Oh my, this is too much:
For the last eight years, the pattern of the working conservative majority has been for a minority of Democrats to join with unanimous Republicans in passing bad legislation. In that environment, Gillibrand would almost certainly have been a bad choice for Senator, especially from a state as blue as New York. However, that pattern of conservative governance broke down over the Wall Street bailout, and has never recovered. Since that time, there have been two sorts of roll call votes in Congress: unanimous Democrats passing bills with a minority of Republican support, and chaotic alliances between a majority of Republicans, along with a smattering of Blue Dogs and progressives, defeated by a “serious people consensus” alliance of a minority of Republicans, a majority of Democrats and the President (whether Bush or Obama). In this environment, someone like Gillibrand is arguably a more useful vote for progressives than a more traditionally liberal Senator would be, as demonstrated by her voting patterns on bailouts.
No, Chris, the Wall Street bailout did not breakdown the voting balance. We still have Republicans voting with Blue Dogs against progressive and mainstream Democrats. The only thing that changed is that you aligned yourself with Republicans and Blue Dogs and called the move ‘progressive’. Then, you looked at one particular Blue Dog, Kirsten Gillibrand, and realized that lo and behold, she agrees with you about the bailout.
Let me repeat myself. No caucus in Congress is more supportive of the bailout than the Progressive Caucus. Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Maxine Waters, Diane Watson, Raul Grijalva, John Lewis, Neil Abercrombie, Donna Edwards, Dave Loebsack, John Hall, Jerry Nadler, etc., all disagree with you about the bailout. The more conservative you are (as Nate Silver demonstrates), the more likely you are to oppose the bailout, which is a curious thing considering it is supposed to be a huge rip-off for the right-wing corporatists, or something.
Chris finds something to like in Gillibrand because he happens to hold the Blue Dog/Republican position on something. That’s fine, but please stop pretending it is the progressive position. It’s not.
I’m conservative?
fascinating.
… clarifying that i COULD have supported a bailout that had strict conditions like the relative pittance thrown at the auto industry, which ya know, actually MAKES SOMETHING as opposed to chopping lots of mortgages into tiny little bits and securitizes them.
But that’s not what was passed (twice). And for the record, there is still no lending, and the institutions that received bailout funds did not use it for anything but buying other banks, paying salaries and bonuses, and having lavish parties.
unless of course the ny times is lying about all of this, which they are wont to do on occasion. But i don’t think they are.
It’s the labeling that is bothering me. There are progressives that opposed the bailout. But it isn’t the progressive position by any measure. An honest look at the roll calls clearly demonstrates that it is precisely the safest Democrats that serve the poorest districts that are the most supportive of the bailout, and that it is the most conservative Democrats in the most unsafe districts that oppose it.
What are they afraid of? They’re afraid of right and left-wing demagoguery, which is so easy when we’re talking about something as unpopular as bailing out the financial sector.
However, progressives in safe seats are overwhelming supportive of the bailout for a simple reason. They want to protect jobs.
No one is really for any of this. Some people, however, are willing to do the unpopular because it is necessary.
We didn’t have the option, by the way, of waiting for a good bill and a decent Treasury Secretary, as you know.
I would agree about the labeling. Not everything fits neatly onto a left-right continuum.
But “necessary”? Only when compared to the alternative of doing absolutely nothing–but I think that’s a false choice.
We didn’t have the option, by the way, of waiting for a good bill and a decent Treasury Secretary, as you know.
perhaps not: but when the treasury secretary is literally down on his knees begging nancy pelosi not to scuttle his bailout, you’d figure the time would be right to twist a few arms and exact concessions.
this was not done, and by the way, the taxpayers’ money is not being used as the senate and the house say they intended, as you know. not that the spineless douchebags will do anything about it.
I’ll give you that, it is necessary. I supported the bailout, but so far it’s been implemented so horribly I don’t see what the point is of throwing more money down it unless we get some actual real measures in there to ensure the money is spent on useful things. Why? Because it’s starting to damage. Is it as bad as if we had not done anything at all? I honestly don’t know, but at this point I wouldn’t be surprised.
that’s been my point the whole time.
i don’t necessarily oppose a bailout, but only if there will be some bang for the buck.
so far, the only people getting banged are the taxpayers, like a $3.00 whore.
And it’s all the more infuriating to see our predictions come to pass.
$15 Billion of taxpayer dollars goes to pay the bonuses of just one firm:
http://clusterstock.alleyinsider.com/2009/1/wall-streets-sick-psychology-of-entitlement
We were told the economy would tank unless we gave this money to the banks. Well, the economy did tank anyway and we lost our 2K from the stock market and what did our gift to the banks buy? The executives made sure they got bonuses in the bad times as well as the good times!
