Winning Wisconsin, Pigs & Hippies Together: This is OUR HOUSE!

by Gary Farber

Don't tell me we can't win this.  Wisconsin Police Have Joined Protest Inside State Capitol.

From inside the Wisconsin State Capitol, Ryan Harvey reports:

“Hundreds of cops have just marched into the Wisconsin state capitol building to protest the anti-Union bill, to massive applause. They now join up to 600 people who are inside.”

Ryan reported on his Facebook page earlier today [Friday, Feb. 25 -gf]],:

“Police have just announced to the crowds inside the occupied State Capitol of Wisconsin: ‘We have been ordered by the legislature to kick you all out at 4:00 today. But we know what’s right from wrong. We will not be kicking anyone out, in fact, we will be sleeping here with you!’

Ryan Harvey's video from Friday:


 

 My quotes:

[…] This is not a budget issue! This is a CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE!  […] Mr. Walker!  […] We know pretty well now who you work for!  [applause] Let me tell you who WE work for! [points to self and police emblem]  We work for all of these people!  [applause] We are not here, Mr. Walker, to do your bidding!  We are here to do their bidding!  […]  Mr. Walker, this not your House!  This is all of our House!  [camera pans 360°]

I want to give this officer a big fat kiss on the mouth.

Pictures from Ryan Harvey, February 25, Occupied Capitol Building, Madison, WI:

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The New Republican Congressional Revolutionary Volunteers Of America

by Gary Farber

Congressman stops short of calling for Obama assassination. Georgia Congressman Paul Broun's Tuesday night’s town hall meeting:

The first question of the night (confirmed by Broun’s office) was “when is someone going to shoot Obama?”

Broun’s response, Athens Banner-Herald (Georgia):

The thing is, I know there’s a lot of frustration with this president. We’re going to have an election next year. Hopefully, we’ll elect somebody that’s going to be a conservative, limited-government president that will take a smaller, who will sign a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. He then segued into Republicans’ budget proposal.

Today: Loughner indictment expected by March 9, trial in Sept.:

Dylan Smith, TucsonSentinel.com

Prosecutors said they will indict Jared Lee Loughner on more federal charges by March 9, a court order said Thursday. U.S. District Judge Larry Burns said in the order that he expects a trial to begin before Sept. 20. Loughner, 22, is the alleged gunman in the Jan. 8 shooting that authorities call an assassination attempt on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

[…] Six were killed and 13 wounded in the attack on a constituent meet-and-greet at a Northwest Side grocery store. Giffords remains in a Houston rehab facility, recovering from her wounds.

Georgia Congressman Paul Broun had best not hold town meetings on Obsidian Wings. Posting Rules:

[…] Calls for the assassination of any person will be subject to immediate banning. Exceptions are made for legitimate military targets in time of war, being put to death after being convicted of a capital crime, etc. — basically, the things that make a killing not 'assassination' to begin with. As before, this is not a prohibition on criticism, vituperation, and all those other good things; just a recognition that there's all the difference in the world between passionately disagreeing with someone and calling for that person's death.

We would ban someone from here for such a statement. But Republican Georgia Congressman Paul Broun lets it pass without a word and:

[…] Broun’s press secretary, Jessica Morris, confirmed that the question was indeed, who is going to shoot Obama? “Obviously, the question was inappropriate, so Congressman Broun moved on,” she said.

We wouldn't just move on, if we noticed that here.

But it's okay if you're merely a Republican Congressional Representative.

Move along. Nothing to see here.

In June, Greg Sargent wrote: Sharron Angle floated possibility of armed insurrection:

Here's another one that could be tough for Sharron Angle to explain away: In an interview in January, Angle appeared to float the possibility of armed insurrection if "this Congress keeps going the way it is."

I'm not kidding. In an interview she gave to a right-wing talk show host, Angle approvingly quoted Thomas Jefferson saying it's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years — and said that if Congress keeps it up, people may find themselves resorting to "Second Amendment remedies."

