David Obey explains why the economy is still shitty

Rep. David R. Obey (D-WI), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, discusses the economy and how our stupid government works in an interview lovingly titled I Leave More Discontented Than I Started.

The problem for Obama, he wasn’t as lucky as Roosevelt, because when Obama took over we were still in the middle of a free fall. So his Treasury people came in and his other economic people came in and said "Hey, we need a package of $1.4 trillion." We started sending suggestions down to OMB waiting for a call back. After two and a half weeks, we started getting feedback.

We put together a package that by then the target had been trimmed to $1.2 trillion. And then [White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel said to me, "Geez, do you really think we can afford to come in with a package that big, isn’t it going to scare people?" I said, "Rahm, you will need that shock value so that people understand just how serious this problem is."

They wanted to hold it to less than $1 trillion. Then [Pennsylvania Senator Arlen] Specter and the two crown princesses from Maine [Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins] took it down to less than $800 billion. Spread over two and a half years, that’s a hell of a lot of money, but spread over two and a half years in an economy this large, it doesn’t have a lot of fiscal power.

Lesson two today in how government works: various smart people and experts come in and lay out The Smart Plan to tell you exactly what needs to be done to fix a problem, political hacks oppose The Smart Plan on the intellectual basis of "that sounds big", elected hacks take their hatchets to The Smart Plan on the intellectual basis of "that sounds big" and the added benefit of "looking like they're doing something to justify their existence to the press and voters", and then said New, Less Smart, Less Effective Plan passes to much circle jerking and back patting..... and fails to fully address all the problems. Everyone acts surprised, yet still refuses to do anything further. Wash, rinse, repeat.

It's over, now we can go back to not having health care

Well the seven hour bipartisan health care summit is over. What did it accomplish? Well, it did make millions of Americans say to themselves "Isn't there a bronze medal women's hockey game that I could be watching instead of this?" Yes, America, yes there was. Finland 3 Sweden 2.

But other than that, nothing happened. It was essentially seven hours of people demanding the right to give a prepared speech. Those speeches had two themes. The Republican's speeches usually include an egregious lie about health care, a "sky is falling" cry that Democrats must not subject the country to the tyranny of majority rule in the Senate, and a paean to start over. The Democrat's speeches usually involved some veiled shot at GOP obstructionism, some forced praise of this bill as a shining blinding light of goodness, and the promise that if Republicans fucked with them 30 or 40 more times, that they'd totally go and pass this bill by themselves.

Almost every one of our elected betters also regaled the country with some horror story of the grievous personal injury or illness of Mr. or Mrs. Regular American with he point being that we should either do something to help them or in the GOP's case, theoretically do something, but not what Democrats propose. All in all it was a massive waste of time and a test of this county's ability to withstand nonstop political bullshit.

But at the end of all this nonsense the Democrats had one abiding message: they're totally finally going to do something, probably.

President Obama challenged Republicans to do some "soul searching" on whether they will support the Democratic health care plan, using the final moments of his health care summit to ask them to put up or shut up. If they don't want to cooperate, the two parties can battle it out at the polls this November, the president said.

Obama's statement and Democratic reactions after the summit were the clearest signal yet that the majority party is charging ahead and abandoning attempts at bipartisanship.
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"We are going to move forward, the ball is in everybody's court," Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters after the summit.
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"Time is of the essence ... it's time we did something and we're going to do it," Reid said.

Really? You don't want to give the Republicans a thousandth chance to come on board in the name of bipartisanship? You're finally convinced that you'll have to do this alone? You're going to considering doing the minor clean-up work it would take to finalize the massive bills you already passed? It's about fucking time.

Maybe now is not the time

With the humanitarian crisis in Haiti, now is the time to organize aid, donate to relief, and keep news flowing from and to the beleaguered country in an attempt to help. What it isn't the time for is using the crisis as a platform for grinding some ax, attacking efforts to help, acting like a complete asshole, or offering up your truly terrible ideas. We've discussed this at length with El Rushbo and Patty's comments over the past few days, hell the Daily Show even went after those two and added Rachael Maddow into the mix. Fine, fine, good, good.

