Category: Legislation

Its a Death Trap, It’s a Suicide Rap*

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Ah, yes, the “centrists” in the Senate. They are what Obi Wan Kenobi was speaking of when he said, “Never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”‡

Their latest “gift” to the rest of us? They are proposing a commission in order to create a back door way to defund Social Security and Medicare.

In this case, it’s Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, (DINO-ND) along with Senatior Judd Gregg (R-NH):

The commission’s main goal would be to figure out what the country needs to do to get its budget back on a more balanced track.

Specifically, the commission would suggest ways to curb spending growth — especially in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — and to boost tax revenue.

There is a simple solution: You just raise the maximum income taken for social security, and let it cover everything that is remuneration, and it’s solvent forever.

In fact, it’s solvent enough that it can fix the medicare funding issue too.

Of note is how this committee is structured, with 18 members, 8 of each party appointed by Congress, and 2 appointed by the White House, and that it would require that at least 14 of the 18 members approve any report, which would be submitted to Congress for an up or down vote.

So, for any tax increase, you would need at least ½ of the Republicans to approve, and you won’t get one.

It’s a Trojan horse, and should be left outside the gates.

It fills the gap, and then some, while

*Apologies to the Boss. It’s a line from Born to Run†
†That’s Bruce Springsteen to those of you who are musically illiterate.
‡Star Wars, you remember that? It was a minor film released in 1977 by the director of THX-1138.

Senate Dems Cave on Public Option

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It’s not like Harry Reid and Barack “Status Quo O” Obama were ever really interested in change, so the Senate killing the public option is hardly a surprise, though it is a bummer.

What did they get in response? Well it appears that they got the ability for people aged 55-65 to who are making not more than 150% of poverty buy into Medicare, at an cost per individual around $625/month.

That’s pretty weak tea.

Well, at least the Dems told Ben Nelson to pound sand on his abortion restrictions, and killed his amendment.

My expectation is that this will get a lot worse as time goes on, and it will get a lot worse in conference committee, and Barack Obama will be able to sign his piece of toilet paper.

Pelosi Comes Out in Favor of Tobin Tax

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Hopefully, this will give Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner the vapors:

A proposed tax on financial transactions “has a great deal of merit” and would help Congress raise needed revenue, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday.

“I believe that the transaction tax still has a great deal of merit,” Pelosi said at a news conference.

The tax would have a “really minimal impact on the transaction, but a tremendous impact on helping us meet our needs,” Pelosi said.

Timmeh….Suck….on…This…

Honestly, I expect Obama to oppose this fiercely in private, though I am not sure what he will do in public.

More Ass Covering by the Fed

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After decades saying that, “It wasn’t their job,” and that it, “Couldn’t be done,” the Federal Reserve is now casting itself as the nation’s premier bubble fighter:

Not so long ago, Federal Reserve officials were confident they knew what to do when they saw bubbles building in prices of stocks, houses or other assets: Nothing.

Now, as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke faces a confirmation hearing Thursday on a second four-year term, he and others at the central bank are rethinking the hands-off approach they’ve followed over the past decade. On the heels of a burst housing-and-credit bubble, Mr. Bernanke now calls financial booms “perhaps the most difficult problem for monetary policy this decade.”

The money quote, which follows, is that, “Mr. Bernanke wants to use his powers as a bank regulator to stamp out bubbles, but the Senate Banking Committee, which will grill him later this week, is considering stripping the Fed of its regulatory power.”

Ben Bernanke does not want to stamp out bubbles, he is just trying to give members of Congress an excuse not to clip his wings.

Some Obstructionism that I Can Believe In

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Bernie Sanders, the Independent Senator from Vermont, has placed a hold on the Ben Bernanke renomination as Federal Reserve Chair:

Mr. Sanders, an independent, is not a member of the Senate banking committee, but he has frequently accused the Federal Reserve of bailing out Wall Street firms and the banking industry at the expense of ordinary citizens.

“In this country, there is profound disgust at what happened on Wall Street,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview. “People want a new direction and people are asking, where was the Fed? How did the Fed allow this to happen, when one of their mandates is to oversee the safety and soundness of the banking system?”

Mr. Sanders said he would place a hold on Mr. Bernanke’s nomination when it reached the Senate floor. Under Senate rules, lawmakers would need 60 votes to override Mr. Sanders and proceed with a vote.

