nancylebov | Outliving the US: the comments

Outliving the US: the comments

The other day, I asked whether people expected to outlive the US, and got some very interesting replies.

The most noticeable similarity was that no one expected anything good to come of an end to the US, which probably supports the idea that the US is very stable.

tahkhleet posted a substantial core dump about politics and the state of the culture. I'm feeling rather swamped. This is unfair. Overloading people is *my* job.

Still, I'm going to pick out some bits. However, I recommend reading the whole thing.

Is Obama genuinely that awful? I'm disappointed that he isn't prosecuting those responsible for torture (and NPR did a bit about how he used the word torture before he was elected, but has dropped it since then). Is he letting *everything* important slide?

I'd have thought he's at least smart enough to take a lesson from what Katrina did to Bush's reputation.

Two "do my homework" questions:

Are his foreign policy advisors really all hawks?

How did he handle things when he was a community organizer? Did he get useful work done?
Slightly different angle about the financial elite: One of my friends believes that credentialism is part of the problem. The most likely way to get one of those very well-paid jobs is to be totally focused on the exhausting work of getting the right degrees. Aside from

tahkhleet's point that only someone who's got bad values will be willing to do the work, getting the credentials means being totally focused on incentives rather than paying attention to the larger system.

Back to my pov: Having a system which makes room for competence is a very subtle problem. If people are totally shielded from consequences, whoever is good at social climbing will get the rewards, and the quality of work goes to hell. If there is too much effort to make sure the right thing is done, people game the measurement system, and the work goes to heck.

Genocide: I've been wondering for a while whether I'll see a nation commit auto-genocide (over 75% of population killed). It just seems as though people go nuts that way occasionally, and people are much more dependent on infrastructure than they used to be. Still, I don't know that the elites are dreaming of wiping a lot of the rest of us out, though worries about overpopulation can be read that way.

For purposes of this discussion, it isn't necessary that the elites would actually benefit from genocide, just whether enough of them strongly believe they would.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I don't think Obama is all that bad, but there is a lot of pent up hostility from the damage the previous administration did to the country. There are a lot of people who are tired of being screwed over by the government, no matter which of the two parties is in control. Both sides seem to do less and less with more and more of our money.

My politics are generally somewhere in the middle. The vocal "liberals" who try to classify me as a Christian Fundamentalist because I disagree with some of the things the current administration wants to do really irritate me.

I'm sure the fact that I have a copy of the Constitution on my phone is enough for some people to brand me as a wingnut. The fact that I am a strong believer in the right to own firearms really offends the liberals. The fact that I defend the 1st Amendment right of some nutjob to say what he believes really ticks of folks on both ends of the spectrum.

Will the country split up? I don't know, but I would like to see a lot more local governance and a lot less Federal governance.

I completely agree.

I saw

tahkhleet's criticisms of Obama and wasn't remotely impressed. What I see is yet another person expecting the US to miraculously transform within days of Shrub leaving office. It takes times to repair 8 years of that sort of damage. Obama isn't shaping up to be the wondrous far-left reformer that many of us would like to see, but he's not just far better than Shrub, he's also clearly better than Bill Clinton, both in terms of being more effective (I actually expect him to manage to get his healthcare reforms through) and in terms of being less cowardly in the fact of Republican opposition. That said, he's a US president, and so we shouldn't expect better of him than we have of most of the better presidents of the 20th century. In any case, because he isn't a wondrous far-left reformer who can instantly transform the US, there is no shortage of people who think he's Shrub II, which I thing is exceptionally foolish.

Indeed, I will go further. Obama never protrayed himself as a far left reformer. For those who can remember back to 2007 & early 2008, there was considerable debate among hardcore politically active progressives about whether to back Obama. Most, in fact, backed Edwards, whom they regarded as having much more anti-corporate policies (Krugman, for example, wrote several columns arguing that Obama would prove unable or unwilling to capitalize on populist sentiment by proposing a genuinely radical economic agenda).

Once Edwards dropped out, progressives faced the question of whether to embrace Clinton or Obama. the majority of progressives went for Obama, given the antipathy of the progressive wing of the party for Clinton.

Indeed. I definitely supported Edwards until he dropped out. I suspect that the overwhelming support for Obama rests on 2 facts - his is clearly the best orator the US has had in national politics for at least the last 20 years, and while open racism is no longer acceptable in public discourse, open misogyny definitely still is still perfectly acceptable.

I largely found Clinton and Obama to be indistinguishable - both were vastly better than any imaginable Republican candidate and neither was nearly as sufficiently progressive as I'd want.

I saw one large double drawback to Clinton: she was wrong about Iraq, and she didn't say she was wrong, she said she was lied to. I prefer having a president who doesn't use gullibility as an excuse.

Edited 2009-04-28 21:34 (UTC)

I don't care about his ideology. I care about him promising to _help the people in distress_ by the rapacious crimes of the elites. That would not necessarily require overthrowing the established order. Just merely housing, clothing and feeding them (about 10 million of them, say it takes $10,000 a head, that's $100 billion. zomg. How impossible that he could find the money for that.) He could let everyone else do everything EXACTLY as they were. We're in a crisis. He said he cared. His inaction is inexcusable.

