Center right , my ass !!
I know there are several on the right that would like us to believe that , but it just ain’t so

WAY back in the day Gore Vidal declared that we have “A one-party system — the Property Party — and it has two right wings.”

As usual everybody thought Gore was over the op. As usual he was absolutely right. This didn’t happen overnight, people. We are now ruled by corporations. And short of a revolution there’s nothing we can do about it.

“Democrats Tell Progressives: America Is A Center-Right Nation”
Not according to the populace that elected these people to represent them. What we actually have is government by AIPAC. As Nancy once stated “impeachment is off the table”. Things seem to have gone downhill ever since then.

The problem with drinking to forget RomneyCare is that it’s still there in the morning. And you have to look at it with a hangover.

I can see where the “Right” comes from. The “center” part I miss completely.

AIPAC? Are you frakkin’ kidding me here?

Are you really going to swallow that tin-foil tripe again?

epistemic arrogance

Linked to very similar work in the post just ahead of you, masaccio, Expert Political Judgment.

So, what we now know about cognition and social thinking tells us our current practices are failing and will fail. Your point that fame makes the epistemic arrogance worse if very true. The famous make more errors, it turns out.

What the Democrats are really saying is that “liberals are useless.” Here’s my treatment of that meme.

Progressives were used we helped get these people elected ,only to see them further the corporatizing of our country.
We are now told our opinions don’t matter ,that we should grow up and behave like the grown -ups.

yes, yes – fabulous blogronicity

thank you masaccio and thank you Glenn for your thoughtful posts

Progressive opinions don’t matter. John Kerry sure knew it in 2004 when he told his antiwar audience in Boston that “we will win the war in Iraq” (as the police state was in full force outside the convention halls). Progressives are masochists. Progressives will hate Ralph Nader because everyone knows the scapegoat is the bad guy. Progressives will call John Kerry the “#1 liberal in the Senate.”

I was just reading your post, and thinking about the relation to my post. I’ve been around a lot of experts, and most of them are quick to say what they don’t know even about their own areas of expertise. Very few politicians have any sense that there is any limit on their knowledge or insight into real problems.

At the outset of this reform process, there was a lot of expert input, through committee work and staff work. At the end, we just see a cloud of dust thrown up by the legislative vortex. We don’t see the people actually making the decisions, we don’t see the people talking to the people making decisions, and we don’t have any input. The whole thing is left to the gut reactions of a bunch of relatively ignorant politicians whose own lives are not affected by their decisions.

M, I believe you should focus on investment, which is by definition conservative and backward looking.

Everybody wants the best return on investment for the longest time. Or in other words, use the investment (building, road, plane, car) for as long as possible, until it breaks and its more expensive to fix than repair.

That’s conservative. That’s the US, and the rest of the “developed” world. It’s easy to do something (for example Build Airports), when these is nothing. It’s hard to build high speed trains when there is so much investment in airports, becuase the high speed trains deliver people to city centers, and development has moved to the ‘burbs, so there is no concentration of customers “down town”.

Money, money invested to earn a return is, and will be conservative, it’s owners will resist change becuse the owners of the money want income, return on investment.

This is also true of heath care. The investors want a return. Owners of coal fired power stations want their 75 year power station life.

So do I, so do you, so do we all, becuase the alternative, wholesale scrapping of investments, is called a collapse.

That is a cop-out. The Democrats’ behavior is CORRUPT, not Center-Right. Selling out to Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, big pharma, & insurance companies does not constitute a Center-Right role. It does reveal values of greed, arrogance, hunger for power. Valuing pharma profits and your coffers over Americans’ health (by not voting for Dorgan amendment) is not Center-Right.

And by the way, take a look at the polls. Dems are antagonizing Progressives, those on the Right, & driving away Independents. Good luck with that in November!

I think to “relatively ignorant” and “not affected” you need to add two other qualifier to the description of our House of Lords: elderly and wealthy. Their insulation (within the bubble of the top 1% — certainly 5% — of the richest Americans, as well as their advanced age and disconnection from the voters who turned out in droves for “change” last year) distinguishes them as well.

The USA is a CENTER RIGHT NATION is the greatest MYTH ever told!!!
It benefits the elites to think this way.
How many conservatives do you find in an unemployment line? Not Many Folks!
The power to define issues is what the MSM use to have. The MSM is dying.
News Papers, National News Cast, are going the way of the dinosaur. This type of media was very important when it came to keeping the masses in line.
Fox News shows you how much integrity you have to lose to make people think conservative.
(Fox’s news people think’s it a great idea to lower the minimum wage? In a depression? WOW! I can see the masses voting for this awesome idea. Poor people are making to much money. Laughing!
Good luck with the 1972 -1994 thinking!
The main reason that conservatives have a chance is the USA is set on having elections on TUESDAY . Why not Saturday? If every day people had the opportunity to vote on Saturday, the elites know the populist would win in a land slides.
The corporate elites have loss the power to keep the masses employed especially white collar workers. HUGE MISTAKE!!! Where are all these talented people getting their news from now?
News Flash people can count!
Obama got 20 million plus from big health care and John Kerry got 8 million plus. (17% of the USA is unemployed, you probably don’t want to many un-employed people reading information like this, they will probably say they have been SOLD OUT!!!)
John Kerry is really not that intelligent, he should have been the last person complaining about Howard Dean, take your 8 million plus and be quiet. Great Information Jane!
I doubt if the New York Times, would have reported how much money Barack Obama, and John Kerry got from Big Health Care. Great Job Jane.
Another embarrassing moment is David Axelrod on Meet The Press talking about how the Insurance companies have fought against Health Care Reform, and within 15 minutes Joe Scarborough tells you Insurance Stock is at a 52 year HIGH! Laughing!
Now millions of people via the internet will learn that Insurance Stocks are at a 52 year high. I think most will conclude big Insurance loves this plan and they have been sold out!
Good luck keeping the nation Center Right.
This White House is clearly living in 1994!!! Laughing

