Category: Politics

What Simon Says

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Specifically, Simon Johnson, former IMF chief economist, who notes that with Peter Orszag resigning as as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Paul Krugman would be the best replacement:

The president should nominate Paul Krugman to replace Peter Orszag as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). (Orszag resignation details are here.)

………

But for the OMB position, the dynamic of a hearing would be terrific for the president’s specific agenda and broader messages. Krugman, of course, is the leading advocate for continued (or increased) fiscal stimulus. This is exactly President Obama’s message to the G20 this weekend.

Plus, when Republicans push back against Krugman on this issue, he will let them have it full blast on fiscal policy during the Bush administration. Krugman has, again and again, been an outspoken critic of the Bush era fiscal policy. He has precise chapter and verse on where the Bush team went off the deep fiscal edge.

………

It will not happen, of course, because Obama only tries to do the right thing when he has no other alternative, and there is simply not the pressure to have Krugman take the post.

Go read the whole thing.

The People of America Have Learned What the People of Texas Already Knew

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That representative Joe Barton (R-TX) is a complete moron.

You see, he publicly apologized to BP for what he called a, “$20 billion shakedown” by the Obama administration in getting the giant oil company to pay into an escrow fund. (He has since recanted)

To my mind, if the Dems don’t run with this like an overpaid wide receiver at the Superbowl, they are morons.

Look Who I Ran Into

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Click for full size

His hair looks better in person

My wife and I had finished dropping the kids off at school following Natalie’s Bat Mitzvah rehearsal, the ceremony is this Saturday, and we stopped at Java Mamas.*

As we pulled up, there were people getting out of a couple of black SUVs, and I looked over, and said something like, “Would you look at that!”

It was former Maryland governor, and current candidate for governor, Bob Ehrlich.

My wife replied, “Matthew, behave!“

I behaved, but I snapped the shot. He’s the one in the shades.

They weren’t politicking, they were just getting coffee, and I didn’t say anything.

It’s not a great pic, though I think that it’s about as good a photo as I am likely to take with my cell phone.

He’s a little bit grayer than I recall from his last official photo, but that was almost 4 years ago.

I did not stay around, my wife and I had errands, so I cannot speak to tipping, though they did queue up politely and wait their turns.

I don’t approve of his politics, but I do approve of his taste in coffee.

*Good coffee and light fare like sandwiches and salad at Java Mama’s, 324 Main Street Reisterstown, MD 21136-1951 (410)833-8100.

Alabama Primaries, and Thoughts on What It Means

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Parker Griffith, the Blue Dog Democrat turned Republican, just lost his bid for the Republican nomination to Mo Brooks by 18 points, which is generally known as a shellacking.

So, this is the 2nd party switcher with the backing of the national party, Arlen Specter being the other who has lost the primary.

In the other race on interest, Artur Davis got destroyed in his bid for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Alabama, and it was another run away, with 62%-38% to Ron Sparks, where Davis was consistently ahead in the polls the entire time.

Hell, the day before, CNN was writing as if his nomination was a done deal.

Interestingly, in Alabama, the numbers appear to indicate that the margins were the same both in predominantly white, and predominantly black areas, despite the fact that Davis is black, and Sparks is white.

So why did black voters walk away from a black candidate in what could have been a historical race?

Well, they looked at Mr. Davis, and found that he had been running hard to the right, looking at November, because he thought that the primary was a “Slam Dunk.”

Among other things, he:

  • Pointedly disassociated himself from the black community and black organizations in Alabama, refusing to even meet with them, and these organizations came out for Sparks, who actively courted them.
  • Voted against the Obama Healthcare bill. (And was the only member of the CBC to do so)
  • Cozied up to the “cultural conservatives”, which in the USA means people who use code words for, “I want to keep the n*gg*rs down.”

I think that a part of this is a mark of maturity of the black political establishment in Alabama, they looked at policy and character, and decided that pigment did not matter.

I think another part is that Davis pointedly took the black vote for granted, and no voter, regardless of skin color, likes that.