Still, it seems that people aren't getting the message to either help or just clamp your mouth shut for a few weeks. No, some people even think it's a nice tool to help their candidate advance in the polls for a primary for a Senate race. Namely the communications director for California Republican Senate candidate Chuck DeVore, who has his solution to the crisis.

"Haiti: the best thing the int'l community can do is tend the wounded, bury the dead, and then LEAVE. That includes all UN and charity," wrote Josh Trevino.

Yes, wonderful plan. Dig a few mass graves, slap a few Dora the Explorer Band-Aids on a few gaping head wounds, take a few good pictures of an entirely flattened country with zero working infrastructure or government, and then dust your hands off and say "Well, it's about time we left now. Good luck rebuilding your shattered lives on your own with no money, food, police, leadership, or buildings. By the way: you're welcome." That sounds like the perfect solution, thanks for adding it to the debate we were having about whether we were going to help out or sit back, do nothing, and take bets on which person will emerge from the shattered nation as the de facto warlord of the rubble pile that is Haiti. It was a pitched debate, but I think your sensible argument pushed the consensus into "Fuck 'em" territory.

But it isn't just idiot political campaigns jumping into the fray. Sometimes scientists ought to learn to shut up as well.

Scientists who detected worrisome signs of growing stresses in the fault that unleashed this week's devastating earthquake in Haiti said they warned officials there two years ago that their country was ripe for a major earthquake.

Their sobering findings, presented during a geological conference in March 2008 and at meetings two months later, showed that the fault was capable of causing a 7.2-magnitude earthquake — slightly stronger than Tuesday's 7.0 quake that rocked the impoverished country.

Though Haitian officials listened intently to the research, the nearly two years between the presentation and the devastating quake was not enough time for Haiti to have done much to have prevented the massive destruction.

Yeah. Listen, I know you guys like to point out when you get things right, particularly when you have so much trouble getting people to believe other predictions about natural disasters, but could you not do this the same week that the earthquake happens? Especially when you all freely admit that there wasn't much Haiti could have done given it's resources and the timeframe? It's not like they were flicking the on/off switch on their earthquake machine carelessly and you told them to knock it off or the Haitian President was putting on a miner's hat, going underground, and using his super strength to push the tectonic plates together. Next time, maybe wait two weeks before you put up the "We told you so" banner and give speeches in front of it.

Seriously, next time anyone has a brilliant idea about Haiti, just pause and ask yourself "Is this going to help in any way?" It likely isn't, so just hold your shining nugget of blinding brilliance inside, the world will try to get on without it.

Senate to America: Waaaah, work is hard

After struggling to kinda, sorta, almost pass health care reform this year on top of all the hard work they did greasing the skids for Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke to give everyone's money to Wall Street, moderate Senate Democrats have a message to those who want them to take action on climate change: boo hoo, addressing large, complex problems is hard, we don't wanna, you can't make us.

Bruised by the health care debate and worried about what 2010 will bring, moderate Senate Democrats are urging the White House to give up now on any effort to pass a cap-and-trade bill next year.

“I am communicating that in every way I know how,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of at least a half-dozen Democrats who've told the White House or their own leaders that it's time to jettison the centerpiece of their party's plan to curb global warming.
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“We need to deal with the phenomena of global warming, but I think it’s very difficult in the kind of economic circumstances we have right now,” said Indiana Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, who called passage of any economywide cap and trade “unlikely.
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“I’d just as soon see that set aside until we work through the economy,” said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.).
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“Climate change in an election year has very poor prospects,” added Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

Awww, it'd be hard work and Republicans would call you liberal hippie pussies. Well, guess what? It's hard work precisely because the problem is so large and you've spent decades not doing a fucking thing about it. Plus, you're going to get called liberal hippie pussies even if you nuke Tehran, so get used to it and man up. And not or nothing, but you all talk a big game about doin' stuff for the economy and makin' jobs a priority, but what exactly have you done? If it's such a large priority why are you dicking around and not solving it? The Senate can't do more than one thing at a time?