They will get the 60 votes anyway, because there are at least 20 ‘Phants who will move to support him, because if someone new comes in, they will have to be more hostile to Wall Street than Bernanke, because the rage over the banker bailouts is so great.

Personally, I think that, in order to create real independence for the central bank, we should go the FBI route: One term for the Fed Chair in their lifetime.

The Excessively Employed

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Mark Halperin.

While I am not a fan of Mary Landrieu, and some days actually hope that the Southern squish Dems lose their battles for reelection so that the Senate is forced to play hardball (i.e. reconciliation).

I am even less enthused about Mary Landrieu’s ongoing act Hamlet act on healthcare reform, which seems to largely involve the desire to increase Medicare subsidies to Louisiana.

That being said, Mark Halperin’s most substantive writing on this issue, and Landrieu’s position on HCR is to post this photoshop job, which has since been removed by a journalist who has secretly infiltrated the corporate offices of Time.

It is, of course a reference to the unfortunate confusion between hair gel and semen made by Carmen Diaz in the movie There’s Something about Mary.

As many of you know, Mark Halperin is this babbling idiot whom Time magazine hired to cobble together this insipid web product called “The Page,” which is designed to scam people looking for trenchant, up-to-the-minute political news into giving Time many, many unnecessary ad impressions as you follow Halperin’s teasing links to his content. That content tends to be a really dumb listicle, or a one sentence piece of pure and unadulterated banality, or, if you are really lucky, a paragraph or two of analysis that’s either so conventional as to appear slam-dunk, or so witless that it’s completely laughable and wrong.

The post about Landrieu was titled, “There’s Still Something About Mary,” for the brain dead readers of “The Page” who would not otherwise get it.

Yes, this should be a firing offense, particularly after both Beck and Limbaugh literally called her a “prostitute,” but since it’s at the expense of a woman, I’m sure that the old boy’s club of journalism will just chuckle

Change You Cannot Believe In

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Well, I think that it’s becoming clear that the reason that Barack Obama is relying on Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner and Lawrence Summers as the core of his economic team is not an accident.

Not only has his economic team been captured by Wall Street, but Barack Obama has been captured by Wall Street:

If the White House and congressional leaders get their way, the vaunted new oversight council charged with overseeing systemic risk in the financial markets will actually be a house organ of the Treasury Department, lacking the independence required to challenge decisions by government regulators, among others.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) last week tried to fix that, by offering an amendment in the House Financial Services Committee that would give the council an independent staff and independent source of funding. But he was forced to withdraw the amendment after it became clear that he wouldn’t get Chairman Barney Frank’s approval, said a source familiar with the committee’s deliberations.

Let’s be clear here, this council is supposed to review not just systemic risk, but also the behavior of the regulators:

As proposed by the Obama administration, the House bill calls for the council to be headed by the Treasury Secretary, who would pick his own staff from within the Treasury Department.

But not only is the council supposed to keep watch over firms and activities that pose a risk, it’s also supposed to oversee the work of other regulators in mitigating threats and supervise financial regulation as a whole, according to the bill’s language. In short, it has a mandate to watch over everything that could possibly endanger the financial system – including inaction and incompetence by regulators.

So, why are Barack Obama and His Stupid Minions™ so absolutely determined to place the centerpiece of his regulatory reform thoroughly under the branch of the executive designed to be a lapdog for large banking interests?

I do not think that Barack Obama is that stupid, that is clear, though while a candidate, and now President, Barack Obama has always been a bit of a cipher.

The answer, I think, lies in his background.

Barack Obama is literally Chicago School, as in the University of Chicago, where he taught for 12 years, and his first “big name” economic advisor is Austan Goolsbee, who is faculty there, and I think that Barack Obama is clearly very devoted to the idea that the government must be held back to prevent it from interfering with economic “innovation”.

Simply put, he is enthralled by the vision of Chicago School economics, as conceived by Milton Friedman and given flesh by Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan, and so he sees his primary role in economic reform to be ensuring that it is toothless and completely controlled by the large Wall Street banks.

When Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that, “The banks own the place,” he was referring to Congress, but it’s true of the White House.

They own Barack Obama too.

Time to Call In the IRS

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The Bishop of Providence Rhode Island has banned Patrick Kennedy from taking communion in his diocese. Suzie Madrak has the scoop at Crooks and Liars (also, you can find it at CNN):

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin has banned Rep. Patrick Kennedy from receiving Communion, the central sacrament of the church, in Rhode Island because of the congressman’s support for abortion rights, Kennedy said in a newspaper interview published Sunday.

