The Failure Of Compromise

Ken AshfordEconomy & Jobs & DeficitLeave a Comment

Let me get this straight:

(1)  Obama puts forth a stimulus bill which, most economists agree, will help shore up the economic downfall.

(2)  House Republicans don't like the bill because it's so much money, so Obama waters down the bill (making it less "stimulating") to appease them.  Then, zero Republicans vote in favor of the water-down version.

(3)  The bill goes to the Senate where it is watered-down some more (making it less "stimulating") to appease Senate Republicans.  But even then, only three Republicans vote in favor of the double-watered down version.

(4)  The House and Senate work on a reconciliation bill between their two versions.  It gets watered-down again.  And it looks like the majority of Republicans still won't vote for it ("wasteful spending" yada yada yada), although it will probably pass because Democrats are in the majority.

So what do we end up with?  A stimulus bill which might not work (or certainly not as well).

Change I can't believe!

Idiot Elected Leaders

Ken AshfordEconomy & Jobs & Deficit, History, Republicans1 Comment

From Columbus Dispatch:

U.S. Rep. Steve Austria said he supports a scaled-down federal economic-stimulus proposal, but the Beavercreek Republican told The Dispatch editorial board that the huge influx of money into the economy could have a negative effect.

"When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression," Austria said. "He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history."

Most historians date the beginning of the Great Depression at or shortly after the stock-market crash of 1929; Roosevelt took office in 1933.

I don't care if it provides job stimulus or not; clearly there needs to be an influx of money to the Ohio education system.

What Hath Rush, Hannity And O’Reilly Wrought?

Ken AshfordCrime, Right Wing Punditry/Idiocy, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

James Adkisson has been sentenced to life behind bars for the deaths of Greg McKendry and Linda Kraeger, the Unitarian Universalist church-goers who died during his assault on their church in Knoxville, TN last July.

What Adkisson left behind is his four-page handwritten manifesto, which can be read here (PDF format).  It's a reiteration of the talking points of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter and the whole hateful bunch.  This guy actually absorbed their eliminationist rhetoric and turned into action — a killing spree in a "progressive" church. 

Some excerpts:

"Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state. Shame on them….

"This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn't get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It's the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence."

"I thought I'd do something good for this Country Kill Democrats til the cops kill me….Liberals are a pest like termites. Millions of them Each little bite contributes to the downfall of this great nation. The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is to kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather. I'd like to encourage other like minded people to do what I've done. If life aint worth living anymore don't just kill yourself. do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals."

Adkisson also admits this: "This was an act of political protest."  Therefore, by his own admission, he was committing an act of domestic terrorism.

That's right.  Let history record that the right-wing talking heads incited an act of domestic terrorism.  Reflect on that.

Fox News Busted

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

Still have doubts that Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party?

This should lay those doubts to rest.

Yesterday, on Fox News' Happening Now, host Jon Scott told his viewers:

"The Senate is expected to pass the $838 billion stimulus plan — its version of it, anyway. We thought we'd take a look back at the bill, how it was born, and how it grew, and grew, and grew."

What followed was a series of graphic slides showing the evolution of the stimulus bill, complete with dates and sources.  Like this:

Hn-20090210-goppr1 

The problem?

Each graphic slide — the text, the sources, and dates – came directly from a February 10 press release issued by the Senate Republican Communications Center.

How do we know?

Because the press release contained a typo.  And one of those typos made it onto Fox's graphics.  Here it is:

Hn-20090210-goppr7   

Notice the date on the graphic?  It cites to the Wall Street Journal of December 19, 2009.

And if you check out the Senate Republican press release, you'll find the same typo:

$775 BILLION

WALL STREET JOURNAL: “President-elect Barack Obama's economic team is crafting a stimulus package to send to Congress worth between $675 billion and $775 billion over two years, according to officials familiar with the package…” (“Stimulus Package Heads Toward $850 Billion,” The Wall Street Journal, 12/19/09)

But the Wall Street Journal article was published on December 18th, in the year 2009.

Fox's research?  Simply parroting GOP talking points…. verbatim.

