When up means down

By Capt. Fogg

The Mayans were far less pessimistic about 2012 than the people who fill my inbox with prophecies of economic doom every day. Actually doom is too mild a word and so is apocalypse if one is trying to set a mood so terrifyingly descriptive of what is happening now and is about to happen, thanks to that Obama. Of course these people are selling investment strategies which I'm sure include buying things they're desperate to get rid of like the gold they bought at $1900 an ounce, but any way the market wind is blowing, they make money from the seminars and newsletters and from screaming like Chicken Little. There's a lot of money in the doom business.

Most of the people I talk to seem convinced that everything is getting worse and won't get better until we "get rid of" Obama in 2012; replacing him no doubt with someone who thinks managing a worldwide economy is an easy task for someone who once managed to save a pizza business by firing everyone, and yet has the nerve to talk about being able to "create jobs." Not to change the subject, but it's truly stunning to see the seamless segue from "government can't create jobs" to "elect me and I'll create jobs, jobs, jobs."

I guess it's no less stunning than Fox News' and John McCain's embarrassing assertions that the 2008 economy was "robust" as we all marched unwittingly off the cliff like a certain cartoon coyote -- and of course, that because "Liberals" were warning us about the inevitable collapse, they "hated America." Not like those forward thinking optimists that modern conservatives are.

We can expect, now that the next presidential election is a year away, that the howling and wailing and rending of garments will grow louder and angrier and numbers will appear proving that calamity awaits us all, no matter what actually happens. It's far too soon to be sure, but this chronic pessimist and a few others with more credible credentials are noticing that our Gross Domestic Product After adjusting for inflation, climbed to $13.35 trillion last quarter, topping the $13.33 trillion peak reached in the last three months of 2007.

I hate to make too much of it, particularly with the Filibustering Vandals doing everything they can to sabotage the economy until November 8th, 2012, but the reality is not quite what the pseudo-conservative chorus is chanting. At least for the moment, things are looking less down. Unemployment is still high, of course -- just a bit above Ronald Reagan levels and we can expect the screamers to keep screaming about that while refusing to do anything about it. We can expect Tea Pissers like Tom "Looney" Rooney (R-Florida) to keep meeting with "Job Creators" and telling us that business owners will hire more employees, irrespective of demand, if we cut their marginal rates even more -- and we can expect that if things do recover steadily and noticeably, he'll find a way to take credit for it because after all, they kept that O-BAH-ma from doing anything for four years while lambasting him for doing nothing. If there is anything these Doomsters are optimistic about it's that they'll always have someone to blame.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

As they like it

By Capt. Fogg 

Wake up, little Susie, wake up
Wake up, little Susie, wake up
We’ve both been sound asleep, wake up, little Susie, and weep
The movie’s over, it’s four o’clock, and we’re in trouble deep
Wake up little Susie
Wake up little Susie, we gotta go home. 

- The Everly Brothers -

___________________________ 

I'm relatively sure that our new "save your way out of unemployment, no job needed" austerity program will stifle the economy and thwart any meaningful recovery and that a good share of the people who held the gun to our heads to push this sorry debt ceiling bill, not only know it too, but desperately want that outcome so as to help push the Tar Baby out of office and privatize the presidency in 2012. 

The Tea Terrorist Great Leap Backward may not let 20 million people starve as Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward did, but it's not only not going to put bread on the table. For many of us, that table may be a park bench.

Victory is so close, they can almost taste it. Unemployment is so high so that millions don't have the money it takes to be heard, don't have the money it takes to buy the products that make the economy expand, but corporate profits are up -- way up. Call your congressman? Write your senators? Sorry Charlie, tea bags come with strings attached and unless your letter is stapled to a million dollar check you might as well save the postage and stationery.

Corporate profits are up, and that's OK. We're selling overseas and manufacturing overseas and American workers are redundant -- and face it, America and what we used to think of as the American way of life, the American Dream, is a millstone around the corporate neck. It's a global economy now and global corporations owe no allegiance to the United States even if they're nominally American companies. They will use every strategy they can to avoid paying taxes in the US or benefiting workers who can be replaced and exploited cheaply in China and India. We're witnessing one of those strategies today. The only people not in danger of being outsourced or laid off or screwed out of benefits and pensions are the legislators and judges and corporate propagandists on the payroll and sorry, little Suzie Teabag, that ain't you. Wake up. 

