The common refrain in response to these issues, voiced by the President himself, is that Republicans raised the deficit, so any debt hawkishness is now hypocritical. Never mind the realities Bush had to deal with at the time, Worldcom, Enron, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on — none of that matters, and in fact, was probably all Bush's fault too by this line of reasoning. Never mind that Obama himself chastized Bush/McCain for increasing the deficit during the '08 campaign. The entire episode drips of insincerity while eerily reminiscent of a kindergarten squabble over birthday cake.
Help Me Obama, You're My Only Hope!
Next up is Obama's housing plan introduced yesterday. Some aspects of the plan, most notably the lack of draconian government interference, and instead a reliance on incentives for the private sector to adjust overvalued mortgages, are actually better than I had expected. But to really agree with the housing plan means suspending any critical thinking and concern for the long term.
For example, is injecting even more money into Fannie and Freddy, so that they can back even more loans, really the right way forward? Weren't Fannie and Freddy, and their backing of loans that shouldn't have been made in the first place, at least part of the problem?
With regard to providing government incentives to banks for rewriting existing mortgages, does anyone really believe that this won't have drastic consequences to the future of America's economy? We're not just talking about a new relationship between private banking and individuals who apparently don't have to be responsible for their own decisions, but also in terms of interest in investment in our economy. Take hope and change out of the equation for a second, would you invest in an economy whose participants can arbitrarily rewrite the contracts that they enter into?
As a homeowner who will not be taking advantage of some of these primo giveaways by our new President, I have been spending a lot of time wondering about my own home's value. Namely, what is it worth when prices throughout the country are being artificially elevated by government action? The response to this question is a false-choice strawman: Would you rather have all of your neighbors forclosed? What would the value of your home be then? As bad as our economy is, most Americans will not lose their homes. What we will lose with this plan however, is the ability to purchase new homes for what they are actually worth, and this is a much more devastaing outome.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Cannonshop
Republican or Democrat, this is not the kind of change America wants.
Sure it is, after all, the Party has a Mandate now, the One has won, people don't want to be responsible, they want to be taken care of.
Nobody, and I mean nobody in Washington D.C. represents the people who worked, and saved, who didn't take advantage of "easy Credit same as cash" financing, nobody in the leadership of either party cares about the people who weren't out to game the system and rip off their neighbours, nobody cares about the people who followed the rules and live ethically-we're just chumps to them-and why not? THEIR supporters outnumber us and always will, because people will, as a group, tend to descend to the lowest common denominator.
You get the Leadership, Culture, and Environment you work (as a nation) to create. The fact is, the HONEST working people are going to keep enabling this kind of shit because we'll continue to pay our taxes, continue not to load up on the debt, and continue to fight to live within our (shrinking) means, and it's a losing proposition as this "Stimulus Bill" shows.
2 - Baronius
You almost got me, Ob. I was following the links to the full text of Holder's speech. Then I remembered that I don't care about race. I don't care if what he said was brilliant or stupid. The only way through this Black History Month for me is the same path I always take.
3 - Roger Nowosielski
"nobody in the leadership of either party cares about the people who weren't out to game the system and rip off their neighbours, nobody cares about the people who followed the rules and live ethically."
That may be true. But what about all those who did NOT live ethically but have done instead their damnedest to bring this nation to ruin?
4 - handyguy
As always, OA's one and only point may be summed up as follows, although he takes 4 pages to expound it:
"Liberals stink - I can't stand 'em. And the thought of them running things bugs the hell out of me."
But we are, Blanche, we are running things. [That's a Bette Davis joke; if you don't get it, don't worry.]
And it's actually kind of fun to watch and listen as the most ideological voices of the right squirm and hiss and yell in an almost entirely impotent fury.
The reflexive need to say No to all of Obama's policies and appointments, to criticize his every news conference and every speech he makes [especially if he, gasp, dares to go outside Washington] -- this is actually a fairly ugly trend, now extending to Eric Holder's bracing and deliberately provocative speech yesterday.
