Will Senate Republicans Kill Automaker Aid?

So, here's the latest from D.C. regarding aid to American automakers. The New York Times is reporting that the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate have reached a deal with the Bush Administration. The Democrats have agreed to allow the automakers to use 25 billion, which has already been appropriated for development of fuel-efficient cars, to help them stay afloat.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been resisting this idea because she wanted Detroit to focus on getting more fuel-efficient cars to the market. She has agreed to allow the 25 billion to be used because she expects that money to be repaid, so to speak, when Obama takes over and there is an expanded Democratic majority in Congress next year.

The question now is whether the Republicans will block the legislation allowing this when it reaches the Senate. They would block it by threatening a filibuster, which could be ended by having 60 Senators vote to cut off debate. The Senate Minority Leader, McConnell, wouldn't commit himself to supporting the bill until he sees the details of the legislation.

If Republicans don't back this bill, and if one of the "Big Three" goes into bankruptcy, then the employment fall-out is on the Republicans' heads. If that happens, then Democrats should tar all Republicans with the brush of Herbert Hoover.

Editor's note: The above picture is from the Times article and is a shot of the executive officers of the Big Three and the head of the UAW at a recent hearing in Congress.

How the Feds are Blowing Through 7.8 Trillion Dollars

The New York Times has an article up on its website that is accompanied by the picture to the left. It shows how the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury are distributing up to 7.8 trillion dollars to the financial services industry.

Although they are plowing money into the system, this money won't help with the wave of foreclosures that are spreading across America. This paragraph from the article explains why:

But analysts said the program would do little to reduce the tidal wave of foreclosures. That is because most of the foreclosures are on subprime mortgages and other high-risk loans that were not bought or guaranteed by government-sponsored finance companies like Fannie Mae

What's interesting is the fact that while there was a lot of debate and public anguish over the 700 billion dollars in bailout funds approved by Congress, the amount of loans, according to the Times, is 1.7 trillion. So under what authority is this money being lent out? If the authority was already there, why did the Congress have to act? Under what terms and conditions is this money being lent out? Who is receiving it and how much are they receiving?

It would seem that those questions would interest someone in the media, let alone Congress, yet people don't seem to be asking them. Maybe everyone just assumes that the same geniuses who got us into this mess will get us out. If so, their faith may be sadly misplaced.

NY Times Profiles Nut-Job Who Is Behind Obama Attacks

The rather pleasant looking guy on the left is Andy Martin, and, despite his smile, he is a definite nut-job. He is also the person who started the "Obama is a Muslim" smear that right-wingers love to pass around in email messages. The New York Times profiled him in an article that is dated October 12, 2008. This is from the article:

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”

He is a filer of frivolous lawsuits, in fact, he was profiled by the CBS News show "48 Hours". This is from the article:

The CBS News program “48 Hours” in 1993 devoted an hour long program to what it called his prolific filing of frivolous lawsuits. He has filed so many lawsuits that a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court without preliminary approval.

Mr. Martin came to the attention of the Times when Fox News had him as a guest on a supposed "documentary". The article points out that many of the anti-Obama rumors on the Internet go back to Martin and an article that he wrote back in 2004. Of course, Fox News and its bloviators like Sean Hannity don't tell their viewers about Mr. Martin's background. If you know anyone who has sent you anti-Obama emails, you might want to send a link to the Times article to them.

New York Times Survey Finds McCain Seen as "Typical Republican"

This is the lead paragraph of a story from the New York Times dated September 17, 2008:

Despite an intense effort to distance himself from the way his party has done business in Washington, Senator John McCain is seen by voters as far less likely to bring change to Washington than Senator Barack Obama. He is widely viewed as a “typical Republican” who would continue or expand President Bush’s policies, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The graph above is from the Times article and you can see a bigger version of the graph by clicking on it. The whole Times article can be found here.

CBS Poll Shows that Uncommitted Voters Aren't Paying Much Attention

CBS and the New York Times released a poll recently that showed that both Obama's foreign trip in July and McCain's high-profile ads weren't having much impact on the presidential race. The poll showed the same results as one taken before both of those events. In the latest poll, 45% backed Obama, 39% backed McCain and 13% were undecided. Those July poll results were the same as the June results.