Now all that Social Security money and that Medicare money go right back into the economy, purchasing goods and services immediately. Minimum wage workers spend every dime they make. Nobody hoards food stamps. They don't want that. They don't want money in your hands, since it's money that might give you some political power, since it's money they could sit on and hoard and invest abroad with no taxes paid. Think it will go to creating American jobs? Are you stupid? 

Your taxes aren't going down, theirs is. They're not creating any jobs you're eligible for or would accept, and your cost of living will be going up as the Dollar shrivels like Limbaugh's penis and your freedom and your rights and your privacy and your political voice and your retirement plans are dissolving in the rapidly rising water. 

And they like it that way.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Little green apples

By Distributorcap

It took 30 years and 204 days, but on Tuesday, August 2, 2011 the fruits of the Reagan Tree of Life will finally have reached its peak when the over-ripened, low-hanging, worm-filled Reagapples will begin to pound the ground, not with sweetened blossoms, but with a dead thud. Thirty years and 204 days of belittling and ignoring the American education system, calling ketchup a vegetable, telling us trees cause pollution, cutting taxes to create trickled-down imaginary jobs (okay, there are a few more maids and gardeners), and teaching Americans that they could have everything they want and it will cost nothing -- the Teadras-educated Republican Party is willing to take the ultimate bet and tell the piper (or croupier) this time to shove it.

The U.S. Congress has spent the better part of the past month arguing over whether the credit limit on the Visa card should be raised in order to pay their bills -- bills they have committed and signed to pay. If this game of cold-war brinkmanship weren't so dangerous on so many levels, it would actually be comical to watch. Watching the children of the right storm out of a meeting (Eric Cantor, who probably has the distinction of having had the most spit balls thrown at him during 7th-grade lunch) and then say no, no, no as the opposition capitulates to nearly every one of their demands is nothing short of having Macbeth playing in a Kabuki theater.

The 80 or so Teabaggers who sandbagged their way into Congress last November promising to stop those eternal welfare queens from driving Cadillacs and finally ridding the country of the leeches who live off their hard-earned (over)taxed dollars, are about to allow the real grand experiment to go forward -- let the U.S. default on its payments for the first time in history, and default by choice. You know the world's strongest economy is going to look like it is managed even worse than Greece.

I used to think the only item on the Republican platform (aka Our American Mein Kampf) was the personal destruction of Barack Obama (or any Democratic president), but now I realize there is actually a second principle enshrined in the GOP's manifesto. Not only do the Teabaggers and their enablers want to see Obama fail, they also want to prove that the ripened fruit of the Reagan revolution ("something for nothing") is actually a sweet treat, that the U.S. defaulting on its bills will have absolutely no consequences.

After all, American exceptionalism is American exceptionalism. Chicken Little is really just Donkey Little, a completely made-up scenario just to allow those pesky liberals to abscond with more money from hedge-fund billionaires and private jet owners to pay for BMWs for those food-stamp queens and unemployed kings. Unlike Bill Clinton, Barack Obama has not given the goose-stepping lunatics in the GOP any stained dresses to use as evidence of a grand socialist conspiracy. Short of the 21st-century version of Fanne Foxe showing up in next few days, the Teabaggers will have to resort to their only other weapon, actually pushing the nuclear trigger. In other words, in order to save the country, they have to vaporize the country. Three hundred million Americans will just have to hope the dice on 8/2/11 are boxcars or snake eyes and not a craps. Good luck with that when one die is all threes and the other is all fours. 

Obama has made this so easy for the Republicans. He has caved so many times to the right on so many issues even the more "reasonable" Republicans (an oxymoron if there ever was one) realize they can play the blinking game knowing their odds of winning are about as good as Secretariat's was at the 1973 Belmont. His obvious weakness as a leader and his hesitancy to confront a group of people bent on his destruction has made the Republican work of making a mountain out of a molehill as easy as selling worthless credit default swaps to a bunch of insurance companies. Compromise requires compromise, not rolling over time after time. Obama has rolled over so many times John Boehner finally figured out that those 80 or so Teabaggers in Congress must really be onto something.

What the Teabaggers and their enablers (actually, they are all a bunch of Teabaggers) fail to realize is that if the sky does fall on August 2nd (and it will), it will be more than repossessed Cadillacs. While those teabagging Congressmen will barely suffer the loss of a nickel in salary, benefits, and pensions (and plenty of them have more than enough money to cushion the potential blow), I would think they have relatives who will suffer, and suffer badly, from a default. And what about the millions who actually voted for the Teabaggers thinking these really smart guys would save them from the leeches on society, only to see now that a government that cannot pay its bills means no Social Security checks mailed, no medicare payments, soaring interest rates on their variable mortgages, a collapsed housing market, more bridges and roads crumbling, weakened airport security, soldiers in Afghanistan watching their checks bounce, and finally a lot of very angry Europeans, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Brazilians, Australians, Saudis, and Swiss, people who help fund the elite of Wall Street?