What's more, the talk show host she spoke to tells me he doesn't have any doubt that she was floating the possibility of armed insurrection as a valid response if Congress continues along its current course.

Asked by the host, Lars Larson of Portland, Oregon, where she stands on Second Amendment issues, Angle replied:

You know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. And in fact Thomas Jefferson said it's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years.

I hope that's not where we're going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.

Larson says Angle was floating the possibility of armed insurrection if Congress keeps it up under Reid et al.

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One Way To Connect

by Gary Farber

ONE WAY TO CONNECT can be this:

This is America:

This is something we can do:

To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor:

The city of Rio de Janeiro is infamous for the fact that one can look out from a precarious shack on a hill in a miserable favela and see practically into the window of a luxury high-rise condominium. Parts of Brazil look like southern California. Parts of it look like Haiti. Many countries display great wealth side by side with great poverty. But until recently, Brazil was the most unequal country in the world

Everything connects:

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Waste Not, Want Not

by guest poster Gary Farber.

How much is $50 billion? 

That's how much the president proposes we spend:

[…] It calls for a quick infusion of $50 billion in government spending that
White House officials said could spur job growth as early as next year —
if Congress approves. […]  Central to the plan is the president’s call for an “infrastructure
bank,” which would be run by the government but would pool tax dollars
with private investment, the White House says. […] Specifically, the president wants to rebuild 150,000 miles of road, lay
and maintain 4,000 miles of rail track, restore 150 miles of runways and
advance a next-generation air-traffic control system.

[…]

The White House did not offer a price tag for the full measure or say
how many jobs it would create. If Congress simply reauthorized the
expired transportation bill and accounted for inflation, the new measure
would cost about $350 billion over the next six years. But Mr. Obama
wants to “frontload” the new bill with an additional $50 billion in
initial investment to generate jobs, and vowed it would be “fully paid
for.” The White House is proposing to offset the $50 billion by
eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for the oil and gas industry.

After months of campaigning on the theme that the president’s $787 billion stimulus package was wasteful, Republicans sought Monday to tag the new plan with the stimulus label. The Republican National Committee called it “stimulus déjà vu,” and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip, characterized it as “yet another government stimulus effort.”

Which sounds good to me, if not to you, but we can all agree that we don't want to "waste" money.

Even before the announcement Monday, Republicans were expressing caution.

“It’s important to keep in mind that increased spending — no matter the
method of delivery — is not free,” said Representative Pat Tiberi, an
Ohio Republican who is on a Ways and Means subcommittee that held
hearings on the bank this year. He warned that “federally guaranteed
borrowing and lending could place taxpayers on the hook should the
proposed bank fail.”

Such concern might have come earlier

Rebuild iraq money

  • The Department of Defense is unable to account for the use of $8.7
    billion of the $9.1 billion it spent on reconstruction in Iraq.
  • Source: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (PDF).

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Just Tax

by publius I have to admit that I don't like the idea of the government stepping in to dictate compensation levels, TARP funds or no TARP funds.  I'm certainly not morally opposed to it — heck, many of these people deserve far worse. The problem, though, is that I don't think the government is institutionally … Read more

And this is the point …..

…. Of calling the Democrats' stimulus package A Stimulus for Tomorrow (Part 11) by von Andrew Sullivan mentions a piece by Daniel Gross, which purportedly reminds "conservatives"* that it's too early to label the stimulus a failure because most of the money hasn't been spent yet. Here is my hand.  Here is my forehead.  Here is my … Read more

Round Two

(Also known as: A Stimulus for Tomorrow, Part 10) by von Everyone should have seen this coming …. well, everyone who reads these here Wings of Obsidian.  From Salon (citing Bloomberg and The New York Times): Call it the the stimulus that dare not be named. Bloomberg reports that the Obama administration is considering "a mix of spending … Read more

There Is Still Good In Him. I’ve Felt It.

by publius Richard Posner just wrote one of those "read the whole thing" essays in TNR.  And it's the clearest and most persuasive theoretical grounding of recent Democratic economic policies that I've seen. It's dense in a few places, but he generally lays out pretty clearly the logic of things like the fiscal stimulus, policies … Read more

