wikistan

Krugman column: G.O.P. – Going to Extreme – NYTimes.com.

News organizations have taken notice: suddenly, the takeover of the Republican Party by right-wing extremists has become a story (although many reporters seem determined to pretend that something equivalent is happening to the Democrats. It isn’t.) But why is this happening? And in particular, why is it happening now?

Here are the common ideas from the Tea Party platform:

1. Identify constitutionality of every new law:
2. Reject emissions trading:
3. Demand a balanced federal budget:
4. Simplify the tax system:
5. Audit federal government agencies for constitutionality:
6. Limit annual growth in federal spending:
7. Repeal the health care legislation passed on March 23,
8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above’ Energy Policy
9. Reduce Earmarks:
10. Reduce Taxes:

Which one of these represents an extreme political position?  Is the now stuff of political extremism?

Regarding a supposed “takeover” of mainstream republicanism by radical factions, Krugman is 100% correct it’s not happening on the Left.   Well, technically correct.  It’s just a matter of verb tense.   Since progressives love to think that ‘tomorrow begins today’,  they just need a little lesson in recent history.  It did happen in 2008, when the union-backed, social democrat left muscled its way past the Clintonites in the Democratic primaries.   Such a long time ago!

More:

The right’s answer, of course, is that it’s about outrage over President Obama’s “socialist” policies — like his health care plan, which is, um, more or less identical to the plan Mitt Romney enacted in Massachusetts. Many on the left argue, instead, that it’s about race, the shock of having a black man in the White House — and there’s surely something to that.

I’d like to hear more about Romney’s nationalization of the student lending, automotive, and financial industries but I’m late for lunch.  I do recall recoiling in horror when he designated CO2 as a toxin, threatened entire industries, and installed union bosses as his deputies.

And from the protection of his lofty perch, nobody will ever get to question Krugman’s assurances that, yes indeed, racism is behind all of this popular disgust.

More bleating:

True, that’s not how it was supposed to work. When the economy plunged into crisis, many observers — myself included — expected a political shift to the left. After all, the crisis made nonsense of the right’s markets-know-best, regulation-is-always-bad dogma. In retrospect, however, this was naïve: voters tend to react with their guts, not in response to analytical arguments — and in bad times, the gut reaction of many voters is to move right.

Refreshing that Krugman can man up and admit a mistake or two. He just needs to admit all of them, like his failure to understand the arguments of his critics. The right does have a undeniable ‘market-knows-best’ attitude.  But they do not have a ‘regulation-is-always-bad’ dogma.   Can you identify one influential right winger calling for no regulations on any given topic?

Observing the nature of the financial meltdown in 2008, and its myriad causes, reasonable conclusions can be made that indict the unintended effects of regulation as a primary input.   Acknowledging this does not mean that you’ve somehow crossed the logical point of no return!  Lack of regulatory control in the markets did not cause the crisis–derivatives and mortgage-backed securities are downstream products.   The problem was that these market were the only mechanism able to deal the ever increasing supply of bad housing debt produced and sanctioned by . . . .wait for it. . . . . . . . federal home lending regulations.  The government flooded more and more unfulfillable obligations into the markets and didn’t have any idea that something would eventually break.   What we needed in 2008 was a drastic revamp of our approach to lending and divesting the GSEs.  Instead, we got unions busing protestors to CEO’s homes to protest executive pay on live TV and more regulations against “predatory lenders”.   And the GSEs remain untouched and still asking for more money.

This despite the Treasury being run by Harvard MBAs – go figure!

Economy, Politics

White House Economic Adviser: Jobs Picture is Still Terrible.

Economy

Politico digs deep -DEEP! – to find a quote praising the Obama Administration’s executive pay mandates for bailout corporations:

“We commend the pay czar and the administration for telling the people who crashed the economy that they need to make the same sacrifices main street and real America have been forced to take on as a result of the economic crisis,” said Dan Pedrotty, director of the AFL-CIO Office of Investment. “The American people are fed up with watching Wall Street play by a different set of rules and pretend like the economic crisis which they created is for everyone else to suffer through and not them.”

Could they have quoted a more obvious position?

Economy, Politics czar, executive pay, obama

Cannibalizing blighted real estate, that is.

Here’s a fun, revealing fact:  The cities of Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Detroit, Toledo, Flint, Dayton, Canton have had a total of fifty-seven mayors since 1970*.

All but nine have been Democrats.

Here’s to your future, Rust Belt!

* based on wildy inaccurate and biased Wikipedia information.

