Jerry Brown on the budget impasses in Washington and California (1 of 2)

California Gov. Jerry Brown sat for an interview with CNN's Candy Crowley last week. This was an early report on it: Calif. Gov. worried about debt crisis CNN 08/05/2011

Here is the full interview in video (2 parts): The full Jerry Brown interview [online exclusive]. A very truncated transcript is also available: Calif. Gov.: Raise taxes or 'retrench' 08/07/2011. A longer but still incomplete one is available at State of the Union with Candy Crowley 08/07/2011.

Jerry addresses quite a few national issues in this interview, something he has been restrained about doing during his gubernatorial campaign last year and his governorship this year. "The Washington of today is suffering and experiencing a governability crisis," he tells Crowley.

I'm continually fascinating by seeing our star pundits unsuccessfully try to understand what Jerry is saying to them in plain English. Candy Crowley is as clueless as most TV pundits, which means she also is obsessed with political "horserace" items. And yet, with any other public figure of Jerry's stature, the headline on this would have been "Jerry Brown hints at 2012 Presidential run."

I don't think that he is likely to do that. But Jerry knows his way around politics. And he knows, even if Candy Crowley doesn't, that a California Democratic Governor talking this way about national issues is implicitly threatening to challenge or back a challenge to the incumbent Democratic President. Although he aims his criticism primarily at Republicans and puts his comments about President Obama in terms of helpful advice, it's very clear that he's highly critical of the way Obama is handling the Presidency. Or, more accurately, failing to do so. He says starting around 3:00 in Part 1:

I would say that the Republicans are gearing up to destroy the President, that the President will have to respond in a very powerful way, and the result for the country could be calamitous.

CROWLEY: Well, I want to ask you about the President. But first let me ask you, just following up on that, ... what does his response have to be? ...

JERRY: He has to be authentic, he has to be powerful, he has to lay out a clear alternative, and run a risk that may not work out for him. Because the, the society is in the mood where it wants a lot of things but it's not willing to pay for 'em. [my transcript version there; the CNN transcript really cleans up Crowley's fumbling attempt to formulate the question]

Knowing that Jerry in these situations chooses his words very carefully, it's notable that he goes on to say to talk about debt by using the word "leverage." The amount of "leverage" represented by the national debt would be reduced if the GDP grew substantially, even if the debt also grew. He later goes on to advocate additional federal borrowing for "Rooseveltian" stimulus, so he's not talking about a need for immediate cutbacks of federal debt. He is talking like an economically literate leader, in other words.

In Part 1 around 7:00, Jerry says some things about the banksters that they and Candy Crowley no doubt find uncivil:

But we [in California] can't overcome the ravages of the greed, the lack of regulation and the, the, the hubris and blindness of Wall Street and the regulators. The people who were in charge of this country ran it into the ground. Through the promiscuous mortgages, the securitized mortgage products that were rated far better than they were.

We suffered a real bank robbery from those who handled our mortgage banking and our investment banking. And we're, and the ordinary people are now paying. Many of the people who caused it didn't, didn't suffer anything. And I think that's where Obama has to keep the light on how we got here. And shouldn't be bonus time for the perpetrators of the greatest devastation to America since the Great Depression.

This is obviously a very different message than we hear President Obama delivering when he tells us that the Emancipation Proclamation was mainly about compromising with slaveowners. It also didn't make the cut on the broadcast segment or the online transcript.

Jerry also had a memorable historical observation. Here's the CNN transcript version:

CROWLEY: I sense that you are angry?

BROWN: No, I am not angry. I am just alarmed at where America is. So I would just say, we better be very careful where we're going, and I hope that we watch it, we being the congress and the president.

And the president is the one that really has the most opportunity to turn this around.

The trancript shows no elipsis there. But the video at 10:35, Part 2 shows him saying (part omitted from the CNN transcript in italics):

No, I'm not angry. I'm just, I'm alarmed at, uh, at, uh, where America is. I mean, we, you know, you look back at history and all the elites, the ruling families of Europe in 1914 were feeling pretty good about themselves. And yet, it wasn't just a few months into the summer when they began what was an absolute catastrophe. So blindness is compatable with good breeding, good education and good relationships. Well, we don't even have that now in much of Washington.

So I would just say, we better be very careful where we're going, and I hope that we watch it, we being the Congress and the President. And the president is the one that really has the most opportunity to turn this around.

Given our pundit's obsession with horserace question, you would think that Jerry's reference to "we being the Congress and the President" would have been enough for even the dimmest reporter to remark on it.

