Category: Politics

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Internal division at Buckeye State Blog same old same old

I don’t declare myself for any political party as I find the organized parties – mainly the GOP and Democrats – actually hurt democracy through all the various election laws they have enacted in order to protect their hold on the offices of government. However, reading my blog, one should see where my political stances are. I just avoid official parties. I do read Democratic leaning blogs including Ohio’s Buckeye State Blog. A recent dust up over an interview with a potential candidate for the soon to be open US Senate seat just reaffirms my bias against parties.

It seems one of the admins and “front pagers” at BSB interviewed Lt Governor Lee Fisher and asked about a pledge issued by Ohio Democratic Party chair Chris Redfern that none of the people who wanted the soon-to-be vacant Senate seat, ask for their ODP endorsement for the primary.

The problem was the interviewer gave the Fisher people a chance to review the video and asked that question and answer about the endorsement pledge be removed.

This led to incriminations that the interviewer was “in the tank” for Fisher by even considering letting his people suggest edits. Words like “objective” and “journalism” were thrown around. There were a bantering of nasty comments made by each side and in the end the interviewer quit the blog and one of the people upset about the incident seem to also quit.

*SIGH*

This is a perfect example why a pledge against getting a pre-primary endorsement is a good idea.

Even in a political party you have people with different views and who support different people in the party. If the ODP endorses a single candidate for an office before the members of the party have a chance to decided who they want then you have the same kind of nasty dust up the Fisher interview caused.

You also get some who take their ball and go home because they didn’t get their way etc….

The sad part is the BSB seems to have this kind of thing happen more often than it should. There have been 3 administrators of the blog in 3 years and with each change has come a change in content focus and some behind the scenes dust up with hurt feelings and people quitting.

Why am I writing about it?

One reason is because I think the rules forcing an endorsement before the primary is plain stupid. If a person gets the endorsement then it makes it very hard for any other potential candidate to have a chance to win the primary because an endorsement forces the party to steer resources to the endorsed candidate. Some people only support endorsed candidates.

Think of it this way. If the national Democratic party had a stupid rule like the Ohio party we may or may not be discussing or hearing about President Hillary Clinton’s plans to deal with the economic melt down. When President Obama started his campaign most Democrats assumed Hillary was going to be their candidate for the national election and she might have gotten the endorsement if one was forced to be made before the primaries. Why a state party wants to make the primary moot is beyond me.

Another reason to write about the issue at BSB is to lament the almost narcissistic obsession with the operation of a blog. If I were in charge the issue would never be public and I wouldn’t have allowed the kiss off posts by the offended parties. It was more an internal dispute and the fact that it was on the front page when other issues are more important is a bit amateurish. And any one not in the loop would be confused about what was going on.

The person who was most offended by the interview and called the interviewer “in the tank” for Fisher has had some strong views both for and against certain Democratic candidates and office holders. In fact he called for Dennis Kucinich to be voted out of Congress on the front page of BSB for what appeared to be personal reasons – he just didn’t like him running for President all the time?

Of course I’m not looking for total objectivity at BSB since it supports Ohio Democrats but the admins should decide if they are going to let candidates to control the info posted about them and at least that hasn’t happened. The interview in question was not initially posted on BSB, which was the interviewer’s prerogative since it wasn’t for BSB, and the admin who is now left to administer the blog alone said it won’t happen ever. The blog should be a place to talk about and debate the merits of potential candidates and then when one is picked in the primary, then it should support that person.

So in conclusion, the issue of a party pre-primary endorsement is a big deal but the dust up at BSB over an interview including a question about the pledge is not and should have been dealt with in private.

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Why Cramer vs Stewart matters?

The recent spat between Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, and Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money on CNBC has been entertaining. It started with a scathing 8 minute video clip of the incestuous relationship between the talking heads on CNBC and the CEOs and climaxed with a face to face discussion between Stewart and Cramer on The Daily Show Thursday night. But why should we care about two TV hosts bantering back and forth like enemies on the junior high play ground? It’s because it shows a light on the problems we have in our so called free press.

As I’ve written before, the classic idea of the press is to be advocate of the people who are suppose to be objective and ask our leaders the tough questions, we, the public either would like to ask ourselves or need an answer. When the press fails to do that, as all too often happens in the corporate media of today, their reporting becomes more like propaganda than journalism.

Jon Stewart and his Daily Show staff – which by the way is a comedy show – showed in their 8 minute clip that CNBC missed the recent financial melt down even as the red flags marched down Wall Street and instead they continued to have a parade of CEOs on claiming “don’t panic”. CNBC was so caught up in having the access to all these rich guys they failed to report about the storm clouds and problems that started in the housing market in 2007.

