One of our trolls yesterday was spamming every thread claiming I was ignoring the excellent news of the jobs report (because I hate Obama or I am a libertarian or something- like most trolls, his gibberish is indecipherable). So here you go, rejoice with the good news:
U.S. employers added 18,000 workers in June, the fewest in nine months, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly climbed, indicating a struggling labor market.
The increase in payrolls followed a 25,000 gain that was less than half the rise initially estimated, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey called for a June gain of 105,000. The unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent, the highest level this year. Hiring by companies, which excludes government agencies, was the weakest since May 2010.
Stocks plunged and Treasuries rose as the absence of stronger job growth caused earnings to stagnate, posing a threat to consumer spending that accounts for 70 percent of the economy. The second-quarter slowdown in hiring underscores a recovery that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said is “frustratingly slow.”
It could be that I am sober and not an insane crazy person, but I’m not seeing why we should be breaking out the champagne.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
So there will be none left for the GOP to confiscate when they ride this shit all the way to blockbuster gains in 2012 because the country has decided that the Dems blocking that god-touched holy austerity is the reason for this all?
Sentient Puddle
If not the champagne, how about the whiskey? Those numbers call for at least some kind of alcohol.
Evolved Deep Southerner
Do they still make Aqua Velva?
Villago Delenda Est
John, don’t you know black is white, up is down, wet is dry?
I mean, really. Break out the bubbly! Weakest private sector jobs gain in 9 months! What’s not to celebrate?
Troll fail, again.
Hill Dweller
We’re fucked.
LittlePig
Most of the losses were in government jobs. Now, Republicans have told us government jobs aren’t real jobs. So why did the unemployment rate go up?
It’s unpossible.
LittlePig
Do they still make Aqua Velva?
Yep, but the imitation vanilla extract is a much better buy.
Derf
Atta boy you predictable douche bag. Just focus on the bad news and what your Koch funded Cato institute supportedbuddy Greenwald tells you to think.
dr. bloor
Everybody relax. The Deficit Reduction Negotiations (Now with Bipartisany Goodness!) will take care of all this joblessness.
cathyx
Evolved Deep Southerner:
I thought aqua velva was an aftershave lotion. No?
Dave
Well, this is good news for Republicans since this is exactly what they want.
Strandedvandal
Here’s a stick Derf! Here boy! Gogetit!
Dennis SGMM
@LittlePig
I’m a Listerine man myself.
arguingwithsignposts
Meanwhile, Grover fucking Norquist tells Minnesota to suck it.
In the pantheon of evil fucks that are ruining this country, there may be some more evil than GFN, but he’s definitely in the top 3.
Scott
Derf is a Republican. Or a firebagger. Same difference.
Derf
How’s about these stories. Why no links to these stories John Galt Cole?
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/private-payrolls-rise-by-157000-in-june-adp-2011-07-07
http://business.financialpost.com/2011/07/07/stars-finally-beginning-to-align-for-u-s-economy/
http://journalgazette.net/article/20110706/APA/1107060818
And here is a little piece on all the so called ‘progressives’ in the media. John Galt Cole is too puny to get a mention but he most certainly belongs on this list.
http://theobamadiary.com/2011/07/07/curious-3/
Sad Iron
Silly John Cole–don’t you see, this is all part of Obama’s long game, his 50-dimensional apathetic chess (or whatever that is). See, he wants the jobs report to worsen–don’t you get it? Once it gets even worse, then we can drop bombs on it and make it all better. Is that so hard to understand?
lonesomerobot
@LittlePig
And real vanilla is much better, often over 50 proof.
Zifnab
@LittlePeg:
Taxes and regulations. They’re crushing us, dontchaknow.
lonesomerobot
when it comes to screen names, I find DERF quite appropriate. DERF.
DERF DERF.
DERFIE DERF.
there might have been a point, but all I hear is DERF.
boss bitch
this is what some on the left sound like when it comes to Democrats.
JGabriel
Bloomberg:
Correct me if I’m wrong (as if anyone needs to ask that here), but isn’t this how a second dip begins?
.
lonesomerobot
Wasn’t derf a character from Thundercats?
Oh sorry, that’s right, it was Snarf. But it could almost be interchangeable I bet.
The Moar You Know
Screw champagne, and forget whiskey, with numbers like that soon enough we’ll all be scrounging for cans of Lysol. I hear the huff is really something else. From a friend, of course. His name is Fred. When he’s really high on the wack, he calls himself “Derf”. Clever, huh?
4tehlulz
Because every job loss brings us closer to the rEVOLution.
Paul/Krugman 2010
JGabriel
@Derf:
What was the good news?
.
The Dangerman
Sad thing is that Big Business, in general, is full to overflowing with cash; I suspect they will start hiring right after Bachmann is inaugurated and cuts the capital gains tax to zero and the corporate taxes (which no one pays anyway) to near zero.
gbear
arguingwithsignposts@14:
I saw that story this morning while looking for news about when the shutdown might end. I couldn’t go read it. I didn’t want to get that much more pissed off and depressed this morning. Fucking assholes Norquist and Pawlenty.
Also, the state’s biggest state park got nearly flattened by straight line winds earlier in the week, damaging lots of historic buildings. It’s not the only park to get storm or vandalism damage since the shutdown began. what a fucking mess.
boss bitch
too much logic, thinking….brain freezing.
in defense of Derf, he would be pushing today’s job numbers if your statement is true.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@boss bitch #20:
The difference here is that we just had a compromise turned down earlier that was slanted about 85% GOP wants to 15% Dem wants. Both sides consider that a compromise too far. Which side has the more legit gripe there?
FoxinSocks
Two days ago, I called my Senators to complain about their focus on the deficit and not jobs.
The conversation went like this:
Hi, my name is JOBS! Er, I mean my name is Fox in Socks, and I’m concerned about JOBS! And I’d like to talk to you about JOBS! Have you heard about the lack of JOBS? What are you doing to create more JOBS? JOBS JOBS JOBBIE JOBBIE JOOOOOOOOB! JOB JOB INFRASTRUCTURE STIMULUS GET OFF YOUR BUTTS I KNOW GOP BUT…JOB JOB JOB JOB!
I don’t know if it did any good, but I felt a bit better afterwards. And I got to say, “jobs” lots and lots of times.
LittlePig
isn’t this how a second dip begins?
Not with a bang, but with a Derf?
On a more serious note, sure it is, the question is how deep. I keep hearing all about uncertainty being the problem with our Galtian overlords, so hopefully the default and corresponding market crash will clear up that uncertainty and they’ll be able to make some jobs happen. Jobs like ‘food scavenger’ and ‘keeper of the fire’, that sort of thing.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@The Dangerman #26:
Just don’t go looking if you’re already unemployed by then. You know, since companies just can’t hire those stinking unemployed wretches. After all, they’re unemployed for a REASON, you know. Can’t start hiring them even when the confidence fairies return, you never know just how badly they’ll destroy the economy then!!
JGabriel
4tehlulz:
Krugman/Stiglitz (or vice versa) 2012: The Keynes Party.
Slogan: “We actually know what to do. We got prizes and everything!”
.
lonesomerobot
Yesterday, Zillow informed me that because one of my neighbors foreclosed recently, my home value fell 12.5%, basically overnight.
I see the value of the site to some extent, but at this point they’re causing me economic damage by publishing their “zestimate” of my home value. To add to the BS, they claim that the value range of my home has been from $29k to over $200k. How in the hell is that accurate?
But rates are low! We’re sure to find a buyer who won’t want to slaughter us on the price!
A bit OT but still hopefully in the same ballpark…
aisce
@ jgabriel
that almost nobody blames the president for this mess?
or maybe just that 18,000 is still greater than zero? that’s, uh…that’s something, i suppose.
boss bitch
Boner Blinks:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/boehner-failing-to-raise-the-debt-limit-puts-economy-in-great-jeopardy.php?ref=fpa
This is an opportunity for the Progressive Caucus.
ruemara
Between the job cuts at the State level and hiring freezes in the private sector, it’s killing us. There are some driblets of good news. Like this one on auto manufacture hiring, and there’ve been more jobs in my field, but the amount of people looking for work makes it almost like bailing out the ocean. And Orange Boner is blaming it on the stimulus and taxes.
jonas
This is unpossible. I was told that if we extended the Bush tax cuts, rich people would be less “uncertain” and give everybody jobs. What could possible have gone wrong? I don’t know what to believe anymore!