It’s the biggest scam in history.
And what happened? The CEO was fired.
etc.
Well. Good for BofA for sacking the guy that helped run the company into the ground. And frankly, if BofA wants to reward it’s executives lavishly that’s up to them. If I were a stockholder I would be outraged at the stupid decision to buy Merril and also at the huge waste of money on the Thain’s office, etc. But I’m not a stockholder because I know these companies have been dead men walking for awhile and are only alive because they have friends in government who will give them free money.
My objection is I don’t want taxpayer dollars going to pay bonuses to a bunch of crooks that made a ton of money while bankrupting their companies and endangering the entire economy. Those bonuses weren’t needed to “save” the economy. And that money was given to BofA with nary a question while the little amount given to the working man’s type of company (the autos) wasn’t given until they put those companies through the wringer.
And Thain getting canned doesn’t get us back our $15 Billion. Plus, he’s just the fall guy. It’s not just Thain doing this. This is Wall Street writ large. All these bailout monies, these unprecedented and huge expenditures of public funds (as well as public obligations–don’t forget that–that is the lion’s share–the part you are hazy on and accuse people like me of misrepresenting the numbers) are being put to use in a similar way–to fill gaping holes in balance sheets of banks with no real thought about how the money will help “fix” the economy other than keep the same perpetual scam machine going.
Plus, don’t feel too sorry for Thain. He’s got his ski house to go to (as well as other homes I’m sure). That’s where I would go right now if I were him.
Looks like some snow coming our way out in the West! Probably some awesome skiing . . . .
I am aware of the fungibility of money and the practice of using bailout monies to continue bad practices. It’s hard to exaggerate how inefficient this bailout is and how disgraceful it is. I support none of that. I also do not support letting the whole financial sector collapse in the name of pure capitalism.
If “progressive” actually denotes a set of ideas, rather than being merely the badge of a tribal alliance, then whether a bill is “progressive” is determined by its content, not by who votes for it. There are three basic positions here:
2 is clearly a more progressive position than 1. In fact, this is true, even if you accept all of Obama’s assurances at face value, because rule of law is intrinsically more democratic and responsible than trusting the rulers to be benevolent. Considering that our new Treasury Secretary was directly involved in the disaster that was the first part of the TARP, it is hard to see why we would expect something dramatically different now, though I do think Obama’s public statements mean that things will be somewhat more transparent and that some, but probably not most, of the money will find its way to the “real economy”. If that was not Obama’s intention, appointing Timmy makes no sense.
Nor is this a matter of time being of the essence. Obama threatened a veto, which would delay matters more. So his primary interest is in having no strings, and he is willing to sacrifice timeliness to that goal, not the other way around.
Between 3 and 1, it is debatable which is more progressive, and relies a lot on non-public information.
I don’t know what it is, but Boo has decided to make openleft his pet peeve.
Why do you hate freedom, Boo?
Boo, you need to read this.
This bailout, devised by the very same crooks who caused the crisis to begin with, is NOT going to help us out of this mess. It’s going to bury us.
So you, Boo, support the idea that we bail out the stockholders and let Americans just fend for themselves and that’s not the hard core conservative stance HOW?
Just because a lot of progressives were fooled into thinking that TARP was a necessary evil doesn’t make it the kind of government intervention a true progressive should get behind.
Since when did you begin trusting neocons to come up with a government intervention program? They haven’t. This is a scam, plain and simple.
THAT’S the progressive position on this subject. Bail out Americans, not Corporate America.
yup. trash the system. that’s how i see your position, too.
total creative destruction, the flip side of neo-con foreign policy.
It seems to me that it’s the bailout proponents that are trashing the system. You are the one proposing to change the rules, i.e. the capitalistic “system” we’ve had in this country for a few hundred years. My God. Look at the unprecedented action of giving some of the most prosperous PRIVATE companies huge gifts of public money because they stand on the precipice of bankruptcy. I thought we had a capitalistic system where shareholders take risks and go bankrupt if they lose their bets. Conversely, these shareholder/risktakers win big profits if their bets pay off. I thought we had deposit insurance and reserve requirements for banks? The rules were known. You want to change the rules in that you want to start protecting certain businesses from going bankrupt.
Those used to be the rules. You want to change the rules and give unprecedented sums of money to the biggest profiteers during the good times yet also come to their defense during bad times (at the expense of the average person). The same people that committed crimes and got us into this fix in the first place you want to bail out first. You want to not only not look back and not punish the guilty you want to spend more than this country has ever spent on it’s wars or other public investments on BANKS that often have committed crimes and now turn around and spend $15 Billion or so of the money intended to “save” our economy on their bonuses! And this is all before the real economic pain has hit.
