Tag: obama

Post election, the Right is still Wrong!

t is worth remembering that those choices were in essence inherited by the president, who is still new to his office

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According to  GOP pundits, everything is still the Democrats fault, as good old Joe Conason reports in TruthDig: ” As Barack Obama’s economic advisers confront choices that vary from bad to worse in their mission to revive the financial sector and the broader economy, it is worth remembering that those choices were in essence inherited by the president, who is still new to his office. Listening to his critics, especially on the right, it would be easy to believe that the president is personally responsible for ballooning deficits, gigantic bailouts, ridiculous bonuses, nationalized institutions and careening markets. It would be easy to believe but it’s entirely false—and merely the latest episode in an old political con game that is all too typical of Washington.  Ever since Election Day 2008, the usual suspects have been hard at work, deflecting responsibility from the Bush administration (and the Republicans in Congress) for the catastrophic effects of conservative policy enacted during the past eight years. Within days after Obama’s victory, as stock prices fell, radio host and ideological commissar Rush Limbaugh exclaimed that we were already in the “Obama recession.”” …Among the boldest perpetrators of this con game over the past few decades is Limbaugh, who shares with his fellow Republicans a peculiar method of timing the blame for economic woe. When he was flacking for the first President Bush back in 1992, he wrote: “The worst economic period in the last 50 years was under Jimmy Carter, which led to the 1981-82 recession, a recession more punishing than the current one.” But of course the president during the 1982 recession was not named Carter; that president was the sainted Ronald Reagan.”

Looking at the national stated unemployment rate:

Nov 1976 Carter elected 7.8%

Nov 1978 Carter mid term 5.9%

Nov 1980 Regan elected 7.6%  (N.B.: many Were Better off than in 76!)

Nov 1982 Regan midterm 10.8%

Nov 1992 Clinton elected 7.4%

Nov 2000 Bush selected 3.9%

Nov 2002 Bush mid term 5.9%

Nov 2008 Obama elected 6.8%

Compare these numbers to Limbaughs lies…

see: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090325_the_con_game_of_blame/

There is a chance that the worst is over…

Today, stocks are up roughly 20 percent in the past two weeks, the biggest such short-term rally since 1938

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“In October, all three asset classes — stocks, bonds and commodities such as oil and farm products — were in freefall. Today, stocks are up roughly 20 percent in the past two weeks, the biggest such short-term rally since 1938.” 

Biggest short term rally since 1938?

From McClatchy: “WASHINGTON — With the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising around 20 percent over the past few weeks, a down Friday notwithstanding, the question on many lips is whether the stock market has hit bottom and, if so, when might the broader economy follow?

Stock prices often reflect expectations of how the economy will be faring six months or so into the future. If the recent rise in stock prices reflects that the market has bottomed out and is starting a bull run — as some prominent analysts tentatively suggest — that would point to a turnaround for the economy by late summer or early fall.

Few analysts are willing to declare that we’ve hit bottom without hedging, especially since there’s been plenty of premature speculation before about a market bottom during the past 16 months of recession. As if to mock the budding optimism, the Dow closed down Friday by 148.38 points to 7,776.18.

Most analysts now agree, however, that there are some encouraging shafts of light after months of pitch-black news.

“The best news now is that despite the worst . . . daily litany of horrible news, the strongest renewed bank fears, despite all of that, we’ve got stocks today essentially where they were in October,” said James Paulsen, chief investment strategist for Wells Capital Management, owned by the giant bank Wells Fargo.”

see: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/64992.html

Who’s on first?

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Once again, our President has been misquoted in the mainstream.  From HuffPost, on The View:

“Elisabeth then asked if Senator McCain felt vindicated at having called the fundamentals of the economy strong during his campaign, only for President Obama to use similar language recently. “Yeah, I think so,” Meghan responded. “It’s ironic it’s the exact language and the exact terms he used earlier. I am sure he does feel vindicated.”

However, Obama did not use exactly the same language as his former rival. “If we are keeping focused on all the fundamentally sound aspects of our economy, all the outstanding companies, workers, all the innovation and dynamism in this economy, then we’re going to get through this,”Obama said last week. McCain simply stated that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong.”

Once again, what the President, who choses words with care, actually said, and, what was paraphrased, are far apart.

see; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/16/meghan-mccain-on-the-view_n_175319.html

Democrats closing ranks…

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Let’s make Will Rogers wrong!

From YAHOO NEWS: “http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090315/pl_politico/20008

“A broad coalition of left-leaning groups is quietly closing ranks into a new coalition, “Unity ’09,” aimed at helping President Barack Obamapush his agenda through Congress.”

“The online-based MoveOn.org is a central player in the nascent organization, but other groups involved in planning Unity ’09 span a broad spectrum of interests, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the National Council of La Raza to Planned Parenthood, as well as labor unions and environmental groups.

The group is still in its early stages, and its organizers have adopted a secretive posture: Several of the people involved did not respond to emails over the last two days, even though one of them, former MoveOn executive director Eli Pariser, has programmed his MoveOn email account to assure correspondents that he is using the account for messages “including Unity ’09 work.”

