Yesterday’s headline news, in all its various establishment media permutations, was full of stories about Still-President George W. Bush paying a visit to wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center this morning. A couple added that this was the site of one of his administration’s most serious scandals.

Those reports were talking about the appalling conditions at Walter Reed given broad attention after Dana Priest and Anne Hull published a front-page exposé last year in the Washington Post—they were not talking about the scandal that is the cause of so many of those wounds. That would be the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

When I heard the story, I smirked and shook my head in disgust, figuring it was just another lame, lame duck attempt at legacy burnishing.

Well, it was that, but it was so much more. . . or less.

It turns out, as was later reported, that Bush had an MRI on Monday morning at Walter Reed for a chronic pain in his left shoulder. Yes, that’s right. Bush went to WRAMC because he wasn’t feeling well.

I suppose it’s a chicken and egg thing. . . kind of. It certainly would have looked bad if word had gotten out that Bush was at the medical center and didn’t stop in to look after the men and women who owe their disability checks to his vainglorious boondoggle. But would George W. have gone out there at all if he hadn’t had his own needs to look after?

Last night, I was watching Rachel Maddow recount the dozens upon dozens of scandals that pock-marked the last eight years of the Bush Administration, and for some reason, I started hearing the “Major-General’s Song” in my head. I have no idea why a mind-bogglingly long list of greed and corruption made me think of The Pirates of Penzance—OK, it’s not that big a stretch—but anyway, my confusion is your, um, gain(?).

So how about a Thanksgiving sing-along. . . .

The Major Criminal’s Song

I am the very model of a modern major criminal
I’ve tortured everything in sight, turned animal to mineral
I’ve stripped men naked, chained them up, and blasted heavy meteral
I recognize no laws on me unless they’re extra-federal

My dad once ran the CIA, he told me it was just good fun
My veep will back me up on that—look out, he’s got a birding gun!
Those treaties of Geneva type should not be taken serious
The prohibitions there within are quaint if not mysterious

I lied the country into war to boost my numbers in a poll
Ignored advice of everyone from grunt to four star general
When Wilson tried to show me up, I said hey it’s your funeral
I’ve ruined oh so many lives, my staff assumes it’s protocol

I’ll hunt them down and smoke them out as long as I am vertical
You don’t have to take my word, just ask my old friend Richard Perle
No terrorist will walk this earth beneath my robot predators
So what if I kill innocents? (How’d that get past my editors?)

It’s the president who makes the laws, so I don’t need an alibi
I decide what’s right or wrong, that’s why I’m the decider guy
Don’t need to recognize the courts or documents historical
My explanation’s ironclad if not un-categorical

My attitudes about your rights are bold and unconventional
Don’t whine at me about the law, I don’t need you to concern troll
In short I am the president who won with RATS subliminal
I am the very model of a modern major criminal

I think it’s still a work in progress—for instance, I’m still trying to find a rhyme for “strategery.”

Funny enough, it was almost exactly two years ago that I was also looking at Bush and thinking Gilbert and Sullivan. Must be type casting.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

——
(cross-posted on guy2k)

Days after the Big Three automakers were sent home without any supper—told to come back after Thanksgiving with a “plan” that shows them to be deserving of $25 billion of taxpayer congressional Treasury largess—Super-sized financial institution Citibank was handed roughly that much cash in an attempt to prevent the bank’s complete collapse. (That is new money added to the estimated $25 billion Citi has already received under the Paulson TARP/injection/bailout extravaganza.)

But one of the big car manufacturers, General Motors, already seems to be ahead of Citibank as far as making plans for financial stability is concerned. GM’s Buick division announced that it has cancelled its five-year, $40 million endorsement deal with star golfer Tiger Woods, while Citibank has confirmed that its 20-year, $400 million deal for the naming rights to the new home of Major League Baseball’s New York Mets is still very much a “go.”

GM’s Chief Executive, Richard Wagoner, was lambasted for taking a private jet to last week’s congressional hearings (and that was bad form), but just a week earlier, the company had already decided to let go of two of its five private jets (all five are leased, not owned). General Motors has also made many other (arguably small) cuts in an effort to trim costs—from slashing worker uniform stipends and buying cheaper wipe-up towels, to trimming the size of test fleets and turning off escalators at corporate HQ after 7 p.m.

These cuts could fall under the “penny wise and pound foolish” category, but they stand in striking contrast to the kinds of cuts Citi has made:

She said it, not me. . .

“Any state programs on the chopping block?” Oh, no she didn’t.

Oh, yes she did.

“I pretty well understand anger,” said Senate Majority leader Harry Reid after the vote of the Democratic caucus.