OK, I started a lengthy response to this, and decided not to waste my time.

Nancy, I'm sorry. This is your page and your friends and I'm trying to be polite. But the level of ignorance and arrogance need to produce a comment as utterly dumb-ass as the one above is making my frickin' brain hurt. Good God! Is Obama a king, that he will trot on down to the Treasury and have them print up some of them twenties so he and his designated agents can hand them out on street corners like bloody reality show hosts?

God knows I can respect folks like

fatlefty, who actually understand this shit who want to see Obama run out on a rail for embracing the Chicago School and the Goldman Sachs gang. I may disagree, but at least that's something feasible and in Obama's control. The idea that Obama doesn't really care because he doesn't fly over the country in his Santa sleigh bringing jobs and Happy Meals to all the poor little children -- it just leaves me speechless.

If the basis for concern about the Obama Administration is

takhleet, then you can safely treat her as an outlier.

First, it wouldn't be inflation. You notice below that I said inflation is dumb. In Canada, we do exactly what I'm describing. We judge that it is UNACCEPTABLE for innocent people to live in absolute destitution for reasons beyond their control. That's how WE coped with the Depression. You didn't, because Hoover was a hidebound conservative and Roosevelt was a faux populist.

Second, Obama can't just "order this" by fiat. But he IS the architect of the budget he _can_ propose legislation...and if he couldn't sell this to the country when you have several million people who are homeless or fast heading for that situation, he is a total amateur. To crush the phobia of "socialism" he could just define the program as automatically ending when the employment rate is above a certain percentage by a certain metric. If he were still having problems just trot out all the Bible verses about caring for the poor. I mean crap, do you people TRULY still _believe_ that poverty in a _depression_ is the fault of the "lazy poor"?

Third,to just out and out insult me _after_ putting words into my mouth is EXTREMELY rude.

...like FDR did with the CWA program?

http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/422902.html

It is at the very least a PLAUSIBLE possibility. Not some fantasy like you accuse me of.

Health care: follow Timothy Noah at Slate. He's clearly got no enthusiasm in his rhetoric for real health care reform. He's still tip toeing around the private ensurers promise him the gov't won't be a competitive threat. Hello. The whole point of a gov't medical program is to provide essential service cheaper than the private sector. It's worked in every other industrial country and REFUSING to do it in the USA because of _lobbying_ is _corrupt_.

I didn't say anything about miraculous transformation. I would have expected he would not make the financial crisis worse. But clearly, he HAS. He has ok'd a plan from Geithner that has been systematically discredited. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/the-geithner-summers-plan_b_183499.html not some random blogger this is a professor of economics from Columbia University). Do you understand how critical this issue is? Billions of dollars that destitute people in tent cities desperately need...for their present needs, for the developmental welfare of their +children+ are going UNSPENT. Because the banks are bleating about needing the money. Even though when they GET their money, they do NOT increase their lending...which was the JUSTIFICATION for giving out that money in the first place! http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Banks-say-theyre-lending-theyre/story.aspx?guid={4280B32E-53CB-49A7-8DC8-D0E95F855358} Now, the article says the banks SHOULDN'T lend. Fair enough. but that doesn't explain why since this is demonstrated there isn't a whisper about changing a policy that CANNOT accomplish its goals.

This is not an abstract issue. The economy is about the human suffering or not of now millions of people. And Obama is facilitating the bankers looting the public treasury. The money we loan to the bankers cannot go to other causes. Note how no one is buying American TBonds in bulk except the Fed, which is a branch of the gov't! This means the gov't has reached its international credit limit. The only way to get more money is by inflation. Which will wipe out the savings left over from the stock market crash. He took the last gasp in the gas tank and SQUANDERED it on a fool's errand. Now...was he stupid, or corrupt? Given that the only people he's listened to on economic policy have been the bankers involved in the fiasco, rather than say, economists or social scientists or bankers from _successful_ banks...I'm inclined to think he's a crook like Blago. It is at the very least a _strong hypothesis_.

On military affairs: he's on auto pilot. People trumpet "oh, he's pulling the troops out". He has no choice. Even BUSH would have had no choice. The Iraqis have served notice that the troops cannot stay. And where is he sending the troops? Afghanistan. Into a re-enactment of Vietnam because we dare not consistently pursue the Taliban into Pakistan. The fact there have been strikes there are pushing Pakistan to the brink of civil war. He's nothing special for foreign policy compared to Bush. He talks big about we're all friends now and everyone's so happy to see him. But he's not DOING anything basically different. Plus, bet you when the Iraqi civil war flares up again, he'll find a pretext to put the American troops BACK in Iraq.