Regulating Wall Street

by publius I won't pretend to claim expertise in the debate about whether the feds should regulate bankers' compensation.  But the devil, it seems, is in the details.  I could easily imagine rules that are excessive intrusions — but I could just as easily imagine acceptable ones too. Regardless, though, the underlying theory of imposing … Read more

The Fruit of Nelsonism

by publius As you'll recall, we passed a stimulus bill earlier this year.  The original proposal was already too small.  But then a group of centrist Senators led by Ben Nelson and Susan Collins demanded additional significant cuts to aid for states.  They ultimately cut about $25 billion from the original proposal, most of which … Read more

August Unemployment Data

by von The August unemployment rate is up to 9.7%.  Geoff at Innocent Bystanders has produced a new chart (right).  The deviation between what Team Obama thought its policies would do to the unemployment rate and what those policies are actually doing is growing. Could Part 10 of the "Stimulus for Tomorrow" series be far behind?  (Parts 1, 2, Hilzoy's … Read more

Government Worked

by publius Deborah Solomon reports in the WSJ that the federal stimulus bill that zero House Republicans voted for, and that 2.5 Republican Senators voted for, is working: Economists say the money out the door — combined with the expectation of additional funds flowing soon — is fueling growth above where it would have been … Read more

The Failure of State Government

by publius The state budget situation is getting uglier by the day.  It’s pretty much a full-blown crisis at this point – and that’s including the federal stimulus aid that was shamefully cut by the Senate “centrists.” The budget crisis is not, however, some sort of freakish one-time event.  It’s a recurring problem that points … Read more

Good News

by hilzoy From MSNBC: "Around Washington and Wall Street they have come to be known as TBTF — too big to fail. It's not just size, though. These companies are so far-flung, so intertwined and so precariously leveraged that a single one's collapse can create systemwide tremors that imperil the finances of millions of Americans. … Read more

“The Optics Are Bad”

by hilzoy From the NYT: "Banks and mortgage lenders are placing top priority on killing President Obama's proposal to create a new consumer protection agency that would regulate home loans, credit card fees, payday loans and other forms of consumer finance. The Obama administration fired an opening shot on Tuesday, sending Congress a detailed, 150-page … Read more

The CRA… Still Not Causing the Meltdown

by publius Megan McArdle cheers on John Carney in a misguided attempt to once again blame the housing meltdown on the CRA — i.e., a 1970s law intended to limit loan discrimination.  She writes: [T]he role of the CRA in the financial meltdown [has been] understated by liberals who are unwilling to admit that regulation, … Read more

The Public Plan and “Honest” Competition

by publius Greg Mankiw is concerned that a subsidized public option would be unfair to private health care providers: If [it is taxpayer-subsidized], then the public plan would not offer honest competition to private plans.  . . .  The bottom line: If the goal is honest competition in the provision of health insurance, the public … Read more

New EFCA Blog and Open Thread

by publius Public service announcement on the labor front — a new blog devoted to the latest news on the EFCA went online this week.  It's aptly named the "EFCA Blog."  The intro post is here — check it out. Otherwise, open thread.  Hope your weekend is going well.

Resolution

by hilzoy Matthew Richardson and Nouriel Roubini have an op-ed on the stress tests in the WSJ. It makes a number of good points, but this one is particularly important: "Stress tests aside, it is highly likely that some of these large banks will be insolvent, given the various estimates of aggregate losses. The government … Read more

Erosion

by hilzoy The Washington Post has an article with the headline: "Wage Growth Is Eroding As Firms Rush To Slim Down". It opens with this example: "In December, Timothy Owner, a trombone player with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, called his landlord to tell her he might have trouble paying rent around May. He and the … Read more

Magic!

by hilzoy From the NYT: "The rest of the nation may be getting back to basics, but on Wall Street, paychecks still come with a golden promise. Workers at the largest financial institutions are on track to earn as much money this year as they did before the financial crisis began, because of the strong … Read more

