Thanks for those comments, and passing along something…

31Mar09

Recently found some nice comments in my inbox, thanks guys. I’ve been struggling to find my voice; more and more I think I just see the world differently than most journalists. Either that or my lack of desire to make a living off of this currently affects me. Anyway, I’ve been obsessed with Ta-Nehisi Coates recently. Here he is on writing:

http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/03/thinking_big.php


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AIG Frustration

16Mar09

First of all, this isn’t a rant about how awful AIG is. There’s enough coverage of that already, and besides, they sponsor Manchester United, so yours truly always knew something was up.

Instead of just being angry, it’s important to know why we are angry and why we aren’t doing anything about it. The first part of understanding why nothing is being done is because we don’t know what to do. Legally.

Lest we forget that we do live in a country that does try to seperate the private sector from the government as much as possible. We live in a country with rules, I know it’s been 8 years since that’s happened, but in it’s spirit, it always has remained the same. Part of our attempted guarentee of the pursuit of happiness means that government is often not supposed to get involved. That’s not my personal belief, it’s part of our Constitutional identity. In truth, we can’t tailor our constitution to this one specific problem.

Anyway, it was that philosophy that drove Republicans and friends of the banks to look the other way the past few years (the Republicans for longer), and the government looked away while AIG became perhaps ground zero for the economic rise and fall.  AIG grew too big to fail, and I don’t think people fully understand what that even means.

Here’s an example. Huffington Post provides just a snapshot of what AIG had to pay out as insurance against, essentially, economic catastrophe

Goldman Sachs at $12.9 billion, and three European banks — France’s Societe Generale at $11.9 billion, Germany’s Deutsche Bank at $11.8 billion, and Britain’s Barclays PLC at $8.5 billion. Merrill Lynch, which also is undergoing federal scrutiny of its bonus plans, received $6.8 billion as of Dec. 31.

AIG had grown, quite simply, bigger than the US, or rather the US economy. It capitalized itself with money that wasn’t quite fake, but rather, made-up. I’m probably not the best person to explain derivatives, but please feel free to explore the internet’s vast resources on what happened with that market.

That is why we have to keep bailing them out; the glodbal economy goes kablooie if we don’t.

So the question is, what do we do about the people at AIG who broke the letter or the intent of the law? There’s apparently a “populist explosion” over the fact that AIG is paying out 160million in bonuses last year. I don’t find myself particularly surprised or upset.

For years, leftish liberals have been talking about corporations being our downfall. First of all, can we admit they were right? They also happened to be right about global warming. In fact, can we also finally admit that an unregulated free market, at best, leads to instability and at worst catastrophe? Obama’s election was part of that solution, although his centrist tendencies do not allow the debate to be framed that way. Personally, I saw this coming and I wouldn’t have let it even affect my life if it weren’t for the ubiqitous news coverage. In fact, perhaps my greatest source of frustration during all of this isn’t that we didn’t see it coming, it’s that at no point, we wanted to see it coming.

The AIG problem has left even our greatest political minds grasping at straws. Bernanke claims of “slamming the phone a number of times,” Geithner’s “hands are tied” (and believe me, he’d do anything to raise his popularity, and the normally brilliant Marc Ambinder came up with this as his best shot:

As recounted below, there’s not so much that the executive branch can do — and should do — to prevent AIG from handing out loopy bonuses. But why can’t Congress pass a law requiring that bonuses granted by a company that has taken bailout money from the Federal Reserve or TARP be taxed at a very high rate? Obviously, Congress would have to find some way to distinguish between legitimate performance pay and illegitimate bonuses, but a one-year tax hike on all such bonuses might not be unpalatable. It’s a much saner alternative than to give the Treasury the instruction to root through contracts to find ways of breaking them.

It’s a cute idea, but it seems like an ex post facto law, and thus it won’t fly. It’s also an idea that the far left has been screaming about for years. But nevermind that; don’t you think Congress thought about this, Marc?