The central line of Holder's speech is really quite remarkable -- instead of the usual platitudes that most public officials giving a speech about race still indulge in, he said:
I think if we're going to ever make progress, we have to have the guts. We have to have the determination to be honest with each other.
This has been met with harsh derision from such luminaries [ugh] as Michelle Malkin, and OA of course follows the party line. It wouldn't matter what Holder had said, of course: he's Barack Obama's attorney general, so people like OA are going to look for every excuse to complain and criticize him.
And I should get mad. But that's just a waste of energy. Holder's speech, like Obama's speech on race a year ago, just increases my confidence that the right people are running things now. I feel good, I feel happy.
So I just smile, and let the poor deflated right whine on.
5 - Arch Conservative
Yeah well I guess until we find ourselves ready to pickup a gun and use it it's all of a lot of talking out of our asses.
6 - Roger Nowosielski
You just about reduced his whole article to a one-liner. What a waste of energy, I should add.
But you can't deprive the man of his emotions, Handy. You haven't got the right.
7 - Dr Dreadful
I don't know about Handy reducing Obnox's argument to one line, but I can phrase the answer to his question in even briefer terms:
42.
8 - Roger Nowosielski
I know it's a stupid question, and I believe I asked it before, but what is "42"?
9 - Baronius
Handy, you should have read the article more carefully. Ob makes an interesting point about Fannie Mae, a point that I've never heard before. He ties the Holder comments to the Obama stimulus plan, which is new. He personalizes the story with his account of his own house, extending it to explain the banks' reluctance to lend (which no one ever talks about). And he ties it all together with the "straw man" theme. Nice.
10 - handyguy
I am quite content to allow OA his emotional distress. What I was saying is that I won't reflexively shout back at him, as I have done in the past.
It's the new Zen me.
11 - Dr Dreadful
42.
12 - Roger Nowosielski
That's good to hear. Let's try to be generous. But since I responded only to your comment, I think it's only fair that I read the article.
13 - handyguy
Baronius, it's like this:
Of course, Obama has come up with liberal remedies for the economic crisis: a large stimulus bill and a mortgage relief package.
He is a liberal president and will continue to come up with liberal ideas and policies.
I'm glad. I want people like Barack Obama and Barney Frank to be able to fully implement their policies. [Which I would describe as mainstream liberal, with heavy doses of advice from very smart economists.]
And of course, people like yourself and the Obnoxious One are not going to agree with most [or any] of these policies.
Too bad. Tough. Get over it. It's our turn. You had yours already.
We're going to steer the ship for a while. If we screw it up, there are future elections to correct the course.
But for OA and I to argue individual points of policy is quite fruitless, as we have found in the past. I say po-tay-to, he says po-tah-to.
I wish he would avoid saying, in effect, "The sky is falling and my beautiful country is being ruined." Because, believe it or not, Barack Obama and Eric Holder and Barney Frank and handyguy love this country too.
But, you know, whatever. Knock yourself out.
14 - Arch Conservative
Handyguy says you had your turn..
Certainly you're not implying that George W. Bush implemented fiscally conservative policy and it failed.
In terms of economics W. was much closer to Obama than to any type of president I'd like to see leading us.
15 - Roger Nowosielski
But Handy,
You forgot the most important thing. Why weren't they saying, "The sky is falling and my beautiful country is being ruined" when Bush was in office?
16 - Roger Nowosielski
Well then, Archie. Why do you blame Obama for following in Dubya's footsteps? Where were your voices of dissent then?
17 - handyguy
I believe Obama is following very good advice on the economy. There is little evidence that W had or followed similarly good advice, even if he spent more money than conservatives would prefer.
[And remember that a lot of that money was spent on military actions that conservatives backed wholeheartedly.]
18 - Roger Nowosielski
W was a megalomaniac. Even the conservatives here would agree. So you shouldn't want to get into the game of comparing the two.
