I present as evidence, one Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama.  He has decided that Obama gets none of his appointees through the Senate.  He's planning to put a hold on every single one of them, thus necessitating 60 senators to vote to override the hold.  Why? 

If you haven't heard, Obama had something akin to question time with the Republican caucus today.  He got up there and, live on CSPAN took all manner of questions from an audience entirely composed of the Republican Congress.  I need to go back and watch it, but all the reports I'm hearing make it sound like he made them look like the fools that they are. 

I really hope that Obama can make this a routine thing and we can establish this as a normal presidential function like press conferences.  A few times a year, the President goes and opens up the floor to the opposition party and deals with their questions.  A President who doesn't have a good grasp of the facts will quickly be called out.  Somebody like Bush would get torn apart.  

Check out the video here.

Mayor Daley on the tax increases on higher income individuals in Oregon:


First of all:

1. The tax increase only affects 2.5% of the people in Oregon
2. The tax increase is only 2% more for individuals making more than $125K/year (for couples it's $250K)

So it's not an enormous increase that we're talking about.  It's not "class war".  It's saying, as our country has always said since income taxes started, that if you make more you pay more.  The reason for this is that the expenses of life do not scale in proportion to your income.  If you make $25K/year it doesn't mean your cost of living is half that of somebody making $50K/year.  So we tax people less when they make less because there's a fundamental cost of living that can't be avoided.  We offset that by taxing the wealthier for a larger percent of their income.

Bad for Oregon?

Daley is saying that this is going to be bad for Oregon.  Really?  First of all it will plug a hole in the state budget so that's a good thing.  Second of all, is this really going to drive the wealthier individuals in the state to move or some such?  It's 2%.  If you're making a lot of money, 2% of your income isn't going to deeply affect your lifestyle.  Of course there's a point where tax rates are so painfully high that it does cause people to work less and to flee to lower tax havens, but 2% higher isn't that threshold.

People Don't Live in Tax Havens

To illustrate my point, how many of the world's rich people live in the Caymans?  In theory, because of the lack of taxes, the wealthy of the world should all be living there, right?  Yet they don't.  Why?  Because they like living in New York and Los Angeles and Chicago.  They pay more taxes, but they get something back that makes it worth the cost.  There are very few people in this world who choose where to live because of tax policy. 

Tax policy has that negative effect only when it's comparatively easy to get around the taxation.  For example, if the sales tax in one city is 10% and the city next door has no sales tax, where will you shop?  Simple.  But if your choice is to live in New York and pay 10% or live in Montana and pay 0% (I'm making up these numbers), are you automatically moving to Montana?  Not likely.  Certainly not if you enjoy the lifestyle that New York offers. 

Which is worse?

Finally, I would make this point: which is worse, a government that can't afford basic services and is constantly on the verge of bankruptcy?  Or a government that is stable and securely funded?  If you're a business owner, or an individual, you want to have a government that is stable in it's funding so that they don't have to do emergency cuts in services or increases in taxes.  These shifts in taxation and services are far more harmful to business and the public at large than a consistently higher tax rate.

Nobody likes paying higher taxes, but we've gotten in this very nasty habit in our politics of promising more services while cutting taxes.  That's unsustainable and in the long run forces tax increases to make up for revenue that was lost in the short term.  The Bush tax cuts in 2000 ultimately lead to deficits that will have to be paid by other cuts in services or increases in taxes down the road.  Had we just maintained a consistent tax rate, that wouldn't be necessary.

Yeah that Obama, he so crazy with his liberal commieness!  Oh... wait...


Just wanted to point out that, once again, Obama is not acting as the raging liberal that he's always being claimed to be by the right.  He's instead looking to private industry for answers, instead of expanding government programs.  It's his standard m.o. and it would be nice if people would recognize that.

Having said that I largely agree with the move.  Basically he's scrapping the investments that were being made in a new rocket capable of delivering people to the moon.  Of course that same rocket was to be the fill in for the space shuttle when it retires.  I don't know if you realize this but we still have people on that space station thingy so we kinda need a way to get people to and from it.  So the theory appears to be relying on the Russians for now but developing private industry options to accomplish the task.

This, I believe to be a good thing in the long run.  Ultimately we aren't going to get very far in space unless there's a profit motive for doing so.  As long as the heart of space flight is embedded in a government program that's not going to happen.  We've seen expansions of what private industry can do in the form of Virgin Galactic, but this needs to grow if we're ever getting off this little rock in any real way.  As soon as it's profitable to go to the moon or mars, we'll get there.