“I would defy anyone to be more angry than I was but I also believe that if you look at the problems we face as a nation, is this a time we walk out of here saying, ‘boy, did we get even?’”

By now you know about the vote within the Democratic Caucus that allowed Republican sock-puppet Joe Lieberman to retain his seniority and his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

In a deal that was brokered behind the scenes over the weekend, Lieberman was forced to step down from his seat one the Environment and Public Works Committee. (A tiny slap on the wrist, but I will try to make a little lemonade here by hoping that this might help kill off once and for all the Lieberman-Warner global warming “effort”—which was a faux-solution designed to check off a box on a congressional to-do list without actually doing anywhere near enough.)

Of course, I, and any other honest, caring Democrats, don’t give a damn about how angry Harry Reid might have been. I’ve been angry at Joe Lieberman for a decade now because of so very many things that he has done to betray his party, his state, and his country—but anger has nothing to do with it. Neither does “getting even.”

Nor, honestly, does the possibility that Lieberman will make the 60th vote in a cloture-ific super-majority (congratulations to our latest Democratic Senator-elect, Mark Begich, by the way). That was just another straw man thrown out there by Senate leaders and media elites to distract us from what this was really all about.

Even if Minnesota’s Al Franken and Georgia’s Jim Martin go on to join the other 56 Democrats and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the Senate majority, Joe Lieberman (Party of One-CT) will never be the 60th vote on any matter of importance—and I promise you that will include attempts to end roadblock Republican filibusters. Never.

Over the next two months, Mr. Paulson must impose some coherence and clarity on the bailout. Otherwise he will only fan anxieties and mistrust, which will undermine the effectiveness of his good decisions and amplify the fallout of his bad ones. With markets gyrating wildly, and the economy deteriorating rapidly, the nation needs clear leadership and a sound plan.

After spending the entire length of today’s lead editorial demonstrating just how badly Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has handled the economic crisis and ensuing attempts at a “bailout,” the New York Times undermines its point with this half-hearted admonition. Honestly, if the Times editorial board knows of a good decision by Mr. Hanky, might they have shared it?

The nation does need clear leadership and a sound plan, but, to date, the nation has gotten neither. As pointed out in this very editorial, any “modest easing the bailout initially brought about in the credit markets is now being reversed over doubts about the Treasury’s stewardship of the plan.” Paulson’s actions have been reactive and woefully behind the curve; he lacks anything like a coherent strategy, and the moves he has taken seem less motivated by an interest in protecting wage-earning Americans than in protecting Paulson’s pals and ideological biases.

There is also zero transparency—something many econ-watchers consider of utmost importance to stabilizing credit markets. . . not to mention the stock market. Beyond the lack of oversight as to what the banks are doing with the billions in bailout cash that they have received (much will end up going to bonuses, balance sheets, and the buy-ups of competing banks), it has now been revealed that there was another $2 trillion (!) dispensed by the Fed that is completely opaque.

Paulson has refused to use any of the TARP cash to help homeowners facing foreclosure, even though that might slow the bleeding and even stimulate some local economies, and now he has also rejected using his precious kitty to help the auto industry. Though it’s true that an auto-industry bailout administered with a similar chaotic attitude and the same lack of rules and requirements would do little in the long run to fix systemic problems in this sector, deciding that Goldman Sachs was “too big to fail” but GM is not is as stupid as it is hypocritical.

Given that record, I have no need to extend the rhetorical lifeline the Times so generously offers. Clear leadership and a sound plan cannot come soon enough, and given the noted rapid deterioration of the economy and the number of Paulson’s remaining days, it probably won’t.

——
(cross-posted on guy2k and capitoilette)

Two days ago I wrote about the proposal to jack up NYC transit fares by 28% and how that was in effect a regressive tax on the sort of New Yorkers whom could least afford it—and how this was being done at the same time New York State Governor David Paterson has refused to consider what’s come to be called the “millionaires’ tax.”

Well, just to add insult to injury, here’s another winner of an idea: New York State has started collecting a $25 child support enforcement fee from those that needed government help to recover child support payments.

To be fair, this insult was originally the brainchild of the Bush Administration and its rubberstamp Republican Congress. As part of the “Deficit Reduction Act of 2005,” the federal government started charging states a $25 fee for child support recovery. However, from then, till recently, New York had covered that fee for its needy residents.

But with the looming state budget crisis, no more. Governor Paterson has decided the state can no longer afford this level of generosity.

Millionaires, however, well, have no fear, the governor is looking out for you.

