A modest proposal, perhaps.

It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)

On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”

On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office: Full Story »

What do all these things have in common: Cash-for-clunkers, IMF funding, pandemic flu preparations, and anti-narcotic aid to Mexico? They’re all considered “supplemental war funding” that the Senate approved in a late-night session July 18^th.

Excuse me, Mr. President, but I thought I heard you promise not to use supplemental war funding bills any more. Apparently, according to PoliFact, I misheard (thank Bush for only funding Iraq and Afghanistan through September, 2009, instead of the whole year). But still, I’d really like to know how those programs are related to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Oh, that’s right. They’re not. Full Story »

I don’t know what to make of the monstrosity that is the Waxman-Markey American Climate, Energy, and Security Act (ACES) that just passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee (E&C). It’s nearly 1000 pages long and initially faced at least 449 Republican amendments. It’s a mess.

After thinking about it for a while, I’ve concluded that it’s just not worth driving myself crazy trying to determine whether ACES is “better than nothing” or whether it “sucks so bad it must be killed.” We’re less than a week into a process that could make ACES unrecognizable by the time it’s done, and so tearing my hair out over whether it’s enough today is an exercise in futility. Full Story »

You’re a coalition of multinational corporations. Imagine this deal: Invest $1 in lobbying. Get a return on investment of $220. Save $100 billion on taxes, too. Nice, eh?

That’s the conclusion of three University of Kansas professors who undertook an empirical analysis of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 to study rates of return for money spent on lobbying, reported The Washington Post in an April 12 story by Dan Eggen.

This law — this shady excuse for a law with a name only charlatans could love — allowed companies that had earned profits overseas to inexpensively bring that money back into the States. The customary tax rate on such profits was 35 percent. But this elegantly named process — repatriation of profits — gave companies a one-time chance four years ago to haul the money home, paying only 5.25 percent.

The act was a tax holiday sought by a coalition of companies, primarily big pharmaceutical and high-technology corporations, all because they sought to pay little or no taxes on profits generated overseas — and they concocted a successful scheme to pull it off.
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There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

– Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

A new world order began when the Berlin Wall came down in late 1989. The next new world order began when the U.S. Army staged the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue after the fall of Baghdad in late 2003. A brave new world order, the one we’re now in the early stages of, began in late 2008 when the U.S. economy dropped down a rabbit hole that may go all the way to China. The trajectory should look familiar; it traces a path taken by hegemons throughout the ages, straight to the cliff they fell from. As with great powers before us, the military might that created our empire has become became the instrument of its downfall.

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S&R has been following Newt Gingrich’s lies about energy and climate since last year when he pushed the “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.” lie in response to last summer’s oil price woes. On Friday, Gingrich appeared as a minority witness, on a panel all by himself, before the House Energy and Commerce Committee - Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment hearings on the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES). S&R has reviewed Gingrich’s prepared remarks for today’s hearing and has determined that Gingrich is still up to his old tricks of lying to Congress and the American people. Full Story »

Dear Mr. Buffet, Mr. Gates, Mr. Turner, Mr. Soros, Ms. Winfrey, and any other hyper-rich types with progressive political leanings:

If this essay has, against all odds, somehow made its way to your desk, please, bear with me. It’s longish, but it winds eventually toward an exceedingly important conclusion. If you’ll give me a few minutes, I’ll do my best to reward your patience.
_______________

In the 2008 election, Barack Obama won a landmark political victory on a couple of prominent themes: “hope” and “change.” He has since been afforded ample opportunity to talk about these ideas, having inherited the nastiest economic quagmire in living memory and a Republican minority in Congress that has interpreted November’s results as a mandate to obstruct the public interest even more rabidly than it was doing before. Reactions among those of us who supported Obama have been predictably mixed, but even those who have been critical of his efforts to date are generally united in their hope that his win signaled the end of “movement conservatism” in the US. Full Story »

Imagine a hearing room in the U.S. Senate. Imagine men and women trying to navigate the issues that surround health care in America and negotiate a solution.

