Category: Politics

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Economics Politics

A Liberal’s Flat Tax

This is one of those posts where I should start with the caveat, “I’m no expert.”

But it seems to me that progressives and liberals should embrace the idea of a flat tax. Much of the tax debate we have in America today revolves around the charge that liberals and progressives are “redistributing wealth,”  targeting the rich, engaging in class warfare, and otherwise penalizing success. Americans tend to look at the tax issue aspirationally. Joe the Plumber, perhaps, is the most famous example. He criticized Obama for wanting to penalize his success, but he actually would do far better under the Obama plan than under the McCain plan. If his business had thrived, he was able to buy another company to double the size of his, and he was able to maintain enough ownership of the total business, then he might have done slightly better under McCain than Obama. But he saw Obama as taxing the guy he wanted to be – and he was incensed. Part of the reason Joe the Plumber was able to attract such a following with his passionate denunciations of “socialism” and the “redistributionist in chief” was the confusing and complicated nature of our tax code which allowed him and many like him to think they were or might soon be penalized for their successes. With an understandable tax code, it’s unlikely Joe’s cause would have resonated.

The bottom line is: our national debate on taxes is distorted by our complicated and confusing tax code. These distortions mainly work in favor of special interests who want their tax benefits preserved and right-wingers who use these confusions to sow doubt about the efficacy of government and who exactly is being taxed.

Which is why liberals should embrace the flat tax.

I’m not saying we should get rid of any progressive tax structure. Rather, we can design a progressive flat tax. 

What would this look like? 

The simple structure would be this: a flat 40% tax on everyone. Then give fixed dollar amount deductions. In other words, a deduction for a child credit would be $2,000 whether you make $25,000 or $250,000. The guy making $25,000 would pay $8,000 in taxes instead of $10,000 making his effective rate 32%. A woman making $250,000 would pay $98,000 instead of $100,000, making her effective tax rate 39.2%. The system could start out approximating our current tax system in terms of who is paying what, but when the math is clearer, it makes for a more fair system and a more honest debate.

Categories
Barack Obama Law National Security Politics The Bush Legacy The War on Terrorism

A Summary of the Civil Libertarian Case for a “War” Against Terrorism

[digg-reddit-me]Liberals and those concerned about civil liberties should embrace the term “war” and policies consistent with some form of a war against terrorism. Bush’s War on Terror has largely discredited this idea because he abused the term, used it as a political wedge issue, and used it as a cloak for his attempts to remove checks to his power. But Obama has a chance to create a framework for a rational and effective war against terrorism – by redefining the aims of this war from aggrandizing the power of the president to preserving the rule of law and our way of life.

Bush’s War on Terror too quickly evolved from a struggle against terrorism to an attack on the rule of law and on any other checks on the president’s power – a war planned in advance of September 11, but justified in the aftermath by a fear of terrorism. The goal of this war was to ensure maximum flexibility for the executive to act which distracted the president from determining and taking the most effective actions. Bush focused on whether he could use torture rather than on whether torture was effective; he wanted the power to detain any individual without any oversight – without taking into account that this would hurt our war aims; he wanted the authority to wiretap and otherwise intercept communications without any limits, and so he authorized the commission of felonies based on a wacky legal theory that expanded his power rather than asking the law to be changed. Bush declared War on Terror but waged war on any checks to his power.

Obama must continue to fight the Wars Against Terrorism ((I think the term “War on Terror” is misleading and vague. We need a new formulation. I’m not crazy about “Wars Against Terrorism” but for the moment, it’s the best I’ve got. It conveys both the multiple fronts of the war as well as the primary enemy, a tactic that strikes at the Achilles heel of our society.)) while reversing Bush’s war against checks on presidential power. Obama must focus on strengthening our society and its’ instutions (including our civil liberties and the rule of law); he must take measures to protect America from catastrophic events and attacks; and he must focus on creating resilient structures that can bounce back after an attack.

Some have asked if war is the right model to achieve these goals. They usually suggest a law enforcement approach instead.

I believe war is the right approach – as war is how a society has always responded to violent existential threats. Terrorism is such a threat. The term war has evolved over time to cover different state responses to these violent existential threats – and in this case it must evolve again. As part of our strategic approach to this war, we must aim to preserve the rule of law and create a more resilient society after an attack. 

At the same time, civil libertarians should realize that if we were to declare the war over, we would leave our society’s values vulnerable in the aftermath of the next attack – as perhaps, Americans shaken and vulnerable, seek a return to war footing, as they sought after September 11, and those liberties granted in peacetime will be once again revoked.