One explanation might be found in the following paragraph from the CBS News article on the poll:

Uncommitted Voters:

CBS News re-interviewed voters who said they were uncommitted, including those who had a candidate but said their minds could change, when we first spoke with them in a CBS News/New York Times poll in mid-July. In the July poll, that was about 36 percent of all registered voters.

The most recent round of interviews suggest that these uncommitted voters remain largely up for grabs.

Seven in ten remain uncommitted. And while a quarter of this group now say they have made a commitment to a candidate that they don’t think will change before the election, about as many as a month ago don’t have a candidate choice at all yet.

This group seems to have become less interested in the campaign since last month. When asked in mid-July how much attention they’d been paying to the 2008 campaign generally, 45 percent said they’d paid a lot. When asked in this poll how much attention they’d been paying in the last few weeks, only 18 percent reported paying a lot of attention.

What a lot of political junkies forget is that most Americans aren't political junkies. They don't really follow politics all that closely. They don't get up and read the latest poll results on websites like www.pollster.com; they don't read political blogs; and they don't follow the presidential campaign like sports fans do their favorite team.

There used to be a belief that Americans didn't start paying attention to political campaigns until after Labor Day. The CBS poll seems to bear that out. It is a human trait not to make decisions until you have to make them. For a lot of Americans, that means making the decision on who to vote for much closer to the election.

Clinton Campaign Doesn't Know How to Effectively Attack Obama

The New York Times has an interesting piece up on its website dated February 21, 2008 about the difficulty that the Clinton campaign has in effectively attacking Obama. The article points out that every major line of attack, especially the attack that is he is too inexperienced to be president, has fallen flat. Some of her advisors want Clinton to be more aggressive, but the problem is that such tactics increase her negatives as well as his negatives.

At the end of the article, the writer points out that McCain's advisors are having somewhat the same problem with Obama. Here is an interesting quote that ends the article:

“I think it’s the difference between their party and our party,” said Robert M. Duncan, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. “They have a more liberal constituency. And the country is center-right.”

“It comes down to the issues,” Mr. Duncan said. “I honestly believe this: I can’t remember a better contrast for us between our candidate and the Democratic candidates during my lifetime.”

This guy Duncan is right in that there is a very clear distinction between Clinton and Obama in a lot of ways. Race, age, position on the war, position on trade, just to name a few. Unfortunately for him, we think the distinctions favor Obama, but, hey, if Obama gets the nomination, we will see in November.

Is Obama Attacking Clinton's Health Care Plan with Right-Wing Tactics?

A lot of commentators think so, including Paul Krugman of the New York Times. According to experts, Clinton's health care plan, by calling for mandated coverage, would cover millions more Americans than Obama's plan, which, except for children, does not mandate coverage for all Americans.

This is how Krugman puts it in his February 4th column:

But as I’ve tried to explain in previous columns, there really is a big difference between the candidates’ approaches. And new research, just released, confirms what I’ve been saying: the difference between the plans could well be the difference between achieving universal health coverage — a key progressive goal — and falling far short.

Specifically, new estimates say that a plan resembling Mrs. Clinton’s would cover almost twice as many of those now uninsured as a plan resembling Mr. Obama’s — at only slightly higher cost.

Krugman explains that last comment by later citing in his column to a study by a MIT professor:

Mr. Gruber finds that a plan without mandates, broadly resembling the Obama plan, would cover 23 million of those currently uninsured, at a taxpayer cost of $102 billion per year. An otherwise identical plan with mandates would cover 45 million of the uninsured — essentially everyone — at a taxpayer cost of $124 billion. Over all, the Obama-type plan would cost $4,400 per newly insured person, the Clinton-type plan only $2,700.

That doesn’t look like a trivial difference to me. One plan achieves more or less universal coverage; the other, although it costs more than 80 percent as much, covers only about half of those currently uninsured.

Further, Obama attacks Clinton's plan using right-wing style language attacking Clinton's plan on the issue of mandates. Krugman compares this to the infamous Harry and Louise ads of the 1990s that were created by the insurance industry:

You see, the Obama campaign has demonized the idea of mandates — most recently in a scare-tactics mailer sent to voters that bears a striking resemblance to the “Harry and Louise” ads run by the insurance lobby in 1993, ads that helped undermine our last chance at getting universal health care.

