Author: Matthew G. Saroff

F%$# You Barry

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As you may or not be aware, the Obama administration has regular meetings with liberal groups, it’s called “Common Purpose”, but it’s better known as the “Veal Pen”.

It’s basically used to ensure that they don’t do anything of value, ever, because the Obama staffers are control freaks, and because they are too busy pandering to reactionaries.

Well, things got a bit stroppy at the last veal pen, and so a senior administration official blamed liberals for Obama’s craven surrender:

Yesterday, Sperling faced a series of questions about the White House’s concessions on the debt ceiling fight and its inability to move in the direction of new taxes or revenues. Progressive consultant Mike Lux, the sources said, summed up the liberal concern, producing what a participant described as an “extremely defensive” response from Sperling.

Sperling, a person involved said, pointed his finger at liberal groups, which he said hadn’t done enough to highlight what he saw as the positive side of the debt package — a message that didn’t go over well with participants.

There is always the excuse that it’s just one person it’s not representative of the administration attitudes, but you hear this sort of crap over, and over, and over again from members of the administration, including one Barack Hussein Obama.

Basically, it’s always liberals fault, and they hate those uncouth hippies, and they know that if they punch them hard enough, that everything till turn out well.

H/t Americablog.

Holy Sh%$ (Economics Edition)

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Remember the recession? Well it turns out it was much worse than we were led to believe at the time:

Two days after that, Americans received grim news about the economy: in the fourth quarter of 2008, GDP contracted at a 3.8% annual pace—the worst quarterly performance since the deep recession of 1982. More bad news hit on February 6th, when the BLS released new labour market figures. It reported an employment decline of 598,000 in January, following on revised drops in employment of 577,000 in December and 597,000 in November—a three-month drop of 1.8m jobs. On February 10th, the Senate passed its version of the stimulus, worth $838 billion. In conference committee, the bill shrank to $787. On February 17th, Mr Obama signed the bill into law.

In the months and years that followed, Washington provided additional support to the economy, perhaps ultimately contributing approximately $1 trillion in total stimulus. But that first bill was the big bite at the apple. The White House looked at the economic situation, sized up Congress, and took its shot. Unfortunately, the situation was far more dire than anyone in the administration or in Congress supposed.

Output in the third and fourth quarters fell by 3.7% and 8.9%, respectively, not at 0.5% and 3.8% as believed at the time. Employment was also falling much faster than estimated. Some 820,000 jobs were lost in January, rather than the 598,000 then reported. In the three months prior to the passage of stimulus, the economy cut loose 2.2m workers, not 1.8m. In January, total employment was already 1m workers below the level shown in the official data.

OMFG!

That’s depression level of contraction.

So, not only was the this recession the worst since the Great Depression, but it was even worse than first reported.

And so the stimulus in 2009 was even more inadequate than was previously reported.

This is why moderation in such situations is so disastrous.

Not Good At All

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The economy, and I don’t mean the furshlugginer debt bill, just showed us that if we aren’t headed for a double we aren’t in for a recovery either, as consumer spending has just fallen for the first time in two years, probably because scared consumers are scared, and so paying down their credit cards instead of spending money.

And today, the Obama administration is announcing that they are pivoting to jobs, after going full out for a debt reduction deal that will slow the economy and cost jobs.

This isn’t closing the barn door after the cow has gotten out, this is closing the barn door after you let the cow out, and shot it dead.

And the Debt Deal Keeps On Giving

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There are now serious concerns that Obama’s debt capitulation, which is rather similar to much of the Republican agenda passed in Wisconsin in the last two months, is likely to demoralize potential voters and volunteers.

It’s bad enough that the Republicans are once again corruptly trying to misinform voters and suppress voting, but now the we’ve got Obama’s cave to further discourage the Democratic party grass roots.

