Stop Me Before I Vote Again

The New York times today reports that Richardson will traveling on an Air Force plane to North Korea in order to browbeat Strange Leader Kim Jong Il about his nuclear program. It's official, it's not official, he's an envoy, he's a private citizen -- nobody understands it, but whether he manages to achieve anything or not it will help the Republicans in '06: if he succeeds Bush will take the credit and if he fails Bush will blame the stupid Democrat.

Richardson's fellow Democrats are presumably gnashing their teeth over this stunt, which may possibly bolster Richardson's chances of being the nominee in '08 at the expense of the party's prospects in '06.

But nobody ever gets excommunicated from the Democratic Party, for anything. Will Rogers' comment that "I don't belong to an organized political party -- I'm a Democrat" is true in a much deeper sense than he intended. The Democratic Party isn't really a party at all, in the sense of being an organization with a political program and some modicum of party discipline. Rather, it is a loose collective of individual opportunists, an ad hoc camel train of unconnected entrepreneurs temporarily banded together against desert marauders, owing each other no loyalty and in fact perfectly willing to stab each other in the back first chance they get.

People who write software have an old joke: when you tell them about something strange their program is doing, they reply, That's not a bug, it's a feature! Even so with the Democrats: their lack of principle, their not being about anything, is not a flaw; rather, it's their essence, the very life blood and raison d'etre of the outfit.

After Tuesday's offyear elections the voice of the electorate will be heard to say, "Time for all levels of gummint to put on their sensible shoes" -- or at least that's how they'll hear it up at DNC/DLC headquarters.

Just imagine the triumphant braying -- "Fellow citizens! The nightmare is ending... the 5 year elephant stampede is rounding its last bend and unstoppably headed for the cliff edge. The bums have just smashed a little too much of the nation's sacred crockery. The people through the ballot box will .... errr... in fact already are... calling 'Halt! Halt you brutes! We've had enough of your big brass banding. Bring back the lute and flute group!' "

Amazing, eh ???

Time for the pawl in the ratchet to fall into place. For every time there is a reason, to every cause a season -- or something like that. After all this nonstop big big flappy-eared fun and frolics, it's time to cool our jets from the Beltway to the green zone. Yup, here and abroad too, "it's cleanup time" -- a role that suits the self-confining subaltern jackass party to the last syllable of its recorded wonkery.

And just you poor folks watch -- all the big neoliberal Bullwinkles of the party will want in on the mission. From now till Christmas time they'll bob and bounce across your screens -- no screen wide enough to contain their gassed-up, ballooning self-importance. The bigger the rack, the bigger the stride, each one trying to look more sensible and stately then the last.

Let's pass over the obvious Senate hams (other than my pal Grack's pinup girl, our relentless holiday queen of tarts, lady Clintaxe). They're all burnt-out cases. What will prove really au courant, really so this year and holiday fashion, are not all these stale stentorian gas horns, but instead all those milktoast, sunbelt dembo governors we've got, stretching from Virginia to the Rio Grande.

Their cry will be some colorless variant on the legendary Camelot punch, one part 90 proof long-aged donkey nonsense to three parts citizen sacrifice -- and oh yeah, a sprinkle of GooGoo nutmeg.

So brace yourselves for endless choruses of their hook line: "steady ways and prudent hands can fix what ails this great great country of ours."

Looming in the wings as next chief of fiscal surgery? -- who but Wall Street's own blended and bonded Bob Rubin, of course! And can old Doc Bob ever carve a mean budget.

Of course as usual, he'll leave the suturing to nobody special -- "I do the hacking, not the hackery."

Here's Buckley:

Time to hand over this sorry enchilada to Hillary and Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden and Charlie Rangel and Harry Reid, who has the gift of being able to induce sleep in 30 seconds.

Democrats today are free to criticize our efforts in Iraq without having to offer constructive alternatives. But put them in the majority, and they’ll suddenly have to put up or shut up. Let them defund the war and implement an immediate pullout if that’s what they really think we should do.... Every Republican I know thinks Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are the best things they have going for them.

... a Republican loss of one or both houses of Congress would turn power over to the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.... [But] sometimes a loss for the Republican Party is a gain for conservatives. Often, a little taste of liberal Democrats in power is enough to remind the voters what they don’t like about liberal Democrats and to focus the minds of Republicans on the principles that really matter. That’s why the conservative movement has grown fastest during those periods when things seemed darkest, such as during the Carter administration and the first two years of the Clinton White House.