And what about those private companies the Teabaggers just love so much? You know, the ones that actually employ thousands of teabagging voters, the ones that receive a big chunk of their revenue from government contracts? Do you think Boeing and Lockheed Martin are going to keep pay a lot of private employees sitting around the lunchroom while they wait for Tim Geithner to sign the checks? What about the diners, dry cleaners, auto mechanics, waiters, coffee trucks, baby sitters, and hundreds of thousands of other private businesses that exist because of companies employing thousands of workers based on government contracts? And those free parks the Teabaggers love to take their kids to on vacation -- gonna get awfully expensive at $50 a head to get into Yellowstone. This is the real trickle-down economy, people who really do earn a living because other people are getting a paycheck, no matter where that paycheck originates, not from so-called job creators who just take their tax breaks and buy more Prada or stash the money in the Cayman Islands.

So old people, government contractors, ancillary businesses, soldiers, medical professionals that help the elderly -- it is time for you to sacrifice in the name of proving the Teabag Gambit. The road to Teabag nirvana is filled with collateral damage. We may suffer, we may default, we may see rising interest rates, we may start opening Hoovervilles, but those fine Republicans in the House, the ones that were sent to ensure an orderly country -- well, they will just be right.

Maybe we can form a new union of people to pick up those little green Reagapples.

Truth in Comics

By Creature


If it's Sunday, it's Truth in Comics.

Nursery Rhyme Capitalism

By Distributorcap

Today on guess where -- Fox News -- Rep. Mike Pence (R - Indiana) became the latest in a series of cold-blooded, vultures who said that extending the Bush tax cuts [for the rich, white benefactors of the GOP] was a good thing, despite the effect they will have on the growing deficit. In fact, Pence said, foregoing that $678 billion in revenue would actually help the economy:

"The reality is that as you study -- when President Kennedy cut marginal tax rates, when Ronald Reagan cut marginal tax rates, when President Bush imposed those tax cuts, they actually generated economic growth, they expand the economy, they expand tax revenue," Pence said. "The point is we've got to get this economy moving again and we can't go back to the tax-and-spend policies of the Democrats or the tax-cut-and-spend policies of the prior administration." 

To Pence, cutting taxes for the rich and continuing to spend (on endless wars) is OK. Talk about spin (and bad math). This is just another way of professing the GOP love for trickle-down-your pants economics without mentioning the debunked and income-redistribution-to-the-wealthy tax plan of Reagan and Bush.

Of course before Pence even got to the campaign talking point of tax cuts, he began with the now now ingrained Rovian/Luntz meme that those poor unemployed people are just lazy bums sitting on their fat asses all day watching General Hospital, drinking beer and refusing to flip burgers at the local grease pit. Since they are just a bunch of good-for-nothings, they will just have to continue to wait for the $400 unemployment checks - because, according to Pence, we just cannot afford to help them. The GOP, who really do feel for those lazy, leaching bums, just cannot in good faith authorize or vote for the $33 billion it will cost to extend unemployment insurance without offsetting comparable spending cuts. [but don't touch wars or ask for tax increases!]

Sing a song of Mike Pence,
A pocket full of sighs.
Four and twenty tax cuts,
Baked in some lies.

When the lies were broadcast,
The House became a race;
Isn't this a dainty dish,
To set before our base?

The base is in their counting house,
Counting out their cash;
The whacks are with the teabags,
Toting guns to bash.

The Moose was in her garden,
Hanging $150,000 worth of clothes;
When down came an oil soaked pelican
And pecked off her nose.

Check this out for a great mashup on Pence by Bluegal

What will it take for America to realize that

1. Trickle down economics - aka tax cuts for Pence's rich Republican benefactors - simply do NOT work, all they do is put more money in the hands of the people who already control 95% of the money. Most people making under $100K or even $200K barely see a nickel of these tax cuts.
2. The Republicans - including Mike Pence - are primarily the ones that got us into this mess to begin with by pushing for unfunded and unnecessary wars and deregulating everything they could get their grubby hands on.

