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National

A Tale of Two Vice Presidents


photo credit: BlatantNews.com

Once upon a time there was a young president who had campaigned on a platform of using the military more conservatively than his predecessor (who happened to be in the other party). During the campaign he had chosen a more experienced man as his running mate in an effort to soothe those voters who might be uncomfortable with his youth an lack of extensive experience.

Once in office an opportunity for military action presented itself and his vice president was among those who were keen to take the opportunity. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, the president heeded the advice of his hawkish vice president and took the necessary steps to expand his use of the military  contrary to his campaign rhetoric.

Of course I am talking about George Bush here and his vice president, Dick Cheney. The trick is that the first paragraph applies word for word to Barack Obama and his vice president, Joe Biden.

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culture National

Our Broken Debate

The big question in the debate over torture right now is “who knew what and when did they know it?” That question is being used by Republicans right now to implicate Speaker Nancy Pelosi as having done nothing with what she knew and thus being complicit in any torture committed under the previous administration. The question and implications are very important questions that are worthy of debate in this country. The reason that I consider the debate to be broken is that the debate is avoiding the real substantive issue and just taking political potshots at the opposing party.

The fact is that speaker Pelosi is not in any way the only hypocrite in this debate – she is not the only one who knew and did nothing until it was politically advantageous. Democratic officeholders have been muttering under their breath (or less) about what the Bush administration was doing until Obama was elected and released the torture memos. In response the CIA is trying to defend themselves from these vocal attacks by revealing that Pelosi knew about this activity years ago.

If the Democrats were more interested in standing against torture in principle than they were in scoring political points and retaining personal power they would have been much more vocal about this issue. Speaker Pelosi would have been saying things like, “based on briefings I have had I am completely uncomfortable with what the administration is doing and willing to do to detainees through the CIA.” (Note that while that statement would open the door for discussion nothing in there would raise any national security concerns.) She would not have been alone either – other Democrats who had been briefed would also have stood up and echoed that sentiment if they had any backbone and cared about the issue. Senator Diane Feinstein would have been one of those who had also been briefed. I don’t know who else had been briefed, but all of them are guilty of doing nothing if they were uncomfortable with what they heard.

On the other hand, if the Republicans were interested in anything other than scoring points against their political opponents they would be naming the Republicans who had been briefed who were equally complicit with Speaker Pelosi. Republican officeholders have proven that they are perfectly content to have spineless and complicit representatives in office so long as they support the party line. They show that as a body they have no problem with institutionalized secrecy rather than open representation for their constituents and the other voters of the United States.

The voters need to demand that their representatives, whether of their own party or another party, quit playing politics in Washington and stick to the very serious business of leading our nation on to increased greatness – we should again be a shining city on a hill that the world can look to as an example of goodness. That can only happen if we quite trying to score political points and start having real debates about what is right and what constitutes greatness.

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National

Obama’s First 100

Today is day number 100 for the Obama Administration. This has been a benchmark of measurement for every administration since FDR. There will be lots of stories in the political media attempting to measure how he is doing as a president. This morning on NPR they perfectly captured the measure in only six words:

His backers give him high marks.

I add my own perspective as someone who is not sold on Obama but holds out hope that he will eventually do the best job he could do by focusing on those areas where he is right (things like real increased transparency in government). My position is largely unchanged from when Obama was elected and when he was sworn in.

If we simply add the fact that those who oppose him give him low marks we can easily see the correct answer to “how is Obama doing in his first 100 days?”

The answer is that 100 days is too soon to tell how Obama will fare over the course of 1461 days (or 2922 days for two terms). This is perfectly typical. We could not have known after 100 days what things Bush was going to do well and which things he was going to botch horribly over his two terms. The same can be said of Clinton or any of his predecessors.

So, Happy 100 Days Mr. President. May my greatest hopes for your tenure be realized or at least may we come closer to my greatest hopes than we come to my greatest fears.

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National

Half Truths

Regardless of what political agenda is being pushed I hate to see people speak or perpetuate half truths. I try very hard not to do that myself. Today I would like to tell the story of two half truths.

The second half truth is the declaration by President Obama that he intends to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. His declaration is coupled with him reminding us of a half truth that President Bush put forward throughout his presidency – namely the fact that his military expenditures were largely left out of the regular budgeting process – relying instead on supplemental appropriations to cover the large gaps in funding the massive military missions. This declaration is made as an attempt to hide the fact that he is proposing record deficits for his entire term and there is nothing to suggest that he will ever propose anything approaching a balanced budget even if he serves two full terms.