Instead, we must continue this war; but rather instead of seeing the rule of law as an obstacle, preserving it must be our fundamental war aim.

Categories
Barack Obama Criticism National Security Politics

Former Drug Czar McCaffrey Doesn’t Care If Marijuana Is Legalized

[digg-reddit-me]QUESTIONER: …[W]hy not just legalize drugs?

Former Drug Czar, General BARRY MCCAFFREY (retired): …[S]ince I’m not in public life, [I can say] I actually don’t care.  I care about 6th graders through 12th graders.  If you’re 40 years old, and you’re living in Oregon, and you have 12 giant pot plants in the back of your log cabin, knock yourself out.

Discussing Mexico and US drug policy at the Council on Foreign Relations on February 23, 2009.

General McCaffrey as drug czar vehemently opposed medical marijuana; he accelerated the militarization of the Drug War in Columbia and Mexico; and during his time as drug czar, arrests for marijuana possession soared above those for harder drugs (See graph on page 3 of pdf). After years of failure to dent domestic demand for drugs, this chief drug warrior now admits he doesn’t care if drugs are legalized and that he sees nothing wrong with growing your own marijuana. It is incredible that someone could pursue the policies he did – and now state that he either didn’t or doesn’t strongly believe drugs should be illegal. 

Two weeks ago, another group of former drug warriors produced a report describing the failure of America’s prohibitionist policy in Latin America and in the United States:

Prohibitionist policies based on the eradication of production and on the disruption of drug flows as well as on the criminalization of consumption have not yielded the expected results. We are farther than ever from the announced goal of eradicating drugs…

Current drug repression policies are firmly rooted in prejudices, fears and ideological visions…

[T]he available empirical evidence shows that the harm caused by [marijuana] is similar to the harm caused by alcohol or tobacco. More importantly, most of the damage associated with cannabis use – from the indiscriminate arrest and incarceration of consumers to the violence and corruption that affect all of society – is the result of the current prohibitionist policies.

From Drugs and Democracy, a report by César Gaviria (former president of Columbia), Ernesto Zedillo (former president of Mexico), Fernando Henrique Cardoso (former president of Brazil) and numerous other prominent Latin American figures released February 11, 2009.

As former Governor William Weld recently explained:

There’s no one so brave and wise as the politician who’s not running for office and who’s not going to be.

It is notable that so many of our prominent politicians reveal after they leave office that they don’t really agree with the premise of the War on Drugs – a war which is consuming billions of dollars, waging war on our citizenry, jailing a higher percentage of our citizens than any other nation, destabilizing our neighbors, competing with and undermining anti-terrorism measures, and making America less safe. 

Instead, the best our current leaders offer is to soften the roughest edges of the Drug War on American citizens. ((Yes, I know about the San Francisco Assemblymen Ammiano introduced a bill in California to legalize marijuana and tax it – but he’s clearly the exception. Texas Congressman Ron Paul would be another exception.))

Obama has taken a number of sensible positions on Drug War issues – but he has not publicly acknowledged what most informed observers can see – that the War on Drugs has failed, is wasting money, and making us less safe. It is inconceivable that a reflective, informed policy-maker such as Obama does not realize this as well.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to tell all of the favor-seekers who came to impress upon him the importance of certain issues:

I agree with you. I want to do it. Now make me do it.

In other words, we must put pressure on Obama if the hopes of reform advocates and Obama administration insiders are to be realized.

Continue reading “Former Drug Czar McCaffrey Doesn’t Care If Marijuana Is Legalized”
Categories
Election 2012 Financial Crisis Jindal Politics The Opinionsphere

Bobby Jindal’s Soapbox (cont.)

The New York Times explains what was going on with the “strings” that Bobby Jindal was complaining about on Sunday’s Meet the Press:

States that accept the stimulus money aimed at the unemployed are required to abide by new federal rules that extend unemployment protections to low-income workers and others who were often shorted or shut out of compensation. This law did not just materialize out of nowhere. It codified positive changes that have already taken place in at least half the states.

To qualify for the first one-third of federal aid, the states need to fix arcane eligibility requirements that exclude far too many low-income workers. To qualify for the rest of the aid, states have to choose from a menu of options that include extending benefits to part-time workers or those who leave their jobs for urgent family reasons, like domestic violence or gravely ill children.

