Budget Fail

After a couple of weeks of bitching about President Obama’s budget without one of their own to offer as an alternative, the House GOP unveiled the Pamphlet to Save Americe at a press conference yesterday. It went over not so well. Jason Linkins has a great piece at HuffPo about this farcical head fake at a budget, what with its utter lack of actual numbers and Underpant Gnome-like sensibility on revenue generation. Suffice it to say, the rollout of this “budget” proves that Minority Leader Boehner is not only a disorganized assclown but a really poor leader as well.

Pledge Week forces me to peek behind the crazy curtain

So my local NPR affiliate WHRV is having one of their interminable bi-annual fundraising drives (FWIW - Lo and I almost always write a check) and rather than deal with a couple overenthusiastic shills trying to guilt me into a pledge (“If you value Public Radio as a service, then please invest in your Public Radio station you miserly cretin”), I decided to tune into the rage-fuelled batshit insane ramblings of Sean Hannity. To say that Hannity has anger issues is like saying Ted Bundy was a wee bit anti-social and I was ready for the freak show.

Anyway, driving along as he ranted and raved, I can almost see him, red-faced, vein throbbing in forehead, barely able to contain himself as he bombards the mike with spittle and paranoid delusions. It was actually pretty funny except for the fact that this whack job actually has a platform from which to bloviate. And just when I thought I had my fill of wingnut gibberish and would switch back to the calm reason of NPR, Hannity brings on Rep. Michelle “Armed and Dangerous” Bachmann, perhaps the dumbest, most insane and irresponsible member of the august body. Like a car crash you can’t look away from, I had to see where this exchange would go. I was not disappointed.

People, what I heard was mind-bending. When these two nutty supernovas of right-wing ideology started riffing back and forth, it took mere seconds for them to stray into no-bullshit pining for a revolution to overthrow the evil Muslim Communist black guy that has, in but 60 days, run this nation into the ground. It was a tour de force of crackpot, black helicopter and tinfoil hat bullshit, quasi-treasonous bile, and reality-denying “commentary” on the sorry state that Liberals have left our nation. And irony of ironies, whenever anyone disagreed with George Bush, Hannity was one of the dudes shouting “traitor” the loudest.

As the interview wound down and with my cup of crazy overflowing, I was oddly proud of myself for actually sitting through the whole thing. Only when Hannity and Bachmann began calling each other “Great Americans” did I get the urge to vomit and jam an ice pick into my ears. That was my breaking point and I quickly switched back to NPR. I had made through the madness alright, but I was spent and could bear no more. It was clearly time to get back to the relative comfort of being browbeaten for money by too-perky strangers.

UPDATE: TPM has transcribed a few choice moments from the interview. FWIW, it really was as bad as I thought.

The man has some stones

One of thornier issues in modern politics is prison reform. The nation’s collective freak out over drug usage in the 70’s and 80’s spawned some really stupid and Draconian laws that have placed millions of non-violent drug users in jail, at huge expense and little societal benefit IMHO. Yet reform efforts are often cast by the law and order crowd as soft on crime initiatives meant to coddle criminals. So it takes some nerve to wade into that particular pool and Sen. Webb appears to be jumping in with both feet.

Alarmed by prisons that are clogged with mentally ill people, drug users and other non-violent offenders while well-armed gangs and drug lords often go unpunished, Virginia Sen. Jim Webb will launch a wide-ranging and politically risky campaign today to overhaul the nation's criminal justice system.

[Snip]

After winning his Senate seat by a razor-thin margin in 2006, "he's improved his standing" with Virginia voters, said Mark Rozell, a political scientist at George Mason University. "He's now seen as a strong incumbent."

But Rozell added that "being hard on crime is the politically safe place to be.... There's just not a lot of public sentiment out there to do something about incarceration time.
"Whether he's doing the right thing or not, politically it's risky."

Kudos to the Senator for taking this on. It will not be easy and he had better watch his back.

Making Sense

From the NYTimes:

The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, outlined the plan Thursday before the House Financial Services Committee. He said the changes were needed to fix a badly flawed system that was exposed by the current financial crisis. Mr. Geithner, in his opening statement, called for “comprehensive reform. Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game.”

Included in the plan would be the establishment of one single agency “with responsibility for systemic stability over the major institutions and critical payment and settlement systems and activities.”

To that end, Mr. Geithner said: “Financial products and institutions should be regulated for the economic function they provide and the risks they present, not the legal form they take,” Mr. Geithner said. “We can’t allow institutions to cherry pick among competing regulators, and shift risk to where it faces the lowest standards and constraints.”

Geithner is absolutely right though the devil, as always, is in the details. Hedging aside, at least he is making the right noises. Timmy has dug himself into one helluva hole. Establishing an effective regulatory regime for non-bank financial firms would go a long way towards getting him out of it.

