Fact-esque

UAW: "No More Concessions"

If we haven't mentioned it before you know we were thinking it: the economic disaster will almost certainly be seen by business as a great excuse to cut labor costs even more and to weaken unions by crying poverty - and this time it may actually have a grain of truth in it, but what the hell. After years of stealing money from consumers, employees, even its own investors, it's cash rich. To mix my fairy tales a little, when you spend years crying "Wolf!" you may have to dip into your Treasurechest to pay the piper even if the teeth are eating through your door. Tough.

And I'm not the only one who feels that way. This week the SPEEA leaders (that's the Society for Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, Boing's engineer's union) okayed a strike if negotiations failed despite Boing's tardy delivery schedule and the crashing economy that isn't good for anybody. Fortunately, the two sides reached an agreement yesterday and a strike was averted but it says something that they even considered it given the state of the economy.

A more typical situation is the one we have now with the automakers screaming about how badly they're hurting what with economy in a tailspin and can't they please get bailed out, too? No doubt their execs have been days or even weeks without a spa vacation or a skiing weekend and how will they live on their meager $300K salaries without those $$$million$$$ bonuses they've been promised? I tell you, the times is bad over at GenMotChrysFord. They're setting up Executive Soup Kitchens as we speak.

Lost in the Wilderness - and Mistaking It for a Theme Park

Even the Republicans, masters of denial, are admitting that they're "lost in the wilderness", as Texas Gov Rick Perry put it. No denial-slouch himself, Perry is insisting that the GOP look to Pub Govs for inspiration and their next leaders. He probably has himself in mind (please, gawd, please!) but the names most often bandied about, according to Bloomberg News and three "experts" rounded up by Salon, are Sarah Palin and Louisiana's Bobby Jindal.

Leave us hope.

The NYT Is Shocked the Bail-Out Isn't Working

No kidding.

As the government’s financial rescue enters a new phase, Wall Street and many ordinary Americans are wondering the same thing: Is any of this working?

The short answer is not nearly as much, or as fast, as many had hoped.

More than a month and nearly $300 billion into the initial effort, many of the nation’s financial arteries seem nearly as sclerotic as they were before. Some of them, in fact, appear to be hardening more.

Loans are scarce, and for many people, getting scarcer. Home mortgage rates have barely eased. While solid corporations can borrow money again in the market for commercial paper — those crucial short-term i.o.u.’s that companies rely on to pay day-to-day bills — trickier forms of financing remain elusive. Hard-pressed companies are still virtually shut out of the capital markets.

(emphasis added)

You may translate "solid corpo's" as those which have lots of cash-on-hand and don't actually need loans.

If you've been paying attention to the reports in the press of what the money has been used for or is planned to be used for, you will have noticed that what it was intended to have been used for - loosening credit and making more $$$ available for loans - isn't on Wall Street's list. At all. Instead the bail-out bread has bought expensive executive vacations, lucrative executive bonuses, pay-offs to investors, and an opportunity for the rescued banks to once again get lost in the easy money of mergers and acquisitions. They're expanding, iow, forcing growth where the conditions don't otherwise exist for growth.

Which is pretty much what we said would happen when Congressional Democrats were rushing the bail-out to Bush's desk without reading it or paying too much attention to what it said in the fine print, which TreasSec Henry Paulson had made sure carried virtually NO restrictions on the banks' use or his own ability to disseminte the funds. The money, therefore, was handed over as part of a law that said it was for lending but without restrictions so that that's all it would be used for. Without consequences to worry about or legal sanctions, Wall Street simply put the money in its pocket. It didn't even say thanks. Meanwhile the NYT, which supported the bail-out editorially and never so much as suggested the possibility of potential dirty work at the crossroads, is shocked, shocked to discover that the thieves who stripped the Treasury and perpetrated fraud on consumers and investors alike would resort to...stealing.

Can they really be as naive as all that?

