Debt and taxes

By Carl 

It never ceases to amaze me, the ability of the uberrighteous to shoot themselves in the foot: 

Greenspan said he expected more turmoil on Wall Street.

"Considering the momentum in which the market went down over the last week, it's very unlikely — if history is any guide — that this isn't going to take a while to bottom out. So the initial reaction, in my judgment, is going to be negative," Greenspan said of S&P’s downgrade.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tried to reassure investors in a Sunday night interview but conceded he could not predict the reaction.

"It's hard to know what'll happen in this context," Geithner said on CNBC. "But, again, I think that everyone can be confident, both here and around the world, that treasuries are the most — these days — the most liquid — the strongest place to put your money at a time like this."

He said S&P "has shown really terrible judgment" and "a stunning lack of knowledge about basic U.S. fiscal budget math."

Actually, Mr. Secretary, I think the S&P has this just right. After all, it's a temporary arrangement that will have to be revisited sooner than you expect, since the Federal tax on gasoline expires next month and budget projections included that in the debt ceiling agreement. It is very likely that tax will be at least scaled back if not eliminated, thanks to the Teabaggers. You can't say this. S&P can.

We get the government we deserve. We are officially a banana republic.

A lot of fingerpointing went on this weekend, but ultimately, the blame rests in two places: The Bush administration and the Teabaggers.

After all, the only significant spending the Obama administration passed was the $787 billion stimulus package, a thickly-wrongheaded attempt to shore up the banking system when that banking system was responsible for the mess we found ourselves in AND will suffer now from the debt ceiling debacle, as interest rates will ratchet up.

Better he should have spent the money here, at home, on works projects designed to get people permanent jobs. There's so much we can use idle labor for, from replacing the national grid to upgrading bridges and tunnels, to just cleaning the damned streets. Jobs = income = spending = more jobs. It's not a hard calculation to make, and given how the banks rebounded better than expected...

How the Bush administration fits into all this? Well, the national debt in 2001 was somewhere around $6 trillion. It's now $14 trillion. Obama can rightly be blamed for $1 trillion or so (let's credit -- debit? -- him with the unnecessary extension of the Bush tax cuts, too), leaving... carry the one... $7 trillion dollars that Bush spent without the income to show for it.

Republicans: they do spend big.

The Teabagger mantra with respect to the debt ceiling was basically nihilist from the get-go: burn it down, let God sort it out.

All we have ever had to do was to roll back the Bush tax cuts, restore the Clinton tax rates (proven job creator, that) and history would have been happy and marked this as a remarkable time when the US yet again ducked a bullet. The idea of minimalist government is so ludicrous, so stupid, so moronic, that I seriously believe the "libertarians" who propose this ought to be locked away in a cage and put on display in the Coney Island freak show.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

The political pendulum of potential revolution

Guest post by Nicholas Wilbur 

Nicholas Wilbur is an award-winning reporter and opinion columnist turned political junkie and critic. He is the founder of the blog Muddy Politics and lives in New Mexico.

(Ed. note: This is Nicholas's third guest post for us. You can find his first two, both on the Obama-GOP tax deal, here and here. -- MJWS)

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A friend asked me recently, "Is there a revolution approaching?"

It was not a stupid question. Given the turmoil in Washington over tax cuts, immigration reform, unemployment benefits, gay rights versus military policy, the constitutional challenges to health-care reform, a quasi-filibuster in the Senate against affluence, and the continued existence of the government itself (via a controversial omnibus funding bill), revolution seems possible if not inevitable.

After the midterm elections, most assumed that the politicking and trash-talking of the campaigns would subside, that the lame-duck Congress would pass the last two months of the year making headlines only when reporters with a quota wrote fluffy filler features about golf games and vacation plans for the slew of Democrats retiring in January.

Obviously, that hasn't been the case. But political turmoil, brutal policy battles, inter-party fighting and even the near severing of the liberal base from the alleged liberal of the decade, the prophet of progressivism, the headman of hope, Barack Obama, are not signs of revolution.