A few words about Trickle-Down-Your-Pants economics. On paper it sounds so great. Give more money to the smart (and rich) and they will invest it - in businesses, in companies and in research and development. But hold on - that is not what actually happened. The money ended up with the rich alright, but instead of investing it back in the economy and American society (which they started labeling "income redistribution") - they invested it with each other. 30 years of Reagan "trickle up" wealth redistribution just allowed the rich to gather more personal assets (like homes, cars, jewelry, hedge funds) instead of building plants, fostering energy independence, repairing infrastructure and a whole slew of other things that could have been accomplished on behalf of the US as a whole. And since billions in excess income proved to be not enough, the beneficiaries of trickle down Republican tax cuts created new (and ultimately way too risky) ways to make even more money. The new uber-class kept tossing the money wads back and forth to each other, somehow making obscene profits and purposely keeping those bucks out of reach from the proletariat, descamisados and regular Americans. While they had their fun, the middle class became a bunch of welfare queens driving Yugos.

The Congressional Budget Office stated that the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthiest households. The tax cuts boosted the income of the top 1% of households (with average incomes over $1 million) by 10%. Compare this to a 2.3% increase for middle-income families with average incomes of $57,000 and a 1.6% increase for the bottom 20% of families, with average incomes of less than $17,000. (Here comes the lame argument about how the rich already pay a disproportionate amount of taxes, they control a disproportionate amount of the assets of this country).

Think about this - the unregulated "financiers" on Wall Street played cat-and-mouse with pension funds, insurance pools and securitized mortgages. 30 years of binge chugging finally led to an economic meltdown. Bush and company then bailed them out (as he walked out the door). The rest of the country - including the idiots who voted Republican because of a bunch of slogans like "we think government is too big" or "we will insure your right to own a gun" ended up losing their jobs, their homes and their life savings and watched as un- (and under-) employment drove towards depression levels. Two scant years later, the criminals who took us down this road are making more money than ever and those without jobs can't even get a $425 unemployment insurance check from Mike Pence.

This is Nursery Rhyme Capitalism at its best. The few who caused some of the greatest losses ever are rewarded the most, while those who actually produce real things of value, are punished the most severely.

The continued argument about deficit reduction just proves what an abomination Pence and his pals are. He and Kyl (who went on this rant last week) think debt just fine for to pay for the tax cuts for the wealthiest in the country, but debt for those who have been thrown into an economic tailspin due to the misbehavior of the wealthiest - well that is just too much red ink for the budget to handle.

And this is who America wants to run Congress again.

UI extension fails again in Senate

By Creature

I'm starting to think Ben Nelson wants his party to fail. Life must have been easier for this turncoat when the Dems were not in control. Bush tax cuts, anyone?

Quote of the Day

By Creature

"If a congressperson finds him or herself voting against extending unemployment insurance during a severe economic crisis then I think they have hit a wall and should ask themselves (and their constituents should ask them) on what basis can they possibly define themselves as Democrats. In fact, I can't see on what basis they even call themselves human beings." -- Digby

Vandalism, violence, and deficit reduction: Thoughts on the G20 Summit in Toronto

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I spent the past several days well away from Toronto's downtown core, well away from the G20 protest areas, well away from the security net that effectively divided the city into two. I used to live downtown, near the University of Toronto, and I still work downtown, in a high-security area, but I now live in the suburbs east of the city. I didn't ignore what went on, though. I couldn't. It was all over the news, scenes of a police car on fire, of protesters crowding the streets, of police in riot gear, of the security fences, of vandalism and violence, of tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets, of mayhem much unlike what we are used to here in Canada.

And, in general, my feelings are mixed.

While I do not approve of the vandalism and violence, and while I think that the confrontational methods used by some of the more extreme protesters are counter-productive, I tend to sympathize at least somewhat with some of the prevailing views among the protesters. It's not that I'm anti-capitalist, it's that I object to decisions affecting the very fate of our planet being made inside a security fortress. There is security on Capitol Hill, yes, as well as on our Parliament Hill in Ottawa, but those bodies are democratic. The G20 isn't. The leaders were elected democratically, for the most part, but their deliberations were anything but democratic.

Write the protesters off as "thugs," like Prime Minister Harper did, or anarchists, which some of them are, but their anger and frustration are reflections of something much deeper than anti-government opportunism. Look past the vandalism and violence and what you find is an understandable hostility towards the status quo, along with serious objections to the policies imposed on the world's billions by the leaders of the wealthiest nations.