Remember : He's already said he's in favor of a war on Iran "to protect Israel". Israel's existence is already threatened by Iran's massive biological warfare program. There is no qualitatively new threat in their nuclear program. So this is another fool's errand. An Israeli attack on Iran will SPIKE world oil prices at least $150.00 a barrel, perhaps more if Iranian vandalism of the shipping lines in the gulf succeed even somewhat as well as they claim. We'll forget the political fallout: this consequence alone should have him saying "I'm revoking the blank check Bush wrote for your policy". So how is he an improvement here?

Cowardly in the face of Republican opposition: you mean the way he hemmed and hawed about the budget begging the Republicans to play nice and then finally he gave up and just bribed a few of them, costing billions in pork? Oh and remember what Brad Hicks noted: if you say "this bill must pass" that's code for "send me your bribe price now". He's either a noob or he doesn't care about being efficient with the government's resources. He's so "bold" about Republican opposition he refuses to prosectue WAR CRIMES. He's so "brave" in standing up to their financial lobby that the most he could make himself do was repeal Bush' tax cuts. Yah, quite a deal we have here a real wonderpup.

I'm curious what you have to say to my rebuttals. I'm more than curious why you're accusing me of having "expected miracles of him". I didn't mention that at all. I didn't imply that. In fact, I had a deep sinking feeling when he and McCain won the nominations. "Oh great, whatever happens, one of those illegitimate offspring of unclean canines has to win the election now." However, I figured at worst he'd be a Ulysses Grant, a worthless patronage dispenser and genially corrupt. He has far exceeded my expectations. I'm calling him on how he keeps saying he's changing the paradigm, he's fixing the country, and he's making it worse.

I've read reports by a fair number of people (including a few progressive economists) that if the initial bailout hadn't been done, the US economy would likely have literally collapsed. The current economic plan isn't perfect, but it's keeping that from happening, and I'm seeing a number of important bills (such as one making labor unions far easier to form) working their way through congress, and Obama has said he will vote for most of these. In any case, I do not understand economics sufficiently well to comment on the current measures beyond a clear awareness that much of the media hype about "the government giving money to wallstreet fatcats who will use it to buy yachts" is utter nonsense.

The point of the various measures is to both keep money flowing in the US economy and to make various business investments look appealing to the people in a position to make them, because if these investments don't look appealing, then they won't be made, and the US economy stands no chance of recovery.

As for Iran, unlike most recent presidents, Obama is actually talking with Iran. Not only don't I expect war, I expect lots of tough talk to appease the many right-wing morons that infest the US, combined with actual efforts at diplomacy, which seems to be what we're seeing. Obama is clearly very cautious, which is annoying, but on many things I'm not prepared to say he's wrong.

...You're looking at it wrong.

He did NOTHING fundamentally different from Bush. He shilled for the bail out while Bush was in office. The bail out bill that included provisions like "nothing that happens through this bill can ever be the basis of criminal charges". And then Geithner acted pretty much like Paulson. Part of why I'm castigating Obama is he sold himself as the candidate of CHANGE! and that's the best he could do?

While the pitchforks, tar and feather crowd are idiots, the level of criminal behaviour going on right now is STAGGERING. I'm not saying "oh they're rich, they're vile, let's lynch them for being successful while we're not". I'm saying they're criminals who have to be prosecuted and Obama is playing King Log while it happens.

You didn't seem to read what I said though. "Money flowing" is the cycle of credit. If the bailout bill didn't or shouldn't promote that then _what was the point of spending the money_? You say it was important to prevent banks going under. But we went way way beyond the point of keeping various banks from going insolvent. Like, here's the problem.

We have banks A, B and C. they've lost 50 cents of every dollar their depositors have, this means they can't make the withdrawal requirements for operations. By law, they should be shut down. Now, we say "no no, very important to keep them open. So we'll lend them 30 cents on the dollar to get them back into being able to stay open. And they'll keep lending, and eventually they'll earn back the money they lost and they can pay us back".

Except the banks aren't showing any signs of making the money back. So in the end, the banks will lose 50 cents on the dollar, plus however much more money they lose _after_ they burn the 30 cents on the dollar the gov't "loaned" them...and after whatever point the gov't finally throws up its hands and says "ok, you're not competent to manage your depositor's money".

Maybe you're thinking "but the dominoes effect of derivatives or the stock market impacts will hurt people too much". This isn't going bankrupt by a few cents on the dollar. This is not some technical accounting rule causing undue stress. This is catastrophic malfeasance. All the money the banks have is retained profits (almost nothing) and the depositor's funds. When a bank buys a worthless investment with a depositor's money, it has essentially allowed the seller of that investment to rob the bank's own depositors. Often, (for example, with AIG as they close up operations) there are obviously kickbacks involved as the bank and the asset seller split the profits. They push the depositor's money out of the bank and replace it with a worthless or radically overvalued asset.

This isn't some weird financial mistake. It was ROBBERY. The banks all sold these wortheless/overvalued investments to each other through subsidiaries. It was understood "I'll buy your worthless paper if you'll buy mine and we'll both take the profits home one way or the other". Between that and kickbacks, it was a giant vacuum cleaner connected to the depositor's accounts. Now the system is too low to function and they get the govt to let them continue as normal. The top 8 banks who got $160 billion for their banks REFUSED to describe how they had changed operations in response to receiving gov't money!