I suppose that claim of a Center Right America will need to be adjusted at the ballot box.

Personally I find Bernie Sanders deal to be on many levels most disconcerting.

The President is representing a right of center agenda, very much in line with Bush 43. The Bill is first and foremost a give away to Pharma and AHIP. No matter how many more people will be additionally served by Bernie’s ‘improvements’, the absence of competition stimulated cost containments of premiums and drug prices will continue to make healthcare inaccessible to growing numbers of the population.

What Sanders acquiesced to is a firming of a two tier Healthcare delivery system. One, where the masses are wilting in crowded waiting rooms, because it’s a first come first serve deal where appointments will not be honored (scary imagery of Canadian healthcare turned into an American reality), – and the other flawlessly and efficiently servicing Le Creme de la Creme. This represents a cynical race to the bottom.

Bernie jerking his single payer amendment, in order not to hold up the Senate’s business of passing funds needed to expand the war in Afghanistan ?!! – had I been eating pretzels when I heard that, I’d have fucking expired!

the con man said I would get triple my money back!

it matters next to nothing that Democrats have crafted some talking point about America is a Center-right nation, therefore whatever.

follow the money, see who benefits. As was pointed out immediately by other commenters, Washington DC operates under the direction of corporate power, and the Lobby on trial for espionage does indeed play a major role in foreign affairs.

It would be like debating Joe Biden – impossible! he is a bloviating buffoon, enthralled and absorbed completely in his own impenetrable worldview.

Gore Vidal was right, as Cellar47 said. maybe 40 years later ‘progressives’ can finally acknowledge that unpleasant reality, ignore the perpetrators shifting alibis, and get on with creating a political/social formation that represents regular Americans?

People who are sure they’re right never ask questions and never learn anything without being told they have to know it.

I’ve worked with people like that. I’m still there; they aren’t. And every week I’m less sure about what I really know.

Democrats tell progressives, we are a center-right party … deal with it.

Z

We will. And they won’t like it.

They played us. Obama and his staff never really cared about health care. They were just trying to negate healthcare as primary issue for Hillary. Since they decided to exploit the progressives and the netroots community, the took all the “good” progressive positions. Once in power, Obam never fought for any of the details in health care. His administration only wanted the Lilly Leadbetter equivalent of a healthcare bill. Since healthcare has been dismissed since Johnson, any victory would be considered a historic victory. Prior to starting legislation, they made deals with the interested industries. The problem that they ran into, which is why this administration has a disain for progressives, they took his campaign pledges and call of “yes we can” to heart. They expected a liberal lion and instead got a well dressed boss hogg. They will only hate progressives for a couple more months. Right around March of 10, therequests of restarting the netroots and prograssive movement to help the party continue the fight should start hitting the emails. I just got a Xmas card from Tim Kaine and Obama, so the makeup is already beginning. This is very hard. The Repub party has shown itself to be somekind of White Christian soldier party. With their strong party discipline it would be silly to support anyone over there if if they had a good moderate act. But how do you get excited about a party that dismisses your efforts completely even though the progressives drove them to the whitehouse. The best that I can figure is tht we need to keep at least 53 seats in the Senate. That keeps the nutbags like McCain and Demint from doing any serious damage. It appears that Dems are even less effective with 60 than they were with 51. There is no reason to believe that the conservadem block in the Senate and the Conservadem administration would do any better with 62 or 63.

So money caused the financial crisis to do the Naomi Klein “Shock Doctrine” thing–destroy the middle class, reduce us to peonage. Luckily, we have much arable land and many people who disdain education to work it. Remember, jobs, jobs, jobs=wage slaves, wage slaves, wage slaves: the ability, which SO many americans want, to say, “Yeah, boss.”

We ARE a center-right nation, or we wouldn’t accept this.

If they think they’re going to be getting a lot of money and labor from the left, they’d better start re-writing their plans.

That is what really maddens me. They had web sites up to ask people for input. They trotted out a bunch of experts they were going to consult with. For that matter, there are plenty of experts in America giving their opinions for free on all these important topics all of the time. How do you think all of us get up to speed? And after all that, this is what we get? I actually understand more of the issues than these people who can hire all the experts they want? The House had Wendell Potter in to talk to them about how insurance works and the Senate didn’t, but the House is being told that they need to go along with what the Senate has done? And we all have to go along because someone has decreed that we are a center right nation whose best interests are served by having our politicians compete with ruthless corporations for their money. At least the Republicans never pretended to give a rat’s ass what we thought or what experts think. If we wanted to just make up some slogans and run with them or put corporate profit above all, we’d be Republicans.

