economy

More States Confounded by Cons

Dana Hunter

California’s not the only state held hostage by insane Con ideology. Kansas is staring down the barrel of their guns:

According to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D), it is up in the air currently as to whether or not government employees will receive a paycheck this Friday. Due to budgetary shortfalls and unexpected expenditures, there isn’t enough money this week to make payroll.

In order to address this shortfall, legislators proposed an inter-governmental loan, a proposal blocked by the Republican majority. Sebelius called them “petty political games”, but any reader here knows that it’s just indicative of the systemic wingnuttery exhibited by Republicans across the country — locally and nationally.

For ten years, Kansas has borrowed from unencumbered funds to close its budgetary gap in that dry spell before people pay their taxes. From the way I’m reading it, it’s basically like withdrawing money from savings to keep food on the table until your bonus comes through, on which date you pay the money right back into your savings. It’s been no problem until this year, which happens to be the year in which Cons are out of power but want to prove their potency, the economy is aspiring to repeat the gory days of the Great Depression, and people are losing their jobs in droves. Now, when the pantry’s empty, the Cons want to tell Kansas to suck it up and starve.

These people are motherfucking beyond insane.

And it’s not just California and Kansas. Louisiana’s coming under fire, too:

Louisiana faces a possible $2 billion budget shortfall next year, and the state is being hit hard by unemployment. Yet Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), rumored to be a future presidential candidate, said this weekend that he may turn down the roughly $3.8 billion for the state in the economy recovery package, which is expected to create 50,000 jobs:

We’ll have to review each program, each new dollar to make sure that we understand what are the conditions, what are the strings and see whether it’s beneficial for Louisiana to use those dollars,” Jindal said.

You know what, you fucktard? I’ll bet that 50,000 jobless people would find those dollars plenty beneficial for Louisiana. I can guaranfuckingtee you that the poor people whose services you’ll slash to try to close that $2 billion gap would find those dollars beneficial. And those people in Cao’s district, y’know, the ones he said this about:

“Even though it is going to be a humongous bill, even though we will be in debt for years, I believe that more likely than not, I will vote for it because the 2nd Congressional District needs a stimulus package.” … “A lot of the provisions in the bill will be good for the district, because we need almost everything,” he said. “You name it, we need it.”

and then stabbed in the back by voting with his party rather than his conscience, I’d imagine they’d find those dollars beneficial.

So how far does it go, America? How many of you are going to let the Cons con you again? How many jobs do you have to lose, how many state employees have to go without pay, how many schools and hospitals and vital services suffer, before you say enough?

Keep in mind the games they’re playing with your lives when this next election cycle rolls around. Hand them a defeat to remember.

Right now, that looks like the only way any of us will get to keep our jobs…

More States Confounded by Cons
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What Is Eric Cantor Smoking?

Dana Hunter

Whatever it is, it must be some pretty powerful shit. Y’know, the kind of stuff that has you standing on a ledge on the 56th floor preparing to prove that while your hallucinations say you can fly, gravity and anatomy say otherwise.

Here we see him at a press conference in January 2008, bouncing on his toes, warming up for the leap:

Eric Cantor makes it clear that he is no friend to those Americans who are suffering:

Well, you know, there are some people in this economy who are really hurting. And if we’re going to enhance their unemployment benefits, if we’re going to increase their food stamp benefits, then let’s call that what it is. That is enhancing the safety net in this country. That is not something that I think we should look to, to grow our economy and to secure the job prospects and the economic future for the American families.

Here he is, flapping his arms on Hannity and Colmes four days after the election:

Cantor also made this little slip on HANNITY & colmes:

MR. COLMES: Yeah. Wouldn’t it be wise to hold your fire and stop looking for a reason to be critical until he actually takes office so you can actually work together before you criticize an administration which hasn’t even taken hold yet, hasn’t even entered office yet?

REP. CANTOR: Alan, Alan, Alan, I’m not criticizing. All I’m saying is we’ve had no indication that they’re reaching across the aisle, taking some of our suggestions to try and make this thing real rather than some payoff to some workers that they feel that they need to provide some assistance to.