Lots of other interesting things to ponder in these essays too (if you skip all the poseur snuffbox-juggling about Edmund Burke and Adam Smith -- even poor James II comes in for some hard words!). For one thing, some of these guys are really against the Iraq war, and have harsher things to say about it than you will hear from any Democrat. E.g. Buckley:

... the tidy theories of a group who call themselves “neo-conservative” (not one of whom, to my knowledge, has ever worn a military uniform), have thus far: de-stabilized the Middle East; alienated the world community from the United States; empowered North Korea, Iran, and Syria; unleashed sectarian carnage in Iraq ... cost the lives of 2,600 Americans, and the limbs, eyes, organs, spinal cords of another 15,000—with no end in sight. But not to worry: Democracy is on the march in the Middle East. Just ask Hamas. And the neocons—bright people, all—are now clamoring, “On to Tehran!”

The other thing that's really interesting, and that offers us all an object lesson, is that these ideologues are quite prepared to see their party lose if they think it would be better for their cause in the long run. When was the last time you encountered a "progressive" Democrat who could do as much? Imagine the Tartarean howls of execration that would greet, say, a Kosnik who advanced a similar argument.

Paranoia can be a lot of fun, actually, if you take it in the right spirit. Here's the professional paranoid's take on the Scooter Libby sentence-commutation "scandal".

The PP thinks this is a little parting gift from Bushco to the incoming Hunger Chancellor -- whoops, I mean the imminent Democratic administration, whether headed by a light-brown -- a very light-brown -- chap from the Midwest or a certain semi-female person (also from the Midwest, oddly enough).

The point of the gift is to enable the incoming administration to be even more outrageously reactionary and imperial than it would otherwise have been -- because, of course, that suits the donor class no matter what kind of ears the administration might have.

Here's how it works, according to the PP:

The Republicans know it's Brand-X's turn next time around. They're probably not even too upset about it. Opposition has its own pleasures and opportunities, and while some third-level bureaucrats may be turned out to wander for four or eight years in the well-padded wilderness of the private sector, they won't starve -- and really, even if they did, who cares about them anyway?

So the Donks get first place at the trough next time around. Well, okay, that's the game. But we -- and that means us pachyderms, and them donks -- really need to lower public expectations. The supposed opposition gets in, and if we both don't watch out together, people might expect something to change. Can't have that! So... let's do something that will make the second string team look good no matter what they do, or don't do. -- I've got it! A pardon! Brilliant! So outrageous, it'll lower the bar for the Hunger-Chancellors well below sea level!

It worked for Carter, didn't it? At least for one term. And come to think of it, what's wrong with that scenario?

Thanks to Flagrancy for the reminder.

House Roll Call

Senate Roll Call

I was surprised to see Joe Lieberman's name in the "Nay" column. Wasn't it evil enough?

I have an inclination towards conspiracism. So I often have to remind myself that people who are wildly irresponsible economic misanthropes, and deeply sympathetic to the needs of people just like themselves, will reflexively do things that look a lot like deliberately locking the family in the house before setting fire to it -- in this case, the cynically named "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005". Source Watch has a good overview of it. The credit card people have wanted this for a long time, well before the credit bubble/derivative singularity engineered to replace the Dotcom bubble. In defense of my conspiracism, a culture of enduring spite, greed and predatory practices, with privileged access to the political structure, can produce things that look a lot like timely, cunning malevolence. But this is a hedge they've desired for a while now.

U.S. bankruptcy filings were 38 percent higher last month than in July 2006 and are 50 percent higher for all 2007 than they were a year ago, according to data complied by the private research company Jupiter eSource LLC.

Almost 307,000 bankruptcies were filed in the first seven months of this year, the company said Friday, citing U.S. Bankruptcy Court records obtained online.

Business reorganizations accounted for 3,400 filings, a 20 percent rise from the same period in 2006 for corporate Chapter 11 cases. Individual bankruptcies accounted for most of the rest.

The 50 percent growth this year is partly a result of a low rate of filings in early 2006 under a new, more restrictive law. Bankruptcies first rose as individuals rushed to beat the October 2005 deadline, then dropped. They rose steadily in 2006.

If this year's pace continues, new bankruptcies in 2007 will total almost 790,000, 34 percent more than last year.