Sorry, I don’t mean to do the Olbermann/O’Reilly callout, but it’s an idea that just wreaks of naivety. Congress didn’t do anything when the auto bailout CEOs flew in on planes, and they didn’t see this coming?

There’s one of three ways to rationalize their behavior. I’ll be kinder to Ambinder and use one of his ideas first: Outrage. It’s why a steroid scandal was brought before Washington in a massive spectacle. Politicians love looking morally outraged; it helps in elections. The second way to see it is as biproduct of corruption. These banks were in the pockets of some of the most powerful people in Washington; Frank, Gramm, McCain, Waters, Dodd…on both sides, the banks have these politicians covered, so of course they won’t do anything. The third is political/legal: is it the governments role to step in stop bonuses from being paid? In a conservative world, no. In a liberal world, it’s something you should be afraid about implying for fear that a Republican will call you a communist/socialist.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t be angry. We should, again, we have to understand why so it doesn’t happen again. Understanding that means some sad realities, namely that it will take a while for the economy to recover and that the economy won’t be as big as it was pre-2008. That’s something I fear Americans will never understand.


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Weird

04Mar09

From CNN:

I think I am developing a crush on America’s first lady. Michelle Obama is more compelling than her husband. He’s good, but she’s utterly fascinating.

Mrs. Obama has blown away the stale air in a White House musty from eight years of the Bushes. It’s like the sun came out and a fresh spring breeze began wafting through the open windows. -Jack Cafferty

So will is Barack willing to negotiate an ass-whoopin’ without pre-conditions? 

 


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Essential Reading to Understanding the Political Future

28Feb09

I got into many conflicts with one of politics professors last year, and I kept on wondering why Obama kept proving me right. I remember a different, far more intelligent, professor once confessing that she thought the Baby Boomers may have actually ruined liberalism. Ambinder provides some must read context in a brilliant article:

There is absolutely a generational component to the anxiety. Three generations of Democratic activists view the possibility of Obama’s election through different lenses; the first came of age in the 60s and 70s before the flowering of modern conservatism and the triumph of Nixonian resentment politics. The second rose to power with the election of Bill Clinton, and today, they approach politics with instincts as developed in the 1992 campaign and refined by Clintoncare, the government shutdown and the Monica Lewinsky affair — careful, wily, programmatic, triangulatish, risk-averse, incremental. The third generation rejects all of that, believing that such caution kicked the legs out from under the Democratic Party. This generation rejects baby steps in favor of bold, often populist action; they reject the notion that the default liberal ideology cannot be majoritarian.

Make no mistake, I’m clearly of the third generation, although that’s not to say nothing can be learned from the previous two. Also note, the third generation would have never come to believe what they believe had not George W. Bush screwed up so badly. I don’t think anyone could have predicted how far Bush would fall after the 2004.

The left also dominated the internet game from the beginning, setting the stage for what we see now. It’s a challenging fact that I have to acknowledge that I am one of thousands of liberal bloggers on the net today, and the whole effect can be that of mass mental masturbation (although opinions can build on each other nicely at times). I consciously make a decision to not be outraged as much as I possibly can; there’s too many outraged voices out there writing the same story. That being said, complete neutrality is dangerous. Ana Marie Cox explains better than I can:

When they give equal weight to opinions spouted on the left and the right, the media give opinions the appearance of facts and thus allow for the kind of wholesale mendacity that’s characterized the Bush years. I tend to think this is not a political calculation, but a practical one: The media is so paralyzed with fear of “bias” that they refuse to make a distinction between fact and opinion. That would, after all, require reporting, which is expensive—and, I might add, hard. And to weigh the benefits and costs of a conservative policy versus a liberal policy? That is expensive, difficult and, worst of all, boring.”

