Pufferfish

Upside Down

That's the latest, most awesomest wingnut marketing idea. It's never explained exactly what the acronym stands for, though I'm assuming  FUBO is a play off of FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition) from Saving Private Ryan. What this gets to is the rage we're seeing from the GOP base in reaction to Obama's bailout and budget proposal. Now, I've long thought that when it comes to economic policies, the GOP base was voting against those offered by Democrats more than they were supporting the GOP' offering up trickle down economics. The idea of Middle America Reagan Dems and the religious right getting whipped up over the thought of slashing the capital gains tax just doesn't compute. Larison picks it up from there:

It has been cultural and social issues along with a (now destroyed) reputation for foreign policy competence that kept the GOP competitive and made Middle Americans into reliable supporters, and it was decidedly not the party’s economic policy that kept these voters from drifting away. Incidentally, this is what makes the push to embrace amnesty and and the call to abandon social conservatism so much more foolish than many other reformist proposals, because these are arguably the only things that hold the majority of the coalition together any longer.

I would add that the “standard conservative economic message” these days is not much of a message at all. Telling voters who pay more in payroll tax that their income tax rates won’t go up (which is all that McCain promised last year) and that someone somewhere is going to get a capital gains tax cut is not compelling to anyone, regardless of their real views on the size and role of government. Calling subsidies and tax credits for people who do pay payroll taxes “welfare” is not going to win anyone’s vote. This is one of the most crucial problems with the Plumberization of the right: the basic complaint about tax policy at the core of the Myth of the Plumber is inaccurate at best. It isn’t just that conservatives rally around symbolic folk heroes, but that they do so in defense of a policy critique that isn’t really valid. In the end, the elevation of the Plumber is what happens when a party and movement are reduced to ridiculing the agenda of their opponents because they have no particularly compelling message of their own.

What we've seen over the last decade is the inversion of the GOP's power structure. That it was ushered in by W. Bush makes sense. Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush 41 were economic, blue blood conservatives who parroted social conservative talking points as a way to get Middle America to vote against its economic interests. They used racial fears and the dirty hippie boogieman to great success, convincing a couple generations of voters that Dems would funnel money to minorities at the expense of whites and our military.

George W Bush was a bridge between the blue bloods and the social conservatives. His lineage was classic fiscal conservatism; his shtick sent Billy Graham lovers into raptures. But his ascension came while the power base within the GOP was turned on its head. Now you have social conservatives running the show while parroting fiscal conservative talking points. Hearing Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin talk about economic policy is disorienting. Sure, they're saying the same things that the GOP has been saying for decades, but the messenger is no longer believable. Who is going to take economic advice from a barely literate, unemployed handyman? The GOP cause has of course also been devastated by external events. Our economic woes are a rejection of their worldview. When you take away the credibility of the message and then strip away the credibility of the messenger, you're screwed.

One other thought: Larison says it's the religious voters who held the coalition together. That's right. But I just can't see how you appease an increasingly belligerent and intolerant base while drawing back into the fold segments of the population that are increasingly diverse and educated. The religious right gave the GOP a great 40-year-run. Now it's the GOP's biggest problem.

Last Call

Obama explains his plan to withdraw from Iraq:

Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end....We will retain a transitional force to carry out three distinct functions: training, equipping, and advising Iraqi Security Forces as long as they remain non-sectarian; conducting targeted counter-terrorism missions; and protecting our ongoing civilian and military efforts within Iraq. Initially, this force will likely be made up of 35-50,000 U.S. troops.

Through this period of transition, we will carry out further redeployments. And under the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. We will complete this transition to Iraqi responsibility, and we will bring our troops home with the honor that they have earned.

The upshot: all combat troops will be out within 18 months, and all troops will be out within 34 months. Ackerman says McCain's support means the debate on Iraq is over. I won't go that far; though it is remarkable that the GOP's favorite talking point over the last several elections has been quickly scuttled as soon as Bush left office. I guess their heart wasn't really in it. Anyway, getting out is never as easy as getting in. But at the very least Obama is showing the ability to put down his hand and walk away from the table. Going all in like Bush continued to do was madness. And to those comparing this to Mission Accomplished because Obama has set an end date, that's not quite right. It's more like Mission Over.