Relaxing Mark To Market

by hilzoy This is bad: "A once-obscure accounting rule that infuriated banks, who blamed it for worsening the financial crisis, was changed Thursday to give banks more discretion in reporting the value of mortgage securities. The change seems likely to allow banks to report higher profits by assuming that the securities are worth more than … Read more

Ugly Loans

by hilzoy When I read blog posts or comments complaining about people who should have known better than to sign up for mortgages they couldn't afford, I'm always of two minds. On the one hand, I'm quite sure that there are a decent number of people who knowingly gambled on the proposition that housing prices … Read more

Hoovervilles

by hilzoy From the NYT: "As the operations manager of a outreach center for the homeless here, Paul Stack is used to seeing people down on their luck. What he had never seen before was people living in tents and lean-tos on the railroad lot across from the center. "They just popped up about 18 … Read more

All of the Above?

by publius A big part of the intra-liberal debate over the Geithner plan is whether or not to nationalize the banks.  But is it really an either/or question?  Could we do both the Geithner plan AND nationalization simultaneously?  Nouriel Roubini seems to think so: “I see the option of nationalization” and the one presented by … Read more

Warming Up To Geithner

by publius My view has shifted a bit on the Geithner/Obama plan.  I’m gone from opposing it outright to agnosticism to tepid skeptical support – largely because of DeLong, Drum, Thoma, and Surowiecki.  And since I know a lot more about telecom policy than finance, I’ll try to squeeze an analogy out of the telecom … Read more

The Geithner Plan, Part 2

by hilzoy In my last post I argued that the auctions Sec. Geithner is (by all accounts) about to propose as part of his plan to solve the problems with the banking industry might not work at all; that if they did work, they would do so by giving buyers an incentive to overpay, with both … Read more

The Geithner Plan: Take 1

by hilzoy Some negative reactions to the Geithner plan: Krugman, more Krugman, Calculated Risk, Yves Smith, James K. Galbraith, Henry Blodget, Noam Scheiber. Brad DeLong, on the other hand, likes it, and whether you agree with him or not, he's made the strongest case I can think of for it, and it's absolutely worth reading, … Read more

A CDS Question

by publius Dean Baker at CEPR has authored a short and helpful primer on the AIG controversy (pdf here).  One interesting question posed is how exactly the federal government is treating AIG’s massive credit default swap (CDS) obligations. As Baker notes, most CDS’s were purchased by parties that didn’t own the actual underlying instrument (e.g., … Read more

AIG and the “Killed Virus” Theory

by publius I’ve seen a few comments critiquing the obsessive focus on the AIG bonuses.  The bonuses are, after all, a drop of a drop in the bucket of our overall costs.  Better to focus on the bigger picture – whether to nationalize; etc. The best response I’ve seen comes from commenter Andrew R. who … Read more

Marcus and the Sanctity of Contract

by publius Ruth Marcus devotes her valuable op-ed space today to a defense of the sanctity of the AIG bonuses.  That’s annoying in and of itself, but that’s her prerogative.  The part I found most irritating (and revealing), though, was her absurd attempt to distinguish the sanctity of the AIG contracts from the UAW contracts … Read more

And Another Thing …

by hilzoy To Edward Liddy: The next time you write to the representative of the janitors, teachers, police officers, and home health aides who now own 80% of your company and are being asked to continue to finance the lifestyles of the people who took it down, try for a different tone. Here, for instance: "I would … Read more

Bonuses At AIG

by hilzoy From the WSJ: "American International Group Inc. will pay $450 million in bonuses to employees in its financial products unit. That division was at the heart of AIG's collapse last fall, which compelled the U.S. government to provide $173.3 billion in aid to keep it running. Chief Executive Edward Liddy told Treasury Secretary … Read more

One In Eight

by hilzoy Can this actually be true? "More Americans struggled to pay their mortgage bills in the fourth quarter of 2008. A record 5.4 million U.S. homeowners with a mortgage, or nearly 12%, were either behind on payments or in foreclosure at the end of last year, according to an industry survey. The Mortgage Bankers … Read more