Btw, these wonderful, hard working bankers? These competent financial wizards we believe have so much talent that their current troubles are just "misfortune that we need to intervene to protect them from?" They are so irresponsible they lobbied for the repeal of the Glass-Seagal (sp?) act. This was the act passed after the Depression which said a bank may not hold its operating reserves in stock. That is critical A bank has to have money on hand to pay depositors who want some of their money back. The banks said "well, money sitting around doesn't earn us anything. We'll buy blue chip stocks, and we can earn a little bit from capital gains and dividends!" The problem with this is that if the stock market suddenly crashes, those stocks become illiquid. You can't sell them. But people are MORE likely to want their money. And when the law requires a bank that doesn't honor a depositor's demand for their own money, that bank must close. The Act was a very reasonable realization that no matter how painful it was for a banker to have idle money around, there had to be a fair bit of it on hand, because emergencies and crises aren't scheduled on the banker's calenders.

It was a total NO BRAINER and they lobbied successfully to repeal this act. and yes, the same thing that happened in the Depression happened again because of it.

Are you aware the President Bush made a commitment to Israel that if they go to war with Iran, the USA is AUTOMATICALLY at war with Iran? Are you aware that Obama has UPHELD this commitment. He may have put in his little fig leaf "if Israel's survival is threatened"...but tell me, since he's said he agrees Iran shouldn't have nukes, if Israel says "we see them getting to close to nukes, we have to do something" what IS he going to do? He might surprise me...but he left the door open to follow Bush' policy and all his rhetoric leads me to believe he will go to war. He chose a hawk cabinet for that reason.

It doesn't matter if Obama is talking with Iran. They have made it clear they want nukes, no matter what. Israel has made clear they will attack Iran, no matter what, if Iran gets nukes. Israel just elected a kingmaker party in its Knesset which is a bunch of RACISTS who say that all Muslims need to be expelled from the entirety of Israel. Israel is steadily marching toward war.

And I'll get into "doing the homework" on the cabinet but oh, the other commenter is SO wrong on that score.

Are his foreign policy advisors really all hawks?

No. They're technically from the "realist" school, which is opposed to change in general. So they'll pull out from Iraq to the extent that nothing bad will happen that they can be blamed for (cf Germany, Japan, Korea), escalate in Afghanistan to prevent disaster (cf Viet Nam), talk about preventing Iran and North Korea from getting (more?) nukes but not take direct action (cf USSR, China). Hawks would be threatening blockades of Iran and air strikes on Somali pirate havens.

Genocide: I've been wondering for a while whether I'll see a nation commit auto-genocide (over 75% of population killed).

It happened in the 19th century. Google on Paraguay and the War of the Triple Alliance. (Nutshell: Paraguay tried to conquer the whole of South America by attacking Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay simultaneously. This Did Not End Well.)

Not the usual Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot model, more like suicide by comprehensively misjudging what your neighbors will put up with.

Have now skimmed the original comments page.

The issue is extremely complex and messy (what I surprise that I say that). Most folks also don't appreciate the level of structural damage done during the last 8 years to the underlying structures of government -- from the purge of experienced federal workers to the destruction of agency morale to the failure to upgrade needed equipment to, above all else, the legitimacy of the decisionmaking process.

That's not something fixed in a hundred days. Frankly, we won't really have a good sense on how this is going to work out for another year or so when the Administration is actually up to functioning strength in terms of appointments and implementation of critical legislative goals.

But no, I do not believe that Obama is "genuinely awful." He is a man trying to negotiate tough decisions in difficult times, aware that being President is not the same as being king and that he therefore needs to make political judgments. Some of these will, IMO, be wrong -- including on very important moral matters. But that I disagree with him does not make him awful.

If he were accomplishing _any_ sane agenda, I could say "well, he's doing something. It's not what I want done, but he's the President". He's not. He's keeping the country on Bush like autopilot on the military, on economics and on health care. You can say "it's too soon to tell how effective he'll be". That's not my beef. My beef is his strategy from the get go is _cracked_. He promised excellence and technocratic government. He is not delivering even from his limited ability to personally contribute to that.

Right.

OK, this usually ends badly, but I will try.

In the last hundred days, the Obama Administration has:

1) Reversed the Bush Admin policy on stem cell research,

2) Reversed policy on Guantanamo,

3) Developed stimulus legislation designed not merely to introduce capital, but to fundamentally restructure significant sectors of the economy,

4) Expanded S-CHIP,

5) Proposed and implemented a mortgage rescue fund,

6) Proposed significant credit card regulation to prevent predatory practices,

7) Proposed a mammoth budget with significant health care reform as its centerpiece,

8) Managed the DTV transition tolerably well,

9) Begun redeployment of military assets from Iraq to Afghanistan,

10) Reversed Bush Administration determination on greenhouse gasses,

That's off the top of my head. For anyone of these you can argue that it is not going right, he's too timid, he's not going fast enough, he's too protective of incumbent interests, or whatever substantive argument you may have. But it seems a trifle unfair to call this "autopilot."