“But Unity ’09 is setting a broader, and longer-term agenda, aiming to exert grassroots pressure on lawmakers in their home states over the next several years on the entire spectrum of political issues.

“When progressive activists are working in concert and the right is forming a circular firing squad, you know it’s a new day,” said consultant Paul Begala, who said he’s not involved in the new organization.

Unity ’09 is, informally, the field organizing compliment to another new organization, Progressive Media , which launched a month ago to coordinate the liberal groups’ messages and their attacks on Republicans and on critics of Obama’s policies. That group’s 8:45 a.m. daily conference call has helped bring such unlikely groups as the League of Conservation Voters into an effort to cast Rush Limbaugh as the leader of theRepublican Party, and has coordinated attacks on two leading critics of Obama’s health care plans.

But while Progressive Media is an in-house project of two existing organizations, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters, Unity ’09 requires more commitment from its members in the form of a $25,000 contribution to the group’s future organizing campaigns, a source said.”

It gets even better: “The new organization is likely to stir fears among conservatives already feeling organizationally outgunned and flatly alarmed by the new progressive infrastructure.

“This, ladies and gentlemen is, a threat to America,” Fox News‘s Bill O’Reilly said, responding Saturday night to POLITICO’s report on the birth of Progressive Media and its morning conference call. “The Obama administration would be wise to avoid this crew. If the new administration gets involved in this, it would be like the Nixon dirty tricks squad.”

N.B.: Will Rogers used to quip:  ” I don’t belong to an organized political party – I’m a Democrat”.

Our New Deal:What Obama and Congress can learn from the Depression of the 1930’s

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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana).

“Those who control the past control the future, and those who control the present control the past” (George Orwell).

On Nov. 5, 2008,I decided that our situation was closer to 1933 than 1993, and decided to reinvestigate the New Deal, which was the name Pres. Roosevelt gave to the programs of Relief, Recovery, and Reform that defined his administration.   The changes included relief for the unemployed, recovery of the economy by: Keynesian spending;  agricultural aid; direct help to industry; and reform of business, finance, and housing.  In addition, Social Security – a series of insurance programs to help the elderly, protect the survivors who lose a wage earner, and provide for the disabled – was established, and support for organized labor became law.  Some of the programs were invalidated by the Supreme Court, but many remain to this day.  The effects of the New Deal?

The GDP recovered to exceed the 1929 level by 1936, and then took a dip in 37-38, recovering to climb on war spending.

Social programs, such as Social Security, unemployment insurance, and the FHA are still in place.

Financial reforms, such as the FDIC, SEC, and others are also still in place.

Organized labor, strengthened by the Wagner Act, enabled many blue collar Americans to increase their standard of living in the post war economy,  and consume more of what America produced.

When The Roosevelt administration yielded to conservative pressure, and reduced spending in 1937, the economy took a dip.

The TVA, and other infrastructure programs, were successful in both providing gainful employment, and in providing needed facilities.

What are the lessons?

o Keynesian spending does work, provided it is not too little.

o Relief, in the form of safety nets, does work.

o Don’t listen to conservatives: it was their polices that got us where we are.

o A crisis can provide the moment for major reforms – ignore those who say we should not try to do too much.

o As J.K. Galbraith observed ( in “The Affluent Society”), strong unions negotiate good wages, which enable workers to consume more of what they make.  (It might be noted that the relaxation of regulation and dilution of wages are major contributors to our current economic problems.)

While it could be argued that the US economy did not recover fully until WWII, I offer:

o If we had kept spending in 1937, there would have been no drop.

o The strengthening and expansion of the central government under the New deal provided the precedents, methodologies, and structures that were necessary for the massive efforts required to win the war, which ended with the US as the most powerful country in the world.  (It may be noted that new centralized programs we create under the Obama administration will help us bring our infrastructure, education, economy, energy polices, and health care systems into the 21st century, and then maintain them for generations to come.)

As for those who say the new Deal failed? Perhaps in their short sighted view they oppose relief and strong unions, but they cannot disagree that the US economy, up until we became dependent on Middle Eastern Oil, and paid dividends rather than modernize, was on top of the world.

In closing:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana).

“Those who control the past control the future, and those who control the present control the past” (George Orwell).

We chose Which family ?

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Palin vs. Johnston:  In “Joe the plummer” terms: “If you are going to talk the talk, then you had better walk the walk.” 

John Ridley observes in HuffPost: “From the time that “Family Values” became an empty phrase regularly trotted around the political arena with all the reverence of the last surviving soldier of a war that was never actually fought, the totality of the family which occupies the White House has reached the same level of curiosity as the quadrennial question of whether or not a presidential candidate can bowl above one hundred.  The shocking, never-saw-it-coming implosion of the forced relationship between Bristol Palin and self-described “f***in’ redneck” Levi Johnston underscores the fact that America sent the right family to Washington.  With regard to Bristol and Levi, regardless of how loving, committed, devoted and generally available a parent is, no parent can guarantee how far an apple will fall from the tree. However, knowing that, no parent should seek higher office on the rhetoric of abstinence only/ sanctity of marriage/gays-are-ruining-family-for-us so let me impose my “values” on you for you. Especially when the empirical evidence is those “values” do not work beneath the very roof from which they are being espoused.” 