Raising The Curtain

David Leonhardt, the New York Times' economic analyst, mulls over Obama's budget offering:

More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years. They do so first by rewriting the tax code and, over the longer term, by trying to solve some big causes of the middle-class income slowdown, like high medical costs and slowing educational gains...

He sought to eliminate some corporate subsidies, for health insurers, banks and agricultural companies, that economists have long criticized. He proposed putting a price on carbon, to slow global warming, and then refunding most of the revenue from that program through broad-based tax cuts. He called for roughly $100 billion a year in tax increases on the wealthy — mostly delayed until 2011, when the recession will presumably have ended — and $50 billion a year in net tax cuts for the nonwealthy.

The history of the United States economy over the last 70 years can be roughly divided into two periods: the decades immediately after World War II, when inequality plummeted, and the past three decades, when global economic forces and government policies caused it to soar. Mr. Obama is setting out to begin a third period that looks more like the first than the second...

Before becoming Mr. Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers liked to tell a hypothetical story to distill the trend. The increase in inequality, Mr. Summers would say, meant that each family in the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution was effectively sending a $10,000 check, every year, to the top 1 percent of earners.

Mr. Obama's budget reflects that sensibility. Budget experts were still sorting through the details on Thursday, but it appeared that various tax cuts and credits aimed at the middle class and the poor would increase the take-home pay of the median household by roughly $800.

The tax increases on the top 1 percent, meanwhile, will most likely cost them $100,000 a year.

Klein aptly writes that "over the coming weeks you will hear this described as a form of radicalism. It is not. It is liberalism--and more: it is purest bright line available to divide liberals from conservatives in American politics. Let the screeching begin."

Oh, and is it also socialism when Obama talks about raising military pay? Clearly.

Wind At His Back

Packer on the enormity of Obama's budget proposal

Reagan changed America above all by changing the terms of political discourse. Between his message to Congress on Tuesday and the ten-year budget proposal he released yesterday, Obama has shown that he wants to do the same. There are no more defensive apologies for having to bring government to bear on problems that the private sector can’t solve. He is making, or rather restoring, government as the instrument of a vast social and economic change, summed up in the word “equality.” The Times is right to compare this moment to 1932 and 1980. Yes, a multitude of special interests and political powers await the chance to eat his proposals to death. Yes, it will be difficult if not impossible to achieve everything set out in the budget and reduce the deficit by two-thirds over the next four years. Yes, everyone will be disappointed in some way by the health-care plan that comes out of Congress. Yes, there will be mistakes, perhaps grievous ones, made out of overconfidence or inexperience or inattention.

But Obama wants to make history (and Bill Kristol knows it, in the nerves along the back of his neck). If his political ability is equal to his ambition, he has a better-than-even chance to succeed, because events are the wind at his back. The key will be to keep the broad public on his side, to channel the surge of populism so that it swamps his opponents and not his Administration.

It's Obama's "post-partisan" style that looks to be the engine driving the possible achievement of this very liberal piece of legislation. That has to do with Obama's political skills. He makes progressive ideas sound attractive. But he's also filling a void. In the last 24 hoursalone we saw Joe the Plumber advocate killing members of Congress for "saying something bad" about the troops and Jon Bolton joking about the nuclear destruction of the president's home city. These people are fucking nuts. Offering a lucid alternative will go far against opposition like this.

Yes, But What About The Young And Rich?

Lemme first say that if Obama gets this budget passed relatively intact it looks to be the most progressive piece of legislation in the last 40 years. Which is why libertarians and conservatives are chugging Dramamine. That gets me to David Bernstein. While he makes a fair observation that Obama promised a net spending cut during the campaign and is going big in the opposite direction, he loses me with this plea for sympathy over the plight of a DC family with a combined income of $300K

My friends in this income bracket tend to have have high mortgages, work 60-80 hours a week, pay 40-50K or more a year for child care (a nanny is necessary when you often work into the late evening--and even day care for two kids in the DC area costs close to 40K a year), and have six figures worth of student loans, primarily from professional school, that they are still paying off. In other words, approximately 100K of their pretax income is taken up by their student loans and child care costs, which are the equivalent of "startup costs". Their mortgage costs may seem excessive, but you don't easily make six figures in low-housing cost cities like Des Moines, and living in outer suburbs is very difficult when you work 12 hour days.