It should be noted too that Artur Davis went to law school with, and was a friend of, Barack Obama, which should have given some more pull with voters.

Actually, this is a more general point, with Specter and Davis on the Democratic side, and with Griffith on the Republican side, and it is that base voters are no longer willing to be taken for granted, not even for a “friend of Barack”.

When they are, and told to suck it up and vote for the party approved candidate, they either vote for the other guy, or they stay home, and my guess is that it is the latter.

To the degree that either party is playing the , “Suck it up and vote for us card,” they will lose.

Unfortunately, while the Republicans have been throwing red meat at their base for the past 2 years, Barack Obama has been studiously cock-punching the DFHs* because he wants to look “post-partisan”.

Unless Obama realizes that compromise in the interest of appearing bipartisan creates both bad policy and bad politics, November will not be pretty.

I have come to the conclusion that Karl Rove’s real genius in his political work was not his completely amoral methods, but an understanding that, except in extreme circumstances,† motivating out the base wins elections.

*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies.
†A pointless war, “Heck of a job, Brownie”, Congressmen hitting on under pages, Terri Sciavo, and corruption and venality that just buggered the mind.

I Need Help With a Prank

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Renovation of the door is called for

I need a group of people who know how to handle themselves around tools, and can look like they know what they are doing.

What I am planning to do is generate a false work order and then install revolving doors at RNC headquarters:

The departures began in earnest about two months ago, shortly after reports of the RNC spending nearly $2,000 in donor money at a nightclub called Voyeur West Hollywood, an establishment where “impromptu bondage and S&M ‘scenes'” are “played out on an elevated platform by scantily clad performers throughout the night.”

The heads have been rolling ever since, even in departments that had nothing to do with the controversy.

It’s been tough to keep track of the staff shake-ups. The party’s finance chief and deputy finance director were recently forced out, as were three members of the RNC’s communications team. Those announcements came on the heels of departures from the party’s chief of staff, a top RNC strategist, and Alex Castellanos, who was brought on to help shape the party’s message. All of this has unfolded since late March.

The party may want to consider revolving doors at RNC headquarters.

Well, I saw that bit of snark, and decided that it’s time to make it reality.

I want a crack team to go there, show up with a work order, and install an actual revolving door.

Yes, I am really serious here, or, at least I think I am.

Hey kids, let’s put on a show in dad’s barn with mom’s costumes!

My guess is that we will get caught, and likely arrested, but if anyone knows a producer for The Daily Show, we can probably get on that.

Good Politics, Good Policy

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The Democrats in the New Jersey statehouse have passed a bill to raise income taxes on people earning more than $1 million a year, and predictably, the wingnut governor is promising a veto:

Lawmakers in New Jersey’s Democrat- controlled Assembly voted to raise income taxes on residents earning at least $1 million a year, as Republican Governor Chris Christie said he’d veto the bill.

The chamber passed the measure 46-32 in a vote that broke down along party lines. Of 33 Republicans, 32 voted no. The Senate approved the bill 23-17 along party lines, setting up a showdown with Christie, 47, as the deadline approaches to have a balanced budget in place when the fiscal year ends on June 30.

“We’ve got a lot of people who can’t afford to pay their taxes” and need the rebates that the measure may restore, Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver said before the vote. “Six- hundred thousand older adults would be better off.”

So now you have the Democrats lining up against Goldman Sachs traders, who get paid obscene amounts to screw their clients and other counter-parties with the guarantee of taxpayer money should they fail.

The optics are perfect, and the policy of making the wealthy pay for the damage that they cause, which has the side effect of providing a less recessionary impact on the state economy, is just plain good policy.

This is a win-win, and Dems should jam up Republicans like this more often.

Why I Read Joe Steffen’s Blog

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If you know nothing of Maryland Politics, you don’t know who Joe Steffen is.

He’s a Republican political operative, formerly Bob Ehrlich’s aide, who is currently on the outs with the party, who is also known by his nickname, the “Prince of Darkness.”

I think of him as Lee Atwater writ on a state wide basis.

