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

Category: Barack Obama Page 8 of 13

Why, Virginia, Would You Think the President Isn’t Willing to See Abortion Rights Slip Away?

If only the king will save us:

While anti-choice zealots may have the necessary votes to uphold the 20-week ban regardless of John Paul Stevens’ replacement, this is why the Court matters so much. The right has used judicial appointments in a blatantly political fashion, and unless the President is willing to see basic rights stripped away, he must act boldly.

Now, odds are that the new nominee will be pro-abortion rights.  But anyone who thinks Obama isn’t willing to sell abortion rights down the river in exchange for things he values more (like giving money to corporations) wasn’t paying attention during the health care reform fight, were they?

If pro-choice organizations want to make sure their rights aren’t sold down the river any further, they need to make clear that if they are, Obama will pay a price. Obama doesn’t respond to left-wingers asking nicely, he doesn’t pre-emptively make concessions to left wingers.  He only does those things for right wingers, as with giving away off-shore drilling without getting anything in return.

Given pro-choice organizations impotence during the HCR, I think we’d best just pray that whoever Obama wants on the court is pro-choice by happenstance.

Insanity is Doing the Same Thing and Expecting Different Results: Real Reform Means Reinstituting Glass-Steagall at Full Strength and Breaking Up Financial Conglomerates

Ok, enough already. I’m sick of people talking about modern markets as if they are something wonderful. No, they aren’t. Obama was absolutely right during the election, they completely fell down on their job, not just for the last 8 years, but for most of the last 28 —whenever Republicans were in charge, and a fair bit when Dems were in charge. Ordinary people haven’t had a raise in damn near 30 years. This is success?

I simply, completely, and utterly fail to see what is so wonderful about the process of securitization. Sure, it allows you to create more financial products. Sure, it reduces the cost of capital somewhat. But are we really better off because of securitization? Of course we aren’t. Without securitization this current market meltdown would have been a hell of a lot milder. What securitization does is take the risk and spread it from the people who might be able to understand it and control it (the people actually issuing the mortgages, for example) to a ton of people who could not possibly know the risk even if they wanted to.

Ratings agency reform is not the solution, they completely fell down on the job and even if incentives were changed they are still not in a position to know whether a mortgage from Mr. Smith is legitimate. Are they going to visit the property? Talk to Mr. Smith? Call his employer? Of course not, they can’t. The only people who can are the people who issued the original mortgage.

Nor should risk be transfered much if at all. Risk must stay with the people who issue the mortgage. If they know it’ll be off their books they won’t do proper due diligence, and no one else can do it. At most, risk should be transfered once and must be transfered in whole and understandable form, rather than taking 20 different incomes steams (or more), melding them together, chopping them into tranches and selling them to people who really have no idea what they’re buying, while you’ve booked your profit and washed your hand, so even if you sold them crap, hahahah, it’s their crap now (or so you think.) Risk must be assumed only by people who can understand it and manage it and who are exposed to the consequences of their decisions. (Ability to manage risk, but knowledge that if they don’t they will get hurt.)

Now let’s talk about this idea that the Fed should basically regulate everyone, with the SEC occasionally peeping over it’s shoulder to see whether market manipulation is ocurring. This is necessary because there are, as Obama points out, no longer clear cut differences between banks, insurance companies, investment banks, brokerages and so on. The repeal of Glass-Steagall put an end to those differences. Glass-Steagall, remember was put in place during the Great Depression to stop another Great Depression from occuring. One of the things that people who lived through the 20s believed caused the Great Depression was not having clear cut boundaries between the businesses, again so that risk was divided appropriately and so that fewer companies became “too large to fail”.

But somehow we think we know better than the people who lived through the last Great Depression; the people who lived through the 20’s and the last great market crackup. So we’ve repealed most of Glass-Steagall and allowed everyone to be in everyone else’s pockets, huge financial conglomerates to mushroom into monstrosities, and allowed unregulated “innovative” financial “products” like collateralized debt obligation (CDOs) to grow into such monstrosites that financial markets were huge multiples of the entire real world economy.

Then it all comes crashing down and people claim to be surprised.

Enough, already. Yes, the world is not exactly the same as it was in the 20’s and 30’s, but we didn’t start having these disasters till after Glass-Steagall and other Depression era securities laws started getting repealed. First set in the 80’s, followed by most of the remainder in 99.

It’s time to break up the great financial conglomerates. Force them to cut themselves up and divide back into brokerage houses, investment banks, retail banks, insurance companies and so on. Put them all under the clear control of regulaters. Reinstitute Glass-Steagall, with very mild modernization, and get rid of most complex derivatives, excessive leverage, the carry trade and so on.

Obama was right during the primaries, the philosophy of the past 28 years has been a failure. Why don’t we, why doesn’t he, treat it as so, and re-institute what worked, re-regulate, then slowly modify from there, with complete transparency and strong regulation.

Financial markets exist to serve ordinary Americans and non-financial American businesses. They haven’t been doing that properly. Time to make sure they do.