The process of implementation is further hampered by the inability to fill key political appointments for a variety of reasons (some self-inflicted, others less so). To take one dramatic example, we did not have a Secretary of HHS until today. This nomination was delayed because of conservative opposition to Sebelius' pro-choice positions. The result of this delay has been to significantly hamper the ability of HHS to implement numerous programs, including the existing Swine Flu outbreak.

From where I sit, which is pretty darn close, this Administration has been working along a fairly consistent line of trying to prioritize the economic recovery, staff up with competent individuals while satisfying various political constituencies, while dealing with a variety of divergent crisis. In the last several weeks, we have seen the appointment of a number of critical appointments below the Senate confirmation level that will have significant impact on policy and implementation (to name a few: the appointment of Alec Ross at State, the appointments of Gene Kimmelman and Phil Weiser to the DOJ antitrust division, the appopintment of Jonathan Adelstein to RUS, the appointment of Miriam Shapiro as Assistant USTR, the appointment of Larry Strickling to head NTIA). While I can think of appointments I'm less happy with (the appointment of a number of Jenner & Block lawyers to critical intellectual property enforcement posts), this is consistent with building a generally pro-consumer, pro-tech, pro-science Administration as promised.

Having now gone through three transitions (tail-end of Clinton when I was a wee pup, Bush, and now Obama), I think these guys have handled things pretty well. I also think the Administration has been pretty consistent in its strategy and priorities. I see no sign of the Administration strategy being "cracked." Wrong in spots, IMO, but not "cracked."

Well said indeed. Also, he's eliminated the global gag rule on abortion and told the DEA to not pursue action against the medical marijuana trade.

...and you don't seem to understand the budget very well either.

1,2 and 10 are cosmetic measures.

1: About as significant as Bush trumpeting how Christianity is important. It heartens people who agree with that ruling but has almost NO impact on anyone today and probably not anytime during his term. I officially bet you $50.00 that by the end of his term, no new life saving therapies from foetal stem cell research will have come into use.

On 2, Obama quietly has started adopting the Bush language again, stealthily. He started using "enemy combatant" again after dropping the term. He started using "enhanced interrogation" again instead of torture. More importantly, he has had his lawyers EXPLICITLY ENDORSE the Bush theory of the "invincible executive". His lawyers said the executive has no limits on its power save for what the executive determines. The House, Senate and Courts can go spin. This is not the declaration of a man who is serious about reversing the stain of Guatanamo. You notice he still hasn't resolved what to DO with them. If he sends them to Bagram that is not exactly an improvement. (Bagram's where most of the "unfortunate fatalities" during "enhanced interrogation" have happened lately)

On 10, have you heard him do anything to reverse the Bush deregulation by executive orders of environmental protection measures? To me that's the barometer of his true colors. He'll pass a carbon tax and push recycling...and those things don't matter. Recycling just extends the productive value of resources. If we don't use radically less, we're going to drown in our own waste. One of my friends noticed in his area, the motto is "Recycle, re-use, reduce" instead of the opposite, which stresses the primacy of "REDUCE". A carbon tax only matters if it makes people use green technology or take environmental measures. I've yet to hear a proposal that way which would accomplish that. Its just an excuse to push the middle and lower classes down.

8 and 9 are just autopilot.

On 8: Sounds like the "crisis" was overblown. I admit, I'm not that educated on it, but again: how does this matter? He delayed a policy by four months. He gave it more money. But the number of viewers affected is something like 2 in 1000. (since the "still unprepared" rate of 1.9 is in only .2% higher of "never plan to convert" rate) I'm sure those 2 elderly pensioners will have real distress over this. But I am skeptical given the aggressive advocacy of AARP that money to get converter boxes for this handful will not be a major horrible crisis. Bush was willing to accept the delay of his baby, the Western Hemisphere Security Initiative. I'm far from convinced he'd have insisted on immediate, as is implementation of the HDTV transition.

(Btw, -_that's_ going to cause real headaches in six weeks. Obama hasn't done a thing about that for fear of being found "soft on terrorism".)

On 9: Did he commit to disengaging from these pointless military actions? no. The amount of military activity is staying the same. The army and marines continue to get closer to breaking (this is the opinion of the PENTAGON and he's ignoring it just like Bush did). He isn't WITHDRAWING from Iraq either. He's reducing forces. http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5910 Besides, the Iraqis demanded the troops be withdrawn. No one's said what happens when the US air force and the 10-20K troops needed to maintain the megabases the US spent billions on are still there in 2012.

4,5,6 "mandatory incrementalism"

but I still question if giving Obama marks for them is any more appropriate than the automatic 'action items' for "base support" that Bush did in his regime. He did after all spend a fair bit of effort doing things that his base would approve of.

re: 4 Ok, I can't say anything genuinely bad about this. However, given that all he did is say "spend more money on this" I don't count it a work of great genius. Especially since his LACK of genius will thrust enough Americans into poverty that the odds are the program will go bankrupt.