He’s the Manchurian Democrat.  Cuel Tom Tomorrow:

More Foreign Worker Visa Fraud

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It turns out that notorious software off shoring operation Infosys decided at some point that cheating H1b visa fraud was too damn much time and money so they have become more inventive:

In a case that threatens to scald Infosys in the North American market, from where it gets over 60% of its revenues, and intensify the debate on outsourcing in the US, Jack Palmer said the company was circumventing H-1B visa rules by sending low-level and unskilled employees to the US on B1 visas instead.

H-1B visas, which are needed to send employees to work in the US, have become more expensive and harder to get than B1 visas that are only meant for meeting, conferences and business negotiations. Palmer, who has been working with the company since 2008, further said that Infosys managers in the US were intentionally committing fraud to avoid paying taxes locally and that the company mistreated him when he filed a complaint as part of the whistleblower policy.

Outsourcing has been an inflammable issue in the US as it continues to struggle with high unemployment. The Indian IT services have often been accused of taking away American jobs to cheaper destinations. This anti-outsourcing sentiment has also resulted in visa norms becoming more stringent in the past few years.

This raises an interesting point.

My solution to H1b visa abuse, it’s largely used to bring in cheap labor and depress wages, is to raise the cost of the application and permitting process, but obviously this would tend to drive exactly this sort of fraud.

I’m beginning to think a bounty program, with people who rat out their employers getting 3 to 5 year work permits, might be the most effective way to deal with enforcing the laws.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

Quote of the Day

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I feel about this the way I feel about people who keep grizzly bears and gorillas and tigers as pets. They keep animals that outweigh them as pampered houseguests, feeding them raw salmon and steak and putting cute little collars on them and sh%$, and then are ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED when their “best friends” get bored one day and eat their faces.

—Athenae from First Draft

(%$ mine)

She was noting that David Frum is shocked, absolutely shocked, that the modern Republican party has been taken over by the insane fringe that they have pandered to for decades.

The question was never “if” but when the inmates would seize the asylum.

Note that Frum is what passes for a deep thinker from the ‘Phants.

BTW, It Ain’t Just US Conservatives Who Want to F%$# Us All

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Because British Prime Minister David Cameron’s brain trust is hard at work:

Ministers yesterday disowned controversial ideas floated by David Cameron’s strategy guru, including the scrapping of maternity leave and consumer rights and the closure of jobcentres.

Steve Hilton came under fire after it emerged that he had put forward numerous proposals to boost Britain’s fragile recovery. His friends blamed the disclosure on obstructive civil servants who do not admire his free-thinking approach to policy.

The 42-year-old former advertising man, who cycles to work and walks around Downing Street in a T-shirt and socks, is seen as one of Mr Cameron’s closest two advisers – the other being the Chancellor, George Osborne. The Prime Minister admires Mr Hilton’s original thinking although he often backs Mr Osborne when the two men clash. Insiders say Mr Hilton has a “scattergun” approach to policy ideas, many of which do not get off the ground. The suggestions leaked yesterday look certain to join the list.

What the f%$3 is wrong with this people?

On This a Day, Trust Newt to Make Me Smile

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It’s just schadenfreude, but I’ll take it.

It turns out that most of Newt Gingrich’s Twitter followers Are fake:

Yesterday Newt Gingrich laid out a new argument for why he should be the GOP presidential nominee: He’s got the most Twitter followers. But according to a former Gingrich staffer, he bought them.

Gingrich complained yesterday that the press is ignoring his prodigious Twitter audience: “I have six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined, but it didn’t count because if it counted I’d still be a candidate; since I can’t be a candidate that can’t count.” Which is true! Gingrich currently boasts 1,325,842 followers, whereas competitors Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann have yet to crack 100,000.

But if Newt is winning the Twitter primary, it’s because of voter fraud. A former staffer tells us that his campaign hired a firm to boost his follower count, in part by creating fake accounts en masse: …

Heh.

When he leaves the race, I’ll miss him almost as much as The Daily Show writers will.

The House Passed the Debt Deal

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And about half the Democratic caucus voted for it.

