Not For Wealthy Financial Moguls

Conservative much?

The outrage over the AIG bonus payments that has dominated the news and really, much of our national psyche the last week gave me pause to really think about what a mess we are in.  I’ve already professed my financial acumen (can’t balance a checkbook) but I still have some ideas on what might be wrong.  I’m going to once again trust the new political administration our Nation elected to get us out of this mess, be it seems President Obama is deadly serious about his plan to change how we do business in Washington D.C., including how we regulate our financial industry.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/21/obama-makes-pitch-for-his_n_177618.html

More specifically on the financial industry: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/politics/22regulate.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

 

Then, I began to think about the opposition the Obama Administration faces in the very tired ideas of the Republican Party.  So it made me think of just what do Republicans stand for?  Don’t they pretend to be for the “common people” the “salt of the earth” citizens who are looking to work their way up in society?  Then why have conservatives worked so damned hard to make sure Wall Street Moguls go unregulated, unwatched and unfettered.  They let the Fox (ooh, I like that) watch the henhouse for so long we are just about financially and morally bankrupt.  So I looked up their party platform and pulled out some…tah dah…talking points (if you use this phrase you sound like you know what you are talking about) directly from americanconservativeparty.org.  And away we go;

1.       1, The legitimacy of government exists only as long as it defends human liberty. (Bush and more specifically Cheney really mucked this up with their whole “we can torture prisoners because we are bigger than you policy”, not much defensible here)

2.       2, The self-ownership evident in human liberty begets basic rights over one’s self and time, and that the right to pursue happiness and self-fulfillment originate here. (Here’s the deal, the Republican leaders cannot speak against Rush Limbaugh without immediately having to kiss his ass and beg forgiveness, and they have been voting in blocks, so much for that one.)

3.       3. The boundary of human liberty ends where it transgresses the rights of another. Jurisprudence exists to mediate disputes where the boundaries of more than one individual intersect.  (My observation on this is that some conservatives have MORE rights than others.  Wealthy, influential Republicans can basically tell people who are not like them [ethnically, financially or socially] they can just shut up and keep voting for the elephant symbol.)

4.       4. The armed forces and law enforcement exist to bolster private defense, not to supplant it.  (Almost all of my friends have guns so I won’t tell them I think they are loonies, I will just make one point, the Liberal leadership in Washington would just like you to not have fully automatic rifles, but other than that, go for it and “get yer deer”.)

5.       5. That the American Experiment was born out of these beliefs and that it has resulted in a bountiful gain for the human condition. (I’ll give them this one in theory, but it was about religious freedom and the right to worship as one would choose to begin with more than anything else.  Ironic in that a very specific type of religious belief forms the very core of the Republican Party as we know it.)

Spring is here and that alone should put you in a brighter frame of mind.  Meanwhile remember adults are in charge at the Whitehouse now.  Dick Cheney, while still a Dick, is not Vice-President.  I think we might just make it, but we have to keep trying.  Praying wouldn’t hurt either.

Happy Reading.

"Blain is a pain and that's the truth"

The Truth

Who does this economy belong to?  Last week, with DOW numbers falling like a paralyzed falcon, the mainstream media (MSM) was quoting conservatives left and right that President Obama’s plans were not being well received on Wall Street, Main Street or your street.  This past week, with a modest but heartwarming upturn in the financial news, no such stories appeared in your local news or in your local newspapers.  Why is that? 

Who does this economy belong to?  The Republicans, desperate as a party, are obstructing, denouncing and flatly rebelling against the Obama administration attempts to rescue the country.  The self-appointed or Whitehouse appointed head of the party, Rush Limbaugh’s words still echo, “I want him to fail”.  While the Washington Post is opining, “Over the past month, Obama has reminded the public at every turn that he is facing problems "inherited" from the Bush administration, using increasingly bracing language to describe the challenges his administration is up against. The "deepening economic crisis" that the president described six days after taking office became "a big mess" in remarks this month to graduating police cadets in Columbus, Ohio.”

The Huffington Post Sam Stein writes of White House officials trying to “talk up” the economy as much as they can: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/13/summers-consumer-confiden_n_174648.html

The Republicans keep pointing out, wrongly, the spending of FDR did not improve the economy in the Great Depression, and the key observation in this argument is the downturn in 1936-37. This is as close to a "scientific experiment" as there can be in macroeconomics: from '33 to '36 Roosevelt unleashed the New Deal and what passed at the time as massive spending. The GDP grew every year by double-digits.  Then, in a reversion to his true roots as a fiscal conservative, FDR decided that it was time to slash spending to balance the budget. The economy contracted. Then in '38, realizing the error of his ways, Roosevelt started spending again, and GDP grew every year thereafter.  Yet you will continue to hear Republicans cite FDR’s plan as a failed experiment over and over again, as if repeating it will make it the truth.