But Crowley's cluelessness is most on display at around 7:15 in Part 1, when she asks, "Now, I don't want to get into anything too philosophical. But then, don't you end up with a one-party government? And is that a good thing?" We can't see Jerry's face as she's framing the question. But he seems to have been enough of a gentleman and enough of a pro at this kind of interview not to reflect in his expressions what he must surely have been thinking, i.e., something along the lines of, "Lord, you are as dumb as dirt." From the posted transcript, in an earlier segment of the show, Crowley uses "one-rule party" - she may have meant one-party rule, but who knows? - to refer to one of the two major parties having majorities in both Houses of Congress and also holding the Presidency. Not what the phrase "one-party government" conjures up to me.

Tags: barack obama, jerry brown, us economy

S&P and the US credit downgrade

Dean Baker has a good analysis of S&P's ludicrous action in downgrading the credit of the United States in How to Think About Standard and Poor's Downgrade Huffington Post 08/06/2011.

We really live in strange times when it comes to policy. After their performance in the housing debacle and the financial collapse, it's only remarkable that anyone would pay attention to them at all.

Tags: dean baker, standard and poors

The Obama Administration, Valerie Jarrett and the Owl of Minerva

When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then has a form of life grown old, and with gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known; the Owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in.

- G. W. F. Hegel, "Preface," Philosophy of Right

Just dropped out of the blue, that comment sounds obscure. But what he meant was that major turning points in history cannot be fully recognized or understood until after they've happened. Some of Hegel's successors were more confident in their ability to recognize historical turning points in real time or even predict them in advance. Hegel himself didn't completely escape the dilemma of whether correctly understanding the past allows one to reasonably predict the future. In any case, he was talking about major historical turning points, like the transition from the Roman Empire to the European medieval feudal system.

What has reminded me of his famous saying lately is my own observation that President Obama with a series of bad decisions culminating in the debt-ceiling deal at the end of July has severely crippled his own Presidency and probably fatally wounded his own re-election prospects.

But I'm not staking a lot on whether I'm correctly understanding some grand turning point. I'll leave that to the Owl of Minerva. But it is clear to me that what we understand as the progressive movement in the United States right now, including what Paul Wellstone called "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," is now faced with a Democratic President actively hostile to its goals, including in particular Social Security and Medicare. Whatever window there was in 2009-10 for democratic reforms and progressive legislation has been enormously reduced. There will be no New Deal 2.0 with Barack Obama as President.

In the wake of the debt-ceiling debacle, we're seeing a spate of articles and blog posts making an effort to understand the magnitude and significance of the crushing defeat the Democratic Party and progressive politics has just suffered. It's also clear that Obama is what we would call a conservative if the Tea Party loonies weren't defining what "conservative" means in the US political vocabulary.

Adam Serwer in Is Obama Toast? The American Prospect 08/02/2011 describes the substantial pessimistic indicators for Obama's re-election in 2012 are. But he does remind us that prediction is very tricky, especially when it's about the future:

Grim forecasts aside, Obama has two important advantages: He retains levels of base approval higher than presidents facing bad economies usually do, and many Americans still blame Bush for the recession. Come election time, though, voters may simply decide that even if the recession isn't Obama’s fault, he still failed to get us out of it. The presidency is not graded on a curve. Even assuming Republican intransigence and obstruction have given Obama the most challenging political landscape ever for a Democratic president, what matters is whether voters feel like he did what he was elected to do: Bring the American economy back from the brink.

And he notes ruefully, "Luck, unfortunately, isn’t much of a plan."

Bob Burnett takes stock of the factually marginalized position of progressives/liberals in Obama: It Became Necessary to Destroy the Economy to Save It Huffington Post 08/05/2011:

We've now seen at least five examples where Obama had an opportunity to make a real difference and lost it by being overly accommodating: the amount of the original stimulus, whether or not to break up "too-big-to-fail" banks, health care, the federal budget crisis, and the debt crisis. (It's probably true that the president caved to the military on Afghanistan, but we don't know as much about that negotiation.) In the debt crisis negotiation, Republicans got what they wanted because the president was soft. ...

The fifth and final lesson is that the economy continues to be in bad shape and -- despite the Pollyannaish assurances of the Obama Administration -- we're likely to find ourselves in the dreaded "double dip" recession. The United States of America is adrift, heading for a sea of icebergs, without effective leadership. ...

The bottom line for Liberals: we're on our own. It's naïve to expect help from President Obama. The economy will continue to spiral downward and Liberals will have to figure out how to save it. [my emphasis]

The cast-adrift imagery is an appropriate one for the state of the left of the Democratic Party at the moment - with "left" now including anyone who seriously supports Social Security and Medicare!