This is a repost from September 16th 2008.  Very minor changes made to indicate when Obama said it, otherwise it stands the test of time remarkably well—which should tell you that nothing has been done since then.  The greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression, and a year and half later nobody has tried to fix what caused it to happen.  Priorities, priorities…

The American Death Wish

(Kicking this back to the top, it’s eternal, particularly in light of the continued efforts to spin health care reform.)

I’ve been struggling with how to write this post for quite some time. It’s the conversation you have to have with a friend where you have to say “it’s nice that you’re trying as hard as you can George. I even believe you are, but it doesn’t matter. Because George, your best just isn’t good enough.”

Or, as Captain Jack Sparrow would put it, all that matters is what a man can do and what a man can’t do.

Sometimes the world doesn’t grade us on a curve. You need to jump a fence, and you can’t. You need to climb a rock face, and you aren’t good enough. You’re running away from a bear, and you don’t run fast enough. And now you’re dead. You wanted to get into a good grad school, but you don’t have the grades or test scores. You’re in a fight, and the other guy wins, and you wind up on the ground and he puts the boots to you and you’re crippled for life. You tried “your best”, but you lost and you’re going to pay the price for losing for the rest of your life. Maybe you lost because he fought dirty, and you’d rather take a chance of being crippled for life than kick someone in the balls. Maybe you lost because he trained harder than you, and you’d rather go have a drink with your friends.

Or maybe you needed to pay for health care, and you didn’t have the money, and someone you loved died. And they died because you didn’t have the money, and because your country didn’t have universal health care. And maybe you always worked as hard as you could, and you campaigned for health care with all your heart. It doesn’t matter, your child, your wife, your husband—they’re still dead. Your best wasn’t good enough.

Now this is where America is. This is the real world. The United States in aggregate has been living beyond its means for over 30 years now. You have been shipping the real economy overseas. Ordinary families have been going in debt. The government has been going in debt. You’ve been voting yourself lower taxes and not paying for infrastructure reinvestment, or education, or anything else that matters, really. You’ve been spending too much money on guns, not enough on butter. You’ve been pushing the bill off into the future.

And whenever I write about what needs to be done to fix this—simple things like universal healthcare, which we know for a fact reduces health care costs by 1/3, because it has worked for every single other country that’s ever done it, people come out of the woodwork and they tell me “that’s not politically feasible.” Or perhaps I suggest a 55 mile an hour speed limit “that’s not feasible”. Or spending significantly less on the military since half the world’s military spending is a bit overboard. “That’s not politically feasible.” Or raising taxes, “that’s not feasible”. Or… but why go on, the list is endless.

Then Obama comes out with a Stimulus bill which simply will not do the job.  It is not big enough.  It is not well constructed enough.  It has no vision.  It won’t work.  This isn’t really in question, even their own report(pdf), which has the thumb heavily on the scale, shows it won’t work if you take the time to look at the job charts.

A lot of people think this is some academic debate that doesn’t matter in the real word, like “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”. It’s not, it’s deadly practical. The US is in severe decline, it is past the point where any other country would have flamed out and had an economic collapse (Argentina collapsed with better numbers than the US has now, for example). Because of America’s privileged position in the world, it’s been able to stagger on.

Now folks can say “Ian those things aren’t necessary, I think the following steps will fix it” and that’s fine. Could be I’m wrong. Obviously I don’t think so, or I wouldn’t write what I write, but hey, plenty of people have been dead certain they were right, and dead wrong.

But what gets me is that so often what I hear is “that isn’t politically feasible. We can’t do that”. Now, by can’t they don’t mean “those things are impossible” or “we don’t have the means”, what they really mean is “we won’t do them, because they would be hard or they’re outside our ideological comfort zone.”

Fair enough. But if those things are necessary, and if you don’t do them, then the consequence is going to be catastrophe. I don’t mean disaster. New Orleans was a disaster, and it wasn’t enough to wake America up. The current financial crisis was a disaster, and so far it’s looking like it wasn’t enough to convince people that real fundamental changes are needed.

So because no one will do what is necessary, catastrophe will happen. What I mean by this is a severe decline in the US standard of living, probably between 20% to 40%, starting in 4 to 6 years and taking place for a decade. Might happen sooner if folks keep refusing to do what needs to be done to fix the financial crisis and stop it from turning into a worldwide Great Depression.  Even before it happens, you’re going to see real wages declining for Americans while their assets collapse in price.

To see what a precipitous decline in standard of living is like, read up on Russia’s history in the 90’s. A lot of people will die of starvation, of cold, of heat, of lack of medical help and from violence.

That’s just the way it’s going to be. Because while there are no problems that America has that America can’t fix, there also appear to be no problems America has that America is willing to fix properly. And it doesn’t matter why. It just doesn’t matter. The bear doesn’t care why you couldn’t run fast enough when it mauls you to death. When the economy finally goes into full bore collapse, when all the bills come due and everyone decides to stop paying Americans to consume, it won’t matter why Americans thought they could suspend the economic laws of gravity forever and live beyond their means for decades.