Can I break something to you? Your jobs? They're about voting on complex shit that has large ramifications to the country and world at large. I'm sorry if that's some great mental burden, but it's what you signed up for. I don't recall anyone standing around saying "Boy, we just gotta force this Ben Nelson fella to run for office" and then voting him in against his will. You don't want to vote on complex important shit that does a lot, costs a lot, and will be used to attack you politically? Well then, might I suggest you figure out what your life's work is and get to it, because being a senator sure as shit isn't it.

Sorry you're expected to do stuff and vote on things. But then again, did you run for office so you could have a nice big nameplate that had the title "Senator" on it or did you actually run to, you know, do something? Sorry, that was a stupid question. I'm sorry this legislation nonsense is getting in the way of you all being Senators. Maybe the next government we create will have some sort of workaround for that. Until then though, could you just maybe try to address more than one issue a year? For us?

Ignore what we said yesterday

It's official. We've reached that point in the health care debate where blind opposition to various aspects of health care has degraded to the point where you aren't even going to be required to stay consistent on an hour-to-hour or day-to-day basis. I'm disappointed, I had $100 bucks on this happening a month ago.

But, as MediaMatters illustrates, it's better late than never. From the assorted press releases from the office of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

Dec. 6: Cutting Medicare is not what Americans want

And despite the inherent bullshit involved in that lie, when it became clear that, as a compromise, that Democrats were discussing the possibility of opening up Medicare to people at age 55 plus some other things in lieu of a public option, came this:

Dec. 7: Expanding Medicare ‘a plan for financial ruin’

So....do nothing? Or is there a press release also attacking Democrats for doing nothing?

Gentlemen, do you see what happens when you try to make an actual policy argument? You contradict yourself and look like asses all within a 24 hour period. Just stick to " is going to kill grandma". It works if they're going to cut benefits, keep benefits the same, or add people into the system. All could potentially kill grandma. In horrifically painful ways. Don't get into the merits of this idea or that idea, just focus on highlighting what has worked thte best: the Democrats unending obsession with liquidating pensioners.

Stay classy, Jerome

We aren't even 24 hours past the Ft. Hood shooting, but we do know it's time for one thing: EXPLOITING IT FOR POLITICAL GAIN!!!! MORE BODIES = MORE EXPLOITATION!!! Take it, Jerome Corsi, you souless fucking degenerate:

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter in yesterday's massacre at Fort Hood, played a homeland security advisory role in President Barack Obama's transition into the White House, according to a key university policy institute document.

Of course it isn't remotely true, but who has time for bodies to get cold when there is shit to sling at Obama! Whooo!!! The first decency line has been breached folks, it's only downhill from here.

Now personally, I would have prescribed a two day waiting period for crazed conspiracy theories that attempt to appropriate gross personal and public tragedies for a perceived leg up in some unending political dick measuring contest that has consumed politics in this country. Not because of any mourning period or sense of respect for the families of the dead, no because this baby is so rife with angles of cheap political exploitation, we want everyone to have their good material ready to go for the Sunday Morning news programs. I mean there's the Muslim angle, the military angle, the pro-war angle, the anti-war angle, the gun control angle, the terrorism angle, and the disgusting, Corsi-esque new lows in human decency that we've yet to explore. I mean anyone from the right or left will have a field day waving these corpses around to justify whatever it is they believed before the shooting happened. Awesome!

I think I'm going to go sit in my closet and drink for this entire weekend. Maybe when I emerge we'll be fully into the "He was in ACORN and taking the orders of Obama in order to kill freedom and pass socialist Obamacare" phase and this will all seem slightly less soul killing.

We are ruled by adults

Mother Jones' Kevin Drum looks at what it took to pass a simple extension of unemployment benefits for the 10.2% of Americans who consider canned beans a luxury.

Democrats only had to break three separate filibusters in the Senate to get this passed! The first filibuster was broken by a vote of 87-13, the second by a vote of 85-2, and the third by a vote of 97-1. The fourth and final vote, the one to actually pass the bill, was 98-0. Elapsed time: five weeks for a bill that everyone ended up voting for.