Financial news shows are not the place to be passing off press releases from CEOs as reporting. People who trusted the network got hurt if they didn’t take action before the market melt down. As Stewart told Cramer last night on his show “This is not a game…”

As James Moore wrote on Huffington Post:

Nonetheless, reporters at the big TV networks and the major publications have no excuse. Minute by minute people like Jim Cramer are feeding crap into our culture and public perceptions and it has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with their egos. How is it that a comedian is the first person to hold accountable these cheerleaders who are promoting a team that has no chance to win and, in some cases, isn’t even in the damned game?

Analysts doing the autopsy on newspaper reporting and the corpse of mainstream journalism are constantly lamenting the fact that so many young people and an increasing number of others are getting their news from Jon Stewart and Comedy Central. Where else is there left to look for thoughtful, analytical, and insightful analysis of the issues of our day? The yuks are just a bonus. Cable news shows can proclaim “no bias, no bull” all they want but every story is framed for a purpose, which is drama and conflict. The viewers and the readers aren’t there without the dramatic tension. You might as well be watching Law and Order: Special News Unit.

And a Comic Shall Lead Them

Yes, negative press can hurt a business but journalists have a responsibility to report the truth even if that means negative reports about a business or market. An uninformed public is a powerless public and they get hurt far worse than these CEOs who stole our money. As Stewart pointed out our 401k’s capitalized their adventures.

Here is part 3 of the Stewart vs Cramer interview on the Thursday Daily Show

*Update*

Saw this bit in a column by Glenn Greenwald on Salon’s website and thought it makes the same point I was making but includes the entire press establishment:

That’s the heart of the (completely justifiable) attack on Cramer and CNBC by Stewart. They would continuously put scheming CEOs on their shows, conduct completely uncritical “interviews” and allow them to spout wholesale falsehoods. And now that they’re being called upon to explain why they did this, their excuse is: Well, we were lied to. What could we have done? And the obvious answer, which Stewart repeatedly expressed, is that people who claim to be “reporters” are obligated not only to provide a forum for powerful people to make claims, but also to then investigate those claims and then to inform the public if the claims are true. That’s about as basic as it gets.

Today, everyone — including media stars everywhere — is going to take Stewart’s side and all join in the easy mockery of Cramer and CNBC, as though what Stewart is saying is so self-evidently true and what Cramer/CNBC did is so self-evidently wrong. But there’s absolutely nothing about Cramer that is unique when it comes to our press corps. The behavior that Jon Stewart so expertly dissected last night is exactly what our press corps in general does — and, when compelled to do so, they say so and are proud of it.

There’s nothing unique about Jim Cramer

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Brit Hume has a hissy about his friends who stole all the money

Brit Hume was upset Sunday because President Obama plans to raise taxes on those who make more than $250,000 a year. Well, I would be upset too if my whole world view was trashed in the course of a couple years as my house of cards came crashing down. The problem for people like Hume is they have no idea they did anything wrong. I have only a few words to say about that….

And the idea that you’re going to be able to squeeze out of the rich, who will move their money around and invest in such a way to avoid it as much as they can, this much money in tax receipts is crazy. There’s only one way to get a big gusher of tax receipts out of the wealthy and everybody else and that is with an extraordinarily booming economy. And normally what happens is you get that when tax rates, which he proposes to allow to increase here go down. Not up.

Williams: Let me give you an alternative point of view. An alternative point of view is that 40% that you’re talking about, those people earn about half of all the money that’s earned in America. They’re blessed to be in this country and to have the opportunity and why shouldn’t they be responsible and pay their fair share of taxes?

Brit Hume Has a Snit Over Obama’s Tax Plan “Squeezing the Rich”

See it’s like this Brit:

YOUR FRIENDS STOLE ALL THE FUCKING MONEY AND IF NO ONE IS GOING TO JAIL THEN THEY OWE RESTITUTION.

GET OVER IT!

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Zombie Banks Need to be Nationalized

One of the items mentioned in President Obama’s address to Congress was about the continued mess in the financial sector. Billions have been given to various banks yet the credit market is still too tight to help ease the economic mess we are in. If credit isn’t flowing then businesses have no way to buy new inventory or equipment and some may not be able to make payroll. Economist Paul Krugman makes the case that these “zombie” banks need to taken over and I agree.

Krugman writes:

Let’s be concrete here. There’s a reasonable chance — not a certainty — that Citi and BofA, together, will lose hundreds of billions over the next few years. And their capital, the excess of their assets over their liabilities, isn’t remotely large enough to cover those potential losses.

Arguably, the only reason they haven’t already failed is that the government is acting as a backstop, implicitly guaranteeing their obligations. But they’re zombie banks, unable to supply the credit the economy needs.

To end their zombiehood the banks need more capital. But they can’t raise more capital from private investors. So the government has to supply the necessary funds.

But here’s the thing: the funds needed to bring these banks fully back to life would greatly exceed what they’re currently worth.