Now imagine that the doors to the room are closed, and that the participants remain unidentified, and that, in fact, “Senate aides had threatened to expel anyone who divulged details of the work group,” reports The New York Times:

Since last fall, many of the leading figures in the nation’s long-running health care debate have been meeting secretly in a Senate hearing room. Now, with the blessing of the Senate’s leading proponent of universal health insurance, Edward M. Kennedy, they appear to be inching toward a consensus that could reshape the debate.

The 20 or so people in that room sitting around tables arranged in a square, says The Times, “include lobbyists for AARP, Aetna, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Business Roundtable, Easter Seals, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the United States Chamber of Commerce.”

Well, I’m not inside that room, and neither are you. And we should be, because President Obama said we would be.
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Let’s go back to one month after 9/11.  The country just suffered its worse terrorist attack in the nation’s history and was going through another.  Weaponized anthrax was being sent through the mail targeting politicians and the 4th estate. The intelligence agencies failed catastrophically and didn’t cooperate with each other. The nation panicked and didn’t know if it could protect itself.

The response? The USA PATRIOT Act. Full Story »

Perhaps because my middle name is “Gullible,” I’d like to trust my new representative in Congress to act wisely, unselfishly, and nobly on my behalf. I’d like to trust his 434 brethren and the 100 senators to do so as well. I’d like the lofty words they speak in the wells of the House and Senate to be accompanied by similarly lofty, well-thought-out actions designed solely to improve the lot in life of me and my 312 million fellow citizens.

But … I doubt it. An obstacle lies squarely in the path of politicians’ ability or willingness to act sensibly and selflessly. That obstacle is money. Or, rather, the pursuit of it to grasp and maintain power, prestige, and wealth.

Despite any number of outrageous conflations of influential wealth and influenced legislation, and despite the protestations of the masses with fewer dollars over the power of the few with many dollars, and despite the laughable “reforms” Congress attempts occasionally, money is not going to leave politics.
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“Psssst. Hey, you. Yeah, you, over there with the really fat checkbook.

“Wanna make some serious money real fast — and legal? Yeah, really — legally.

“All you gotta do is give me about $114 million. That’s all — and I’ll give you an ROI of 258,449 percent. Yep. You heard right — 258,449 percent. You’ll make $295.2 billion.

“That work for you?”
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Beginning in 2010, the number 722,000 will rule state-by-state congressional politics. When the Census Bureau finishes counting Americans, it’s expected to find that the U.S. population will have increased from about 281 million in 2000 to 315 million. Many states will face reapportionment based on about 722,000 residents per district — gaining or losing seats in the House of Representatives according to the states’ populations as determined by the 2010 census.

State populations in the South and Southwest will have grown appreciably more than in the Midwest and Northeast, reflecting immigration and migration trends that took root after World War II. Consequently, the shift of political power from the latter to the former will continue (see map). For example, the population of California, the most populous state in the union and larger than all but 34 nations, will grow nearly 8 percent from 2000 to 2010 — but California will lose a seat in the House.

Following redistricting is important because reapportionment and redistricting may shift power in the House of Representatives. How great a shift depends on an intricate political calculus involving party control of legislatures and governorships.

This decennial dance may determine which party is best positioned to retain or regain control of the House following 2012 elections. Full Story »

On the eve of the election, the New York Times editorial board wrote up an excellent critique of Bush’s last minute, lame duck executive orders that he signed on November the first. Here are some excerpts:

Agents will be allowed to use informants to infiltrate lawful groups, engage in prolonged physical surveillance and lie about their identity while questioning a subject’s neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends. Full Story »

What is the meaning — or at least a meaning — of today’s election?

I asked the juniors and seniors in my opinion-writing course to consider that today by looking into:

• How many state legislatures have both chambers controlled by one party? Will that number increase for either party?
• Will governorships contested today change from one party to another?
• What is the party split in the House of Representatives today, and what might it be tomorrow?
• What is the makeup of the Senate today, and what might it be tomorrow?