Unfortunately that type of centrist reporting is still very much alive in the Obama era; one needs only turn on their cable news network to find outraged Republicans practically screaming about the stimulus package, and now the budget. However, the interesting part is that Obama’ favorability is now at 67% percent; one must wonder if Americans will get tired of hearing outraged, illogical Republicans (believe it or not, I’ll decline to say that is all of them).

But if Obama’s favorability does hold even over 50%, then the fearless generation of Democrats will have won, where the previous generation failed. Obama’s budget actually lays out concrete plans for things that Bill Clinton compromised, and Jimmy Carter’s bad luck lost. His popularity suggests that they could even come into fruition. We will certainly have to examine if we are a “center-right country” as conservatives like to claim.

It is hard to blame the second generation for their approach. The Republican attack machine was far better, plus they never had such a dramatic failure for a president like George W. Bush.  There’s no doubt that the Republicans were harder to beat then. However, that second generation keeps rearing its head. It was almost encompassed in the Hillary Clinton campaign, probably culminating in the “obliterate Iran” comments and the gas tax holiday via windfall oil profit tax. These ideas are outdated and they have already lost out. The media has failed to catch up to a certain extent, still with “crossfire like” formats that assume the country was still at the political deadlock it was at in 2000. The Republicans certainly failed to grasp it perhaps more than anyone. It’s not just that Americans grew tired of the right’s ideas. It’s that the facts (remember, stubborn things) were, and are, overwhelmingly in the left’s favor.

Republicans’ failure to read the country pretty much explained the inevitably doomed Palin pick (although I still wonder what Kay Bailey Hutchinson could have done). The Clinton Dems were worried about her, even though few broke ranks. I remember one of the more heated arguments with that professor was over Sarah Palin. He thought her ability to whip crowds up into a frenzy would translate at the polls, and the Bradley effect would do the rest (he also famously worked for Bradley). I argued that America did look kindly upon some of racism, and at the very least, rampant neo-conservativism spouted by brainless idiots like Joe the Plumber. So who won that one? Well, clearly I did, but the margin brings me to quoting David Plouffe. He was asked what he thought Palin’s impact on the race was:

“She was our biggest fundraiser”


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Can’t Spell Twitter without Twit

27Feb09

Another alarm bell goes off on the Web 2.0 boom, this time, via a Bushie.

Via the Daily Beast:

Twitter is not a business. I know its founders would like to think it is. It is, for the most part, a diversion. It’s part of the web 2.0 nonsense that believes if you build anything, venture capitalists will throw money at it and then some old media dinosaur will buy you for a gazillion dollars. But, I suspect those days are over. -Mark McKinnon

He’s right, twitter have drastically screwed this up. There is a business there somewhere (they’ll have to hire me to tell them where), but as it stands now, it has even less potential to succeed long term than a free-of-cost Facebook.

There are some very sad attempts at rebuttals in the comments. Personal favorites:

McKinnon isn’t interested in any medium that he can’t manipulate or control and he isn’t keen on anything he can’t spin or where PR agents can’t frame the message. Bottom up communications is anathema to the spin-Nazi as we like to call him.- thair1

Twitter is a bit of waste if what you’re doing with it is simply saying “This is what I just did.” It’s banal and pointless at that level. Use it for “this is what I’m thinking” or “this is something you should know about”, and it’s telepathy of the best kind.- DoyceT

And a nice counter in the comments as well:

Twitter is for egomaniacs who crave attention and think what they have to say should be seen by EVERYONE!- Munodi


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Glenn Beck is Clearly Baked

27Feb09

This is incredible, I’ve never seen an interview like this before.