The decision by the outspoken prelate, reported on The Providence Journal’s Web site, significantly escalates a bitter dispute between Tobin, an ultra orthodox bishop, and Kennedy, a son of the nation’s most famous Roman Catholic family.

“The bishop instructed me not to take Communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me Communion,” Kennedy told the paper in an interview conducted Friday.

Kennedy said the bishop had explained the penalty by telling him “that I am not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that I’ve taken as a public official,” particularly on abortion.

(emphasis original)

Seriously, if the Church wants to be this captured by the Republican party, perhaps the IRS should look at improper electioneering.

I would also note that the Republican party has been captured by nativist bigots, people who hate Hispanics, who are now over 2/3 of the Catholic Church, then perhaps Catholics of good conscience should find those few Bishops and Cardinals of good faith who spend their time on serving their flock, and leave those who spend their time on than lobbying on abortion and covering up for pedophile priests to their own devices.

Apologies for the poor audio quality of the vid, it’s from the Christo-Fascist CNSNews.

Toto, I Don’t Think that We’re In Kansas Any More

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Alan Grayson on Dylan Ratigan (2:24)

Crooks and Liars has a very illuminating clip on just what Alan Grayson expects to find in an audit of the Fed.

While I love Grayson’s line that, “Well we are in Emerald City right now. We’ve arrived in Emerald City. Toto has just run underneath the curtain…,” the important quote, and the important question is the more significant quote, “Well what I think is favoritism towards selected big banks that have failed and led us to the brink of national bankruptcy.”

What is clear is that for a long time, at least since Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan became Fed Chairman, was that the “Greenspan Put”, which Wiki calls:

The Fed’s pattern of providing ample liquidity resulted in the investor perception of put protection on asset prices. Investors increasingly believed that when things go bad, the Fed would step in and inject liquidity until the problem got better. Invariably, the Fed did so each time, and the perception became firmly embedded in asset pricing in the form of higher valuation, narrower credit spreads, and excess risk taking. It has been criticized as a form of privatizing profits and socializing losses, and as inflating a speculative bubble in the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis.

(emphasis mine)

Has been a factor of life.

Basically, if you were big enough, and f$#@ed up badly enough, the United States Fedral Reserve System would bail you out.

I think that there are a number of reasons, the first being that in doing so, you can make yourself look good, and I also believe that in the Ayn Rand addled mind of Greenspan, speculators are Rand’s noble capitalists, and as such need to be coddled and protected.

The best example of this is probably the collapse of Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), where Greenspan set up a bailout that competed with a much more severe haircut for the investors, to see this, but it happened over, and over, and over, and over again.

The only reason that Greenspan could get away with this, and be called a genius for getting away with this, was because he concealed, and in some cases flat out lied, about what he was doing.

That needs to end.

It is corrosive to democracy, it is corrosive to society, and it is corrosive to finance.

Harry Reid Disses David Broder

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So it appears that Harry Reid is telling the “Dean of the Washington Press Corps” to go Cheney Himself:

“In tomorrow’s Washington Post, David Broder, their distinguished senior columnist, certainly not a political conservative, expresses his reservation as a citizen about the steps that we could be about to take,” McConnell said.

Reid couldn’t have been less impressed. “To focus on a man who has been retired for many years and writes a column once in a while is not where we should be.”

(emphasis mine)

David Broder has been highly respected for his writing columns calling liberals DFHs* and giving a tongue bath to the conservative establishment since the 1960s.

Actually, it’s been the same article, written over and over again.

Nice to see that Harry Reid is calling him irrelevant. One wishes that this statement had been made decades ago by hundreds of more people.

Of course Broder is a conservative. He has been a spokesman for the status quo for over 40 years, though his real constituency is the Washington, DC cocktail party circuit.

*Dirty F$#@ing Hippies.

Update on the Fed Audit

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Alan Grayson on the Bill

On Tuesday, we were getting reports from there was a conspiracy afoot to emasculate the bill in the dead of night, using an amendment put forward by Representative Mel Watt (D-NC) wherein the GAO could “audit” the Fed, but could not actually get detailed information. It actually made the Federal Reserve less transparent.

Yves Smith rather colorfully, and very accurately described the amendment as, “Tantamount to saying you are permitted to operate a strip club as long as the patrons are prohibited from looking at un or underclad bodies.” (heh)

What followed was a bit of theater, where the opponents of the audit, rolled out economists who argued that the audit proposal was destructive, but neglected to mention their own financial ties to the Federal Reserve:

But far from a broad cross-section, the “prominent economists” lobbying on behalf of the Watt bill are in fact deeply involved with the Federal Reserve. Seven of the eight are either currently on the Fed’s payroll or have been in the past.