It required only about half an hour of basic Web research to answer those questions. In other words, they found that the significance of today’s election might be this: How big are Sen. Barack Obama’s coattails, and what might that mean?
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Men who commanded other men in the age of close-order battle often wrote of the tell-tale signs of a rout. It seems that, in watching the battle from afar, one could often see a line of men waver as if wind were blowing through wheat, and when that happened, absent a rally or reinforcement, it was usually just a short while before those men would break and run.  A battlefield commander would have to make a determination when he saw the waver:  Should he send reserves to that part of the battlefield, reinforcing the weakness and hoping for a victory on another part of the field, or should he withdraw, using the reserves to cover the retreat in good order, keeping as much of his army intact as possible to fight another day? Full Story »

S&R: Rep. Boehner, Chairman Bernanke called yesterday for Congress to pass a stimulus plan to help stabilize the U.S. economy. Studies have shown repeatedly that stimulus plans directed at the poor are the most likely to both help those who need the money the most and to have the greatest economic benefits for the country - the poor are most likely to spend any money given them instead of save it or use it to pay down existing debt. The same studies have shown that your preferred stimuli - corporate tax cuts, capital gains tax cuts, an “all of the above” energy development plan, etc. - fail to provide significant stimulus to the economy in less than one to two years and are not cost effective for that reason. Given these facts, why should Americans who are suffering from a bad economy right now support your plan when they won’t see any improvement for at least another year?

You can see it in liberals’ eyes and in their white-knuckled grips on their hammers and sickles.  They read the headlines.  The polls are softening for Barack Obama.  Could it happen this year, too?  Will the Democrats once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

In a word, “no.”  And here’s why.

The polls

There may have been a very slight movement of the national polls towards McCain, but it’s hard to be sure.   Some of the most widely reported polls in Obama’s favor were outliers to begin with and never should have been given much credence.  The high-quality polls — those that have tended to do a good job of predicting final results in the past — have been fairly steady for weeks.  Real Clear Politics is still reporting a +6.8 lead for Obama nationally; not that it matters much. Full Story »

Link of the Week (as opposed to the Weakest Link):

From American Raj, a new book by Eric Margolis: Abdullah Azzam “ran a dingy little rooming house next to his office for Muslim mujahedin headed for Afghanistan that came to be known as ‘the base’ or ‘the centre,’ and in Arabic, ‘al-Qaida.’ Rarely in history has an international revolutionary movement sprung from such modest origins.” From humble beginnings, a little acorn grows.

From “Reversal of Fortune” by Joseph Stiglitz at Vanity Fair: “We learned from the Depression that markets are not self-adjusting — at least, not in a time frame that matters to living people.” There’s only so long you can put off your retirement because of a down market.  Full Story »

I am in my 50s.  In my lifetime, I have seen partisan politics become increasingly bitter, increasingly childish, and increasingly focused on personal, political wins at America’s expense.  When the chairman of the Federal Reserve and Warren Buffet tell me that the American financial system needs an influx of capital in order to keep from collapsing, I tend to believe they believe it, and if they believe it, given their level of expertise, I would generally take their advice.

Today, American politics passed a threshold.  If anyone thought that our politicians, especially in the GOP, still care more about America than their own re-election campaigns; if anyone thought they still had a core of political courage that could, in extremis, overcome their own, petty rivalries; if anyone thought there was still a kernel of greatness in an American political landscape that produced the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Abraham Lincoln, I doubt they still believe today.  Their OWN PRESIDENT, their PARTY LEADER, came to the House Republicans and told them that this is a grave crisis, and even then they scuttled the agreement. Full Story »

This could be a Very Bad Week for Sen. John McCain.

Last week, McCain attempted a stunt for the ages, announcing that he was “suspending his campaign” so that he could rush back to Washington, where he was apparently desperately needed in order to pull together an economic bailout package. He called on Sen. Barack Obama to stop stomping the shizzle out of him on the campaign trail join him in pursuing a non-partisan solution that would ease the suffering of his cronies on Wall Street the American people.

Needless to say, the plan fizzled, and for a variety of reasons.

• For starters, McCain has been absent from Washington for so much of this year (and most recent years, for that matter) that when he showed up, most people didn’t know who he was. Full Story »