Year: 2010

OK, I Didn’t Live Blog the SOTU

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Though thankfully, because of my Eastern European Jewish heritage, I have no hangover.

That being said, I watched, and drank every time he cock-punched the DFH’s,* so most of my thoughts are probably not that valuable, or coherent.

That being said, he did call for the repeal of the Military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, and now Valerie Jarrett is saying that he is, “committed to getting it done.”

Now, let’s see what happens when Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman get all pissy about it.

See video (11:35, and the interview with Jarret starts at about 3:05, and the exchange on DADT is at about 10:45)

*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies.

Well, All Signs Point to a Senate Appointment of Ben Bernanke Soon

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The current whip count has more than 50 Senators voting for him, and because Wall Street wants him, it appears that arms are being twisted in the Senate to get Senators who vote against him to vote for cloture, because, I guess, a stimulus package to reduce unemployment, or a fix to America’s broken healthcare plan, both of which required 60 votes to clear the Senate are less important than reappointing Wall Street’s lapdog at the Federal reserve.

Paul Krugman nails it in one sentence

I can hardly think of anything more calculated to solidify the view that Wall Street doesn’t have to play by the rules that apply to everyone else.

We have had reports of a number of Senators, including Barbara Boxer, who now appears to have a contentious reelection bid ahead of her.

I think that the two are tied together: Voting for Bernanke is voting for Wall Street, and your opponent can make hay of it.

Harry Reid took a slightly lower key approach, announcing his support for Helicopter Ben late on a Friday evening, so it would not get much press, and the wording is intended to make it sound conditional (it’s not). Faint praise indeed.

FWIW, if you vote for cloture, your opponent will make just as much hay of it.

Interestingly enough it is the arguments for his reappointment that make the best argument against his reappointment.

For example, we have a story saying that a Bernanke defeat would rattle Wall Street and so might precipitate a double dip recession.

It’s wrong on a number of levels, not the least of which is that we are going to have a double dip recession anyway, because, between new defaults in residential and commercial real estate and the increase in oil prices, the so-called recovery that we have seen won’t happen.

The bigger point though is the reason that Bernanke leaving the post would rattle the financial markets is because that they feel that if they screw up royally, then Bernanke will bail them out by pumping money into the system or slashing rates.

Wall Street is looking at a “Bernanke put,” which much like his predecessor’s “Greenspan put,” (both described at the same link) create moral hazard and encourage risk taking.

It’s pretty clear that Ben Bernanke is aggressively lobbying Senators to get reappointed, see his promises of transparency in the Federal Reserve that he made in a meeting with Dick Durbin, but it is just as true that all the moves toward transparency and consumer protection will end once he is reappointed and the audit bill is killed.

At this point, I think that the only chance that he won’t be reappointed lies with the accusations by Senator Jim Bunning and Darryl Issa that Bernanke is lying about his involvement in the AIG fiasco, and relying on those two lying chowder-heads is not something that I am particularly sanguine about.

The Racism of Our Press

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Whenever someone flings a shoe at someone as a gesture of contempt, the press seems compelled to note that this action is an Arab gesture of contempt.

As Matthew Yglesias notes, when commenting on a shoe throwing incident involving Sudanese President Omer Hassan Al-Bashir, throwing shoes means, “you suck!” in every society out there:

My continuing question about this shoe-throwing business is in what culture, exactly, is it not the case that throwing a shoe at a guy giving a speech is a sign of contempt? I recall going as far back as when shoes were thrown at Iyad Allawi media types calmly explaining that this is an insult “in Arab culture.” But is the message really so unclear that we needed to break out our handy-dandy Arab cultural translation manual for? I think one thing that makes the shoe-toss such an effective gesture of protest against figures in the global news is that the message is loud, clear, and unambiguous to an audience from any culture. You’re talking to an audience, I’m in the audience throwing a shoe at you—it’s disrespectful.

