Go for the jugular

Click image for full Tom Toles/Washington Post cartoon.

How could higher savings be bad?

Paul Krugman puts the pipsqueak stimulus in context:

[C]onsumers suddenly increased their savings. ...

[Y]ou have a negative shock on the order of 6 percent of GDP.

Against this you had a stimulus bill of $800 billion — except $100 billion of that was AMT extension that was going to happen anyway, another $200 billion was other tax cuts of dubious effectiveness, so you were left with $500 billion of spending, spread over more than 2 years — maybe 1.5 percent of GDP or less.

It just wasn’t big enough to do the job.

The $1.5 trillion stimulus package - the one that Larry Summers refused even to present to President Obama - and it's Obama's fault for appointing Summers, whose foremost attribute is undeserved arrogance (though he thinks it's brilliance) - would have filled 75% of the demand gap. We wouldn't have 9% unemployment if Obama had taken this case to the people:

• It's free to borrow money.
• The best way out of recession is to grow.
• We're going to build useful infrastructure that we and our children will benefit from for the next 30 to 60 years.
• This will heal unemployment, which will take much of the pain - and there will be some pain - out of repaying the debt.

The estimable professor forgets to explain why higher savings in face of a recession could possibly be bad. People are tightening their belts in the face of hard times. Rational, careful, conservative (in the good sense).

The paradox of thrift is the textbook example of the fallacy of composition in Keynesian economics. Behavior that's good for an individual or a family makes a recession worse. Money that's saved - not because people suddenly became virtuous but because they are fearful about the future - is money that's not spent. Since it's not spent, businesses have to contract their economic activity. They may be sitting on big profits (sound familiar?), but there's no reason at all for them to build more capacity, much less to hire unemployed workers.

Only the government, acting on behalf of all of us, can break this vicious cycle with deficit spending. And again, borrowing money is as close to free as it has ever been in history.

Punishing the innocent

President Obama retains the Wall St.-driven bias to help the thoroughly corrupt and incompetent banking sector as if they were deserving. I don't understand why. It has been bad economic policy (though better than the Republican Congressional caucuses' do-nothing rhetoric), and it has been bad politics.

Moral merit, of course, is not the first criterion. The health of the economy at large is what matters first.

Punishing the guilty is not as important as saving the blameless (or the less blameworthy, anyway). If bailouts save the economy for all of us, we have to hold our noses and bail.

Instead, we've had punishment for the innocent (stimulus inadequate for the deserving unemployed - most of them) and amnesty for the guilty (a banking system built on fraudulent practices throughout the life cycle of mortgages that have gone essentially unaddressed).

And the 112th Congress will give us even less of both justice and value, since it's dominated by doctrinaire anti-government Republicans.

Where's the pro in all the con?

The optimistic view:

[T]he inadequacy of the administration’s initial economic plan has landed it — and the nation — in a political trap. More stimulus is desperately needed, but in the public’s eyes the failure of the initial program to deliver a convincing recovery has discredited government action to create jobs.

In short, welcome to 1938.

Then there's the pessimistic view:

There is one big difference between today and the 1930s, however. Once there was a political party in America - the one that did the New Deal and the Great Society - that stood up a bit for the middle class and the poor. But Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have led the Democrats down a different path. Now the party stands for a slightly weaker version of the GOP's plutocracy protection service. And, seemingly, for getting its face bitch-slapped bright red at every possible juncture.

We may have a long, hard slog of privation and national diminishment ahead of us. Democrats, who are merely disappointing, are taking the blame. Republicans, who offer nothing more than "you're not rich, screw you" - and who really are to blame - stand to regain power.

Fairness doesn't enter into it remotely. Or maybe, as David Michael Green says, this bitter outcome is just what we've earned by being repeatedly stupid.

Full-throated liberalism?

Click image for full Matt Davies/Journal News cartoon.

Attention deficit

Click image for full Nick Anderson/Houston Chronicle cartoon.

Republicans bullshit their constituents about their real aims because their constituents can't make this sort of connection.

Austerity is just around the corner

Contracting our economy away from prosperity is what the teabaggers want. They'd rather have more of a shrinking pie than to have ... more.

Now international economists are joining them in opposition to economic stimulus:

[T]he conventional wisdom now is that these countries must nonetheless cut — not because the markets are currently demanding it, not because it will make any noticeable difference to their long-run fiscal prospects, but because we think that the markets might demand it (even though they shouldn’t) sometime in the future.