That being said, he tends to be rather more chatty about the comings and goings of Republican party politics in the state (In fact, it was imprudent postings on a BBS that were traced back to him which got him fired by “Bad Hair Bob” some years back), and so, despite my profound disagreements with him on issues of policy, I read his blog and I hear a lot of good inside baseball.

Case in point, he outs Republican party stalwart David Nawrocki for sending campaign emails from his work account.

It seems like a minor thing, until you realize that Nawrocki works for the Social Security Administration, which makes his email a criminal violation of the Hatch act.

Oopsie.

This is why I blogroll people and subscribe to their RSS feeds. It’s not because I agree with them, but because they can teach me things.

Lame, Even By Republican Standards

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Will Bunch notices that Pennsylvania State Attorney General, and Republican nominee for governor, Tom Corbett, has issued subpoenas to determine who is making nasty tweets and blog posts about him:

Corbett’s actions here look like one of the most stunning abuses of power I’ve seen in a while — not just in Pennsylvania but anywhere.

A blog focused on exposing the alleged “hypocrisy” of Attorney General Tom Corbett and the Twitter account associated with that blog could soon be enjoying a bounce in reader interest, thanks to a subpoena ordered by Corbett’s office earlier this month.

Corbett, who won a primary against Rep. Sam Rohrer Tuesday and will be the Republican nominee for governor in November, subpoenaed Twitter representatives to appear as grand jury witnesses to “testify and give evidence regarding alleged violations of the laws of Pennsylvania.”

The case could gain viral attention, since the subpoena calls into question the right to free speech, specifically from anonymous posters on the World Wide Web.

Maybe I’m missing some nuance here but at first blush it looks like the anonymous owners of these two Twitter accounts and blogs are doing nothing more than exercising their 1st Amendment rights of free speech to criticize Corbett’s public actions. If Corbett believes that he has been libelled by any of the blog or Twitter posts, he is within his rights to personally sue them (a difficult case for him to win, as a public figure). But that is a far different thing from using the power of the state and the grand jury.

Bunch further updates with a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story, where a they imply that the blogger/bloggers are a defendant in a case, but in a quick reading of the blog, there is no mention of the case, just a litany of accounts of unethical behavior by Mr. Corbett.

This is clearly an attempt at retaliation against critics.

Cloture Fails on financial Reform

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The vote was 57-42 against cloture, with Democrats Maria Cantwell of Washington and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin voting against cloture,* and Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, voted for cloture, with Specter not yet back in the Senate.

Cantwell and Feingold are right here: They have been refused a vote on a number of important amendments and other issues, most notably:

  • Allowing states to enforce their own usury laws, which means that credit card consumers would no longer have their interest rates driven by the laws of South Dakota and Delaware.
  • Putting the “Volcker Rule” into statute, forbidding banks from engaging in proprietary trading.
  • A restoration of the Glass Steagall separation between commercial and investment banking.
  • There are requirement that derivatives trade through public exchanges with public price discover is toothless.

It’s nice that some progressives have shown that they are willing to show teeth.

With Republicans coming to realize just how loathed Wall Street is, and realizing that Blanche Lincoln’s reelection driven decision to get rough on the banks has triggered a dynamic which makes the bill more extreme as time goes on, as opposed to the usual process of bills getting emasculated in the Senate.

Every day that goes by, it gets for any Republican and corporatist Democrat who is standing for reelection this year finds it harder and harder do do Wall Street’s bidding.

I think that after a few more days of delay, they’ll end up finding a way to break up the big banks.

*Harry Reid voted against cloture too, but that is so he can offer a motion to reconsider, allowing for revote.

Eu Passes Restrictions on Hedge Funds

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EU finance ministers have decided to require greater transparency and regulations of hedge funds, despite (also here):

EU finance ministers have agreed a common position on draft EU legislation on managers of hedge funds and other alternative investment firms, opening the door for negotiations with the European Parliament, the co-legislator.

The agreement on Tuesday (18 May) comes despite UK concerns that the Europe-wide law could negatively impact the British economy, with 80 percent of hedge funds currently located in London.