In response to Obama’s half-truth many Republicans are perpetuating the first half-truth by sharing the following graph (or some similar variation):

Obama Budget

If we were to admit the full truth the graph would look more like this graph (which I created based on the best information I could find online without excessive research):

Obama Budget

Looking at the complete picture we see that the Bush fiscal record is 1) incomplete and 2) abused the budgetary process to obscure the financial cost of our military engagements. We also see another myth being put forward, that the extraordinary 2009 budget is attributed to Obama. The truth is that Obama took office 7 months into FY2009 and  the bulk of that budget was spent by the Bush administration. On the other side, we see that Obama inflated the FY2009 budget by including the appropriations that Bush would have acquired through supplemental appropriations and by frontloading some of his new priorities so that he could claim to cut the deficit in half while running deficits that are larger than anything seen during the Bush administration.

I am convinced that any good goal has as much chance of succeeding while acknowledging the full truth than it has when only presenting half the truth.  am also convinced that while both parties have been outrageously fiscally irresponsible the democratic party is even more bold about pretending that we can put that fiscal responsibility on the shoulders of generations unborn.

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National

Define “Change”

I have come to the conclusion that I should not listen to national news – it just gets me agitated.

I was driving home listening to NPR and was treated to actual soundbites from the rallying speech that President Obama gave to the Democratic caucus meeting. I had head about that, but hearing these gems really showed that many people must mistake the fact that Obama is articulate by assuming that everything he says must therefore be intelligent and accurate.

The audio clips I heard had the president emphasizing that the people elected him (and the rest of Congress)  to change the direction of the country and were not seeking "more of the same." What really got to me was this well phrased analogy:

"I don’t care whether you are driving an SUV or a hybrid, if you are headed toward a cliff you have to change direction."

He’s absolutely right. My reaction was that instead of changing direction when faced with an economic cliff, the president and Congress are accelerating and hoping to grow wings by the time they reach the edge. Let’s examine the "change" that he is promoting.

The president calls inaction irresponsible – it seems to me that inaction is not something that the Bush administration can ever be accused of. In other words inaction would probably be the clearest for of change. Last year the administration got a $150 Billion dollar stimulus bill and later received another $700 Billion to unfreeze the credit markets. That’s $850 Billion in spending last year of money that we don’t have and the result is that we are still in a recession with no end in sight. The change that Obama is promoting is something on the order of $800 Billion in new spending of money that we don’t have. I’m beginning to think the politicians really don’t know the difference between legal tender and monopoly money (too bad the IRS knows the difference all too well).

President Bush and his Republican Congress raised deficit spending to an art form. When Bush got a Democratic Congress there was no change in habits. Now President Obama and his Democratic Congress are trying to build an art acadamy around Bush’s art form – that’s not the change I was looking for.

I understand that the argument Obama is trying to make is that the country is sick and honestly needs surgury. That is an argument that I can accept. The problem is that we have already tried surgury by hatchet – it doesn’t work very well. Our Republican senators are trying to insist on using a scalpel for the surgery. Their profligate economic past opens them up to accusations of hypocrisy – and many of them might very well be acting in full hypocrisy. Regarless of how hypocritical they are being the fact is that surgury with a scalpel is safer and more likely to not kill the patient. This leads to another inconvenient truth. Assuming that the patient survives surgury (whether by hatchet or by scalpel) to get a liver transplant we need to recognize that the disease was not a bad liver, it was alcoholism. Just because you have had a transplant does not mean that it’s safe to go back to the bar.

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National

Economics 101 (Bush Edition)

Wasn’t it so nice for our president to give the country a lesson in economics. He worked hard to reinforce the image of Washington knows best. Unfortunately his lesson left out a few details that are less than flattering for Washington. Let’s review the text of his speech. I’ll skip all the real fluff and focus on those parts of the speech that need correction.

This large influx of money to U.S. banks and financial institutions, along with low interest rates, made it easier for Americans to get credit. These developments allowed more families to borrow money for cars, and homes, and college tuition, some for the first time.

It’s nice to cite the "large influx of money" but the real problem was "{artificially} low interest rates" that were being managed by the Federal Reserve Board. These are what allowed for people to get credit too easily to buy cars and houses that they often had no business buying – certainly not at the inflated prices that tend to follow easy credit. And lets not kid ourselves, loans for college tuition are an inconsequential fraction of this problem but citing them makes it harder to argue against all that easy credit in the first place.