[H/T: Media Matters]

UPDATE:  From Washington Monthly…

Fox News literally got the Republican press release this morning, and soon after, aired it as if it were news. It's one thing to take the party line on every issue, but when a news outlet starts running GOP press releases — without even bothering to correct the party's typos — you know the network has given up entirely on being taken seriously.

It's worth noting, of course, that this is not only ridiculously partisan, it's also unethical — Fox News led viewers to believe the Republican talking points were actually the result of network research. If Fox News is going to pull a stunt like this, it should at least have the honesty to disclose the source.

The Chutzpah Of Wells Fargo

Ken AshfordCorporate Greed, Economy & Jobs & DeficitLeave a Comment

Campbell Brown:

(CNN) — Wells Fargo gets the "chutzpah" award for its PR counter attack. You may have heard about the bank's swanky Las Vegas trip that it had planned for its employees last weekend at two high-end casino resorts.

Keep in mind Wells Fargo took $25 billion in bailout money from taxpayers. It was only after The Associated Press broke the news that the annual getaway was still on, economic crisis be damned, that Wells Fargo, under public and government pressure, decided to cancel.

So, lesson learned? Not quite. This Sunday, Wells Fargo took out full-page newspaper ads in the New York Times and The Washington Post, by our calculation spending at least $200,000.

In the ads, Wells Fargo's CEO announced all of its big employee events for the year have now been canceled. He then blamed the media and said that our one-sided reporting on this subject makes every employee recognition event sound like a boondoggle. And that ultimately, our misleading reports have hurt Wells Fargo employees who deserve a pat on the back, and hurt the tourism industry since they aren't taking these trips anymore.

To which the reply can only be: Give me a break. This is really very simple: Taxpayers lent you $25 billion because of a national financial emergency. We don't think in the current environment you should be throwing lavish "thank you" parties. Period.

Yup.  Sometimes, I just don't think these bankers get it.

Fun Fact: On September 18, 2008, We Were Three Hours From Total Economic And Political Collapse

Ken AshfordEconomy & Jobs & DeficitLeave a Comment

According to Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D) (PA-11), in mid-September of 2008, the United States of America came just three hours away from the collapse of the entire economy.  This was two weeks before the huge market collapse during the first week of October 2008. 

It's buried in an interview he gave with C-Span recently.  The bombshell Kanjorski drops starts at about 2:10…

Partial transcript (emphasis added):

I was there when the secretary and the chairman of the Federal Reserve came those days and talked to members of Congress about what was going on… Here's the facts. We don't even talk about these things.

On Thursday, at about 11 o'clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the United States to a tune of $550 billion being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two.

The Treasury opened up its window to help. They pumped $105 billion into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks.

They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic and there. And that's what actually happened.

If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o'clock that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.

Now we talked at that time about what would have happened if that happened. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it.

Wow.  And we also recently learned that total economic collapse almost happened in England as well, on October 10.

Scary times.

Wasteful Spending On The Arts?

Ken AshfordEconomy & Jobs & Deficit, Popular Culture, TheatreLeave a Comment

The folks at the NRO's The Corner don't care for the stimulus bill.  Not surprising.  In this NRO article, they outlined 50 “of the most outrageous items in the stimulus package”.

Number one on the list?  $50 million for the NEA.  Here's what those "serious" critics of the stimulus package had to say:

The easiest targets in the stimulus bill are the ones that were clearly thrown in as a sop to one liberal cause or another, even though the proposed spending would have little to no stimulative effect. The National Endowment for the Arts, for example, is in line for $50 million, increasing its total budget by a third. The unemployed can fill their days attending abstract-film festivals and sitar concerts. 

Do they really believe that the purpose of the $50 million line item (which represents 0.00625% of the total stimulus package) is in there so that unemployed people can enjoy the arts?

FACT:  There are 5 million people employed in the arts in the United States, according to a study conducted last spring.  And most of them are not actual artists; they are everything from janitors to accountants that serve the arts industry.  But artist or not, being unemployed affects them just as strongly as it affects an unemployed factory worker.