And on January 12th, we see his knees bending and his arms windmilling as he gets ready to take flight [h/t]:

Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican whip, said Republicans had concerns about expanding the [SCHIP] program, to immigrants or any other group, before the original purpose of the program was achieved. [emphasis added by moi]

“The program has not fulfilled its initial mission, to serve children of the working poor,” Mr. Cantor said in an interview.

Houston, we have lift-off:

Well, the new Newt Gingrich is at it again. Virginia Representative Eric Cantor, who takes “credit” for leading the House Republicans to unanimous opposition to the Obama Jobs Bill, now is “opposing” the plan to help prevent foreclosures:

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said that the Obama administration’s yet-to-be-announced $50 billion plan to stem home foreclosures may only add to the country’s fiscal and housing problems.

snip

“Homeowners, right now, are suffering under skyrocketing property taxes. And if we put the bill for $50 billion plus on top of all the bills that families have right now, you may very well be set to encourage more foreclosures,” said Cantor.

The Hill: Cantor offers early criticism of Obama mortgage aid

If you don’t have a home, you can’t pay property taxes. And property taxes don’t go to the federal government. Cantor knows that. Clearly he is being disingenuous.

That’s one way to put it. I think I prefer the term “suicidally delusional,” meself. Because, you see, it turns out that man really wasn’t meant to fly:

The GOP senses an opening to attack Obama and the Democrats on the stimulus and future legislation as spending our nation cannot afford, which is of course ironic given that the Republicans signed off on President Bush’s doubling of our national deficit.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) previewed this line of attack today when criticized the upcoming mortage legislation on CBS today: “At some point, I think the people of this country are beginning to understand, who is going to pay for all of this?”

Do the numbers indicate that Americans are beginning to subscribe to Cantor’s philosophy?

No.

More Americans approved of former President Bush before he left office than of Congressional Republicans’ efforts regarding the passage of the stimulus bill, according to a Gallup poll conducted a week ago. [emphasis most emphatically added]

Poor Eric. That’s gonna be a long, hard fall, with a rather messy landing at the end.

What Is Eric Cantor Smoking?

Cons Out to Destroy California

Dana Hunter

There’s insanity, and then there’s this:

It sounds as though California is finally melting down politically:

“The state of California — its deficits ballooning, its lawmakers intransigent and its governor apparently bereft of allies or influence — appears headed off the fiscal rails.

Since the fall, when lawmakers began trying to attack the gaps in the $143 billion budget that their earlier plan had not addressed, the state has fallen into deeper financial straits, with more bad news coming daily from Sacramento. The state, nearly out of cash, has laid off scores of workers and put hundreds more on unpaid furloughs. It has stopped paying counties and issuing income tax refunds and halted thousands of infrastructure projects.

Twenty-thousand layoff notices will go out on Tuesday morning, Matt David, the communications director for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said Monday night. “In the absence of a budget we need to realize this savings and the process takes six months,” Mr. David said.

After negotiating nonstop from Saturday afternoon until late Sunday night on a series of budget bills that would have closed a projected $41 billion deficit, state lawmakers failed to get enough votes to close the deal and adjourned. They returned to the Capitol on Monday morning and labored into the evening but still failed to reach a deal. They planned to reconvene at 10 a.m. Tuesday to go at it again.

California has also lost access to much of the credit markets, nearly unheard of among state municipal bond issuers. Recently, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the state’s bond rating to the lowest in the nation.

California’s woes will almost certainly leave a jagged fiscal scar on the nation’s most populous state, an outgrowth of the financial triptych of above-average unemployment, high foreclosure rates and plummeting tax revenues, and the state’s unusual budgeting practices. (…)

The roots of California’s inability to address its budget woes are statutory and political. The state, unlike most others, requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Legislature to pass budgets and tax increases. And its process for creating voter initiatives hamstrings the budget process by directing money for some programs while depriving others of cash.

In a Legislature dominated by Democrats, some of whom lean far to the left, leaders have been unable to gather enough support from Republican lawmakers, who tend on average to be more conservative than the majority of California’s Republican voters and have unequivocally opposed all tax increases.”

They need three (3) Republican votes in each house. They can’t get them. And this despite the fact that the Republicans who have been negotiating have gotten a lot, including, according to the LATimes, “tax breaks for corporations”.