Why? Because even though Republicans were allowed to tack on a tax cut to the bill as the price of getting it passed, they decided to filibuster anyway unless they were also allowed to include an anti-ACORN amendment. Seriously. A bit of ACORN blustering to satisfy the Palin-Beck crowd is the reason they held up a bill designed to help people who are out of work in the deepest recession since World War II. Details here and here. That's called taking governing seriously, my friends.

So in order to extend a measure that everyone supported, Democrats had to add in a first-time homebuyer credit that basically adds to our problems in the housing market in an attempt to prop it up and enact a tax-cut shenanigan that allows small-businesses to engage in shadier accounting practices. All to pass a bill slightly faster so that hundreds of thousands of extra people wouldn't go broke while they dicked around.

...AND THE HOOOOOOOME OF THE BRAAAAAAVE! Makes you glad to be an American.

Broken News: Senate negotiations break down over bill to wish Americans a "good weekend"

WASHINGTON—With the weekend fast approaching and dinner plans and yachting excursions still left to plan, today the Senate suspended negotiations on a proposed non-binding resolution to wish Americans a good weekend.

The resolution, S.417 the Schumer/Wyden Have a Good One, America Act, was initially an attempt by the Senate to show the public that it was not out of touch with their feelings and that, despite decades of proof in legislative form, they did not harbor any ill will toward the citizens of this great nation.

All in all, the bill not only wished Americans “a good weekend”, but also asked them to “stay safe”, “have a fun time”, “try not to drink too much”, to “try to remember to obey the laws of this land”, to maybe get outdoors, go camping or visit a national park, and “have a little fun, you deserve it.” Sadly, all these banal expressions were meant for when this bill was initially introduced: Labor Day. 2008.

“It is my honest belief that these demands to stay safe and obey the laws of this country are a deliberate attempt by this Administration to order the good people of this country to do their bidding for some shadowy socialist purpose,” observed Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the ranking minority member of the Senate’s Empty Platitudes and Glad-handing Committee.

He was joined in his opposition by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), himself a member of the Senate’s Committee for Meaningless Timewasting, who decried the legislation's suggestions of vacation destinations as “a chilling incursion into the personal choices and freedoms of all Americans” before vowing to filibuster the bill.

But not all the opposition and debate over the bill came from Republicans, as several Democrats took umbrage with many of the bill’s provisions. Having experienced numerous interactions with the public during health care town halls, West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller and Virginia Senator Jim Webb had proposed changing the main premise of the bill to “Go fuck yourselves this weekend, America.”

"I have looked into the dark, dark heart of America," a pale, white, and broken Webb intoned. "These people do not deserve a good weekend."

The Democratic portion of the opposition also attached several riders to the bill. The more noteworthy of these called for government to supply subsidies to help adults attain better reading comprehension skills; empowering citizens to beat with chains anyone suggesting a talk radio pundit or 24 hour news commentator has made a worthwhile point; that senators should be allowed to stomp to jelly the faces of anyone who invokes the phrase "death panels"; and a one-time stimulus aimed at printing several massive posters of a political cartoon in which a man, marked as “the American public”, was bent over a barrel and sodomized by a large cat dressed like the Monopoly guy with “health care industry” written on his top hat.

Sadly, their proposal was rejected on the premise that it was dangerous to point out the truth to the country as well as vocalize any displeasure over their interaction with society’s teabag waving dregs. Others within the caucus have now just grown to oppose the resolution on the basis that many of its suggestions and parameters are hopelessly outdated now that the debate had dragged on into November.

“I’m just worried that if we pass a bill full of references to summer activities, camping, and going outside, we’re going to appear to be out of touch,” observed majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who was wary of forcing a vote on this non-binding resolution. “I mean, you tell some poor bastard to visit Yellowstone now and he’ll freeze his ass off. Plus, some of these were clearly suggestions for a three-day weekend, of which there isn’t one for a very long time. We’re just going to look stupid.”

