Tea-ing off April 14: A day before many planned tea parties around the nation, President Obama spoke about his economic plan. Rachel Maddow talks about the president's speech with former DNC chairman Howard Dean.
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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Think Progress: Santelli on tea bagger protests: ‘I’m pretty proud of this.’
In February, former derivatives trader and current CNBC host Rick Santelli famously called for a Chicago tea party to protest Obama’s housing plan. Now, Santelli’s rant has helped spawn disingenuous “grassroots” tea party protests across the country. This morning on CNBC, Santelli squawked about how proud he was of his followers:
SANTELLI: I’ll tell you what. I think that this tea party phenomenon is steeped in American culture and steeped in American notion to get involved with what’s going on with our government. I haven’t organized. I’m going to have to work to pay my taxes, so I’m not going to be able to get away today. But I have to tell you, I’m pretty proud of this.
“You’re like a cultural phenomenon at this point,” CNBC host Joe Kernen told Santelli. Watch it:
Sully: Left Behind?
Yglesias: What Do Federal Taxes Pay For?Glenn Reynolds today pens an op-ed hailing the "tea-party" "movement" as a post-partisan, spontaneous uprising of ordinary folks against the establishment of both parties. He makes no mention of Pajamas Media's heavy investment in the events, nor Fox News' endless touting and endorsement of them, but he does point to FreedomWorks' coordinating website. I'm sure, of course, that it's a mix of both: some grass roots enthusiasm, coopted in some part by Republican party operators. But it seems odd to describe this as anything but a first stab at creating opposition to the Obama administration's spending plans, manned by people who made no serious objections to George W. Bush's. The tea-parties are as post-partisan as Reynolds, one of the most relentlessly partisan bloggers on the web. When you see them holding up effigies of Bush, who was, unlike Obama, supposed to be the fiscal conservative, let me know.
But the substantive critique must remain the primary one. Protesting government spending is meaningless unless you say what you'd cut.
If you favor no bailouts, then say so. If you want to see the banking system collapse, then say so. If you think the recession demands no fiscal stimulus, then say so. If you favor big cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, social security and defense, then say so. I keep waiting for Reynolds to tell us what these protests are for; and he can only spin what they they are against.
All protests against spending that do not tell us how to reduce it are fatuous pieces of theater, not constructive acts of politics. And until the right is able to make a constructive and specific argument about how they intend to reduce spending and debt and borrowing, they deserve to be dismissed as performance artists in a desperate search for coherence in an age that has left them bewilderingly behind.
A very nice chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
A European made the point to me a few weeks ago that even though the political constituency for the enormous defense budget is huge, the Pentagon (and defense-related programs in the Department of Energy) doesn’t really provide a service people use. If we did something crazy like resolved to limited defense spending to twice the combined budget of Russia and China and reallocated the money to other priorities people would probably feel, on an intuitive level, that they were getting more “bang” for their tax “buck.”
The other related point is that a ton of tax money is going to health care, and a very large proportion of health care spending is waste—either medically useless or counterproductive—and this would look even bigger if we could see implicit tax subsidies.
Fascinating Aravosis: Top Republican again suggests that economy is doing fine
The media is missing a huge story. What once seemed like unrelated stories, are now evidence of a large pattern of statements and actions by the Republicans, explained by the fact that they do not believe that the economy is in trouble.
1. Phil Gramm says we're a nation of whiners.
2. John McCain says on the campaign trail last fall that the fundamentals of the economy are sound.
3. House Republicans torpedo the bailout as everyone else sits in fear that the market is in a talspin.
4. Nearly every single Republican votes against the stimulus package.
5. Numerous Republican governors reject their own state's stimulus money, threatening their own local recovery and the national recovery.
6. Cantor says Democrats are "overreacting" to the economic situation.
7. Steele says he still sees lots of people shopping at the malls.
8. Conservatives, led by Gingrich and Armey, hold nationwide Teabagging protests today in opposition to the stimulus package that was necessary to stop us from going into a depression
Then today, the #2 Republican in the House, Eric Cantor, again suggested that the Democrats are overreacting and that the economy was not in trouble.Democrats in Congress are taking advantage of citizen fears about the nation’s economy for political gain, U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor told area Republicans here Tuesday.Every example I cited above can easily be explained if the Republicans simply do not believe that the economy is in trouble. This isn't just out of touch, it's delusional. I seriously have no explanation for how an entire political party can look around this country right now and not see an economy in trouble.
“There seems to be a disconnect between what is really happening in our economy and how the federal government is reacting,” said Cantor, R-Va., the GOP minority whip – his party’s No. 2 member in Congress.
“The more I am outside the Beltway, the more I understand why everybody seems to be scratching their heads wondering, ‘What in the world are they doing up in Washington?’ ” he said.
Finally, as for "using fear" to scare the public, that's classic. Remember, they always accuse of us doing what we're not, and what they already have.