Banking on the Brink

What has been happening is the previous administration as well as Obama’s have done everything short of taking over the essentially failed banks. What I don’t understand is the aversion to do it since it happens all the time.

During the Great Depression and earlier it was common to have bank panics. There would be some incident or economic downturn which then led to a “run” on banks – where depositors lose confidence in a bank and remove their money. If too many people did this the bank would close and go out of business. Generally banks didn’t keep enough cash on hand to pay out all the deposits so unless you got your money out early you would lose any money still at the bank.

In 1933, 4,004 banks closed putting thousands of people in a world of hurt. One of the ways bank runs were minimized and are rare today was the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). It provides insurance for up to $250,000 of a person’s deposit at a member bank. In return FDIC has oversight on the bank. If the health of a bank reaches a certain point, FDIC moves in, removes the management, cleans up the books, and runs the bank for a short time before it either liquidates it slowly or sells the assets to private investors.

In 2008, 30 banks have been taken over in this way by FDIC.

It is clear that the recent bail outs provided to the various banks haven’t freed up the credit market and in some cases the banks have continued on as if nothing is wrong – like spending on lavish parties or using tax payer money to give out bonuses. The bad management needs to be removed and the banks made over.

I know some are saying “But Doug, you support a bail out of the auto industry. Why can’t we let those fail too?”

The simple fact is there is a program to allow a bank to be cleaned up and continue under new ownership. If an auto maker was allowed to fail, more than likely it would be liquidated meaning it would be gone along with the thousands of jobs they had and the ones at the associated suppliers on down the line.

The solutions can’t be the same since the problems are completely different and the outcome of not doing anything are completely different.

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President Obama announces recovery agenda – Jindal and the GOP trapped in time worm hole

Tuesday night President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress to announce his agenda for the economic recovery and other issues that have long been put off like health care reform. Meanwhile, the GOP seem to be trapped in the 1990’s. They picked Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana to respond. He proved once again that political Republicans just plain hate America.

President Obama gave a great speech calling for fixing education, health care, and returning the US to leadership in research and development of technology.

My favorite part was:

In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.

Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.

Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery

and this part:

For history tells a different story. History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas. In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry. From the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age. In the wake of war and depression, the GI Bill sent a generation to college and created the largest middle-class in history. And a twilight struggle for freedom led to a nation of highways, an American on the moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world.

In each case, government didn’t supplant private enterprise; it catalyzed private enterprise. It created the conditions for thousands of entrepreneurs and new businesses to adapt and to thrive.

and finally:

But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country – and this country needs and values the talents of every American.

Of course after the speech, the Republicans decided to respond. Unfortunately they picked Governor Bobby Jindal to read the usual talking points that pretty much says “government is the problem”. I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if it his remarks didn’t include outright lies.

But Democratic leaders in Congress rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history – with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest. While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a ‘magnetic levitation’ line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring.’ Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, DC.

Governor Bobby Jindal’s Republican Address

Well there is no specific plan for a train from Las Vegas to Disneyland. Why wouldn’t buying new cars for the government create jobs? Those cars won’t just appear. They have to built by someone right? It is also ironic that Jindal would criticize a program to monitor volcanoes. Wouldn’t it be good to try to know ahead of time if one was about to erupt. That’s like complaining about the money spent for weather radars used to track Hurricanes.

All Jindal had was “tax cuts, tax cuts, more tax cuts and drill baby drill”. YAWN! That was the same platform that helped them win the White House in 2008…. oh yes that’s right they didn’t win. I also loved Jindal complaining about the $1 trillion deficit while ignoring that the GOP helped President Bush squander our surplus from the Clinton years and spend more than that on an unnecessary war in Iraq.

As David Brooks noted during the speech coverage on PBS:

JIM LEHRER: Now that, of course, was Gov. Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, making the Republican response. David, how well do you think he did?

DAVID BROOKS: Uh, not so well. You know, I think Bobby Jindal is a very promising politician, and I oppose the stimulus because I thought it was poorly drafted. But to come up at this moment in history with a stale “government is the problem,” “we can’t trust the federal government” – it’s just a disaster for the Republican Party. The country is in a panic right now. They may not like the way the Democrats have passed the stimulus bill, but that idea that we’re just gonna – that government is going to have no role, the federal government has no role in this, that – In a moment when only the federal government is actually big enough to do stuff, to just ignore all that and just say “government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending,” it’s just a form of nihilism. It’s just not where the country is, it’s not where the future of the country is. There’s an intra-Republican debate. Some people say the Republican Party lost its way because they got too moderate. Some people say they got too weird or too conservative. He thinks they got too moderate, and so he’s making that case. I think it’s insane, and I just think it’s a disaster for the party. I just think it’s unfortunate right now.

No wonder no current Republican in Congress wanted to give the response.

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