Enough With the Teabagging Already

BOULDER, Colorado -- While walking down the street in Boston recently, my mother found this flier on the ground. She had no idea what it said, so she mailed it to me to translate. The flier is back from the last election, and it was put out by the Massachusetts Senior Action Council, a grassroots community organizing group that lobbies for the rights of seniors. Here's what it says:

What would you do if 40% of your revenues were taken away?

Approving ballot question 1 threatens to eliminate $12.7 billion (around 40%) of the state budget by ending the Massachusetts income tax.

On Tuesday, November 4, say NO on ballot question 1. Today times are hard enough, and it's not worth it to make them worse.

The story behind this is that some tax-protesting fools got a measure on the Massachusetts ballot this past November that would have amended the state constitution and outlawed the income tax. Luckily, the voters of Massachusetts were wise enough to vote down this suicidal libertarian proposal 70% to 30%.

These same survivalist cranks [Note: In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that as a semi-professional academic, I was born and raised in a secret Comintern camp in communist Hungary and sent to this country to brainwash college freshmen with propaganda about "income inequality" and "post-structuralism." Additionally, that guy is right, and the change over to digital TV is a conspiracy to brainwash America] are likely going to spend tomorrow "teabagging" Obama by chucking tea bags into whatever body of water they can find with their CPAC friends. At least the elderly Russians in Massachusetts have more sense than the Republican operative nitwits who are organizing tomorrow's fake "grassroots" movement, which is nothing more than a pathetic partisan ploy to try and gain some electoral legitimacy.

Who was it again that oversaw the greatest expansion in government spending since Lyndon Johnson? And who oversaw the near doubling of the national debt? And who had a secret, illegal wiretapping program to spy on American citizens? And who operated a global network of secret prisons to kidnap and torture people? Oh right, I forgot - Barack Obama is the Nazi fascist communist gay Muslim terrorist free-spending wealth-redistributor. I hate to sound so partisan myself, but this nonsense tax protesting, and the fake populist outrage over invented government intrusion into our daily lives by the new administration, is positively sickening, and let us speak of it no more.

Jindal's Awful Speech

NEW YORK, New York -- If I gave birth to a child and it was Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's response to President Barack Obama's address to the joint session of Congress, I'd name it Blather McBlather-Lies.

The guy's main point -- that government shouldn't be a savior, but people must save themselves -- is something I think we can all agree with. Maybe too much so -- throughout his own speech, Obama spoke of not wanting "big government" (even if what he was proposing would expand government) and Jindal's rebuttal sounded like he was setting up straw men rather than actually arguing with Obama.

Stepping back, however, if the problem with the Johnson through Carter administrations was that government was too big then, today it's too small where it matters. To that end, Obama's argument that saying "big government is good" (or its opposite) is inane holds truer than Jindal's more ideological tone, especially since bigger government in the Bush years would've been able to regulate finance better, prevent Katrina from being such a disaster, and slow the widening rich-poor gap.

Indeed, Jindal's prime example of the dysfunctionalness of government was none other than the Hurricane Katrina that ravaged his state. But Jindal is from the same party as the people who botched Katrina, and the egg seems to fall on his face here. After all, to most Americans, Katrina proved not that government is too big and slow but that the recent Republican administration was too small, uncaring and uninvolved -- oh yeah, and that George Bush hates black people.

Beyond that, in his rebuttal Jindal carried the latter-day Republican torch of taking an $800 billion bill and calling it "wasteful" by drawing attention to the same one or two $200 million projects -- perhaps some (but certainly not all) of them are regrettable, but they're drops in the sea. Like hundreds of Republicans before him, he harped on the $300 million the federal government will use to buy new cars (the fact is, though, the federal government, just like Mr Jindal's state government, does own lots of cars, and now is probably the single best time to buy cars given the precipice-hugging state of the auto industry).

