Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Barack Obama Page 10 of 13

With Friends Like Democratic Congresspeople

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On December 24, 2009

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Well, well, well.  It turns out that Acorn broke no laws.  None.  In the last five years.

But the Democratic Congress still threw them under the bus, with an illegal bill of attainder, banning them from receiving any government money.  Very similar to how they censured MoveOn for daring to challenge Petraeus.

Can you imagine the Republicans doing the same?  When the Swift Boat Vets lied repeatedly about John Kerry, did the Republicans vote to censure them?

And for that matter, did Dems try and censure the Swift Boat Vets?

Democrats constantly throw their own supporters to the wolves.  It’s one of the reasons there is little real loyalty on the left.  On the right, someone may occasionally have to take a bullet for the team, but afterwards they’re well taken care of and even rehabilitated if possible.  And major conservative organizations aren’t repudiated, nor do Republican leaders generally speak of “conservatives” with the sort of contempt that Democratic leaders reserve for liberals and progressives.

Democratic Congresspeople, as a group are weak people without strategic sense or the ability to bargain.  The exceptions, the strong ones, are unfortunately mostly conservadems – Republicans in drag like Ben Nelson.

If 40% of Dems are thinking of not voting in 2010 it’s exactly because Democrats won’t stand up for their own base.  For their own people and what those people believe in and need.  They only stand up for Pharma, banks, insurance companies and other entrenched powers.

Loyalty.  It’s a two way street.  And neither the White House, nor Congress, have shown any.

An Evening Rant To All the Fools Who Think Bernanke Saved the World And Obama has done the right things

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On December 21, 2009

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So very glad to hear your opinions. Unlike most of the morons who think Obama/Bernanke/Paulson/Geithner did the right thing, I predicted almost everything that happened to the economy, in many cases years in advance, and I sure as hell don’t think so.

But what do I know? Unlike the people who call the shots, I have a consistent record of being right far far more than chance would allow.  Therefore, as with everyone else who called their shots right far in advance I have no say, but have to listen to morons who didn’t call it right tell us how they had no choice but do stupid things like not nationalize banks, not force banks to actually increase lending, not force bondholders to take a haircut, not institute massive progressive taxation and not pass a health care bill which is a massive giveaway to the medical industry of the US.

Great.

I hope all you morons who think there was no other choice but to do what has been done enjoy the right wing populist backlash that Obama and the Dems, by doing the wrong things over and over again, have made virtually inevitable.

God I wish Canada wasn’t right next to America.  Being in a dingy attached by a chain to the Titanic, while the Titanic is run by morons cheered on by fools is immensely depressing.

The Bill of Indictment

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On December 16, 2009

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Anderson over at the Newshoggers lays it out:

  • Escalation in Afghanistan, a war which cannot be won
  • Increased immigration raids
  • Indefinite detention using the exact same rationale as Bush
  • Warrantless wiretapping
  • Refusal to investigate Bush war crimes
  • Covering up Bush war crimes
  • Backing renewal of the PATRIOT act
  • Continued extraordinary renditions
  • Right to hold people without trial
  • Right to use military tribunals with rules of evidence which violate fundamental rights like facing your accuser and seeing the evidence against you
  • Asserting the right to continue to torture if he chooses, at Bagram and Balad
  • Escalation of the Pentagon budget, both on-book and off-book

And much, much more.

Bush’s third term in almost all significant ways.  And Anderson is right, when lefties are having to try and make the case that Obama is better than Bush, it’s game over.  It shouldn’t even be close.  Bush is in the top 3 worst presidents of all time.  Being slightly better than him is a success?

Lesser evil, indeed

Phagh.

Go read.

Parliamentary Politics in a non Parliamentary System

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On December 12, 2009

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Yglesias begins to get it:

We’re suffering from an incoherent institutional set-up in the senate. You can have a system in which a defeated minority still gets a share of governing authority and participates constructively in the victorious majority’s governing agenda, shaping policy around the margins in ways more to their liking. Or you can have a system in which a defeated minority rejects the majority’s governing agenda out of hand, seeks opening for attack, and hopes that failure on the part of the majority will bring them to power. But right now we have both simultaneously. It’s a system in which the minority benefits if the government fails, and the minority has the power to ensure failure. It’s insane, and it needs to be changed.

I’ve been explaining this for going on five years.  The first time I tried to explain parliamentary politics to Americans was after the 2004 election (sadly, gone with BOP’s archives).  The most recent was in July, where I pointed out that without the possibility of snap elections, the US form is particularly virulent:

Now in parliamentary systems a majority government just does what it likes, and the opposition reflexively opposes but can’t stop anything.  In a minority government, the opposition can’t just stop everything because if it defeats the government on the wrong vote it’ll cause an election and you don’t want one of those till you’re sure you’ll win and the governing party won’t get a majority.  So the government can still get through a fair bit of its agenda, even if it doesn’t have a parliamentary majority.

In the US there’s no threat of a snap election, and the opposition can often hold up significant legislation, especially in a case like the current one where the governing party has unreliable members (something that’s very rare in most parliamentary systems).

So the Republicans have taken parliamentary opposition one step further.  Instead of just opposing everything but letting it pass, then running against it, they figure why not oppose everything in the hopes of weakening policy to the point where it doesn’t work?  The stimulus bill was compromised to the point where it didn’t do the necessary job.  The global warming bill likewise, and the health care bill appears headed for the same fate.

Lousy policy leads to lousy outcomes. Lousy outcomes make the population unhappy, and less likely to vote the incumbents back in.