Coleman/Kezeminy and Laurie the Bag Lady

Just a quick shout-out to TMiss for those of you who might, now that the mainstream press has finally gotten into the act, be curious about what's going on over there in the normally squeaky-clean politics of Minnesota. What's going on, briefly, is that a Republican got caught being corrupt. Nothing new there, gawd knows, but Minnesotans aren't used to that sort of thing like the rest of us and it's causing quite a stir - or would be if the local big-time press wasn't so deep in the bag for Coleman. The Chicago Tribune, as TMiss documents, has been ignoring a major story about Coleman's wife acting as a bagman to deliver illegal contributions from multimillionaire businessman Nasser Kazeminy to her husband and handing itself over to Coleman surrogates and buttonmen to publish long fluff pieces and elaborate rationalizations for his attempt to stonewall the investigation.

Just scroll down and read the various posts for all you will ever need to know about it, including Coleman's sleezy attempt to blame Franken's campaign for a lawsuit that started in Texas before the campaign began, and Coleman's wife's invisible job with one of Kezeminy's companies. It's the sort of thing the Drudge Report would normally be all over if it was a Democrat involved, but, as we all know, the RWNM isn't interested in massive Republican corruption, only b-j's received by Democrats and spreading discredited stories about ballots in cars.

The recount, btw, won't be finished until next week but last time we looked, Coleman's 600-vote lead had shrunk to barely 200. TMiss said the recount wouldn't accomplish anything because Minnesota vote-counting wasn't ever that far off. With 2/3 of Coleman's victory margin doing a vanishing act, I have to say it's the only thing he's been wrong about so far.

Palin & Bush: The Dream Team

If there's any single characteristic that sets wingnuts apart from normal people it's their ability to ignore an uncomfortable reality and fashion a new, more congenial one that only they live in. Today brings us the two stars of Wingnuttia pretending that the election didn't change all that much and they're still right about everything they've been hopelessly wrong about.

First up, George W Bush, whose every move, thought, policy and belief was jettisoned by a disgusted electorate less than 2 weeks ago. In an excess of exuberance unexplainable by modern science, the man-who-would-be-king has decided to lecture Europe (which held a massive sea-to-sea champagne party to celebrate the election of his successor) on how it should handle the economic crisis he created.

President George W. Bush asserted Thursday that the global financial crisis is "not a failure of the free market" and urged world leaders to adopt modest financial reforms that stop short of the tighter regulations Europeans favor.

"Our aim should not be more government. It should be smarter government," Bush said during a speech in New York, a day before about two dozen world leaders converge on Washington for a weekend summit he is hosting.

The first question is, why are world leaders going to a summit held by the man who is the root cause of their economic troubles and then listening to him when he has less credibility than religious right preacher trying to explain what he was doing at the prostitutes' swap shop? Is this for its entertainment value? Because it's hard to imagine what other value it could possibly have. His performance in office has been so dreadful he has established a new baseline for incompetence, stupidity, and blind denial that won't be bettered for generations (if we're lucky) and yet he talks as if he isn't currently the world's personal bete-noir and they didn't collapse in laughter and hoots of derision when he told them his "solution".

And Lennon Laughs Approvingly

You have probably read the story of the 1.2 million copies of the prank NYT being handed out in NYC. Don't miss this video of reactions to the paper.  And whom exactly did the NYT send out to talk about it?  Or was it just some random (and apparently really dumb) worker who decided to jump into the breach to defend the Gray Lady's honor?  Note to random dumb guy: defending what isn't there is a zen exercise at best and takes more commitment than what you show.

New York Times Special Edition Video News Release - Nov. 12, 2008 from H Schweppes on Vimeo.

David Brooks Admits His Conservatism on FTN

Avedon Carol directed us to this Steve Benen post responding to David Brooks' announcement on Face the Nation that conservatism is the bunk. Both Benen and Carol were struck by his "analysis", Benen because he thoyght it was accurate and Carol because she thought somebody should remind Brooks that he was part of what he was decrying.

I'm most interested in this sentence: "And, fundamentally, the conservative movement failed (and I've been in it my entire life) because it hasn't addressed the problems of today, the rise of China and Russia, the rise of inequality, energy, health care. It's great to worry about Reagan. I loved Reagan, but those days are over." It "hasn't addressed the problems of today," David, because it created them - and you helped. Which is precisely what it was supposed to do - make everyone so wretched that they would never again feel free to grow their hair too long and march in the streets.

