The New Depression is setting in as the AP reports startling numbers of jobless and job cuts.
Recession-battered employers eliminated 598,000 jobs in January, the most since the end of 1974, and catapulted the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent. The grim figures were further proof that the nation's job climate is deteriorating at an alarming clip with no end in sight.
Yet the politicking and GOP obstructionism continues unabated. How? With a little help from their conservative Democrat colleagues. It seems even the NYT editorial board is finally beginning to recognize that the difficulty of saving our wrecked economy is because of the Blue Dog Dems as much as the obstinate Pubs.
We’re happy to see President Obama getting tough with Congressional Republicans who are trying to sabotage the stimulus and recovery bill and bring even greater ruin on the economy. Since Mr. Obama campaigned on the promise of bipartisanship, we hope he will also bring his hammer down on shortsighted Democrats who are threatening their own brand of havoc.
***
In the Senate, Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, spent the day working with Republicans to dangerously strip down the Senate’s version of the economic measure. What noxious programs were they so eager to dump? Money for the Amtrak passenger rail system, the shortchanging of which has been a damaging annual ritual that has put America decades behind most of the world.
Short-term stimulus — more unemployment insurance, shovel-ready projects that put Americans to work — are a top priority. But Republican claims that spending money on projects that would take a year or two to develop is not stimulus are nonsense. By all projections, this will be a long recession and a protracted recovery. Money should be in the pipeline now for 2010 and 2011.
The idea that spending on infrastructure is too high in the bills before Congress is equal nonsense. The American Society of Civil Engineers has called for $2.2 trillion in repairs and upgrades for dismal roads and bridges and other structures. That’s even before considering bullet trains or a national health care system.
(emphasis added)
Meanwhile, Paul Krugman is giving out the same warning I was the other day.
A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.
It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.
***
The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.
(emphasis added)
And the conservative Dems are right there shoving with them.
Every conservative on the NYT staff it seems is giving the "moderates" (also called "centrists") so-called "credit" for a "bipartisan" stim package that, if Krugman is right (and he usually is) won't stim a damn thing since most of what would do the stimming has been taken out in favor of more corporate tax cuts - the policy that got us here in the first place. These "moderates" are without exception conservatives who don't foam at the mouth or take meat cleavers to their liberal grandmothers. Apparently that's all it takes to be considered moderate these days. Conservative NYT reporters David Herzenhorn and Carl Hulse (they're a "bipartisan group" to the former and a "bipartisan gang" to the latter) are busily building them up as the country's last hope against those fanataic t & s liberals.
A bipartisan group of senators worked furiously in backroom negotiations on Thursday to cut the cost of the more than $920 billion economic stimulus plan. Senate Democratic leaders said they would await the outcome of those talks before calling for a final vote on the measure, perhaps on Friday.
***
By early evening, aides said the group had drafted a list of nearly $90 billion in cuts, including $40 billion in aid for states, more than $14 billion for various education programs, $4.1 billion to make federal buildings energy efficient and $1.5 billion for broadband Internet service in rural areas. But they remained short of a deal, and talks were expected to resume Friday morning.
“We’re trying to focus it on spending that truly helps stimulate the economy,” Ms. Collins said. “People have different views on whether or not a program meets that test. So we’re continuing to talk. We get close, and then it drops back, and then we get close again.”
(emphasis added)
The only thing that matters to the conservatives - and NYT reporter Herzenhorn since he accepts their target without question - is the same thing that mattered to Rumsfeld and Cheney with regard to the Iraq War, the same thing, the only thing, that ever matters to conservatives: Sure they want to avert the crisis but only of they can do it CHEAP. These are guys who have a history of spending $100 to save a dime. There's been NO discussion of what's in the bill because the Beltway media are buying the GOP line that what the stim bill does is way less important that what it costs. And, of course, it costs too much. So what's gone so far thanks to back room deals by Nelson & Co? Monkeyfister, as Avedon says, isn't happy about any of it.