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Barack Obama Financial Crisis Politics The Opinionsphere Videos

The Partisan Eruption During Obama’s State of the Union

[digg-reddit-me]I thought this was the most interesting moment in yesterday’s speech – as the partisan feelings of the Republicans erupted, and then were responded to by the Democrats.

Throughout the speech, Obama seemed to want to talk through partisan lines, trying to minimize the applause. But here the Republicans took the first half of an Obama antimonic device and interrupted his speech – their only real excitement of the night. They seemed to relish in the fact that Obama was “admitting” that the deficit was a worthy issue, jeering. Of course, Obama has planned to pivot to the deficit and entitlement spending all along – speaking of a forthcoming Grand Bargain even before he took office. In the end, this demonstration made the Republicans look rather petty. But then, as Obama completed his antimonic device, stating that the enormous deficit was “inherited,” the Democrats took advantage of their opportunity to pettily respond to the Republican jeering.

This exchange captures the dynamic of Obama’s Washington so far – as Republicans and Democrats jeer each other and posture against one another while Obama tries to explain what he’s doing and to get a serious response.

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Politics Videos

Schwarzeneger Demonstrates the Idiocy of Anti-Partisanship

[digg-reddit-me]Arnold Schwarzeneger brilliantly demonstrated the idiocy of postpartisanship in his appearance on This Week:

The policy position Schwarzeneger is defending here makes a lot of sense – as you can see if you check out a more in-depth clip. But his justification is typical of the conventional definition of postpartisanship (and it’s close cousin, bipartisanship). I tried to make a distinction during the election battle between a “bipartisan McCain” and a “postpartisan Obama.” I described the difference between the tactic of bipartisanship which ” is about compromise, getting things done, protecting the status quo, and consenus” and postpartisanship which is “a specific approach to governing that calls for bi-partisanship as a tactic to neutralize certain issues while advocating common sense, a focus on the long-term, and an emphasis on ‘tinkering’ to deal with more significant issues.” I think this distinction still makes sense but the terms are so often used by politicians seeking political cover that defining them almost seems pointless.

So, I’m making here an additional distinction – between anti-partisanship and post-partisanship. A significant amount of the rhetoric about partisanship, bipartisanship, and postpartisanship by politicians is really about anti-partisanship. McCain claimed he was being “bipartisan” because he vocally opposed some of his party’s positions. His whole maverick persona was based on his bucking of his party on certain issues. On these issues, McCain became a partisan for the Democratic positions. Joe Lieberman who also claims the mantle of “bipartisanship” has a similar political profile – as he likewise became a partisan for the Republicans on those issues on which he agreed with them. The more appropriate description of this attitude is not “bipartisan” but anti-partisan. It is not about reaching across ideological or party lines – but about rejecting one’s own party or team. Similarly, Schwarzeneger here states that if both parties oppose something, it must be good for the people. This is an insight into the anti-partisan mindset – that views parties themselves as perverting democracy.

There is an essential truth to this anti-partisan idea. Glenn Greenwald, a prominent liberal partisan, for example admits that “no party has a monopoly on good ideas and there’s nothing wrong with compromising with the other party when doing so yields superior policies.”  Schwarzeneger makes a similar point in the longer clip, and Obama has made this point prominently as well:

I’m a Democrat. I’m considered a progressive Democrat. But if a Republican or a Conservative or a libertarian or a free-marketer has a better idea, I am happy to steal ideas from anybody and in that sense I’m agnostic.

While everyone seems to agree that partisanship can be limiting and blinding – and that we should be willing to take the best ideas of our opponents – there is less agreement on what the right approach should be. Greenwald, an unabashed partisan, included the caveat: “bipartisanship for its own sake elevates process over substance.” He frequently rails against bipartisanship which he often sees as a cover for Democrats to cave in to Republican instransigience. And he certainly has a point – as any look at the Democrats in Congress under George W. Bush will reveal. Governor Schwarzeneger sees partisanship as his enemy – and he often takes on Republicans with the support of Democrats and vice versa. From the clip above, you get a sense of his approach.

And then you have Barack Obama. He clearly sees the problem with partisanship; yet he has not adopted the anti-partisan approach of McCain and Schwarzeneger. He almost always favors liberal and progressive policies – and rarely rejects his party to work with Republican partisans. But he does work with Republican partisans – he seeks common ground, civil dialogue, and an engagement with the ideologies that motivate the Republican party. You can see this in his initial health care plan – which did not inclued a mandate due to a desire to limit government coercion. You can see this in the tax cuts that made up more than a third of his stimulus bill. You can see this in his pivoting towards entitlement reform and a plan to reduce the deficit. You can see this in his overall approach to the financial crisis – which is clearly Keynesian, but leavened a Hayekian acknowledgment of the limits of economics and central planning.

