Left In Lowell

Why I forget some weeks to read Digby and her cohorts is beyond me. Read all of this.

There was a lot of talk during the transition about how economists and elites of all political ideologies knew something major had to be done, and they must have thought they would just coast to a quick victory on this plan. But that’s not what’s happening, as the conservative noise machine forced an argument about small particulars rather than the need to have a massive job creation program as soon as possible to stave off disaster. The bill was pre-compromised and nothing like a Roosevelt-era New Deal but it would be enough to spur job creation, save a lot more jobs that would be eliminated, and face down the abyss of massive job loss and a deflationary spiral. And while ultimately, Republicans may “lose” in that something will be enacted, they will have won because they will preserve the fundamental argument that government spending is negative and suspicious while tax cuts are always positive and righteous. Their goal is to muck up the bill enough to discredit it and make it functionally inoperable, purely for reasons of party and not country.

There are some damn good finds in there, including this little piece of history, where Rick Perlstein explores the role of the shift in public opinion on economics to a precurser of Clintonism, Wisconsin Democratic senator William Proxmire.

Proxmire, who left public service in 1989 and died in 2005, may be best remembered—it’s what I remember—for a monthly publicity stunt called the “Golden Fleece Award,” bestowed upon what he would claim was the month’s most wasteful and ridiculous pockets of government spending. The pundits fell in love with the notion’s good-government pretensions, and for all I know the stunt did the nation some good paring the federal budget of waste, fraud, and abuse.

I suspect, though, the exercise was largely a silly waste of time. One of my professors in graduate school won a Golden Fleece award. Senator Proxmire awarded it for a supposed grant to fund her “mountain climbing hobby.” Actually, she’s one of the nation’s most distinguished anthropologists. She has never climbed a mountain in her life, but used her field work among the Sherpas of Nepal to arrive at some of the most incisive theorizing extant on how societies work. Second-guessing the peer-review process of National Science Foundation grants made for nifty headlines. But it was also numbingly reactionary. According to the Wikipedia entry on Proxmire, the prizes sometimes “went to basic science projects that led to important breakthroughs.”

We don’t just need a change in Washington, we need a change in general perception of what is useful in government spending. The plague of Reaganism has created the least economically equal society in the post-WWII era, contributing to the decline of the middle class and increasing the levels of poverty, while enriching a few and making our system incredibly precarious and prone to abuses (S&L, Enron, Lehman Brothers). Anyway, you are commanded to go read dday over at Digby’s place, in full.

A few days ago, I wrote about the EU response to the “Buy American” clause of the stimulus. And though I understand the impulse (”we’re spending American taxpayer money so it ought to be on American goods”) I’m not sure we’re ready for the consequences. A friend of mine in Canada sent these thoughts to me (via email). And yes, Canadians don’t put z’s in ize’d words.

I don’t think people realise the extent to which economies are intertwined today.

Take Plug Power for example … a company in upstate NY that supplies clean power solutions. They are the one bright light in a fairly depressed area of the state. They could play a huge rule in the various investments … particularly in mobile power sources. But if the Buy American clause passes they will be excluded from it and probably go bankrupt as a result. Why the exclusion? Although the delivery systems are built and assembled in NYC, the actual power pack is a hydrogen fuel cell designed and manufactured in BC by Ballard Power.

If you want to know the disastrous potential impacts look at the Smoot Hawley Tariff bill of 1930. It was brought into force to try and protect American jobs. Other nations slammed their own tariff barriers into place in retaliation and the value of world trade dropped by two thirds … that’s right … two thirds in the space of two years.

This whole buy American thing is a knee jerk reaction that doesn’t address the real problem of productivity. I mean the reason so many of your South East wood mills are unproductive is because they were protected by punitive tariffs on Canadian wood for so long that they didn’t need to upgrade … we had to upgrade just to compete … and the longer the tariff stayed in place the worse it got.

Anyway … instead of looking at the job losses I would like every American who works in an export related field to get a little note on their paycheck that shows just what portion of that comes from exports.

This is too simple a reaction to too complex a problem.

Now, my friend’s viewpoints are what are considered relatively conservative, at least in the pro-business sense, for Canada and British Columbia, specifically. But he knows a lot about these trade issues and he makes a very compelling point. It appears the Buy American clause did not get taken out of the Senate version of the stimulus in the latest round, so this is a very relevant discussion.

The airwaves have been filled with victim Republicans whiiiiining and moooooaning about two things: one, that Obama wasn’t bipartisan (read: bending over) enough! They want to leave you with the impression that they got nothing they wanted from this bill (when in reality, they just don’t understand the meaning of “being in the minority” and “compromise”). And two, that the stimulus bill is chock-full of a million pieces of “pork.”