And if you really want to feel depressed about the state of the Democratic Party, you can turn to Valerie Jarrett, Obama's domestic advisor, who is the living image of a bland Party apparatchik and who explains to us Why I'm Proud to Be Part of President Obama's Team Huffington Post 08/05/2011. Valerie Jarrett is to inspiration for Democratic activists what a lecture on hydrogen molecules would be to a high school pep rally: "Today, President Obama is managing our nation's challenges with the courage, wisdom, and compassion that I've seen time and time again over our two decades of friendship." With Party leaders like Valerie Jarrett, we are doomed. Check this out:

He knows that true leaders never let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

And the Emancipation Proclamation was mainly about compromise with slaveowners.

Every day, he receives letters and emails from Americans who are doing everything in their power to solve the tremendous challenges they face. As long as President Obama is in the White House, he will listen to those Americans, and they will have a voice here in Washington.

And if you put a baby tooth under your pillow, the Tooth Fairy will exchange it for money during the night!

None of these fights has been politically easy, but President Obama has taken them on. That's what leaders do.

Come 2013, Jarrett has a fine career ahead of her as a TV pundit.

President Obama is determined to change the tone in our nation's capital.

What, he's determined to wipe out the last traces of anything that sounds like a distinctively Democratic message?

He will listen to those with whom he disagrees, because that ability "to disagree without being disagreeable" has always been a central element of our democracy's success.

And those you supposedly agree with him, i.e., his own Party's base voters, he will brag about making them angry by dumping on them again and again. I think his speechwriters are working on a paraphrase of a famous passage from Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 "Rendezvous With Destiny" speech for his 2012 campaign: "The liberals are united in their hate for me, and I.Welcome.Their.Hatred!"

At a time when a troubling coarseness pervades our national debate, it is easy to be discouraged. But recently, I was reminded of why hope more is powerful than fear.

If at this point in her spiel, you don't have a strong urge to break down weeping, you probably aren't a real Democrat at all.

In our current debate over debt and deficits, Americans once again urged their leaders to choose compromise and common ground over partisanship and dysfunction.

They also urged their leaders to reject cuts in Social Security and Medicare. That didn't play out so well. (Yes, that link is to Republican talking points whose screaming hypocrisy will not stop them from being used over and over again from now until Election Day 2012.)

These stories of ordinary Americans standing up for their beliefs inspire the president. They motivate him to continue speaking out on behalf of those who would otherwise go unheard.

To quote Linda Blair being tormented by an evil spirit in The Exorcist, "Make it stop! Make it stop!"

Years from now, when we look back on these tumultuous times, we may be surprised by the pettiness of our debate, and by the cynicism of some of those in Washington.

[deep sobs and a wail or two]

Our president is truly the kind of leader these times demand. I could not be prouder to be a part of his team.

Are those the wings of the Owl of Minerva I hear? Or the approaching sounds of a Michele Bachmann Administration?

Tags: obama administration, valerie jarrett

An inside-outside approach for progressives toward the Democratic Party

This interview with Jeff Cohen, founder of the liberal media watch group FAIR, is an example of the kind of discussions that will have to take place for years to come if the Democratic Party is going to be re-made into a New Deal Democratic Party that supports Social Security and Medicare, not just in campaign rhetoric but in every budget and every debt ceiling negotiation and in every other political "hostage-taking" situation with the Republicans.



Tags: democratic party, jeff cohen

Why the Clinton analogy for the Obama Presidency is a poor one

David Bromwich gets to the nub of the political-style problem in Why Has Obama Never Recognized the Tea Party? Huffington Post 08/02/2011:

Obama likes to compare himself to Lincoln but the president he most nearly resembles is Clinton -- but it is Clinton without the knowledge of politics, without the passion for politics, without the sheer tenacity of devotion to the game of politics. Clinton beat his Tea Party and humbled their leader within a year of their midterm victory, and their only revenge was an impeachment which they also lost. Obama has awarded his opponents a hostage, the economy, which they won't release in a year, or two years, or ten.

I don't want to praise Bill Clinton excessively. This year, he endorsed Obama's proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare, showing that his personal commitment to Democratic Party core values and programs is superficial at best.

But as President, Clinton understood that as the leader of the Democratic Party, part of his leadership job was to confront the opposition Republican Party at times and to confront them on the basis of the Democratic Party's program and priorities. Clinton famously practiced a political strategy of "triangulation," which meant establishing some kind of practical working relationship with both parties in Congress.

Whatever his deepest inner convictions on particular issues, Clinton gave his own partisans the impression that the compromises he was making like that on welfare reform were a pragmatic but undesirable adjustment to the reality of Republican strength in the Congress. Clinton could manage soaring rhetoric and come off as the national pastor. But he was also a Democratic partisan who was willing to fight the Republicans and cast the issues on which he was fighting them in a clear way. The Gingrich Republicans looked bad on the government shutdowns because Bill Clinton made sure that they owned the shutdowns in the eyes of the public.