Link

If anyone wants to fact check the story, the stats are available.

Using the scale I borrowed from Owen, I'd rate the legislation at 5 lantoses in conception and six in action, with the potential for eight and half if the economy gets really bad. The full ten lantoses are reserved for things like privatizing Social Security. It's bad legislation. Though the Democratic aisle crossers in the House and Senate probably couldn't have prevented its passage, the large number in each chamber nevertheless carries nasty weight well past that point.

Aisle crossers make revision or even repeal of bad laws very difficult. Outside the CEO class, there's no group of people more inclinded to persevering in folly than lifelong policitians. They're protected by their party infrastructure and crony networks. They face no consequences. The worst (pdf) of them are supremely confident and add petty ego to the mix. The Democrats always defend their aisle crossers, whose stubborness is proportionate to their inability to consider things thoughtfully and whose obligations to voters end the day after elections. Any other group of human beings could at least discuss where things went awry and take whatever small notice that they had. In the status quo, it will take something like a miracle to even get this modified. The bare minimum outside a miracle is putting a dent in their comfortable patterns, i.e. third party runs and/or spoiling.

You can have any kind of healthcare program you want from the Democrats, provided it's Romneycare, which itself owes a debt to the cynical and aptly named COBRA.

From Wikipedia:

COBRA does not, unlike other federal statutes such as the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), require the employer to pay for the cost of providing continuation coverage; instead it allows employees and their dependents to maintain coverage at their own expense by paying the full cost of the premium the employer previously paid, plus up to a 2% administrative charge (150% for the disability extension). Employees and dependents can also opt for a lesser form of coverage, e.g., to choose continuation coverage under a plan that only covers the employee, but not his or her dependents, or that only provides medical and hospitalization coverage and does not pay for dental work, if those options are available to covered employees. Employees and dependents lose coverage if they fail to make timely payments of these premiums. Employers are required to inform employees and dependents upon loss of coverage, in writing, by at least fifteen days before the coverage ceases.

I picked that for the smug wording, not for accuracy. It doesn't take any close reading to spot the problems with "allowing" people to take on the full weight of their misfortunes, plus the necessary incentivizing penalty surchages, or with easing the responsibilities of the people who play a major role in causing the misfortunes in the first place. It's welfare queen heaven. The premise is that good people are never reckless enough to lose their jobs. They take personal responsibility! People who get sick in order to weasel out of examining the character flaws that cost them jobs are bad people, and they should pay for it.

The ideology of Romneycare is that health insurance is available, but people are often too stupid and feckless to acquire it and insurers need more help in providing it. They all need a push. Cost containment will come from the miracle of consumer choice and magically removing the structural impediments that inflict insurers. Presumably people will plan their cancers and heart attacks accordingly.

The latest version of Hillarycare will pay for health care by

"removing hidden taxes, stressing prevention and a focus on efficiency and modernization, the plan will improve quality and lower costs."

"will be required to get and keep insurance in a system where insurance is affordable and accessible."

"receive an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan."

"the way Americans live, eat, work, and play have real implications for their health and wellness. The Obama health plan will require coverage of essential clinical preventive services such as cancer screenings and smoking cessation programs in all federally supported health plans."

"all parts of our society must share responsibility. Edwards will make a historic effort to make insurance affordable and easy to obtain through new regional Health Care Markets, tax credits, and expanded Medicaid and children's health insurance programs. In return, employers must contribute their fair share and individuals must take responsibility for themselves and their families by signing up for an affordable plan."

It's not as though there's no support for a real plan. It's got a 2/3 majority. Employer-based plans are foundering. The big automakers are begging for federal relief and forcing their employees into taking on all the costs themselves. Pooled risk is easy to understand. The loss of "competitiveness" caused by skyrocketing health costs has even been noticed by the CFR. The dimmest lights in the technocratic cosmos understand. So why don't the Democrats?

The whole corporate limited liability elite has a nice long high-unemployment program awaiting us. No matter how we turn at the polls -- we mere job smurfing rubes are in for a shit slide.

Both the Orthrian mastheads take Wall Street's dacoit state $700 bill whale of a bail to be a fiscal contraint of titanic(*) proportions -- one that will stymie spending well into whatever next administration we the weebles choose.