What Krugman worries about is that even if Obama later decides that there should be mandates, his campaign's rhetoric against mandates will be used to defeat such a plan in Congress.

Obama's supporters like to claim that he practices a cleaner, more progressive form of politics, but using right-wing scare tactics against Clinton's health care plan doesn't strike us as particularly progressive.

The Questions Exit Polls Don't Ask

Have you ever wondered why you never hear about the percentage of evangelical voters who vote Democratic? Think about it. You hear all the time about what percentage of Republicans voters are evangelical Christians, but never a discussion about what percentage are Democratic. That's because, according to this NY Times article, the exist polls don't ask that question.

This is a quote from the article:

If you want to know what percentage of voters in the Republican caucuses and primaries described themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians — and whom they voted for — exit polls will tell you. If you want to know what percentage of voters in the Democratic caucuses and primaries consider themselves born-again or evangelical Christians, well, sorry. No one knows.

No one knows because the exit polls did not ask

Here's why they don't ask:

Let’s be clear. Exit polls cannot ask about everything. The questionnaires handed voters hurrying away from polling places cannot be any longer than two sides of a single sheet of paper. Pollsters have to make choices. And representatives of ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, NBC News and The Associated Press, who have formed the National Election Pool that has conducted state and national exit polls since 2003, have good reason to be tight-lipped about what goes into making those choices.

Interestingly enough both progressive evangelical Christians and Howard Dean are raising the point that since exit polls don't seek this information, the media doesn't cover the story of evangelical Democrats. This leads to the situation where most people think that Christians, especially evangelical Christians, only support Republicans.

This, of course, is not true. According to the CNN exit poll for the 2004 election, 23% of 2004 voters said that they were evangelical voters. Of those, 21% voted for John Kerry. Since there were over 112 million Americans voting, 21% of voters represented a lot of voters, indeed over 21 million of them.

This lack of balance in reporting voting by evangelicals may result from more than just a lack of space on a questionnaire. My guess is that very few reporters who cover national politics, or their editors, know many evangelical Christians. Therefore, given the attention that the Republican Party pays to evangelical Christians, it is easy for them to assume that evangelical Democrats don't exist.

News coverage represents the decisions that are made by reporters, editors, and publishers. Those decisions are governed by the background that these decision makers bring to the process. If their background is such that evangelical Christians are all lumped together as Republicans, their decisions will reflect that fact.

The problem isn't that America is diverse, the problem is that decision makers in the news industry may not be diverse, not only racially, but culturally.

Iraqi Defense Minister Wants US in Iraq Until 2018

The Iraq Defense Minister said yesterday in Washington that he envisions the US in Iraq until 2018. He doesn't believe that his country will be able to handle internal security until 2009 to 2012 and will not be able to defend its borders until 2018 to 2020. These remarks need to be jumped on by Democratic candidates running for President.

In the past Bubble-Boy has gotten away with mouthing platitudes like "When the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." Platitudes that were designed to sound tough, but avoid actually telling the American people how long their sons and daughters were expected to be in Iraq. Now, thanks to the honesty of the Iraq Defense Minister, we know what this Administration's plan is for Iraq. Its plan is that American troops stay in Iraq for another decade.

It is time for Democrats to engage the Republicans on this issue. The choice is pretty clear. We can be in Iraq for 10 more years while the Iraqis fight among themselves or we can set deadlines and get out. We can't control what the Iraqis do, we can only control what we do.

If Bubble-Boy and the Duck Hunter would have told the American people back in 2003 that we would lose at least 4,000 American troops in Iraq, spend at least half a trillion dollars, and be tied up in Iraq for 15 years, there is no way that the American public would have supported this war. Of course, we weren't told that. Instead we were told that we had to worry about mushroom clouds over our country.

Right now, according to a recent CBS/New York Times poll, only 3% of Americans would support having large numbers of American troops stay in Iraq longer than five years. Only 10% would support having large numbers of American troops in Iraq for two to five years. Given those numbers, there's no way that Americans will buy into BB's 10 year plan.

New York Times Explains the Iowa Caucus System

This may come as a surprise, given all the media attention to the Iowa caucuses, but the caucuses tonight don't actually elect any delegates to the Democratic national convention. No, what they are doing tonight is selecting delegates to a bigger convention which then selects delegates to the state convention which then selects delegates to the national convention. Confused? This graphic spells it out. Needless to say, this is one screwed up system.

