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Americans need to face a hard fact: we almost certainly dodged another Great Depression by a hair’s breadth thanks to the combined efforts of Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the Obama administration and the much maligned Democratically-controlled Congress. But the fallout from the near economic collapse and financial meltdown is likely to endure for years and not months. The problems are deep and widespread, global and not merely national in scope

Whilst our government is not entirely helpless in the face of this recession, neither does it have in its bag of tricks a silver bullet or a magic wand to make it disappear. Unaccustomed as they are to an unemployment rate near 10%, Americans are unlikely to see a dramatic improvement any time soon no matter which party rules in the White House or congress.

In Europe, the harsh consequences of recession-induced joblessness is ameliorated significantly by a substantial social safety net that provides a livable income, retraining opportunities and housing assistance.  America’s Swiss-cheese version offers few such protections. The fact is Americans are just a pink-slip away from personal catastrophe, where a job lost can mean no health insurance (although thanks to Democrats that will change by 2014) and perhaps homelessness for themselves and even their children.

On NPR recently I listened to some bright spark from one of the right-wing think tanks explain why extending unemployment benefits is a disincentive to those who have been unemployed longer than a few months to search vigorously for a job – this despite credible estimates that there are five job seekers to every available job in the market. Is $300 a week a fortune to people who were earning $50K just year ago? Not on the planet most of us live on, that’s for sure. He went on to suggest more of the unemployed should be willing to uproot their families and move; or be prepared to take a job at McDonald’s at minimum wage, as though you can support a family that way.

Appalling, outrageous and shameful though it may be, this is the prevailing view on the right and among congressional Republicans. It highlights the extent to which most Republicans are completely out of touch with the way most Americans live, and lack any ability to empathize with those in distress.

So it does matter which party steers us through the hard times and best prepares the country to take advantage of the global recovery when it does come. And that, ladies and gentlemen, would be the Democrats.

American families that are hurting need help not platitudes. Yes, they need jobs. But these do not grow on trees nor appear on government demand. In the short term unemployed Americans need government assistance to ensure they have basic financial assistance, can keep a roof over their family’s heads and for re-training where that is feasible.

And as the economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman endlessly preaches, we also need to take advantage of the low cost of government borrowing to invest heavily in our human resources through increased spending in education, and on needed infrastructure improvements.   To cut spending now on these essential engines to our future prosperity as states struggle to balance their books is myopic and idiotic.

As for the deficit, we don’t need lessons on fiscal rectitude from a party that:

1. Drove us into two wars (and botched both of them),
2. Turned a budget surplus into a deficit quicker than you can say “Bush tax cuts for the rich,”
3. Passed into law an unfunded Medicare drug benefit to pander to and keep seniors in their political column,
4. Calls for fiscal austerity, but still wants extend Bush’s tax cuts for the rich even though their expiration would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the treasury,
5. Wants more spending on an already bloated Pentagon budget and on border fences with Mexico, and finally,
6. Whose deregulatory zeal got us into this mess in the first place.

Dick Cheney was wrong; deficits do matter – but not now.

I understand that Americans are unhappy with the Obama administration and congress for not fixing the economy. The fact is there are no easy answers or quick fixes to our economic doldrums, and much depends on what happens outside of our shores and beyond our control.  The impulse to hold someone, anyone, responsible for what ails us is strong.

Yet to elect more Republicans, a party bereft of ideas and only able to obstruct and impede government, is to invite paralysis to our policy making machinery and the infliction of more pain on those Americans who need our help in these times.  Please, let’s not cut off our noses to spite our faces in November.

Let’s start with the Democrat. 

Connecticut’s Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is looking to take over retiring Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd’s seat in the Senate. 

Yesterday The New York Times released a story that puts his campaign in jeopardy:

At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life.

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008.  “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam.  He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

…

In an interview on Monday, the attorney general said that he had misspoken about his service during the Norwalk event and might have misspoken on other occasions.  “My intention has always been to be completely clear and accurate and straightforward, out of respect to the veterans who served in Vietnam,” he said.

But an examination of his remarks at the ceremonies shows that he does not volunteer that his service never took him overseas.  And he describes the hostile reaction directed at veterans coming back from Vietnam, intimating that he was among them.