The “millionaires’ tax” is pretty simple as tax proposals go. Income over $1 million would be taxed an additional 1%, and income over $5 million would be taxed .75% more. New York has one of the highest concentrations of wealth in the country—just one-half of one percent earned 28% of the taxable income back in 2005. The proposed tax surcharge could bring in about $1.5 billion in the first year—or roughly three-quarters of the expected NY budget shortfall.

The millionaires that would have to pay this tax—or at least a few loud ones, like the ubiquitous, selfish, and inevitably wrong Donald Trump—argue that if you make them pay this increase, they just might leave New York. I say, as did the NY Daily News recently, call their bluff.

As the Daily News observed, New Jersey imposed a much larger increase on all incomes over half-a-million a few years back, and they got incredible bang for their buck—about $26 coming in for every $1 fleeing the state.

And they were fleeing New Jersey!

Even New York City’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg—who had previously been heard whining about a surcharge—now says this millionaire flight threat is a lot of hooey:

I can only tell you, among my friends, I’ve never heard one person say “I’m going to move out of the city because of taxes.” Not one. Not in all the years I’ve lived here. You know, they can complain, “Oh got my tax bill, it’s heavy.” But they’ve not ever thought that. My friends all want to live here and understand the value.

He oughta know, right? That is his cohort.

As for the rest of us—that would be 99.5% of us—well, I’m guessing a lot of us have a little less mobility. And since Paterson knows he’s got a captive “audience,” I guess it’s up to this rest of us to pick up the slack, balance the budget, and so, look out for the Governor’s interests. . . whether we want to or not.

Last week, I wrote this:

The implication [of the AP story] is clear, and has been said outright, first-time non-white voters brought into the system by the Obama campaign provided the margin necessary to pass Prop. 8.

Except that if you look at the data from the AP exit poll [now a pdf], that isn’t clear at all.

Unless there are cross-tabulations from this poll that have not been made publicly available, I cannot see how the numbers support the certitude of the claim. . . .

Democrats overwhelmingly rejected Prop. 8, first-time voters overwhelmingly rejected Prop. 8, those who are in accordance with Obama’s positions overwhelmingly rejected Prop. 8, those who supported Obama in the primary overwhelmingly rejected Prop. 8, those who voted for Obama on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected Prop. 8.

Five days later, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight wrote this:

Certainly, the No on 8 folks might have done a better job of outreach to California’s black and Latino communities. But the notion that Prop 8 passed because of the Obama turnout surge is silly. Exit polls suggest that first-time voters — the vast majority of whom were driven to turn out by Obama (he won 83 percent [!] of their votes) — voted against Prop 8 by a 62-38 margin. More experienced voters voted for the measure 56-44, however, providing for its passage.

Now, it’s true that if new voters had voted against Prop 8 at the same rates that they voted for Obama, the measure probably would have failed. But that does not mean that the new voters were harmful on balance — they were helpful on balance. If California’s electorate had been the same as it was in 2004, Prop 8 would have passed by a wider margin.

Furthermore, it would be premature to say that new Latino and black voters were responsible for Prop 8’s passage. Latinos aged 18-29 (not strictly the same as ‘new’ voters, but the closest available proxy) voted against Prop 8 by a 59-41 margin. These figures are not available for young black voters, but it would surprise me if their votes weren’t fairly close to the 50-50 mark.

There are few quantitative analysts I would trust more than Silver (and his presidential predictions were the best of the lot this cycle), so it is a real confidence builder for me to know that when he looks at the data he sees the same thing that I see—or, more accurately, he doesn’t see the same thing that I don’t see. There is nothing in the exit polling to support the narrative that the first-time African American voters brought to the polls by Barack Obama’s campaign provided Prop. 8 with its margin of victory—and, in fact, most evidence seems to point the other way.

Silver believes that the ballot measure owes its passage to older voters, noting that if no one over 65 had voted, Prop. 8 would have failed by “a point or two.” Silver suggests that as that demographic ages out of, um, life, bigoted efforts such as this one will eventually fail.

While I tend to agree overall—the younger you go, the more comfortable most seem with diversity—I think that Silver should take a look at the family factor. Those that are married and have children (31% of the sample) voted in favor of the measure 68% to 32%. All others voted against the gay marriage ban by a ten-point margin.

(I know what you’re thinking: “All others” includes most of the voting homosexual population. That’s probably true. Alas, there is no cross-tabulation for “married heterosexuals without children”—however, because the “all others” segment is so much larger than the “married with children” slice, even if you could subtract the gay vote, I suspect that this segment would still have rejected the proposition.)