Really. I am not making this up. With the state budget $41 billion in deficit, Republicans held out for corporate tax cuts, and then aren’t even supporting the resulting bill.

What the Cons are doing to California is far beyond insane. They’re holding a state hostage to their tax cut religion, and don’t doubt they would do it to the nation if Washington worked by the same outlandish rules as California. They’ve completely broken with reality. Even Reagan faced up to facts and raised taxes, first on the state of California when he was governor, and then again as President. Today’s Cons are so far round the bend they can’t even follow the lead of their hero when their state and their nation are in desperate straits.

Robert in Monterey, who has been blogging the crisis at Caltics, pulls no punches in describing what they’ve become:

The Republican Party now exhibits the logic of a terrorist organization – willing to sacrifice anyone and everyone to their ideological purity. And it’s worth noting that they themselves embrace that description, with one Republican Congressman equating their party to the Taliban. Rush Limbaugh says he wants Obama – and thus America – to fail; John and Ken and the California Republican Party are essentially saying the same thing about California.

Let the state fail, they say. Let all the schools close, all the health care workers be fired, all the buses and trains shut down, all the construction workers laid off. Let the economy collapse, because god forbid they step down from their ideological pedestals.

Republicans have become the party of no – no to economic recovery, no to fiscal stability, no to the very government they have sworn to uphold.

This is what comes of electing people who hate government and hate coastal California even more. The only question now is, what do we do to prevent them from destroying a nation?

Cons Out to Destroy California

How Right They Were

Dana Hunter

And, since I’m talking about Cons, you know I don’t mean “correct.”

David Waldman, the blogger formerly known as Kagro X, has compiled a series of Con quotes about Clinton’s stimulus package. You know, the one that led to nearly a decade of prosperity. The Cons were just as Right then as they are now – and just as blindingly stupid.

A taste:

Rep. Robert Michel (R-IL), Los Angeles Times, 5/28/93:

They will remember who let loose this deadly virus into our economic bloodstream.

[snip]

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-CA), 5/27/93:

This is really the Dr. Kevorkian plan for our economy.

[snip]

Rep. John Kasich (R-OH), GOP News Conference, Senate Gallery, 8/3/93:

Come next year… we’re going to find out whether we have higher deficits, we’re going to find out whether we have a slower economy, we’re going to find out what’s going to happen to interest rates, and it’s our bet that this is a job killer.

Ah, yes. Total job killer:

And that deficit, oh dear:


Not to mention, y’know, the economy totally tanked:


And I’m sure they’re just as Right this time.

How Right They Were

Cause and Effect

Dana Hunter2 Comments

Democrats good for the economy. Republicons bad. Why is this so hard to understand?


At the end of that diagram, you can clearly see the cliff Bush drove us over. That is, of course, after he drove us over the first cliff in 2001. You can’t blame the terrorists when you’re the one that ignored the intelligence warnings.

I have no idea where this myth that the Cons are the party of fiscal responsibility came from. They spend like drunken sailors when they’re in charge. Check out the deficit:


My goodness me, it does appear that the deficit has exponentially increased under Cons ever since Reagan.

Here’s another myth-shattering chart. Corporate profits increase under Dems:


Funny how when more people can afford to buy your products, you sell more, innit?

So, with all that being the case, let me ask a question: how the fuck is it that Cons are allowed to discuss the economy, much less get their grubby hands on it? According to these charts, we should be laughing ourselves sick every time they open their mouths, and never ever again let them come within spitting distance of the economic controls.

The article I took those last two charts from is well worth reading in its entirety, btw. And it’s got plenty more pictures drawn from government sources for the terminally hard-of-thinking. Time to explode those myths before that precipice we’ve fallen over drops us into a chasm not even a Democratic president can pull us out of.

Cause and Effect

Whip the Senate Into Shape

Dana Hunter

Time to pick up the whip.

We’re shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs a month, and the fucking Senate’s quibbling over minutae. Con fucktards are driving the debate over the stimulus (which is something they desperately need to fail so they can hang on to what power they have left). And the Blue Dogs are trying to preach fiscal responsibility at a time when, without drastic action, there may not be enough fiscal left to worry about being responsible for.