Obama’s post-partisanship is a flexible and pragmatic set of beliefs in honest engagement with those beliefs that oppose them. He does not define his politics by standing in between the parties or against one party of another. Rather, he is an unabashed liberal who takes conservative critiques of liberalism into account, and who continues to seek civil dialogue and engagement with his opponents. Greenwald criticized Obama’s approach to partisanship for being about process – and it is about process – but that is it’s value rather than it’s shortcoming.

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Barack Obama Domestic issues Economics Financial Crisis Green Energy Health care Politics The Opinionsphere

The Larger Narrative

[digg-reddit-me]David Brooks:

The crisis was labeled an economic crisis, but it was really a psychological crisis.

Republican pollster David Winston:

[Obama]’s going to have to fit other issues into the larger narrative of the economy.

Michael D. Shear and Paul Kane in the Washington Post:

Whichever side proves to be right, the sharp, partisan lines over the stimulus bill make it plain that both parties intend to exact a political cost over last week’s votes. And their leaders are looking to history for inspiration as they consider how to maneuver in the weeks and months ahead…

Republicans have made it clear that they intend to try to shift the economic debate toward concern about the federal deficit.

Obama is now completing the three-step jig he planned from the beginning, with his address to Congress tonight focused on the Grand Bargain needed to shore up our economy for the forseeable future.

The first step of this jig was supposed to be easy, nonpartisan, and uncontroversial – a spending and tax cutting bill to stimulate the economy. The second step was supposed to be harder but still nonpartisan – dealing with the mortgage and banking messes. In both cases, Obama has approached these problems as a mechanic trying to figure out what has gone wrong and taking whatever steps are necessary to fix it. Just as a mechanic does not make moral judgments about springs and gears but focuses instead on doing what is necessary to get the machine working again, so Obama approached the economy. Most Americans appreciate this, as polls show that while many dislike the specific measures he has had to take, they approve of the job he is doing. The question was: how to get growth started again – greedy bankers and lying loan applicants and wasteful consumers all are being bailed out – because the problems they have caused are “gumming up the works.” And the consumers at least are being encouraged to continue in their spendthrift ways – at least for now, as Dana Milbank explained:

[Ben Bernanke] even indulged in a bit of economist humor when talking about the paradox of encouraging people to spend even though overspending caused the problem: “Somebody once called this the Augustinian principle, which says something like, ‘Let me be moral, but not quite yet.’ “

The third step is more complicated and politically fraught – as Obama seeks to tackle the third-rail of American politics – Social Security; and at the same time, health care reform; and deficit reduction; and tax reform; and possibly climate change legislation. Obama argues that this economic crisis – and the borrowing to stimulate us out of the economic crisis – have created a “fierce urgency of now” – and that all these issues must be tackled at once. 

John Harwood of The New York Times spoke with Senator Judd Gregg about this:

To protect America’s currency and its borrowing capacity, Mr. Gregg said in an interview, “the world has to be told that we’re going to be fiscally disciplined in the out years.”

Efforts to tame long-run entitlement spending may find more Republican support than Mr. Obama achieved on the stimulus. “He has extremely fertile ground in the Senate,” Mr. Gregg said, crediting the president’s early outreach and “courageous position of saying the can’s been kicked down the road long enough.”

Yet despite the bipartisan consensus that these issues must be tackled, here is where the real disagreements should be. Contra George F. Will who argued constantly that the stimulus bill and banking and mortgage bailouts should be opposed by Republicans and supported by Democrats on based their principles, the initial stimulus and other emergency measures should only have raised principled objections from those with an unflagging belief in the free market – which describes only a minority of Republicans. These measures violate the ideologies of both parties – as big business is bailed out and the market is intervened in. There were issues to be raised as to what the most effective methods of dealing with the crisis were – but to oppose measures wholesale as the Republicans did – indicates a lack of seriousness.

The real debate should come now as we decide the shape of things to come and address the moral and political and long-term issues instead of the emergency measures taken to attempt to stimulate the economy.