Obama shares Clinton's neoliberal economic outlook and his mid-first-term attempt to navigate a political atmosphere that seemed to have turned in favor of the Republicans. But Obama's version is "Clinton without the knowledge of politics, without the passion for politics, without the sheer tenacity of devotion to the game of politics." (Bromwich)

Then there's the actual state of the economy. The US economy was in recovery in 1994-6, and the tech boom/bubble was beginning. Steve Kornacki in The futility of playing Mr. Reasonable Salon 08/04/2011, a misleading title because Kornacki is actually arguing that the President's Mr. Reasonable act seems to be playing pretty well, acknowledges at the end the large fly in the ointment of partisan optimism for the Democrats:

So while it's good news for Obama that his base still isn't in revolt (and probably never will be), he's got a much bigger problem: He seems intent on following Bill Clinton's 1995/1996 playbook, but the magic ingredient that made it work for Clinton -- a growing economy that made "pure independents" eager to give him the benefit of the doubt -- is missing this time around. Playing Mr. Reasonable looks a lot different to voters when they're out of work or fearing for their jobs.

Matt Stoller has an interesting analysis of Obama's approach to liberals in What Presidency? Naked Capitalism 08/01/2011. My summary here doesn't do it justice. But he argues that Obama's strategy toward liberals is to try to have them focus only "on the ceremonial non-governmental aspects of the Presidency. You do it by making sure that they focus only on the televised aspects of the Presidency." But he capsulises the political risks in his concluding paragraphs. Not only will some proportion of liberal voters be disgusted by what he's doing, as in the debt deal and the Libya War. His substantively bad policies present major risks to his re-election prospects and to the general prospects of the Democratic Party:

It is only by focusing on the governor-in-chief role that one sees a different focus of the Presidency. It is absolutely the case, as [Paul] Krugman notes, that Republican detachment from reality is a threat to democracy. But it is worth noting that in ascribing to this the sole cause of our political situation is to diminish the notion that creatively using power can achieve good things for people. For instance, it's true that having a press corps with more balance about the goals of Republicans and Democrats would create a healthier democratic society – but then, it’s probably also true that a real foreclosure prevention plan in 2009 would have dramatically restored faith in government by touching the lives of millions of people in an affirmatively positive instead of malevolent way.

All of this is to say that how one sees government is critical to how one judges Obama. And if the only consideration is the boundaries of television, then of course, Obama is going to look like a mediocre narrator-in-chief constrained by wild forces he cannot control. Of course, Congress will make him seem like a somewhat inept but well-meaning legislative leader or party leader. It is only in turning off the boundaries set by a narrow TV-dominated discourse that one truly sees Obama’s real handiwork – the wars, the bailouts, and most tragically, what could have been but never was.

Tags: barack obama, david bromwich, matt stoller, david kornacki

Mark Fiore's "Declaration of Thingamajig"

Tags: mark fiore, libya war

David Bromwich needs to remember how to love his monster

Years ago I read this passage in Gary Wills' review of Robert A. Caro's Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Vol. 2 (1990), Monstre Désacré New York Review of Books 04/26/1990 edition.

In 1944 Laurence Olivier began a run as Sergius in Shaw's Arms and the Man, unsuccessfully. When Tyrone Guthrie came by to see the Shaw play, he asked, "Don't you love Sergius?" Decidedly not, Olivier answered. "Well, of course, if you can't love him, you'll never be any good in him, will you?" Olivier called this the "richest pearl of advice in my life." Years later he could point to the exact spot outside the theater where he had received this pearl, after which he loved — and played — the hell out of Sergius.

Robert Caro needed a Tyrone Guthrie at some earlier stage of this long run with the life of Lyndon Johnson. "Love that stooge?" Olivier had asked Guthrie; but Sergius is simply a blusterer. It is easy enough, with effort, to love a vain child. Monsters are another matter, and Lyndon Johnson was clearly a monster of ambition, greed, and cruelty. What's not to loathe?

But it rots the soul to entertain, too long, an unmixed contempt for any human being, even the worst. There is something eerily obsessive about Caro's stalking of his villain. It is the inverse of gilding the lily, this continual tarring of the blackguard. Johnson's treatment of his wife was bad enough, one would think, that Caro need not exaggerate it. Yet Caro reserves information where it would partly exonerate, and produces it only when it further incriminates. We are told, early on, how Congressman Johnson flew home to his district on his patron's corporate airplane while his wife had to drive the long trip with their belongings. Though Caro admits that "Lady Bird disliked flying," he tells us that the principal reason for "this disparity in the Johnsons' travel arrangements," which proved that "he treated her like the hired help," was Johnson's parsimony where she was concerned.