No. The people that have destroyed the American system are the supply-side Reagonomic corporatist fools that currently have too much sway over even the Democratic party.
It is quite ironic that you are cheering on the fools that turned America into a kleptocracy and claim it’s the objectors that are destructive.
typical.
I don’t want to reward greedheads, I’m fully in favor of imprisoning any number of CEO’s, COO’s, CPA’s and whoever else is responsible for these scams.
What did I say? I said I am for protecting jobs. I have no other motivation. Jobs. Work. A functioning economy where people can make investments and get loans, and hire people to do work. Where people can borrow money to get a car to go to work, or to expand their business.
I am fully in favor of nationalizing the banks (at least, temporarily). Equity stakes are better than shitpile.
You make a complete caricature of my position.
The parallel would be if I kept arguing that you support the loss of 10 million jobs because you don’t agree with me.
How about we let the stockholders take thier hit on the chin, give the money to the common guy so he can start up his small business or pay off his debts or heck, just BUY stuff and we jump start the economy THAT way?
Not only is it the ethical thing to do, it’s the best way to end this crisis.
Whoever said we’d trash the system? We’d PROTECT the system the good ole fashioned way: From the bottom up. Give all that money to Main Street, not Wall Street and watch the economy come bouncing back. You know, the Keynesian way. The progressive way.
Let the stockholders bite the bullet, but bail out the common guy. Not because it’s the right thing to do, which it is, but because it’s the only intelligent way out of this mess. FDR made it work, so can we.
How is it progressive to be pro bailout?
Forget labels and forget lists and let’s just assume that two reasonable “progressives” can disagree on this issue. Evidently both you and Bowers consider yourself progressives and you both evidently think your respective stance represents the progressive position.
However, you seem to be avoiding the discussion on the merits and saying “I have more progressives (as you define them–or according to your lists) on my side than you do so I’m the progressive on this issue”.
What’s progressive about giving a bailout to BofA so Merril Lynch can take the money in the front door and quickly send $15 Billion out the back door in bonuses to it’s executives? This is what Obama and the so-called progressives on your list were fighting for? Gifts to bank executives to “kick-start” this economy before “this sucker blows”?
I really fail to see your argument of why bailing out failed investment banks without nationalizing them, or indeed, even attaching any strings to the money at all, is a good and progressive thing to do. Talk about heads exploding.
Plus, this is Bush’s proposed bailout!! Bush and Paulson’s and Bernanke’s and it represents the supply-side Reagonomics that has plagued both parties. After helping the bankers siphon of their ill-gotten gains and weaken our economy during the great Credit Bubbles (during which time the average American’s income stagnated) the Democrats now want to come to the bankers’ aid first and foremost. And Obama and you and a few “progressives” have sheepishly fallen for the Bush scare tactics and think you need to lavish money we don’t have on criminal bankers to “fix” the economy. How can you say anything is progressive when it’s proposed by Bush? Are you really unaware of the progressive argument against the bailout?
I’d prefer not to characterize either the pro or the anti-bailout position as ‘progressive’. But if you are going to do so, it’s clear that the balance falls to the ‘pro’ position.
What I object to, above all, is this effort to hijack a policy position that is most opposed by progressives and call it the true progressive position. It’s not accurate and it borders on outright dishonesty.
Add to this, that I have seem more dishonest accounting and ‘economist analysis’ from the progressive opponents of the bailout than I have seen from the Republican opponents, and I’m losing my patience on this matter.
I believe that, had we not passed the bailout, we would have suffered much larger job losses, much more business failures, and a much deeper hole to climb out of. If I didn’t believe that, then I would oppose spending the money without proper oversight and without adequate investments in other distressed areas of the economy. The banks needed to be saved so that the economy didn’t go right down the shithole. I never said I liked it.
I certainly understand the progressive case against both the bailout and many of the features of the bailout. What I don’t support is lying about the cost, or using evidence of every wasted dollar as an excuse to whip up populist disgust with what is an admittedly unpleasant and unpopular program.
There’s a certain kind of bizarre faux-populism that has been present in the debate from the start. What we know is that the banking system is fucked up, and the question before us should be, “What do we do?” Unfortunately, we’ve yet to have that discussion in much of the blogosphere, and this goofball mutated McCarthyism that has accompanied the bailout at places like OpenLeft is only harming our ability to do so.
OpenLeft’s main commentators cannot imagine that Barack Obama and Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters might be smarter, better informed, and simply more insightful than them. Not to say that Obama cannot be either wrong on tactics or on position, but he is not a fucking moron or utterly naive. I got bitterly attacked over there before, for saying this, but when white American “progressives” consistently underestimate and offer condescending finger wagging advice to black people who are obviously brilliant, one has to wonder whether some of those prejudices are at play.