NY Times Economic Writer on Clinton/Obama Differences

A New York Times economic writer lays out what he believes is the essential difference between the Clinton and Obama approaches to the economy. He calls them right of John Edwards, but well to the left of the Republican candidates. He summarizes the difference this way:

The easiest way to describe Senator Clinton’s philosophy is to say that she believes in the promise of narrowly tailored government policies, like focused tax cuts. She has more faith that government can do what it sets out to do, which is a traditionally liberal view. Yet she also subscribes to the conservative idea that people respond rationally to financial incentives.

Senator Obama’s ideas, on the other hand, draw heavily on behavioral economics, a left-leaning academic movement that has challenged traditional neoclassical economics over the last few decades. Behavioral economists consider an abiding faith in rationality to be wishful thinking. To Mr. Obama, a simpler program — one less likely to confuse people — is often a smarter program.

The article then goes on to point out that the Clinton approach was used by her husband in the nineties in expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. This program was a tailored program aimed at the working poor. It was extremely successful and, because it benefits those who are working, avoids the stigma associated with government welfare programs.

The article also argues, however, that the problems facing America's middle classes such as globalization, the coming collapse of the employer linked health care system, and growing income inequality might not be susceptible to an approach based on tax credits and tailored government programs.

Although we would have preferred an article that would compare Edwards' economic view along with Clinton and Obama's, it is a good article and well worth the time.

Media Elites Don't Share Concerns of Ordinary Americans

Why does Maureen Dowd write crap like this, focusing on the personalities of politicians as opposed to their policies? Well, the first reason is that it is a lot easier. If you write stuff like hers, you don't need to do any research, other than occasional Google searches. Another reason is that it pays well. Maureen Dowd makes a lot of money as a columnist for the Times, and then makes more money selling books and has the opportunity to make even more money appearing as a guest lecturer. The most important reason, though, is that Ms. Dowd, like most members of the media elite don't have the same concerns as other Americans.

She makes a good deal of money, she has health insurance, she probably has a good pension, and, since she doesn't have any children, doesn't have to worry about what happens to America after she is gone. What in the world does she have in common with people who are working at relatively low paying jobs, worried about paying for health insurance, and worried about how they are going to support their children? The answer, of course, is not a damn thing.

This is why Ms. Dowd, and other media elites, can sneer at Democratic candidates and spend a great deal of time analyzing their personalities, or their marriages, or how much they did or didn't spend on an haircut. This is why they can write articles that pretend to reveal deep psychological motives of people they have seldom, if ever, met or talked with.

The best thing that could happen to progressive candidates would be for about 75% of the media to lose their jobs so they could see what it is like for the rest of America. Maybe then they would care more about policies and much less about personalities.

NY Times Profile on Mike Huckabee

As readers of this blog know, we have been saying for some time that Mike Huckabee could be the best Republican candidate to run for President in 2008 and, consequently, the worst Republican candidate for the Democrats. This is because of his populist message that blends social conservatism with economic populism. This message is one that could appeal to voters who are conservative on issues such as abortion and gay rights, but back programs such as Medicare, Social Security, and increases in the minimum wage.

In the past a lot of these voters voted for Reagan in 1980 and 1984, but many of them voted for Clinton in 1992 and 1996 because of economic issues. They voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, but voted for Strickland and other state-wide Democrats in 2006. In particular these voters are important for Democrats in the southeastern part of the state, an area that is socially conservative, but needs economic help. It is no cocidence that Governor Ted Stricland comes from that part of the state. Because he came from the part of the state, working class voters who support Democrats on economic issues but disagree with the party's liberal orthodoxy on social issues felt comfortable voting for him.

The New York Times has an article up about Mike Huckabee in which Huckabee is depicted as roiling the Republican establishment by running a populist campaign. Interestingly his principal advisor is Ed Rollins who worked on the Perot campaign in 1992. That campaign, especially in Ohio, was very successful for a third party campaign. Its appeal was built on getting votes from "angry white males" and other so-called Reagan Democrats.

