I work as a political consultant out of Alexandria, VA. In 2006 I worked for Gov. Mark Warner's Forward Together PAC. In 2004 I worked for Richard Morrison among others.
TPM Cafe has a post up from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich that diagnoses our biggest economic ailment, lack of demand:
I is investment. Absent consumer spending, businesses are not going to invest.
Exports won't help much because the rest of the world is sliding into deep recession, too. ...
That leaves G, which, of course, is government. Government is the spender of last resort. Government spending lifted America out of the Great Depression. It may be the only instrument we have for lifting America out of the Mini Depression. Even Fed Chair Ben Bernanke is now calling for a sizable government stimulus. He knows that monetary policy won't work if there's inadequate demand.
The answer to the first question is "a lot." Given the magnitude of the mess and the amount of underutilized capacity in the economy-- people who are or will soon be unemployed, those who are underemployed, factories shuttered, offices empty, trucks and containers idled -- government may have to spend $600 or $700 billion next year to reverse the downward cycle we're in.
The answer to the second question is mostly "infrastructure" -- repairing roads and bridges, levees and ports; investing in light rail, electrical grids, new sources of energy, more energy conservation. Even conservative economists like Harvard's Martin Feldstein are calling for government to stimulate the economy through infrastructure spending. Infrastructure projects like these pack a double-whammy: they create lots of jobs, and they make the economy work better in the future. (Important qualification: To do this correctly and avoid pork, the federal government will need to have a capital budget that lists infrastructure projects in order of priority of public need.)
Government should also spend on health care and child care. These expenditures are also double whammies: they, too, create lots of jobs, and they fulfill vital public needs.
I've been calling for these kinds of economic stimulus for months. Glad to have someone joining in who's got the ear of the incoming administration.
Senate Republican rules are clear that a Senator convicted of a felony is to be stripped of chairmanships. As of today, disgraced but re-elected Senator Ted Stevens retains his Chairmanship Ranking Member status of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.
According to an Oct. 22 report from the Congressional Research Service, however, the House and the Senate have traditionally refrained from bringing expulsion charges if a lawmaker wins reelection after his misconduct is known to voters.
From the report:
Key graph about Republican rules is here:
If the Senate is like the House, these rules were passed in a self-righteous paroxysm in 1994 to show how much cleaner and more ethical the Republican majority was going to be than the old Democratic one. We all know how that turned out.
Does evil old McConnell have any shame? We'll find out if he lets Ted "I have not (really) been convicted" Stevens keep his chairmanship ranking member status.
On this day of relief and celebration, I'd like to take a moment to remember all those in the progressive movement who didn't make it across the finish line yesterday.
All the candidates and campaigns who didn't quite make it, or in some cases didn't even come close despite pouring their blood and treasure into the fight. Being from Texas, I'm painfully aware that not all Democrats won big in 2008.
For those of us who've been involved in progressive politics for awhile it seemed like the interminable Bush years would never end. The bitter losses of 2000, 2002 and 2004 building up layers of scars and heartbreak. But we fought through it and damn I'm proud of my country and my party today.
But there were millions of Americans who didn't live to see the repudiation of the Bush era, despite working so hard to achieve it.
Let's take a moment to remember our fallen comrades and especially to all those lost on 9/11, in Afghanistan and Iraq, to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike and every other disaster of the Bush/Cheney era.
And let's remember those whose loving marriages were suddenly declared illegal in California by Prop 8 and every other state where bigotry has been written into the law. That fight isn't over, we will not forget. We shall overcome.
I'd especially like to remember three people:
Madelyn Dunham, the grandmother of the President-Elect who didn't live to see it, but who did get to vote for him. We all owe her a big debt of gratitude.
Fred Baron, a legendary trial lawyer who won many victories for the little guy in the court room and poured millions of his own dollars into the Texas Democratic Party in the last few years, pretty much single-handedly keeping it alive. He passed away on October 30th.
And Dr. Andy Miracle, a friend of mine who wasn't any kind of big political player but whose passion to end our national nightmare inspired me greatly. Andy had a cerebral hemorrhage just before the 2004 election and never got to vote that year. I think of Andy every election day as I vote.
I'd like to share one of my favorite poems "To those who've fail'd" by Walt Whitman:
To those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast,
To unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
To calm, devoted engineers--to over-ardent travelers--to pilots on
their ships,
To many a lofty song and picture without recognition--I'd rear
laurel-cover'd monument,
High, high above the rest--To all cut off before their time,
Possess'd by some strange spirit of fire,
Quench'd by an early death.