I would note that one of the myths here is that hedge funds and other highly speculative activities benefit the economy as a whole.

They don’t. They suck productive intellect and capital into purely speculative activities, and this makes everyone but the hedgies and bankers poorer.

The US has been fighting this tooth and nail, and claiming that this is protectionism in violation of WTO rules, but I agree with Yves at naked capitalism on what this is really about: “

Yves again. Did you catch that? Look at what the Europeans want: to regulate hedge and PE funds, as in prevent them from engaging in behavior proven to be dangerous (abuse leverage) and give investors more disclosure, and restrict firms that refuse to agree to play by those rules. That is hardly a radical agenda, yet Treasury Department is working in lockstep with the industry to defend its ability to operate with minimal constraints. And note that no one is mounting an argument that these businesses are socially productive and hurting them will hurt the economy because no such argument can be made credibly. Instead, an effort to impose “prudent regulation” is begin branded as “discrimination.” The problem is no one outside the industry will buy the argument. And Team Obama’s zealous defense of these firms again reveals how, despite its efforts to present a populist, pro-reform image, that it will never cross its best friends, the big financiers, in a serious way.

With members of Congress realizing that the political backlash from being easy on the banks completely overwhelming any amount of campaign donations that the finance industry can generate, which is why the Senate finance reform bill is getting better, it’s time for Barack and His Evil Minions™ to realize that their political future is connected to taking down the banks.

Telecoms Set to Mount Astroturf Campaign Against Net Neutrality

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Think Progress is all over it:

This morning, representatives from various front groups launched a new coordinated campaign to kill net neutrality. Speaking on Capitol Hill, these front groups took turns decrying the evils of the principle of a fair and unbiased Internet. LULAC, which is funded by AT&T, called Net Neutrality “Obamacare for the Internet.” (LULAC was not present at the press conference. The Hispanic Leadership Fund, another group funded by the telecom industry and opposed to net neutrality, spoke at the event. We apologize for the error.) Americans for Prosperity — a corporate front group founded by oil billionaire David Koch but also funded by telecom interests — unveiled a new ad smearing net neutrality as a “government takeover” (the initial ad buy is $1.4 million dollars). And Grover Norquist, representing his “Americans for Tax Reform” corporate front group, said net neutrality is like what China does, “putting policemen on every corner, on the street or on the Internet.” Watch it:

(Strikout original)

And once again, Declan McCullagh,* who can be relied on to take any lie from a telco industry lobbyist represent them them as truth, had published a gotcha article claiming that it was just a bunch of college kids, only he missed the following facts that his lobbyist friend sources neglected to tell him:

  • The person running the web site is not a student. She is professional paid staff of an astroturf lobbying group.
  • She used a professional PR service to track the distribution of the story.
  • The “students” met with Norquist and His Evil Minions™.
  • Norquist and His Evil Minions™ have been parroting the terms from the presentation word for word.

Fundamentally, if you read something from McCullagh that might have to bear on his rather extreme libertarian views, find a 2nd source to verify.

When push comes to shove, he will put forward the Cato Institute line ahead of the truth.

*No link this time, you can find the link at the Think Progress rebuttal. Mccullagh is, as Andrew Orlowsky notes, a “Draw by crayon libertarian,”†and so he quotes uncritically industry-funded astroturf groups in his article.
†He is also the guy who created the, “Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet,” myth, and he remains proud of that bit of hackery.

Idiocracy Was a Documentary

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Idiocracy writ small

Yes, this an actual campaign ad in which a candidate is lambasted for believing in the independently observed fact that is evolution.

It’s actually a little more complex, because it’s an ad for a Republican primary, and intelligence and fact count for very little in that world.

Additionally, it may be the Alabama Education Association, the state branch of the NEA union, that is running the ad.

The AEA has had a number of long running battles with the candidate, Bradley Byrne, most prominently over his attempts to ban community college employees from holding public office.

Whether or not it’s the AEA funding this, the point is that they (probably correctly) see a person who understands the scientific method and proof as being vulnerable if this is exposed to the Republican party base.

It’s probably true, and it’s very sad.