What is ticking off parts of the GOP is that Huckabee is not afraid of attacking the Bush adminisration on foreign policy or how it handled the war in Iraq. He is not afraid of saying that he raised taxes to pay for goverment services such as roads, schools, etc. He is described by Rick Santorum, the former right-wing Senator from Pennslyvania, as a "pairie populist" who would appeal to working class voters in the southwestern part of his state. In short, after years of using such voters to gain power and then screwing them over in favor of giving tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations, the Republican establishment is worried that they are now deciding they want to drive the bus, not just sit in the back. In will be interesting to see what Huckabee does in the Republican primaries.

Will Hillary Clinton be a Drag on Local Dems?

A reader sent us an article that appeared in the New York Times dated December 4, 2007, about how certain freshman House Democrats are concerned that a Clinton nomination will hurt them in their re-election races. Although the article's headline was entitled "Vulnerable Democrats See Fate Tied to Clinton's", the writer only mentioned five Democrats by name. They were Nancy Boyda of Kansas, Zack Space of Ohio, Nick Lampson of Texas, Heath Shuler of North Carolina and Brad Ellsworth of Indiana.

The article focuses on Nancy Boyda of Kansas and what she is doing to make sure she distances herself from Clinton. The article has a great quote by Boyda:

Ms. Boyda, who is trying to establish a political identity as independent, said her intent was simply to show the voters of both parties in her district that she was delivering for them. Of the presidential race, she said: “It is something I have no control over, quite honestly. They will demonize any Democrat who becomes the nominee. I just put my head down and work.”

The Clinton campaign, of course, downplays this concern. The article quotes Harold Wolfson, Communications Director of the Clinton campaign, in the following excerpt:

Advisers to Mrs. Clinton, who has long sought to parry concerns within her party that she is too polarizing, dispute the idea that she could hinder Democratic candidates in Republican districts. They note that New York Democrats gained a net of four House seats in her two Senate elections and that she campaigned actively for House contenders in both.

“Anyone can speculate, but there are a set of facts that tell a very different story,” said Howard Wolfson, communications director for the Clinton campaign. “The actual evidence makes clear that she is an asset in tough districts."

The problem may not be in 2008, but in 2010. In 1992, Bill Clinton won election but didn't get over 50% of the popular vote. The Republicans, led by Bob Dole in the Senate, declared on election night that since he didn't win over 50% of the vote, his election wasn't really legitimate. They then proceeded to block his most popular intiative on health care. The result was that the Democatic turn-out fell in 1994, and the Republicans took control of Congress for 12 years.

The same thing could happen in 2008 and 2010. Clinton could win in 2008 and the Democrats could retain and even increase their majority in Congress. If, however, there wasn't 60 reliable votes in the Senate, the Republicans could block legislation. The result might be a depressed turn-out in 2010 and a Republican come-back in the mid-term elections.

Right now the Republican minority in the Senate is set on a course to force a record number of cloture votes, votes that are designed to end filibusters. When Democrats were in the Senate minority from 2003-2007, the highest number of cloture votes was 58 in both the 1998 and 2000 terms of Congress. At the rate cloture votes were being scheduled in July of 2007, the number for the 2006 term of Congress is projected to be 153.

There is one big difference,though, between then and now and that is that the political make-over of the former states of the Old Confederacy has pretty much been completed at the Federal level. It will be hard for the Republicans to find enough Congressional seats to take back the House in 2010 if they haven't done so in 2008.

Another possibility is that the Democrats could, if they hold on to their Senate majority, force a vote to amend the Senate rules and do away with the filibuster. The Republicans threatened to do so after the 2002 mid-term elections to get more of Bush's radical, right-wing judicial nominees confirmed. The argument was that it would only take 50 votes to change the Senate rules because the Vice-President could break a tie.

Whatever happens, Representative Boyda is correct. Down-ticket Democratic candidates can't control what Republicans do, they can only control what they do and how hard they work. No matter who is the nominee, Republicans will demonize any Democrat who gets the presidential nomination. They have to, because Bubble-Boy has failed to achieve anything other than get the U.S. involved in an endless war in the Middle-East, and run up huge budget deficits.