We didn’t agree to that, and given the Democratic majorities in Congress, it didn’t have to be that way. It’s that way only because Congress and the Administration agree with Krauthammer that this is a center-right nation.

Well said. Would that “center-right” figment bear any resemblance to the mythical creature described by Vidal? The right trotted out that myth immediately after the election. As Harold Pinter said, “It’s a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay.” That’s the power of myths.

Myths, as some may have heard me say before, are not the same as lies. A lie is a distortion of factual circumstances; a myth offers a way of seeing and being in the world. It’s what is left unsaid, but is heard or seen loud and clear, that distinguishes the language of myth (metaphor) from that of prose (the declarative sentence).

Myths physically speak to our emotions more than our intellects.

The reader hardly need be reminded that the images not only of poetry and love but also of religion and patriotism, when effec­tive, are apprehended with actual physical responses: tears, sighs, interior aches, spontaneous groans, cries, bursts of laughter, wrath, and impulsive deeds. Human experience and human art, that is to say, have succeeded in creating for the human species an en­vironment of sign stimuli that release physical responses and direct them to ends no less effectively than do the signs of nature the instincts of the beasts. The biology, psychology, sociology, and history of these sign stimuli may be said to constitute the field of our subject, the science of Comparative Mythology.

[...]

When Housman writes that “poetry is not the thing said but a way of saying it,” and when he states again “that the intellect is not the fount of poetry, that it may actually hinder its production, and that it cannot even be trusted to recognize poetry when it is produced,” he is no more than reaffirming and lucidly formu­lating the first axiom of all creative art–whether it be in poetry, music, dance, architecture, painting, or sculpture–which is, namely, that art is not, like science, a logic of references but a re­lease from reference and rendition of immediate experience: a presentation of forms, images, or ideas in such a way that they will communicate, not primarily a thought or even a feeling, but an

impact.

[Emphasis added. Joseph Campbell. (1968). Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, pp.40-42. New York: Penguin.]

Thus the inchoate nature of support for both Obama and Palin from people who’ve been jacked by carefully crafted myths.

Two posts here at FDL speak to exactly this issue. The first is Jon Walker’s The Insidious Myth of the Progressive “Bill Killers”.

The second is another in emptywheel’s series on the advent of neo-feudalism.

Her main point (I believe, this is my take) is that our nation has become ungovernable due to the privatization of public authority. Call it fascism, corporatism, or feudalism, the point is, we can’t pass legislation even to save our own lives, let alone save the planet. Our ship of state has been hijacked by robber barons.

Especially insidious, IMO, is the practice of subinfeudation (allegiance in exchange for land) that puts private political interests ahead of “promoting the general welfare.” In the minds of feudalists, that’s not a problem, because, to them, there is no public interest! It’s all private, just as god himself intended. If “a man’s home is his castle,” what’s that make his political “home?” Feudalists are wannabe royalists, just like the god they worship: a cosmic tyrant of the universe that he made, making it and all things in it his private property.

That’s what makes people under royal rule “subjects” of the “divine will.” But we’re supposed to be self-sovereign citizens of a democratic republic.

Take a look at some of the patriarchal medieval beliefs in just the Senate bill alone, esp. regarding women’s health. I’d say they’ve adopted a new version of droite de seigneur, the “god-given right” of a Lord to take a bride’s virginity on her wedding night, taking it as their right to screw us all royally and call it “good governance” as long as their private fiefdoms benefit.

Fuck ‘em.

I understand this problem. Remember that there is constant turnover in investment opportunities. At the outset, Starbucks was a great investment, then it wasn’t. The same is true of Sears and Woolworths and plenty of other companies. We can handle a lot of that kind of failure, and for-profits in the health care business are prime candidates for creative destruction.

Perhaps you will lead us out of the wilderness of our blind allegiance to party.

YES! You are right. The congress is so corrupt that they do not even attempt to hide their paymasters anymore. Left, right, center, it does not matter, the rethugs opened the last door to secrecy after bush got the SCOTUS to make him prez. They openly allowed the K street boys to come in and write the legislation that the corporations wanted. Like you say, its far to late to change things without a revolution and that will never happen because the corps keep the sheeple fat dumb and happy by feeding them crumbs. Will we get health care? I don’t know, but if we do it will be something that will give the HI industry billions and will screw the little guy.

On another front, the tea baggers-here in Texas-are putting one of their own up for Gov. Gov “Good hair” and Kay did their best to ingratiate themselves with the “tea baggers” but, as I thought would happen, the tea baggers saw thru them and called the rethug party just another bunch of pols, changing their beliefs with the way the wind blows

I have been saying right along that the rethugs pandering to the uber conservative “tea baggers” would blow up on them is slowly coming true. The rethugs actually thought that they could co opt this group, they imagined that just because the TBs are white lower class and more than a wee bit racist, that they-rethugs-could give them a snow job and that the TBs would gladly join in the rethug party. Ooops. Just because they are mostly uneducated does not make them stupid. They have been stringing the rethugs along, now they are starting to come out with their own candidates. That might just throw a monkey wrench into the rethug dreams of regaining a majority in congress.