Yglesias: It’s Not the TARP, It’s the Guarantee
Jane Hamsher: Dick Gephardt’s Integrity Jammed in Revolving Lobbyist DoorYou don’t get a ton of opportunities, as a liberal, to write “this is a good point from The Wall Street Journal editorial board,” so let’s note that The Wall Street Journal editorial board is making an excellent point about the farcical nature of the idea that if Goldman Sachs repays its TARP money that it’s no longer a ward of the state. They observe that Goldman has benefitted mightily from the Maiden Lane III vehicle from the Fed, and from special post-Bear access to the Fed’s discount window, and from the FDIC’s new broader debt guarantees. But beyond all that:
The larger issue going forward is whether Goldman is “too big to fail,” which means that everyone knows the feds will ride to the rescue if it gets into trouble again. Before Bear Stearns, investment banks were allowed to fail, a la Drexel Burnham. But after last autumn, no one will believe it. And Goldman will hardly mind if that’s what the marketplace believes, because such an implicit taxpayer guarantee will let it borrow more cheaply and thus make more money. Think Fannie Mae again. Even now on the taxpayer dime, Goldman is still trading on its own equity account — risky banking behavior.
The point is that Goldman and other banks can’t have it both ways. If they want taxpayers to save them, then they have to take fewer risks and become smaller.
My main dissent would be that this puts too much agency on Goldman’s shoulders. There’s an inherent time-consistency problem such that even if Lloyd Blankfein and Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke all swear mighty oaths to never bail Goldman out again, nobody will believe them and nobody should believe them. It’s not an issue of whether or not, subjectively, Goldman executives and shareholders “want” taxpayers to save them, it’s an issue of the fact that Bush/Paulson/Bernanke/Obama/Geithner have set a new series of precedents about to handle the potential collapse of large, complicated financial institutions. So instead of it being “if they want taxpayers to save them, then they have to take fewer risks and become smaller” it’s given that taxpayers will save them, then have to take fewer risks and become smaller.
Exactly how to do that, of course, is controversial. But I think it’d be good to see a mixed approach. On the one hand, more prudential regulation. On the other hand, regulation to discourage massive scale. And with two hands working together, some kind of sliding scale such that risk-regulation gets stricter the bigger you get. Thus far, though, we’ve heard only a little from the administration about risk and not much of anything about scale. This is troublesome, since the political “window” in which the will might exist to enact meaningful new rules is not going to stay open forever.
So Dick Gephardt is concern trolling health care reform.
“It is immoral to have people without health insurance,” he said, speaking to about 70 people on the lawn of a Manchester home. “This issue is in my heart. It’s in my head. It’s in my soul. I will not rest until I get the people health insurance.”
Now Mr. Gephardt says universal or near-universal coverage cannot pass this year — and he is urging the White House to defer that goal until it enacts cost-saving reforms in health care delivery. Otherwise, he argues, the new president risks the same losing argument about paying for expanded coverage that stymied President Bill Clinton 15 years ago.
What happened? Well, Dick left office and did what politicians do -- became a well paid lobbyist.
Maybe he -- and the New York Times -- should've thought to mention that.
DougJ: Potemkin protests
John Cole on How To Understand The “Tea Party” PhenomenonThink Progress notes that “Americans For Prosperity” is now paying people to publicize all tomorrow’s tea parties. Which makes me wonder: do you think some of the people who show up tomorrow will be getting paid to be there?
The purpose of all the tea-bagging is, of course, to make it look there is some groundswell of antipathy towards Obama’s policies coming from real Americans. And “Americans For Prosperity” and the like don’t care how they get the real Americans to show up. That stands in contrast to left-wing protesters, who are often unabashedly hippie and want everyone who protests with them to be there for the “right reasons” (based on my experience with protester friends).
One thing we know for sure: there will be lots of fighting over the number of people who show up at the tea parties. Some reporter in Pittsburgh or Cincinnati will estimate there were 30 tea-baggers downtown and Michelle Malkin will find a witness who says there were really 150. Grainy cell phone video will be examined and confused calculations will be made, possibly with the help of Google earth. If the city is within driving distance, we may even find out what kind of countertops the reporter has.
Simply mentally replace the phrase “tea party” with “hissy fit” and it really clears things up. For example, the Instapundit’s editorial in the WSJ (further proof, no doubt, of the grass roots nature of this event!):
Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies—dubbed“tea parties”“Hissy fits”—to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501© group like MoveOn.org.So who’s behind the Tax Day
tea partieshissy fits? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize…The protests began with bloggers in Seattle, Wash., who organized a demonstration on Feb. 16. As word of this spread, rallies in Denver and Mesa, Ariz., were quickly organized for the next day. Then came CNBC talker Rick Santelli’s Feb. 19 “rant heard round the world” in which he called for a
“Chicago tea party”“Chicago hissy fit” on July Fourth. Thetea-partyhissy fit moniker stuck, but angry taxpayers weren’t willing to wait until July. Soon,tea-party protestshissy fits were appearing in one city after another, drawing at first hundreds, and then thousands, to marches in cities from Orlando to Kansas City to Cincinnati.I hope that helps you.