AAA Bonds
Hey, I’m with you, John. But I have to admit the angry Obamaniac schtick is a deft new development here under the bridges.
Mnemosyne
IIRC, the private job market has been chugging along pretty well — even with this crappy report, the private sector still added 57,000 jobs last month.
What’s dragging us down is the local and state governments that keep laying people off — that’s how we ended up with a net gain of only 18,000 once you added up the number of private jobs added and subtracted the number of public jobs lost (39,000).
Steve Benen has several good posts on this today, including this one.
For once, it’s not the greedy Masters of the Universe who are the problem here — it’s the local and state governments laying off public employees that’s dragging us down.
lonesomerobot
This calls for the ultimate stimulus program: World War 3! I’m sure if we poke a stick in Syria’s eye a bit more and finally quit dallying on those ground troops for Libya we can find plenty of ways to generate jobs.
AAA Bonds
My favorite quote on the Boehner blab so far comes from TPM:
I suppose I should get comfortable with policy being made on the golf course, a friendly game of poker between millionaires, but I doubt I ever will.
AAA Bonds
My favorite quote on the Boehner blab so far comes from TPM:
I suppose I should get comfortable with policy being made on the golf course, a friendly game of poke-her between millionaires with results rolled out simultaneously by Coke and Pepsi, but I doubt I ever will.
lacp
Well, YOU might not see anything to write home about, but this is certainly good news for John McCain!
cathyx
And why do you think that the state and local governments are laying off public employees? Could the tax base be shrinking? Maybe all the layoffs in the private sector, moving jobs overseas, and paying lower wages are having an effect on the amount of taxes the state and local governments collect.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mnemosyne:
Not quite. It’s the local and state governments who are enthralled by Grover Fucking Norquist and the anti-tax zealots, who are led by the MOTU. It’s an evil circle jerk.
gbear
OT. The last space shuttle is lifting off in about 5 minutes. TPM has a link to a live feed.
Just Some Fuckhead
John, how do you think frontpaging doom & gloom stuff like this makes the Confidence Fairy feel? You don’t care, I bet. But you should care because the admin is betting on the Confidence Fairy to turn things around.
Xecky Gilchrist
Indeed, a minor gain is worse than a loss, and if the job gain had been greater the Republicans would never have claimed that their way would have done even better.
Despair!
AAA Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
What’s even worse? Imagine what those 57,000 private sector jobs probably look like in wages/spending power compared to the 39,000 public sector jobs lost.
We’re shifting people from cautious spending into survival mode, on top of everything else.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
*sigh*
I just…good fuck all, it’s just…
Why even bother anymore? It seems like its literally impossible to drag anyone in this fucking country leftward anymore, because all it takes is one fucking soundbite and suddenly the pendulum is shotputted way back to the right. People simply fucking hate hippies too goddamn much to care.
And the more you try, not only do you seem to fail even more spectacularly, but the more blame for the fuck-ups of the other side you get to shoulder while they reap the entire benefits of the fuck-up and go on to succeed even wilder than expected!
Fuck it, there is no more fucking hope. It’s done. Fuck it all, I give up. This country doesn’t just not want me, it fucking wants me and the other hippies dead it seems like. So why fucking bother fighting back when you just lose even worse the more you fucking try.
shano
All job gains were at McDonalds.
Now we can pay even more for health care in teh US.
fasteddie9318
The good news is, once we finally stop wasting money on programs to aid the Peasant, the Confidence Fairy will magically make our Galtian Overlords start hiring people again. But not so many people that unemployment would drop below 9%, which is the new normal and you peasants are just going to have to suck on it.
/genesperlingidiocy
@Mnemosyne:
Some of that can be chalked up to the maliciousness of various Republican governors and legislators, but some of it is also due to the fact that those local and state governments have seen their tax revenues collapse. If the Masters of the Universe would deign to pay their taxes, let alone to start hiring unemployed folks who could themselves then start paying taxes, some of that pressure would be released.
Maude
@arguingwithsignposts:
Here in NJ, there’s nothing to say. Christie is tanking the state.
Anya
I wonder if most of the losses in government jobs are related to wingnut led states and their lay-off bonanza.
Having said that, the President made a colossal mistake, when he focused on the debt craziness, instead of pushing congress to focus on job creation.
Xenos
‘Derf’ is low German for ‘village’, one of which an idiot is missing.
Dennis SGMM
C’mon people; turn those frowns upside down! There is nothing wrong with this country that a fine, bi-partisan compromise that includes reducing capital gains taxes to zero, corporate taxes the same, and ending the supply of government money to the bloodsucking aged and infirm won’t cure. I’m going to party like this is the same America that I knew for the first fifty years of my life.
Citizen_X
Sigh. And here I was hoping that Der had been shamed into silence by the actual jobs report.
Jim C.
@56 Anya:
I’d argue that the Republicans forced his hand on that one. He kind of HAD to focus on the deficit BECAUSE of the craziness they were inflicting.
bourbaki
@Mnemosyne:
Considering the economy has to add more than 100,000 jobs a month (see here for instance) just to keep up with the growth of the working age population, 57 k ain’t much to write home about.
fasteddie9318
You elect a technocrat, this is what you’d get. He’d rather reach a Grand Bargain on this than try to rally popular support for a jobs program, so he’s lost the message on jobs and his Grand Bargain is probably going to be far right of center.
Davis X. Machina
Sometimes it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.
This is America. If I don’t get to have a union, or health care, or a defined-benefit pension, or protection against arbitrary dismissal, or any of the things many if not most public service employees have, then you don’t either. If my job sucks, yours has to suck. If I’m out of work altogether, you have to lose your job, too.
Don’t think of it as 39,000 public sector jobs lost, think of it as 39,000 overcompensated, unaccountable, pension-hunting civil service drones having to suck it!
Hard times make people mean. Even in good times we already have enough mean to serve as the base of a major political party. Somebody with actual political savvy in that party is going to figure out how to turn crab-bucket syndrome into political gold.
Anybody less of a dick than Christ Christie could have waltzed — waltzed — into the White House as ‘the hard hittin’ general we need to manage America’s new war — the war on public employees’.
fasteddie9318
Wait, so Cole is criticizing the president for not going farther to the left on jobs at the behest of the Kochs? Batshit troll is batshit?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
you know, if heisenberg had read political blogs, and was trying to plot the loci of their participants and their leading lights, on the ever changing political spectrum graph, based on day to day posts, issues, allegations, and plain ole trollery, he would have produced something very much like the uncertainty principle on weed.
my opinion is that much time and trollery can be saved with a simple here it is, here is what i think, and fuck you if you think the inconsistencies are meaningful, because really they are besides the point, and way too fucking meta to be worthwhile.
that said, jobs suck and no one cares. jobs would fix our economy in a jif, and no one cares.
k-thug represent!
krug life!
lonesomerobot
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Ya know, I really want to tell you to back away from the ledge. But I’ve basically been feeling the same way about things. There are too many people in this country who would rather believe the mythology than the reality. I just visited Joplin, MO last week (I have relatives there). One of the most exasperating things to me was seeing the preponderance of “God loves Joplin” signs. Really? So I guess if God didn’t love Joplin, more than 40% of the town would be gone now? And of course, God chose the part of town where about 48% of the residents had no property insurance of any kind (this stat comes from my Aunt who is doing relief work there).
I’ve got a backup plan, fortunately (dual citizen), and I’m seriously considering getting the heck outta here. But that’s not too much solace for me if all of my family are still here if the economy does collapse and we end up with Bachmann/Perry 2012.
Xantar
Wait. I’m confused. How was Obama supposed to NOT focus on the debt craziness? The debt ceiling vote is a real thing, and the Republicans really are threatening to vote for a default. That does require some attention.
And Obama does talk about jobs. A lot. It took up half of his introductory statement at the recent press conference, in fact. The media’s just not reporting on it because DEBT FIGHT is more interesting.
Which is not to say that maybe he should have better messaging (somehow), but at some point I think some responsibility has to be laid at Republicans and at other Democrats who can’t stay on message.