But, come to that it really does not make a bit of difference(except in who pays the taxes-rethugs make those who are not rich pay, dems make the rich pay a wee bit more, but in the end it will be the middle class that gets the short end)who is in charge in WaDC because, as you so ably pointed out, it is the corporations who really rule the US. So, we have become, an oligarchy, whether we will it or not.

Without Liberals we might never have left Vietnam.
Without Liberals we might never have seen past the Reagan Revolution.
Without Liberals we might never have sought to health insure everyone.
Without Liberals we might never know the right direction to go.

Republicans and Blue Dog Dems certainly haven’t shown the way…
except where to find the nearest cliff to fall off.

The Left knows where the political solution is. Everything after that is a concession to the Blue Dogs. The Republicans don’t even want to be involved in policy-making since they think it makes them weaker politically.

The HCR would look a lot better if we had just started with the original plan and ended a week or two later after a few refinements. The final bill could probably be about 750 pages and would probably cost 1/3 less, but save our country about 50% more money. (these are very very rough estimates)

How much did it cost us to ‘buy’ Nelson, Lieberman, Landrieu, Lincoln, Bayh and any others? Does that make the entire bill almost worthless?

If we don’t get a public option then what will that cost America? Are their votes to pass something worth that much?

I hope they make more progress to keep improving the bill up to the final vote. And I hope the final product is one that doesn’t cost more than it saves.

The main problem is that congress, be they left, right or center is totally corrupt. The megacorporations own congress, they whistle and congress jumps, a pavlovian response that the corps have trained members of congress to obey. We have become an oligarchy. Obama is part of this culture, the big fight between the rabid right and the sheeple dems is a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. In the end the corps will get what they want and we the people-who are politically active-will get screwed because our masters know how to manipulate the sheeple. The oligarchs read their history, they know how the same system worked back in the 20s and 30s, lead the sheeple around by the nose and then do what you want. The MSM will never report this because they have already been coopted by the oligarchs.

When the financial markets imploded, Henry Paulson came up with a solution: throw $700bn at the problem, and get Ben Bernanke to throw more trillions at it. The conservatives of both parties complained bitterly, but the grown-ups in Congress of both parties voted it through.

why do you (seemingly) approve of paulson’s $700 billion bailout or bernanke’s monetary policies? serious question.

They will only hate progressives for a couple more months.

I’m betting the first thing they do is address DADT and DOMA. They think that will appease gays, and there aren’t too many folks on the “other side” it will piss off. They think this will show how “progressive” [or whatever] they “really” are.

I hope the GLBT community plays THEIR part in this charade: let Obama think he’s going to win the community over with his “progress,” let the legislation pass or regulations become effective, and then support him no more.

I don’t know about America, but the Democrats are center-right. Obama is and was supported by “The Whole Food Nation,” a large collection of fat cats with strong corporate affinity. Obama himself is right and may be a little center. Whom are we kidding, the Democrats and their leaders are corporate center-right.

MarkH, you pat your buddies on the back a little too forcefully IMHO.

Without Liberals we might never have left Vietnam.

Actually, the attempt to create South Vietnam failed because in erecting a kleptocratic state there, the war effort demolished its own economic base, while in the US overspending destroyed the dollar-gold standard — and by 1972 it wasn’t just “liberals” who were against it. Moreover, the operational argument here is that neoliberal governance is too much for liberals.

Without Liberals we might never have seen past the Reagan Revolution.

The “Reagan Revolution” is still going on.

Without Liberals we might never have sought to health insure everyone.

Do you mean to say that the insurance companies got Congress to create a bill forcing anyone of means to buy their product merely because liberals told them to do so?

Without Liberals we might never know the right direction to go.

No, that’s what ecosocialists are for.

The Left knows where the political solution is.

So close, yet so far away.

I hope they make more progress to keep improving the bill up to the final vote.

Is that what they’ve been doing? “Making progress”?

Here’s a diagnosis and prescription of the problem. Worth the read.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/16/815429/-No-One-Is-Going-To-Save-You-Fools

It’s time we progressives change our party registration to Independent. When Democratic elected officials start representing us again, instead of corporate America, we can switch back. Until then, we do nothing to help them get re-elected, not even vote. With the exception of Howard Dean, the Democratic Party has been telling us for years to “Go to Hell.” It’s time we returned the favor!

It more or less worked

No, the TARP really didn’t make a difference. It was the trillions that Bernanke threw at the system that kept things from collapsing. And it wasn’t because Helicopter Ben had some grand plan or knew what he was doing. Throw enough trillions at almost any problem and it will have an effect at least for a while.

Really from Obama’s election onward, our elites have been trumpeting the message that we are a center-right nation. This is just another false narrative they put out to distract us while they get on with, or I should say, continue the serious work of looting the country. The best translation of center-right from elitese would be Looters R Us.