5: Pretty stingy. I'll grant, Bush probably wouldn't do that. But the way he did this implies when the PRIME mortgage holders enter hell later this year he'll be tardy in helping them...if at all.

6: Too little. He's also talking about bailing out the credit card companies. If it goes like the banks is going to be an absolute mess which empowers the CCC's at the expense of their clients. He didn't do anything about payday loans, which make loan sharking look friendly (literally! 60-200% interest rates for loan sharking versus 1300% for payday loans!)

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews/idUSTRE53J6OR20090420 talks about how the CCC's feel they need to resist more regulation. So it doesn't seem their style has been cramped too much so far or it would be talking about repealing _existing_ regulations. Moreover the democrats before this point have not been exactly spirited in their defense of the consumer.

3 and 7 : total smoke and mirrors.

You seem to have fallen for a common fallacy: by looking at the NUMBER of things someone has done, you lose sight of the relative _weights_ of the _value_ of what they are reporting. There are only three items on that whole list that are of any significant value. But they pale in comparison to the two items you drew no special attention to. The budget and the stimulus package.

The budget is an exercise in misdirection and unreality. It assumes that next year, the GDP will grow by 3.2% and this growth plus higher taxes will pay for a significant chunk of the spending. That is grossly unrealistic. This is not chump change. 14.33 trillion GDP. if we contract again another 1/2 percent (that's being generous) that's 3.7 % error in change in GDP. That's about $530 billion in GDP, of which about half goes to taxes. The total tax rate on all activity is roughly 50%.

So that's about 265 billion in lost revenue owing to unwarranted optimism. That's about 1/8th of the budget's revenue gone. This is significant. If the budget held steady and your ran up 12% a year instead of say 2% a year (let's assume no president is going to avoid being a little over optimistic). That means with a realistic president you'd have added an entire year's GDP to the national debt in 36 years...or in SIX years.

The federal debt was about 1 trillion...the deficits from the next two fiscal years will triple that. (Never mind the 2 trillion from the bailout bill and stimulus package). So we will see the federal debt go to about 5 trillion. The 2007 budget had 22% of its funds go to paying the debt on 1 trillion. Do the math. The formal debt of the US gov't is about to swallow the country. He is gambling on HUGE increases in revenue to continue into 2012 and beyond. There is little sign to think this.

Obama cites the "banner" unemployment rate of 8% instead of the "real" unemployment rate of 18% when you include the "discouraged" job searchers. That's the ones who prefer being poor or dependents to trying to find work. This includes a huge number of disabled people who have been excluded from social security because y'all won't recognize your pressure cooker society is making people SICK in record numbers.

And people just let this pass because what can they say? "Ooops, we're doomed"? Everyone assumes things will just work out because they always have in the past. The budget assumptions don't even mention the fact that there is no longer any credit being extended to America by China and the other "net saver" countries in any significant quantity. (Saudi is about to go bankrupt and THAT will sack the only possible late arriving saviour for the American bond market).

You can say "its not fair, how could he avoid this?" Well, if he hadn't exhausted America's credit on worthless endeavors, and he hadn't acted in such a reckless fashion that no one will lend to you...maybe there would be options.

There is no possible outcome of his stimulus that can yield a high enough % growth in the economy to prevent a default. He has utterly failed in his most important task barely a season into his presidency. Was it a fair task? A reasonable task? No. But his deceptions and lack of due diligence have ensured that what damage could have been controlled mostly was not. This failure totally eclipses anything on your list. It's a failure that happened from his corruption. He thought he could shovel a few more truckloads of cash at his cronies among the super rich and then make all of society pay for the loss. He was wrong and everyone will pay for his error.

...does not equal a "program" compared to the unholy trinity of (in order of descending importance with relative weights):

--> His role as King Log as the upper class loots the country's financial system (60)
--> Embracing Bush's "invincible executive" governing theory (as manifested in his insistence not to prosecute war crimes done by Bush) (30)
--> Continuing Bush's "War on Terror" (10, because the world is used to the US acting badly at this point)

plus

don't feel like getting the footnotes exhaustively set up but:
-->miscellaneous authoritarian gestures including (??? since sources not cited in detail yet)
(1) ban on hand loading ammunition (pending legislation but its past the draft stage)
(2) declaration on record and in front of reputable witnesses (two newspaper reporters among them)that he wanted a 2 million man "civilian security force" for "America's security goals"
(3) failure to over-ride Bush's executive martial law order that put FEMA in charge of the country, SPD 51. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_and_Homeland_Security_Presidential_Directive)
(this one is scary. Its like a Sword of Damocles. There's no definition of how the "state of emergency starts; nor how it ends; nor why the previous legislation was inadequate; nor why no one in the House or Senate can look at the actual operations plan for the marital law measures; nor why it calls for the illegal suspension of all branches of the gov't save the executive.(previous acts did NOT do this))
(4) His push to eventually have all people ages 18-42 donate two years of their labor to the gov't and to accept the gov't decision as to what type of labor to carry out.

to me, that's his real program, and the scattering of significant things he did are not a "program" compared to it.