Elizabelle
Anya:
I agree. I think he’s vulnerable for just that reason.
fasteddie9318
Has he been doing anything other than talking about them?
lonesomerobot
I think maybe you mean deficit craziness? Which was of course the big mistake.
Elizabelle
The Atlantis just blasted off. Dang. Too slow to get back to the laptop. Missed it.
Re jobs report. This looks like a great day to stay off the internet.
Going to do something positive.
Southern Beale
We’re doooomed …
Dammitall I wished someone in power took this shit seriously.
Legalize
Meanwhile, Bohener admitted today that the debt ceiling has to be raised in order to avert disaster. But he can’t get it done in the House.
In sum:
Has to be done. Has to.
but
He can’t get it done. Can’t do it.
So, what the fuck is his job?
Dennis SGMM
The president made a colossal mistake when he failed to focus on jobs at the time that he took office. Much good and good will from the electorate could have flowed from that.
ruemara
Fasteddie, what would you have him do then? Is there a presidential thing he can do to create a job that does not require the House & the Senate?
LorenzoStDuBois
This is actually really good news.
Cheap labor is and has been the goal of our most powerful factions, from Greenspan to Bernanke, from McConnell to Reid, From Romney to Obama. This is awesome for corporations. The politicians that will be thrown out will be set for life in their corporate sinecures.
This is part of the plan. Corporations are on cloud 9. Everybody who counts is winning.
FlipYrWhig
@ Jim C.: IMHO he’s actually trying to mix concern for the long-term deficit with a case for short-term stimulus that could yield decent bang for the buck. He actually _does_ talk about that, and tour sites that have to do with it, and make proposals (like the payroll tax holiday). But the frame of that discussion has been entirely about “cuts,” from all parties and across all media coverage both professional and amateur. It’s a frustrating chicken-and-egg problem, probably best captured by that Chris Cilizza thing about how some of Obama’s recent remarks on economic matters weren’t “newsworthy.” I think he talks about this stuff, in the right ways, but nobody listens; then when that happens he tries to finesse it by talking about the stuff that people _do_ listen to, but then they only listen to that.
I wish we were having a discussion more like this: “If you say you want to make cuts, there are probably many areas where we can save money IN THE LONG TERM, but here and now the much more pressing issue is pumping money into the economy IN THE SHORT TERM, because people are hurting, businesses are hesitating, and under those circumstances ONLY THE GOVERNMENT CAN PICK UP THE SLACK. People who want to talk about cuts can make a plan for long-term savings; we’ll look to phase those in when the crisis is over. But not now.”
Nemesis
Boss Bitch
Thanks for the chuckle. The Prog Caucus is irrelevent. They have done nothing but whine for years. Their latest whine: “Obama put SS cuts on the table while our backs were turned.” My ass he did. The Progs are nothing more than profressional crybabies. Their biggest accomplishments are hiding behind well-crafted theatre while getting rolled.
In fact, getting rolled is apparently preferable to them, rather than actually doing something meaningful. They prefer the “getting rolled” meme over the “we’re impotent”” meme.
Linda Featheringill
Snarxist #52
A-fucking-men!
Citizen_X
Then what were the GM bailout and the stimulus (you know, some of his first actions) about?
More like accusations of being the new Stalin Bolshevik Fascist Commie Czar.
ETA: Yes, those moves weren’t sufficient. My point is “sufficient” wouldn’t have saved him from the ZOMG Soshulizt! tag.
fasteddie9318
No, of course there isn’t. But as bad as the media continues to be, they haven’t landed entirely on the “zOMG DEFICIT DEFICIT DEFICIT WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT JOBS” storyline entirely based on their own stupidity and Republican chicanery. The lack of a consistent jobs message (*cough*Plouffe*cough*Sperling*cough*) out of the White House has helped. They pay periodic lip service to the problem but there’s been no real push to get public support.
fasteddie9318
The only way they stop getting rolled is to start withholding their votes, at which point they’ll be castigated as purity trolls. The Progressive Caucus is basically in no-win territory.
srv
@ The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Real change has never come without violence or a depression.
@ Legalize
Without jobs, we will have more teabbagers in the House in 2012.
fasteddie9318
The tag only works because unemployment is still sky high and they’ve lost the messaging on job creation. He needs to quit trying to be Lincoln and start acting a little more like Truman and attack Congress for its failure to act. He’s starting to use that kind of language here and there, but not well and not often enough in my opinion.
Nemesis
Snarksist
I, also too, have reached the same conclusion.
Americans are not about to hit the streets with pitchforks in hand. The opposition is just to effective and too well organized.
My kids are dual citizens and Im outta here in 10 years, or earlier.
handsmile
The Snarxist…(#52)
Re your final paragraph: proper etiquette dictates that if you plagiarize from “The Big Lebowski” you must give credit. ):
Reading this righteous profanity-riddled screed made me imagine it being intoned by John Goodman as “Walter.”
And anything or anyone who brings that movie into mind deserves my thanks! “The Big Lebowski” is always good for what ails one.
EDIT: Emoticon fail. Should be: :) :)
murbella
You are not a libertarian.
You are a useful idiot for libertarians.
You frontpage libertarians and give them a platform.
ruemara
except, fasteddie, he talks about jobs every time he’s at the mic. Whitehouse.gov has clips of every speech. I guess you think that they should just pull a Palin and when asked a question that isn’t about jobs, just start talking about jobs. Ok, I was hoping you might have a bit more of a plan.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@handsmile #86:
…eh? Which scene did I crib from? Because if I did end up cribbing from Liebowski, it was purely unintentional. The only parts from it that I make a point to quote all involve Quintana.
sukabi
if no one has already posted it, (I haven’t read all the comments) here is a set of graphs that demonstrates how bad the latest report actually is… we’re in new territory folks, more of the unemployed are leaving the workforce than are finding jobs… something that doesn’t happen in ‘recoveries’…
Jim C.
@FlipYrWhig
Nice post. Agree with it for the most part.
Southern Beale
Well, on the bright side the concern over June’s sucky job numbers proves what we’ve all been saying, which is that no one gives a shit about the deficit.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Southern Beale #92:
Except those folks who insist that the sucky job numbers are inherently tied and caused by the deficit.
Which includes about 95% of anybody with any actual voice in the goddamn matter.
fasteddie9318
Yeah, I realize what with the electoral mandate I have to do something about the economy it’s a real disappointment that I don’t have it all figured out. There’s no plan to be followed that gets around the fact that the Republicans will block any new effort at job creation, and the President’s lip service to the issue doesn’t do as much to direct attention as the fact that the overwhelming focus of this administration since at least the midterms has been on austerity and deficits, not jobs. The fact that the President’s top political adviser is downplaying the electoral impact of the job market and one of his top economic advisers is out there basically spewing Republican Confidence Fairy/structural unemployment gibberish talking points, these things don’t help either.
The Moar You Know
David X. Machina: Hard to acknowledge, but Americans are mean fuckers even in the best of times. What has been cropping up recently frankly beggars belief, and I’m not some wide-eyed youngster.
Dennis SGMM
Stump speech:
“When I took office in January of 2009 unemployment stood at a little over seven-and-a-half-percent. Thanks to careful economic stewardship and bi-partisan compromise, unemployment now stands at a little over nine percent. A vote for me is a guarantee that this kind of progress on the jobs front will continue.”
Can you say “landslide”?
OzoneR
Except NASA apparently.
handsmile
The Snarxist…(#89)
Oh no, oh no…I was just joking (a feeble one, perhaps). Your post’s fulmination simply brought to my mind several scenes in the movie where Walter splutters with outrage.
And just to be perfectly clear: in absolutely no way do I mean to discredit or diminish the sentiments you expressed, ones I share all too often. I often find “Lebowski” to be the right kind of “beverage” on such occasions.
OzoneR
suddenly the rhetoric doesn’t mean much.