She's right, of course, and I'd go even further: Brooks was a late-coming but major member of the Bush Apologists in Big Media Club who advocated, supported, and protected Bush's neoconservatism every chance it got.

But what I was most interested in was this single clause: "(and I've been in it my entire life)".

Wasn't the NYT pimping Brooks as a "liberal/centrist voice" when they hired him? Didn't he pretend to be a center-left liberal for months after he began writing his column? Did I just imagine all that? Or did Brooks just admit on national television that he lied/cheated/swindled his bosses and audience by pretending to be something he has never been?

Outside the Bubble

According to this, Philly has essentially escaped the housing bubble which has brought ruin to this great country of ours and perhaps to the whole world!!!! 

The Philadelphia’ housing market continues to decline, but at a rate far less than most other major U.S. cities. According to Case-Shiller MacroMarkets’ composite house price index, house prices have fallen by an average of just over 20% in the largest U.S. cities, compared to only 6.8% in Philadelphia. Compared to other cities in Case-Shiller’s index, seventeen cities have experienced cumulative price declines that are larger than Philadelphia, and only three cities have experienced cumulative price declines that are smaller than Philadelphia.

The stats for Philadelphia housing also appear to be comparatively better on the topic of foreclosures, too. Only 0.33% of all Philadelphia-area households--about one in every 303 households—are in the process of being foreclosed upon. This is well below the foreclosure rate in places like Las Vegas (3.5%), Southern California (3.1%) or Phoenix (2.1%).

With the modest price declines to date, Philadelphia’s housing is now considered to be overvalued by only 1.6%, according to research firm National City/Global Insight. This is down from a peak of 13.8% two years ago, and is also well below the degree to which other “bubble” cities are still considered overvalued, such as Miami (18%), Phoenix (15%) and Washington DC (12%).

Why can't everywhere be as sensible as Philadelphia (and three other cities which are apparently more so)? 

Two Dem Parties? Hmmm...

This is interesting (from Balloon Juice commenter JimPortlandOR):

Parties do disappear and get replaced. It is more likely that the Dems split into progressive and blue dog parties than the GOP resurrects itself in 4-12 years, if ever. The GOP has become the 21st century version of the Know Nothing party.

I hesitate to allow myself to hope the Pubs are really that dead, although he makes a good argument that they may very well have committed suicide. But I find the idea of a possible Dem Schism between FDR Dems and moderate Pubs (Blue Dog Dems) very attractive. It makes sense and could work as long as they are, in name as well as in fact, two different parties with different leaders, different primaries, different candidates. I know from Mass that mixing the two is a disaster.

The $700B Bail-Out Just Became a $2.7Trillion Theft

The $$$700B$$$ bail-out is -

Oops. Make that $$$$2.7 TRILLION$$$$. (Via TMiss)

The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

``The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that's a big problem,'' said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston- based Loomis Sayles & Co., where he co-manages $17 billion in bonds. ``In a liquid market, this wouldn't matter, but we're not. The market is very nervous and very thin.''

Bloomberg is suing under FOIA to force the Bush Administration to disclose who got these so-called "emergency loans" and what collateral has been given. But I beg to differ with Mr Fuss. Even if the market was as liquid as the 80's, this would still matter. It is a de facto stripping of the Treasury in violation of the Constitutional mandate that the power to disperse public funds rests with the Congress, specifically the House, alone. IOW, IT IS THEFT. There's no other word for it.

Palin, Petard Hoisted

As the right-wing begins in its own ininmitable fashion to deal with being told by the electorate in no uncertain terms that it ought to go live in an uninhabited wasteland somewhere far from civilization where it won't be in the way of the rest of us while we clean up the mess it made, there are naturally a number of ironies developing as the first step. Let's face it, the Right has been using nasty negative attacks as a communications device for so long it doesn't really know how to communicate any other way any more, and being faced with what it considers an unexplainable and near-total defeat, its first instinct is to find a scapegoat.