For the record, I hate Anakin McCain and the Republican party passionately. I am not taking sides in a partisan dispute. I'm calling it like I see it because he is just behaving that badly, especially after extravagant promises to the contrary.

For a closing statement, read:
http://koogrr.livejournal.com/433037.html?thread=2045325#t2045325

...because I get the uncomfortable feeling from two commentators that I am drawing ire for having committed some type of "lese- majeste" against Mister Obama. I have not. I have struggled for clarity and accuracy my whole life in all things...most of all in ruminations about what's going on in the world and what we as individuals have to do. This is not some sort of petty "their man won" garbage.

Regarding the unholy trinity:

(1) As I said below, Wall Street has corrupted both parties. One of the reason Clinton's budgets focused so much on deficit reduction is that on the advice of Bob Rubin (his Treasury Secretary, who worked at Goldman Sachs before entering government service and worked at Citigroup afterward), Clinton wanted to stay on the bond traders' good side.

(2) This sucks and I hope more pressure can be brought to bear on the issue, but at least he hasn't pardoned the crooks, so if he doesn't have the cojones to prosecute them, maybe one of his successors will.

(3) Both parties, sadly, have a tradition of throwing the weight of the US military around. I would love to see an Administration pull back to something closer to isolationism, but the military-industrial complex is too powerful to allow such a drastic change in policy happen in one election cycle.

I don't know enough about your smaller points to comment.

Relative to the American political spectrum I'm pretty far to the left (if I were Canadian I'd probably be voting NDP), but Obama never campaigned as someone so far to the left. He campaigned from the center of the Democratic party (not to be confused with a "centrist" who splits the difference between the Democrats and Republicans) and that's how he's governing.

Do I wish the center of gravity in US politics was farther to the left? Absofuckinglutely. Did I expect my vote in a presidential election (as contrasted with all the other ways I as a citizen can influence the political system) to shift this center of gravity more than one or two degrees? No way in hell.

What

osewalrus said.

Obama is quite a distance from my ideal Presidential candidate, but my ideal candidate would probably get no more than 40% of the popular vote, and if by some fluke he or she were elected, Congress would be routinely blocking his/her proposals by veto-proof majorities. Compared with the actual Democratic politicians that have had a snowball's chance of becoming President from Carter onward, Obama is the messiah.

I'm disappointed by how he's dealt with the financial crisis so far, but Wall Street has methodically corrupted the power structures of both parties, so I can't say I'm surprised he hasn't found better lieutenants to manage that end of things.

Thanks. I gave up responding to Outlier Girl after the second round. Long ago, back when Usenet ruled the Earth, I learned that the magic "delete" key meant I could decide whether to waste my time or not.

Indeed.

Obama provides the second stage of the ratchet effect in increasing presidential power; or if you prefer a different metaphor, he's the good cop to Bush's bad cop. He's scaled back on rhetoric and to a lesser extent on details, but has not made any significant reduction to how much power the president holds. He hasn't revoked the claim to be entitled to hold prisoners indefinitely without charges. He's given the torturers a free pass. He's outdone Bush on deficit spending. He isn't touching the harassment of airline passengers or other gratuitous "security" measures, as far as I can tell.

People will be grateful because we've gained back a little of what we lost to Bush, and forget what things were like in the 20th century; after a while, those of us who want to restore that degree of sanity will be called "reactionaries."

Sorry about being late with moderation-- it isn't usually something I need to do, and I wanted some time to think.

osewalrus, if you find yourself apologizing in advance for something you're about to do, this is probably a sign it isn't a great idea. This rule may well apply to anyone who isn't a compulsive apologizer.

I was distracted by your mention of friendship. You're my friend.

takhkleet is something who's said some interesting things and some plausible things in my lj.

One of the questions I mull in the background is how to use anger productively-- insults get people's attention, but unfortunately they're apt to put the attention on the insult rather than any other message.

This applies both to

tahkhleet's insults to Obama and

osewalrus's insults to

tahkhleet.

I was expecting much less of Obama than a lot of people-- I was hoping for a president who wouldn't initiate new disasters. Anything else is gravy.

I'm not going address every point about Obama, just a couple of easy ones. Obama can't decree payments to Americans in financial trouble (as

tahkhleet implied on the first pass). He could push for them.

It's pretty clear that Obama prefers systems solutions. Reining in the credit card companies means that fewer people will be pushed over the edge.

I have no idea whether this approach has something to do with his experiences as a poor person and/or as a community organizer.

Allowing stem cell research isn't just cosmetic, but it is long haul. I'm sure it will take more than four years for new life-saving therapies to show up. And a lot of the promise of stem cells is for chronic diseases-- very debilitating but only somewhat deadly (diabetes) or afaik not deadly with proper care (Parkinson's).

I can't figure out if giving money to banks that don't lend it makes any difference. To anything. One thing I've learned from the crisis is that I know a lot less about the economy than I thought.