And he said the $8 billion to fund high-speed rail was nothing more than an attempt to build a maglev (technology that allows trains to hover via magnetic levitation -- China's one of the only places building them) train between LA and Las Vegas, two bastions of the out-of-touch and sinful. But this is bullshit. That project is decidedly not happening (here's one of the many articles pointing that out), and high-speed rail is both one of the most important things this country can do to improve efficiencies in business, economic competitiveness, quality of life for citizens, and reduce greenhouse gases. Perhaps one day Republicans will apply for passports, travel to foreign countries, and understand that people living in countries with high-speed rail (otherwise known as the G-20, minus North America) really don't have it so bad.

OK, two more favorite Jindal moments:

When he "reassured" Americans that Republicans remain fully committed to fiscal prudence, despite the way Bush "warped" the party. Right. Republicans went along with Bush kicking and screaming about the deficit-inducing tax cuts and wars in Iraq and "on terror." And it must be one of those ironies of history that Reagan and both Bushes either took surpluses inherited from Democrats and turned them into deficits, or widened existing deficits. I'm sorry, Governor Jindal, but you're a liar and not a very bright hope for the Republicans if they think they'll recapture the White House with you.

Finally, was it just me or did this guy have the most obnoxious, condescending voice I've ever heard on a politician? I got the sense Gov Jindal thinks we non-gubernatorial Americans -- who, as he repeatedly noted, can "do anything" and don't need guvment -- are a bunch of half-wit slobs. The man's tone was so insulting that I'm tempted to wager the good governor was a college debater in his day. And if he was, he handily lost tonight's tournament.

Boner of the Day

NEW YORK, New York -- No, this isn't anything that John Boner, House minority leader, did -- at least not directly. The day's boner move is the compromise reached between the competing House of Representatives stimulus bill and that put together by the Senate.

Here's the boner move, as reported by the New York Times:

Despite intense lobbying by governors around the country, the final deal slashed $25 billion from a proposed state fiscal stabilization fund, eliminated a $16 billion line item for school construction and sharply curtailed spending to provide health insurance for the unemployed.

The final agreement retained a $70 billion tax break to spare millions of middle-income Americans from paying the alternative minimum tax in 2009. Some Democrats decried the provision as a costly addition that would not lift the economy and that Congress would have approved, regardless of the recession.

Why's this bad? As the Wall Street Journal -- the nation's most conservative big paper -- writes: "A dollar sent to a state government to prevent layoffs or cuts in services yields a $1.38 economic boost, according to models used by the White House and Congress to calculate economic benefit. By contrast, the bill's inclusion of a measure to slow the expansion of the AMT will yield only 50 cents of stimulus for every dollar of avoided tax, the models predict."

So at the insistence of the Three Most Powerful People In The World -- bench-crossing Republican Senators Arlen Specter, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe -- stimulative funding was replaced with a measure that taxpayers lose half their investment on, and that measure would've probably been passed in another bill later on, as happens every year.

Here's the upshot: "To win Republican votes, the final stimulus package is considerably leaner than what many economists say is now needed to jolt the economy, given its grave condition."

The question now is, what timeframe do we replace "day" with in "Boner of the Day"?

Is Congress Economically Illiterate?

NEW YORK, New York -- I noticed something strange when doing my part to save the global economy from oblivion. Congresspeople, by and large, have not traditionally cared or thought much about the economy.

That statement, of course, begs two questions: 1) What ass goes around with this Jebus complex, and why?; and 2) How could you say something like that about the people who brought us Freedom Fries?

All things in turn.

After growing exasperated as craven Democrats sold out mass transit so that I can put $500 I don't need in the bank, I decided to write my Senators and representative to ask that they not give in to Republican ideological tax-cut demands.