All Topics, Economy, Politics Economy, mayors, rust belt

A curious trend considering the legendary quality control institutionalized in non-union Japanese transplants couldn’t possibly have.  Just. Stopped. Working.

It’s like they just started cranking out the lemons.

Some recent examples:  Toyota’s Prius has crap headlights. Honda’s Insight sucks.   But Obama’s people’s car Chevy’s Volt?  It’s gonna kick both their asses.

Don’t think for a minute that the hard earned record of marketplace success enjoyed by Japanese automakers over the decades– witnessed by millions of objective consumers — is immune from the extraordinary influence of a political-media machine mostly concerned with propagating the worst kinds of marketplace manipulation in the name of “Change”.

Economy, Media, Politics, SocioFascism chrysler, gm, honda, obama, toyota, union

Let’s get this shit done before the mid-terms!

The Congress-critters are lining up right now to vote on this without reading it, just like TARP.

Economy, SocioFascism health care, obama

127,510.  Still down 29% or something from the year before but it’s not 12,751.  Or zero.

Economy chevy

I once gave a speech that this was the wrong nationalization at the wrong time.

Economy gmac, Iraq

The federal government is in the process of seizing ownership of two major American corporations with the sole intent of dividing its equity between the government and one of its largest political donors.

But it was Bush who trampled the Constitution with “illegal” wiretaps and, in other matters, fired his own employees for political reasons.

What constituency did Bush reward with wiretapping?

Where are the consitutional critics who not only blasted Bush’s “overreach” on legal (and congressionally-approved) warrantless wiretaps but went as far to call for his impeachment over the matter?

The silence is strange.  After all, the wiretapping program had received congressional support, and although parts of the program were rebuked by the courts as unconstitutional, the current administration not only supports the concept but employs it as deemed necessary in the global fight against terror.

How possibly can we view the Chrysler takeover as a constituional action?

Cliff Asness couldn’t have described the Chrysler annexation more clearly:

“The President’s attempted diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union that delivers money and votes for him. Why is he not calling on his party to “sacrifice” some campaign contributions, and votes, for the greater good? Shaking down lenders for the benefit of political donors is recycled corruption and abuse of power.”

Of course, we’re told, it’s NOT socialism.  It’s NOT fascism.  So what the hell is happening here?

Economy, SocioFascism chrysler, hedge fund, obama

The scraps of a dead car company are being pulled apart by statist bullies and anxious creditors with legal standing.

In the end, it seems like there was more of an urge to save union jobs than to save a struggling company.

Economy, SocioFascism chrysler, uaw

Vodkapundit remarks on the curious, um, remarks from the New York Times regarding the massive economic stimulus in early 1930’s Germany, otherwise known as GigantArschficker.*

(The NYT link requires a user name and password, which I will most certainly not provide).

* best available German translation

Economy, SocioFascism nyt, obama

The budget alternative includes proposals for a (much) flatter income tax system, a tax holiday for capital gains and estate tax, and a lower corporate income tax rate.

Economy, Politics budget, Economy, gop

Shy, reclusive billionaire George Soros denies any wrongdoing after his pet project is fined after crashing Hungarian financial markets:

In a statement Friday, Hungarian-born Soros responded he had been informed of the fine but insisted that he was not involved in the transactions.

“I no longer control the Soros Fund Management’s operations, I retired last year and now only oversee the transactions to do with my private account,” he said in the statement, published by Hungarian news agency MTI.

He’s  just a peaceful, content old man tending to his tomato plants.  And by tomato plants I mean strategic financial and propaganda campaigns purposed with enshrining the international left.

Soros has expressed regret, but what was done was done.  It’s in the past now.  Shall we move on?

Economy, SocioFascism financial, hungary, markets, soros

Although, he  just “ran” GM by running its CEO out of office, the President . . is . . .just. . not . . that. . . into. . . running car companies. But that doesn’t mean he discards the idea of using the production of automobiles to remake America.   The ground work is getting laid here for something big. . .

Also from today’s speech:

Obama addressed industry workers, a crucial constituency, saying that while there may be more pain to come, “I will fight for you. You are the reason I am here today.  I will fight to bring the methods and resources of production under your control and, together, we will produce something so essential to our being it will elevate us.”

I might have added the last sentence but what I think he’s getting at is this is the time to rally around remaking a once great company (which, for all of its warts, would have been a sustainable organization if not for the worldwide credit crisis) into a visionary enterprise destined to lift unionized American workers out of their grim situation. It’s about the next ‘peoples car’, and who will control its production, consumption, and usage.

"Nice little Chevy Volt"

America will make the Chevy Volt in its own image, with its own sweat and blood.