Suffern ACE
Yep. We like to think that it’s just the wingnuts. Our moderates is also nutty on this. The modnut brigade of the democratic party whose policies we’ve been following as Democrats since 1994 doesn’t really have much of an idea or will to do anything either. But they look good on TV and are willing to not sponsor the bill to provide government funding to the Black Lesbian Enviornmentalist Cooperative Center in your hometown so they get fundraising dollars and votes, but no one questions their sanity or lack of ideas.
rickstersherpa
When I consider the alternatives, I will be voting for the President next fall, but without a lot of enthusiasm. And it is not just this President, but the last Democratic President as well who seems in to be in thrall of the Confidence Fairy, the Invisible Bond Viglantes, and the neat ideas of 1990s “New Economy,” about who needs dirty manufacturing when we have financial engineering. See Dean Baker and President Clinton and Mrs. O’Leary. As for our current President’s fondness for Gene Sperling’s lame ideas, Mike Konzal deconstructs their origins.
http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/why-is-the-obama-team-embracing-hooverism/
OzoneR
The mind of the left
1.) Obama needs to do something about jobs
2.) Can’t, won’t get through Congress
3.) Well he needs to least talk about jobs
4.) He does
5.) Well he needs to do more than talk
Go back to Step 1 and repeat.
Can’t imagine why people like me liberal’s idea of refusing to negotiate with Republicans and this get nothing done won’t work.
Elizabelle
Maybe the job numbers will get Obama to go with Plan B or C, and propose government spending on infrastructure to create some jobs?
Clearly going with a Wall Street-centric approach did not work, because Wall Street short-term health is independent of Main Street.
He can’t double-down on patience, because it will take more than that to get out of our double dip recession slash Depression with some safety nets.
OzoneR
He did that, high speed rail, Republican candidates for governor ran against it in 2010, many won and rejected the spending.
murbella
@JGabriel
we are leaving Iraq in December….getting kicked out actually.
and the A-stan drawdown has started.
that is 30k + 47k troops that will be coming home right away, and the other 70k from A-stan will come home after Obama is re-elected in Nov. 2012.
that is a great good thing.
the US is spending 100 million taxpayer dollahs per day on Bush’s foreign adventure of missionary democracy.
At least that bleed will stop.
What do you think will happen when the America public realizes that 4.4 trillion dollars went down a rathole?
Because we are getting NOTHING out of Iraq and AfPak but the undying enmity of dar ul islam.
Muqtada and Allawi want to sue us.
cleek
@Legalize:
Obstructor In Chief
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
I too wish this were the discussion we were having. But it is not. In fact, the president and his team have went out of their way to reinforce the meme that government can’t create jobs. The president is repeatedly on record saying that, Austan Goolsbee as well as others.
Citizen Alan
Nemesis @ 85
Don’t delay, don’t hesitate. I started making plans to leave in 2004. But my mother cried for hours at Christmas and told me if I moved to another country it would literally kill my father (he was 75 at the time and in the middle of a health crisis). Now, I’m 42, have health issues of my own, narrowly fought off bankruptcy last year by tapping every bit of my savings and retirement, and am utterly without hope for the future. At this moment, barring a miracle, my retirement plan is now “die young.”
The Republicans are filthy animals who want to kill us all, and the Democrats are too weak and cowardly to do anything to save us. Flee while you can.
Corner Stone
@boss bitch:
bitch, wtf are you even babbling about anymore?
WyldPirate
@sukabi:
This was interesting from your link, sukabi:
and here is what Obama said on the “Today Show” the other day (via Yglesias):
Goolsbee allegedly said this today:
Basically, Obama and his current and former economic team are fucking clueless…in addition to being fucking helpless if one is to believe the Opologists here.
WyldPirate
@Corner Stone:
Probably ranting and demanding the YOU, personally, provide an economic plan. And that you should just STFU and quit being mean to President Barry cause he can’t do anything because of the mean old Congress. Also, too.
Elizabelle
insult to injury: last line of the NYTimes alert on jobs numbers:
I would argue that we never hit an “official end” to the downturn.
Just more proof that we have a double-track economy,.
Citizen Alan
ruemara @ 88
Actually, that sounds like a pretty good plan to me! Just demagogue the fuck out of the issue until the the media is forced to pay attention to it, if only to wonder why the President cares more about jobs than the piddly things they think are important. I’d like to see a Presidential spokesman whose been confronted by some inane question ask point blank: “Why do you care about that more than jobs? You know, other than the fact that you HAVE a job and don’t care about anyone else?”
stuckinred
Citizen Alan
I get it, you are Woody Allen!
Mnemosyne
True, and it’s not like the budget issues states are having are a brand-new problem that just popped up this year. They’re a result of a 30-year-long campaign by anti-tax zealots to force states to have “balanced budgets,” which is one of those things that sounds great when you’re doing well economically, but that bites you in the ass if there’s any kind of slowdown.
I’m more making the point that the employment problem right now is not because private companies are not hiring, which is what someone was claiming. They are hiring. Even the anemic numbers this month are in the black.
The problem AT THE MOMENT is that government layoffs are dragging the whole job market down, and there’s very little states can do because most of them stupidly decided to require “balanced budgets” because Grover fucking Norquist and his pals whispered in their ears and convinced them it was a great idea.
Yes, corporations have too much power, rich people need to pay more taxes, etc. etc. But those are long-term problems and even if we hiked the federal income tax rates by 10%, it still wouldn’t solve the immediate employment problem.
Legalize
@52 The Snarxist:
I’m getting to that point, myself. I don’t think this country wants to be helped. Its people are smart enough to say out loud what they want, but too stupid to actually pick the people who could make it happen. This is repeatedly demonstrated election cycle after election cycle.
pablo
John,
I’ve noticed you tend to wait until the results come in before you pitch a fit. That seems to be a character flaw.
Citizen Alan
Qua?
Jay in Oregon
Lonesome Robot @20:
Personally, I think he’s off by a letter. Then this would be so much more fitting:
http://derp.memebase.com/
dr. bloor
Time to change that “black Jimmy Carter” tag to “black Herbert Hoover..”
WyldPirate
@FlipYrWhig:
Then tell me, Flip, WTF is Obama on this austerity kick and yacking about “belt-tightening” when what you refer to is classic Keynesian economics?
Shit, we would be better off borrowing billions at the dirt cheap interest rates now and paying unemployed people to dig holes and fill them back up.
Each dollar borrowed would generate $1.40 circulating through the economy. This is WTF Krugman, Atrios Delong and other economists have been screaming about for two goddamned years.
and yeah, I know, the mean old Republicans are sabotaging things purposefully.
But instead–as Krugman points out–what Obama has done by playing the dupe and buying into the “debt is the most important problem evah” is:
Obama is shooting himself in his own goddamned foot.
fasteddie9318
Well clearly there’s nothing Obama can do about anything jobs-related; he can’t get anything substantive done, which may very well be the truth since the Republicans seem to have located the fail switch on the federal government, and talking doesn’t work either. Even different talking, like explicitly attacking a do-nothing Congress instead of talking in wistful generalities about how swell it would be if we can has more jobs, would undoubtedly fail because the Republicans, the media, and vast swaths of the populace are against him.
Just to satisfy my curiosity: the folks who are resigned to this don’t actually believe that Obama is going to be reelected anyway, do they? I don’t care what kind of clown parade the GOP puts on between now and next November, he ain’t winning reelection with 9%+ unemployment.
Dennis SGMM
@WyldPirate
Because none of those things were in place before Obama took office, right? The utter fucking cluelessness and tone-deafness of that statement gives me the George H.W. Bush-and-the-Supermarket-Scanner Blues.
WyldPirate
@dr. bloor:
This would be funny if it weren’t so tragic and so fucking true.
catclub
The Dangerman @ 27 “I suspect they will start hiring right after Bachmann is inaugurated and cuts the capital gains tax to zero and the corporate taxes (which no one pays anyway) to near zero.”
Nope. They will start extracting profits and hiding them in swiss banks. The whole lesson for me of high tax rates is that they force businesses to invest in their companies RATHER THAN extract profits. It is also why charitable donations go down when tax rates go down. People have more moeny to be selfish with, and they are just that.
OzoneR
actually no, he’s right. Employers kept their employees because they had no reason to fire them, until the recession hit, now they have no reason to hire them back.
murbella
Missionaria Protectiva, Primary Teaching
srv
@ fasteddie9318
He doesn’t care about jobs. He’s just going to adopt whatever meme comes up and toe some ‘moderate’ path. He’s totally paralyzed, can’t do anything, and if you don’t have some detailed proposal then STFU.