19 - Baronius
Roger, how long have you been a regular on this site? We've been saying that Bush was wrong to expand government as long as I can remember. Of course, we were saying that a lot more in his last six months in office, when he really went nuts.
In fairness, Handy, Obama has already spent more money than Bush's wars cost, and Obama's been in office a month.
20 - Roger Nowosielski
"Using the politics of fear under a cynical veneer of hope, our country seems to have accepted a direction that rewards individual failure, while blaming the 'other' for any and all ills. No one is accountable in this new reality except for those dastardly 'wealthy few Americans.' And we can expect those wealthy few to become even fewer."
This is the crux of your argument, OA, and its faulty premise. "The politics of fear," if you recall, is the gist of the Bush Administration which escalated the 9/11 attack into a cataclysmic event. The present crisis is real, impending, and it's not likely to go away any time soon: it bears down on and impacts nearly everyone of us - the rest of the world including. So your attempt to equate the two and turn the tables, as it were, is but a feeble attempt at holding on to a sense of self-righteousness. Good luck!
As to the other matter you raise - the rich Americans. If you have any sense, you ought to know that no one in their right mind begrudges here anybody else's success. This whole nation, in fact, is founded on worshiping success, and you need to look no farther than the adulation we all bestow upon sports figures, movie stars, you take your pick.
But there is a difference, the most crucial difference, between American generosity - and yes, it is generosity - with respect to some such and the kind of people you're trying to glorify and pay homage to. They are the scum of the earth, the scourge, the cause of all our ailments; and the sooner you realize that, you may rightly call yourself an American.
Not before!
21 - handyguy
Baronius, add up the costs of the Bush tax cuts, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Then we'll talk. [You can put the Medicare drug benefit in a separate column, because that is something a liberal president might have done too.]
No one is thrilled about the gigantic deficit spending. But I trust these guys. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll find out.
22 - Roger Nowosielski
I understand, Baronius. In terms of dollars and cents, 8 times $70 billion or so is considerably less than the stimulus plan. But the former had benefited Haliburton and a great many other of the government's subcontractors. We paid through the nose and there is no windfall to speak of in terms of access to oil or anything of that nature - unless of course you want to count our success in Iraq as the point of it all.
Which bring us to the stimulus. It's an open question whether it will work or not - no one can convince me that they know what the future holds.
So I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
23 - Hope and Change?
handy... "Bush...Bush....Bush" I thought the Bush Derangement Syndrome was cured when King Barry crowed "I WON!"
"I trust these guys." Condering the jugdement you express in your posts here on BC, its obvioud that your judgement is considerably flawed...with that ladies and gentlemen we are in for huge disaster based on current policies...
24 - handyguy
"The politics of fear."
One of my favorite movies of all time has been little seen in this country. It's The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear. It was a BBC TV documentary first shown in Oct 2004.
It's more of a what-if, intellectual exercise than a recitation of facts and events. It's also unnervingly funny at times
The thesis is that politicians in the post-Cold War era have looked for new ways to increase and consolidate power. Creating a myth that we are under threat from a gigantic evil terrorist conspiracy, too complex for 'ordinary people' to understand, served this purpose for Bush and Blair. And actually, Islamists also tried to use a myth about the West being The Great Satan, the killer of children, to gain more converts and power. It's an exhilaratingly intelligent movie.
I disagree with the interpretation that Obama is trying to scare Americans. [Even Alan Greenspan now says this is the worst recession since the 30s and more federal spending is needed to save the banking system.] But it does fit the same intellectual idea, so I am interested to hear it discussed.
As long as the rightists citing it are willing to concede that Bush utilized the politics of fear more frequently and more effectively than anybody.
25 - Lumpy
good article. i'm amazed at how fast and how strong the backlash has been already. people are really pissed about the porkulus bill and the corruption in congress.
we don't really have to work to rebuild the republican party. obama is doing the job for us.
I wonder how much damage they cam do in 2 years. people are actually talking rebellion and normal folks not just crazies.