This shit has got to stop. Call your Senators. Let them know in no uncertain terms that you’re expecting them to rescue the country before we end up with third-world unemployment rates.

Drown out the Limbaugh lobotomy victims. It’s getting intense out there.

Backed by a deluge of conservative grassroots phone calls (100 calls for every 1 progressive call!), Senate Republicans are moving rapidly to obstruct President Obama’s economic recovery bill. They’re pushing reforms that are designed essentially to make the plan fail — demanding that billions be cut from a plan that, if anything, is already too small, and that more be diverted to top-end tax cuts.

Since when are we letting these fucktards drive the debate? Their ideas got us into this mess to begin with. It’s like taking advice from the man who poured gasoline on your house and set it afire, then tells you that you need more gas to smother the flames. Is this country really that fucking stupid? Let’s prove that at least a few of us aren’t.

Especially in the midst of this meltdown, we cannot sit back for a moment while the forces conspiring to maintain the failed status quo push ever forward. Forget about campaigning, this is governing. And while different rules apply, one thing is constant – nobody ever won the battle of ideas without speaking up.

Call your Reps.

Do you know how many jobs our economy shed in December? 693,000. Over half a million jobs. If this shit continues, we will lose over 6,000,000 (that’s six million for anyone who is zero-challenged) jobs this year. That’s if things stayed the same. Anyone other than the delusional fools on the right care to bet that if we don’t take action, things won’t get worse?

We need to start screaming before we all end up fucked.

Take a few minutes and call your senators, even the liberals, and tell them that you want them to vote for the stimulus. I can’t believe we have to whip a Democratic senate with 58 goddamned votes, but apparently we do.

Whip your Senators into shape.

Whip the Senate Into Shape

And You Wonder Why the Left is Angry?

Dana Hunter17 Comments

dday and I share a sentiment:

I think every post I write gets me angrier and angrier, so I may need to take a time out. But first:

Max Baucus spoke at the Academy Health National Policy Conference today. His first words were:

The 19th Century British philosopher Herbert Spencer wrote: “The preservation of health is a duty.”

I believe that this Congress has a duty to reform health care.

And he continued, “this morning, I’d like to spend some time talking about the potential obstacles we may face as we move forward – and the reasons why those barriers can be overcome.” So his talk was a kind of analysis, setting out the barriers and how they can be surmounted.

The Washington Times watched that performance, listened to it, and wrote this.

A key Senate Democrat charged with overseeing his party’s swift push for universal health care indicated on Tuesday that reform may have to wait until next year, as other priorities related to the economy and wars take precedent.

“Why might reform not happen this year? As is often the case, the new administration and the new Congress face competing priorities,” said Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat and Senate Finance Committee chairman, at a health policy conference in Washington hosted by AcademyHealth and Health Affairs magazine. “These priorities compete for time on the agenda and attention in the press and in public.”

“The president’s dance card is indeed full,” he added.

Seriously, shoot me in the face.

If you read nothing else today, pop an extra dose of blood pressure meds and go finish dday’s post.

I’ve been getting steadily more steamed. A democracy is nominally run by its citizens. To make good decisions, you need good info. And this is the kind of codswallop we’re fed. Anyone wonder why I get my news from the blogs rather than the MSM? I’m going to need that gun when dday’s done with it.

I’d boycott the networks, but I don’t watch teevee anymore anyway, so it’s a rather empty gesture. I can’t watch. Not even when Obama’s on trying to correct all of the bullshit they’ve spewed:

But this is good stuff from the Prez. More like it, please:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, Charlie, if you take a look at the bill, the fact is, there are no earmarks in this bill, which, by the way, some of the critics can’t claim for legislation they’ve voted for over the last eight years. There’s no earmarks in it. We’ve made sure that there aren’t individual pork projects in there.

The criticisms have generally been around some policy initiatives that were placed in the bill that I think are actually good policy, but some people may say is not going to actually stimulate jobs quickly enough. I think that there’s legitimate room for working through those issues over the next several weeks to make sure that we get the best possible bill. But here’s the thing that I think we have to understand. The economy is in desperate straits. What I won’t do is adopt the same economic theories that helped land us in the worst economy since the Great Depression. What I will do is work with anybody of good faith to make sure that we can come up with the best possible package to not only create jobs and provide support to families, but also to lay the groundwork for long-term economic growth.