The question becomes “Are beliefs about gay marriage static?” Will the young segments that voted against Prop. 8 continue to feel the same way, even as they age and/or have children? To ask it another way: Do those married with children tend to favor the ban more because they would tend to be older than those without kids, or did those that are younger reject Proposition 8 because they had yet to reproduce?

To my eye, the history of civil rights movements in the United States would favor Silver’s take on the numbers, but the numbers don’t confirm this, at least not with absolute certainty. I guess, as they—and the numbers—say, time will tell.

——
(cross-posted on guy2k, capitoilette, and Daily Kos)

Tell me you didn’t see this one coming. MTA Chief Elliot Sander announced this week that economic times being what they are, the Transit Authority’s deficit was going to balloon to $1.2 billion, and so service cuts and substantial fare hikes were now inevitable.

The MTA had already slated eight percent fare increases for next year; they now say they will need an additional 20% to make up shortfalls caused by increased fuel costs and decreasing property values (the MTA gets a good chunk of its budget from property and property-related taxes). If an increase like that is approved, the price of a single ride on a New York City subway or bus would climb above $2.50.

Capital improvements and service expansion are already lagging far behind the needs of a city expecting to grow to a size of 10 million in the next decade, but even if Sander gets all of his fare boost, service and improvements will still have to be cut back to trim the deficit.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority is hardly the only state agency facing a budget crisis as the Bush economy and the Wall Street meltdown send shockwaves through the New York economy. (For those of you not familiar with NYS politics—yes, the city’s transit system is run by the state. It was taken from the city during the 1970s fiscal crisis, and NYC never got it back.) Governor David Paterson, who has already negotiated state budget cuts, is demanding the legislature return for another round—and for that round, Paterson is proposing a 25% haircut.

Still, Paterson has made it clear: there will be no state tax increases.

What Paterson means by that, of course, is that he will not countenance a state income tax increase. The ousted Spitzer Administration had floated the idea of a “millionaires’ tax”—a surcharge on the highest of highest incomes to help New York meet its obligations—but Paterson, formerly a state representative from Harlem and once considered a liberal, has thrown that baby out with Eliot’s bathwater.

Of course, a 28% fare increase—more than a dollar extra for every roundtrip commute—would effectively (if not officially) be a tax increase. . . except this one would primarily affect the other end of the economic ladder.

To reiterate: For millionaires, who don’t take the subway all that much—no new taxes; for working class New Yorkers, who do use the subway daily to get to and from work—how does paying an extra $260 per year sound? (That’s per person—if there are kids that use the subways and busses to get to school, multiply accordingly.)

NYC is the economic engine of New York State. (And city residents already pay a disproportionate amount to fill state coffers—they pay out more than they get back in services and benefits.) The fuel for that engine is the city’s workforce—and that workforce relies in large part on public transportation to get to work. Without a functioning and affordable public transit system, New York City’s commerce—the state’s engine—would grind to a halt.

So why is it that all anyone can think of when times get tough is to cut service and raise fares? Why take one of the great advantages that New York has over most other American cities and hobble it? Is it that hard to think of anything else to do?

Let me give it a try. . .

Fist off, it is high time that control of the city’s mass transit system is returned to the city. For far too long, income from the total of state transit systems has gone disproportionately to commuter rail; subway and bus riders have effectively been subsidizing suburban rail commuters. That has to stop. I’m not saying that commuter rail isn’t important—it is vital—but the subway system is more vital to the workings of New York City, and it deserves the full benefit of its income.

Second, how about some creative thinking?

New York City and State pay more in taxes to the federal government than either gets back—so it is in America’s best interest to keep the New York economy growing. So how about we integrate some of NYC’s financial problems into the national thinking on bailouts and stimulus?

If Washington is going to spend billions to bailout the auto industry, why not spend a couple billion to help out systems that are better for the economy and the environment than cars? Seriously, not only does the MTA itself provide good-paying jobs to thousands of New Yorkers, capital improvements would provide even more, and the service that the MTA provides increases the productivity of practically all city businesses. Backstopping automobile manufacturers will cost tens or hundreds of billions, and I can’t even begin to tell you how much of that will go to the credit divisions, or legacy costs, or executive compensation, or shareholder value. I can pretty much guarantee that one or two billion to the MTA will deliver much more bang for your buck.

Here’s another idea: The coming infrastructure bill. . . what says infrastructure more than subway and light rail? Why shouldn’t the New York congressional delegation insist that this promised investment in infrastructure pick up the tab for system upgrades and expansion? Let fares go to the day-to-day operating costs. For all the reasons cited above, I am pretty sure that few infrastructure investments will provide better ROI.