They're signs of life in the most deplorable sense of the term – proof that, in a bittersweet, backward and still disappointing way, Washington is functioning. The fact that a socialist senator from Vermont carried the day as the No. 1 Twitter trend with his 8 1/2-hour filibuster means only that politics continues to provide ample entertainment for Americans, and – to the shame of too few Americans – for the rest of the developed world as well.

The truth is, revolution in America is a dream, a distant, out-of-touch fantasy with worse odds than a three-legged mule competing in the Daytona 500. A few will talk of it, a few less will listen, but fewer still will actually do anything to achieve it – mainly because nobody knows where to start, much less where to end.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ filibuster speech proved this.

In talking about tax cuts for the wealthy, he went on for hours about rich people's control of the banks, the markets, the marketplaces – Wal-Mart, of course, not excluded. He railed against classism, inequality, education, poverty, corruption, and more – issues that millions of Americans fight for and against daily, whether volunteer social workers or over-paid corporate lobbyists.

And that is the dilemma.

It is the reason the majority of Americans generally tune out news from Capitol Hill. It is the reason politics is such a dirty word that patriarchs prohibit it as a dinner conversation topic. It is the reason so many feel helpless to the point of foregoing their most basic rights as United States citizens: voting.

There are too many issues to tackle, too many injustices to protest, too many wrongs to right – and not nearly enough time to adequately address them, even as a salaried member of Congress, who proved this by talking instead of marching, lecturing instead of fighting, and filibustering an issue all but decided after sitting on the sidelines as the policies that created these social ills were pushed through Congress, in many cases, decades ago.

Four thousand people began following Sanders on Twitter throughout and after his speech, and the blogosphere twitterpated with admiration, confusion, false hope, and a renewed longing for the long-abandoned utopian dream. The bleeding hearts fluttered anew with the romantic idealism of progressive revolution even as our elected members of Congress yawned and exited the building, knowing full well the difference between symbolic gestures and realistic political solutions.

It's difficult to gauge what is sadder, the fact that Sanders was correct and still ineffective in riling even his fellow lawmakers, or the fact that as his speech turned heads continent to continent, the most staunch supporters of his ideals did nothing but forward e-mails, "Like" Facebook pages, and "retweet" pragmatically impossible progressive talking points.

When unemployment begins to fall, steadily or slightly, the focus of American media consumers will adjust accordingly. The hostility of D.C. politics will be buried in the papers and ignored by the masses once again.

The truth was written by a Marine nearly four years ago on a wall nearly in Ramadi, Iraq, and it speaks beyond foreign policy: "American is not at war... America is at the mall."

Charting a new course in U.S. foreign policy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Libby flagged this earlier -- concluding that she "can't think of a better way for Obama to signal that our foreign policy is about to undergo a complete turnaround" -- and I agree that it's a hugely significant development:

The incoming Obama administration has notified all politically-appointed ambassadors that they must vacate their posts as of Jan. 20, the day President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office, a State Department official said.

The clean slate will open up prime opportunities for the president-elect to reward political supporters with posts in London, Paris, Tokyo and the like. The notice to diplomatic posts was issued this week.

Political ambassadors sometimes are permitted to stay on briefly during a new administration, but the sweeping nature of the directive suggests that Obama has little interest in retaining any of Bush's ambassadorial appointees.

Most ambassadors, of course, are foreign service officers, but often the posts involving the most important bilateral relations (such as with Great Britain, Japan and India) or desirable locales (such as the Bahamas) are given to close friends and well-heeled contributors of the president.

But is it really just a move to "reward political supporters"? I suspect there's more to it. Obama wants nothing of Bush's political ambassadors because he wants nothing of Bush's foreign policy generally (Gates at the Pentagon aside). And Libby's right. For all the talk of continuity and the cautious centrism of Obama's top-level appointees, change is coming.

What this bold move shows is that Obama is serious about restoring America's standing in the world, about re-engaging with the international community, and about charting a new course in U.S. foreign policy. And there is no time to waste.