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Dear GOP, Thank You for Michael Steele

27Feb09

I’ve been tracking Michael Steele since he was my Lt. Governor way back in the days of living in Baltimore. At the time Steele was used brilliantly by Bob Ehrlich as an attack dog. He also helped Ehrlich in the black community, who previous Lt. Gov.-turned-candidate-Kathleen Kennedy Townsend alienated. Ehrlich was ousted after one reasonable term where he fought for slot machine legalization, and faced opposition from state Democrats who wanted to increase the sales tax. Ehrlich lost that battle, eventually crashing out to Former Baltimore mayor Martin O’Malley. Ehrlich’s kinda disappeared, but Steele was an up and comer, rising through the ranks to eventually because the head of the RNC. He was elected with the hopes that he could bring in newer (i.e. black) constituents. Little did the GOP know, he’s pretty fucking crazy (Personal anecdote: He once got into a heated policy argument with an autistic kid while speaking at my school). Steele has pledged to make the GOP more “hip-hop” friendly. With what’s happened over the past couple days, all I have to say is thank you desperate GOP:

Mostly via Huffington Post:

According to CNN, Steele was then praised by Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

As Steele concluded his remarks, Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann — the event’s moderator — told Steele he was “da man.”
“Michael Steele! You be da man! You be da man,” she said.

You’ll remember Bachmann from trying to start McCarthyism again. Wait, there’s more:

Although he emphasized that the conservative movement must become a revolution and transform America, he conceded that the party had made mistakes: “We know the past, we know we did wrong. My bad. But we go forward in appreciation of the values that brought us to this point.”

His bad? Dude, you weren’t even making any decisions! How many times will you ever see the phrase “my bad” followed by “appreciatiation of the values?” How could Steele top that. Give it up to ya boy, B-Jind!

Via Politico:

SLIWA: Because he is — when guys look at him and young women look at him — they say oh, that’s the slumdog millionaire, governor. So, give me some slum love.

STEELE: I love it. (inaudible) … some slum love out to my buddy. Gov. Bobby Jindal is doing a friggin’ awesome job in his state. He’s really turned around on some core principles — like hey, government ought not be corrupt. The good stuff … the easy stuff.

Let’s just ignore that on Jindal’s watch a decent chunk of the state turned into slums. Let’s ignore that Jindal isn’t even from India (his parents are) and he didn’t grow up in the poverty that the people of Mumbai did (though growing up non-white in Lousiana probably fucking sucked). But seriously, “friggin awesome?” Napoleon Dynamite is the GOP chairman?


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Sullivan’s Conservative Fantasyland

27Feb09

Let me preface this by saying I definitely respect the man, and he’s become one of the people I read the most. However, it’s sentiments like these that make me really wonder if he fully grasps what is going on here:

“Change is not running up even bigger deficits that George Bush did,” – Rep. Gene Taylor (D).

Agreed, but look: you don’t expect a Democrat to act like a Republican, especially after the Republican, on spending, acted like a liberal Democrat. And I didn’t expect the Obama administration to be the Ron Paul administration. I did expect more than what now looks like deceptive rhetoric on fiscal sanity in the long run. If the president thinks fiscal conservatives will be satisfied by hiking Medicare premiums for the very rich and a proposal to end ag subsidies that may be dead on arrival in Congress, he’s mistaken.

But it’s the Democrats’ government now. And I think I see why Judd Gregg couldn’t handle this. I couldn’t either. There’s a difference between patriotically supporting a new president inheriting some goddawful problems and betraying every fiscal principle you ever had.

Let’s get one thing straight first: Judd Gregg did not drop out of the running for Commerce Secretary because of some sort of fiscal principle. He did because he was afraid that the White House would count too many brown people (even though it would be under his purview) in the census, thus hurting Republicans in future elections. His withdrawal was also due to Congressional Republican pressure. Sullivan even had a lengthy chat with Marc Ambinder on this topic that curiously cannot be found on the Atlantic politics channel.  So right off the bat, Sullivan is hypocritical; all of a sudden when he cares about fiscal conservatism again, Judd Gregg is a hero.