The Fed connections are not outlined in the letter sent around to committee members on Wednesday, but are publicly discernible through a review of their resumes, which are all posted online.

It should also be noted that the publishing staff of almost every significant economic academic journal has similar conflicts of interest with regard to the Federal reserve.

Well, despite the best efforts of the Federal Reserve, and Barney Frank, and Mel Watt, the Paul/Grayson audit bill was passed by the House Finance Committee by a vote of 43-26, 15 Dems voted for it, in addition to all the Republicans.

Hopefully, this will progress further, but my guess is that the knives will be coming out on this.

Major props to Ryan Grim of HuffPo, he’s the author of the HuffPo links here, who has been on this like white on Rice.

More Ass Covering by the Fed

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Once again, the Fed discovers consumers in order to forestall an audit, and the Consumer Financial Protection Agency taking over their purview.

This time, the Fed is going after fees on gift cards.

Seriously, is there anyone with two brain cells to rub together who does not understand that the Federal Reserve was hostile to the idea of actually enforcing consumer protections until Congress started about auditing it and taking away some of its enforcement power.

Wrong!

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Nancy Pelosi is now saying that any financial transaction tax must be internationally agreed on:

Any tax imposed on financial transactions would have to take effect internationally to keep Wall Street jobs and related business from moving overseas, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday.

“It would have to be an international rule, not just a U.S. rule,” Pelosi said at a news conference. “We couldn’t do it alone, we’d have to do it as an international initiative.”

This is wrong on a number of levels:

  • There is already such a tax in the UK, and it has been there for years, and London’s “The Street” still rivals Wall Street.
  • The US had a tax on stock purchases well into the 1960s, and it did not chase investors over seas.
  • The idea that much of the financial industry would go elsewhere is a bad thing is simply misguided. Above a certain proportion of GDP, it becomes a source of parasitic loss, and detracts from our economic well-being.
  • If we wait for international consensus, it will never happen.

I’m just saying.

This is What You Get When You Go For Bipartisanship

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Not only were there bogus tax cuts in the unemployment extension, in order to pick up a few Republican votes, it now appears that the extended benefits will expire at year’s end, because they were paying attention to the end of the year when they passed this bill just 2 weeks ago.

If the Republicans want to stop a bill like this, one that has a huge majority supporting it, they should be made to express their opposition on the floor. Spending a few months cajoling them is counter productive.

The Senate Healthcare Bill is Out

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And, no surprise, it is much weaker tea than the house version:

Here is how the merged Senate bill compares to the legislation passed in the House. The merged Senate legislation has lower affordability standards, covers less people, invests less in prevention, does not require all large employers to provide health insurance, and includes a weaker public option. But the bill goes further in controlling health care spending and reducing the deficit.

I still don’t think that we will get a bill that will provide meaningful healthcare reform.

Too many people *cough* Barack Obama *cough* just want something that they can call healthcare reform.

Old Pinko is a F$#@ing Genius

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I’ve known the Old Pinko for years, and we exchange emails frequently, and I sent him notice of the twitter meme about using some celebrities to read the bill if the Republicans demand a full reading on the floor of the Senate.

His response:

They should use folks, perhaps children, who have serious illnesses and no health insurance. That, that would really stick it too them.

I will note, however, that I would probably avoid using children, since the right wing in general, and Michelle Malkin, and her deranged Minions™ in particular, already have a history of going after people whose politics they find distasteful, including 12 year old boys critically injured in auto accidents.

Now, if only he’d post more frequently to his blog.

There is A Meme Going Around Twitter

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It appears that the Republicans are going to insist on having the whole healthcare bill read in the Senate.

The Dems have a team of speed readers standing by to do this, and there is a discussion on twitter as to whether we should give an hour to Christopher Walken or William Shatner to read the bill.

It’s a fascinating concept.

I have two vids after the break to give a compare and contrast Shatner and Walken.

Feel free to add your take in the comments.
[on edit] Yes, Jack Nicholson should be included too.

[on further edit]James Earl Jones as Darth Vader might be a bit much.


Walken reading Lady GaGa’s Poker Face


William Shatner’s seminal I am a Canadian.


Nicholson, 5 Easy Pieces