Policy translation: no full employment deficit for Uncle Sam next year -- no plunging dollar, no trade rebalancing, no forced march toward green production, no come-home-kids world peace crusade. Instead: misery on Main Street, stagnation in the trade gap, and old glory spilling (and dripping) blood somewhere or else -- "over there".

This earth-rounding financial blight will bite us all and bite deep. Our choice come November? The next Herbert Hoover or the next Grover Cleveland.

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*Double meaning intended.

The stuffed shirt shown above, Ramsay Macdonald, played the false progressive job-class face of Anglo-Saxon reaction in the inter-war years -- and played the bigger fool right up to his deathbed.

Leader of a Labor Party that thrived at the polls on Tory bankers' intrigues, he never was his own man, even as prime minister, and come the crash -- why, he was as tight-assed and at-sea as any City banker: a prisoner of misapplied Calvinist virtues and the received banalities of Victorian political economy.

Ponder this: Oby One as another such face of prudential folly.

P.S. :

This goo-goo prig, Philip Snowden, played Bobby Rubin to Mac-Ram's working man's Hoover.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- IBM employees being laid off in North America now have an alternative to joining the growing ranks of the unemployed - work for the company abroad.

[cut]

Only "satisfactory performers" who are "willing to work on local terms and conditions" should pursue the jobs, the document says. IBM would not immediately confirm if it means that the workers would be paid local wages and would be subject to local labor laws.

CNN

One need only look at the compensation and stock options available to IBM's CEO and Chairman Sam Palmisano to grow angry: his salary alone is $1.8 million. On Feb. 1st he sold 55,253 shares worth $5,103,167. Let's see him go to India and work for local pay.

Tech-Ex

Workers at IBM say the technology company launched a round of layoffs Wednesday, a day after announcing a boost in profits. A union official estimated the cuts at 2,900, but said an exact count isn't available.

On Tuesday, IBM reported a 12 percent increase in earnings in the fourth quarter of 2008 over the same period in 2007.

The next day, Alliance@IBM, an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America, posted news that job cuts had begun. Laid-off workers began leaving comments about their own statuses on the Alliance@IBM Web site. "I was whacked yesterday," wrote one, who signed the comment as Lexington. "29 years 10 months."

Doug Shelton, an IBM spokesman, declined to say how many people were being let go. "We are not communicating that information," he said.

NPR

International Business Machines Corp.'s chief executive, Samuel Palmisano, advised the Obama transition team last month that $30 billion in government investments in expanding broadband access, computerizing health-care records and improving the electrical grid could create more than 900,000 U.S. jobs.

The IBM presentation came in response to a November request from the Obama advisers for an analysis of the job-creation impact of information-technology investments. IBM said that Mr. Palmisano made the presentation in a conference call with transition team members including Carol Browner, who has been named the White House coordinator of energy and climate policy, and Julius Genachowski, a top technology adviser for the president-elect.

WSJ

There's a certain inevitability to that last. In the quest for really horrible advice from cretinous IT CEOs, Obama was handicapped. Carly Fiorina, Hewlett Packard's quondam destroyer, had already been snapped up by McCain. Poor old Democrats. Always having to settle for second best.

What you need: a Lamartine-quoting party-line-Communist ex-convict yellow journalist who habitually punched people out for no apparent reason.

You’re asking yourself: “Does Emerson really believe that a Communist or a thuggish populist demagogue would better serve the American people than the Congressman I actually do have?”

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m willing to bet 10-to-1 that your Congressman is effectively worthless.

Neither Bernard nor Shoemaker would put up with any of the Obama / Blue Dog / Republican bullshit. Either of them would have the good sense to scream bloody murder about what they saw happening. But your own Congressman will almost certainly do nothing much at all about all this.

Trollblog

Obama said in an interview with CBS television network's "60 Minutes" program that if Geithner tried to quit, he would tell him, "Sorry buddy, you've still got the job."

Reuters

Fantasy meets bromide, falls in love... The passive aggressive misdirection of that little morality play is very cute. But it's utter bullshit. Any bets on when he goes under the bus? Someone has to take the fall for putting the Great Looting into overdrive. Geithner is perfect. He's a socially retarded little yuppie, deeply unlikable, with a dork's delight hairdo and a face made for graceless victimhood. In hindsight, he was a perfect pick for Treasury. He's got a bus quotient of 9 on a scale of 10. The psychodrama of his departure appeases the Brand Democrat team leaders, takes the focus off Summers and gives Obama breathing room.