Now being offered up as the initial sacrifice, one Sarah Palin. Steve Schmidt, a demonstrably meaner Rovian that Karl himself, has decreed that Obama's win was the result of Palin's "going rogue" during the campaign and is seeking revenge by having his minions in the RWNM slip the stilletto into her back at every opportunity.

What's ironic isn't his using the same techniques on a woman he after all chose as McCain's "maverick" sidekick. That was to be expected. What's ironic is her rather unbelievable reaction. After spending her campaign telling lies and spreading gossip about Obama, none of which was, needless to say, true, and recently blaming the media for McC's loss because they weren't spreading her lies with enough gusto, now that she's been subjected to the same kind of slime she had so much fun feeding her fans, she actually has the nerve to be outraged.

Gov. Sarah Palin denounced anonymous criticisms leveled at her by former John McCain aides as lies, including allegations that Republican lawyers were traveling to Alaska to reclaim her high-priced wardrobe and that she didn't know Africa was a continent.

"Those accounts are not true," the former Republican vice presidential candidate said in her first public comments on the matter since the election Tuesday.

***

Palin denounced criticism from unidentified McCain campaign aides as "cowardly." She said she found it frustrating trying to respond to false allegations when she didn't know who was making them.

"It's ridiculous," she told reporters. "You guys report based on anonymous sources, so it's hard to have a defense."

No shit, Sherlock.

Of course it's only fair to note that not just Sarahcuda but none of the Right ever expected to have its dirty games turned on itself. In fact, one must remember that it has spent years developing its particular brand of blind, unquestioning acceptance and of and belief in wingnut innuendo. Skepticism of anything said inside the bubble isn't allowed. Andn then there is the cynical use of the media's right-wing bias to spread its false gospel without checking facts which Sarah finds so adorably unfair.

Maybe she'll rethink 2012 after all.

Bush Economy Implosion Cont's: Unemployment at 14-Yr High

Washington Post Business reporter Howard Schneider takes note of an important if not surprising piece of economic news. Buried under Obama's historic, precedent-shattering presidential victory were the rather significant numbers from the Labor Dept showing that we now, officially and even before the inevitable "adjustment" will push it even further upward after Elaine Chao's pro-Bush statistics forgery tweaking, have the highest unemployment rate since the early 90's recession of the first Bush: 6.5%

The U.S. economy shed 240,000 jobs in October and the unemployment rate jumped sharply to 6.5 percent, a worse-than-expected showing that highlights one of the top issues President-elect Barack Obama faces when he meets with his economic advisers later today.

Businesses have been trimming payrolls since the start of the year, with 1.2 million positions lost over the past 10 months. The 6.5 percent unemployment rate -- up from 6.1 percent in September -- is the highest since early 1994, when the economy was pulling out of recession.

More than 10 million people are now jobless, actively seeking work but unable to find it, a number that has spiked by 2.8 million over the past year.

The way things are going we'll soon be looking back on these as the Gold Old Days when unemployment was only 6% instead of, what? 10? 20? 50? Should we start a pool on how bad it will get? Would you believe more than 50%?

(And btw, what's with the "worse-than-expected" shit? Expected by whom? This has been inevitable for months and happening for months. Next month will be worse. Far worse.)

Don't Miss This

Watch this slideshow from Obama's last 2008 campaign rally in Virginia.   The photos were taken by Nida Vidutis, who deserves some kind of award, and posted on Flickr.  Warning: you're gonna cry :)  (via April Winchell and Ezra)

New New Deal

The Institute for America's Future is hitting the ground running and good on them.   Most people on the left know what FDR said seventy years ago and what Krugman says today about bad morals making for bad economic is true but here's Sara Robinson, writing at the IAF site, about why passing a universal health care bill now matters politically:

Conservatives are already acutely aware that if we get health care that works, they're going to be shut out of power and out of the conversation for decades to come. They also know that, come January, they may find themselves too weak to put up a fight.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama knows it, too, which is why he's made universal health care a central part of his agenda. If he succeeds, I think people are going to be surprised at the depth and speed of the resulting leftward shift in American values. Seeing the government deliver such an essential and powerful good to so many people will permanently discredit many of the most fundamental assumptions of the conservative worldview—and in doing so, will make it much, much harder for the cons to ever make themselves politically relevant again.