I should point out too that the size of the stimulus needed increases as economic conditions and unemployment worsen. My own estimates began at about $800 billion a year for as long as needed. Now it is more like $1.3 trillion a year for as long as needed.

could you show your math please? i’m kinda curious to know how people are coming up with their numbers (both inputs and results expected). thanks.

folks are leaving in droves, which is great, but it is time to build a new formation, a new Big Tent.

Democrats have been in substantive, policy implementation agreement with neo-con Charles Krauthammer for almost 20 years, since the triangulating DLC ‘centrism’ took permanent root in the Party under Clinton.

you say:

“. The policies of the conservatives have failed the nation, causing grave damage to our economy and our international reputation, but that doesn’t seem to matter.”

what are you going to suggest be done about it? More and Better Democrats? is that old nostrum really going to fly after 2008, when the (D) has the WH and both houses of Congress?

nope, as the astute Gore Vidal observed decades ago, the solution is not more and better corporate overlords who wear my team colors, the solution is more Democracy, more authentic choices on the ballot.

This all makes sense if you think of it this way:

What we have is a coalition government.

It’s not that it doesn’t matter which party is elected – it’s that for the current system to work, each party must agree with certain core objectives, primarily the protection of industry or corporate power.

This has been the case since the founding of our country. The “States Rights” battle was lost in 1865 and the Washington/Corporate system was solidified. The two parties, which are distinct, compete for the advantage of their faction withing that framework. Progressives are in the Democratic faction. And nothing is accomplished by not supporting your faction, except to strengthen the other.

Simply petitioning the leaders of your faction will accomplish little. We can not accomplish what we need to accomplish on health care, environment, labor, energy with a simple electoral strategy within this framework. It must have a vibrant and strong social strategy. Less NAACP and more ActUp!

The Democratic party structure must be destabilized in order to move it from ‘center-right’. The DP is now Blue/Red (the Clinton model). It must be realigned to Blue/Green.

If it cannot be realigned, then let it become Big Blue as Big Green grows.

One possible tactic: Everybody runs for something, overwhelming the system.
This is the political equivalent to a “denial-of-service” attack.

From a Democrat cousin:

After reading the posts here and on a number of the other liberal blogs, it is obvious that many of you are upset and feel betrayed. I can understand that. However, I believe that many of you had unrealistic expections, not only with this President, but with the “so called” democratic majority in congress. Joe only caucus’ with us. He has never been a reliable democratic vote. You all knew there were “Blue dogs” in the senate. Believe me, I’m represented by one here is Louisiana. I can’t chang that. The Republican would have been much more damaging to the country. We knew what we were getting. It was the best we could. A progressive could not get elected in that district. Period. We don’t have “purity” test for our party.

Because you did not get what you thought the country deserved: a public option, single payor, or amedicare buy-in, you consider the democrat in the senate and the Predisent sellouts.

I would not say that the counrty is center-right, but enough democrat senatorial districts are. That’s the reality.

As many of you know, the 15th Amendant federalized the right to vote in 1870. When Eisenhower and his congress began debate on the 1957 Voting Rights Act only 20% of eligable black voters could actually exercise that right.(for various restrictions by many southern and other states) This legislation nationalized voting standards and created the Civil Rights Commision. This legislationhad not abolished to Poll Tax or state-imposed literacy test. So, should the country’s progressives’ have fired thier congressman because the legislation left blacks with still alot of voting restrictions. the Answer ids no. The next voting rights legislation was signed into law in 1960. It authorized Federal Judges to take up voting Rights litigation to insure the right to the ballot. But guess what, the poll tax and literacy restrictions. So, did these tow pieces of legislation greatly increase the number of blacks voting? No.

It was not until the Civil Rights act of 1965 that the right to vote was fully realized with the other civil right provisions. It was in this legislation that the poll tax and literacy restrictions were eleminated.

I say all this to say. Think long-term. This was a big fight. There was a hell of alot of opposution. We keep fighting. The President would have signed a more progressive bill if it would have made it through congress. But we don’t have that make up in congress. We deal with what we have and not what we wish we had.

So, progressives, the other members of the democrat family feel your pain; we just try to think a bit more pragmatic and long-term about the healthcare battle.

hey – good framework!

destabilization is what gets the (D)’s attention – and ironically the (D) captured progressive element acts as a shock absorber, or heat sink, absorbing the discontented energy yet maintaining the relationships of all the parts as you described, the Red/Blue overall coalition on behalf of consolidated corporate power, with the Green/Progressive molecule attached, squirming, to the left of the Blue.

bearing in mind current situation – the internet, the economic Depression with permanent double digit unemployment, the climate/environmental crisis – my considered view is that no amount of exasperated faithfulness on the part of Progressives will move the Blue our way, and there is much greater freedom of action, not to mention personal and institutional pride, available outside the veal pen, outside the paddock and pasture, up in the canyons, outside the last fences.

Selise and Hugh, please note my phrasing: the plan included both TARP and the Bernanke trillions. TARP put the congressional seal of approval on the plan. That worked to accomplish what it was designed to do: the financial system didn’t collapse.

The Paulson plan was the only one on offer at the time. I think the fair questions are a) was there a better alternative at that time that had more of a chance of passing and b) would it have been better to let the financial implosion continue without taking action.