If a hypothetical couple's initial income is a total of $300K, and they work an average of 70 hours each, and assuming two weeks vacation, they are in effect getting a grand total of $28.57 an hour for their labors, and a fair percent of that is going to pay interest on the mortgage. I'm sure they are glad to know that they are rich enough to be taxed at over 50% of their marginal dollar.

We're talking about bumping the tax rate for these people up by four percent. Four percent. I don't need a fantastic litany of high-end estimates on expenses to know that four percent isn't going to make or break a family with a combined income of $300K. If it is, then you probably need to have a conversation with yourself about all the crap you're buying. What I do know is that if this family actually exists in my town then I'd like to buy them a drink and explain point by point their stupidity. Who in their right damn mind would over-extend themselves with a costly mortgage if they had kids and a six figure student loan to pay off? Maybe it's time for a little personal responsibility. Besides, is it even possible to have two parents working 70 hour weeks and assume any parenting is happening? Prioritizing a career over raising children is a personal decision. Fine. But don't cry to me if things get tight because neither parent can make it home for dinner before 8 pm.

Anyway, Bernstein's argument is the same recycled crap we heard in the 90s that Clinton's federal tax rate of 39 percent (yup the exact same as Obama's proposing) on the rich was going to kill the geese who lay the golden eggs. I'd say that worked out ok.

Seems Worth Noting

While the White House and Geithner talk a lot about being aggressive and bold with their moves to try and unfreeze the credit markets, there's been quite a bit of lollygagging through the decision making, stress testing process. Krugman is worried that this is Japan 2.0. But given that we're seeing exports plummeting in Japan, Italy rescuing its banks, Eastern Europe imploding and Russian GDP tank, I'm wondering if Japan 2.0 is thinking a bit too parochial.  Hell, violence has already broken out in Athens (Greece), Longnan (China), Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Riga (Latvia), Santa Cruz (Bolivia), Sofia (Bulgaria), Vilnius (Lithuania) and Vladivostok (Russia). (Go ahead and read that Salon article if you want to get the crap scared out of you.)  Well, at least the White House is paying attention:

President Obama and senior administration officials have begun receiving a daily CIA report on the global economic crisis in addition to briefings on terrorist threats and other national security issues, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta said Wednesday.

The CIA's role in producing the report underscores the level of anxiety within the administration over how rapidly the economic downturn is spreading, as well as its potential to hobble foreign governments and trigger instability overseas.

The report, called the Economic Intelligence Brief, was launched at the request of the White House and delivered for the first time Wednesday.

[CIA Director Leon] Panetta said the document would survey major economic developments internationally and focus on how plunging markets and credit pressures are driving the decisions in nations including Russia and China.

The report covers "economic, political, leadership developments" in other countries as well as "the implications of those developments in terms of the U.S. economy," Panetta said.

I've been trying to get on board with the idea that Obama is slow walking this nationalization proposal to try and get conventional wisdom and votes on his side. But this is taking on the look of an elaborate stalling tactic to give banksters every opportunity to avoid nationalization - even if that means making the process of digging out harder by the day.

Anyway, what I do know for sure is that we'd all be in a much better place if Wall St. had just stuck with this business model:

How Deep The Rot Goes

More information is coming to light in the government's case against Kyle Dustin “Dusty” Foggo, the disgraced former No. 3 official at the CIA during the Bush years. What's important about Foggo's case is that it doesn't appear to be out of the norm and is yet another indication of just how widespread fraud has been. Under the cover of state secrecy it seems that scores of Bush officials have cultivated a nice cottage industry out of kick-back schemes and bribes with government contractors:

CIA officer Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who pleaded guilty in September to wire fraud, rose steadily through the agency's ranks to become its third-highest-ranking official despite a record of misconduct and warnings in his personnel file that he was willing to disregard or break the agency's rules, according to Justice Department documents unsealed yesterday in preparation for Foggo's sentencing today in Alexandria.

The documents provide an unusually detailed account of his misdeeds within the top ranks of the nation’s clandestine service. They recount how Foggo’s colleagues repeatedly accused him of improper liaisons with foreign nationals, how he allegedly assaulted a foreigner who bumped his car, and how — from his perch at CIA headquarters as executive director — he bullied the agency’s office of general counsel into hiring his subperforming longtime mistress and then transferred the woman’s complaining supervisor. For nearly three years, Foggo concealed that his childhood friend Brent Wilkes was the principal figure behind a company for which he had arranged lucrative CIA contracts for supplies and aviation services. The improper deals were exposed in part because Wilkes was separately bribing a congressman. The FBI raided Wilkes’s offices in 2005 in that probe, eventually laying bare his extensive and secret ties to Foggo and the CIA, according to the government’s account.