Looking at the tally, my Congresscritter, Jon Sarbanes, voted against it, but Hoyer, Ruppersberger (no surprise there) and DCCC chair Van Hollen all voted for this sh%$ sandwich.

Any Democrat who votes for this deserves a primary challenge, and the fact that Van Hollen is running the DCCC means that you should not give to that organization, but instead choose your candidates a la carte, because the DCCC will continue to spend their money on spineless wimps with no moral compass.

As to the substance of the deal, words fail me, but they don’t fail the Rude Pundit (NSFW, but if you know the Rude One, you knew that).

Also, read Krugman, whose New York Times OP/ED, The President Surrenders, is a marginally more polite take down.

Me, I don’t think that Obama is as bad a negotiator as we would like to think.  I think that he is getting much of what he wants, and using Boehner as a useful idiot for political cover from his own base.

It Looks Like There is a Debt Limit Deal

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And it looks like it sucks.

I’m still digesting it, but it appears mandate cuts, and not taxes, and it gives the Republicans to pivot away from their disastrous vote to kill Medicare, and accuse Democrats of doing the same.

I guess that’s what serves as bipartisanship in Obama’s mind.

About the only bright spot is the possibility that House Democrats may desert this bill en mass, which has the possibility of changing the dynamic in a positive way.

And the Clusterf%$3 in Libya Goes Into High Gear

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Normally, this would not start happening until after a successful foreign backed revolution, but with a stalemate on the ground, I guess it’s time that the various factions of the Libyan rebels have decided to start killing each other to determine who gets the spoils.

The first head on a stake is that of their chief of staff Gen. Abdul Fatah Younis:

The chief of staff for rebel forces fighting to overthrow Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi was attacked and killed Thursday, according to the rebels’ leadership council.

In a terse announcement that left many questions unanswered, the president of the council said Gen. Abdul Fatah Younis and two other commanders were killed as they returned from the eastern front near Port Brega to Benghazi, the de facto rebel capital.

Reading haltingly from a brief communique, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, president of the Transitional National Council, said pro-Kadafi gunmen had infiltrated rebel-held areas, but he did not specifically blame them for the killings. Abdul Jalil refused to take questions from reporters.

In response, the council has ordered all militias to stand down, and to integrate into the formal security forces.

This was foreseeable. This is a group with no real leader, and no credibility beyond the support that it receives from NATO, so it was inevitable that we would see this.

Of course, this means that NATO will feel compelled to escalate in order to show their credibility, so I expect to see British and French troops on the ground as “advisers” in the not too distant future.

It’s kind of like Vietnam writ small.

Looks Like Someone Was Bankrolling the Christofascist Terrorist in Norway

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I would note that the source is not the most reliable, Justin Raimondo has a a truly peculiar history, he’s an antiwar activist who is gay and who endorsed Pat Buchanan, but he has followed the money on Anders Behring Breivik, and it indicates that Mr. Behring Breivik:

  • Accumulated well over 100 Grand in savings.
  • Never held down a real job that would imply that level of savings.
  • Lived a lavish lifestyle.
  • Had his money in opaque offshore accounts.

Assuming that Raimondo’s thesis bears up to scrutiny, and it did to my 10 minutes of Goggling, then there are really just two possibilities here, either he was a relatively successful professional criminal, or he was being bankrolled by the Christofascist right in the same way that Scott Roeder was by Operation Rescue and their ilk.

Needless to say there was some fairly explicit support of these fanatics on our side of the pond, Pam “I Would Be in Jail If I Were Muslim” Geller, for instance, published a letter from Norway that sounds suspiciously like Breivik’s manifesto, while scrupulously preserving the author’s anonymity a few years back.

One hopes that the Norwegian authorities are more diligent in their pursuit of right wing terrorists than Barack Obama and Eric “Place” Holder have been, because the ties between Operation Rescue and the Tiller assassination have at this point elicited nothing by way of a credible investigation.

More Like The Bush Administration Every Day

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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Case in point, punishing scientists who speak the truth even when big oil wants lies:

It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice.