Frank Rich Column in NYT on Obama

Frank Rich has a very interesting column in the New York Times Sunday, December 2, 2007 edition about Barack Obama's chances to become the Democratic nominee. In the article, Rich points out how the "Beltway media" in D.C. has been mostly wrong about the 2008 campaign. Here is a quote from Rich:

Election year isn’t even here yet, and already most of the first drafts penned by the political press have proved instantly disposable, from Fred Thompson’s irresistible Reaganesque star power to the Family Research Council’s ability to abort the rise of Rudy Giuliani. The biggest Beltway myth so far — that the Clinton campaign is “textbook perfect” and “tightly disciplined” — was surely buried for good by the undisciplined former president’s seemingly panic-driven blunder last week.

Rich is making a very good point. Most of the time the political press does get it wrong. The political press thinks about politics all the time. It's their job. They also have to produce stories all the time. Again, because it's their job. When they produce these stories, however, they are mostly trying to predict the behavior of voters who don't have to make a decision for some time. Consequently, they have a good chance of making bad predications.

The intangible thing that Obama may have going for him is the fact that most Americans are tired of the type of politics they have gotten since the cultural wars of the 1960s. The 60s produced some very bitter struggles over civil rights, the Vietnam War, the role of women in our society, and laid the path for the battle over gay rights.

Consequently, the politics of baby boomers, who grew up in that decade, have been shaped by those same bitter struggles. We have seen that in the troubles of the first two baby-boomer presidents, Clinton and Bush. Each of them has had their own supporters and opponents who seemed determined to fight to the death. Such struggles take a toll on voters' psyches. Voters may be looking for a way to end these battles.

Barack Obama, being the youngest of all the presidential contenders in both parties, is positioned to take advantage of such sentiment, if it exists. If he was to win the Democratic nomination and then go on to win the presidency, the fact that he was born in the 1960s and therefore not shaped by its bitterness would be a big reason why.

"Bush Economy" Heading for a Recession?

The economy is heading toward a recession. New home sales are down 8.5% since July. Prices of new homes have fallen 7.5% from a year ago. Credit is increasingly hard to get for consumers and businesses. All of these are signs that the economy is heading towards a recession.

Ever since Bush's reckless, radical tax cuts, we have heard from his supporters and apologists about how they have helped the economy. Actually, and this is something that presidents of both parties don't want to talk about, but the Federal Reserve Board has more control over the economy than any president. If the Fed makes more money available, it helps both consumers and businesses get loans. They use these loans to buy goods and services, thereby creating more jobs for Americans.

Under Greenspan the Fed basically allowed homeowners to turn their homes into ATM units. Americans borrowed on their equity to finance everything from home remodeling to a new vacation for the grandkids.

Naturally, since Greenspan is a Republican and since Bush is an idiotic Republican, no one thought about overseeing the financial institutions making these loans. As a result, we now have a wave of losses in the billions of dollars from risky loans. Consequently, we see financial institutions, who are apparently led by people who are not real bright given their past history, sharply cutting back on new loans.

If there is a recession, look for three things to happen. One is that Republicans like Bush will push for even more tax cuts under the rationale that we need to "pump" up the economy. Two, Democrats will do even better next year than anticipated. Three, illegal immigration will become even more potent as an issue because of economic insecurity among working class Americans.

Politics is About Personal Relationships as Much as About Philosophy

There is a story in the New York Times dated November 24, 2007, about how a former Marine is organizing western Iowa for Barack Obama. The essential point of the story is that he is trying to develop a network of voters who will recruit other Democratic voters to Obama's cause for the upcoming Democratic caucuses. This is a quote from the article:

The outcome of the Iowa caucuses, a set of 1,781 precinct meetings to take place across the state on Jan. 3, hinges on creating a strong and loyal person-to-person network. Mr. Steele is among the hundreds of Democratic and Republican campaign aides stationed in Iowa responsible for building — and sustaining — those networks throughout the state’s 99 counties.

Most local campaigns don't understand this point: In politics relationships are as important, if not more so, as philosophy in winning elections. People don't go out and work for candidates in local elections because they agree with their philosophy, they go out and work for them because they like them. This is not so true on the national and state level, but is very true on the local level.

People who are thinking about running for office need to work on developing a network of personal relationships they can draw on for their campaigns. It is possible to win local political campaigns without such a network, but it is much easier with such a network.

Will New AG Authorize Criminal Prosecution of Blackwater Employees?