Foggo’s deceits wasted more than $1 million in public money, according to a long and angry memo filed by three prosecutors with the acting U.S. attorney in San Diego, who oversaw the probe and wants U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris to impose a stiff sentence. But the account also raises new questions about how a field officer who repeatedly set off ethical alarms was able to ascend in 2004 to a position where for nearly two years he oversaw the CIA’s day-to-day worldwide intelligence-gathering operations...

Porter J. Goss, a former CIA officer, congressman and director of central intelligence, who appointed Foggo to that job in 2004 and gave him a performance award in 2005, laid the blame on unnamed members of his "senior staff" in an affidavit submitted to the court. He said that "I did not suggest him nor seek him out" and that he felt "deceived and betrayed" by Foggo just before firing him in May 2006.

The U.S. Attorney who pressed charges against Foggo, Carol Lam, was dismissed. The Justice Department’s internal probe points to substantial evidence that the dismissal was for improper, politically-motivated reasons. Sound familiar? Foggo is also connected to former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who is serving more than eight years in federal prison for his involvement in a bribery scandal. Wilkes, Foggo's childhood friend, is a co-conspirator in Cunningham's case.

The more we look into the Bush years, the worse it gets.

Kenneth The Page Responds

Get On With It Then

My dad phoned in after his return from Florida and warned that the local radio stations are lit up with callers wanting to secede from the Yankee banksters and our uppity president who are destroying this great country. The war of northern aggression roles on. I'm inclined to let them go:

Louisiana has gotten $130 billion in post-Katrina aid. How is it that the stars of the Republican austerity movement come from the states that suck up the most federal money? Taxpayers in New York send way more to Washington than they get back so more can go to places like Alaska and Louisiana. Which is fine, as long as we don’t have to hear their governors bragging about how the folks who elected them want to keep their tax money to themselves. Of course they do! That’s because they’re living off ours.

I'd love to see how far Mississippi and South Carolina get without federal dollars keeping their barely buoyant education and health care systems afloat. Looking after these people and funding their society of guns, drugs, brothels and Sunday service is exhausting. I feel like a dad parenting a thankless, petulant teenager.

Self-Defeating

It used to be that what got commie, homo lovers and tight-assed bankers to bark at each other was debating the role and size of the welfare state. Just think back to the halcyon days of Bush-Clinton '92. Liberals believed in providing boot straps to people without; conservatives believed boot strapless people would have to work a bit harder. But the two sides seemed to agree that what's a given, I thought, is that the government should provide basic goods and services. Most obviously that would be keeping the citizenry safe (this is going to ignite some Burkean passions). Like, say, when a Hurricane strikes and puts a major American city underwater. That would be a good time for an involved, effective government to respond to the needs of the public. Or, say, a volcano that is known to be close to blowing. It would make sense that the government might step in and offer basic detection services to give people a heads up if it's about to start raining lava. But somewhere along the way the debate changed. At some point the GOP decided that basic services was wasteful spending.

Krugman says that after watching Bobby Jindal's stomach-churning display that "the intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead." I think that might be too kind. See, Beavis and Butthead were aware of their considerable limitations. They weren't stupid enough to try and rule the world. Plus they weren't taking on the look of nihilists.

But the GOP isn't a party of nihilists. Because they do have beliefs. And most are stupid. They believe that government can work if its pursuing a war of choice, explaining away the response to Katrina and cheerleading the use of torture. That's an ugly recent track record.

So, how did they get here? Well, mainly because they're a party of aged white southern men who seem to have a hankering for re-fighting the Civil War and who emit an unending stream of idiocies when they are put in front of a camera. They hold mutual masturbation sessions on topics ranging from Reagan to patriotism and demonstrate in embarrassing fashion that they are most comfortable with bigotry and hate. They believe that opposing the president during an economic crisis without offering anything resembling credible alternatives is virtuous because they are cocooned within their own fear and superstition of what government can do. If tax cuts are wrong, then they don't want to be right. So they twist themselves in intellectual knots and push out droves of educated voters to the Democratic ranks. They're the stupid party. And they don't even know enough to see that providing basic services is the reason we have a government.