In my mind, I compressed this down to the advice, "You have to learn how to love your monster." And took it to mean that when you are evaluating someone whose ideas or actions you find particularly unsympathetic, you have to find some way to empathize enough with them to understand how they approached things. Otherwise, you'll wind up doing what Robert Caro did in that installment of his four-volume biography of Johnson, disliking the subject so much that you look for ways to trash him, whether or not you're being consistent or making sense.

I've been very impressed with David Bromwich's various analyses of Barack Obama's, which he has based heavily on a close reading and listening to the President's speeches on the stump and as the Chief Executive. His Why Has Obama Never Recognized the Tea Party? Huffington Post 08/02/2011 continues that trend, and has some important and perceptive insights.

But I've begun to worry that Bromwich has reached a level of downright contempt for Obama that he's starting to slip into Caro's authorial mistake of looking too hard for reasons to trash him. In my own experience, looking at Obama's actions from the viewpoint of a Democrat who had cautious but substantial hopes for his Presidency, you don't have to look that hard to find substantial things to criticize.

Here Bromwich does again what he's been so good at doing: looking closely at what Obama public style and self-representation tell us about his decision-making and deal-making. But a distinct note of contempt is creeping in:

It is an abysmal failure like the larger strategy favored by Obama's handlers: the devising of ever more talking venues for him, on the assumption that if people disapprove of the way things are going, the reason must be that they don't see and hear enough of Obama.

Undertone: I'm sick of hearing this guy.

There follows the baby-talk explanation of "No Taxation without Representation" as if his audience were barely sophisticated enough to remember the rudiments of fifth-grade history.

Undertone: Really, I'm sick of hearing this guy.

Ever pliable and parental, Obama pronounces "healthy" the desire shared by both parties to see the country pay its debts.

Undertone: No, seriously, I'm sick of hearing this guy's voice.

Worse than the lofty disclaimer is the debonair condescension.

Undertone: Really, people, the sound of this guy's voice kind of makes my skin crawl.

The broad programs to which he thought he adhered, and talked as if he believed in, he has sold down the river.

Undertone: I'm sick of hearing this guy's voice; plus he's, you know, black.

That "sold down the river" phrase is a reference to slavery. It referred to slaves being sold to owners in the Deep South, where their chances of escape were less than those in states bordering on a free state.

I don't want to get all prissy about political vocabulary. But, just as with Matt Taibbi, Bromwich's introducing a well-known race-related phrase in a piece otherwise dripping with contempt for Obama is not a appealing thing.

I'm noticing these things more because my own impression is that Obama with his debt-ceiling deal and his offers to cut Social Security and Medicare has crippled his Presidency and almost certainly fatally wounded his re-election prospects. He's now seriously "damaged goods" politically. So for writers and pundits, attacking Obama is now something that can please a wide spectrum of the audience, not just Republicans. Defending him will look more and more like tying yourself to a doomed cause. Expect more commentators to pile on with criticisms tailored to win quotes from conservatives as "even the liberal so-and-so says ..."

Bromwich's analysis in that piece is generally sound. Obama has avoided directly confronting the Tea Party narrative. He does frequently speak in a way that sounds condescending, especially after hearing it over and over. That's a particular problem for a Democrat, because the Republicans have well established a narrative that says Democrats are "elitists" that look down on the Real Americans. And Bromwich is correct about Obama's failure as Democratic party leader:

For Obama has torn up the social contract which was the heart of the Democratic Party. Those who want to confine the blame to Republicans say that the opposition party follows the dictates of a fanatical faction. True; but a president in these circumstances would seem all the more obligated to confront the opposition.

One might quibble over whether the "social contract" has been shredded. After all, Social Security and Medicare benefits survived last weekend's Big Bad Deal. But the political contract between the Democrats and their electoral base that the Party would protect Social Security and Medicare.

But if Bromwich wants to keep his orientation in writing about Obama, he needs to remember how to love his monster.

Tags: barack obama, david bromwich

From the reliably staid PBS Newshour: "After Long Debt Battle, Is Current Version of U.S. Government Sustainable?"

At least that's the title at its PBS Newshour website as of this writing, where the transcript can also be found.



Tags: barack obama, debt ceiling

Remind me again why the Democrats in 2008 thought it was a great idea to let McCain endorser Joe Lieberman caucus with them?

Independent "Democrat" Joe Lieberman:



I can't add much to Joan McCarter's comments on this at Lieberman: We have to cut Social Security to pay for fighting 'the Islamist extremists' Daily Kos 08/02/2011. Except to note that Holy Joe describes his proposal to begin the phaseout of Social Security as one "to secure Social Security for American seniors."