If he wants a second term (I don’t think he really does), or do anything about jobs, then he should be asking where Congress’ Job Plan is, and ignoring the debt talk. Let the media go crazy. That’s what you want the voters thinking about in Nov. 2012. I know all the pragmatists here are willing to walk the road to hell and live with a decade more of teabaggers paper cuts, but at some point you have to realize there’s no there there.
There is zero hope for Obama or democrats if the meme of deficits and jobs remain intertwined. That meme has to be broken, and it has to be broken NOW. We are going to have huge deficits with or w/o jobs programs for a decade or more. Obama’s (and y’alls) path is like believing in some anti-Keynesian fairey. It doesn’t exist, it never will, and you will never solve anything on that path. You aren’t being pragmatic, you literally are crazy people.
I’ve got a parachute, me and mine will find a way to survive either way. Most of you will have a much harder time. If you really believe Obama can’t do anything, then I sincerely suggest you get the fuck off this blog and start retraining, move to depression-resistant/economically diverse areas or start looking for another country.
OzoneR
He tried that with Paul Ryan’s speech and after the media spent a day complaining it was too shrill, they tossed it aside like it never happened. He tried it by comparing Republicans to his daughters and was called a dick, he tried it with his town hall and was told it was “news-less”
I think he will get reelected actually because there’s no way unemployment will be at 9 percent in Nov. 2012 unless there’s another tsunami-like disaster or if we default and go through a long debt crisis. The latter of which might work in his favor.
That said, I won’t be surprised if he doesn’t, but regardless, he’s completely ineffective at challenging any type of policy narrative, always was and always will be. Unless he has a Democratic Congress, which is the focus for me in 2012, he’s gonna be playing on Republican territory and he’s going to have to surrender to a lot of their rhetoric just to be taken seriously.
Unless the public chooses otherwise.
fasteddie9318
I’m sorry, but when was this magical time in the past when employers kept paying people just because they had no reason not to pay them? Is this seriously what we’re going with?
ruemara
You think it’s wrong for me to ask what the plan is? You’re saying that the President needs to do, not talk. OK, give me something he can do. I’ll back you up, I’ll write, call, whatever. It’s not snark to see if there is something we can galvanize around that may have a good impact. Jesus, quit acting as if asking for more information about what else is possible is the start of WW III. It could also be a start to something worthwhile.
OzoneR
he can’t break it, he can’t be taken seriously by those who need to hear it.
Someone can probably break it, but it’s not him.
James E. Powell
Are you suggesting that our Galtian overlords are not compassionate, conservative rulers?
OzoneR
up until late 2008. I was one of those employees. When I got laid off after budget cuts, they told me “Your position isn’t necessary, we kept you on because you do good work” and my old company has never rehired, even though its profitable now.
yes, because it’s partly true.
MattR
@fasteddie9318: This is what drives me mad about supply side economics. Businesses hire employees when it is profitable to do so. Giving them extra money in the form of tax breaks changes neither that decision making process nor the profitability of hiring the next employee.
El Cid
Here’s loony crazy firebagger Hillary obsessive Paul Krugman refusing to give credit to Obama for this improvement.
He is a stupid stupid-head who just wants to shout mean things and have a left-wing blogospheric freakout and never say anything about how people are finally doing better.
He’s also awful because he says stuff he thinks is true and supported by evidence even when it isn’t politically possible, which is the real standard of what’s true and responsible, and not all this just thinking about stuff.
Just like the evil John Cole who never sees anything positive about our final economic turnaround.
The business I work for is doing a lot worse these days, but it’s only because I’m a stupid stupid-head and we’re failing to capitalize on the better economy.
I looked up the BLS figures myself and I was so stupid I didn’t even see all the positives, but it always depends on what radical left wing source you pay attention to.
OzoneR
been doing that for over a year.
Mnemosyne
You do realize that the whole “debt ceiling” issue is real, right? That it actually is something that needs to be raised or it will affect the entire global economy because the US will stop paying either its creditors or its citizens?
I wish people would stop conflating “deficit” and “debt.” The debt IS something that has to be dealt with right fucking now or else we’re looking at global depression. The deficit is the thing that can wait. The debt and the deficit are not the same thing.
Linda Featheringill
ruemara #131
The most constructive thing I can think of is government-sponsored building programs:
– infrastructure repair
– actual infrastructure building [trains?]
– modernizing the electrical grid
– actually setting up alternative power “farms”, wind, solar, whatever
Mnemosyne
And for the people who will only listen to Paul Krugman, here’s what he says about the debt:
The debt problem has to be fixed. The deficit is not the debt. The deficit is something else entirely. Please stop using them interchangeably.
Linnaeus
For the folks here feeling hopeless, I can understand that, but one way to try to assuage that feeling (if you’re not doing it already) is do what you can on the local and/or state level of politics. That’s where you create the bench for leadership at the national level, and, frankly, there’s a lot that gets done at the local & state level that does make a difference in people’s lives. Plus the scale of politics means that policy inertia can be overcome more easily – though I know that’s harder to do, relatively speaking, in some places than others.
Sometimes, in my cynical moments, I wonder if this country is simply ungovernable at its current size and with its existing political institutions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not predicting a breakup anytime soon, but the idea of that happening at some point doesn’t strike me as totally silly.
srv
“You do realize that the whole “debt ceiling” issue is real, right? That it actually is something that needs to be raised or it will affect the entire global economy because the US will stop paying either its creditors or its citizens?”
Yep. You do realize this is going to be an argument we have every 9-12 months until somebody calls their bluff. And the more baggers that get in each year, the less of a bluff it will be.
Dennis SGMM
@srv
I’m beginning to suspect that he’d rather be president of Harvard than president of the United States.
@OzoneR:
Because Obama is going to click his Ruby Slippers together three times and summon the Magical Jobs Pony? Granted there are fundamental forces driving joblessness and the president has little control over many of them. He could at least try rather than jumping onto the austerity bandwagon. Why elect someone who mimics Republicans when you can elect the real thing?
fasteddie9318
And so did he, because the media said it was too shrill and we certainly don’t want to offend the media or challenge its conventional wisdom.
Oh noes, thanks for bringing up that time when Some Guy went on a barely-watched cable morning show hosted by Some Republican Guy and called the president a mean name. The PTSD counselors are still heading to the White House daily to try to repair the damage that was done.
And he humbly agreed with them, because we certainly don’t want to offend the media or challenge its conventional wisdom.
You’re right. As long as the Obama White House takes the Beltway media as its grand arbiter of all that is newsworthy and socially acceptable, they’re screwed.
El Cid
It’s not the major priority at the moment, and the best way to address that would be to have people make more money by having jobs and better wages so you could take in more revenue by taxes except now we’ve figured out that tax revenue is inherently evil and it will destroy the economy and by the way we’ve more or less decided in public commentary that budgets only comprise spending and not revenue.
What Democrats need to do is propose a massive public works program based upon building giant statues of John Galt, mountain-sized Confederate flags, city-sized Red Dawn dioramas, life-sized re-enactments of THE SURGE, and so forth.
Yutsano
Last time I checked, the Beltway Media was indeed the grand arbiter for all that is newsworthy and socially acceptable. The Village exists to protect its own interests, and it goes with whoever pays the bills. Which is advertising dollars.
El Cid
Also, I think Obama should propose a program to convert a huge proportion of our subsidized corn crops to arugula production.
And new regulations requiring that all fast food restaurants use vegetarian patties in their burgers grown organically in a cooperative headed by Michelle Obama, and use only fancy Dijon mustard and no ketchup.
FlipYrWhig
@ Wyld, @ Corner: I don’t think Obama believes in “austerity” and I have said repeatedly that most of the litany of purportedly clueless statements have been badly misinterpreted. I personally think that Obama has been trying to use “austerity” _rhetoric_ to get a grip on genuine long-term budget problems: to try to move the discussion of “cuts” towards addressing LONG-TERM effects. (It’s not unlike a certain approach to climate change, as seen at the end of _Inconvenient Truth_: we can do small changes now that have big effects down the road, or we can put off those changes and end up having to absorb much more painful shocks later.) But what keeps happening is that all the different kinds of “cuts” — short-term, long-term; funding, benefits; etc. — are being swirled together by politicians on all sides, the elite media, and the alt-media. I sincerely do believe that he _really does_ talk about the economic climate, the stakes, the priorities, and all the rest, and even does so in the ways his detractors say they’d like him to do. But nobody’s noticing! Mostly because the discussion of “cuts” got to be so overwhelming that no one wants to bother to make the, to my mind key, distinction between short-term and long-term, or between tangible benefit and the money that provides said benefit along with pure lucre.