Easy credit, combined with the faulty brainless assumption that home values would continue to rise, led to excesses and bad decisions. (corrections in italics)

The following statement is almost entirely true and when we insert the one final bit of truth it is very damning to the idea of government intervention.

Two of the leading purchasers of mortgage-backed securities were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk. (emphasis added)

The one bit of untruth there was the implication that people were wrong to believe that Fannie and Freddie were guaranteed by the government. When push came to shove, the government stepped in and guaranteed both entities. Even if it had not, it was the perception of such a guarantee that allowed those companies to "put our financial system at risk."

The market is not functioning properly. There has been a widespread loss of confidence, and major sectors of America’s financial system are at risk of shutting down.

If the market is allowed to correct itself those sectors would shut down and restart, like a computer reboot. Though the process would be painful in the short term, the problems would be corrected much faster than if we insist on picking our way down the face of the cliff.

Perhaps we should take note of the fact that our government has been actively assisting the market for 7 years allowing the housing market to artificially expand our economy during a time when we should have allowed for a market correction following the Tech bubble and the shock of 9/11. Now the problem is worse than it was which gives us more excuse to pursue the same course with more drastic measures.

Without $700 Billion worth of intervention, Bush predicts:

Even if you have good credit history, it would be more difficult for you to get the loans you need to buy a car or send your children to college. And, ultimately, our country could experience a long and painful recession.

In a free market individuals and businesses would be learning to deal with the difficulties of tighter credit by living within their means, but "We must not let that happen." Because our market has been manipulated with artificially low interest rates and other such "minor" interventions the true value of a new car or a college education has become distorted. I note that Bush did not list buying a house as something that would be more difficult, I’m sure that’s because reckless home buying on easy credit is a visible part of the problem.

Lest we forget our recent history, while we have not had a serious recession (which would generally last less than 12 months) our last 84 months (at least) have been filled with news of job losses and anemic economic growth. We credited the rise of home prices with what little growth we saw and blamed the war, outsourcing, and illegal immigrants in turn for the lack of real growth.

Now we are seeing the one positive thing we saw as the primary cause of our current predicament – and yet we fail to realize that the reason for our unnatural 84 month see-saw is government intervention in the markets. Ultimately we have experienced a long and painful open wound which is now infected which was caused by our attempts to avoid the surgery of a natural market correction.

The president paints a rosy picture of how the proposed intervention would function, but the fact is that the proposal so far lacks any structure to guarantee anything like the picture we are being sold.

I liked the reference to the FDIC:

And through the FDIC, every savings account, checking account, and certificate of deposit is insured by the federal government for up to $100,000.

The FDIC has been in existence for 75 years, and no one has ever lost a penny on an insured deposit, and this will not change.

In order to avoid some panic, let’s remind ourselves that the above statement is true, those accounts which are based on actual cash value are safe so far, and safely insured by the government already. With that safety net, we should take our chances with Wall Street and let the government bail out the savings of those who lose money if their local banks ever fail.

Despite corrections in the marketplace and instances of abuse, democratic capitalism is the best system ever devised.

It has unleashed the talents and the productivity and entrepreneurial spirit of our citizens. It has once made this country the best place in the world to invest and do business. And it gives gave our economy the flexibility and resilience to absorb shocks, adjust, and bounce back. (corrections in italics)

Since then we have decided that we want to unleash the entrepreneurial spirit without having to absorb shocks and adjust. Good luck with that plan.

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National

A Lame Duck Can Bite Harder

As illustrated by the current budget standoff, an unpopular lame duck president has powers that often elude presidents earlier in their tenure. Prior to 2006 Bush never vetoed anything. Now he has no re-election to worry about so he has nothing to lose by vetoing every bill Congress sends that is not in line with what he wants. Eventually they have to override the veto or fall in line with his request.

Because his popularity is already low he does not have to worry about disappointing anyone by sticking to his favored position. By standing firm he takes the chance of raising his popularity. If that fails the other members of his party are already prepared to keep their distance from him. The odds are highly against this coming out good for the Democrats.

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General

The final gamble

The New York Times > Washington > News Analysis: Fresh Starts: One for Iraq, One for Bush
Here it is, the final gamble on Iraq. What happens in the next couple of months will largely determine how Bush is viewed in averything he has done over the last 18 months.

Will he be vindicated or vilified?

If for no other reason than the sake of the Iraqis I hope he is vindicated.