What did this summit accomplish, after all? Did these leaders agree to do something about poverty, genocide, or climate change? No. They basically just agreed to a set of neo-liberal (a label I dislike but will use for lack of anything better) principles centered around balanced budgets. You can read the G20 statement here if you like. The primary goal is "a full return to growth with quality jobs, to reform and strengthen financial systems, and to create strong, sustainable and balanced global growth," and the most significant agreement was to cut deficits, with government debt "at least stabilized or on a downward trend by 2016," according to Harper. The commitment is voluntary, with an exemption for Japan, which faces serious fiscal problems, and concerns from the U.S., which, under Obama, is (rightly) focused more on economic stimulus than on deficit reduction.

But how to cut deficits? Some countries will do so through tough austerity measures, as the new government in the U.K. has already initiated. Given that raising taxes is often not a viable political option (and it should be noted that many of those in attendance at the summit the leaders of conservative governments, and hence not so inclined towards tax increases: Harper, Cameron, Merkel, Berlusconi, Sarkozy, etc.), the likeliest way to reduce deficits is to cut spending on social programs. And that means disproportionately harming those who need those programs the most, the poorest and neediest citizens of the G20 nations, those without a voice in Toronto, inside the security fortress, those for whom many of the protesters were speaking.

To be fair, the G20 statement does make reference to "providing social protection to our citizens, particularly our most vulnerable," as well as to "supporting the poorest countries during the crisis," but the focus is clear, and I think C&L's Ian Welsh got it right:

It's really, really simple. The rich crashed the world economy. They were bailed out, with their wealth having almost entirely recovered and corporate profits likewise have pretty much recovered. Now, at the G20, the world's leaders are discussing how to make regular people pay for the rich's follies.

The world's developed countries have built extensive public health systems, promised citizens a paycheck for life and erected a welter of protections around some industries and types of jobs. Now their leaders are conferring over a singular dilemma: how to take some of it back without undermining the economies they are trying to sustain.

You notice that somehow, no one is talking about going back to 1950's levels of progressive taxation, with a top rate around 90%. No, what they're talking about is making the middle class and the poor pay for the sins of the rich.

The key thing here to understand is this: there is no crisis for the rich or corporations anymore, therefore as far as they are concerned, there is no crisis.

*****

At the G20, today, what is being discussed is how to take away what's left of your economic future. Ordinary Americans didn't see a pay raise in the last decade. Not only won't they see one this decade, they'll take a loss, and now even the European experiment in taking care of the population is on the chopping board.

This is your future being decided, and no, they don't think you have a say in it.

And that's part of the problem. You don't. Which is not to say that governments shouldn't pursue fiscal sanity, or to suggest that the G20 leaders don't care at all about "ordinary" citizens, but the fact is, there's a massive disconnect between the priorities of the G20 nations and the priorities of the vast majority of their citizens -- and the priorities of the vast majority of people in the world's wealthiest countries weren't under discussion in Toronto, not in any meaningful way.

Even here, even in the biggest city in one of the world's richest and most privileged countries, a city of massive wealth, you find people living in cardboard boxes or sleeping on heating grates. Go just a few blocks from the security fortress and you find poverty, misery, despair. As anywhere else, you find people struggling to make ends meet, to pay the bills, to put food on the table, to take care of their children. You find people just trying to get by, people trying to deal with an economic crisis that they still feel even while their elected leaders talk about slashing social programs and multi-national corporations rack up profits in the billions. You find people for whom the G20 Summit meant nothing, even if, in the long run, and even if the economy improves in macro terms, it may bring them more pain.

And, again, what of climate change, of oppression and genocide, of human rights, of any other issue that may resonate with the "ordinary" citizens who were shut out of the summit? Nothing. Deficit reduction was the name of the game, that and protecting the interests of the global oligarchy that pulls the strings while the rest of us are silenced.

Really, is it any wonder there was such rage on the streets of Toronto over the weekend? Is it any wonder that those who are shut out, even in a supposed democracy, want to have their voices heard?

And it is any wonder the police cracked down to prevent those voices from being heard? As The New York Times reported:

An escalation of aggressive police tactics toward even apparently peaceful protests at the Group of 20 summit meeting led to calls for a review of security activities.

After allowing a small group of people to burn police cars and smash windows unimpeded on Saturday afternoon, many of the 20,000 police officers deployed in Toronto changed tactics that evening and during the last day of the gathering.

There was a notable increase in both the numbers of police officers who surrounded demonstrations as well as more use of tear gas and rubber or plastic bullets. At the same time, there was a visible drop in the number of demonstrators in the city streets.

As a result, the violence by some demonstrators that marred the opening of the Group of 20 meeting did not reappear on Sunday, and more than 600 people were arrested Saturday and Sunday.