You see, young Yglesias, the press is, or believes that their audience is, full of racists, and so they feel the need to describe the behaviors of brown people as if they were tour guides on safari.

Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico?

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There is an author named Bill Martin, who wrote a political treatise called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation

There is another author named Bill Martin, who wrote a children’s book called, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

They are different authors, but it appears that the the right wing morons who control the State Board of Education did not realize this:

What do the authors of the children’s book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and a 2008 book called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation have in common?

Both are named Bill Martin and, for now, neither is being added to Texas schoolbooks.

In its haste to sort out the state’s social studies curriculum standards this month, the State Board of Education tossed children’s author Martin, who died in 2004, from a proposal for the third-grade section. Board member Pat Hardy, R-Weatherford, who made the motion, cited books he had written for adults that contain “very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system.”

Trouble is, the Bill Martin Jr. who wrote the Brown Bear series never wrote anything political, unless you count a book that taught kids how to say the Pledge of Allegiance, his friends said. The book on Marxism was written by Bill Martin, a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago.

You see the phrase, “Brown bear, brown bear, what do I see?” is just so similar to, “that would in effect overturn the imperialist system, and that would depend on creating, as Mao saw, self-reliant economies, not liable to exploitation.“

The stupid, it burns us!!!!!

H/t La Figa

Tax Sanity from Oregon

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Having gone to high school in Portland, I am shocked that Oregonians have passed initiatives increasing taxes on the wealthy and large corporations, measures 66 and 67, by large margins.

This is surprising for Oregon?

I’m sure that a lot of you are saying, but it’s Oregon, it’s liberal, and you would be wrong.

In the 1920s, Oregon was the most Klan dominated state ever, and on taxes:

The double-barreled victory is the first voter-approved statewide income tax increase since the 1930s. Other states, facing similar budget woes, are watching the outcome closely because Oregon, after all, is a state that capped property taxes and locked a surplus tax rebate program into the constitution.

The last time voters approved a tax increase was 2002, when they agreed to bump up tobacco taxes to help pay for the Oregon Health Plan. Voters rejected income tax increases twice in recent years.

People in Oregon, which has a vociferous anti-tax streak in the electorate, have realized that if you want services, you have to pay for them.

More notably, it’s a broad based tax.

Cigarette taxes are seen as punishment for bad behavior, while the income taxes are seen as dues for being a part of society.

This is a big deal because it’s not a sin-tax, or a lottery, it’s a real broad based tax.

Here’s a Surprise

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Remember those GMO herbicide resistant crops?

You know, the ones that would allow for more productivity because you could spray them with weed killer, and only the weeds would die?

Well, not so much:

The authors of the report, entitled “Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use,” used US Department of Agriculture data to look at America’s three largest genetically engineered crops – soybeans, corn, and cotton. They found that the amount of herbicides used on them has increased from 1996 to 2008 by approximately 7 or 8 percent, with a particularly sharp increase from 2005 on.

In particular, the amount of Roundup that is used on genetically engineered crops has multiplied several times during the time period, says the report’s main author, Charles Benbrook, who’s the chief scientist at the Organic Center.

“This big increase in herbicide is driven largely by the emergence of Roundup-resistant weeds,” Dr. Benbrook says. But “industry is still saying to the public that genetic engineering [has] reduced herbicide use.

So, you have a new technology, one that rewards the over-use of herbicides in the short term, and in the long term, you end up creating resistant weeds.

<snark>Hoocoodanode? After all, when hospitals massively overused antibiotics, and farmers started putting in their feed, there was no similar incident of antibiotic resistant pathogens. </snark>

Is Joe Biden Suggesting that He Might Rule the Filibuster Unconstitutional?