So I don’t really see the rhetorical flaws people keep harping on. I see that the rhetoric is being thwarted or ignored, and I don’t have any good ideas about how to solve that, but the rhetoric itself is solid. YMMV.
murbella
@srv
im not sure Obama can do anything about jobs….we are witnessing the end of empire for America. Anglosaxon protestantism and freemarket capitalism just made America the overclass of the world for a while.
We just spent 10 years and 4.4 trillion dollars trying to spread missionary democracy and freemarket capitalism in Iraq and AfPak, and failed utterly.
the uber-gross eating contests on “independence” day are reminiscent of the Roman vomitoriums i think.
we had a good run while it lasted.
;)
OzoneR
This one way I’m involved, but I live in New York City where Democrats are Democrats for the most part. I would like to be more involved somewhere where it can make a difference.
I grew up in Southern Indiana and I now live in New York City and can’t for the life of me figure out why they exist in the same country, they have nothing in common.
OzoneR
Um, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the debt ceiling has already been it.
It’s THE MAJOR priority at the moment.
fasteddie9318
Then what the hell are we all on about. The media problem isn’t going to get fixed. If the extent to which the White House can affect public debate is entirely on their terms, then we should all stop worrying and learn to love the bomb because we’re all fucked. I swear, for all the talk about how Obama is insidiously expanding executive power, he’s apparently the weakest president we’ve ever had, so weak that his entire agenda can by stymied by any one of a thousand other actors. I wouldn’t want a second term either if that were the case.
Brachiator
I agree completely. One troubling aspect of the weak economy continues to be long term unemployment (people without a job for a year or more).
Although there are a lot of ways of looking at this data, no matter how you slice it, the trend does not look good.
By the way, some news stories (and Mitt Romney) keep harping on various economic data “that is the worst since 1948.” This is not because 1948 was a particularly bad year for the US economy. This is a classic case of misunderstanding statistical data. As a recent TPM story makes clear,
Obviously, there is data for earlier periods, but it is not always directly comparable to the time after 1948 because of data collection methods, assumptions and the other methodology issues.
As always, this stuff is made worse by lazy and stupid business writers and editors who regurgitate crap without understanding it.
OzoneR
That led to 24 hours of discussion on whether or not he was right/should’ve been suspended/White House could’ve been nicer on EVERY DAMN network.
The Beltway media IS the grand arbiter of all that is newsworthy and socially acceptable.
I’m not sure how you challenge media conventional wisdom? How do you do it, keep giving speeches they don’t cover or criticize?
Corner Stone
God damn, the labor force shrunk while unemployment increased, there are more unemployed people who haven’t even entered the “looking for work” work force, and existing wages declined?
Does somebody need to fish slap this WH?
fasteddie9318
There’s nothing they can do whatsoever. Obama was elected to the presidency, not to an office with actual authority or visibility.
OzoneR
The media can be fixed if the left wants to make it a priority, which they don’t because they don’t see it as a problem.
it was entirely predictable.
fasteddie9318
So the theory is that if the president and his White House focused on nothing but jobs, and the media didn’t care for their focus (or their tone or whatever), the media would pretend that there is no president?
OzoneR
I’m sorry if you thought a Democratic President would have the authority or visibility of a Republican one. I thought it was pretty clear there are two separate rules for Republicans and Democrats.
WyldPirate
@FlipYrWhig:
Thanks for the answer, Flip. I don’t fully agree, but it was a well-reasoned argument.
fasteddie9318
See, when the people who demand that Obama’s critics produce their own fully-formed national jobs plan say stuff like this, it makes me raise an eyebrow. Your plan for “the left” to “fix” the media is…?
srv
I had suggested many years ago that we give them South Carolina and let them create their utopia. Now, I think it would take a few more states.
Corner Stone
@fasteddie9318:
I’ve always remembered the old trope about good PR, “Answer the question you wish you’d been asked.”
It works for CEOs, Sports Stars and politicians.
“Jake Tapper, I’m glad you asked me about jobs. Because, uh, here’s, uh, what we’re gonna do…”
OzoneR
Yes. How is this not clear to people already? For chrissakes, he has to schedule press conferences around Dancing With The Stars. Left wing pundits have fun mocking how the networks cover stupid shit instead of him. Remember when all three network cut into a Pelosi press conference then cut away when she said she would talk about jobs, not Anthony Weiner. Did you not see how everyone joked who would be the first person to ask him about Casey Anthony at his presser the other day?
The President isn’t interesting or worth covering until he’s parroting what the media wants to hear. Republican President give them what they want to hear, Democrats don’t.
Corner Stone
@WyldPirate: I don’t see how you reached that conclusion.
WyldPirate
Since Obama is so powerless, perhaps his Presidency will go down in memory as “The Limp-Dick Presidency”.
I wish someone could hook the entire crew at 1600 Penn. Ave. to an IV drip of Viagra…maybe then they could at least dick-whip the Rethugs silly if nothing else.
Linnaeus
@OzoneR:
I grew up in SE Michigan, about a 20-30 min. drive from the U.S.-Canadian border, and I’ve thought sometimes that I have more in common culturally and socially with the folks in southern Ontario than I do with someone from Maine or Mississippi or Utah. Relatively speaking.
OzoneR
I don’t do that, because it’s a fruitless effort. Whatever you propose will get laughed out of DC and we both know that.
That’s my plan. There’s no point in proposing a jobs plan unless we have someone who has the people’s attention taking it seriously.
Brachiator
@Linnaeus:
I keep hearing this stuff from people and I have no idea what it means.
What is the magic optimum size for a country? What new magical political institution is there that can govern better than we have now? Is this some kind of Steve Jobs Apple product, the iPolitics? “Smaller, sleeker, magical. It just works. In the cloud.”
Belgium (population 11 million) has not had a functional national government since June 2010:
Behind this, of course, is not the idea that a nation is “ungovernable” but that various factions refuse to yield or compromise, similar to what we have here with the Republicans and the Tea Party fringe attempting to hijack the United States.
WyldPirate
@Corner Stone:
I think that Flips point about Obama talking about jobs is true. I think that a lot of it gets drowned out because a.) it is sporadic and b.) the language is not harsh enough.
Those are points I agree with Flip about.
I think that Obama should have abandoned the bipartisanship horseshit in the first couple of months of his Presidency. Some of those fucksticks were openly saying then that their goal was to make him a “one-term President”. Not that there ios anything wrong with that per se as that is what the opposing party should do within certain limits.
People belittle the “bully pulpit” all the time here, but when everything else you have tried in certain areas has failed, drastic actions are required. “desperate times ccall for desperate measures.”
I don’t think Obama has any choice but to go the Truman in ’48 route now. Well, that and quit acting like a goddamned Republican when it comes to economics and doing their dirty work for them.
OzoneR
I don’t think the nation is ungovernable because its too large, it’s too diverse and polarized.
It might be too large geographically.
agrippa
Atta boy you predictable douche bag. Just focus on the bad news and what your Koch funded Cato institute supportedbuddy Greenwald tells you to think.
Derf:
get a grip.
OzoneR
The “bully pulpit” has also been tried. It was tried with tax cuts last year. It was tried with his speech on Ryan’s plan. It was tried when he demonized Congress as being like his kids, and it didn’t work. He tried when discussing high speed rail, it did not work.
And it didn’t work so well for Truman either, while he did get narrowly reelected, he ended up getting nothing done, even with a Democratic Congress after 1948 and left office the most unpopular president ever.
aisce
@ ozoner
you are without question the dumbest, whiniest assed person on this site.
move to fucking singapore, you twerp. it’d be perfect for you. your dream country come true.
Brachiator
El Cid:
Here’s my problem with Krugman:
I agree with his diagnosis of the problem, but I don’t think he is particularly useful with respect to a solution.
Yeah, we need more stimulus. Trouble is, when high level policy is turned into actual legislation, we still end up with weak sauce that accomplishes little.