Instead Reid hoped that he would be able to push through the resolutions wishing Americans a “Happy Thanksgiving 1982” as well as a “Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah 1991”.

Some within the Senate felt that a resolution offering to wish Americans a good weekend was just too ambitious a process to undertake at this point in time. Hoping to instead to pass a bill that recognized the fact that there were Americans, but leaving the debate open for whether or not they should be wished a good weekend or even good morning, for another time, perhaps years down the road when more information becomes available.

When asked to comment on the fact that legislation wishing it a good weekend had stalled, America simply sighed, slowly walked over to the liquor cabinet, poured itself a stiff drink, and mournfully drank it while perusing Canadian apartment listings.

Democracy in action

New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, America's benevolent rich political overlord, is setting records. The kind of records that make you glad that only billionaires can afford to run for any elected office of substance in this country.

Bloomberg, a former Republican who ran this time as an Independent, spent more than $85 million of his personal fortune on the race – dwarfing the amount Thompson raised – the most cash dispensed for a self-financed campaign ever. This brings the total amount he's spent for three terms to a quarter of a billion dollars.

For those of you scoring at home, he outspent his closest opponent, Generic Democrat, by almost 20-1. And he still had to squeak out a win. That isn't even counting all the money he had to spend to get the city to repeal the term limit laws so that he could run again.

Add this to the $22.6 million from his Goldman-Sachs golden parachute ($125 million total for all his political campaigns put together) that repellent loser Jon Corzine spent making sure he lost to fat, repellent loser Chris Christie in the New Jersey governor's race. Don't worry, the ultra rich former McCain adviser who tried to run Hewlett-Packard into the ground, Carly Fiorina, is going to show the people of California that they need not be ruled by mere multi-millionaires like Barbara Boxer.

Ahh, doesn't it make you feel proud to be an American? Right now, even as we speak, children are looking at this and dreaming of a future where they to make hundreds of millions in various business fields and thus are deemed by our media elite as "serious" enough and "expert" enough to run for higher office, or are, at the very least, able to fund their own primary campaign against the other billionaires that are running for the chance to run for the seat. *sniff* Makes you glad to be alive right now, where being rich makes you qualified to make laws instead of just merely having them not apply to you. It's a grand time.

Hmm, enacting health reform early...sounds like a crazy idea

How fait accompli is some kind of health reform right now? Well, it's basically to the point where everyone glosses over tiny things like the White House opposing the public option in the Senate and Harry Reid having to lead the way on his own and just moves on to a debate about how soon to implement health reform proposals. Because how can you be expected to get re-elected or reap the popularity of health care reform in 2010 if it doesn't kick in until 2013? There's also something about helping people in need and providing much needed relief in what is actually a life or death situation for blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

The most significant changes to the health care system wouldn’t kick in until 2013 – two election cycles away. With Republicans expected to make next year a referendum on health care reform, Democrats are quietly lobbying to push up the effective dates on popular programs, so they'll have something to run on in the congressional midterms.

Democrats are anxious to mix the good with the bad since some of the pain would be phased in early, including more than $100 billion in industry fees that critics say could be passed on to consumers.

“We want to be able, within the cost framework and the implementation framework, to have as much start as early as possible, even though we know all of it can’t,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), a Finance Committee member who is working with other senators on the effort. “And the White House wants to have as much as possible to start.”

Among the proposals: make prescription drug discounts available to seniors as well as start randomly adding poisons into those drugs as part of the "death panel" program, tax credits for small businesses, a high risk pool for filth with pre-existing conditions like rape, low birth-weight, or high birth-weight, and money to hire ILM to do enough CG and special effects work to make it look like the severely underwhelming minor tweaks to our system were a massive overhaul and top to bottom reforming of American health care.

Of course there is opposition to these efforts. Sen John Cornyn (R-TX) argues that this is just a seedy and transparent attempt to get people to see the benefit of the legislation by letting them, you know, enroll in programs and get coverage. Plus there's that unfair election advantage where people might be fit to reward Democrats and punish Republicans just because one made an attempt at reform while the other shrieked about grandma getting ganked. And really that's what this all comes down to: elections. Because isn't that the whole point of doing something like this: so one can get re-elected and look good politically? It's certainly not about providing the best and cheapest plan and reforms to cover the American people, so the process of elimination only really leaves politics.