The Joys of Fatherhood – Big Boy Edition

So it has been a rough ten days or so on the J. front. The boy has been acting up like you would not believe; to the point that I was getting concerned that perhaps I was indeed the Father of a three year old Anti-Christ. Hitting, temper tantrums, talking back, generally being a jerk to his teachers – I think I have aged three years in the past week.

So after a long discussion about what was acceptable behavior for a big boy and the consequences of any further nonsense, we sent J. off to school this week, anxious but hopeful. Monday and Tuesday were largely uneventful, thank god and as such I was thinking that maybe he was getting it and we had passed through an ugly but temporary phase. Hurray for us, hurray for him. And then yesterday, J. was an angel. He received a glowing report from school. He ate his dinner without complaint. He did not throw a fit when it time for bed. He was, in fact, awesome. Indeed, as we were reading him his bedtime stories, I didn’t think I could have been more proud of him. That was until he recited to me nearly verbatim “How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?” IN ITS ENTIRETY.

Now, I have no idea how common it is for three year olds to memorize a forty page book and, really, there is like one line of text per page but that said, I must say I was damn impressed and more than a little shocked. When he was done, he sat there giggling with this goofy grin that totally said “Holy Shit! Look what I can do!” It was just a supercool moment and one that reassured me that, hey, maybe we are getting this parenting thing and that he is growing up to be a smart, well adjusted kid. It is a moment that I will cherish for a long time. So Big Ups J., you did Daddy proud!

Owned

I didn’t see most of the press conference last night but one bit I did catch was Obama schooling CNN’s Ed Henry.

The CNN White House correspondent, Ed Henry, who asked the question, also suggested that the New York attorney-general, Andrew Cuomo, was doing a better job of dealing with AIG than the White House.

Obama gave a general answer and Henry again asked why he had taken a few days to tell the public. The normally cool and controlled president replied sharply: "It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."

Good stuff. Here is the video.

New Rules

When we eventually find our way out of the current financial quagmire, we are going to need new regulations on the amount of leverage a bank can take on, reinstituting some form of Glass-Steigel, etc. But the single most important principle governing these new rules must be that if an institution is too big to fail, then it is too big. No single entity ought to have the power to essentially hold the US economy hostage. Thanks to Phil Gramm and his deregulation crusade in the late 90’s, we now have a financial landscape littered with firms whose only reason for surviving is that they have loaded guns pointed our collective economic head. That must change.

Old wine in a new bottle

As best as I can tell, the Geithner Plan to save our banking system appears to be the old Paulson Plan to buy mortgage backed securities and a bunch of other crap at inflated prices. The Administration has just repackaged this REALLY BAD IDEA so that instead of buying them directly, we incent the private sector to do so with our money.

The plan relies on private investors to team up with the government to relieve banks of assets tied to loans and mortgage-linked securities of unknown value. There have been virtually no buyers of these assets because of their uncertain risk.

As part of the program, the government plans to offer subsidies, in the form of low-interest loans, to coax private funds to form partnerships with the government to buy troubled assets from banks.

Bad, bad, bad. This amounts to giving the banks a massive subsidy using private equity as the bag man. So much for moral hazard, free markets, etc. And what’s worse, there is no guarantee that the banks will actually start lending again even if we do fork over wads of cash. We have no controlling stake in the banks and as such, little say on how they operate. Finally, if and when this plan craters, there will be little stomach in Congress to give the Administration another bite at this apple. Obama may only get one shot to fix this mess and this plan has FAIL written all over it. But don’t take my word for it; here is Krugman on Geithner’s position:

This is more than disappointing. In fact, it fills me with a sense of despair.

Oh boy - this is going to end poorly.

Krugman on the Obama Economic team

Ouch.

This administration, elected on the promise of change, has already managed, in an astonishingly short time, to create the impression that it’s owned by the wheeler-dealers.

As the wise man once said, “Sometimes the truth hurts”.

Not going too well

God Lord has Treasure Secretary Tim Geithner gotten off to a bad start. Maybe it is because he is too close to Wall Street (he was Pres. Of the New York Fed), maybe he is being constrained by the Administration, maybe the taks before him are too overwhelming for a Treasury Department not yet fully staffed, or maybe he just doesn’t know what the hell he is doing. I have no idea but this AIG bonus thing is the latest in a series of missteps. And where are the details of his bank rescue plan? Dude needs to get his shit together and fast.

More AIG nonsense

If ever there was an argument for abrogating a contract, the bonuses given to the AIG derivatives traders is it. We own that company because those very traders screwed up and nearly brought down the world finance system. That they should be rewarded for such failure is abominable. If nothing else, those assholes should receive a pink slip with their check.

Happy Birthday P.

My lovely sister P. hit the big Four O today. Hurray P.!