It just won’t matter. You can either do what it takes to fix the problems or you can’t. If it’s true that you can’t, then I quite seriously, sadly, and with utmost sincerity suggest that you either start learning how to survive in a societal meltdown, or you get out, or you hope that your number comes up in the next few years so you don’t have to pay the bill that comes due when people think they can live in fantasy land, on credit, forever.

America elected Barack Obama. He’ll have, essentially, two chances to fix things. He’s failing the first one already, with his botched stimulus bill and that’s going to be disastrous. If he fails the second one, that’ll be catastrophe.

So I sure hope that, yes America can.

(Originally posted January 18, 2009 at FDL.  It’s pretty clear now that, no, America can’t.)

How To Save Abortion Rights

Lots of crying amongst women about how their abortion rights are being sold down the line to get this lousy health care bill passed.

I’ll say publicly what I have said privately: start a serious Draft Clinton movement, start it now.  (Her denials of interest won’t matter).

Nothing will change unless Obama personally thinks his own reelection is on the line.  Sitting presidents don’t survive serious challenges from within their own party.

Obama flexes his muscle

And Kucinich caves and agrees to vote on HCR.  Kucinich’s email is a piece of work:

I know I have to make a decision, not on the bill as I would like to see it, but the bill as it is. My criticisms of the legislation have been well reported. I do not retract them. I incorporate them in this statement. They still stand as legitimate and cautionary. I still have doubts about the bill. I do not think it is a first step toward anything I have supported in the past. This is not the bill I wanted to support, even as I continue efforts until the last minute to modify the bill.

Basically, he seems to have gotten nothing for his vote. Nothing.  And he can’t even find a good reason to vote for it.

Obama is proving, again, that he is very good at arm bending.  What I am hearing is that threats are being made to cut off all Democratic party support for many Reps who vote against the bill.  Some blue dogs will be allowed to vote against, but progressives as a group, and even some conservative Dems are expected to bite the bullet, vote for the bill, and suck up the consequences.

This is the moment when Obama flexes his muscle, proves he has control of the party, and that he will use that control against those who stand in his way.  It’s what he has to do, and progressives should take note, because this sort of hardball politics is what they’ll have to do if they ever get in power.

This is the second time Obama has really bent arms.  The first time was the bailout bill, before he was even president, which would not have passed without his intervention, an intervention which I have been told was extremely heavy handed.

It’s a pity that Obama is only good at strong arming Democrats, prefers to strong-arm progressives instead of conservative democrats, strong arms for conservative bills which are giveaways to corporate interests and appears completely incapable of playing any sort of hardball with Republicans, but this is the President that Democrats wanted.

(Full text of Kucinich’s letter after the jump)

Why would anyone think Obama wants to reshape the courts?

The hand wringing about how Obama isn’t using his opportunity to push through liberal judges (or even many judges at all) misses the point.

If he couldn’t even be bothered to replace the majority of the Justice Department’s USA’s, men and women chosen by Bush for their partisan credentials, which is completely within his purview and not subject to Republican filibustering, why would anyone  think that he wants to push the courts to the left?

Who does Obama think is going to support him in 2012?

At this point Obama has

1) not stopped the Bush era raids against Hispanics which is totally at his discretion;
2) not lived up to his promises to gays, and he can stop DADT any time he bloody well wants to;
3) not been willing to protect women’s abortion rights
4) not shown any intention of passing EFCA (a bill helping unions organize)

Unions, women, latinos, gays…

Who does he bloody well think is going to support him in 2012?

Healthcare Wheel Spinning

I can’t say how grateful I am that I didn’t spend the last year working for a blog where my job would have been to report in the minutaie of health care “reform” like it mattered.

Really.

That’s what keeps going through my head.  Most of the entire year was spent on Kabuki, we now know for a fact what was obvious by the summer, Obama never wanted a public option, never wanted a good bill, and was putting together a bill whose fundamental structure was created by cutting deals with pharma, insurance companies and various other health care providers.  It was always intended to be a dog’s breakfast.

I suppose somebody has to be part of the left wing noise machine, however much it amounts to pushing the same boulder up the hill over and over again, then being bitchslapped by your “friends”.  I’ll pass.

The end result of all the fuss is that some people got paychecks, some progressive legislators got donations,  and if a lousy bill passes, it will be no more to the left than Obama originally intended.  In fact, it will amount to a right wing bill intended as a huge giveaway to various powerful interests.

The only good thing which could be said, I suppose, is that for most of a year, various people have been given an education in healthcare economics. Unfortunately, when you get out into the general population, most of what they heard was lies and liberal blog readers already knew that single payer was the way to go.

Clinton was the “spin” presidency.  Bush was the “big lie” presidency.  Obama is the “Kabuki” president—there’s lots of bullshit pretense at consultation and process, but the end result they want is predetermined, and it’s almost always conservative.

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