U.S. Politics VI

[Annelise]

[quote name='Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt' post='1734798' date='Mar 26 2009, 18.25'][url="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/03/hmmm_that_was_interesting.php"]http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/...interesting.php[/url]

It seems that we might have underestimated Steele's political cunning after all. :lol:[/quote]


I read something that he was missing from the big NRCC fundraiser Tuesday, headlined by Jindal.

I also saw that in response to the party of no and no ideas criticisms, the Republicans are working up their own budget alternative. That's a good thing, productive, IMO. Oh FFS. I was just looking on politico for that Steele misses dinner bit and the new headline is "Bad Blood: GOP Infighting on budget".

[DanteGabriel]

[quote name='Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt' post='1734798' date='Mar 26 2009, 18.25'][url="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/03/hmmm_that_was_interesting.php"]http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/...interesting.php[/url]

It seems that we might have underestimated Steele's political cunning after all. :lol:[/quote]
Obama works the rope-a-dope better than Steele, that's for sure.

[Annelise]

It's not national news, but was just following the release of energy funds at Recovery.gov back to MI and so on. I have to say, Granholm does really seem to be working hard at making renewable energy a priority as well as a state industry.

[quote]...several new renewable energy businesses and business expansions are expected to create a combined total of about 3,500 jobs. They include:

Global Wind Systems, Inc., a new company in Novi, which will manufacture wind turbine systems.

Hemlock Semiconductor Corporation which will invest up to $1 billion to expand its existing facilities in Hemlock. The company is a major producer of polycrystalline silicon, a component of photovoltaic cells, which produce solar energy.

Fisher Coachworks, LLC, which manufactures hybrid vehicles, will develop a facility in Livonia to produce plug-in mass transit buses.

In addition, a planned redevelopment project in Ann Arbor will feature a mixed-use building powered by alternative energy sources.

A second redevelopment project in Grand Rapids is planned to be the first project in west Michigan with a zero carbon footprint.[/quote]

There were more, a solar company settling in MI I think and another solar company expansion in MI, but I can't find that page now. Essentially the solar and wind businesses have been expanding since the 10% renewable by 2015 went into effect.

From her state of the state address this year:

[quote]"I will ask the Legislature to make Michigan the first state in the nation to let every homeowner, every business, become a renewable energy entrepreneur who can make money by installing solar panels or wind systems on their home or business and selling that renewable energy back to the power company," she said.[/quote]

Husband and I were talking last weekend about how we might like to do one or the other at our next place. If we can afford it, but read something about how she's workin' on that too. We shall see.

Anyhow, trying to look at the glass as having something in it, you know? :P

[Andriy Czarchenko]

GOP alternative "budget" is totally ridiculous.

[Annelise]

[quote name='The Czar' post='1735008' date='Mar 26 2009, 21.36']GOP alternative "budget" is totally ridiculous.[/quote]

You mean what you've seen from the preview, or that they're doing it at all?

[The_BlauerDragon]

[quote name='The Czar' post='1735008' date='Mar 26 2009, 18.36']GOP alternative "budget" is totally ridiculous.[/quote]
Divide and conquer. Keep us fighting over liberal vs. conservative and we never notice that they don't serve either.

[url="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18568.htm"] It's sad, but true.[/url]

[Zap Rowsdower]

[quote name='Inigima' post='1733248' date='Mar 25 2009, 13.58']Scot, you're being so horrifyingly disingenuous that it's hard to believe it's really you.

First: As Zap says above, Dodd tried to prevent the bonuses and eventually gave in to pressure from the White House. So stop placing the blame for this at Dodd's feet. That's Treasury's fault, and/or possibly Obama's.[/quote]

Inigima, I blame Obama in addition to his Treasury, because the lie which the Treasury formulated that blamed Dodd for the bonus situation, benefited Obama in the same way that it benefited Geithner.

As evidence for this, just look at Pax Thien's posts, which categorically defend the administration even though it has been demonstrably proven that the the administration was lying in order to dodge blame for the AIG mess. I have no doubt that there are millions of Americans out there who still somehow believe that it was Obama and Geithner who were pulling for the Common Man, and it was Dodd, who appeared in a puff of ominous purple brume, wearing a crooked top hat, sporting a jagged Lon Chaney [i]London After Midnight Smile[/i] grin, who manically removed the wording in the bill that would have prevented AIG from paying the bonuses, laughed evilly, thrust his black cape vampirically over his lower face, and then disappeared once more into the abysmal shadows.