Quoting a John McCain e-mail to his supporters:


One of the more irritating games in DC is the bandying about of the terms debt and deficit, using them interchangeably and in ways that are deliberately confusing.  So, to clarify:

Watching the live blogging of the iPad release and Steve Jobs had this to say:


Is it better than a laptop at browsing the web?  No.  No flash support, and typing on a soft keyboard in a pinch is doable but it's not great.  Is it better than an iPhone at browsing the web?  No, because it won't fit in my pocket.  Is it better for reading books than a Kindle, or an old fashioned paper book?  I rather doubt it.  I'd need to see the screen in person, but what makes the Kindle work is that it's actually easy to read for hours on end. 

Price for this device: $500.  Now if only I could think of a reason why I'd want to own one...  I mean yeah it'd be nice for when I'm flying somewhere, so if I was a real road warrior maybe worth it.  But otherwise I just don't see the point.

Getting back to my previous posting on the Apple Tablet:

Evidence currently points to Apple releasing basically what I described in my last sentence: a big iPhone.  I have no doubt that the big iPhone will have some nifty bells and whistles, but to my mind, what will distinguish it is the quality of the display.  Either you can read text on it for hours at a time without wanting to stab your eyes out, or you can't.  That's what will make it a success or a failure.

Having said that, if Apple can get that right, then they have a definite winner.  One device for watching movies, reading books, playing music and games, as well as being able to purchase all of those things with a mere flick of your finger via iTunes?  That's an impressive combination.  It will be really interesting to see how the interface for the new device works. 

I will say, that ignoring the display quality consideration, Apple is being smart and trying to scale up an iPhone rather than scaling down a laptop.  All of the Windows tablet devices are a poor compromise on a full laptop.  Apple is going the other route, trying to make a bigger better iPhone, and I suspect that'll be more successful in the long run.

Apparently Obama is looking to turn deficit hawk while the economy is still recovering.  Here's the rough outline:

The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, including air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks.

But it would exempt security-related budgets for the Pentagon, foreign aid, the Veterans Administration and homeland security, as well as the entitlement programs that make up the biggest and fastest-growing part of the federal budget: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

 

So first of all they'll be cutting back spending when we're still in the economic ditch.  Unemployment is at 10%, the housing market is still weak, and the commercial real estate market is actively melting down.  So cutting spending right now is probably not a good idea and it might even make sense to do further stimulus.

Second of all, if they do give a shit about actually reducing the debt, this is not the way to do it.  Go look at a break down of the budget and the single biggest expense is the military and all the money we are burning in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Of course that is off the table.  A few small cuts to needless military research projects would likely save a hell of a lot more money than this spending freeze.

The one thing I would support in that freeze would be farm subsidies which should simply be abolished.  Furthermore, in the current economic situation, it's probably the one outflow you can cut without severe consequences.  The down turn has largely not touched the areas of the country where food production happens.  Of course so long as Iowa is where the first caucus is held and Iowa has a largely agrarian economy, we'll have farm subsidies.  

I voted for Obama on the theory that he'd sell progressive ideas to conservatives.  Instead he's trying to sell conservative ideas to progressives and failing badly.  Where he's been in a position to make decisions independent of the rests of government he's generally done well.  Whenever he's dealt with the legislature and been called on to actually lead he's been an abject failure.  I had hope that the Massachusetts election would wake Obama up, but this move suggests he's going to be even worse. 

We'll see what happens at the SOTU but my hope and optimism is fading fast...

Today I got out and voted in the Democratic primary.  You can still vote early up until the 28th.  If you don't do it then, the real election day is on February 2nd.  So you can check out your shadow and vote while you're at it. 

To that end, I wanted to give my recommendations.  Actually, more specifically, recommendation in the singular.  There are a number of seats up in the election, but there's only one I'm really informed about and have an interest in.  Specifically: Cook County board president.  Cook Count has one of the highest tax rates in the nation, and the current president, Stroger, is a product of nepotism.  It's long past time to get rid of the Stroger family grip on Cook County.

To that end, I would suggest voting for Toni Preckwinkle.  I met a couple people who were at the Democracy for America campaign training and they were working to help get Toni elected.  She's been endorsed by all of the major papers, and here's an excerpt from the Trib's recommendation:

If you haven't seen Avatar there are some minor spoilers below so you might want to skip ahead. 