I’ve already admitted in an earlier post I’m an economic novice, so I guess you will have to decide.  At the time of this writing the Obama Administration is about 60-days old.  My common sense tells me that this economic crisis has been years in the making, and that the housing bubble was just one bubble that was artificial.  The lack of oversight on Wall Street (Madoff was LITERALLY unchecked-sorry about the caps, I hate them too) and the big time bankers made out like bandits and still are…while running our financial institutions into the ground.

Sources of Amusement

Sarah Palin and George W. Bush.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19996.html

blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/03/palin-v-politic.html

Happy reading.

The President's Lost Week

Bum’s Rush

It was all going so well.  Rush Limbaugh had been tagged as the Republican leader, well; he was because no one could stand up to his rants without scorn.  Senators, Republican National Committee leaders and such were kissing his ring.  Obama’s popularity rating was going up even as the Stock Markets dived.  Then the cat got out of the bag.

It seems it was leaked that Paul Begala and James Carville, Democratic Party strategists and friends with Rahm Emmanuel, he of the White House are all good buddies.  Carville who so brilliantly managed Bill Clinton’s campaigns had learned in some polling that Rush Limbaugh had a lower approval rating than Jeremiah Wright.  Yes, that Jeremiah Wright, the radical preacher the Republicans tried to pin to Obama during the Presidential Campaign.  While Rush’s ditto-heads are loyal to a fault (understatement) the populace as a whole think Limbaugh is a gas bag. 

Phone calls were made to Emmanuel from Begala/Carville and before you know it, Rahm Emmanuel pinned the Republican leader tag on Rush.  Only they “got found out”.  I’m sure it wasn’t a pleasant conversation when President Obama, who had beseeched the Washington set to “set aside” childish behavior, read the riot act to these political funsters.    

Oh ok, so it worked, and the President’s popularity soared, but it ate up a whole week of news and the Country really needs the Republicans to play nice.  They Republicans were not doing so well on their own…eating their young (Steele, Jindal) and generally floundering around.  David Frum of Newsweek chimed in, “Rush is to the Republicanism of the 2000s what Jesse Jackson was to the Democratic Party in the 1980s. He plays an important role in our coalition, and of course he and his supporters have to be treated with respect. But he cannot be allowed to be the public face of the enterprise—and we have to find ways of assuring the public that he is just one Republican voice among many, and very far from the most important. “

It’s time for the White House, Mr. Emmanuel, to drop this and let the corpulent Limbaugh hang himself. On his radio show Friday, Rush Limbaugh suggested that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would be dead by the time health care reform legislation passes. "Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy memorial health care bill,” So you see…just send him a box of chocolate covered Oxycontin and your problems are over.

Follow-up

Republican Party National Chairman, Michael Steele, is in trouble with his own party: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/us/politics/08steele.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

Meanwhile, Governor Bobby Jindal seems to be viewed as more of a Napoleon Dynamite than a serious Presidential Candidate: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19722.html.

 

Happy reading.

Bum's Rush

CPAC, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 

The Conservative Political Action Committee met this weekend and to my thinking, the conservative movement as part of the Republican Party is imploding.  Florida Governor Charlie Crist (R) was practically booed off the stage because he had spoken out earlier that his State needed stimulus dollars and he would gladly accept them (he was not, by far the only Governor to do so but he lives in big populous swing State).  The keynote speaker of the convention was, as Keith Olberman refers to him, comedian Rush Limbaugh.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/28/rush-limbaugh-at-cpac-dou_n_170792.html

Not only did Limbaugh reiterate his desire for President Obama to fail, he fell just a step short of the Boston Tea Party speech of revolution that some even more radical than Rush (true enough) seemed to advocate.  Probably the most embarrassing moment came from Michelle Bachman (R-Minnesota): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/26/michele-bachmann-tells-mi_n_170426.html  I’m as un-hip as any man alive and that was preposterous to me. 

Chess match

I see the Obama administration moving their pieces with a very fascinating design.  I’m not a chess master, but I think the Obama people are painting Rush Limbaugh and his ditto-head following into the proverbial corner.  Not missing any opportunity to make Rush Limbaugh the figurehead of the GOP, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel called the brash talk show host the "voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party" on Sunday.

Appearing on CBS's Face The Nation, Emanuel brought up Limbaugh without being prompted. Applauding the conservative radio personality for being upfront in his desire to see the president fail, Emanuel went to great lengths to make the case that Limbaugh, more than any other contemporary figure, is the leader of the GOP.

Republicans now have the dilemma…the classic argument.   What is distressing or painful about a dilemma is having to make a choice one does not want to make.  Either they rebuke the “Rush” or embrace him.   If they dismiss him, they stand to lose significant base support (now there is a double meaning) or showing their constituencies they want Obama to fail.  Over all, my comment is, “well played, Mr. President, well played.