I got another: What say we reduce the burden of rising fuel costs by making the New York transit system one of the stars of the new green economy? Spur plug-in hybrid innovation by promising the best technology a crack at replacing all of NYC’s busses. Fund an initiative to find a self-sustaining way to generate all the electricity needed to run the subways. Yes, that’s dreaming big, but a) not that big, and b) isn’t that the change we need?

So there you go—in fifteen minutes, I just outlined three (or was that four?) possible alternatives to fare hikes and service cuts. And I am just doing this on my own, pro-bono. There are staffs of paid experts and consultants at the MTA’s and the government’s beck and call—where are their ideas?

Indeed, I’ll go a step further: where is the political leadership? Why is it that the best anyone can think of is to make the poor and working class suck it up, pay more, and make do with less? What makes that leadership? That’s the simpleton’s solution. That’s the coward’s way. Why should we reward that?

When I went to the polls here in Manhattan last week, I didn’t just vote for change at the federal level; I voted for my US Representative, and my state senator and assembly member, too. Two years from now, I’ll vote for all of them again, and a Senator. I expect them to be full participants in promoting the vision and the programs that were highlighted in the campaign of our president-elect. What better place to begin than right here at home?

——
(cross-posted on Daily Kos, guy2k, and capitoilette)

Last Thursday, I wrote that Obama’s path to victory in this election—a strategy that embraced core Democratic values instead of pandering to the center-right—had left me feeling validated if not vindicated for two decades of advocating just such an approach.

Well, thanks to Stanley Greenberg, writing in today’s New York Times, you can now color me vindicated, too. Greenberg, who was Bill Clinton’s chief pollster and one of the men most responsible for reinforcing the notion of “Reagan Democrats,” has decided to finally lay that frame to rest:

I’m finished with the Reagan Democrats of Macomb County in suburban Detroit after making a career of spotlighting their middle-class anger and frustrations about race and Democratic politicians. . . .

For more than 20 years, the non-college-educated white voters in Macomb County have been considered a “national political barometer,” as Ronald Brownstein of National Journal described them during the Democratic convention in August. After Ronald Reagan won the county by a 2-to-1 margin in 1984, Mr. Brownstein noted, I conducted focus groups that “found that these working-class whites interpreted Democratic calls for economic fairness as code for transfer payments to African-Americans.” So what do we think when Barack Obama, an African-American Democrat, wins Macomb County by eight points?

I conducted a survey of 750 Macomb County residents who voted Tuesday, and their responses put their votes in context. Before the Democratic convention, barely 40 percent of Macomb County voters were “comfortable” with the idea of Mr. Obama as president, far below the number who were comfortable with a nameless Democrat. But on Election Day, nearly 60 percent said they were “comfortable” with Mr. Obama. About the same number said Mr. Obama “shares your values” and “has what it takes to be president.”

I was never comfortable with Greenberg’s attributing all of the Democrats’ problems in Macomb to what is, not to put too fine a point on it, racism. Though I don’t doubt that this segment of voters contains racists, I’ve often thought that this rationale sells these people short, and lets the Democrats off too easy. Pardon the pun, but I felt that the racism Greenberg measured in Macomb was only skin deep.

Missing from Greenberg’s old equation were Democrats able and willing to sell the Democratic brand. It was easy for white voters in Macomb to feel that the Democratic Party had turned away from them because in many ways they had. Running scared since 1972, and more so after 1980, Democrats kept quiet about or even abandoned many of the policies and programs once championed by the party—programs that directly helped working class voters like the ones Greenberg studied.

The void created by the Democrats’ ambivalence to their own legacy was exploited by the continuance of the Republican’s infamous “southern strategy,” and filled by rightwing myths like “the Cadillac-driving black welfare cheat”—myths that were allowed to metastasize into full-blown frames. By the time Greenberg brought his white suburban voters into a focus group, the Democrats were no longer the party of New Deals and Great Societies so much as they were the party of over a decade’s worth of government’s failures. That these failures—especially as they intersected lives in Macomb—owed much to the budgetary, trade, and labor policies of Republicans notwithstanding.

So, naturally, to Greenberg, what he heard in the focus groups throughout the 1980s and ‘90s expressed itself as racism (I’ve moderated enough focus groups to easily see how this “finding” could have emerged). And, naturally, as Macomb voters moved to a place of trust vis-à-vis candidate Obama, Greenberg sees this as an evolution away from that racism.

I don’t believe that adequately explains the shift any more than I believe that the election of America’s first bi-racial president means that racism is no longer an American problem. And I think I now have some statistics to back me up.