable.

So what now? There are some signals that the president is realizing consensus is impossible with an opposition made up primarily of Bible-banging pyromaniacs, and that, anyway, consensus is not always a desirable goal in and of itself. (His reflexive proposal to cut the corporate tax today, however, is not a good sign. He’s bidding against Mitt Romney on Romney’s home turf, on an issue that will not resonate with any great mass of Democratic voters at all.) His chances of being re-elected are better than they were a year ago, but it’s still going to be a long pull up a dirt road to get to 270 electoral votes. Once in that dreary effort, I’d like to hear all the eloquence that made him a star edged with the faintest amount of vitriol, just a dollop of scorn to liven it up. The country deserves that. A little more consensus and we might all go down together.

Best gun salesman ever?

~ susie ~ 7 Comments

Barack Obama! Even though he hasn’t done a thing to control guns, he gets accused of it anyway, because that’s how your basic paranoid wingnut thinks:

Although the nation’s largest gun lobby would never publicly acknowledge it, at least one gun-loving group seems to realize that a Democratic president isn’t always bad for business.

In a post published Tuesday by online ammunition supplier Ammo.com, President Barack Obama is hailed as “the greatest gun salesman in America.”

The site is even asking readers whether the gun industry should actually begin supporting him.

In an eye-grabbing message, the munitions outlet compiled dozens of statistics that show firearms sales skyrocketing in the wake of Obama’s 2008 election.

“Ironically, the perceived hostility towards gun owners by President Obama has actually helped the firearms industry tremendously,” they wrote. “Since the 2008 election, more Americans than ever before are purchasing firearms & ammunition. This has meant massive increases in sales by firearm & ammunition makers, billions more in federal and state tax collections related to guns & ammo, increased membership in the [National Rifle Association (NRA)], and hundreds of thousands of new Americans carrying concealed handguns. Therefore, should the firearms industry support President Obama for a second term or not?”

That’s actually a good question — although it’s not being taken seriously by the NRA.

During the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre declared Obama’s lack of interest in gun regulations to be part of “a massive Obama conspiracy.”
Continue reading “Best gun salesman ever?” →

The musical chairs economy

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Ian Welsh:

Ok, for some time, folks have been after me for a formal economics post. What’s going to happen in the future in the US?

The answer, for around the next 5 to 6 years, maybe longer, is the musical chairs economy. Let’s lay out the basics.

Oil and Gasoline consumption in the US has been crashing for years and the trend shows no sign of stopping. The US is now a net exporter of oil.

The majority of people who lost their jobs in the aftermath of the financial crisis have not found new jobs. Nor are they going to. Those who did, have generally found jobs which pay a lot less than what they had before.

For those people who did manage to keep their jobs, things aren’t so bad, just as people who kept their jobs in Great Depression did ok.

What has happened is that the general circle of prosperity has been reduced. Less people now live in the “good” US economy. When they drop out of that economy they also use a lot less oil and gas, and even electricity.

Since the US can no longer sell nearly as much paper in exchange for real resources and goods, the US now has to sell something the rest of the world wants. One part of that is intellectual property, which is why you will continue to see stricter and stricter IP laws. The other part of that is hydrocarbons. The world is still hungry for oil. And if Americans use less of it, and if the US moves massively to fracking of unconventional oil (which it is) then the US can, again, become an oil exporter. (Remember, for most of the 20th century the US exported oil.)

This plan includes impoverishing large numbers of Americans, since the reduction in oil use is not being produced by providing the same services with less energy, but that is not an issue to those who run America’s industry or politics, since they do not, despite rhetoric, care about the welfare of ordinary Americans.

Slut-shaming

~ susie ~ 7 Comments

It’s not as if I think women should have any say about their reproductive organs, so it’s perfectly okay that Darrell Issa’s committee meeting yesterday didn’t invite any women who would speak out against their slut-shaming party yesterday:

This morning, Democrats tore into House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) for preventing women from testifying before a hearing examining the Obama administration’s new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees. Republicans oppose the administration’s rule and have sponsored legislation that would allow employers to limit the availability of birth control to women.

Ranking committee member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) had asked Issa to include a female witness at the hearing, but the Chairman refused, arguing that “As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness.”

And so Cummings, along with the Democratic women on the panel, took their request to the hearing room, demanding that Issa consider the testimony of a female college student. But the California congressman insisted that the hearing should focus on the rules’ alleged infringement on “religious liberty,” not contraception coverage, and denied the request.

Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) walked out of the hearing in protest of his decision, citing frustration over the fact that the first panel of witnesses consisted only of male religious leaders against the rule. Holmes Norton said she will not return, calling Issa’s chairmanship an “autocratic regime.”

A new generation of deniers

~ susie ~ 22 Comments

UPDATE: The Heartland Institute insists the information is fake, and is asking people to remove it. But since this is the same climate-denial group that published stolen scientist emails, I say “Fuck you.”

I was talking to a friend who lives in another state about how allergies are really, really bad this winter. I told him my eyes were burning and watering, and my nose runs all the time, too. We were kidding around: “Gee, wonder why that’s happening?” It was 52 degrees today in Philadelphia and the plants and flowers are starting to bud and bloom. More importantly, the leaf mold from the fall never got killed off, because we never got a sustained frost.

So of course I’m really happy to see that the Koch brothers are gearing up for an all-out propaganda effort to turn children into climate-change deniers:

Internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green reveal that the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers, Microsoft, and other top corporations, is planning to develop a “global warming curriculum” for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as “a major scientific controversy.” This effort, at a cost of $100,000 a year, will be developed by Dr. David E. Wojick, a coal-industry consultant.

“Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective,” Heartland’s confidential 2012 fundraising document bemoans. The group believes that Wojick’s project has “potential for great success,” because he has “contacts at virtually all the national organizations involved in producing, certifying, and promoting scientific curricula.” The document explains that Wojick will produce “modules” that promote the conspiratorial claim that climate change is “controversial”:

Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy“), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact (“environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is amajor controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather“), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on.

Wojick will receive $5,000 per module, with twenty modules produced a year. Wojick, who manages the Climate Change Debate listserv, is not a climate scientist. His doctorate is in epistomology.

The view from nowhere

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

I don’t think there’s much doubt that Paul Ryan is trying to position himself as VP material, and there’s also not much doubt that talk show bobbleheads aren’t going to push him all that much on his entitlement double talk – either because they don’t especially care, or are just that dim. Witness this exchange today on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, in which he embraces the classic Beltway journalists’ “View From Nowhere”: “Some say” it’s premium support, “some call it a voucher.” Really, George, how much trouble would it have been for YOU to do your freakin’ job and explain that what we’re really talking about are Groupons for healthcare? How much money does ABC News pay you to sit and nod at this crap?

STEPHANOPOULOS: And let’s get more on this now with Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee. He comes to us from Wisconsin this morning.

You just heard Jack Lew right there, Congressman, say that Congress should just get this payroll tax extension done. Will they?

RYAN: Well, I think we will, but what we’re trying to do is simply cut spending to pay for it. You’ve got to remember, George, that this payroll tax holiday loses money to the Social Security Trust Fund. And if you just extend this without paying for it by cutting spending, then you’re accelerating the bankruptcy of Social Security. That’s all we want to do, is make sure that Social Security is left unharmed while we extend this payroll tax holiday.

Yes, because we all know how determined Republicans are to save Social Security.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But — and the White House agrees with that, but the point is, it seems like you’re stuck on how to pay for this extension.

RYAN: Yeah, it seems as if the parties — the president’s party leaders are more or less not engaging in these conversations. We have offered literally scores of different offsets. We’ve taken provisions from the president’s own budget as ways of paying for this payroll tax holiday, yet they continue to insist on not agreeing to those kinds of things.

So I don’t know where this is going to come down to it. I do believe this will get extended. But when we make offer after offer based on policies that we know Democrats and the president have supported in the past, yet they still insist on not coming to agreement, it’s difficult to see exactly how this is going to pan out.

Oh, you mean the part about raising revenues? Yes, funny how “stuck” Republicans are on this one issue, thanks to Pope Grover.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let’s get to the broader budget. You heard Jack Lew there say that they have $2.50 of spending reductions for every tax increase. And the White House and Democrats have really targeted your plan to reform Medicare, this — what you call premium support, they say it’s a voucher system. I want to show right here the — the ad put out, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, saying just when you thought Medicare was safe, they are back. They’re saying that your plan is going to end Medicare as we know it.

Are you concerned that this — this attack — and we’ve heard Republicans pick it up, as well — could end up costing your House majority?
Continue reading “The view from nowhere” →

‘Take yes for an answer’

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Sure, it’s better than nothing – but I don’t think it will solve that many problems:

Since details of the big foreclosure settlement began leaking out, liberals have been watching to see how New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman would react, as a sign of whether the deal is a giveaway to big banks — or whether it contains the promise of real accountability.