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He’s coming down very hard on the filibuster, and I’m wondering if he is sending a signal that, as President of the Senate, he is prepared to rule that the filibuster is unconstitutional:

“As long as I have served … I’ve never seen, as my uncle once said, the Constitution stood on its head as they’ve done. This is the first time every single solitary decisions has required 60 senators,” he said at a Florida fundraiser, according to the pool report. “No democracy has survived needing a super majority.”

The author of the story seems to think that this is an attempt to create a groundswell for using reconciliation to fix healthcare, but I think that Biden might be suggesting something even more radical.

I think (hope) that he is prepared to kill the filibuster.

The interesting thing here, is that the “Centrists” must be crapping their pants over this possibility, since their real agenda is to do nothing ever, and a change to the filibuster rules would make it much more difficult to do nothing ever.

Just Primary Her

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Yes, once again, another Senate “sentrist” appears to be determined to ensure that nothing good will pass the senate:

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D[INO]-AR) will oppose Dem efforts to move health care legislation through Congress using budget reconciliation, hurting Dems’ chances for using the controversial parliamentary maneuver to pass a reform bill.

“I am opposed to and will fight against any attempts to push through changes to the Senate health insurance reform legislation by using budget reconciliation tactics that would allow the Senate to pass a package of changes to our original bill with 51 votes,” Lincoln said in a statement on Tuesday. “I have successfully fought for transparency throughout Senate deliberations on health care, and I will continue to do so.”

“I will not accept any last-minute efforts to force changes to health insurance reform issues through budget reconciliation, and neither will Arkansans. We have worked too long and too hard on this reform effort – we need to get it right,” she said.

By “We”, of xourse, she means “her”, and she does not want a process that diminishes her ability to f%$# with people’s lives, because she wants someone kissing her ass.

Matthew Yglesias is right when he calls out the Senate “centrists”, and notes that they “seem prepared to resume their customary role as the villains whose consistently egomaniacal and self-destructive behavior has badly damaged the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Saab Auto to Survive

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I think that the folks at GM have finally realized that they could either close down the company, pay the costs for that, and secure the undying enmity of a lot of potential future customers, or sell it to someone for a bag of magic beans.

In this case, “someone” is the Dutch sports car manufacturer, and the magic beans are $74 million in cash and $326 million in preferred shares, which, for a company that can manufacture about 100,000 cars a year, is a pittance.

I’ve always liked the cars, though I’ve never owned one, and I think that this is a positive.

Economics Update

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Well, the news has been pretty good today with the American Trucking Association Truck Tonnage Index rising in December, and the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index rose sharply in January, while across both ponds, the UK GSP rose in the 4th quartter opf 2009, indicating an possible end to their recession, and Japanese exports rose for the first time since the Lehman collapse.

I will note that ex-consumer confidence, these could be temporary blips from the need to restock inventories.

In the old standards of oil and currency, oil fell, largely on concerns about a downgrade on Japanese sovereign debt, while the dollar was mixed, up vs the Euro and Pound, but down vs. the Yen, and I’m just confused about that.

Mostly, I think that the markets are holding their breath waiting for the Fed’s meeting this week to finish.

More College Republican Bull Sh%$

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Remember James O’Keefe, he dressed up like a pimp, and got those videos of ACORN helping him and his “Ho” buying a whore house.

I believe that at the time, I thought that I didn’t have much to add, and besides, College Republican guerrilla theater bullsh%$ just wasn’t particularly interest, so I limited my self to the bill of attainder that Congress passed.

Well, James O’Keefe has now taken College Republican antics straight to the felony level, by attempting to wiretap the office of Senator Mary Landrieu with three friends, Joseph Basel, Stan Dai and Robert Flanagan.

They pretended to be phone repair guys, and they tried to tap phones, so it appears to be a clear case of, “entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony,” which can get you 10 years, and if they have more evidence of tapping equipment, then the jail time can go to 20 years.

Oops! It’s all fun and games until someone puts an eye out, I guess.

The kicker on all this, Robert Flanagan is, “the son of William Flanagan, who is the acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana.”