And it's not like jobs in the arts are secure.

Why Is The GOP Smiling? (Or “The Audacity of Nope”)

Ken AshfordEconomy & Jobs & Deficit, RepublicansLeave a Comment

To read today's Washington Post, you would get the impression that Republicans are happy with their opposition to the stimulus bill.  By fighting the popular Obama, the article suggests that the GOP is beginning its road to a comeback:

After giving the package zero votes in the House, and with their counterparts in the Senate likely to provide in a crucial procedural vote today only the handful of votes needed to avoid a filibuster, Republicans are relishing the opportunity to make a big statement.  Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) suggested last week that the party is learning from the disruptive tactics of the Taliban, and the GOP these days does have the bravado of an insurgent band that has pulled together after a big defeat to carry off a quick, if not particularly damaging, raid on the powers that be.

"We're so far ahead of where we thought we'd be at this time," said Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), one of several younger congressmen seeking to lead the party's renewal. "It's not a sign that we're back to where we need to be, but it's a sign that we're beginning to find our voice. We're standing on our core principles, and the core principle that suffered the most in recent years was fiscal conservatism and economic liberty. That was the tallest pole in our tent, and we took an ax to it, but now we're building it back."

The second-ranking House Republican, Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), put it more bluntly. "What transpired . . . and will give us a shot in the arm going forward is that we are standing up on principle and just saying no," he said.

Yes, the GOP is finding their voice.  A voice that just says "no" (Cue Nancy Reagan's anti-drug message, and Senator Ted Stevens).

The article contains a photograph of Rush Limbaugh, suggesting that he is the de-facto leader of the Republican Party.  What's that about? Change nobody can be believe, because it's not change.

And the last paragraph is a howler, containing a nice quote from Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.):

"This thing is a dog and it doesn't hunt," Ryan said. "Everyone thinks Washington is just going back to pork-barrel spending. You can't walk down the street in Janesville, Wisconsin, without someone trashing it."

I suppose there are a lot of disgruntled people walking aimlessly down the street in Janesville Wisconsin, seeing as how so many of them were thrown out of work when the Chevy plant (which had been there 90 years) was closed.  But I don't think they will be complaining loudly about a job stimulus bill.

In fact, it appears that most Americans are behind Obama on this.  The graph don't lie.

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That's right. by nearly a two-to-one margin, Americans do not approve the Republican attempts at obstructionism.  Republican politicians and pundits might want to hold off on popping the champagne cork.

FURTHER THOUGHT:  I suspect that both Obama and the "Democrats in Congress" approval ratings would be higher if they were a little less centrist.

Thrill Me

Ken AshfordLocal Interest, TheatreLeave a Comment

Good local theatre this weekend and next:

Thrillpic By Mary Martin Niepold

SPECIAL TO THE JOURNAL

Published: February 8, 2009

Putting a murder to music may not be new, but it does curl the brain somehow. Sweeney Todd did it, and Oklahoma! to a lesser degree. Kurt Weill is famous on the subject.

Now, "The Murder of the Century" is the focus of the two-man musical from Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance, Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story.

For good ole, cold-blooded, calculated murder — the brainchild of two very intelligent young men — you can't ask for more than this particular, real-life crime, which happened in Chicago in 1924. It involved the murder of a young boy by Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, who were longtime friends, privileged Jewish university students and, possibly, lovers.

The murder set the country on its ear and immortalized the eloquent, 12-hour indictment of the death penalty by the duo's defense attorney, Clarence Darrow.

Jamie Lawson, the artistic director of Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance, is moving the company beyond its reliable roster of edgy humor. Lawson said he's still not sure why he picked Thrill Me, but he knows that he likes it and serves as the show's director and one of its co-stars.

He hasn't acted for nine years. His last role as one of several cowboys in Crazy For You is hardly preparation for playing a cold-blooded murderer who sings.

In this show, he plays Leopold, the younger of the pair who didn't necessarily concoct the murder but needed so much to be loved that he went along with his friend, Loeb, who enjoyed Nietzchean "superman" fantasies. Together, they came up with "the perfect crime," and newspapers relished headlines about "thrill killers."