( Spoiler Cut )

Corporate personhood goes a step further:


Prior to this ruling corporations would have to funnel money for such activities through PAC's which had various rules that controlled how they took in money and how they spent it.  The rules are still in place that limit direct donations to campaigns but this gives corporations a free hand to spend as much as they want.  Given that the biggest problem our government has right now is the dominance of the legislative agenda by corporations, this will only serve to make that worse.

Before this ruling a corporate lobbyist had some influence over congressman through donations to their campaigns and the limited actions they could take through their PAC.  After this ruling they could go to a congressman and threaten to spend millions of dollars in a coordinated strategy to remove them from office if they don't do as requested.  They could fund ads, documentaries, or in the case of media conglomerates, news stories, that would attack the politician in question. 

I suppose if you accept that corporations are equivalent of private citizens then this ruling follows quite logically.  However, corporations ultimately end up being more equal because they have vast sums of money that they can throw at this.  Definitely not good.

Good news:
If Obama is basing his approach towards the banks on the suggestions of Paul Volcker, that's a really good sign.  Volcker was in charge of the Fed during the Carter administration and it was his moves that shut down the inflation problem that was getting out of hand at that time.  It was a move that lead to a recession, so not exactly a popular move, but one that was necessary.  He's a smart guy who will make the hard choices, and that's exactly what we need driving banking laws right now.

So last night Democrats lost Ted Kennedy's Senate seat to a Republican.  As a result, the Democrats no longer have any illusion of a filibuster proof majority.  To that end, I have some thoughts on how we got here and where we should go in the future.

Not The Change We Can Believe In

The problem that Democrats had in the last year is that given that 60 seat majority, they felt that they could pass legislation on a party line vote.  So they ignored the possibility of using reconciliation and tried to get legislation through with all 60 members of the Democratic caucus on board.  This of course put the most conservative Democrats in a position of power, and gave private insurers far too much say over the bill.  The bill stalled repeatedly and as it moved forward it became more and more unpalatable to all those folks who voted for change last year.

This lead to the Massachusetts special election where Republicans were desperate to get one more seat so they could shut down anything.  On the other hand, Democrats weren't as clear on whether the winning the election would benefit them.  We could safely assume that the same legislative agenda of 2009 would continue through 2010, and we weren't all that happy with how that agenda was playing out.  With a loss of the seat, it totally changes the dynamics in the Senate, and that could be a good thing depending on how the Democrats work with it.

Reboot Change

My advice to Obama and the Democrats is to reboot change in 2010.  The state of the union is coming up and I think it would benefit Democrats to see this as an opportunity to take a very different legislative tack.  What they should do is come out and say that they tried to work with Republicans and industry players to get real change, but that the political climate does not support this.  Then for the rest of 2010, they should put forth the legislation that they'd really want.  Be bold and progressive and pass what they can through reconciliation.  Then push bills into the Senate and let Republicans shoot them down and then blame Republicans for these failures in the 2010 elections.

It is time for Obama to get all FDR on Republicans.  No more of this playing patty cake with them, trying to somehow get one vote on their bills.  Republicans have refused to work with you, so now it's time to go out there and do what you really want.  Go after the banks, hard, with real regulatory reforms.  Put forth a robust public option for health care via reconciliation.  Show the voters that there's some fight in you.

My fear though is that Democrats will make a mistake and try to continue what has been failing.  That the House will vote through the health care bill as passed by the Senate so that they can pass something.  That legislation passed through the Senate will stall as Democrats water down legislation in a desperate attempt to get one or two Republicans on board.  Call it the Rahm Emanuel school of legislation: passing something, anything, is better than doing nothing, no matter how bad it is.  If Democrats go down that path, I predict massive losses in 2010 as the base enthusiasm gap widens.

 

One of the things I always find fascinating about our tendency to boil politics down to the liberal vs. conservative spectrum is that people throughout the spectrum will often claim the same things as being distinctly theirs.  Here's a bit from a conservative film critic that brought this to mind:

The crowing we’re seeing from leftists over the belief that the roaring success of the anti-American, military-bashing, feast of political correctness that is Avatar represents some sort of validation of their worldview or a comeback for liberal film-making only begs one question: What took them so long?