CHARLES GIBSON: CBO says only 25 percent of this bill would get to people within a year. [Memo to Charlie: that’s been debunked, you dumbshit. Don’t make me come over there with the Smack-o-Matic 3000.] Republicans now say it needs to be more stimulative, there needs to be more money on infrastructure, there needs to be more tax cuts, there needs to be more help for homeowners, maybe even guaranteeing 4, 4.5 percent mortgages. [Memo to Charlie ctd.: Cons are saying all sorts of shit trying to excuse themselves for not voting for the stimulus, and you’ve already repeated it endlessly. Be a fucking reporter for once and note they were against help for homeowners way before they were for it, and just voted down more infrastructure spending. If you can’t fact check, STFU.]

Would you accept those things?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, keep in mind, for example, some want to put more infrastructure in the bill, and they’re also complaining that it doesn’t spin out fast enough. In some cases, there are contradictions there. I mean, we may want to spend on a whole bunch of great infrastructure, but it may take seven or eight years to do it, in which case we’re vulnerable for the criticism that it’s not spinning out fast enough. I think that in a package of this sort, that has to go to Congress with 535 opinions, at least, then there’s going to be some give and take.

What I’ve said is that any good idea thrown out there to improve this legislation I’m for. But I want to be absolutely clear here that the overwhelming bulk of the package is sound, is designed to put people back to work, help states that are in desperate straits, help families who are losing jobs and health care, and it’s designed to make sure that we’ve got green energy jobs for the future. In fact, most of the programs that have been criticized as part of this package amount to less than one percent of the overall package. And it makes for good copy, but here’s the thing — we can’t afford to play the usual politics at a time when the economy continues to worsen.

I wonder what it’s going to take to get that through the Cons’ thick skulls? We already paddled them soundly, not once but twice, at the polls. What more does it take to make them grow the fuck up and start acting like responsible adults? How, in fact, do you play ball with tantrum-throwing toddlers who take their ball and go home when they
don’t get their way?

And what is it going to take to break the media of the habit of being stenographers for the Cons? Do we need to add a remedial training program to the stimulus that will send these fake journalists back to school so they can learn to be the real thing? I’m not even sure it’s an educational issue – I think they know they’re supposed to fact-check, but they’re too addicted to Con bullshit to stop swallowing it. Which, I suppose, makes this more of a heath-care issue. We need to stage an intervention. Get those media clowns into detox, stat.

This is why the left seems so angry, folks. Ten metric tons of dumbfuckery dumped on one’s head on an hourly basis while you have nothing but a dessert spoon to shovel it off with rather has that effect.

And You Wonder Why the Left is Angry?

More Republicans Like This, Please

Dana Hunter1 Comment

There’s one or two of them who occasionally makes sense. Very occasionally:

Rep. John L. Mica (Fla.), the ranking Republican on the transportation committee, called the proposed infrastructure spending “almost minuscule” and expressed regret that the administration had not crafted its plan around an ambitious goal such as building high-speed rail in 11 corridors around the country, which Mica said would cost $165 billion.

“They keep comparing this to Eisenhower, but he proposed a $500 billion highway system, and they’re going to put $30 billion” in roads and bridges, he said. “How farcical can you be? Give me a break.”

You know what? He’s a typical Republican in many, many ways, but here he’s actually talking sense. More like this, please.

But, of course, the majority of them are just batshit fucking insane:

Now, Republicans are just chipping away and collecting scalps, and they’ve been moderately successful, but in a really haphazard fashion. Yesterday, out of nowhere, conservatives started complaining about the lack of housing aid in the bill, which is rich for them. And check out what nutball Michelle Bachmann tried to pass as an amendment (it didn’t make it through the Rules Committee) – requiring a state spending cap for any state that receives funds from this legislation, the kind that almost destroyed Colorado a few years back (Republicans are the party of state’s rights). I’m not seeing a lot of strategy, just a general lurching from one outrage to the next.