I expect people to do things that will benefit them. So Obama and his treasury sec. both had motivation to blame Dodd. I suspect that Obama must have approved of the attempt to blame Dodd for the mess since the public would blame the president just as much as Geithner if they realized that they had been doing everything in their power to ensure that the denizens of Wall Street could continue to feather their nests.

Even if Obama was not responsible for authoring the lie, then he is still at fault since he continues to benefit from it.

When a lie is told and it benefits you:

1. You have told the lie and are thus responsible for it, or
2. The lie was told by someone else but it was still to your benefit

If it is number 2 then you have the options of
1. Exposing the lie as untrue, and refusing to derive the benefits of the lie, or
2. Say nothing and let the lie stand, and derive the benefits from the lie.

If you choose option two, then you are just as responsible as the person who first told the lie.

[quote name='Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt' post='1734651' date='Mar 26 2009, 13.00']First, zap linked to some article claiming that it was some senior white house official blaming everything on dodd at first. as I've pointed out, that wasn't confirmed anywhere on what very link he posted. sloppy research, or disingenuous effort in hope that people won't click on link for verification purposes ............. you make the call.[/quote]

If you aren't being deliberately obtuse in order to avoid admitting that Obama lied, and instead are simply mislead by the way I phrased my posts, then I apologize for not being clearer.

[url="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/17/dodd/index.html"]Gleen Greenwald[/url] and [url="http://firedoglake.com/2009/03/17/treasury-attempts-to-blame-dodd-for-aig-bonuses/"]Jane Hamsher[/url] first commented on the NYT article that linked Dodd to the AIG bonus mess. The accusations against Dodd mainly came from an anonymous Obama administration official.

Greenwald and Hamsher pointed out that the accusations in the article were false, that it was the Obama administration and not Dodd that was responsible for removing the wording that would have prevented AIG from awarding those bonuses.

Furthermore, Greenwald pointed out that the article itself stood in defiance of the NYTs own policy on anonymity. [url="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/opinion/22pubed.html"]The NYT[/url]'s "...policy says the newspaper will not allow personal or partisan attacks from behind a mask of anonymity." I think that trying to dodge the public anger over the bonuses by dumping the responsibility on Dodd counts as a "partisan attack."

When people became aware of Greenwald's commentary, the NYT was forced to replace their original article with one that conformed with factual reality.

The NYT then moved the original article to a different location.

The NYT then changed the wording of the original article to remove the anonymous administration lies.

[quote name='Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt' post='1734651' date='Mar 26 2009, 13.00']Second, zap conveniently left out the fact that the bonuses were agreed upon last year, under Paulson's tenure at Treasury; and it is quite illegal to retroactively break these contracts under the laws as it is without incurring even great punitive rewards.[/quote]

If the government said, that as a precondition for accepting government bailouts, that you cannot pay bonuses to the people who were most responsible for the economic mismanagement at your corporation, is there anyone, [b]anyone[/b] who doesn't think that AIG would have hired battalion after battalion of lawyers to conjure up a rationale, that would pass legal muster and allow AIG to rescind the bonuses?

But this course of action was unacceptable to Obama's administration. And why shouldn't it be? It should have been obvious well before Obma took office, well before he nominated Geithner as Treasury Secretary, that Obama was going to look after the well bred, the well to-do, and the well connected.

According to [url="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Barack_Obama/Campaign_Financing#Big_industry_contributors"]Sourcewatch[/url]:
[quote]"Obama received more donations from employees of investment banks and hedge funds than from any other sector, with Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase among his biggest sources of support.

"Individual donors included Ken Griffin, the multi-billionaire founder and chief executive of Chicago-based Citadel Investment Group, one of the world's biggest hedge fund companies," the UK's Financial Times reported July 17, 2007.

"Obama's fundraising was more heavily dominated by financial professionals than other main candidate. He received $160,760 from employees of Lehman Brothers, just over $100,000 each from employees of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase and $61,125 from Citigroup employees," the Times reported.[/quote]

Also from the same SourceWatch page, quoting from Michael M. Bates article written in August 10, 2007, for The New Media Journal:

[quote][b]Senator Obama didn’t include banking interests among those nefarious special interests. Then again, with over $600,000 so far, he ranks number one among all candidates of either party in money from commercial banks.[/b] And you may have noticed he didn’t mention teachers’ unions either. Surely that has little to do with the $1.3 million he’s gotten from the education industry, again putting him at the top spot among all announced Democrats and Republicans. ... Let’s see him return the more than $5 million he’s taken from lawyers and law firms. [b]He can also send back the more than $3 million from the securities and investment industry and attach a letter saying he doesn’t need or want special interest funding.[/b] Then there’s the $1.3 million from real estate, the $1.3 million from the entertainment industry, [b]and the $652,000 from hedge funds and private equity sources he’s accepted so far[/b]. Send it back with regrets. He could bow out of Oprahlalooza next month, saying that he doesn’t want to give even the slightest hint of impropriety by accepting all that dough from fat cats. Moreover, he could return the $7,885 he’s taken from what used to be called Big Tobacco. Or if he’s still not been able to give up that filthy habit - smoking cigarettes that is, not taking special interest money -, he could request an in-kind contribution.