By the way, apparently, Obama and high ranking government leaders are going to put in some weekend work:
I hate this last minute stuff. It tends to end up in a “compromise” in which the Republicans get the better deal, and the president ends up talking about “hard choices.”
fasteddie9318
And for the same reason we don’t have one: there are large factions of basically separatists who don’t have any reason to compromise with anybody but whose nominal cooperation is required to get anything done. I see no reason why Belgium must continue to exist under those conditions. Why must this country?
Linnaeus
@Brachiator:
Federalist No. 10 has some discussion about this, in which Madison talks about large republics vs. small ones; Madison favored the former, anti-federalists like Jefferson favored the latter.
I wouldn’t claim there’s some kind of specific optimum size for any particular country; if size is even a factor at all, there’s also historical, cultural, social, etc. contexts to consider and those aren’t (obviously) going to be the same for every country.
With regard to political institutions, this piece at The American Prospect by Matt Yglesias got me thinking. Maybe there are structural factors that exacerbate the problems created by unyielding factions.
Mind you, I’m not saying that everything needs to be torn down and replace – it’s just some speculation I engage in when I’m in more depressive/cynical moods.
fasteddie9318
Your plan for the left to fix the media is for the left to fix the media?
OzoneR
What baffles me is the idea that somehow we need to make the case of something the public stupidly rejected eight months ago as if they’re going to suddenly agree with us.
Making the case for something doesn’t make it so, it just means making a case, and even if the Democrats did push for more spending and more stimulus, which Chuck Schumer seems to be doing right now, it doesn’t stop the fasteddies from saying “that’s nice, but you didn’t do anything, just talked”
“Fighting” doesn’t win votes or support, Passing shit does.
OzoneR
No, my plan for the left to fix the media is go Breitbart on Fox News, unearth every possible dirty scandal you find, and have our George Soros buy up media outlets and counter News Corp.
My plan is to declare all out war on Murdoch and the Koch brothers.
sneezy
@ boss bitch:
What a schmuck. Hey Boehner, you’re the fucking Speaker of the House! It’s YOUR JOB to buttonhole, persuade, cajole, bargain, twist arms, knock heads, do whatever it takes to get the bill through your caucus of morons. Don’t just stand there like an idiot, man up already!
Sheesh.
FlipYrWhig
@ Brachiator : I think we all agree that there are many Better Plans. They haven’t been tried. And there’s no way to make them come to pass, because Republicans will block anything good and they won’t care how hard the public hypothetically complains, if they even would. That leaves us debating how best to talk about the Better Plan. Do you talk in such a way as to try to get some portion of the Better Plan, the part that can get past obstruction; or do you demand that the Better Plan stop being obstructed, explain why it’s so much better, and shame the obstructionists? Well, if you do the latter, you run the risk of getting even less from the former if you decide to switch gears. Is it worth it anyway? That’s what we keep fighting about: the value of a cogent losing argument. I don’t think that’s worth very much. Some people think it’s worth quite a lot.
Flugelhorn
One.
And.
Done.
Stefan
I agree with his diagnosis of the problem, but I don’t think he is particularly useful with respect to a solution.
He had a solution,which was ignored: make the stimulus much bigger.
Now, sure, he’s not that useful when it comes to actually implementing his solution, but then again that’s not his job: he’s a professor and a pundit, not a politician. His job is to identify and analyze problems, and then hopefully (hopefully) politicians will use that analysis to translate it into real-world legislation.
WyldPirate
@OzoneR:
Given the alternatives, this is all that matters, isn’t it?
Moreover,, history tends to give Truman a bit kinder view than the immediate aftermath of his Presidency.
ETA: And this piecemeal bully pulpit shit is all that has been tried. He needs to belittle the Rethugs and call them what they are–saboteurs of the country, domestic terrorists. He must–and I hope this dopesn’t get me in trouble–call a spade a spade.
fasteddie9318
Because when I complained about Obama earlier in this thread, I really meant to complain about Schumer?
Schumer actually seems to be getting it:
“We have now been playing entirely on the Republicans‘ field for six months and the recovery has only slowed. We have seen enough to know that their approach is not working.”
“And we need to start asking ourselves an uncomfortable question — are Republicans slowing down the recovery on purpose for political gain in 2012? … [N]ow it is becoming clear that insisting on a slash-and-burn approach may be part of this plan — it has a double benefit for Republicans: It is ideologically tidy and it undermines the economic recovery, which they think only helps them in 2012.”
When I’m hearing this kind of rhetoric out of the White House on a regular basis, as opposed to “golly, I sure wish Congress would do something about jobs,” I’ll stop complaining. Because I completely recognize that Obama is boxed in and there’s only so much he can do.
OzoneR
then he should stop commenting on politics and stick to promoting his ideas.
fasteddie9318
Yeah, STFU and fall in line.
OzoneR
pay more attention because the message, it comes out of the White House, it came out when he acted like “a dick”
OzoneR
No, join the administration if you want to comment on politics. Krugman was asked by Clinton, he refused, and he closed the door on working in the Obama administration.
If he thinks he can better advise the President, join the administration or make Obama appoint you to something.
I really hate people who comment on things they have no interest in being involved in. You don’t like what’s being said, become part of the message, don’t sit idly back and fling shit.
I can’t stand that in people.
cleek
@OzoneR:
alternately, people could stop treating every word he says as if it comes with a Nobel-Certified Guarantee of Truth. fucking argumentum ad verecundiam, how does it work?
even smart people get shit wrong, especially when they venture outside their area of expertise. which is kindof why the phrase “area of expertise” exists.
WyldPirate
@OzoneR:
Hardly anyone watches fucking Morning Joe and hardly anyone knows who Marki Fucking Halperin is.
The dude is not Walter Cronkite, OzoneR. I don’t know why this is so goddamned hard for you to understand.
OzoneR
and hardly anyone didn’t hear about it. You don’t have to watch the show to know what he said and why he said it.
The end result of Obama calling out Republicans was “A man on TV said he was mean” not “Obama calls out Republicans”
Message…lost.
WyldPirate
@cleek:
Problem is, Krugman isn’t venturing outside his area of expertise with his commentary on economics.
Even when he has–for instance on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan– he has the best track record of any of the opinion columnists.
Tsulagi
Don’t forget U6 at 16%+!
Normally I’d agree with you that if the economy and unemployment levels continue to go sideways or worsen through next year (likely after the debt ceiling compromise), Obama would be dead man walking going into November, but I think you misunderestimate the depth and quality of the Field of Clowns.
On the contender side you have the likes of Tiffany Addict Newt, Both Sides of the Mouth Romney, Crazy Eyes Bachmann, Quitter Palin, and lesser clowns. Say what you will about the Tea Party, they’ve produced Obama’s best chance for reelection.
OzoneR
I think he’s mostly right about what he said, but his childish demeanor and his words about Obama over the years have struck me as “I don’t like this guy and I’m having a good time just sitting slamming him”
What bothers me is he could be someone who could change a narrative if he got more directly involved, put together a think tank or something, I just don’t think he wants to.
And that’s such a waste because we need people with his ideas.
WyldPirate
@OzoneR:
Data please?
I can back up my claim on Morning Joe viewership, but not Halperin (even though he is so insignificant as to not warrant any sort of survey).
Sure, the “liberal blogosphere” has heard of it, but that is a minuscule number of the populace.
OzoneR
Data? Dude, it was ALL OVER the news that day, it was even in my local newspaper.
El Cid
__
Um, uh, you know, like, whether it’s how it was meant to be phrased, the sentence I was addressing:
The debt ceiling seems like it is extremely significant, depending on what the Constitutional types say. (I.e., whether or not Congress has to approve, I don’t have much of a comment on that matter.)
Bender
Hey! Finally! A Ball-Juicer with half a clue about economics! Only half, but you’re getting closer! Most businesses won’t invest in new jobs if they don’t think that the government has the ability or inclination to be good for business. The businesses might need that cash to survive an economic emergency, or to deal with new government regulations, or to pay increased taxes.
Of course, today Obama says (with a straight face, maybe hoping he can fool idiot Democrats and the C-student media — but I repeat myself) that the real reason businesses aren’t hiring is because… Republicans won’t vote to raise the debt ceiling.