Once the Democratic President offered up Social Security cuts in the name of trying to avert a completely contrived debt-ceiling crisis, he made it open season on Social Security for Republicans and ConservaDems.

Tags: joe lieberman, social security

Racial references to President Obama, from "both sides"

From Doug Lamborn Apologizes To Obama For 'Tar Baby' Comments Huffington Post 08/02/2011:

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Co.) has apologized for the controversial "tar baby" comment he made on a local radio show last week while discussing President Barack Obama and the debt ceiling debate.

On the 630 KHOW Capils and Silverman radio show, Lamborn said:

"Even if some people say, 'Well the Republicans should have done this or they should have done that,' they will hold the President responsible. Now, I don’t even want to have to be associated with him. It's like touching a tar baby and you get it, you're stuck, and you're a part of the problem now and you can’t get away."

From Matt Taibbi, Obama Doesn't Want a Progressive Deficit Deal Rolling Stone 07/11/2011:

Obama's new plan, for instance, might involve slashing Medicare and Social Security under "pressure" from the Republicans.

I simply don't believe the Democrats would really be worse off with voters if they committed themselves to putting people back to work, policing Wall Street, throwing their weight behind a real public option in health care, making hedge fund managers pay the same tax rates as ordinary people, ending the pointless wars abroad, etc. That they won't do these things because they're afraid of public criticism, and "responding to pressure," is an increasingly transparent lie. This "Please, Br'er Fox, don't throw me into dat dere briar patch" deal isn't going to work for much longer. Just about everybody knows now that they want to go into that briar patch. [my emphasis in bold]

Both the Tar Baby and briar patch referernces are both from the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris, whose purpose was to revise the image of antebellum Southern race relations in the eyes of his readers, to present them as benign in order to enforce the white supremacist sentiments of postwar Southern white conservatives.

From Matt Taibbi, Debt Ceiling Deal: The Democrats Take a Dive Rolling Stone 07/11/2011:

Back in 2008, the congress and George Bush rewarded Hank Paulson and Wall Street for pulling the Cleavon-Little-"the-next-man-makes-a-move-the-n---er-gets-it" routine by tossing trillions of bailout dollars at the same people who had wrecked the economy.

This is the context of explaining that Obama was happy for the Republican Tea Party to pull the same thing this time.

Matt Taibbi is a good political analyst, although his free use of insults and vulgarity as always bugged me a bit; he seems to be trying to achieve the cyncial and irreverent tone of Hunter Thompson's journalistic style. But these racial references make me wonder if he's preparting to repositioning himself from a left-leaning cynic to one more pleasing to Republican Tea Party sensibilities. At the least, I wish he would clean up his act in regard to the dubious racial references.

Tags: doug lamborn, joel chandler harris, matt taibbi, white racism

David Dayen: President Obama was scamming us on the 14th-Amendment option

David Dayen zeroes in on the significance of Vice President Joe Biden's admission that the President was ready to use his 14th Amendment power and obligation to meet the financial commitments of the United States if Congress didn't pass the debt ceiling increase.

There are two big implications of this. One is that Obama was scamming the country, the world and the Democratic Party about the alleged impending disaster from not approving the debt ceiling. The second is that no honest activist, commentator or politician should fall for this scam when the next debt ceiling increase is up for a vote this coming November. David Dayen:

The bombshell dropped alongside the debt limit deal yesterday, aside from Gabrielle Giffords’ return to Congress, was Joe Biden telling a group of House Democrats that the President was prepared to "invoke the 14th Amendment" in the event of the debt limit failing to pass. I'm not sure entirely what he means by that, but there are enormous implications.

The President said all along that the only way to raise the debt limit was to raise the debt limit through legislative action. He was unmoved by the claims that it could be raised through other means. Now we hear through Biden that, as a fail-safe, there was a way for Obama to use his power as chief executive to avoid a default. ...

This is nonetheless valuable information. It shows that the President feels he has the option to avoid a financial catastrophe recklessly pushed by the opposing party. The next President, when faced with this, is likely to jump at that possibility. I know that Mitch McConnell said on the floor of the Senate that this will happen again on the next debt limit vote. But it seems to me that a hand has been tipped now. If more reporting is done on this, the debt limit need not be a hostage-taking event again. And at the very least, a movement should begin inside Congress to abolish it, especially because a US President has intimated that they always have a backstop irrespective of the failure to pass.

What a disgraceful business the whole debt-ceiling debate was. The Republicans are more reckless and irresponsible in their approach. But it was Obama's responsibility as President and leader of the Democratic Party to not let this thing play out the way he did. He failed in that responsibility badly.