Are you kidding me?  He’s been lying, uh I mean “misspeaking,” about his service during the Vietnam war?  Who does he think he is?  George W. Bush?  

Five deferments from 1965 to 1970 isn’t exactly what you brag about to a group of veterans, unless you align yourself with Dick Cheney who once said he “had other priorities in the ’60s than military service.”  Yes… like his apprenticeship to Lucifer.

And now for the Republican.

Indiana Congressman Mark Souder, a self-described Conservative Christian, resigned today after admitting to an extra-marital affaire with a part-time staffer.  The Washington Post reports:

The conservative Christian congressman’s chief of staff, Renee Howell, confronted him last week over the rumored affair with Tracy Meadows Jackson, according to a source in the office. On Tuesday morning, two weeks after winning the primary, Souder publicly admitted the affair — without naming the staffer — and said he would resign effective Friday.

The affair began after Jackson was hired in 2004, according to the source in the office.  Jackson, who is married, was to be a guest host with Souder for a daily radio spot he recorded for WFCV, a Christian radio station in Fort Wayne, Ind. Jackson also at one point played host for a local cable-access show that served as a platform for Souder to discuss conservative issues, and she helped produce numerous videos of Souder’s speeches and positions, including one in which they discussed his strong support for teen abstinence.

Silly rabbit, abstinence is for kids!  It’s not for grownups.  And if you happen to be an egotistical, hypocritical, married congressmen that’s not getting enough at home, no problem – just go add a fuckbunny to your staff!

Since President Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, the administration and Democrats in Congress have arguably:

Saved the United States economy from a meltdown which could easily have become a depression; given a new lease on life to the US automobile manufacturing industry whose collapse would have been disastrous to Michigan in particular and the Mid-West in general; put into law health-care legislation which fills a crucial hole in the nation’s frayed social safety net and taken a giant step towards ending the shame of being the only advanced country that doesn’t offer universal coverage to its citizens. And with luck, Congress will, by summer, pass an overhaul of the financial regulatory system which will be the most significant and far reaching in a generation to protect us from the sort of catastrophe that befell the nation at the end of the Bush administration.  Assuming, that is, the GOP hasn’t found a way to block it.

The Democrats’ reward for this impressive record of accomplishment from the American electorate will, at best, be a much reduced majority in both houses of Congress or, very possibly, the loss of one or both to the Republicans.  These are the same Republicans who have given the word “obstructionism” a whole new meaning and dimension; the same Republicans who have repeatedly put what they perceive as their political interests ahead of those of the country.

Yes the deficit is dangerously high and attributable in part to TARP and the 2009 stimulus bill. Yet most economists agree that the government couldn’t stand by and do nothing in the face of the sort of deep and destructive recession Obama inherited from the Bush administration. The $787 billion stimulus, passed with just one Republican vote in the Senate, gave a much needed boost to the economy and saved hard pressed states from devastating cuts to teachers, police and other critical public servants. And TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) which, in any case was passed at the end of the Bush administration, has been used wisely to prevent a disintegration of our financial system.

As for the health-care legislation, once Americans have penetrated the smokescreen of misinformation generated by the GOP, they will come to realize that at a time when money talks and Big Business rules, Democrats showed great political bravery and determination in striking a telling blow for ordinary, hardworking people who feel, and usually are, powerless in this political environment. The health care bill will ensure that wealth flows, just for a change, from the affluent to the benefit of those less well off in our society. 

Yet Americans see none of this.  Still grumpy because the economy remains weak, we will mindlessly punish those whom we blame for not fixing now what hasn’t had time to be mended; and reward those who did more than anyone to put us into the mess in the first place and have done nothing constructive to get us out of it. And as a bonus we will ensure political gridlock in which little that is useful can get done.

Where’s the sense or the justice in that?

The New York Times reports the top five as:

$4,000,000,000  David Tepper, Appaloosa Management

$3,300,000,000  George Soros, Soros Fund Management 

$2,500,000,000  James Simons, Renaissance Technologies 

$2,300,000,000  John Paulson, Paulson and Company

$1,400,000,000  Steve Cohen, SAC Capital Advisors 

How did David Tepper win the contest for Greediest Person of the Year?