In an interview with me just now, Schneiderman — who has gained a national liberal profile for his insistence on true accountability for financial institutions — conceded the settment announced today was “small” in financial terms, given the struggles of underwater homeowners and people who lost their homes.

But he insisted that time will show that today’s settlement was a win — that it secured a framework that will ultimately result in a true accounting of the role big banks played in sparking the economic meltdown.
Continue reading “‘Take yes for an answer’” →

The Mincome experiment

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Giving people a guaranteed annual income is an idea that’s been embraced by a lot of smart people. What most people don’t know is that in Canada, for a short time, it actually happened:

Although the Mincome experiment was intended to provide a body of information to study labour market trends, Forget discovered that Mincome had a significant effect on people’s well being. Two years ago, the professor started studying the health records of Dauphin residents to assess the impacts of the program.

In the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 per cent. Fewer people went to the hospital with work-related injuries and there were fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse. There were also far fewer mental health visits.

It’s not hard to see why, says Forget.

“When you walk around a hospital, it’s pretty clear that a lot of the time what we’re treating are the consequences of poverty,” she says.

Give people financial independence and control over their lives and these accidents and illnesses tend to dissipate, says Forget. In today’s terms, an 8.5 per cent decrease in hospital visits across Canada would save the government $4 billion annually, by her calculations. And $4 billion is the amount that the federal government is currently trying to save by slashing social programming and arts funding.

Having analyzed the health data, Forget is now working on a cost-benefit analysis to see what a guaranteed income program might save the federal government if it were implemented today. She’s already worked with a Senate committee investigating a guaranteed income program for all low-income Canadians.

The Canadian government’s sudden interest in guaranteed income programs doesn’t surprise Forget.

Every 10 or 15 years there seems to be a renewed interest in getting Guaranteed Income (GI) programs off the ground, according to Saskatchewan social work professor James Mulvale. He’s researched and written extensively about guaranteed income programs and is also part the Canadian chapter of the Basic Income Earth Network, a worldwide organization that advocates for guaranteed income.

GI programs exist in countries like Brazil, Mexico, France and even the state of Alaska.

Although people may not recognize it, subtle forms of guaranteed income already exist in Canada, says Mulvale, pointing to the child benefit tax, guaranteed income for seniors and the modest GST/HST rebate program for low-income earners.

However, a wider-reaching guaranteed income program would go a long way in decreasing poverty, he says.

Criminal charges brought against MO foreclosure company

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

I’d almost forgotten such things were even possible. Hallelujah!

One of the largest companies that provided home foreclosure services to lenders across the nation, DocX, has been indicted on forgery charges by a Missouri grand jury — one of the few criminal actions to follow reports of widespread improprieties against homeowners.

A grand jury in Boone County, Mo., handed up an indictment Friday accusing DocX of 136 counts of forgery in the preparation of documents used to evict financially strained borrowers from their homes. Lorraine O. Brown, the company’s founder and former president, was indicted on the same charges.

Employees of DocX, a unit of Lender Processing Services of Jacksonville, Fla., executed and notarized millions of mortgage documents for big banks and loan servicers over the years. Lender Processing closed the company in April 2010, after evidence emerged of apparent forgeries in these documents, a practice now called robo-signing.

Chris Koster, the Missouri attorney general, will prosecute the case. “The grand jury indictment alleges that mass-produced fraudulent signatures on notarized real estate documents constitutes forgery,” Mr. Koster said in a statement. “Today’s indictment reflects our firm conviction that when you sign your name to a legal document, it matters.”

Iran: We’ll hit country that stages attacks

~ susie ~ 8 Comments

I wonder why Iran feels threatened?

Well, this should be fun, don’t you think? I’m sure our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president will do everything in his power to find a peaceful solution:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran will target any country where an attack against it is staged, a senior Guard commander warned Sunday, the latest Iranian threat tied to growing tensions over its nuclear program and Western sanctions.

Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the elite Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s most powerful military force, did not elaborate. His comments appeared to be a warning to Iran’s neighbors not to let their territory or airspace be used as a base for an attack.

“Any place where enemy offensive operations against the Islamic Republic of Iran originate will be the target of a reciprocal attack by the Guard’s fighting units,” the semiofficial Fars news agency quoted Salami as saying.
Continue reading “Iran: We’ll hit country that stages attacks” →