There aren’t any elections right now. We fight the battle in front of us. Health care is one battle. Another battles is to find progressives to run on the Dem ticket. Any takers?

Sadly, we are a corporatocracy and it will probably take another bloody American Revolution by all us little people to turn this country around. They have all the money, and we have all the votes. But, unfortunately, since the “Reagan Revolution”, this country has been dumbed down so completely that ordinary citizens have no impetus or idea what a democracy is nor any desire as to how to get our “representative democracy” back; to compound the problem, we have become a nation of complacent watchers–movies, video games,computers, texting, tweeting–we no longer have the ambition or desire to rise up and rebel. As long as we are entertained (bread and circuses!)and not asked to put forth much effort or money, we don’t give a damn what the government does. Oh, to have the 70s back!

Could there possibly have been a way to protect the real losers, eg, pension funds, municipalities, while allowing the banks to fail? Would have recapitalizing those entities been cheaper and more beneficial overall than bailing out the banks?

Center right my ass. Democrats are now officially the lapdog to facist repub theocrats. Christ.

Here are a couple of posts I wrote around the time of the Obama stimulus.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/3563
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/3522

These are not meant to be hard and fast numbers. They are indicative. Everything depends on the assumptions made, such as how much money is needed to fund a new job, and how much is needed to keep it in succeeding years. Vary these and you get different results. But a crucial point is that after the first year you need to take into account the cost of maintaining jobs and that reduces the amount you have to spend on new jobs. So for example, let’s take a trillion dollar a year stimulus with a 90/10 split between spending and taxes. $140,000/job (salary, materials, physical plant, etc.) Now in the real world, a lot of this money might go not to new jobs but, for example, to support existing state jobs and shore up state deficits, or for other uses, which would have only secondary and tertiary effects, and most of those again on maintaining existing jobs. But for the purposes of modeling, let’s run the numbers.

We would have $900 billion in spending and $100 billion in tax cuts. The economic multipliers associated with these are 1.4 and .4 so $1.26 trillion and $40 billion respectively, or overall $1.3 trillion in effective stimulus. Dividing this by $140,000 per job you get 9.3 million jobs.

In the next calculation, we have to decide on how much it takes to maintain a job in succeeding years. In my original diaries, I used $70,000. It probably is higher. But let’s go with that. That means we have half or $630 billion in the second year to create new jobs. So with our 90/10 split, let’s say $570 billion in spending and $60 billion in tax cuts. Applying our stimulative multipliers (because spending is more effective than tax cuts), call it $800 billion and $24 billion respectively. Dividing $140,000 into this, you get 5.9 million. Over the two years, you will have created 15.2 million jobs. Now what is interesting about this is that come your third year essentially all of the trillion has to go for job maintenance, even $50 billion would be needed. You would have zero money for job creation.

But there are probably another 12 million underemployed and 3 million who have left the work force. And the population and therefore workforce keeps growing so the stimulus would need to grow or the private sector would have to pitch in to create new jobs. Now in all honesty I do not expect things to go as optimally as this model suggests. And I think state and local budgets will need help not in creating jobs but in maintaining what they have and services. That is why I think we are now more in $1.3 trillion a year land. But again these are ballpark. I can’t tell you that $1.2 or $1.5 trillion would do the trick. It is more like a trillion is the starting place. I hope this helps.

i think the liquidity crisis needed immediate action. but i don’t see why the TARP (aka bankster bailout) had to be passed at all. what actions exactly do you think prevented the financial system from collapsing? or are you arguing that everything paulson and bernanke did was necessary and there were no other options?

Uh… so you guys think this is a left-leaning country? Really?

If you’ve ever worked for a campaign or tried to convince a majority of any disctrict outside of a liberal inner-city to support a progressive cause, I can’t see how you couldn’t agree with that statement. America IS a center-right country, and our topic should not be how we convince people that it isn’t. Our topic should be how we convince people to change their minds and think differently than they do.

This is something that Thomas Frank and others have tackled, but for some reason most of us can’t face it. You really think the majority of Americans are progressives? You can say they SHOULD be, or that deep down if they knew all the facts correctly, they WOULD be, but would you say they are now?

Thinking your countrymen are deceived and lied to isn’t the same as saying they really agree with you and are ready to take action accordingly. Denial of the ideology war doesn’t help us out, it only makes us delay the real (monumental) task of educating everyone. This is something the right has always understood, but we still prefer to put off.

are your numbers meant to be deficit spending on top of whatever current policies would have given us (via automatic stabilizers, etc)? or do they include deficit spending due to automatic stabilizers?

data please?

I don’t think it matters if the country is center right or left. I think this is an old debate and an old way of thinking.

Because of the fillibuster rule any Senator can hold any bill hostage.

This is what we need to be debating imo.