On the other hand, I'm concerned that if any of the banks start lending, they'll all start lending the bailout money simultaneously, leading to serious inflation.

If I pressure the government, it's going to be about torture. At least I understand the issue.

Re: claim that I said Obama could do something he plainly couldn't, re: Money for the homeless. Quoting above:

Second, Obama can't just "order this" by fiat. But he IS the architect of the budget he _can_ propose legislation...and if he couldn't sell this to the country when you have several million people who are homeless or fast heading for that situation, he is a total amateur.

I thought it was a given that I meant "he should pass an immediate assistance bill in the House and Senate". It wasn't, so I made the above clarification. No one seems to have recognized this.

In Canada, the main reason it took so long to get welfare was because McKenzie King, the main Prime Minister in that period (and who had a solid lock on power from 1935-1948) was scared of the banks. The people had no issues with voting for the measure. In fact, war veterans from WW I had organized a huge protest in 1935 (thousands started marching toward Ottawa, they were stopping Manitoba). That was an important reason why King was elected with a large majority: people were sympathetic to the veterans' claims that their sacrifices in the Great War entitled them to some help from the government during hardship beond their control. The previous gov't had attacked the people who took part in this protest while negotiating with the leaders.

1930's and 40's Canada was not afaik noticeably less conservative than current America. Barak Obama has unprecedented personal popularity (80%) and even his policies have strong support (51%). So I cannot understand why if there is a need, and he's a community organizer who knows the pernicious effects of poverty first hand, why he hasn't done this. He has the political capital. The experience of other nations proves that welfare per se is not an irresponsible or financially destructive measure. Especially welfare during an economic catastrophe.

If he's the goodhearted man you claim, why has he not acted? There are no substantial barriers in his way. Politics is the "art of the possible". I do not see why relief for the people in tent cities is such an implausible and scorn-worthy proposition. Why should this not be the easiest measure in the world to pass right now?

For the cost of 1/15 of all the money he futilely gave to the banks,he could address this problem immediately. It would have a strong stimulus effect since it would all end up getting spent. In BC, 84,000 people with disabilities receive government assistance equal to between 2/3 and 4/5 of the amount I suggested for the homeless folk. The cost of this is roughly 2% of the provincial budget. This covers 2% of the population. In America, 2% of YOUR population would be 60 million. This is not a "Santa dropping money off the back of his sleigh" scenario. It is nothing like that.

Or am I simply grossly misreading Americans and the consensus is that the people who are living in tent cities deserve that fate and deserve no assistance? Even reactionary Canadians in the 30's and 40's didn't feel that way, so if I am in error, it is a reasonable one.

(Canadians used to be so conservative that we:
(a) Interned our Japanese during the war, too
(b) treated Francophones as second class citizens in their own province (don't ask about outside of it!) because they were Catholic and weren't descended from British stock
(c) had SERIOUS protests about forming our own navy because as a patriotic British Imperial Dominion, we should be giving Britain money to expand its navy to protect us
(d) felt that the British monarch was our ruler and anyone who didn't like this or didn't want to support Britain was a bad Canadian)

I don't think that having my words distorted, ignored and mocked without reference to their content is equivalent to me insulting Obama for a logical, clearly defined and reasoned list of causes. I still apologize for insulting him. But many of my friends are going to be in those tent cities soon and I'm very very angry about this. I'm very angry he's ensured the economy is going to go straight to hell. You cannot borrow anymore, on a federal budget level. This is an absolute catastrophe. The effects this will have on the American population are going to be at least as bad as what happened to people in Argentina. Youtube the Argentinian crisis. That fate is approaching in America (and Canada, a bit later, so this is personal...80% of Canada's exports are to US so when your economy collapses so does ours) because Obama was too cozy with the bankers. So when I erred in insulting him, I had HUGE provocation. What have I done to earn such absolute derision from your friends?

I'm sure it's not limited to either party -- but I have heard *much* more of this from the left than the right. I suspect osewalrus has too.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14851926/displaymode/1107/s/2/framenumber/6/

I've just seen another similar attack, also from the left. I suppose it isn't surprising-- people tend to get angrier at those who almost agree with them than at those who are just plain completely wrong.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Outliving the US: the comments

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

I didn't say that either.

Re: I didn't say that either.

Wow. That's an offensive statement.

....fly over the country in his Santa Sleigh...

(looks wry (part 1))

(looks wry (part 2))

(looks wry (part 3))

Re: (looks wry (part 3))

Even if everything you say is true...

Footnote

Iran

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Ah, you're missing the point

Re: Ah, you're missing the point

Re: Ah, you're missing the point

You lack an appreciation of what is substance and what is not

Re: Ah, you're missing the point (goes on)

on these, I'll admit I may be unduly harsh

This is the Point

Three Tiny Bright Spots

Re: Three Tiny Bright Spots

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Helping the destitute

Insults and non equivalency

Just erase the part that says "Republicans."

Re: Just erase the part that says "Republicans."