The New York Times reported in an article dated November 13, 2007, that the FBI has concluded that the Blackwater employees who killed 17 civilians on September 16,
2007 were not fired upon by Iraqis before opening fire. Consequently, the FBI's report concludes that at least 14 of the Iraqis were killed without "just cause." Assuming that this report is true, the question becomes whether the Blackwater employees can be successfully prosecuted.

The reason why there is a question about whether the Blackwater employees can be prosecuted is explained by the following paragraph from the article:

"Some lawmakers and legal scholars said the Sept. 16 case dramatized the need to clarify the law governing private armed contractors in a war zone. Workers under contract to the Defense Department are subject to the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, or MEJA, but many, including top State Department officials, contend that the law does not apply to companies like Blackwater that work under contract to other government agencies, including the State Department."

The issue of whether to prosecute will be the call of the new Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey. Prosecutors have an ethical obligation not to bring charges that they don't believe can be successfully prosecuted. Thus, the newly confirmed AG could find himself in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Given the media attention that this event has generated, and given the reported anger in Iraq at the actions of private security contractors like Blackwater, our bet is that he authorizes a criminal prosecution. We wouldn't bet the family farm on it, though, given the fact that the Bush Administration doesn't seem to have a very high regard for the rule of law.

Strickland Endorses Clinton

The New York Times is reporting that Governor Ted Strickland endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. In making this endorsement, Strickland specifically rejected arguments that Clinton was going to hurt down ballot Democrats. Here is a quote from the Times article:

On a conference call with Senator Clinton and reporters, Mr. Strickland repeatedly vouched for Mrs. Clinton’s electability in next November’s general election, an issue that her rivals have tried to raise doubts about.

He also indicated her nomination would not be a drag on congressional and state office candidates; the campaign of one of her rivals, former Senator John Edwards, has argued that Mrs. Clinton’s unpopularity

Readers of this blog know that we posted an entry that raised the issue of whether Clinton would be a liability for down ballot Democrats. Apparently Ted Strickland doesn't think so and he is certainly much more knowledgable than we are about Ohio politics.

Do Republican Presidencies Mean Financial Crisises?

One of the messages that Bubble-Boy and his band of merry right-wing radicals have pushed is the idea that his reckless tax cuts have been good for the economy. Any economic good news is seized on by the Bushies as evidence that their glorious leader's policies have been good for the American economy. They conveniently overlook the growing inequality in America and the fact that the great majority of his tax cuts went to the upper 5% of American households to argue that their fiscal policies do work.

Well, the chickens are coming home to roost as the American economy seems to be moving into a recession. The New York Times had an article up on its website dated November 8, 2007 about the Dow Jones losing over 300 points on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 and how the Chinese are beginning to sell off their tremendous holding of American dollars. This is the money quote, to make a bad pun, from the article about the Chinese decision: “We will favor stronger currencies over weaker ones, and will readjust accordingly,” Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress told a conference in Beijing on Wednesday.

What is apparently driving the down slide in both stocks and the value of the American dollar is the uncertainty over the fallout from the sub prime mortgage crisis. This is the second time since 1980 that there has been a financial crisis during a Republican administration. The first was the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and now we are having the sub prime mortgage crisis of the first decade of the 21st century. Going back further in history we have the recession of the late 1950s under Eisenhower and, of course, the granddaddy of them all, the Great Depression under Hoover.

It is no mystery why there is this correlation between financial crisis and Republican presidential administrations. The Republican Party doesn't believe in government regulation and oversight. It does believe in the power of the marketplace to correct excesses. The market does correct excesses but by the time such excesses show up, the damage done by the correction to millions of Americans is much worse than it had to have been.

Financial diasters such as the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s or the sub prime mortgage crisis of this decade can be avoided. Take, for example, the sub prime mortgage crisis. Most commentators will tell you that a major reason why financial institutions made thousands of bad loans is that they sold the loans to other institutions instead of keeping them in-house. As a result, they didn't have incentives to make good loans and had incentives to make bad loans. Here's a thought: Why not make financial institutions keep the promissory notes for a minimum period, say five years. Such a law would give incentives to banks and other financial institutions to make good loans.

Republicans will say that such a law is an intolerable interference with the marketplace, but isn't such an interference better than having real estate markets collapse across America as thousands of homes go into foreclosure?