There's nothing else that will do so much for so many so quickly—and, at the same time, lay down the sturdy foundation for a long, strong progressive future.

Sounds great - better than great - but it's not going to happen unless people put at least as much energy as they put into getting Obama elected into getting a good health care bill passed.   And that means resisting the cheerleader roll.

I work for Penn Action.  We're part of the Health Care for America Now campaign, which was endorsed by Senator Obama in October.   The plan is to keep putting pressure on members of Congress to sign on to the HCAN principles (over 125 already have) and then pushing hard for a good heatlh care bill in 2009.  Keep your eye on what HCAN is doing and how you can help.  

Via the HCAN blog.

China Needs a Stimulus Plan!

This article is fun to read because, except for the mentions of growing economic inequality, it's like reading about Bizarro United States.

On the other hand, our culture has ingrained in our blood that we must always be thrifty, and save for the unknown, for the future, and for our children. Even though in the past 10 years, the government has done a lot to establish a welfare system to ensure our medical care and retirement nest eggs, many uncertainties, including the rising bills of our children's education, and the increasing costs of oil, food and future inflation worries, will keep us from spending freely, the way our American counterparts did before the financial crisis.

The benchmark yearly deposit rate of less than 4 percent, far lower than the inflation average of 7.0 percent for the first nine months this year, has failed to thwart banks' savings from mounting. This shows China still can't shake off its saving mentality. It would probably need another generation to change this, as the consumptive-prone "Only Children", born in 1980s and 1990s, have a greater say on family finances, who will take over from the "Baby Boomers" of the 1960s and 1970s, to which I belong.

What Now? (Updated)

What does the election of Barack Obama mean? Not as much as you'd probably like it to but more than you might think in your darker moments.

I'll leave the speculation about the racism implications (are we past it?) to others. The fact is,l I don't know. As I read this election, Obama could have been a space alien or a cat toy. I've said this several times so I won't dwell on it: people were so sick of Republican greed, selfishness, and pigheadedness that the Democrat was going to win no matter who s/he was. Next to the fear generated by the GOP-sponsored collapse of the economy, racism played a very small role. Apart from the Dead End Kids - who have now been reduced to a paltry 20% - the slime-sucking McCain campaign's use of name-calling, invective, gossip-mongering, innuendo fostering, hysterical scare tactics, and race baiting fell as flat as a busted balloon tire.

Have we finally had it with the Atwood/Rove school of Dirty Pool? Did we look away in disgust when Sarah Palin got right down in the mud in her bikini and shotgunned shit in all directions? Or were we simply more afraid of what might happen if a John McCain got hold of the economy and tried to squeeze out the last few pennies for the banks and corpo's who backed him?

I don't know but whichever of the many possible explanations you pick, the point is that they and their policies, their lies, their slime, their childishness, their cluelessness, and their stubborn wrong-headedness have been soundly and convincingly repudiated. Unlike Bush's election where the squeaker of all squeakers was within days transformed into a mandate, Obama's win really is a mandate - a command from we the people to Stop the Madness.

But will he? Unfortunately, probably not. Not unless we get together and make him. The conservative DLC is already pushing its business-friendly right-wing agenda and warning BO that he'll be sorry in some unspecified way if he makes any lib/prog moves at all, by which is understood that they will hold him responsible if the Dems lose the off-year elections.

Undecided

Brad Friedman says that Prop Hate is too close to call.   Brad is also offering to help Al Franken out with the coming recount, willing to forget that Al Franken didn't want to pay attention to election integrity issues when he had a show on Air America.   The good news: results of the race will mostly be able to be recounted by hand because of the use of paper ballots.   That could not happen in Pennsylvania.

