First off, I have a post up on Buddhist economics at the other site.
Second, see Ali Frick, “As Economy Sheds 600,000 Jobs In One Month, Senate Conservatives Ask: What’s The Rush?”
I would like to explain to Congress that people are getting genuinely panicky out here. Panicky as in the last lifeboat is gone and we’re still on the deck of the Titanic. See also Paul Krugman.
And as the boat begins to break apart, what are the Republicans doing? Playing games. As Steve Benen says, “The opposition party, when it’s not blatantly lying about the recovery plan, is offering ideas that are a) nonsensical; b) dangerous; or c) nonsensical and dangerous.”
In right-wing rhetoric, all public spending is pork. Here’s a list of the “pork” about to be cut from the stimulus bill.
Head Start, Education for the Disadvantaged, School improvement, Child Nutrition, Firefighters, Transportation Security Administration, Coast Guard, Prisons, COPS Hiring, Violence Against Women, NASA, NSF, Western Area Power Administration, CDC, Food Stamps
It really is time for torches and pitchforks, people.
Yes. It’s a perfect example of where Republicans heads are.
In the last election, the Republican Party was so thoroughly rejected and discredited that they were left with only two choices: change their philosophy on the nature and role of government; or work night and day to sabatoge everything the Democrats propose so they can later claim that the Democrats are ineffective and we should all, in the next election, vote Republican.
They’ve made their choice. Like the comedian Rush Limbaugh, the Republican members of Congress want to see this country fall off an economic cliff so that they can, disingenuously, blame it all on the Democrats. Hopefully, our elected Democratic officials will start to spend quite a bit more time pointing this out to the American public. But, I’ll keep my pitchfork at the ready, just in case they don’t.
It’s going to be interesting to see if/n/when/how the public turns against the Republicans. Obama has only started to fight (finally!!!), and Reid apparently thinks he has the votes once the package is worked over a bit more. It sounds to me like a deal is close.
In California, we’re seeing the same Republican intransigence. Because it takes a 2/3 majority to pass tax increases, solutions to our state’s monumental fiscal woes are held up by the Republican minority. Their leadership has gotten each legislator to vow “no more taxes” with a threat that they’ll be dead meat next election cycle should any of them renege. People on the street are disgusted but haven’t yet felt the pinch, at least not masses of them – it’s not quite pitchfork time here. The editorial pages around the state have turned against the Republican ideologue holdouts however.
It’s a very interesting high-stakes game of chicken the Republicans are playing. Reminds me a bit of the way Bill Clinton refused to budge for them in the 90s, they shut down the government, and the public got pissed at them – the move blew up in their faces. One can only hope for similar public revulsion this time around.
Naomi Klein in The Nation describes a state of affairs in Argentina similar to the pitchforks scenario as:
“Argentina, who, in the midst of an economic crisis eerily similar to our own, took to the street banging pots and pans. They shouted, “¡Que se vayan todos!” (“All of them must go!”) and forced out a procession of four presidents in less than three weeks.”
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/02/all-them-must-go
Obama’s recent message seemed almost pleading and on edge as he indicated that the situation is dire, not as interpreted by Pelosi or himself but rather the country’s top economists. He said something like “sure it’s a spending bill, that’s the point.”
It’s amazing how muffled Obama’s rhetoric is amongst the pulicization of every wingnut including Gingrich who doesn’t even hold office. I’m sure we’ll here from Tom Delay. I couldn’t find anything on his address in print at MSNBC. Finally there was an Australian newspaper and the following:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2MzNTc5YzQ3MmRkYzE2YzM3MGFlMjk2ZDliZDEzY2U=
Our nations press only seems to be exploiting the food fight as infotainment. They don’t seem worried a bit.
I honestly cannot tell who the congressional GOP are consulting for economic advice…Limbaugh? They either know the situation and are trying to exploit it with a particularly twisted form of brinkmanship with hope of regaining power in the disastrous aftermath or they are ignorant. Both reasons are equally scary. The only thing that scares these guys is being found out and they still think they have cover in the form of American’s whose ignorance of our plight leads to something akin to pouring gasoline on a fire.