Too little, too late

Nearly a year ago, Paul Krugman said that the $800 billion stimulus wouldn't fill the gap in aggregate demand. His colleagues are catching up.

Optimistic assumptions in turn contributed to producing a package that if anything is too small, analysts say. “The economy was weaker than we thought at the time, so maybe in retrospect we could have used a little bit more and little bit more front-loaded,” said Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, another financial analysis group, in St. Louis.

Now, finally, there's an expert consensus that we ought to reup for more. Yeah, experts and another half a trillion dollars would buy us the stimulus we needed in the first place. Unfortunately, the Republicans and the Senate Blue Dog Democrats are immune to experts and would rather have Hoovervilles than fix the problem.

Actually, the Republicans gain as America loses, and they're o.k. with that. The Blue Dog Dems? What do they get? Do they put keeping their own jobs ahead of keeping millions of their constituents employed? Or are they just not very smart? Only if the stimulus succeeds wildly are they likely to retain their seats, yet they dither like a bunch of pullets headed for the plucker.

Lessons lost in history

Republicans and their propagandists think you deserve your unemployment. Democrats, including President Obama, aren't making the political case for adequate stimulus.

Click image for full Bruce Plante/Tulsa World cartoon.

Driving the snakes out of stimulus

Gov. Deval Patrick is wrong about plodding along with federal stimulus expenditures. The key goal of the stimulus is to get money into productive uses immediately. It's bad that Massachusetts is 49th at that. Not as bad as the bankers sitting on their TARP money or making acquisitions with it, but still bad.

Needs of the Republicans

... outweigh the needs of the many.

It is simply critical for Republican electoral chances that the stimulus not work, and the best way they can get it not to work is to stop it early. So what if that takes a huge dose of doublethink.

Drama queen

Mark Sanford (R-SC) will take stimulus money after all, but he does not have to be happy about it. He just wants the federal government to leave him the hell alone - just as long as he gets on TV being left alone.

This is possibly the dumbest thing yet said by an elected official about the stimulus:

The stimulus "may or may not work," Sanford continued. "But wouldn't it make sense if it doesn't work to take 10 percent of that to pay down debt so that our finances are in stronger order, so that if it doesn't work, and if the storm is still raging 24 months from now, we're in a stronger financial position to spend more, to issue more debt, to do a whole host of things that would help people at the state level?"

Pretty much, I'm going to save my raincoat in case it's still raining in 2 years, so that then I can keep myself dry!

Frank Morgan, the schools superintendent in rural Kershaw County, likened Sanford's proposal to spend stimulus money to pay down debt to "trying to pay off your mortgage while your kids are starving."

Viagra for the Confederacy

Because the two bestest times of all time were the Civil War and the Great Depression, a couple of Confederate/Republican golden oldies are sweeping the nation. Well, not exactly the nation, but the Republican back benches in those citadels of enlightenment, Montana, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.

Some dipshit two-bit Oklahoman would be happy to condemn his fellow citizens to become Okies.

From Montana to South Carolina, lawmakers in mostly red states have pushed ahead with measures calling for state sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment, saying the federal government has overstepped its bounds with the stimulus package. The states are calling for the right to ignore laws they deem unconstitutional.

This is what gets them excited. I hope there's not little blue pill for it, although they are trying to deal with their political impotence.

Look, we settled this in 1865 after killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of loyal Americans and people whose children would once again be loyal Americans. Some of the latter were my relatives.

You states rights idiots don't have the power to unilaterally declare a federal law unconstitutional, as if you can even spell it. It doesn't matter what bullshit law you pass in Oklahoma or South Carolina (perversely proud home of Fort Sumter) or Montana or at your local militia meeting.

Of course, I guess we thought we had this settled even before the Civil War, when in the 1780s we ditched the Articles of Confederation in favor of the stronger government in the Constitution.

Why is CNN covering this fake and bullshit-filled trend? You don't think Lauren Kornreich called up Republicans in every state legislator, do you? The Republican press machine must have issued a release, which she dutifully typed up.

What's in it for them

Republicans (with help from blue dawg Democrats) successfully prevented a larger, more effective stimulus. They even prevented its being debated. What's in it for them?

They believe all the usual nonsense about the so-called free market, and they hate anything that might help a person. Hey, that could be a handout to a lazy no-account welfare queen overextended homeowner. The conservatives all know that you just can't give those people anything, or they'll just want more. Who do they think they are, AIG?