The democratic party does not respect progressives, they use us to win elections and then tell us to fck off when it is time to govern. In their eyes we are lower on the food chain than even the right wing wingnuts. The republicans dont dare disrespect the wingnuts bcz without them they cant win elections. The dems cant win elections without us but they think we hate the republicans so much that we will accept anything they do to us to spite the republicans. We laugh at the wingnuts but at least they are respected by the party that they elect. I am sure the Repubs, Dems, and Wingnuts, are laughing at us right now. We are like the battered wife who takes the abuse bcz she is scared to leave her abuser. The only way we are going to get some respect is when we show the dems that we will let them lose elections when they refuse to do what they promise while campaigning. We need to send notice to the dems in congress and in the white house that we will not be available in 2010 and 2012. If the dems believe we are a center right country then our absence shld not be missed. Even if it means the republicans win back the majority we can not continue to allow our votes and effort to be taken for granted. Once they realize that without us they wont sniff majority status in the congress and the white house is off limits, they will have to respect us. It is time for progressives to demand respect by any means necessary and there isnt a better time to start than November 2010. Obama will be back trying to make promises and friends again, he has to do this to win in 2012, we have to make sure he pays the price for this betrayal. I for one cant wait to hear his concession speech in 2012.

Well, you tell me. Are you satisfied with the way the American people vote? Can you name hundreds of politicians representing hundreds of disctricts who are solid, on-the-money progressives? Or are you constantly frustrated in election after election?

If America really is a left-leaning nation, we should be generally happy with election results every year. But we aren’t, are we? We are constantly frustrated and pessimisstic. Why do you think that is? Could it be that most of the country doesn’t agree with us, and our struggle is really a ideological, educational struggle, rather than a simple strategic question?

If we simply blame “the system,” I think we are lying to ourselves. We are in the ideological minority. It’s not the end of the world, it’s just something we need to recognize before we can ever change it. If anything, it’s a beginning.

As often happens running the numbers off the top of my head the first time around, I make mistakes. I used the stimulative value not the actual value for the second year. Sorry. 9.3 million at $70,000 per job is $651 billion. That would leave only say $350 billion for new job creation in the second year. So $315 billion and $35 billion spending/tax cuts. Applying the multipliers: $441 billion and $12 billion or $453 billion total stimulus in the second year for new job creation. Dividing by $140,000 gives 3.15 million jobs so the total for 2 years would be 12.45 million or 12.5 million. In the third year, there would be $125 billion for new jobs and $875 billion would go to maintaing old ones.

For the third year, $112.5 billion in spending, $12.5 billion in tax cuts. $157.5 billion and $5 billion respectively for a total of $162.5 billion or 1.2 million jobs. So the total over 3 years would be 13.7 million jobs. In the 4th year that would leave $41 billion for new job creation out of your trillion. All the others factors are as I outlined them above. Sorry again for misleading anyone on what is an eye-glazing but necessary exercise.

This is the cost of the program. See also my correction at #59. Budgets are made up of what Congress decides to spend or rebate as tax cuts. Any part of that can be considered deficit inducing when outlays exceed expenses.

Also zeroguardian get real. You seem not to have noticed the corruption of our for-hire, “money is free speech” political system.

I don’t know enough to have a real opinion of my own about letting the giant banks fail. I think the consensus among people I respect is that it would not have been safe to let them fail. I do think it should have been done differently, but that was not a real possibility under the prior administration with the election so near. As an example, I would not have bought stock in AIG. I would have loaned money instead.

I tend to agree with you about this. Every one of these fights we take up is an opportunity to educate people. It is very difficult to reach out to people because our jobs are so demanding, and our spare time is precious to us. You would be amazed at the people I meet singing who don’t have a clue about economics, and repeat thoughtlessly the stuff they hear in the mainstream media about it.

A doctor friend of mine told me he is reading some book by Milton Friedman to understand how to cope with the Great Recession. I explained that my solution was to follow the story of Joseph in the Bible: save during the fat years so you can survive the lean. This is a simplified version of my Notre Dame freshman economics course. He made some insulting comment about Paul Samuelson, who wrote my text. It takes a long time for the kinds of conditioning people have endured for the last 30 or so years to wear off.

that doesn’t answer my question @54.

I am trying to say that the Paulson/Bernanke plan was the only thing on offer. Anything else I might say is just speculation. I wasn’t smart enough at the time to come up with some other plan, and I’m no smarter now.

A couple of days back, I passed around a quote from a Washington Post story from November of 2006, after the Dems had that amazing mid-term result.

Essentially, in that article, Rahm Emanuel said he was going to ignore the progressive agenda, because the Democratic arty’s future was with the Blue Dog (aka Blue Cross) wing of the party. It was clear as day.

When he became the Obama chief-of-staff, we should have known what was coming.

Because of Emanuel, Obama has only disdain for the progressives in his base. And, because of the way they have treated us, I have nothing but disdain for them. Obama and Emanuel are corporatist hacks. They do not represent my values.

Too bad I wasted so much time advocating for Obama in ‘08. Never again.

I think nationalization/bankruptcy was and is the only way to deal with the TBTF. You to have control not just financially but physically of them before you can effectively unwind them. Re the TARP, remember it was supposed to start out as a reverse auction to buy up crap securities. That was always a Rube Goldberg approach. But Paulson got the money and they needed to justify the gun to Congress’ head used to get it so they found the minor provision of loans and suddenly that was what TARP became. The Fed and FDIC credit lines were always far more important than the TARP funds. These may have helped some of the smaller banks but also left them open to predation by the TBTF that now had money to burn.

lol. well, if you are going to defend samuelson, bernanke and the tarp, then maybe i better concede the issue of the usa being a center-right nation to zeroguardian03.