Economy, SocioFascism chevy, Economy, gm, obama, uaw, volt, vw

I *might* have made that last part up, but it’s a real likelihood.  What are the chances that our government, with all of its good, green intentions, unwittingly stunts the growth of beauties like this?

Economy tesla

What?  They want to ban black cars?  That’s insane. .. .

When we first heard of this issue, an internal debate immediately began as to whether this might be an elaborate early April Fool’s joke, but it isn’t. Read through CARB’s complete Cool Cars Standards and Test Procedures here for more.

Rule #1. No matter what time of the year, assume anything coming from the California Air Resource Board is a joke.  Madness.

Well, it would make sense for California to adopt Florida’s white car with tinted windows approach.

Economy autoblog, carb

What a difference a couple of months make.  Who really controls the language anymore?

Economy, SocioFascism mccain, obama

Krauthammer nails Obama on his odiously hypocritical position against pursuing further scientific study of human cloning.

If additional research in embyronic stem cells is soooo necessary because it keeps the door open to usable results (and it very well may be), why shouldn’t we also pursue the potential benefits garnered by human cloning research?

Politics involved?  You don’t say.

All Topics, Economy, Politics clone, cloning, obama, stem cell

Ford leading the way with negotiating lower labor rates.

Economy ford, uaw

It is interesting to note that the chapter in Obama’s federal budget titled “Inheriting a Legacy of Misplaced Priorities” is actually a call for . . . misplacing priorities.  Only Mao could have said it better.

More to the point, Henninger notes an explicit vow of fiscal retribution against the upper echelon of taxpayers.

Economy, Politics budget, Economy, obama, porkulus, stimulus

Obama making “clarifications”.  Obama blames former President Bush—not for setting him up with a huge “socialist” deficit–but for making it necessary to enact much larger “socialist” deficit.

Economy, Politics, SocioFascism obama, socialist

Much is being made of Geithner’s inability to not only send the right messages to soothe America’s private sector, but to also staff his own department. Could it be that nobody wants to jump onboard his sinking ship?

Sure, the Treasury spins that it’s already filled more of its political appointees than previous administrations, but is that any measure of success?

Economy, Politics geithner, obama

German incentive leads to 21% jump in new car sales while other nations struggled in the fourth quarter.

What’s the secret? Germany has recently instituted a new set of incentives that pays motorists €2,500 to scrap their old car in exchange for a new, more fuel efficient model. Domestic manufacturers reaped the largest rewards, posting a 63% gain in February orders.

Should America try the same?  Sounds like a win-win:  we boost domestic auto sales, preserving hundreds of thousands of quasi-public servant union jobs, thus sustaining a huge failing sector of our economy.  Oh, and at the (nowadays) modest cost of billions of dollars. Yes we can!

Economy

Why does the Dow keep falling?

Let’s all play a little blame game.   What or who can we blame next for the continuing drop in the Dow. . .

Credit default swaps? Already done.

Phil Gramm? Already done.

Deregulation?  Bullshit, but check.

Wall Street bankers?  This one got us huge mileage.  Better lay off a little since we might need a few of them to “come to their senses” and help out next week if things don’t shape up.

Bush–we did inherit his deficit (which in turn contained our first TARP plan).   Let’s keep that one handy again.  Maybe release some unflattering memos or something. . . .Keep our left flank distracted for a while.

The WSJ has a better answer to this stupid madness. Let’s blame the guy in charge who’s actually talking down the economy and proposing strong medicine measures historically proven to further harm it:

So what has happened in the last two months? The economy has received no great new outside shock. Exchange rates and other prices have been stable, and there are no security crises of note. The reality of a sharp recession has been known and built into stock prices since last year’s fourth quarter.

What is new is the unveiling of Mr. Obama’s agenda and his approach to governance. Every new President has a finite stock of capital — financial and political — to deploy, and amid recession Mr. Obama has more than most. But one negative revelation has been the way he has chosen to spend his scarce resources on income transfers rather than growth promotion. Most of his “stimulus” spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest.

It’s on your watch now, dawg.  You’re a man.  Take-the-hit.

Economy, Politics, SocioFascism

via Samizdata

What did you do during the recession, Daddy?

I installed solar panels and wind turbines.

If only Franklin Roosevelt had thought to put millions of Americans to work during the Depression doing make-work jobs that were gee-whiz futuristic…. Oh, that’s right. He did. And it didn’t work then, either. But this time is different, you know.

- Nick Gillespie, at Reason’s Hit & Run blog.

Economy, Environment, Politics, SocioFascism green collar