But in this challenge is an opportunity, as Richard Florida explained in The Atlantic:

The Stanford economist Paul Romer famously said, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” The United States, whatever its flaws, has seldom wasted its crises in the past. On the contrary, it has used them, time and again, to reinvent itself, clearing away the old and making way for the new. Throughout U.S. history, adaptability has been perhaps the best and most quintessential of American attributes. Over the course of the 19th century’s Long Depression, the country remade itself from an agricultural power into an industrial one. After the Great Depression, it discovered a new way of living, working, and producing, which contributed to an unprecedented period of mass prosperity. At critical moments, Americans have always looked forward, not back, and surprised the world with our resilience. Can we do it again?

David Brooks writes with both concern and a carefully measured dose of hope:

[Obama’s] aides are unrolling a rapid string of plans: to create three million jobs, to redesign the health care system, to save the auto industry, to revive the housing industry, to reinvent the energy sector, to revitalize the banks, to reform the schools — and to do it all while cutting the deficit in half.

If ever this kind of domestic revolution were possible, this is the time and these are the people to do it. The crisis demands a large response. The people around Obama are smart and sober. Their plans are bold but seem supple and chastened by a realistic sensibility.

Brooks is still concerned about how this may turn out. As are we all. 

With tonight’s speech, Obama will begin to craete his legacy – beyond fixing the problems accrued during Bush’s tenure. He will begin to, at long last, deal with the stability issues raised by the combination of FDR’s New Deal revision of the social contract and Reagan’s counter-revolution, as he sets a fiscally sane course for the future. In the midst of this crisis, if Obama is to be the leader we need him to be, he needs to see the opportunity to re-write the social contract and create a more stable economic, financial, and international system. Tonight is his chance to make that case. 

Here’s hope it is not wasted.

Categories
Barack Obama Criticism Election 2012 Financial Crisis Jindal Politics

Jindal’s Soapbox

Governor Bobby Jindal, 2012 contender and current governor of Louisiana, argued on Meet the Press this past Sunday that he opposed the stimulus bill and would refuse some to accept some of it’s monies for his state despite it’s looming budget deficit. He gave a few reasons – echoing the established conventional wisdom that Obama should have taken it upon himself to craft the stimulus bill instead of allowing Congress to play it’s part as a coequal branch of government and stating that there was too much spending that Democrats wanted in the bill. This, of course, is a standard politician’s trick, used by Democrats such as Obama as well as Republicans such as Jindal – be outraged at the “the very chaotic, decentralised and often irrational mess” that is American politics while at the same time demonstrating a healthy respect for the distinct advantages of this politics, with the knowledge that, “What keeps America behind is also what keeps pushing it relentlessly, fitfully forward.” In other words – Jindal is railing against the system itself as a political weapon while only taking positions that would keep the system intact. His opposition then clearly has a political component – rather than being a matter of pure principle. There’s nothing wrong with this – but it’s important to acknowledge. 

Jindal gave another reason for rejecting federal stimulus money –  because:

You’re talking about temporary federal money that would require a permanent change in state law.

He continued, using a rather sneaky phrasing to make his point:

[T]he federal law, if you actually read the bill–and I know it was 1,000 pages, and I know they got it, you know, at midnight, or hours before they voted on it – if you actually read the bill, there’s one problem with that.  The word permanent is in the bill. [my emphasis]

Hearing especially that last phrase, with it’s seeming definitiveness yet clear allowance for the opportunity to weasel out of what it seems to be saying, I was rather convinced that only a politician trying to exaggerate a point would use the phrase. Regardless of whether the policy was positive or not, it would have been nice to 

Yet, upon reading the bill, I found that Jindal was right – the law did require unemployment benefits be calculated in a particular way – and that the state law establishing this be permanent rather than temporary. At the same time, the bill offers what seems to be an escape clause – in which the Secretary of Labor is allowed to judge whether states have met the criteria set forth in the law. 

If Jindal’s objection were merely that he did not want to change the state law permanently in order to receive the monies, he could just apply for the funds and see what happened. There are enough ambiguities in the text that a clever lawyer could probably find a loophole allowing the monies to be given to Louisiana. More important, this would provide better political ground for Governor Jindal to make the case against this provision – he would have clearly focused the political debate on whether it was right for the stimulus bill to impose permanent changes. I personally think it unlikely that the Secretary of Labor would provoke such a conflict – which is probably why Jindal is making his case this way.

He chose to reject the funds because he wanted a soapbox issue to helped cement his national opposition to the plan. 

Jackie Calmes and Robert Pear wrote in the New York Times last week that Jindal was joined by a number of other Republican governors in vocal opposition to the plan:

The harshest critics include Mr. Sanford and Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Haley Barbour of Mississippi, the national chairman of the party in the 1990s, Rick Perry of Texas, and Sarah Palin of Alaska, the party’s 2008 vice-presidential nominee.