"Civil liberties are in rough shape today," said Nathalie Des Rosiers, the general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which had two of its observers arrested and detained. "We will have to have some accountability for what is going on."

In a statement, the Canadian branch of Amnesty International called on governments to review the security measures made for the meeting, including a temporary suspension of various civil liberties in the portion of this city's downtown near the meeting site. 

It's all well and good that there's free speech, and that's essential, but the real issue here, and it explains much of the rage and outrage, is that too many voices are simply shut out of the conversation entirely. After all, you can protest all you like, but they won't hear you and don't care to hear you. It's like banging your head against some mad bugger's wall, as Roger Waters put it in a different context.

And so what can you do? Thankfully, most of the protesters behaved peacefully. Again, I won't go so far as to condone vandalism and violence. And perhaps some consideration will be given to alternative views once democratic parliaments, as opposed to a summit of world leaders, take up the issues at hand. But when you see that you've been shut out, that your leaders have erected security fences to keep you back and brought in scores of police to keep you down, maybe, just maybe, you want to lash out. To me, the story is not just that so many protesters demonstrated peacefully but that so few expressed their rage openly. "Ordinary" citizens, after all, those without a seat at the table, are justified to feel disenfranchised and disconnected, as well as to be discontented with the conditions under whey they are governed.

Much of the focus in the media will continue to be on the vandalism and violence, and on the clashes between police and protesters, but there is much more to what happened than that, and it was all about so much more than that. Sometimes people just want to be heard, after all, and sometimes, even in a democracy, especially with their leaders ignoring them and seemingly taking their very democracy from them, people have to take to the streets.

Still in economic crisis

By Creature

The amount of extended hurt about to be launched is going to be massive. I don't get why Republicans (and Ben Nelson) can't grasp this. Well, actually I do. They are counting on Americans blaming Democrats. And, with headlines like these, they might be right.

Quote of the Day: Sheldon Whitehouse on the "tax extenders" bill and the "Republican debt orgy"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Last night, Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island took to the floor of the Senate to address the ongoing Republican opposition to restoring extended unemployment benefits that, under the stimulus bill, expired on June 1. He pinned the blame exactly where it belongs:

I understand the point about the debt and the deficit and the spending. But to me, that doesn't have an enormous amount of credibility, because when President Clinton left office, he left an annual surplus... At the end of [George W. Bush's] term, we had $9 trillion in debt. We would have none of this if it hadn't been for the Republican debt orgy that they went through.

I understand the need for fiscal sanity, too, but at a time of economic crisis -- and we're not out of it yet -- punishing the unemployed is hardly the right thing to do. And it really is ridiculous to think that many of the unemployed are living happily off government benefits. Whitehouse continued:

The notion that you're going to cut off somebody's unemployment insurance and have them go out and find a job is just plain nuts. There aren't a lot of people lying around enjoying the luxury of unemployment insurance payments. They want to be getting to work.

Welfare is always an "allure," as Republicans have put it, but it's also a necessary safety net precisely for times like this. And it's not just the unemployed who will suffer at the hands of the Republicans. As Arthur Delaney of HuffPo reports:

Democratic leaders in the Senate have apparently failed to win enough support to overcome a Republican filibuster of a bill to help the poor, the old and the jobless, despite making a series of cuts to the measure over the past several weeks to appease deficit hawks.

"It looks like we're going to come up short," said a senior Democratic aide on Wednesday evening. "It looks like Republicans are prepared to kill aid to states, an extension of unemployment benefits, and ironically, the Republicans are prepared to kill efforts to close loopholes that allow companies to export jobs overseas."

The legislation, known as the "tax extenders" bill, would reauthorize extended unemployment benefits for people out of work for six months or longer, would protect doctors from a 21 percent pay cut for seeing Medicare patients, and would provide billions in aid to state Medicaid programs.

Come Friday, 1.2 million people will lose access to the extended unemployment benefits, a number that will grow by several hundred thousand every week after that.

As Steve Benen correctly notes, the votes are actually there for the bill. The problem is the filibuster, and the Republicans won't even let the bill get to the floor for a vote:

Democrats appear to have lined up 58 votes, but in the Senate, 42 is greater than 58, even when our economic health is on the line.

In the real world, this means millions of jobless Americans will lose their already-modest benefits, and hundreds of thousands of workers will be laid off over the next year, including teachers, police officers, and firefighters. All of this will happen because Republicans are more concerned about the deficit -- a deficit they created under Bush/Cheney -- than the economy.