Blllleeeechhhh…
The GOP does not seem to realize that they are not even helping their rich base. As Dumbya so eloquently put it :this sucker could go down”. If it does–and there is no assurance the stimulus package will prevent economic collapse– there will be no rich and capitalism and democracy will both end in this country and probably the world. Dumbya held out the alternative of martial law in getting the TARP passed. Maybe we just need to suspend the government in the South
“it’s time for torches and pitchforks”
No it’s time the democratic leadership gets some god dam balls. I am sick of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, they are fucking useless. How can a newly elected president with 70% approval ratings and party control of congress have this much trouble passing a bill? Well frankly the bill sucks, I watched the appropriations committee hearings one night a few weeks ago, I knew then that the wing-nuts would have a food fight with this. The democrats loaded up the bill with alot of bullshit that they didn’t bother to go out and defend, so the wingnuts go out on TV and tore them to shreds. Nancy and Harry just sit back and let these wingnuts label them big spenders, while the wing-nuts never looked at anything Bush spent, they happily pissed away almost a trillion in Iraq, do you hear any democrats bring up the hypocrisy, they are a bunch of fucking pussies, I guarantee they will lose the house in 2010, guaranteed.
Obama was smart enough to know that RIGHT NOW, he has the political cover to put through what amounts to a new New Deal (and hence, the triple threat of rolling back regressive withholding taxes, tripling federal education spending and dramatically increasing health spending, along with big-time stimulus spending)… the Republicans were SMART ENOUGH to know that he was doing that too… not crazy, people… SMART. The Repubs also know that while Obama is immune to cable-talking-head horseshit, the morons in Congress, especially jittery Senators, aren’t. They know that if he succeeds, its just like FDR: they can count on Dem leadership uninterrupted for decades… they are willing to destroy the country to stop anything as horrible as THAT.
The Republicans KNOW that this isn’t just another bill: Obama could actually use the occasion of this Republican-caused-economic-catastrophe/crisis to actually closeout some major holes remaining from the New Deal and Great Society– the POINT is to eventually cover all Americans under an expanded Medicare, the POINT is to actually eliminate some of the blatant unfairnesses in education caused by local funding, the POINT is to roll back the unfairness in our tax system.
Obama knows it. The Republicans know it. Pelosi knows it. But does Harry Reid? We’ll see. I see every indication that Pelosi is going to hang tough in conference– the compromise is going back the other way… if the Repubs WANT to filibuster this…. MAKE THEM. LET THEM use a procedural dodge intended to subvert democracy to prevent a national lifeline in a country losing 20,000 jobs A DAY.
We’ll see. Obama is organizing house parties this weekend. He’s taking to the bully pulpit next week. We will see how this comes out. The systemic process inertia and absurd power of the Beltway Village remains powerful… we’ll if “yes we can” means, in fact, “yes we can.” I’m hoping the Big O can do this; I’m just not sure that’s how I’d bet as long as Reid is Majority Leader.
ROGER WICKER (R-MS): As Thomas Jefferson reminded Americans in his day — and I quote — “Delay is preferable to error.†Let’s not rush into doing this the wrong way.
Now, this is offensive! Aside from containing zero context of a probably true quote, it’s offensive to see a spoiler standing on another man’s reputation to try and bolster his own credibility. My theory is that your argument is weak if you have to invoke the dead.
Talking Dog and Uncledad both offer useful opinions and observations. I would also like to take this occasion to repudiate Senator Harry Reid – I don’t know what makes him so willing to compromise – but I don’t like it. I think this all misses the good news though. If you didn’t notice (*the poor media didn’t notice, the TV had bobbleheads talking about how great tax cuts are), this week President Obama sounded like an actual adult telling the children around the nation how these story lines we have been talking about are stupid. I stumbled across Newt Gengrich on the Washington Journal today and he kept on saying the same things, “people making a quarter million dollars have such high tax bills they can’t hardly afford to eat anything but beans and rice…”, “bureaucrats shouldn’t decide how you spend YOUR tax money…”, “Ronald Reagan is a god…†etc. The real problem is we haven’t had an articulate figure in the public actually point out the fact that we have been trying the low tax, little government regulation tact for 30 years and look where we are. It looks like the President is going to communicate about how silly this dogma is after it has failed for 30 years. Things are looking up.
I like Obama but I side with the republicans on this. If this bill was designed to create jobs and is being presented that it has no pork in it, shouldn’t all the spending be designed with creating jobs?
These are all noble causes but how many jobs would they create?
Oh Please… if someone making a quarter of a million is eating beans and rice it is either because they were living past their means and their credit dried up or because they like beans and rice.
I might add.. if someone making a quarter of a million is feeling the pinch .. just think how much the people with much less are struggling.
throbo — the ultimate purpose of the stimulus bill is to get money into circulation. Creating jobs is one way to do that. Another way is to get money to state governments so the states don’t have to cut back programs or lay off workers, which is what some of the spending on the list is about.