Interestingly, all seem to have national ambitions – and designs for 2012. 

The point I’m trying to make is one I’ve made before – the Republican opposition to the stimulus is clearly a matter of politics rather than principle.

Categories
Barack Obama History Politics The Bush Legacy The Opinionsphere

A Confession of Love To The Paradox That Is America

Andrew Sullivan sees the essence of America’s strength as it’s constitutional Burkean conservatism:

I’ve learnt over the years that the constitutional system that seems designed to prevent change has more wisdom in it than some more centralised parliamentary systems; and because the very chaotic, decentralised and often irrational mess of American state and federal politics also allows for real innovation and debate in ways that simply do not occur as vibrantly elsewhere. The frustration and innovation are part of the same system. You cannot remove one without also stymieing the other.

Yet:

America can drive you up the wall. To Europeans and world-weary Brits, it can sometimes seem almost barmy in its backwardness. It is a country where one state, Arkansas, has just refused to repeal a statute barring atheists from holding public office but managed in the same session to pass a law allowing guns in churches. It incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than even Russia and aborts more babies per capita than secular Europe.

Darwin remains a controversial figure, but Sarah Palin was a serious candidate to be vice-president…

On race, of course, this is especially true. No civilised country sustained slavery as recently as America or defended segregation as tenaciously as the American South until just a generation ago. In my lifetime, mixed-race couples were legally barred from marrying in many states. But equally in my lifetime, a miscegenated man who grew up in Hawaii won a majority of the votes in the old slave state of Virginia to become the first minority president of any advanced western nation.

That is the paradox of America; and after a while you find it hard to appreciate anything more coherent. What keeps America behind is also what keeps pushing it relentlessly, fitfully forward…

You live with the worst because you yearn for the best, because the worst in its turn seems somehow to evoke the best. From the civil war came Abraham Lincoln; from the Great Depression came Franklin D. Roosevelt; from segregation came Martin Luther King; and from George Bush came Barack Obama. America may indeed drive us up the wall, but it also retains a wondrous capacity to evoke the mountain top and what lies beyond.

Read the whole thing.

Categories
Barack Obama Economics Financial Crisis Politics

The Hypocrisy of the Traders’ Revolt

[digg-reddit-me]

[Click image for larger version.]

Matt Drudge seems to be cheering the call for a ‘Tea Party’ and other civil disobedience in opposition to Obama’s proposed mortgage plan.

ABCNews describes the plan as “help [for] up to 9 million homeowners facing foreclosure or struggling to make their mortgage payments.”

The plan seeks to help two groups of people as described by ABCNews:

  • First, some 4 million to 5 million families who have seen their home values drop, but are not at risk of foreclosure, would now be able to refinance into new mortgages.
  • The other group, 3 million to 4 million homeowners with adjustable-rate mortgages, would be able to temporarily have their loans modified to a lower interest rate – for at least five years.

In order to accomplish this, Obama is proposing that $100 billion be given to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to allow these groups to refinance the loans for those whose home values have dropped below what they owe.

For the second group, Obama is propsing that $75 billion be used to help those with predatory loans temporarily modified to a lower rate. That’s a total of $175 billion. The plan doesn’t yet have a complete budget, but these are the basics and the largest elements.

The response being promoted by Drudge and CNBC:

The government is promoting bad behavior… do we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages… This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage? President Obama are you listening? How about we all stop paying our mortgage! It’s a moral hazard…

My emphases above. Am I the only one who finds it incredible that CNBC and financial traders are talking about civil disobedience and moral hazard and “losers” as soon as Obama proposes a $175 billion plan to directly help about 9 million Americans? Yet these same people assured us that bailing out the banks to the tune of $700 billion was necessary for financial stability – and that plan directly helped how many?

What the fuck is wrong with these people?

Edit: Apparently, the trader explained that “The trading floor is a pretty good cross section of America” as part of his justification. And of course, it’s better to help this “pretty good cross section” of rich America than to help an actual cross section of the population.

Edit again: A commenter over at reddit says that the particular CNBC host in the clip has actually been calling on mobs to go after any CEOs who take the TARP bailout money too. That removes the charge of hypocrisy from him, although not from those others who supported the bailout out to Wall Street but complain about any funds being used to fix the mortgage situation. And it still leaves the CNBC anchor, Dylan Ratigan, open to charges of pure stupidity.

Continue reading “The Hypocrisy of the Traders’ Revolt”