“We bet on the country’s revival,” Mr. Tepper, who describes his trading technique as a mix of deep analysis and common sense, said Wednesday in an interview. “Those who keep their heads while others are panicking usually do well.”

…

Undaunted by that drop — and by the bankruptcy and liquidation of Lehman Brothers — Mr. Tepper loaded up on the preferred shares and bonds of the big banks in late 2008 and early 2009, correctly assuming that the government would not permit bigger institutions to fail.

It did not hurt that the Treasury Department was a fellow investor, buying preferred stock and warrants to help steady the faltering balance sheets of the banks. The government has since sold many of its bank stakes at a considerable profit.

Mr. Tepper, who manages about $12 billion for investors, also benefited from a successful investment in bonds of American International Group, the giant insurance company that was also rescued by the government.

He made a bet that the government would rescue the financial institutions that were too big to fail.  He won big.  Your average middle class, tax paying citizen is left with the bailout bill.

Okay, these guys pay taxes too.  They make obscene amounts of money, so they should be subject to the highest tax rates, right?

Wrong:

If there is one tax loophole that looks dead in the water, it’s the law that lets hedge fund and private equity managers pay a 15-percent capital-gains rate on the multimillion-dollar fees they collect — substantially less than the top income tax rates paid by their secretaries, chauffeurs, and the pilots of their private jets.

On the surface, the stars are aligned. There is a newly elected Democrat in the White House who is desperate to raise revenues. His budget calls for killing this tax break to raise $14.75 billion over five years and $23.89 billion over ten years. In addition, there are Democratic House and Senate majorities – representing the party of working people – and what could be more unfair than letting billionaires pay taxes at a fraction of the rate of the guy with the lunch pail? (Huffington Post, 02-26-2009)

Good question.  And why haven’t the Democrats closed the loophole that allows multi-billionaires to pay a lesser tax rate than I do?  It might have something to do with Democratic congressmen being in the pockets of the hedge fund managers.  That’s right, if you read that Huffington Post article you’ll find a chart that shows the hedge funds donated at about a 2-1 ratio in favor of Democrats. 

2009 was record year for these greedy bastards.  Maybe this time they scraped a little too much money off the top of our depressed economy, and maybe it was enough to draw the ire of of a populace that feels like it’s bearing too much of the tax load.  Will there be any gatherings in Washington D.C. to protest the special budget-busting tax treatment given to these billionaires?  We’ll have to wait and see what happens.

I am so tired of turning on the morning news and seeing nothing but a bunch of Republicans whining about the passage of the health care reform bill.  I just don’t get why they get so much air time to bash Obama and a bill the Democrats passed after about fifteen months of prolonged debate.  I was hoping that maybe today the media would focus on what was actually in the bill and, I don’t know, maybe have a Democrat explain it and why it’s a good thing.  But no such luck, the Today Show had clips of Limbaugh, Boehner, McConnell, and a gaggle of other rich old white guys.  NPR had a five-minute interview with Judd Gregg (R-NH) who babbled on and on about how the Republicans have been treated so badly by the Democrats.  Hmmm… I wonder if he was sympathetic to the Democratic minority from 2000 – 2006?  I can’t say for sure, but my guess is NOT.  Which reminds me… Jon Stewart said it best shortly after Obama was elected president and the Democrats took over both houses of congress:  “You guys lost!  It’s supposed to taste like a shit sandwich.”   They can serve it up, but they can’t eat it.

Okay so I continue to be frustrated by the mainstream media, and not just because they seem to devote so much time to the losers, but also because the losing party is home to so many mean, xenophobic, racist bigots.  I cannot tell you how pleased I would be if I turned on a major network newscast and saw that they were doing an in-depth report about the hateful bigots that proudly align themselves with Republicans and Tea Partiers. 

I found some solace in Bob Herbert’s column this morning:

…it is time for every American of good will to hold the Republican Party accountable for its role in tolerating, shielding and encouraging foul, mean-spirited and bigoted behavior in its ranks and among its strongest supporters.

For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness.  All you have to do is look around to see what it has done to the country.  The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy.  As a country, we have a monumental mess on our hands and still the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of a remedy except more tax cuts for the rich.

This is the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction, the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics.  This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry.