Make that Correct, Better family, not the ‘right’ family, as ‘right’ is usually wrong!

 

 

see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/obama-v-palin-america-pic_b_174868.html

The ideologies that failed

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Frank Schaeffer – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Schaeffer – a former religious right Republican, addresses his former party:  “You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have thenerve to criticize the “architect” America just hired — President Obama — to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.

I used to be one of you…. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today’s wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson’s and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!

With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party — you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today’s fifth column sabotaging American renewal.

President Obama has been in office barely 45 days and the Republican Party has the nerve to blame him for the economic and military cataclysm he inherited.” 

Thank you Mr. Schaeffer, and here we hope the  GOP ignores you & continues its current path…

see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/open-letter-to-the-republ_b_172822.html

Redistribution from those who have too much, to those who have too little

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E. J. Dionne, in TruthDig

”  Our political system adjusts badly when the familiar landmarks erected during controversies of the past are swept away and prepackaged arguments become obsolete.

    Starting with this week’s congressional budget hearings, it will be imperative to recognize the extent to which President Obama’s fiscal plan and the direction he set in his foreign policy speech on Friday have transformed the terms of the nation’s debate.

    The central issue in American politics now is whether the country should reverse a three-decade-long trend of rising inequality in incomes and wealth.

    Politicians will say lots of things in the coming weeks, but they should be pushed relentlessly to address the bottom-line question: Do they believe that a fairer distribution of capitalism’s bounty is essential to repairing a sick economy? Everything else is a subsidiary issue.”

Right on!

see:http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090301_dionne_redistribution/

More on the GOP threat to our Recovery

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“The Ecstasy and the Agony”

Frank was really Rich today, and, amongst his words of celebration, was a warning.  Samples:

“The good news for Obama is that he needn’t worry about the Republicans. They’re committing suicide.”

“…the party is trying to lock down its white country-club blowhards.”

“G.O.P. pseudopopulism ran riot last week as right-wing troops rallied around their latest Joe the Plumber: Rick Santelli, the ranting CNBC foe of Obama’s mortgage rescue program….The Santelli revolution’s flameout was just another confirmation that hard-core Republican radicals are now the G.O.P.’s problem, not the president’s. Rahm Emanuel has it right when he says the administration must try bipartisanship, but it doesn’t have to succeed. Voters give Obama credit for trying, and he can even claim success with many Republican governors, from Schwarzenegger to Crist. Now he can move on and let his childish adversaries fight among themselves, with Rush Limbaugh as the arbitrating babysitter. (Last week he gave Jindal a thumb’s up.)”

Mr Rich goes on to warn us on potential problems.

see: “http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/opinion/01rich.html?ref=opinion”

The author sees the current GOP media situation as being caused by, among other facts:

o  They are so used to being able to run all over Democrats, minorities, the under-privileged,  and ‘Liberals’,that they do not yet realize may people are living in hard times, and wish a different message.

o They don’t yet realize the impact of the opposition having control of the executive and legislative branches.

Does the GOP stumbling mean we can go on auto-pilot and win the next three elections?  No, we must work hard, but we will take all of the help we can get!

A True Paradigm Shift: Ultra Rich helping those in need

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NY Times Columist Nicholas Kristoff writes today that we have a President who is more strategic: “Most presidents are tacticians, but President Obama is a strategist. His budget suggests that he aspires to be an echo of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, harnessing his charisma, vision and political capital to transport America to a different place.

The absurd system of health coverage we now have is a historical accident from World War II. Because of wage controls, employers competed for workers by offering health insurance as a fringe benefit — and so we’re stuck today with a system in which the loss of a job is compounded by the loss of health insurance.

Titanic ambitions encounter titanic opposition, and opponents of health reform are already rehearsing the arguments that they successfully used in the past:

We have the best health care in the world, and you want to create a socialized bureaucracy? You want to wait months for a necessary operation, as in Canada? And you really want higher taxes to pay for this, stifling the economy and undermining our long-term competitiveness?

So let’s examine those arguments.:

It’s true that the existing system offers top-line medical care. Yet over all, it is preposterous to argue that we have the best medical care in the world….McKinsey Global Institute found that the United States spends about $650 billion more on health care each year than one would expect for a country at its income level. That’s $2,100 per American, and it’s one gauge of the waste of our existing system….Repairing the system is thus not only a moral imperative but also an economic one. So if our health system is broken, is it really so awful that we increase taxes for the wealthiest Americans to make repairs? In 1980, the top-earning 1 percent of Americans accounted for 8 percent of the total income pie; by 2006, they grabbed nearly 23 percent.?”

see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/opinion/01Kristof.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Right on Mr. K!