Sully: Ten Years Later
Tony Woodlief remembers Columbine:
There’s little left to say about evil, in a secularized culture with a Christianesque patina, once the tired whipping boys of culture and video games and bullying are laid aside. They weren’t gamers? Weren’t bullied? Weren’t molested or obsessed or wrongly medicated? Well then. Could have happened to anyone.
Aravosis: Former Bush officials can no longer travel abroad, for fear of being extradited under torture charges
Funny as hell. And just one more indication of what the Republicans have done to our national image.Sully: To Be Indicted, Ctd.
Greenwald responds to my post:
Agreed on both counts. We'll see, won't we?Andrew Sullivan says that Obama, by not prosecuting Bush officials, is playing "a long game" which will eventually result in accountability for the war criminals, whereby Obama "hangs back a little, allows the evidence to slowly filter out, releases memos that help prove to Americans that what was done was unequivocally torture and indisputably illegal."
It's going to be quite some time before one can definitively prove or disprove that theory, but if, on Thursday, Obama does anything other than release the three OLC torture memos more or less in fully unredacted form, that will be rather compelling evidence negating Sullivan's speculation. Conversely, as I said earlier this week, if those memos are released essentially in full over the vehement objections of key intelligence officials, Obama will deserve some substantial credit for doing that.
- Sully: Obama's Moment Of Truth On Torture
The question before the president today is not whether to prosecute his predecessors for war crimes; it is simply whether to allow the memos that the Bush administration drew up describing in gruesome detail the torture techniques they authorized - or to cover them up. There are zero national security interests in keeping such information secret. The ICRC report has already detailed what was done to many high value detainees, and the methods are unequivocally war crimes, and known across the world. To directly attach such torture techniques to the specific decisions of the Bush administration merely provides accountability. No more; no less. It provides transparency.If Obama, for some reason, decides to prevent us from seeing exactly what was done then he will achieve only one thing: he will tell the world that the US has indeed authorized and practised war crimes while simultaneously telling the world that America will not be accountable for it. He will betray all of us who supported him to restore the rule of law. He will, in fact, merely confirm the worst fears of what was actually done while making himself an accomplice to protecting the war criminals who did it. And please don't even begin to spin us with the following:
"We want to maximize the amount of information available to the American people," said a senior administration official involved in the discussions, adding that such a policy has to be balanced so it "does not damage national security interests."
National security interests would only be damaged if the US were seen to be continuing the cover-up of war crimes begun by Bush and Cheney. If CIA staffers believe that covering up war crimes is integral to maintaining their morale, then we need new CIA staffers. This is not about persecuting the CIA. It is about maintaining basic political accountability for decisions and policies that were illegal, unconstitutional and immoral.
There is no compromise possible here, Mr president. Do the right thing.
Think Progress: Scarborough: Obama Is ‘More Focused On Targeting Veterans’ Than Fighting Al Qaeda
Yesterday, a copy of a Department of Homeland Security report was leaked, detailing the increasing radicaliziation of “rightwing extremists.” One portion of the report warned that “rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat.”
This morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough expressed fury at the report’s mention of veterans. Ignoring the report’s conclusion that right-wing groups would try to recruit veterans, Scarborough declared that the Obama administration was “targeting veterans” and waging a “war on veterans”:
When you have a president and you have the Department of Homeland Security more focused on targeting veterans than on protecting our border on the South where a war is breaking out, or protecting us from, I don’t know, al Qaeda? Isn’t this interesting: they no longer want to use the term “war on terror”? They don’t want to use “the war on terror” because that makes them feel uncomfortable, but they have no problem targeting veterans returning from war. This is perverse. … There’s not a war on terror but there may be a war on veterans.
Watch it:
Scarborough declared that if Dick Cheney had done something similar, the entire media would have been appalled.
What if Dick Cheney decided that he was going to target liberals? … Can you imagine what certain newspapers and cable news shows would do if George Bush and Dick Cheney decided to target democratic loyalists, and say that they may be a terror threat?
Of course, DHS already wrote a report on “left-wing extremists,” completed earlier this year. “This is the job of DHS, to assess what is happening in this country, with regard to homegrown terrorism, and determine whether it’s an actual threat or not, and that’s what these assessments do. This is nothing unusual,” a DHS official told Fox News.
More importantly, the report did not target “conservatives” or “Republican loyalists.” Indeed, it’s odd that conservatives like Scarborough would willingly group themselves and Republicans in with “rightwing extremist activity, specifically the white supremacist and militia movements” — the actual focus of the DHS report. Scarborough is not alone in this lumping, however; yesterday, Michelle Malkin declared that the report a “hit job on conservatives,” while Fox News linked the report to the conservative “tea parties.”
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