Sullivan is clearly an intelligent man, and honestly, I do share his desire to one day see a balanced budget, believe it or not. However, I know that day won’t be today or anywhere near today. I also doubt that he would agree with me that the way to do that is to increase taxes across the board and invest dramatically in education, both k-12 and higher. (He’s previously expressed his desire for a flat tax; one of the least economically and socially informed ideas of all time) Arguments for less government at this point are borderline disturbing. Aside from today it seems,  Sullivan has properly joined the crowd that has been panning the Republicans newly-discovered fiscal conservatism in the face of economic crisis.

Sullivan has started a feature on his blog called “View from your Recession;” apparently he was unaware that it still kinda sucked to live in America before this recession. 20% of America has no health insurance. Many have inadequate insurance, many have Medicaid, and seniors by and large have to rely on Medicare, which Sullivan has panned as overly expansive, and a drag on the budget. It would seem the only alternative would be to allow seniors to shop the free market for health insurance. The market is far too pricey, and excludes those with pre-existing conditions, which is uh, almost every senior.

In addition to that sad reality, many seniors most valuable asset, their home, has most likely dropped in value incredibly steeply, so even the concept of selling one’s home to move into a nursing home doesn’t seem that appetizing.

Sullivan also frames this as if Obama is acting the wrong way to fix the mistakes of George W. Bush. That’s only partially true; yes, Obama’s Iraq withdrawal certainly corrects a Bush mistake, and his increase of troops in Afghanistan does as well, although both will likely be a drain on the budget for years to come. Don’t blame Obama for having to deal with that. However, we are literally looking at decades of mistakes, made by primarily Republican presidents in our failure to maintain our infrastructure, our education system, our health care system, our fuel sources, etc.

Obama is making strides towards repairing those mistakes. Someone has to foot the bill, and the longer we wait, the harder that becomes. We will continue to lose billions per year if someone doesn’t step up and end the madness of fossil fuel. Americans will continue to waste billions per year paying private health insurance companies that don’t fulfill their promise to pay for expensive medical treatments.

It is very politically convenient for Sullivan to be a conservative, because his roots are in the Tory party in Britain. Britain never failed to deliver on health care, they don’t face the same pressure from automakers, and they don’t live the same extravagant lifestyle as Americans in general. Perhaps most importantly, conservatives don’t have to ally themselves with the same religious nutjobs we have here.

There very well could be a case to make for conservatism in some sort of Tabula Rasa environment. Maybe somehow we’ll get out of this crisis with a boom in alternative energy that drags us out of our debt. Then let’s have that argument. However, to rediscover fiscal conservatism now is a mistake that could actually bring us into deeper trouble. I am tempted to say it could be the end of America, but then I’d get a Malkin award, and I wouldn’t want that.


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Breaking: McCain Supports Obama Iraq Plan

26Feb09

Via HuffPo:

“They’re going to present us their recommendations. It’s their plan,” he said. “From what I know about it, I agree with it.”

For McCain, the plan has virtue because it is backed by the generals and the ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. “I like it best because it’s what Ambassador Crocker and General [Raymond] Odierno and General [David] Petraeus also felt was a suitable strategy,” said McCain.

Couple of interesting points:

1. McCain really chose his words carefully, despite the positive spin here by HuffPo. “It’s their plan” and “suitable” strategy; it’s clear that he has room to wiggle out of this one if he needs to.

2. General Petraeus is invoked – As far as I know, this is the first I’ve heard of Petraeus giving any sort of public endorsement of an Obama military policy. Expect Obama to take that and run with it…and expect Petraeus to be a little bothered by McCain leaking that info.

3. Would Petraeus have supported this plan if he were still in charge of Iraq? My guess is no. But Obama did give him 17,000 more troops for Afghanistan, which had to help this endorsement.

4. One wonders if this is part of a broader Republican strategy to try to give the appearance of some bipartisanship. Of course, it doesn’t really matter what McCain says on the issue because Obama is the commander in chief and would have gotten his way anyway. This move might give them some political capital in attacking the massive spending being proposed in the new budget.


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Louis CK Puts it Into Perspective

26Feb09

Some claim he’s the most stolen from comic around right, and it’s easy to see why:


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