And for those of us who only died political deaths this year, you'll be back.
To end on a happy note of political resurrection, my good friend Richard Morrison, whose long-shot 2004 campaign against Tom DeLay was one of the first netroots campaigns waged on the national level got his first electoral victory yesterday. Richard, an environmental trial lawyer who's been representing those that the big developers have paved over, flooded out, and ripped off for more than a decade now has been elected to the County Commission of Fort Bend County , Texas. I have a feeling that there will be a lot less irresponsible development going on during his term. Congratulations, Richard.
Take a moment to make your dedications to fallen comrades and second place candidates in the comments.
Yay we won!
Now we're in the driver's seat and the problems coming down the road are much bigger, scarier and implacable than any we've seen in our lifetimes.
In my experience there's only one way to drive out of a fiasco -- fast and in the right direction.
It's not the time for half-measures and Dean Baker has a great idea, healthcare:
More importantly, it will provide the same access to health care that people in other wealthy countries have long taken for granted. For this accomplishment, President Obama will rank alongside Presidents Roosevelt and Lincoln as one of the nation's truly great presidents.
The backdrop is straightforward. Economists from across the political spectrum are now calling for a large stimulus package to limit the economy's decline and the rise in unemployment. The consensus is in the range of 2.0-2.5 percent of GDP, or $300 billion to $400 billion a year.
And if that sounds pie-in-the-sky, check this NYT op-ed from Bob Rubin and Jared Bernstein:
We also jointly believe that fiscal stimulus must be married to a commitment to re-establishing sound fiscal conditions with a multi-year program that includes room for critical public investment, once the economy is back on a healthy track.
One of us (Mr. Rubin) views long-term fiscal deficits -- in combination with a low national savings rate, large current account deficits and foreign portfolios that are heavily over-weighted in dollar-dominated assets -- as a serious threat to long-term interest rates and our currency and, therefore, to our economic future. The other views these economic relationships as much weaker.
At the same time, we both agree that our economic future also requires public investment in critical areas like education, health care, energy, worker training and much else. In our view, then, the next president needs to proceed on multiple tracks, with both the restoration of a sound fiscal regime and critical public investment.
Can we get out of this crisis? Can we do the things we need to do to help those in need -- especially the state governments that actually do so much of the public service work in this country?
Do I really have to ask the answer to that question, today of all days?
YES WE CAN.
The New York Times reports this morning on congressional hearings yesterday when governors David Paterson (NY) and Jon Corzine (NJ) called for aid in a new stimulus package:
Speaking to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Mr. Corzine implored, "We need federal help to get through these tough times."
Their remarks increased the pressure on the federal government to include money for state governments in the next round of economic stimulus legislation, pointedly putting the requests of the executives of two of the nation's most populous states on the record.
I've been beating this horse for a long time. But it has yet to get up and move so I'll keep on flogging.
Congress needs to put federal money to work in the states where it will immediately provide relief to the distressed and kickstart the economy.
Since Mark Warner won the statehouse in 2001, Virginia has been trending blue. Tim Kaine's 2005 win, Jim Webb's Senate win in 2006 and Warner's commanding lead in this year's Senate race are all testimony to that.
But the latest polling information on the 2009 Governor's race is the most dramatic evidence I've seen yet that Virginia is becoming a flat-out Blue Big-D Democratic state:
The question, included in a Washington Post Poll on the presidential race published Monday, highlights the challenges facing Republicans as more Virginia voters identify themselves as Democrats and independents.
Of registered voters, 48 percent prefer a Democratic governor vs. 31 percent who want a Republican.
...
But for the first time since 1985, Democrats are girding for a primary fight to decide their nominee. Del. Brian J. Moran (Alexandria) and state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, who narrowly lost to McDonnell in the 2005 attorney general's race, have announced they plan to run. Terry McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and adviser to Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, is also considering a run.
The nomination is up for grabs in a three-way fight, according to the poll. When self-identified Democrats and independents who lean Democratic were asked which candidate they prefer as the nominee, 16 percent named Moran, 12 percent McAuliffe and 11 percent Deeds.
This gives Virginia Democrats an unprecedented opportunity to push for the most progressive nominee and still have an excellent chance of winning.
We've been covering the staggeringly corrupt Minerals Management Service of the Bush Dept. of the Interior all year and the hits just keep on coming.