Today, the Senate took out the Mass Transit part of the stimulus bill. No investment in trains or buses, and no money to help cities and regions pay for those services. Fucking obstructionist, anti-American Republicans.
Real altEnergy investment is next to nil. Because Republicans told the Villagers that non of that would be "stimulous."
A SUPERTRAIN project would have put many, many people to work in REAL PRODUCTION. But no. Republicans told the Villagers that non of that would be "stimulous."
Solarizing 3-Million single-family homes at government expense would also put hundreds of thousands to work, and would only represent 10% of this 900-Billion dollar monstrosity of mainly, now, tax breaks for the rich, Corporations, and the "Banks" that created the mess in the first place. Boosting the tax breaks for putting PVs on Corporate roofs would have helped immensely. We'd also could have cut CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions greatly, and cut our oil usage. But no. Republicans told the Villagers that non of that would be "stimulous."
Bonuses to the Auto Industry to get the hybrids and electric cars rolling, as well as a huge tax break to turn out mag-lev or electric locomotives would have aided in this. But no. Republicans told the Villagers that non of that would be "stimulous."
What did they leave in? Tax cuts for the wealthy. Because that tactic has worked so well for us up to now.
Who did this to us? Besides "moderates" Collins and Nelson, Hulse offers this list:
The group included veteran senators like Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a Republican who is up for re-election next year; Mark Udall of Colorado, a Democrat elected last year; George V. Voinovich, a Republican from the economically hard-hit state of Ohio; both the Democratic and Republican senators from Alaska; and Joseph I. Lieberman...
Arlen Specter And Joe "Liar" Lieberman are now "moderates"? Mark Udall of the great family name but a cipher otherwise is included in the councils because he doesn't know anything and has no opinions and that makes him a "moderate"?
NYT conservative columnist and all-round mental mediocrity Monsieur Dahveed Brrroooooks has likewise taken to calling them a "gang" and bi-gawd they're awesome! The Home Team wouldn't have been able to accomplish a thing without 'em.
In the first major episode of his administration, the stimulus package, the conventional policies so far have won. The Obama administration sent a series of stimulus principles to Capitol Hill and allowed the Old Bulls in the House and Senate to write legislation. They produced sprawling bills that gathered dozens of traditional liberal ideas. The resulting bills would have been no different if Nancy Pelosi had been elected president, or Harry Reid, or any other conventional Democrat.
The substance of the legislation set up the polarized debate that followed. Liberal interest groups were happy. Conservative Republicans were united in opposition. But something interesting happened this week. The momentum of the debate was set by moderates. Conservative protests wouldn’t have amounted to much without nagging moderate unease.
Moderate economists looked at the package and complained about the vast parts that don’t even pretend to stimulate. Education reformers took a look at the education section and noted that the huge amount of money is not leveraged to produce any real reform.
IOW, the dam stim pack wasn't aimed at the usual conservative goals. Quel Horreurs! Come les moderates to the rescue!
Yah! Yah! They're our clan! If they can't do it, nobody can!
And why should we be worried suddenly about how much saving our country costs when just a few weeks ago we didn't care what destroying a foreign country cost? Why, naturellement - le deficit!
Most of all, moderates were concerned about deficits.
And who can argue with that?
More importantly, who will the GOP blame when the GOP-wrecked stim plan doesn't work?
I don't have to answer that, do I? Let Monkeyfister have the last word.
When is the Obama Administration going to understand that today's GOP cannot be taken at faith. That they are completely untrustworthy, and have placed their Party over the good of the Nation?
When is the Democratic Party going to understand that they won, and need to treat the GOP the EXACT same way that the GOP treated them for the past 12 years simply to accomplish the goal of moving the Country to the place that it needs to be moved to in order to simply survive?
When are the Villagers going to accept that this Country, and its very existence are in a state of dire peril, and that the current paradigm is now useless, and over, and MUST change to something very different?
You know what? They aren't, and they will NEVER grasp that.
Nope, they won't. UNLESS WE MAKE THEM.
Comments