Of course, they’re lying to you. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake outlines the actual process whereby this stimulus bill passed in the House. Though she’s writing about how Pelosi is being thrown under the bus by Rahm, it’s relevant for also showcasing just how little the Republicans really should be whining like the little victims that they think they are.

The Obama transition team has been working on the substance of the bill from day one. Their first step was to go to the Association of Mayors, the National Governors’ Associations and other non-congressional groups and say “give us all your shovel-ready projects.” That and other provisions written by the Obama team became the spine of the bill. It went through only three committee markups, and moved through the House at lightening speed in a way that made many House chairs unhappy, with the notable exception of Dave Obey (now also under attack) who helped push it through quickly.

The House bill is notable not only for its size but also because it had no earmarks, which are the lifeblood of House members, the way they show their constituents what they’re doing for them. As one person knowledgable about the writing of the bill says, “if you’re in the House why would you write a bill without earmarks unless you didn’t write the bill?”

So, if the bill went through largely as Obama wanted it, without earmarks, based on the work the Obama people did asking the people on the ground (mayors and governors) and what they can get done, and it included an awful large chunk of tax cuts to try and entice Republicans, how exactly do Republicans justify their whining sessions on TV again? Oh right, Republicans never need to justify anything, just clap really hard and maybe the fairy will come back to life.

Take the word of an actual GOP House member. Someone who is actually right up there in terms of big names in the Republican minority, Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas.

“Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes. And these Taliban — I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.”

Republicans lost the majority, were resoundingly rejected at the polls, and this is their strategy? Again, if it weren’t that we’re facing a crisis, I’d be hoping for more of this - nothing like comparing yourself to a hated enemy of the United States when trying to discuss your opposition. It explains so much…

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. That’s not good news, it’s a form of cancer that’s particularly deadly and aggressive. The article says they did catch it early, so maybe that helps.

I’ve always really liked Justice Ginsburg, her viewpoints and her toughness. Good luck to her and her family.

Via AMERICAblog again, TPM reports that 36 out of 41 Republican’ts voted to strip the stimulus of ALL, yes, read that again, ALL spending of any sort.

OMFG. What Josh says.

This approaches flat earth territory in terms of where the economy is right now and what conventional macroeconomics suggests about how to combat the problem.

Does a nondeadly flu virus exist that strikes only Republicans? That would be really convenient right now. Just knock a good lot of them on their butts until the grownups can pass the real stimulus bill. What stupid farm do they get these guys? ROME IS BURNING! So, let’s debate whether or not to spend money on aqueducts, or roads. GAHHHH!

By the way, the sane Republicans are the ones you expect - Susan Collins (ME), George Voinovich (OH), Arlen Specter (PA), and Olympia Snowe (ME).

The rich in the country are always the first to scream “class war!” at any hint of fair redistribution (like more progressive income taxes) or, in the most recent case, when Obama says any top execs at big corporation receiving our hard earned taxpayer money must take a salary cap of $500,000. (I mean, who can live off of a mere $500,00??? It’s murder! Taking very expensive food from their children’s mouths!)

Via AMERICAblog, I found this great post by Cliff Mason over at normally-business-shilling CNBC. I’ll excerpt it, but go read.

When it comes to the real class war, the stuff that matters, not just optics about CEO earnings, the rich are thrashing the rest of us, just like they always do.

It’s class war when Washington passes a $700 billion TARP bailout for Wall Street with feverish haste, but struggles to pass an $800 to $900 billion stimulus package for everybody else.

Think about that for a second.

Bail out the banks, no problem! But give a helping hand to poor, working class, and middle class people? That we have to debate endlessly. Washington knows how to bail out the rich, but our incredibly popular President is having trouble bailing out the other 99% of the country.

That, my friends, is class war. And it’s so institutionalized that we don’t even realize it’s going on.

The real class war is what’s happening to the poor and middle class. The gap between rich and poor has done nothing but increase for decades under our modern policy of allowing business to do what they will, then rewarding failure by bailing them out (because we have no other choice…because not propping them up would utterly destroy all of us). Republicans are so far on the wrong side of this debate, I would venture to guess that their current “obstruct all stimulus that ain’t tax cuts” binge will erode their popularity much further. The Republicans have not hit “bottom” yet - and they certainly haven’t admitted they have a problem.

Fine for us political types that really want to see the Republicans become a strictly regional party with very little chance of recovering in less than a generation or two, but meanwhile, people are getting laid off. Idiots. I hope you all choke on your “newfound unity,” bitches.