Glenn Beck of Fox News has called President Obama a “racist” and asserted that he “has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Mike Huckabee, a former Republican presidential candidate, has said of Mr. Obama’s economic policies:  “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff.”

The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere and then has the gall to complain about an absence of bipartisanship.

There’s much more detail about Tea Partiers taunting a poor man with Parkinson’s disease, and the spitting, cursing, and name calling done on Saturday by protestors as the Democrats walked into the halls of congress.  Read it all here.

While watching President Obama deliver his first State of the Union speech last night I was struck by how comfortable he was standing before Democrats, Republicans, Supreme Court justices, diplomats, and military leaders.  After one year in office, he appeared as though he owned the place.  He looked and sounded like he was meant to be there.  I never sensed that from Bush.  He always looked uncomfortable in those surroundings, and his speech delivery was, well… unnatural.  Perhaps even he realized he really didn’t belong there. 
 
President Obama easily moved from making serious points about jobs, national security, taxes, war, and healthcare reform, to humorous remarks about those same topics.  He also called out both parties in ways I wanted him to, but never expected to hear.  He even scolded the Supreme Court for last week’s ruling that allows corporations to fund political campaigns.

With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen that done before, but there hasn’t been a ruling by the court as egregious as that one for quite some time. (For further reading and illustrations about how SCOTUS sold our country to the rich, go to Clowncrack.com.)
 
And while asking both parties to reach agreements to pass laws to help the American people, he called out the Democrats:

To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills.

…and the Republicans: 

And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town — a supermajority — then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well.  Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership.

And while speaking about the budget, the Republicans again:

From some on the right, I expect we’ll hear a different argument — that if we just make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts including those for the wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations, maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away.  The problem is that’s what we did for eight years.  That’s what helped us into this crisis.  It’s what helped lead to these deficits. We can’t do it again.

Obama really is a great orator, and when he spoke about the importance of putting aside petty political games that only further divide us and prevent our nation from moving forward, you really believed him – if you were a Democrat anyway.  We’ll see how the Republicans respond.  I have a feeling that they will remain obstinate, because politics is the only game they know.

Let’s get one thing clear:  the failure of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate a bomb on an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day was not only an extremely good piece of luck for the passengers and crew (who deserve credit for their quick thinking and courage), but also for those charged with security in the United States.  Why?  Because it highlighted flaws in the way in which we analyze and use intelligence information that has been collected on potentially dangerous individuals, and in our screening procedures at airports. 

Yet instead of celebrating our good luck we’ve been treated instead to unseemly hand wringing and finger pointing. The sources for most of this, not unexpectedly, are Republicans and the right-wing punditry.  President Obama has been criticized for his delay in making a statement and for not lending it more urgency by not, presumably, sounding sufficiently breathless.  And of course the GOP lost no time trying to make political hay out of it.  Former vice-president Cheney sounds more and more as though he can’t wait for an al-Qaida attack to succeed so that he can begin an endless round of I-told-you-so interviews on prime-time network TV.  He evidently blames Obama for not reacting in the same panicky mode as he did in the wake of 9/11.

The fact is this near miss is a gold mine of an opportunity to improve our intelligence collection and handling procedures, as well as to tighten security screening practices by, for example, speeding the more widespread introduction of newer technology such as full-body scans.

We seem to be missing a couple of essential lessons from this and past incidents.  The first is that no matter how much we may want it, the government cannot guarantee our safety.  I don’t happen to think that explosives sewn into underwear is necessarily a sign that al-Qaida has increased its effectiveness or ingenuity; quite the contrary.  But the fact remains our human protectors will always be fallible and the efficiency of our technology limited.  Big Daddy cannot always protect us.

The second lesson is that maybe Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was unwittingly correct when she said that the system worked. Part of the “system” has to be us, the ordinary members of the public.  Just as it was the action of passengers and crew that saved that flight over Detroit, and of others who forced the 9/11 hijackers of United Flight 93 to abort their mission to crash into the White House or the Capitol, so we must all realize that we, too, have a role to play in preventing terrorist attacks from succeeding. 

After all the next attack may not come on an airliner at five thousand feet but on a crowded city bus at ground zero.