Needing love from a madman may not be new subject matter, but in this show it's all set to music. First performed at the Midtown International Theater Festival in New York in 2003, the musical by Stephen Dolginoff (book, musics and lyrics) went to a larger Off-Broadway venue in 2005 by the York Theatre Company.

Songs are simply titled: "Thrill Me," "Way Too Far" and "Keep Your Deal with Me."

Lawson says that directing a two-man musical is easy enough. Bryan Daniel plays Loeb, and Lawson describes directing as something like, "OK, Bryan, you sing that line. OK. Then you come to me."

The subject matter, however, keeps Lawson thinking.

"The murder was so shocking," he said. "Why would two wealthy, everything-going-for-them kids want to do something like this? What was the motivation?

"Anything you do today is captured on the Internet or by your neighbor.

"We're just fascinated with this stuff," he said. "It's an episode on CSI, for heaven's sake. It's a history lesson to music. It's CNN, 2009."

Leopold and Loeb's murder of a 14-year-old boy who lived in their same wealthy neighborhood entailed killing him, then pouring hydrochloric acid on the body. Afterward, they had dinner.

One of the intrigues of the material, Lawson said, is comparing what happened in 1924 to the bombardment of violent and titillating imagery and behaviors we live with every day today.

"I can't figure out if there was the same amount of this kind of behavior back then and we just didn't have YouTube to tell us about it. Or do we have more of it because we're bombarded with this flow of stimulus? From the moment I get up, there's this constant stream of information — the computer, the TV, even the billboards are everywhere."

The show is told from the point of view of Lawson's character, Leopold. It's 1958, he's up for parole for the fifth time, and flashbacks take the audience to the planning of the murder — and the twisted relationship between the two men.

What's revealed in the show is that they had signed a contract. "The contract was to fulfill one another's needs whatever they are," Lawson said.

Loeb was killed in prison, and Leopold was paroled after 33 years whereupon he moved to Puerto Rico.

Lawson is still thinking about his choice.

"I really don't know what compelled me to this show — to picking it — and to being in it. I don't usually play characters so deviant. I'm used to fluff, playing fluffy characters."

■ The Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance presents Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story at 8 p.m. on Friday, Saturday, and Feb. 19-21, and at 2 p.m. on Feb. 22. Tickets are $16 for adults and $14 for seniors and students. 1047 Northwest Blvd., Winston-Salem, N. C. Call 336-723-7777.

[Photo by Jeffrey Driver]

On The Chopping Block

Ken AshfordEconomy & Jobs & DeficitLeave a Comment

Greg Sargent gets a memo:

I've just obtained an internal Senate committee memo detailing the latest cuts being eyed by the gang of Senators being led by Dem Ben Nelson and GOPer Susan Collins. Here is what’s being eyed in the bill right now:

*****************************

Total Reductions: $80 billion

Eliminations:

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

*****************************

Reductions:

Public Transit $3.4 billion, School Construction $60 billion

*****************************

Increases:

Defense operations and procurement, STAG Grants, Brownfields, Additional transportation funding

*****************************

Nelson spokesperson Clay Westrope confirms the authenticity of the memo, adding that the figures obviously could change. But this is currently the general direction.

As you can see the amount being cut appears to have fallen, to a total of $80 billion, though Westrope says the actual number is closer to $100 billion. Also, it appears some of those cuts are being maintained even as defense funds appear to be getting added.

While one can agree with some of the eliminations and reductions, I can see most of them promoting job growth ("COPS Hiring"?  That's a pretty obvious one).  In any event, a Republican would be hard-pressed to explain why "defense operations and procurement" creates jobs, and money for the "Coast Guard" (or "education improvments" or "prisons" or whatever) wouldn't.

What's most offensive about the negotiated reductions is the total elimination of food stamps.  Food stamps are one provision which gives us the most bang for our buck, stimulus-wise.

Stimulus 

Plus, it's the right thing to do — i.e., making sure low-income families, in a time of severe recession, can feed themselves.