Senator Obama has benefited significantly from “bundling,” which involves supporters collecting smaller contributions, putting them all together, and giving them to a politician. According to Public Citizens’s White House for Sale Web site, Barack’s had 262 “bundlers” each gather at least $50,000 for him. One is Commonwealth Edison chairman Frank Clark. Perhaps the utility’s millions of customers who saw rates skyrocket by 24 percent on average wish he’d spend less time on politics and more on providing energy at a reasonable cost.

Barry is trying to distance himself from other candidates by suggesting that when it comes to political cash he’s different than the others. He’s purer than pure. It’d be easier to take his self-righteous pontificating about how malevolent the special interests are if he didn’t have both hands out grabbing money from those same sources. Sooner or later, even those salivating over Obama’s candidacy will come to the awareness that he’s nothing more than your standard-issue liberal hypocrite. He can only hope it’s after he’s on the national ticket.[/quote]

The article quoted above has since been taken down but [url="http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638"]OpenSecrets[/url] is able to verify the accusations that Obama was rolling in money from banking and Wall Street interests during the 2008 campaign:
[quote]University of California $1,385,675
[b]Goldman Sachs[/b] $980,945
Microsoft Corp $806,299
Harvard University $793,460
Google Inc $790,564
[b]Citigroup Inc[/b] $657,268
[b]JPMorgan Chase & Co[/b] $650,758
Stanford University $580,904
Sidley Austin LLP $574,938
Time Warner $547,951
National Amusements Inc $541,251
WilmerHale $524,292
UBS AG $522,019
IBM Corp $518,557
Skadden, Arps et al $510,274
Columbia University $503,566
[b]Morgan Stanley[/b] $490,873
US Government $479,956
General Electric $479,454
Latham & Watkins $467,311[/quote]

In case your wondering where those numbers come from, scroll down to the bottom of the OpenSource page. "All the numbers on this page are for the 2008 election cycle and based on Federal Election Commission data released electronically on Monday, March 02, 2009."

As Molly Ivans once noted, you got to dance with them what brung you.

I just wish, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs and homes right now, that Wall Street's economic investments had been as shrewdly and carefully chosen as their political investments.

[EHK for Darwin]

[quote name='the Blauer Dragon' post='1735042' date='Mar 26 2009, 20.55']Divide and conquer. Keep us fighting over liberal vs. conservative and we never notice that they don't serve either.

[url="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18568.htm"] It's sad, but true.[/url][/quote]

That article was unrelentingly naive and more than a little bit dumb. You want public services, medicare, social security, the baddest military on the planet...that shit costs money. Remove those systems and you can have drastically lowered taxes along with an easily balanced budget. But anyone who even thinks about it is gonna be stormed by 20 brigades of rascal driving grannies. We see a mini-political revolt over every single base closing, think drastically curtailing the military is gonna play well? Think privatized highways, schools, police and fire departments are gonna serve our interests better? Think they're not gonna raise an uproar?

The article acts as if there are 500+ people in Congress acting as a single, cohesive entity dedicated to the outright screwing of the taxpayer. Given that most members of the two parties can't agree on the color of shit, I find that a bit absurd. There are indeed forces like economics, inflation, and politics that factor into every decision made in Washington, over which no individual nor group of individuals has any real substantial control. The article is a pointless load of nonsense.

[Andriy Czarchenko]

[quote name='Annelise' post='1735037' date='Mar 27 2009, 03.52']You mean what you've seen from the preview, or that they're doing it at all?[/quote]
The press conference was for introducing their alternative budget plan not a preview. The whole thing was a complete failure and is deservedly mocked by everyone. That´s also why I used "budget".

Alternative budget plans are useful when they are even somewhat realistic. What that ridiculous pamphlet told us is that their whole plan is again CUTTING TAXES. :bang: Everything else was on "We´ll come back next week" level. They´re gonna vote on the real budget next week.

[Annelise]

[quote name='The Czar' post='1735608' date='Mar 27 2009, 09.14']The press conference was for introducing their alternative budget plan not a preview.[/quote]

Yeah, evidently there's some division on that score. From the GOP split on budget article:

[quote]House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) raised objections to an abbreviated alternative budget "blueprint" released today -- but were told by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) they needed to back the plan, according to several Republican sources.