Tags: barack obama, david dayen, debt ceiling

The Big Bad Deal compromise

This was Obama's presentation on 07/31/2011 praising the debt-ceiling agreement and bragging it would reduce discretionary domestic federal spending to the lowest level since the Eisenhower Administration, something the Democratic President apparently thinks is a good thing.



Here's an alternative take from Scott Bateman, featuring the President's own words:


Actual Audio: Obama on the Debt Deal from scottbateman on Vimeo.

Meanwhile, Jamie Galbraith prior to the Senate vote was saying Vote 'No' to the Debt Deal and Call in the Constitution New Deal 2.0 08/2/2011. His reasons:

On the economics: by slowly choking off public services, public investment and regulation, the deal sets the economy on a path to strangulation. Every dollar cut from the budget, now or later, is a dollar less of private income. Less private income means less consumption, less private business investment, fewer jobs. Tax revenues will fall, and the deficits and debt will in the end not be reduced. The so-called "cloud of debt" will not lift. Contrary to the foolish claim made by the White House today, there is no magic by which "lifting a cloud of uncertainty" produces growth. There is no confidence fairy.

On dishonesty: the proposed cuts would reduce discretionary public spending as a share of GDP to what it was before the government had any major role in transportation, housing, education, safety, health, medical research or environmental protection. To where it was before the NIH or the CDC, before HUD, before the EPA, before OSHA, before the Department of Education. This is a false promise: those cuts cannot and will not be found. To promise them is to play to the gallery of the ignorant. To pretend that to make them would be good policy is to repudiate the entire past half-century. To make them would bring on a disaster, in many small and large ways, as the physical structures and legal and institutional protections built up over decades crumbled and fell apart. [my emphasis]

At least Social Security and (maybe) Medicare survived actual cuts in services in this round. But:

And while Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid escaped in the first round, they are set up to fall in the second. The deal creates a new junta to force those cuts before the end of this year. The process is repellent, cruel, undemocratic, and designed to leave blood on the ground but not on anyone's hands. [my emphasis]

What we've seen is a genuine breakdown in our democratic system, with unpopular oligopolistic economic policies being jammed through in the face of basic economic knowledge and good sense. When do we stop saying that the US is "becoming" a Banana Republic and acknowledge that the transition has occurred?

Michael Tomasky puts it sensibly in Obama Gives It All Away Daily Beast 07/31/2011:

This is the lowest moment of Obama's presidency. It makes Bill Clinton signing of the welfare reform bill of 1996 look like the founding of the Peace Corps. Even the things he supposedly got out of this deal could vaporize. Defense cuts on par with domestic cuts? After the military contractors' lobbyists get to work? I'll believe that when I see it. Of course Obama did get one concession: no second debt-ceiling vote until 2013. By which time, if he doesn't fundamentally change his way of doing business, he may very well be in retirement.

In political-science terms, Tomasky is right in the bolded statement. But in a more fundamental systematic sense, the low point of Obama's Presidency was his decision not to prosecute the torture perpetrators of the previous Administration. The assumptions implicit in that decision about the rule of law, the role of democratic government and the politics of facing an authoritarian opposition party are now visibly disintegrating his ability to govern. Without some unexpected crisis in which Obama displays a previously-unseen ability to deftly exploit, the Republicans with their control of one House of Congress and most of the federal judiciary are now running the show.

Tomasky is obviously right about the bolded following, as well:

... entitlements [Social Security and Medicare] are next on the GOP’s list. Take my word for it: The Republicans who will serve on the "super-committee" of 12 senators and House members who’ll be charged with determining the next round of cuts by Thanksgiving are going to aim squarely at entitlements, especially Medicare and Medicaid. Now, entitlements need reform and savings, no doubt about that. [This is a nod to conventional pundit wisdom, left vague enough to not specify what Tomasky thinks those need to be. - Bruce] If Republicans were interested in a good-faith way in shoring up the programs for the long-term even if it meant, say, that Medicare wouldn't kick in until age 67 for people now in their 40s, that would be one thing. [I.e, Tomasky thinks this disatrously bad idea is a desirable thing to do. - Bruce] But in fact, they want to destroy it. And Medicaid’s position is even more precarious. We spend too little on it as it is - the barest minimums for poor people's health costs, which inevitably result in higher-cost treatments down the road. This December, liberals will be counting on Barack Obama to defend those programs. What a disgrace that that is now a frightening proposition. [my emphasis]

Tags: barack obama, debt ceiling, james galbraith, michael tomasky

Why economist Dean Baker is good reading

Dean Baker has been cranking out the posts at his Beat the Press blog the last few days on the economy and the debt ceiling fiasco. Here are my summaries of several of his recent posts, the first from Data Bytes rather than Beat the Press:

Weak Consumption and Shrinking Government Slow GDP in Second Quarter 07/29/2011

While the Country Slept: Financial Industry Profits Go Through the Roof 07/30/2011: discusses the financial sector profits

The NYT Wants the U.S. to Have Slower Growth 07/31/2011: the projected future federal surpluses circa 2000 were based on an untenable assumption about private spending.