But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a warming Arctic has been suspended and his work put under official investigation for possible scientific misconduct.

Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist, oversaw much of the scientific work for the government agency that has been examining drilling in the Arctic. He managed about $50m (£30.5m) in research projects.

Some question why Monnett, employed by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, has been suspended at this moment. The Obama administration has been accused of hounding the scientist so it can open up the fragile region to drilling by Shell and other big oil companies.

“You have to wonder: this is the guy in charge of all the science in the Arctic and he is being suspended just now as an arm of the interior department is getting ready to make its decision on offshore drilling in the Arctic seas,” said Jeff Ruch, president of the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “This is a cautionary tale with a deeply chilling message for any federal scientist who dares to publish groundbreaking research on conditions in the Arctic.”

There could be some completely innocent explanation for this, and I could be the rightful heir to the house of Saud.

I think that both are equally likely.

Just Mint the Damn Coin Already!

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I haven’t said much on the solutions on the debt ceiling debate, I’ve been more focused on the source of the problem, which is that Obama, in his eagerness to find a way to gut cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in order to feed his own ego by burnishing his self image as a bipartisan compromiser who brings people together because he’s just so damn awesome.

At this point, it would be good to have a plan B, and while there are a number of ways to work around this, though to my mind is the use of the Treasury’s explicit statutory authority to mint platinum proof coin of arbitrary value, which they could be deposited in the Federal Reserve account and used to keep the debt below the ceiling.

So if they mint a few trillion dollar coins, deposit them in their “checking account”, and it’s off to the races.

But it won’t happen, because Obama still wants to find a way to gut cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Well, This Might Explain the Bank Failure Spike

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It appears that the economy is slowing, with the last two quarters GDP disappointing.

1st quarter GDP was revised down from a 1.9% annual rate to an 0.4% annual rate, and the 2nd GDP disappointed, coming in at a 1.3% annual rage, below the 1.6% forecast.

So, as the (already grossly inadequate) stimulus has run out, the economy has sputtered to a halt.

No worry though, austerity will create growth by:

  1. Collect Underpants
  2. ?
  3. Profit

What this has to do with bank failures?

The fact that they are a lagging indicator.

You see banks become insolvent when too many of their loans go bad, and those loans go bad following the economy tanking, not before.

We are in a double dip recession in all but the NBER ruling.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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 And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Virginia Business Bank,Richmond, VA
  2. BankMeridian, N.A., Columbia, SC
  3. Integra Bank National Association, Evansville, IN

Full FDIC list

It’s been a busy week.

In fact, it’s been a busy past 4 weeks.  There have been 13 banks closed after what had been a bit of a lull.

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

When Joke Line Calls Out Republicans, They Have Jumped the Shark.

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This is one big shark that they jumped.
One With Frikken Lasers!

In fact, this is an indication that they are jumping C. Megalodon.*

Because Time Magazine‘s Joe Kline, the man who has made a career of hating on liberals and sucking up to Republicans, to the degree that he wrote a bio of Woody Guthrie that treated his politics (“This machine (his guitar) kills fascists”) as a sort of an idiot-savant phenomenon, has finally been forced to find the current behavior of Republicans to be beyond the pals:

And so, here we are. Our nation’s economy and international reputation as the world’s presiding grownup has already been badly damaged. It is a self-inflicted wound of monumental stupidity. I am usually willing to acknowledge that Democrats can be as silly, and hidebound, as Republicans–but not this time. There is zero equivalence here. The vast majority of Democrats have been more than reasonable, more than willing to accept cuts in some of their most valued programs. Given the chance, there was the likelihood that they would have surrendered their most powerful weapon in next year’s election–a Mediscare campaign–by agreeing to some necessary long-term reforms in that program. The President, remarkably, proposed raising the age of eligibility for Medicare to 67.

(emphasis mine)

Joe Klein has made a career out of saying that both sides are wrong, and when you’ve lost him, it says that you not only crossed a line, but you crossed that line a very long time ago.

*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). But in either case, you are jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.