Any wonder what political discussions are like in the Flanagan house?

Do you wonder, just a little bit, if maybe Flanagan the elder might be inclined to make politically motivated prosecutions? Do you wonder even a little?

This is why the decision not to review the illegal political hirings at the DoJ was a bad idea.

It sounds hopey-changey to let bygones to be bygones, but what this means is that the legal toxic waste that are Bush DoJ hires remains on site.

Sent to My Senators, Re: Bernanke (Please Vote No)

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I sent them the following:

I am writing to ask you to vote against reappointing Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Additionally, I am requesting that you support a filibuster of his nomination.

While I believe that he is a very talented economist, I believe that his outlook, and his prior performance, make him unsuited for continued service in this position.

First, and most importantly, he has made it clear that he will not move on unemployment if it means moving away from a 2% inflation target by the Federal Reserve.

His statements saying that his goal was to preserve, “the anchoring of inflation expectations,” is simply dangerous and wrong in the midst of the worst downturn since the Great Depression.

By expressly stating that he will choose to ignore the 2nd mission of the Federal, the maintenance of full employment, he has shown himself to be ideologically unsuited to the post.

Given that unemployment is at 10% by the U-3 measure, or 17.3% by the more representative U-6 measure, and there is little if any indication that there will be significant improvement in the jobless rate this year, this is short sighted and destructive.

Additionally, his fierce opposition to reforms of the financial system, particularly his opposition to the Financial Consumer Protection Agency (FCPA) shows that he is out of touch with the need to protect consumers from predatory institutions marketing dishonest financial instruments.

His suggestion that the Federal Reserve would fulfill this role, when it had that role pre-crisis, and refused to act on credible evidence of fraud and deception, is simply nonsense.

This is further compounded by his position on transparency at the Federal Reserve, where he is clearly stonewalling every effort for investigators to understand the nature of the financial meltdown of 2008.

The unwillingness to come clean on the failures that might have happened at the Federal Reserve Board and the regional banks means that there will be no meaningful disclosure, and without disclosure, no lessons will be learned, and this cycle will be repeated, particularly given his record of being an enthusiastic cheerleader for the housing bubble, and the associated dodgy mortgage bubble, before they popped.

The primary argument for his reappointment is that if he is not reappointed, it will somehow shake the financial markets, and trigger another disaster.

This analysis assumes two things:

  1. That he has been thoroughly captured by Wall Street, and so the large investment banks are demanding that he kept to serve their interests, and not those of the people.
  2. That he is simply indispensable, and as Charles de Gaulle said, “The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”

If there are lessons to be learned from Alan Greenspan’s disastrous tenure, it is that the “Greenspan Put”, where the expectation of bailout created moral hazard that led to reckless behavior, and that the “Rock Star” Fed Chair is to be avoided at all cost.

I followed up with a phone call to both offices.

Economics Update (a Day Late)

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So, we now have some idea just how much the new home buyer tax credit artificially inflated the market, because existing home sales fell 16.7% from November to December.

Since existing home sales are recorded at closing, and in order to qualify for the tax credit, the sale had to close before the end of November, this (seasonally adjusted) number shows that just anemic residential real estate is.

In overseas central banks, the Bank of Japan has kept its benchmark rate at 0.1% (effectively 0%) as they continue to fight what is now a nearly 20 year long deflationary spiral.

In energy, oil was up slightly, while in currency, the US dollar fell slightly.

The Boys from Brazil

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Or maybe Crawford, TX, and Bush’s pig farm.

OK, so this picture is captioned, “Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, also known as Joe the Plumber, right, appears with Arkansas Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Conrad Reynolds.”

Does Mr. Reynolds look familiar, as in Boys from Brazil familiar?

The Republicans are cloning George W. Bush.

Tekeli Li!!!! Tekeli Li!!!! Tekeli Li!!!!

shiver

H/t Jollyreaper at the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS for the catch.