The argument, coming a week before the full House and Senate are scheduled to vote on the budget, underscores the minority party's woes in a mounting unified opposition to President Obama's $3.6 trillion FY2010 budget proposal.

Ryan, the ranking Republican on the budget committee, plans to introduce a detailed substitute amendment for the Democrats' spending plan next Wednesday -- and still intends to do so.

But he and Cantor were reportedly told by Boehner and Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) they needed to move more quickly to counter Democrats' charge they were becoming the "Party of No," according to House GOP staffers.

The 19-page document, prepared by Pence's office, was distributed two days after President Obama criticized Republicans for trashing his detail-crammed 142-page budget outline without producing a credible alternative.

“In his egocentric rush to get on camera, Mike Pence threw the rest of the Conference under the bus, specifically Paul Ryan, whose staff has been working night and day for weeks to develop a substantive budget plan," said a GOP aide heavily involved in budget strategy.

"I hope his camera time was gratifying enough to justify erasing the weeks of hard work by dozens of Republicans to put forth serious ideas," the person added.

"It's categorically untrue," said Pence spokesman Matt Lloyd. "Cantor as well as Ryan and the rest of the leadership have been part of this process for weeks. They not only signed off on it, but their staffs helped edit it."

Ryan told POLITICO that he didn't feel thrown under any buses and downplayed the disagreement.

"The problem is that somewhere along the line, someone got the mistaken impression that we were going to roll out a budget alternative today," he said. "What we all signed off on was a preview—the real [alternative] is coming next week."[/quote][url="http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0309/Aides_Cantor_Ryan_objected_to_GOPs_budget_blueprint.html"]http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/..._blueprint.html[/url]

[Annelise]

Palin and fellow Alaska GOPers feud on how much of the stimulus to accept: [url="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20539.html"]http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20539.html[/url]

[quote]According to Stevens and Republican state House Speaker Mike Chenault, a Palin legislative aide told them that the governor could not meet with them and offered to have members of Palin’s staff speak with the lawmakers instead.

Stevens said the lawmakers turned down the offer because Palin’s staff “often has trouble answering questions.”

The meeting was scheduled to negotiate a solution to the conflict between lawmakers and Palin over the 31 percent of federal stimulus package funds the governor said she plans to turn down.

GOP state legislative leaders, who can bypass Palin to accept the disputed funds, have accused the governor of playing politics with federal money allocated to a state facing a massive budget deficit.

“We think the stimulus package brings a unique opportunity for communities around Alaska to benefit,” Chenault said.

Despite Palin’s announcement that she would like to turn down a chunk of the stimulus, she conceded Thursday that the decision was not up to her.

“I can't predict how much or what funds legislators might add to my request, and we haven't heard all the public testimony yet,” Palin said. “To say now what might happen with an unknown bill would be premature.”[/quote]

[TrackerNeil]

[quote name='Annelise' post='1735875' date='Mar 27 2009, 12.18']Palin and fellow Alaska GOPers feud on how much of the stimulus to accept: [url="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20539.html"]http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20539.html[/url][/quote]

May I express my pure delight at the quandry the stimulus presents to GOP governors? If they take none of it they'll have to make politically unpalatable decisions at the state level. If they take any of it they can scarcely complain too loudly in future about deficit spending. And taking only part of it is really no better than taking it all. I don't know if the Obama folks gave any thought to that aspect of this stimulus, but if so... :thumbsup:

[Annelise]

Some Friday fun.

Redstate update: Legalize drugs, Save Mexico. [url="http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/comedy/2009/03/27/rsu_drugwars/index.html"]http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/comedy/...wars/index.html[/url]

:lol:

"We legalize drugs today, we can put an immediate end to this violence. Plus, I would have an awesome weekend."

"The gov'ment just take that money and flush it down the damn toliet like they always do."
"Yeah, but we'd be so high nobody would give a shit."

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Legalizing drugs to allow them to be taxed and regulated is a frightenly rational idea as opposed to the current "War on Drugs."

[Annelise]

Plus, I would have an awesome weekend.

[WarGalley]

Simon Johnson has a [url="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200905/imf-advice"]great piece in the Atlantic [/url]on the ties between political institutions and governments, the parallels between economic crises in emerging markets and the American economy, and the argument for nationalizing insolvent banks.