You can’t blame them, though. After years of watching helplessly as liberal films flopped at a heartwarming 100% rate while conservative-themed films such as “Rambo,” “Gran Torino,” “Taken,” ”Knowing,” “and “Dark Knight” made money, it only makes sense that to lost-in-the-desert Lefties, Cameron’s garishly colored 3D cartoon makes hamburger look like a steak dinner [...]

There’s little doubt Avatar will end up as the number one or two top moneymaker worldwide of all time, out-performing the conservative Dark Knight (#5) and another epic that frequently finds its way on to a number of conservative movie lists as a favorite: Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (#2) [...]

So looking through that list of supposedly conservative films I find a lot of liberal themes in them.  For example, in the Dark Knight, my favorite scene is Batman's interrogation of the Joker.  In this scene, the Joker is trying to push Batman over the edge to make him become like the Joker by breaking his moral code; turning him to Cheney's dark side.  Compare that to Taken where it's basically revenge porn where a man takes the law into his own hands with no concern for the consequences of others. 

While Eastwood's character in Gran Torino is definitely a conservative the film has huge huge doses of multiculturalism in it.  Eastwoods character he ends up finding a lot more in common with the Hmong people than he does with his own family.  Tell me that's not a liberal message.  Having said that, what makes it all the more fascinating is that it's their more conservative values that is what appeals to him.

This all speaks to the fact that most successful Hollywood movies find a way to provide a story that can appeal to a large audience on a number of levels.  You can go watch these movies and pull out all manner of conservative themes and all manner of liberal themes.  It's a rarity that a film is overtly liberal or conservative because it's not worth annoying half the audience. 




 

Jamie Dimon, CEO of Chase had the following to say about the financial crisis:

Some Republicans have started signing onto the following pledge:

Mayor Daley on the possibility of WalMart moving into Chicago:

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, on the potential for the government to take back $120 billion from the biggest TARP recipients:


Jamie, my dear friend, the constant vilification is because of three factors:

1. The perception that these banks did little to manage risk and gambled huge sums of money on shady investments
2. The perception that these banks then robbed taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of billions to bail them out of their mistakes
3. The perception that these banks are paying massive bonuses to their employees, effectively stealing government money and handing it out to these people

If it turned out that this perception was false, you might have a point, but as it turns out, it's spot on.  Funny thing but all of us folks who learned basic economics in high school and college got this impression that the capitalist system is supposed to reward success and punish failure.  And yet, what we find in practice is that if you work at a big bank you get rewarded for success and rewarded for failure.  This kinda pisses us off because the rewards are coming out of our tax money.

I grant that some banks were better than others and that JPMorgan Chase was actually one of the better run banks in this crisis.  They didn't dabble as much in the riskier assets and when the shit hit the fan they did help to clean up the mess.  But let's not pretend for a moment that they haven't benefited hugely from that mess.  They are now one of the biggest financial institutions in the world, have the implicit backing of the United States government, and have seen a number of their competitors wiped out.  The crash was good to Chase.

So Jamie, in the words of the Bard, "get over it!"  You're filthy rich and will continue to be filthy rich and if it means you have to put up with the rest of us being a little cranky that you're wealth is coming at our expense, tough shit. 

The court case to determine the fate of prop 8 is now under way.  Here's a quote from the defense (i.e. the ones saying the gay marriage ban should remain) that struck me:


If that's there defense, I think prop 8 is going down.  A couple points to make:

1. There's established court precedent that contradicts the notion that governments have the right to regulate the sexual intercourse of mature consenting adults.  So to say that there's a "socially approved" version of sex and that the government should be able to enforce that with the full power of law is clearly flawed.  By that logic, people who were into BDSM could be forbidden to marry.
2. Note the two words he has there the "production and protection" of children.  Now while you might conclude that gay marriage does not lead to the production of children, there are many gay couples out there who have children.  Given that, marriage provides greater protection to children than a couple that has some other legal arrangement.  For example, if there was a gay couple where there was abuse happening, if the child was related to the abuser, the "spouse" would have no legal standing to claim custody.

If that's the best they can do, I'm rather optimistic about prop 8 getting shot down.

I haven't talked about Peak Oil in a while but here's a quote on Peak Oil that I had to post:


Anyhow, it seems like many of the people who claim that peak oil is a myth fundamentally misunderstand how peak oil works.  It's not that we ever run out of oil, it's that oil gets increasingly expensive making it impractical as a source of energy for our economy.  Predicting the date of peak oil is a difficult proposition, but given that oil is a finite resource, eventually we'll reach peak production.