In their nightmares, though, these Republicans see the ghost of John Maynard Keynes. Most of them don't understand him, but they fear that a stimulus might be successful. They're deeply afraid of another Roosevelt, someone whose charisma and success could leave them out of power for two decades like last time.

Barack Obama clearly has the charisma. They need to deprive him of success.

A too-small stimulus does two great things for Republicans: It may fail and improve their electoral chances in 2010 and 2012. And it still incurs big debts - though less than either the Iraq war or the Bushist tax cuts for the wealthy - and that makes it possible for the conservatives to try again to kill all the social spending the federal government does. All of it. That's what gives them their morning woody - the chance to put all of us at even greater risk.

See, a too-small stimulus is a win-win for the Republicans! It's only a loss for the American people.

Keynesian bet

Gotta get me some of that action!

Click image for full Dan Wasserman/Boston Globe cartoon.

Bankrupt

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Porketty-pork-pork-pork

Woo-hoo! Why would you want a new New Deal when we're always here to trickle down onto you?

Click image to see full Mark Fiore animation.

Nobody even read it!

All over the wingnuttosphere, idiot dopes are finding today's argument of convenience is that no one even read the stimulus bill. They didn't worry about this sort of nicety when that good man, Darth Cheney, was taking care of things for them. But, come to find out, it's the content of the bill that they actually object to, so someone must have read enough of it.

Look, they had weeks to read the bill while the President and Congress were writing it, debating it, and amending it. Then, they had a conference report that reconciled differences between the House bill and the Senate bill, and they only had to skim that for changes, not read the whole goddamn bill from the beginning.

The wingnuts have no idea how the process even works. Even if they did, they wouldn't let that knowledge get in the way of being stupid ditto-heads.

Final vote still to come

Harry Reid's canvassing for more Republican votes for the stimulus. Great, though it's not great that it's in the news. It's clearly not a deal that the Republicans have stopped fighting, and it's good the Democrats are still engaged in defending it against betrayal.

The real story is what the Republicans are doing. Just because Tom Delay is gone doesn't mean they're not twisting arms and hammering their three turncoats (believe me, that's how they see them).

The GOP got to Judd Gregg, after all. What he said two days ago about continuing to serve in the Senate makes no sense set next to what he said yesterday - his probable retirement in 2010. What he's saying now makes no sense in light of his pursuit of the job of Commerce Secretary.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell welcomed Gregg's withdrawal.

"Sen. Gregg made a principled decision to return and we're glad to have him," McConnell, R-Kentucky, announced. "He is among the smartest, most effective legislators to serve in the Senate -- Democrat or Republican -- and a key adviser to me and to the Republican conference. It's great to have him back."

What did the Republican enforcers tell him to make him end his political career?

Obama tried conciliation

Once again, we see in stark terms that 'bipartisan' means do it the way the Republicans want and shut up about the rest:

Of the 219 Republicans in Congress, [Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania] were the only three who backed the bill.

The Republicans in the Senate have declared their willingness to filibuster anything, no matter how needed. Obama's honeymoon? Sorry, he doesn't get one from them.

The Republican rump in Congress does not accept the result of the election. They think - if you can call it thinking - that the voters swung that 2 x 4 that hit them between the eyes because John McCain wasn't conservative enough.

Obama wants to be President of the whole country. I can see why. Frustrations aside, it's what the country needs.

Barack at 47 is a mature man in full control of his emotions. Maybe being black in a white world helped make him this way. Maybe his mother and grandparents made him that way. Maybe it's just who he is.

This result - scant Republican support - could be ideal. Obama can fairly say that he made repeated and highly visible attempts to reach across the aisle but that they were all spurned.

Without being visibly angry the way I would have been, Obama has achieved a Democratic bill, passed by Democrats. He and they get all the credit when this succeeds.

Lindsay Graham doesn't even realize that he's been backed into a corner. He doesn't realize how overwhelming the Democratic majority is:

"You couldn't pick up one Republican in the House, and you lost 11 Democrats. You've lost more Democrats than you've picked up Republicans. That's not bipartisanship," he said Wednesday on CNN's "The Situation Room."

And Graham's alleged to be a moderate!

Of course, the upshot is that the Republicans have to try to make the economy and the country fail. Nothing new there. Again, this conservative party needs to be killed and replaced with one that has a semblance of moderation, a little sanity, and a clear belief in democracy.