Never mind the dozen obvious logical problems with that bit of brilliance from President Wile E. Coyote, Super-Genius. It takes a special brand of politician to shove that whopper out there — a desperate, arrogant, and ultimately clueless hack who is expecting his backers in Washington news bureaus to put their journalistic integrity (what’s left of it) on the line to run with a moronic, transparent lie.
We’ll see if they go for it. So far, CBS radio has reported the President’s ludicrous line without giving a Republican the chance to laugh at what complete bullshit it is.
srv
As he said at the time, it was pretty clear to him that Obama was appointing the people who got us into this mess to the jobs that mattered and providing window dressing to others (Volcker, et al). As always, he was right.
His first invite was to sit down at a WH dinner with other economists, and realized Geithner had organized it as a “shouting match amongst equals” to show they were all whack-jobs and Obama shouldn’t listen to any of them.
Becoming part of the message means towing the party line. Krugman has attacked the right and left with equal opportunity, because he’s not going to be put into a position and then tow some idiotic political line.
You’re like the wingnuts, you just want to be fed whatever agrees with favored politico, until another flavor-of-the-day policy comes along.
I can’t stand that in people.
Davis X. Machina
@Linnaeus: As a citizen of the most populous and southernmost Maritime province — Maine — I know how you feel.
Davis X. Machina
@Bender: Bender, I place implicit trust in anything you say about bullshit. If we bloodless socia1ist technocrats admire anything, it’s expertise rooted in personal experience.
WyldPirate
@OzoneR:
that’s anecdotal.
People don’t watch the fucking news much–20-30 million at most and most of them are over 65.
karen marie
Nemesis @ 78:
I think the reference was to the House Progressive Caucus.
WyldPirate
@Bender:
Brachiator
@Linnaeus:
Yeah, but this was all resolved with the Constitution. The previous argument had been that you could not combine the 13 colonies into a larger national government. The proponents of the Constitution won the day. But I guess one can always resurrect the arguments and try to apply it to contemporary issues, although I am not sure to what end.
@FlipYrWhig:
The problem is that I don’t think that the Democrats and Obama have even offered a better plan. The present debate over the deficit and taxes simply continues an old argument and concedes much of the argument to the Republicans, who continue to float along on the fantasy that if you just cut taxes and gut Social Security then jobs will magically appear.
I think that the government had to do the bailout. They had to deal with the collapse of financial markets. After that, or alongside, they needed to concentrate on jobs. And here I don’t think that it was just that the stimulus was too small, I think that much of it ended up in efforts that maintained some jobs, but was not directed into stuff that would provide a real stimulus. And since then, I haven’t seen much in the way of anything creative coming from the Democrats (I don’t expect anything from the Republicans and have not been disappointed).
@Stefan:
Krugman is good on macro economics, but not on practical tax and economic policy. It’s not just the size of the stimulus, it is what you spend the money on. It’s here that the Democrats lacked imagination and insight. But even where programs were good, they didn’t have the desired effect, and the Democrats (hobbled by the Republicans) have not responded quickly enough.
And of course, now, with the emphasis on “austerity,” the idea of more stimulus is almost totally off the table. The momentum and opportunity has been lost.
srv
Where have I heard that before…. Hmmm…
Brachiator
Bender:
You are completely wrong, perhaps because you rely on right wing media for your sources. Significant breaks were given to business as part of the Obama stimulus package, and these breaks were enhanced as part of the 2010 tax compromise. For example, there is freaking 100% bonus depreciation on the purchase of new assets.
The idea that businesses “don’t know” whether they can do anything because the Democrats might tax them is ridiculous.
OzoneR
No, he didn’t say that, because he took his name out of serving in the administration BEFORE the election. When I get a chance, I’ll be happy to find where he said that.
Then he should stop commenting on politics, the end.
WyldPirate
Never mind.
OzoneR
and how many read newspaper? go online and read articles? Far more than 20-30 million.
It’s not just cable news network, though they’re the biggest offenders
WyldPirate
WTF
Brachiator
@srv:
RE: Krugman is good on macro economics, but not on practical tax and economic policy. It’s not just the size of the stimulus, it is what you spend the money on.
Thanks for helping me make my point. Krugman is great on thinking about the national economy,
But this still begs the question on how any economic stimulus should be spent. States that got money used it to preserve jobs, raise salaries and to plug state deficits. There is nothing to suggest that a 50% larger share would have gone to new projects. And while spending on services is good, often even vital, Krugman does not connect the dots on how this might have increased demand and employment.
He is macro wrong about tax cuts. A large chunk of the stimulus went to targeted tax credits. But this is inefficient because it still leaves lots of people who don’t care about or can’t use a specific credit with no particular benefit even though they may be on the brink of financial ruin. And when wages are stagnant and prices (especially food and energy costs) are rising, then tax cuts do in fact have a stimulative effect.
Some of Obama’s efforts were spot on, particularly education credits and the deduction for otherwise taxable unemployment benefits. They provided immediate relief and the education credits (which need better auditing) allows people to invest in themselves and may pay off in the future. We needed more of this kind of thinking.
But otherwise, Krugman’s stuff about increased federal spending on infrastructure projects and bloc grants to states represents a mushy and old fashioned kind of thinking, and offered no guarantee of increased employment. For example, fewer people are required for construction projects than during the public spending years of the Great Depression era, and it is still the case that many of these jobs would not go to women, who make up a much larger portion of the labor force than in earlier years. So, in my view, a lot of this stuff was a solution that did not accurately understand the problem.
AnnaN
RE: the jobs report/numbers
What most people don’t realize, is that even though the Federal budget was passed months ago, we didn’t get our appropriations from Treasury until late last week. The end numbers were dismal, hurting more than the 10% cuts we were preparing for at the beginning of the fiscal year. Being a scientific research division over 90% of our yearly budget is overhead for labor. We have to shed 17% of our staff and due to Fed regs, that means full-time contractors through our cooperative research institute agreements have been and will continue to be getting the shaft. We have applied to our parent Agency/Department of Commerce to allow for us to conduct VERA/VSEP (voluntary early retirement/separation) programs to reduce the number of those layoffs.
We may be a small division but every agency/line office is in this boat. Divisions have been laying off people since the budget was passed and those numbers are what is screwing with the employment/jobs figures as agencies shed people in order to comply with the Anti-Deficiency Act. This scenario is going to be repeated until the end of the fiscal year. The employment numbers are going to be dismal as a result. It’s not going to get better for at least a little while.
Blech.
Bender
Very small potatoes (maybe you think they are major because you rely on left-wing media for your sources!) compared to the negative effects on business of Obama’s “indefensible” regulations, the costs to businesses of ObamaCare, and the threats of CO2 regulations, investor accreditation changes, higher FICA caps, etc.
srv
@Brach
Nobody is spending more, they’re saving. What poor and middle class folks got a tax cut to stimulate more?
His whole point, repeated endlessly in his other posts in early 2009 was that the stimulus had to be big enough to carry for several years. He predicted it would dry up before mid-2010 and that would be a gift horse to the Reps. He can’t be expected to come up with the micro of every given jobs program a year out.
Hal (GT)
Their is one thing for sure that these numbers this week show. A schizoid economy.
Brachiator
srv:
I got this.
I never said that Krugman needed to micro every given program. I said that he has no real clue about tax policy at anything other than the macro level.
He can wail all he wants about how the stimulus had to be bigger. Big whoop. This becomes semi-theoretical, and a bit of a formula: “if the drag on the economy is X billion in GDP, then a stimulus of equal size is necessary.”
But this still comes down to the fantasy belief that all it took was a big pot of money thrown on the economy and everything would have been better. Krugman could never advance from this basic, and simplistic position. There are economists who can look at past recessions and Depressions and detail not just the amounts, but the types of programs that worked and which were less successful. But Krugman is not one of these types of economists. This part of the equation does not interest him.
And to the degree that he talked about infrastructure development and state subsidies, he is largely wrong, based on what actually happened with these revenues.
He is also wrong with his disparagement of the value of tax cuts, which is odd because he is very aware of the issue of wage stagnation.
Shorter answer: It is an article of faith that a bigger stimulus would have worked better. But talking about the volume of money without any better sense of how that money should have been applied makes these arguments an exercise in navel gazing. Even when it comes from Krugman.
the idler
“For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.”
Barack ObamaFDR