[Fatuous]

[quote name='Ser Scot A Ellison' post='1736117' date='Mar 27 2009, 15.07']Legalizing drugs to allow them to be taxed and regulated is a frightenly rational idea as opposed to the current "War on Drugs."[/quote]

I don't know why it would be "frightenly". "Surprisingly" maybe or perhaps "worryingly". Or just "rational", maybe? If you're opposed to current war on drugs, that is.

I stopped using capitals on that one a long time ago.

[TheLoneliestMonk]

drugs should be legal. show of hands: who here who does not smoke meth would try it if it were legalized? before i get skewered (maybe rightfully) for having no source, study, or research to back up this claim but, here it is anyway... I do not think the social stigma on use of drugs (especially "hard" drugs) will disappear because of drug legalization. in my definitely biased mind i see drug use very slowly increasing after complete legalization and then depleting. even if drug use does increase i have to say i do not think it will have a huge impact on the productivity of those users. to back this i cite research that shows alchoholics and junkies work better with a regular fix procided to them. besides that there are a few things that have never been tried so cannot be proven but i would say (in my obviously biased and not very educated opinion) are obviously true anyways. first and foremost, not paying to stop drugs and instead taxing people for buying drugs is good for the government's budget. second is that if regulated by the government, drugs will be safer. what i mean by that is that if drugs are distributed at a known, regulated strength, there will be fewer over doses and if needles are not regulated there will be fewer people getting diseases from shared needles. this means fewer intraveneous drug users will contract these disease and spread them to non users through sex or whatever.

[Zap Rowsdower]

There hasn't been much talk of the the "new" Treasury plan in this thread. I know that somewhere, we have an economics thread, but I couldn't be bothered to find it. Also, the details of the the administrations plans, in which the government will subsidize private investors who will buy up the "toxic assets" from the banks, seem more directly relevant to the issues of political corruption I brought up in my previous post.

[url="http://www.nypost.com/seven/03252009/business/double_dippers_161157.htm"]DOUBLE-DIPPERS: CITI, BOFA BUYING BACK LAUNDERED LOANS AT LOWER RATES [/url]:

[quote]As Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner orchestrated a plan to help the nation's largest banks purge themselves of toxic mortgage assets, Citigroup and Bank of America have been aggressively scooping up those same securities in the secondary market, sources told The Post.

Both Citi and BofA each have received $45 billion in federal rescue cash meant to help prop up the economy and jumpstart the housing market.

One Wall Street trader told The Post that what's been most puzzling about the purchases is how aggressive both banks have been in their buying, sometimes paying higher prices than competing bidders are willing to pay.

Recently, securities rated AAA have changed hands for roughly 30 cents on the dollar, and most of the buyers have been hedge funds acting opportunistically on a bet that prices will rise over time. However, sources said Citi and BofA have trumped those bids.

One source said that the banks' purchases have helped to keep prices of these troubled securities higher than they would be otherwise.[/quote]

So lets see if I can summarize how the banks and our political leaders have been behaving:

1. The banks buy lots of awful assets.

2. Because they now have so many of these toxic assets there is a danger all our major banks will collapse and thereby wreck the economy.

3. Because of the crisis, the banks stop lending money which throws the economy into an even bigger tailspin.

4. The banks demand a taxpayer bailout.

5. Our leaders, who have no objection to wasting money, just as long as they also are the beneficiaries, give the banks their bailout, after making sure the the bill also awards their states and districts with pork barrel projects.

6. The banks get their money but they refuse to use it for its intended purpose and instead simply sit on it or use it to buy other banks.

7. The economic crisis continues.

8. Obama's treasury department then decides that to end the crisis we are going to have plunk down even more taxpayer money. The government will basically give money to private investors, who will then use that money to buy the toxic assets from the bank and hopefully clean up their balance sheets.

9. The banks, sensing another payday right around the corner, begin to buy [i]more [/i]toxic assets so that they can later sell them at inflated prices.

I guess I'll have to compliment the Obama supporters on the top notch economic plan their leader has put together. Next to filling a huge sack with money and dancing around Wall Street while stuffing the money into the pockets of any random banker and investor he can find, Obama really couldn't have come up with any more brazen way to give taxpayer money to the already financially well off.

Hope! Change!

[Commodore]

[url="http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/03/27/canned-transparency/"]LINK[/url]

[quote]President Obama promised to make his administration the most open and transparent in history, and taking questions from the public kind of looks like that. But it also kind of looks like a gimmicky, canned publicity stunt, rather than true openness in government.

Real transparency would include fulfilling his campaign promise to post bills online for five days before signing them. [b]The president has now signed 10 bills into law and not subjected any of them to that five-day public review.[/b][/quote]