Damn this politicization

Ahh we've already come to an important time in the aftermath of Senator Ted Kennedy's death. And here I though tit would take more than three days. It is a time where people who despised Ted Kennedy, his ideals, his legislative record, and issues that were important to him, get to take to the airwaves en masse to complain that everyone else is politicizing his death.....and that oh by the way that means everyone should rally to defeat stuff that meant a lot to Kennedy, like health care. I mean is there any better defender of Ted Kennedy's legacy than Rush Limbaugh?

Key conservative voices have begun to charge in the day after Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death that Democrats are inappropriately politicizing the senator’s death, his memorial and his legacy.
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"Placing [Kennedy’s] name on a health-care bill, in memoriam, or using his name as a sympathy ploy to advance a health care bill that would deny Americans the choices Sen. Kennedy had is an insult and is supreme hypocrisy,” the talk show host Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday. 'The senator's passing is going to give them the opportunity to use the sympathy play to get as much done in his name as possible."

"No government was a partner with God in Ted Kennedy's death. To put his name on this current health-care bill would be to insult what he stood for,” Limbaugh said.

Yes, I can think of no greater insult to the American people than Democrats using Ted Kennedy's lifelong fight to extend health care coverage to all Americans to...extend health care coverage to all Americans, or even worse: by letting Americans get the same coverage that Kennedy got because he was a member of the Senate. I can think of no greater polar opposites, of no greater incongruity.

All I know is that when I see Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity advocate for the same idea and line of thinking within two sentences in the same article and try to put forth the idea that an event that hasn't even happened yet is irrevocably politicized, I am filled with the knowledge that it is undeniably a good idea and the product of honest people trying valiantly to protect Ted Kennedy's legacy and look out for the American people. In fact, I agree, in order to honor Ted Kennedy and make sure there isn't even a whiff of politicization in the air we need to make sure health care is defeated! For Teddy!

Salesman in Chief

With the stimulus bill stalled in the senate, the economy swirling down the drain, and possibly only days out from a national "blame the black guy for it" movement, President Obama has taken his case to the ink stained wretches in the print media to speak to the American people. Obama wrote an op-ed. There's his first problem, no one reads papers anymore. He should have ponied up the cash and had Perez Hilton scribble out the basic outlines of the proposal over a picture of Lindsay Lohan looking drugged out. That's all America reads anymore. But still, here's some of his op-ed.

In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.
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I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.
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So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. We can place good ideas ahead of old ideological battles, and a sense of purpose above the same narrow partisanship. We can act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity and, together, write the next great chapter in our history and meet the test of our time.

Ideology? You actually ascribe an ideology behind the opposition? I'm with Dean Baker, there's nothing coherent about the opposition to keeping out country from turning into an agrarian barter economy, it's all politics. Maybe point that out, Barry. Or the fact that the Republican congress and the Republican President enacting Republican policies helped us into this mess, so we should listen to them.....why?

But it's still nice to know that even in times of crisis our political betters will rise to the occasion, stand up and say "Fuck this country, what's it all mean for the 2010 midterms? If we stall this stimulus the country will be so destitute and awful that they'll have no choice but to put us back in power."

Meet the new boss

Good to be reminded that, at the end of the day, they're all varying degrees of crooked:

CHICAGO (AP) — Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday on charges of conspiring to get financial benefits through his authority to appoint a U.S. senator to fill the vacancy left by Barack Obama's election as president.

According to a federal criminal complaint, Blagojevich also was charged with illegally threatening to withhold state assistance to Tribune Co., the owner of the Chicago Tribune, in the sale of Wrigley Field. In return for state assistance, Blagojevich allegedly wanted members of the paper's editorial board who had been critical of him fired.

Blagojevich also was charged with using his authority as governor in an attempt to squeeze out campaign contributions, prosecutors said.

More of a breakdown over at Atrios' pad.