The latest is another whistleblower coming forward and talking to CNN. Seems the dude won the DOI's highest award in 2003 for saving the government (that's you and me, taxpayers) $500 million in royalties that the oil companies tried to underpay.
The next year his position was eliminated. Meanwhile the more oil company friendly staff at MMA partied on for the next five years.
Maxwell said the report doesn't surprise him. The agency, he said, is corrupt "top to bottom." Video Watch a failure to "protect America's interests" »"It sounds like they forgot they work for the government," he said. "It's disgusting. ... There's no excuse for that. Those people should not be working in those positions at all.
...
Just before he lost his job, he said, one of his superiors in Washington ordered him not to investigate why Shell Oil had raised its oil transportation costs. Maxwell said it jumped from 90 cents to $3 a barrel without adequate explanation. The government paid Shell to transport oil from offshore platforms.
When asked why a government worker would tell an auditor not to investigate, he said: "I believe it started from the top down," he said.
Shell Oil told CNN it "pays the same rate any shipper does" and that it has "never engaged in fraudulent transactions or entered into sham contracts as Mr. Maxwell alleges."
Maxwell, a registered independent, said the shift in attitude at the agency began about seven or eight years ago, about the time the Bush administration came into power. He said he was discouraged from aggressively auditing oil companies.
"Laws and regulations were not applied, also not enforced," he said.
Even as Bush's boy Henry Paulson (you might remember him from such bailouts as Bear Sterns and AIG) considers radical measures:
Some say the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008's vague language gives Paulson almost unlimited power to intervene.
Boy that's reassuring ain't it. The guy who used to be the CEO of Goldman Sachs is now about to step in and use our money to nationalize them.
Paulson is, of course, the architect of both Goldman's failed strategy and the utter disaster that has been the last two years of Bush administration financial policies (since his appointment as Treasury Secretary in 2006.)
But don't forget, its not really the U.S. taxpayers who are financing this bailout. From a a NewsDay Op-Ed by James Ludes and Bernard Finel:
The United States was already dangerously indebted before the housing crisis forced the government to slip even further into the red. Since January 2001, the U.S. national debt has increased from $5.71 trillion to more than $9.64 trillion in August. Our foreign debt has increased even faster, from $1.01 trillion in January 2001 to $2.67 trillion today.
The debt we owe to countries that do not share our interests or whose interests may run at odds with our own has grown even faster than that.
In 2001, we owed oil-exporting nations $48.5 billion - we now owe them $173.9 billion. In 2001, China held $61.5 billion in U.S. debt; it now holds $518.7. In 2001, Russia held less than $10 billion; it now holds $74.1 billion.
And owing money to "our friends" has serious implications:
They go on to outline the Suez Crisis of 1956 when President Dwight Eisenhower used America's financial power over Britain and France to force them to pull their troops out of the Suez Canal. Now we're the ones with global strategic delusions of grandeur that we're letting other countries pay for. As Ludes and Finel conclude:
Debt-financed tax cuts and overly zealous deregulation have proven to be a failed social experiment with potentially dire national security consequences. We have long recognized that cuts to defense spending can sometimes hurt national security; so too must we acknowledge, once and for all, that tax cuts and runaway spending can do the same.
The United States is a rich and powerful country. It is criminal that we have weakened our own fiscal health so gravely that we are left to consider the national security consequences of restoring liquidity to credit markets. But we must.
· AK SEN: AP CALLS IT FOR BEGICH! (Sandwich Repairman)
· Draft DavidNYC for Senate (Jonathan Singer)
· LA-04: Dick Ain't Done Yet ... (DailyKingFish)
· GA-Sen: Libertarian Allen Buckley Speaks Out on Georgia Senate Run-Off (Senate Guru)
· Wish Gov. Dean a "Happy Birthday" (Matt Ortega)
· IA-Gov 2010: Will any Democrat challenge Culver? (desmoinesdem)
· Young Dems use Facebook to slay cranky old Republicans (MediaCzech)
· OH-15: Debating Provisional Ballots (Sandwich Repairman)
· More 2010 Manuevers in Louisiana (DailyKingFish)
· MN-Gov / MN-01: Walz considers gubernatorial run (MN Campaign Report)
· NV-Sen: Republican Challenger for Harry Reid Emerges (Sven at My Silver State)
· Keith Ellison (D-MN) is up for Progressive Caucus chair (MN Campaign Report)