Of course, Senator Tracy Flick doesn't have any functioning web site at the moment, so there was no way to write her. But the stranger thing was that none of the New York Congressional delegation that I looked at had any option available to speak out on the economy. When you write a Congressman, you usually have to fill out your name, address, etc., and then select the topic of your query from a pull-down menu. Time and time again, Congresspeople's pull-down menus included "Immigration," "Defense," and "Education." But nobody had an option for "Economy," and a minority had "Fiscal Policy" or "Taxes" or anything vaguely related to the economy -- even Chuck Schumer, legendarily beholden to Wall Street, doesn't seem to think that much about the economy, judging by the sorts of comments he expects to get from constituents.

Try it yourself here by searching for your Congressperson's contact page.

I guess the point is that Representatives and Senators don't expect to hear from constituents about the economy and may simply not really know or think much about the economy in the broadest terms themselves. Quite possibly that's why the US, unlike other countries, has never engaged in debate about adopting a competitiveness policy or taken measures (like school reform or granting more H1B visas to skilled workers) that would improve our economy. Perhaps it will also mean Congress fails to pass the stimulus bill that prevents 7% employment from reaching 15% (so I say as a strip porno noodie lounge advertises on CNN in prime time -- as sure a sign of recession as they come).

Auto Bailouts: Global Companies Need Them Too

NEW YORK, New York -- Running counter to the propaganda line that US automakers need government money not because of the global economic crisis that is plunging car sales but because they are not viable businesses and deserve to be taken over by foreign competitors, the NY Times reports today that European and Asian companies are increasingly seeking bailouts. 

Only where the US plan recently punted by the Senate would have provided a $14 billion loan, the European companies are looking for nearly $55 billion. 

And, as Dennis DesRosiers, an auto analyst, said:

"“It’s a foregone conclusion that governments around the world are going to aid these companies. It’s just a matter of working through the politics.”

Note to Republican Senators: If the US automakers don't get guaranteed loans soon, they won't necessarily be taken over by "better" companies, but by ones whose governments realize the importance of not letting a huge industry collapse on the rocks.

Is Obama a Marxist? Just Ask Old Himmler McCain

The "socialist" tack of the McCain campaign has really been annoying me, both because of its potential to seriously harm the hopes of either party normalizing its relationship with the other (can you, a red-blooded American congressman, really co-sponsor legislation with the Commies?) and because it is another step down the path of McCain/Rovian prevarication that cynically assumes voters are half-wit slobs to be lied to and manipulated (WHAT, WHAT, Leo Strauss!).

Its upshot is that McCain has somehow managed to link white American men's fears of black people (not to mention terrorists, both of the "washed-up" and homebred sort as well as of the more exotic Arab sort) with their fears of Communism, nothing to sniff at nearly 17 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Obama has done too little to counter this claim, probably because he is too smart to take it seriously. However, I think any voter who can still be undecided at this point probably isn't quite as swift. Obama does need to get out his economic message more clearly tonight, to finally put the nail in McCain's coffin (before a heart attack does it a year into office), by forcefully making the following points:

1. Fully rebut the "Socialist" label: Obama needs to put this thing to rest already. Firstly, he should mention that the richest 2% would still be paying fewer taxes than under Reagan or Clinton and that government revenues from taxes as a percentage of GDP would be lower than under either of those presidents -- or under any president but Bush for that matter. He should most certainly not imply that anything even vaguely socialist is OK.

Obama needs to rebut clearly that he is a socialist and remind people with a bright yellow highlighter that taxes for the richest under Obama would be lower even than under Reagan or any other president besides Bush. If he's a socialist, so is Reagan, GHW Bush, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower.

2. Explain fiscal responsibility and the irresponsibility (and break from American tradition) that Bush's tax cuts have represented. I think a large number of our countrymen no longer have any idea why taxes are necessary at all. This is a huge cognitive disconnect on the part of Americans springing from the fact that Bushian anti-government ideology has, I think, instilled in many a sense that government can just cut taxes ad infinitum and that history has a teleological purpose in getting taxes eventually down to zero, which would've happened years ago if it weren't for Communists masquerading as congressmen.