What the Republicans are doing makes perfect sense from an electoral point of view.  Voters are not going to primarily blame Republicans for Democrats failing to govern effectively.

This is something that many Democrats, especially older ones who came from a more genteel era, or those who some sort of strange genetic disposition to compromise (Obama) don’t seem to get.  But Republicans get it in their limbic system.

Learn it.  Live it.

George Bush’s 3rd Term

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On December 8, 2009

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Well, well, well:

The openly-gay head of the federal Office of Personnel Management, John Berry, said this weekend that he cannot follow a court order directing him to provide health benefits to the lesbian wife of a federal employee. Why? Because he says that he doesn’t have the legal authority to do so.

Neat trick. We should all try that one next time a court orders us to do something. “Sorry, your honor. Rather than appealing your decision, I’m simply going to state publicly that I don’t believe I have the legal authority to obey your order.”

It’s keen that not giving benefits to gays is so important to Obama that he’s willing to tell the courts to go take a long leap off a short pier.  Wish I could say I was glad to see him take a stand on something.

I’m so glad we got so much “Change”.  Same basic economic policy, same basic financial policy, lots of warmaking.  Oh, and the current suggestion on the “public” option?  Make it run by private companies with no public funding.   Meanwhile, women are being thrown under the bus on abortion and Obama doesn’t care.

Homophobic and sexist.  Maybe not personally (I don’t believe Bush was a homophobe personally) but when it comes to public figures judging by policy is perfectly fair.

Plus ca change.

Hell No Dems Won’t Vote

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On December 5, 2009

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When 40% of democrats don’t want to vote, the solution is not to tell them to vote.  The solution is to institute policies which make them want to vote.  That’s up to Obama and Congress, it is in their hands.

People do not get excited by the lesser evil, and while those of us who studied Obama in detail knew he was a conservative democrat, the overarching themes and rhetoric of his campaign amounted to “Big Change for the better!!”

He has not delivered on that and it is to be expected that people will be disappointed in him.  To expect otherwise is remarkably naive.

Remember the last few years of Bush?  All those conservatives trying to say “no really, the economy is better than it feels to you, I have numbers”?

This is the same sort of thing.  Trying to tell people “no really, it’s not so bad” doesn’t work when their experience is “Yeah, this sucks and no, you didn’t do what I think you said you’d do”.

People feel betrayed, and they should, because Obama has signed on with giving trillions to rich people and screwing over the middle and working class.  Trust me on this, that’s what’s happening and will happen.  The next twenty years economically are going to be worse than the last twenty, and Obama had options which would have made that not so.

Furthermore, only people who threaten to walk, get things. If you will vote Obama/Democrat no matter what, why would they give you anything?

They wouldn’t, and they won’t.

The President’s Afghanistan Speech

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On December 1, 2009

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Actually, pretty good (at least the written form).  Of course, I think he’s just throwing good money and lives after bad, but so be it.  The strategy is clear “surge, get some temporary gains, call it a victory, get the hell out”.  Same as Iraq.

In a larger sense, same as the overall economic/financial strategy.  Throw money at it, without any real intention of fixing fundamentals.

The Real Question isn’t about Summers Judgment

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On November 29, 2009

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So, a story about how Summers ignored repeated warnings about risking Harvard’s endowment:

It happened at least once a year, every year. In a roomful of a dozen Harvard University financial officials, Jack Meyer, the hugely successful head of Harvard’s endowment, and Lawrence Summers, then the school’s president, would face off in a heated debate. The topic: cash and how the university was managing – or mismanaging – its basic operating funds.

Through the first half of this decade, Meyer repeatedly warned Summers and other Harvard officials that the school was being too aggressive with billions of dollars in cash, according to people present for the discussions, investing almost all of it with the endowment’s risky mix of stocks, bonds, hedge funds, and private equity. Meyer’s successor, Mohamed El-Erian, would later sound the same warnings to Summers, and to Harvard financial staff and board members.

“Mohamed was having a heart attack,’’ said one former financial executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering Harvard and Summers. He considered the cash investment a “doubling up’’ of the university’s investment risk.

But the warnings fell on deaf ears, under Summers’s regime and beyond. And when the market crashed in the fall of 2008, Harvard would pay dearly, as $1.8 billion in cash simply vanished. Indeed, it is still paying, in the form of tighter budgets, deferred expansion plans, and big interest payments on bonds issued to cover the losses.

What does this say about Summers judgement?  What does it say about the man who may be more in charge of Barack Obama’s administration’s economic policy than anyone else?

And the real question almost no one wants to ask, what does it say about Barack Obama’s judgment that he made this man his chief economic adviser and keeps him as his main economic adviser?

As Sean-Paul Kelley said, somehow everyone’s willing to take shots at people like Summers and Geithner, but not at the Czar:

This is just irritating.

I think the president is [focused on Main Street],” Brown told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think the vice president is. I think the advisers are mixed.”

The Ohio Democrat was responding to a handful of House members — Democrats and Republicans alike — who this past week had criticized Timothy Geithner for mishandling the bank bailout and failing to spur small business lending. Those members have called for the Treasury Secretary’s resignation in light of these perceived failures.

What Sherrod Brown is basically saying is this: “I love the Czar, Long Live the Czar, but down with his ministers.” Seriously, this is a narrative trope straight out of Czarist Russia, when the peasants, long oppressed and over-taxed bemoan the fact that their Czar loves them, but is surrounded by evil ministers. Brown knows better.

If the emperor is surrounded by bad advisers, the emperor is ultimately to blame.  He chose them, not the other way around.

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