It's unpleasant to think about, and I really hope it's not true, but it may be time for a discussion about whether GOP lawmakers are trying to deliberately sabotage the economy to help their midterm election strategy. After all, these same Republicans have supported deficit-financed tax-extenders before -- there's no credible reason to change course now. On the contrary, with the economy struggling to break through, the need for this package is more obvious, not less, if your goal is to actually improve economic conditions.

I think that's a discussion we need to have. Senate Republicans, including the supposed moderates like Susan Collins and joined by "Democrat" Ben Nelson, seem to be doing everything in their power to block economic recovery and destroy the safety net that so many American need, a net that will allow many of them to get back on their feet again. Pat Garofalo at Think Progress writes that at least 200,000 jobs could be lost from withholding aid to state Medicaid programs. And in addition to cutting benefits to the unemployed, the failure to pass the bill, the Republican failure, would lead to dramatic cuts to services all across the country, according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report cited by Garofalo:

Arizona would have to cut funding for its state court system, Colorado's likely cuts "include eliminating state aid for full-day kindergarten for 35,000 children, eliminating preschool aid for 21,000 children, and increasing overcrowding in juvenile detention facilities," while New Mexico "could eliminate a wide range of Medicaid services, including emergency hospital services, inpatient psychiatric care, personal care assistance for the disabled, prescribed medications, and hospice care."

And so on, and so on. And yet Republicans don't seem to care, so focused are a few of them on the deficit and many more of them either on playing politics by trying to sabotage the Democrats' agenda or on slashing government altogether, cutting even essential services like health care and policing. And even significant Democratic concessions haven't won over any Republicans.

It's all quite appalling, and so deeply harmful both to the economy broadly and to the American people, so many of whom will continue to suffer through the worst economic situation since the Great Depression. The stupid filibuster rule in the Senate is partly to blame, for even a party with a large majority that actually wants to do something is stuck, but the blame really does need to be on the Republicans, who seem to have zero interest in compromise and zero interest in doing what is right for the country. It is imperative that voters remember this come November.

Can Blue Dogs read?

By Creature

If they can they should read Harold Meyerson in today's WaPo discussing their collective cluelessness when in comes to jobs and the deficit. More likely, however, they will piss on their WaPo copy. Which is no different than what they are doing to the American economy.

Damned either way

By Creature

Benen:

There was a point not too long ago when Democrats thought the focus should be "jobs, jobs, jobs." Now, with the elections drawing closer, some of the Dems have decided the focus should be "deficit, deficit, deficit" -- a deficit that will, by the way, get worse if more Americans are unemployed.

And once the Dems fully (and wrongly) embrace "deficit, deficit, deficit" they will be hit for not caring about "jobs, jobs, jobs."

More spending please

By Creature

Sixty percent of the public is game for more spending to help the economy, and the Dems can't muster the votes to do something. Of course, they're afraid that Rush Limbaugh will yell at them, so it makes perfect sense.

Jobs

By Creature

The report is not good. Get ready for another dip into the recession pool.

No jobs for you

By Creature

Because Democrats are afraid of Republicans calling them names. Sure, deficit spending sucks, but until we're out of this hole there really is no choice.

Another new black

By Capt. Fogg

My local Tea Party is gearing up for another froth and drool session on tax day although at least half of them know by now they won't be paying Federal Income Taxes this time or at least less than they paid the year before. You can be damned sure there won't be any of the local Billionaires (there are quite a few) amongst the cracker crumbs.

The Dow is over 11,000 as I write this, investor optimism boosted by earnings reports and economic data. Inflation remains contained at one tenth of one percent, despite the solemn assurances of Weimar style runaway. Retail sales continue to climb more than expected as the economic expansion continues.

"The amount of diesel fuel bought using credit cards at U.S. truck stops increased in March to the highest level in more than a year, indicating the recovery is broadening beyond manufacturing "

says Bloomberg and truck tonnage, which accounts for 68 percent of freight transported in the U.S., increased on a year-over-year basis in February for a third straight month, as truckers benefit from inventory rebuilding, increased exports and stronger sales.

It's getting harder not to call this a recovery, but it would certainly be hard to associate the news with the kind of implosion into economic chaos a Marxist economy and tyrannical Pol Pot killing fields some of the more extreme viewpoints have been forecasting.

"Bleak is the New Black"

writes Newsweek, but it's in the context of the increasing disparity between the sound and fury and the tale told by economic data.