So Much for the Bradley Effect

There was a very brief moment last night when I thought McCain might have won. It was quarter til eleven and as I was passing a bar a group of young white girls emerged hollering, "Nobama, Nobama" and doing victory dances. There was more cheering and "Nobama" chanting coming from inside the bar and people were slapping each other on the back, shouting epithets at Obama and exclaiming "We did it!"

Could they have stolen another one? It would have to have been massive theft, blatant, all the way across a huge country. And for a moment - just a moment - my stomach did a curl and dove into my toes.

McCain. President. Four more years of corruption, torture, oil wars, a crashing economy that he would do his best to crash even further. It was an appalling thought.

But what really got to me was what a McCain victory would have said about us: that after enduring the Bush years, GOP lies and crackpot mythology, Constitution-shredding, and then the dirtiest presidential campaign on record, we had voted that we liked all that and wanted more. It was a depressing thought. What had happened to us during the Bush years would have had to go a lot deeper than fear, deeper than racism even. It would have meant that a majority of us were attracted/convinced by slimy campaign tactics to violate our own interests even though we knew this time that we were doing so. It was so depressing to contemplate the state of hatred and greed that we must have stooped to that I considered - for a few seconds - jumping off a bridge or, alternatively, moving to Canada. And I hate being cold.

DLC to Obama: Be "Cautious"; Is Obama Listening? (Updated)

I probably don't have to tell you that that's DLC-speak for "ignore the left, pander to the right". Well, with the win in the wind and assuming there won't be the kind of massive election theft we don't believe the GOP is capable of (yet), the Blue Dog right-wing ideologues of the DLC are already rushing to give Obama notes on how not to move toward the people who are electing him. 

William Galston, who David Sirota calls "one of the ideological leaders of the Democratic Leadership Council", has rushed to print this advice (in the New Republic) on the very day the reality-based left wing majority is electing America's first black president.

The good news is that the terms of his victory likely will have left him some room to maneuver. The not-so-good news is that expectations are sky-high and that some of his supporters will press him to throw caution to the wind and emulate FDR's first 100 days, or LBJ's feverish legislative pace in 1965 and 1966. This is a temptation Obama would do well to resist. Despite today's crisis environment, there are economic and political limits to government activism that the president-elect will ignore at his peril.

***

[Obama's] investment agenda (as distinct from the stimulus package) does represent an addition to the long-term spending baseline. The risk is that at some point, the rest of the world will become less willing to finance an orgy of American deficit spending and will demand higher interest rates, which could torpedo prospects for sustainable growth. The new administration will have to judge where that point is and be willing to change course if its first guess about the tolerance of global lenders turns out to be wrong.

***

[T]he people will expect Democrats to act as a governing majority. That means agreeing on an agenda for the first two years and then getting it done. The more ambitious the agenda, the more likely it is to fall victim to entrenched political realities, and failing to strike a workable balance between ambition and political feasibility would invite a repetition of the 1994 mid-term disaster that left Bill Clinton on the defensive for the remainder of his presidency.

This is, as Sirota points out, Blue Dog conservative code for "do what the corporations want you to do and don't scare them with any lefty-liberal nonsense about fair wages and lots of spending on those lazy welfare bums".

If There's a Sinkhole We'll Step In It

Whoever wins (Obama) is going to have a helluva job on his hands. Agence France Press, the French AP, reports today that according to Moody's 30 out of 50 states are in recession already and 19 of the remaining 20 are on the edge. To recap for the stunned among us:

49 out of the 50 states in the US are in or near recession.

Moody's defined recession for the study as a decline in a state's gross domestic product (GDP) on average over a six-month period, compared with the prior six-month period.

According to the March-September study, 27 states were already in recession in August.

States with shrunken GDPs were concentrated in the eastern half of the United States -- the Midwest, the southeast and the northeast -- and the West (California, the largest state economy; Oregon; and Hawaii).

At-risk states were located in the center of the country and in the northeast, including New York state.

And the only state that isn't in danger of economic collapse? Hey, Saraaa-aaah!

Moody's said the only state that showed growth was Alaska, whose economy is dominated by the oil and gas industry.

Which I don't have to tell you is doin' fine, jus' fine.