(mostly joking – serious about the samuelson part)

fair enough. but that’s no reason to claim the people who went along with the bailout were the grownups.

It should. This is what a trillion a year in stimulus would buy you in jobs over the first 3-4 years (if you accept the assumptions).

Paul Samuelson. Not the pretender Robert Samuelson.

are your numbers meant to be deficit spending on top of whatever current policies would have given us (via automatic stabilizers, etc)? or do they include deficit spending due to automatic stabilizers?

those were my questions. or maybe you have not reconsidered your remarks to marshall and scott on marshall’s follow on post to rob during the deficit debate at NC? if you are still of the same mind, then my questions won’t make any sense.

…..

but now you make me want to ask another question. do you accept the assumptions?

sadly we’re talking about the same person :(

Clinton, Rahm, and Obama are the DLC crowd who would rather deal with the conservatives than the liberals. The DLC despises Howard Dean. They call him crazy every chance they get. The only reason they allowed him to be the party chair is because he would bring in the votes from the left….and he did.

Everybody denying Paulson (TARP), Fed Chair Bernanke (loans & guarantees), Treas. Sec. Geithner and the Congressional stimulus saved the economy are experiencing a serious case of denial.

I understand why Republicans hate to admit these things, but why would any Democrat, particularly those who supported Obama and voted for him, deny the achievements?

Unfortunately, “right” and “left” doesn’t suffice to describe our predicament. America appears to me to be run primarily by a body of individuals with a strong corporate-bent – that’s the current ‘center’. It used to seem that Republicans were the ‘corporate’ party and that Dems were the ‘labor’ party, but now there is no labor party, and Republicans have to share the corporate mantle with the DLC and the rest of the moderate Dems. It is a sad state of affairs. While I can’t sympathize with my Republican friends on many issues, we can seem to both agree with the sentiment of “throw the bums out.” I had the sad thought today, that we are living in a corporate serfdom, and that corporate-funded healthcare, though expensive for businesses, is another great tool for keeping workers well-behaved, dependent and tethered to their employers and their benefits.

To be honest I have forgotten the context of the NC debate. I am not sure what automatic stabilizers would mean here. Are you talking about the general notions that markets are cyclical and self-correct? You know I am sure that I am at least in part Keynesian in my approach to the current crisis. I also think that there is sufficient underlying strength in the economy coupled with a fiat currency to allow for deficit spending on the order I contemplate. This can be magnified by directing money and investment away from unproductive sectors like the paper economy, the imperial wars, the wealthy and into areas that build a greener, more sustainable industrial base and communities to go with this. In that I depart from pure Keynesianism because I attach a vector to the increase in aggregate demand. And as I have said in the past, even with all this, I do not see our way clear without a considerable amount of debt repudiation. A government with a fiat currency doesn’t have to balance its books but for the rest of us the math is the math and the only way to get out from under crushing debt maintenance is simply to erase a fair amount of the private debt. I think Keynes saw this more in terms of bankruptcy (don’t want to put words in his mouth) than debt repudiation but the general effect is the same in that it frees up capital to increase aggregate demand.

I grew up in a conservative home listening to Rush Limbaugh, and one thing he said was that you can’t win elections until you educate the populace. When you lose, you determine what in your message didn’t get out, and you make sure to get it out for next time. This is something that Karl Rove and most of the GOP strategists understand- that winning isn’t mainly about strategy, it’s about popular belief.

When our side loses, we tend to conclude that we were out-strategized by the other side, or that they cheated and stole the election. This only prolongs our misery, because these are external forces that turn us into the victims, and we get discouraged and become cynical and fatalistic. Our path ahead is convincing the population of our ideas, not in assuming they all agree with us and that forces outside our general control have tricked and manipulated the situation. No victory in our future if we keep doing that.

re my questions: “are your numbers meant to be deficit spending on top of whatever current policies would have given us (via automatic stabilizers, etc)? or do they include deficit spending due to automatic stabilizers?”

automatic stabilizers are everything from fed income and sales taxes to unemployment insurance that automatically increase fed deficit spending in a recession.

my initial question was also what results do you expect from your proposed stimulus (unemployment levels, and anything else you think is relevant). iow, how would you measure success or failure of your proposal? and my newer question was do you accept your assumptions?

……..

re NC debate:

Rob Parenteau: Debate on Deficits: A Reply from Rob Parenteau

Marshall Auerback: All Debt is Not Created Equal: Government Debt is NOT the Same as Private Debt

if you can now talk about fed deficit spending and fiat money, “strength in the economy coupled with a fiat currency to allow for deficit spending,” ” A government with a fiat currency doesn’t have to balance its books but for the rest of us the math is the math,” then i think at least a little of what rob, marshall and scott (boy were you obnoxious to scott and marshall too) wrote must have sunk in as you were then insisting on fed gov default and previously that the nature of our monetary system, how money is created and destroyed, is uninteresting.

….

i have no idea what you are talking about re “pure keynesianism” — is that based on your own reading of him, and if so what are you referring to?