"America is coming back stronger, better, and faster than nearly anyone expected—and faster than most of its international rivals."

and at present, the Dow is up over 70% in the last year. As to whether we would have turned around earlier if there had been no bailout, no stimulus package and a program of austerity, tax cuts for billionaires and continued deregulation as the Republicans demanded after 1929, it seems harder still to believe that we would be talking about recovery as anything but a cruel joke just now. Even so, despair, panic, and even hysteria are the stock in trade of the Fox News doomers and gloomers - the same folks who blamed pessimistic Liberals for "talking down" the solid economy of the Bush years. No, certainly a continued, uninterrupted recovery is hardly a sure thing, but more balanced Republican observers may be beginning to wish the fear mongering Murdoch would reign in his dogs a bit tighter before American voters realize that the last thing the Republicans seem to want is what they want: a recovery.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Quote of the Day

By Creature

"Never again should America be in a position where the Secretary of the Treasury comes in to Congress and says 'Give me $700 billion or the economy will disappear by Monday.'" -- TARP-watchdog-hero (and my choice to replace Timmy Geithner) Elizabeth Warren, warning that the government must prepare now for the coming commercial real estate collapse.

Low risk of double-dip

By Creature

I sure hope Geithner's right. Reality, however, is painting a different picture. Have we learned nothing from the Bush years?

The French confection

By Capt. Fogg 

Bob Greene made me laugh this morning, writing about the magazine ad for a Hermès suitcase priced at $27,100. He thought at first it was a joke until the Hermès store in Naples, Florida told him that it wasn't even their most expensive bag, which of course is diamond-encrusted. This one isn't. It's trimmed in "Evercalf" leather which I suspect to be much like the "rich Corinthian" leather of Chrysler Cordoba fame, which means most of the cost -- at least $27,000 of it -- is in the trademarked name for a perfectly ordinary material. Otherwise it's just a canvas bag, or "officer canvas" as they call it, which means you may have to salute it if you're wearing a Hermès hat.

Why? Greene keeps asking, although I know and you know exactly why anyone would actually buy one at a time when more Americans are cramming their things into shopping carts and Hefty bags and wandering the streets. It's precisely because it cost $27,100 and you can't afford to toss that kind of money away on nonsense, hand stitched or not.

It's not the sort of bag most people would really notice, except that it doesn't have the silly handle and wheels that make our airports seem like farmyards full of goat carts, but then it's designed for another purpose, it's designed both to remind you and to help you forget that there are people -- millions of people trying to support families on one Hermès suitcase a year.

Hey, don't get angry. It's your money and you're taxed enough already. Under Reagan's tax structure you'd have had to make do with Louis Vuitton or, perish the thought, Hartmann, so the country owes it to you and you needed to buy it now, before that Marxist in the White House restores the tax rates of that prince of Capitalism -- right?

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Good riddance!

By Carl

You think Barack Obama is glad to see 2009 end?

1) Climate Change Conference Stalled

2) Democrats Squabble Over Healthcare Reform

3) Whiny Republicans Throw A Temper Tantrum

4) First Time Jobless Claims Are Surprisingly Higher

5) Obama's Support Is Winnowing Away

This closely mirrors the first Bush year, when he could get nothing done and was falling apart, until one fateful day in September of 2001.

We hope Obama will not resort to allowing a tragedy on his watch, but one never knows for sure.

I wouldn't say he desperately needs good news, but it's certainly looking as though he could stand a bit of picking up and the clock is running, after all. He needs something in the first half of 2010 in order to consolidate the gains Democrats have made over the past six years in Congress.

Curiously, it's the attacking from the left that flummoxes me. I get that an awful lot of hope (pun intended) was placed on Obama's shoulders, but come on! The economy this year, the worst since the Great Depression, has hampered any effective legislation he could possibly have been expected to pass, AND he's had to herd cats from his left and his right in order to do what he has been able to accomplish.

And it's most assuredly NOT helping that the moronic leadership in Congress has been nipping at his heels instead of assisting his agenda.

Hell, you'd almost be tempted to blame Bush/Cheney for sabotaging the nation, poisoning the well ahead of Obama's takeover, in order to give one final bird to the people of the United States.

If liberals, and I count myself a liberal, albeit one with a mind, are going to blame anyone, then let's shift the focus to where the blame truly belongs. If Republicans could blame Clinton (or worse, Jimmy Carter) for Bush's failings eight years out, certainly we can be sporting enough to blame Bush for failing to live up to his fiduciary duty to protect the nation and its citzenry, just one year down the road.


(crossposted to Simply Left Behind)