People Don't Move for Jobs When There Are No Jobs 07/31/2011: Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal makes a sloppy and unsubstanitated claim about housing values and the willingness of people to relocate for work

Conservative Tea Partiers Oppose Cuts to Social Security and Medicare, not Just Liberal Democrats 07/31/2011: the national media is willfully clueless about the popularity of Social Security and Medicare.

The NYT Wrongly Asserts That Economists Want to Cut Social Security 07/31/2011: The New York Times pulls claim about economists wanting Social Security cuts out of the air

With All the Excitement Around the Pending Debt Ceiling Deal Fox on 15th (a.k.a. the Washington Post) Gives Up All Pretext of Objectivity 07/31/2011: The Washington Post's quality of reporting is ddescending to the FOX News level.

Gretchen Morgenson Is Right: Bankers Have No Shame 07/31/2011: major banksters are still reckless about mortgage securitization; they can also be real whiners.

Another Front Page Editorial at the Washington Post 08/01/2011: calls Washington Post "Fox on 15th"; WaPo talking smack about national debt.

The Impact of the Budget Deal for Those Who Don't Carry Around the Budget in Their Pocket 08/01/2011: Obama's Big Bad Deal with the Republican leadership would hammer discretionary spending and therefore be a real kick in the stomach to faltering economic growth

Does the President's National Economic Adviser Not Know That Democrats Controlled Congress Last December? 08/01/2011: Gene Sperling justifies Obama's agreement on extending the Bush tax cuts by whining about the Republicans.

Tags: dean baker, medicare, social security, us economy

The other "confidence" game on the debt ceiling

We've heard a lot of hot air from Republicans and their conservative flacks about the need to restore "business confidence," a longtime favorite conservative excuse for not using economic stimulus.

Now the Obama White House is playing a different kind of confidence game, as explained by Hunter in White House spin on debt ceiling deal promises Democrats will be able to stand firm ... next time Daily Kos 08/01/2011:

The White House is basing this entire deal, and agreeing to nearly all of the demands made by the farthest-right conservatives, on the premise that they will stand firm next time on the exact same economic and political points that they were not able to stand firm on this time: it basically renders this whole exercise into a judgement call as to whether you think next time is the charm, when it comes to Democrats having the courage to stand up against difficult, hostage-laden Republican demands.

There is nothing in the last few years that would suggest that to be the case.

Tags: debt ceiling

Patrick Cockburn on the mess known as the Libya War

Patrick Cockburn consistently did some of the best reporting on the Iraq War. Which means you don't see him on the Sunday morning talking-heads shows in the US. But it's worth paying attention to what he is writing about the Libya War in Why the West is committed to the murderous rebels in Libya Independent 07/31/2011:

The Libyan rebels are even weaker than those in Afghanistan and Iraq where the Western-backed opposition had a core of loyal and well-trained fighters. In Afghanistan, these were the mostly Tajik forces of the Northern Alliance and in Iraq the Kurds had a well organised and well led army in the north of the country. In Libya, rebel forces have always been more meagre, inexperienced and often appear to be one side in hitherto obscure tribal confrontations which have turned into mini civil wars.

The nature of the civil war in Libya has been persistently underplayed by foreign governments and media alike. The enthusiasm in some 30 foreign capitals to recognise the mysterious self-appointed group in Benghazi as the leaders of Libya is at this stage probably motivated primarily by expectations of commercial concessions and a carve-up of oilfields.

And he comments on the success of the Free Libya propaganda campaign in the Western media, no doubt assisted by the usual bank of consultants available to exile governments supported by friendly NATO governments:

In one respect, the foreign media has been more culpable than governments in giving credibility to the TNC as an alternative to Gaddafi's regime. Official rebel statements and claims have been treated with respect, as if they were not geared to winning the propaganda war. Atrocity stories, such as the use of the mass rape of women as a weapon of war, were broadcast uncritically by CNN and others. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International as well as a UN commission, found there was no evidence for the allegations, but there was no retraction by the media. How could it be that for month after month Gaddafi's forces were still fighting when he was meant to have no support? One answer was that he had hired mercenaries from black Africa. Frightened labourers with no documents were arrested and presented by the rebels at TV press conferences as mercenaries and later quietly released. In contrast to their limited military capabilities, the rebels have proved extremely effective in cultivating the foreign media. [my emphasis]

Tags: libya war, patrick cockburn