They aren’t like Republicans.  They would benefit from being more like them in some ways.  This Modern World explains:

And so did Jon Stewart about four minutes into this segment form Monday’s show:

“Mr. President, I can’t tell if you’re a Jedi ten steps ahead of everything or if this this whole health-care thing is kicking your ass just a little bit.  Why is this so hard?  Why can’t you guys just stay on message?  Remember the Bush team?  Little bit of discipline.  Little bit of repetition.  They sold us a war nobody wanted and nobody needed.”

An unusual thing happened today.  The moderate wing of the Republican Party prevailed over the far right wing.  A week after the Republican National Committee drafted a resolution to rename the Democratic Party the Democratic “Socialist” Party, the resolution has been dropped.

The moderates argued that if they passed the resolution, the public would view them as a party so devoid of new ideas that all they can do is resort to petty schoolyard name calling.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele was against the resolution all along.  His side prevailed over the unruly children in his party who still claim that “the proposal was good for the GOP.”

“It has generated the debate we had hoped for,” said Indiana committeeman James Bopp. “It was an effort to educate the American people, and it was successful.”

Yes, it was about as successful as a DNC resolution to rename the Republican Party as the Republican “Fascist” Party would be. 

I’ve made the case a few times on these pages for why the Republicans are fascists, but renaming their party?  Why bother?  They have Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney in the spotlights reinforcing my view every day.

Yesterday Arlen Specter announced that he was leaving the Republican Party to join the Democrats with whom he now finds himself more philosophically aligned.  Specter’s statement included:

While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

I’ve always thought that Specter, like Lincoln Chafee and Olympia Snowe, were GOOD members of the Republican Party because they provided it with some much needed moderate views.  But as many people have pointed out, there is no room for moderates under the shrinking tent that covers the Rightwingoverse.  Specter saw what happened to Chafee, so he defected to save his Senate seat that he would otherwise first lose to Patrick Toomey, a hard-right Republican challenger, who would in turn lose to the Democratic candidate in 2010. 

Olympia Snowe used a very effective quote from Reagan in her column for the New York Times to explain why the party’s hard line on moderates is a going to make them irrelevant.

When Senator Jeffords became an independent in 2001, I said it was a sad day for the Republicans, but it would be even sadder if we failed to confront and learn from the devaluation of diversity within the party that contributed to his defection. I also noted that we were far from the heady days of 1998, when Republicans were envisioning the possibility of a filibuster-proof 60-vote margin. (Recall that in the 2000 election, most pundits were shocked when Republicans lost five seats, resulting in a 50-50 Senate.)

I could have hardly imagined then that, in 2009, we would fondly reminisce about the time when we were disappointed to fall short of 60 votes in the Senate. Regrettably, we failed to learn the lessons of Jim Jeffords’s defection in 2001. To the contrary, we overreached in interpreting the results of the presidential election of 2004 as a mandate for the party. This resulted in the disastrous elections of 2006 and 2008, which combined for a total loss of 51 Republicans in the House and 13 in the Senate — with a corresponding shift of the Congressional majority and the White House to the Democrats.

…

I have said that, without question, we cannot prevail as a party without conservatives. But it is equally certain we cannot prevail in the future without moderates.

…

Reagan said:  “We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only ‘litmus test’ of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.” He continued, “As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.”

As much as Republicans have worshipped at the altar of Ronald Reagan over the past eight to ten years, you’d think they’d latch on to the key to his strategy that grew their party and gave them power for many years – Tolerance.  I guess today’s Republicans can’t accept any gray in their black-and-white world.

For now, I think that’s a good thing.  As soon as Norm Coleman does the right thing and concedes to Al Franken, the Democrats will have a filibuster proof majority and might be able to push a few important items through congress.  However, since their party is far more tolerant and can accept shades of gray under its tent, I doubt they will be able to garner very many filibuster-proof majorities.

Paul Krugman wrote on his blog about what Specter’s defection means:

… we have a party that seems to be in a death spiral: the smaller it gets, the more it’s dominated by the hard right, which makes it even smaller. In the long run, this is not good for American democracy– we really do need two major parties in competition.  But I’ll settle for getting that back after we get universal health care and cap-and-trade.

Those are both difficult bills to get through Congress without filibuster proof majorities.  I do hope we see both of them enacted during Obama’s first term though.