Obama needs to set out:

a) why government is at all necessary and why it has always been involved in certain aspects of American life (roads, schools, military) -- and why it has retreated from some of these in recent years with dire consequences (as in Katrina);

b) that taxes are therefore needed to restore the traditional place of government;

and that c) huge deficits and fiscal irresponsibility were fine for Bush when he squandered Clinton's surpluses but if the government isn't able to climb out of debt it'll raise interest rates for everyone and really hurt businesses (unlike marginal tax increases). Given that the Republicans have given up fiscal responsibility for those Pillars of Human Learning -- the issues of Creationism, Gun Control, Abortion and Sex Ed -- maybe the Democrats will take up the banner of fiscal prudence.

3. Name the people likely to be on his economic team: Although anyone who's concerned about Ayers or Wright is probably just using those arguments as a cover for racism, these absurd rumors persist, thanks to the Old Man and Twit who circulate them every day. Obama needs to show people that he is the centrist in this election, that any change he represents would act to restore -- not remake -- America, and he needs to do this by saying who his advisers are. When people see that familiar, trusted faces like Larry Summers, Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin and Warren Buffett are the crux of his team, it becomes harder to hold on to fantasies that he's an America-hating Muslim terrorist socialist.

A nice dig at McCain, whose economic advisers are a bunch of partisan hacks (Douglas Holtz-Eakin seems to be a political talking-head bulldog more than an economist); failed business leaders (Carly Fiorina was as apt an exec at H-P as Palin was an interviewee with Katie Couric, only Palin didn't cut 20,000+ US jobs or take a $21 million golden parachute after the interview; Meg Whitman's EBay has never even been profitable); and ideologues (the likes of Phil Gramm and Jack Kemp are Reagan political toadies with no claim to any experience or knowledge about economics at all), would be entirely appropriate here.

4. Give concrete details about job creation plans. Not only is job creation a huge worry for most voters (and rightly so), it's also an Obama strong suit. His job-creation strategies, admirably, are a mix of ideas from some of the world's smartest people. The creation of a $60 billion National Infrastructure Development Bank -- as conceived by Felix Rohatyn to oversee projects of federal, not local, importance -- and focusing on "rebuilding America" will be a huge source of jobs to do long-overdue work and avoid the local, "Bridge to Nowhere"-type projects Palin is fond of.

Obama already mentions his $150 billion "Manhattan Project" for energy independence and the greentech jobs it would bring -- 5 million jobs in building solar panels and turbines, and overhauling the nation's electrical grid -- in his stump, but he needs to do it even better.

His plans for public-private partnerships and investment funds to identify and develop advanced manufacturing techniques that would bring back production jobs to the US are hardly ever mentioned. Neither are the $80 billion in tax credits that would go to small/new businesses or R&D positions. Longer-term goals of worker-retraining, education and healthcare also play a part here...

McCain's plans, really, boil down to nothing more than giving the richest more tax breaks and increasing the house-of-cards aspects of our economy by further puffing up indecorous levels of consumer spending that far outpace production via tax cuts and low interest rates. This is called a consumer bubble; being the world's shopper of last resort, spending credit fueled by the Chinese Communist Party's investment in US bonds and not producing anything, will leave us in a hole much bigger than our current over-leveraged mess, given that real estate spending is a small fraction of overall consumer spending.

BONUS: Call McCain a racist Nazi slut. Conceding that the twin horrors of the 20th century were fascism and communism, if McCain's proxies can call Obama a "Marxist," the equivalent would be to call McCain a "Nazi." Of course, McCain's no Nazi, and Obama's no Marxist. But just as Obama wants to empower the middle class and bridge the wealth gap that is swallowing the country, so are McCain and Palin running a racially charged campaign about which candidate is true to "American culture" and "traditional American values" or, more simply put, is "American." That's as Nazi as Obama is Marxist, if not more so.