Sadly, it’s working. I guess the provision to refurbish the National Mall has been excised. From a raw policy standpoint, it’s not a dealbreaker, but it shows a troubling trend where GOP hissy fits bear fruit. Democrats are plowing forward on this bill, but what happens with the next one? Who has the ear of the President? Democrats who want to cement legitimate progress? Or Republican know-nothings who appeal to elites to create firestorms? And the idea that this will buy Obama votes down the road for other liberal initatives borders on the insane.

So here’s an idea for Obama: seize on those statements from the rare few Republicans who actually realize the need for more spending, give them their heart’s desire, and then go on teevee crowing “See? All bipartisan, these bits were recommended by Republicans, isn’t that loverly?!”

Reward good behavior, punish bad. It works for small children. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for the bunch of screaming infants the Republicon party has become.

More Republicans Like This, Please

We've Walked This Road Before

Dana Hunter2 Comments

One common theme emerging from the current hullaballoo over the desperately-needed stimulus package is this: Cons don’t want one. Unless, of course, it consists entirely of tax cuts. They never shut up about tax cuts.

Now, my darlings, I know you’re not stupid. You know that just because someone repeats something ad nauseum does not mean it’s true. But you probably all have easily-snookered people in your lives, whom you care about. You may only care because no one has to pass a basic economics test in order to vote, and you wish they’d stop voting for outrageous idiots, but still, you care.

So when they fall under the sway of many Republicon voices all chorusing “Tax cuts, tax cuts, taaaaxx cuuuuttttsss!” you might wish to show them the road already traveled (h/t):

Larry Mishel on the effect, or more precisely the lack of any effect, of the 2003 tax cuts on “Jobs and Growth”:

Tax cut approach has already been tried and failed as stimulus:…[The administration claimed t]he Bush tax cuts of 2003 … would generate 1.4 million jobs on top of the 4.1 million jobs that were expected to be generated over the eighteen months following June 2003. See [here]…

EPI tracked the initiative’s effectiveness through a website, www.jobwatch.org, and found that it fell far short of its goals. Not only did the promised 1.4 million additional jobs not appear, but the 4.1 million jobs expected with no action also failed to materialize. In all, only 2.4 million jobs were created—1.7 million short of the administration’s projection without their new policy. Thus, by the Bush administration’s own metrics the tax cut program fell short by a total of 3.1 million jobs (149,000 pr month). For an analysis of how the Bush 2003 tax plan (The “Jobs and Growth” plan) fell short of its job claims see [here]…

On what basis can the conservatives who embraced those failed initiatives now claim that tax cuts are the best policy?

It seems Republicans have but one answer to every problem, get government out of the way through tax cuts and deregulation. When they are asked what caused it, whatever it might be, there is one answer, government. When asked how to fix it, whatever it might be, there is but one answer, reduce government through tax cuts and deregulation. For many, especially the politicians, it doesn’t matter whether tax cuts will actually fix the economy, the goal is to reduce the size of government by any means, and they see this as an opportunity to do just that.

[snip]

They already screwed this up once, the initial tax cut stimulus package put into place last spring was too small and poorly targeted, it had all sorts of problems all in the name of appeasing this same group – and here they are trying to muck up the process once again, to hold jobs hostage while they try to get tax cuts in place, even though something like 40% of the package is already devoted to tax cuts. Camel, tent, nose. I think it’s time to stand up and say no, sorry, you lost the election, and not by just a little bit. You had your chance and look where we ended up – with a terrible economy, huge holes in the budget making it much harder to respond to the downturn, a financial sector wrecked by your anti-government, self-regulation philosophy, what is it about the past several years that would lead us to have any confidence at all you have the slightest clue how to manage a well-running economy instead of driving it into a ditch, let alone heal one that is broken?

Down that road lies an economy in ruins, hundreds of thousands of jobs vanishing at an appalling pace, an ever-increasing gap between rich and poor, and a vanishing middle-class. Why the fuck do we want to walk it again?

If Cons had anything useful to contribute, and if they understood bi means two, I’d be quite pleased with Obama including them in the construction and passage of this bill. Considering that all they have to offer are the same horrible ideas that caused this disaster in the first place, I say fuck ’em. The people who broke the country don’t get to tell us how to fix it.

The next time the Cons want to throw their weight around and try to impose their will on the stimulus package, this is the only response Obama should give them:


You can tell him so here.

We've Walked This Road Before