Obama to Reboot WPA

Barack Obama is looking towards our collective future while borrowing from our past, apparently. The last time this country was in such a financial downward spiral, a visionary named Franklin - the to-that-point far lesser known fifth cousin of an older and bolder dude named Teddy - became president and rammed through quasi-Socialist legislation to turn this country into a pseudo-Socialist regime. Or so some like to Monday Morning Quarterback still, seventy years later. So, fittingly, pinko-Communist President-Elect Obama is reaching into the past and taking a page directly from FDR's "get us the hell out of this not-so-Great Depression" playbook. Obama announced his economic plan... and I feel like I've heard it before:

President-elect Barack Obama promoted an economic plan Saturday he said would create 2.5 million jobs by rebuilding roads and bridges and modernizing schools while developing alternative energy sources and more efficient cars.

Building roads? Building bridges? Modernization projects? Flying cars? Sounds to me like the Works Progress Administration, Version 2.008 (never heard of it? Educate thyself here).

Well, sounds well and good, Barack. But let's not forget that the Great War, not the WPA, was ultimately responsible for finally kicking the dust off of American industry and throttling the Great Depression. Not that the WPA (and its other be-acronym'd cousins) didn't build some great roads, bridges and dams. And if I get my flying car technology, then it's a raging success. But it does beg the question:

So, President-Elect-Comrade Obama... if we're really reliving the Great Depression, who are we going to attack to get out of it?

How Do You Measure Yourself Against Other Presidents? By Height.

Hugh Hewitt records the surface data of the American economy on this past election day to begin his assault on the President-Elect:

When Barack Obama was elected:

The inflation rate was 3.7%
Unemployment was 6.5%
The prime was at 4%
The Dow closed at 9,625
The NASDAQ closed at 1,780
The S&P closed at 1,005
Oil was $60 a barrel.
U.S. monthly domestic oil production: appx 155 million barrels
U.S. proven oil reserves: 21.3 billion barrels
U.S. offshore proven reserves: 3.9 billion barrels

Hewitt proclaims these are the proper numbers to measure Obama's success. Of course, Hugh Hewitt is wrong, but at least he's dumb.

For starters, assuming there is an accurate, universally accepted empiric to measure the success of a President's policies as applied to the economy, wouldn't you begin your assessment period when the individual actually takes office on January 20 and can actually put these policies in place? Of course not. Why would you? The numbers could be worse on that day and make it much easier for Obama to improve on Hewitt's statistical window-dressing.

How about the stock market? It has always been more skittish than Howard Hughes sitting first row at a Gallagher show during the watermelon smash (non sequitur - how can you possibly live with yourself after paying money to go to a Gallagher show? Suicide isn't selfish, despite what people tell you.). The stock market clumsily measures overall investor confidence, not necessarily the fundamentals of the economy (which "are strong" as John McCain assuaged us during the campaign). But I'll play along. Here's a number: 10,609 - the Dow's closing average on the day George W. Bush took office. We'll check back on January 19, 2009 using Hugh's metric.

And the oil numbers? More right-wing obfuscation of the real problem with the current Republican administration's (lest we forget Bush still reigns) energy policy and the cavalier attitude of the American consumer. It's the numerical representation of the woefully dim GOP mantra "drill, baby, drill," despite endorsement by our nation's foremost energy expert, Sarah Palin.

At the end of Obama's first term, I will measure success by the proportion of domestic production/consumption of renewable, clean energy sources versus fossil fuels and petro-products. By the end of his second term, Obama's legacy will be measured by whether we can see our society free and clear of Middle Eastern oil and within two years of total energy independence (or pretty damn close). I will hold our new President to his Kennedy-esque pronouncement of realizing energy independence within 10 years. Jack's vision got us to the moon. Barack's vision should get us to the moon again using a spaceship powered by solar sails and a hydrogen fuel cell.

Hugh, let's cut away the rhetorical excess, shall we, and get down to brass tacks. One number - the Unemployment Rate - for the whole shebang. The Potatoe will record it on January 20, 2009 and wager . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . ONE EURO . . . that the number will be lower at the inception of Obama's second term, January 20, 2013.

Look, I know the stakes aren't that high, but we're in a rough patch here just like the rest of you. Hugh, be thankful it wasn't one dollar.

A Mandate To Loot

Allow me to introduce you to the independent oversight board charged with monitoring the $700 billion bailout.

You want me to appoint some folks, you shiftless Congressional layabouts. You make me sick:

In the six weeks since lawmakers approved the Treasury's massive bailout of financial firms, the government has poured money into the country's largest banks, recruited smaller banks into the program and repeatedly widened its scope to cover yet other types of businesses, from insurers to consumer lenders.

Along the way, the Bush administration has committed $290 billion of the $700 billion rescue package.

Yet for all this activity, no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste. Nor has the first monitoring report required by lawmakers been completed, though the initial deadline has passed.

So let me get this straight: We now approach 50% of the initial bailout fund - the big block of stinky government cheese - dispatched into the financial markets (and car markets, and insurance markets, and perhaps the credit card markets, I hear Spencer Gifts just received aid to bolster its dwindling lava lamp inventory) without a single overseer appointed, without a single status report filed?

F**k it, let's loot the coffers! "Yeah, no cops!":

The GOP Parasite

Shows the districts that voted more Republican this election cycle than in 2004. Fascinating. Writes the epilogue of the McCain-Palin ticket. The two-week march of "spread the wealth" bogyphobia (which most conservative pundits lauded as McCain getting back on message) fell on nationally deaf ears. Apparently "Fake Americans" weren't the only ones who found the ubiquitous presence of the deplorably dense Joe the Plumber on par with scrapes of a metal fork against a ceramic plate.

More significantly, fear mongering and encrypted race-baiting still plays and plays well along the Appalachian Trail into Tornado Alley. Perhaps this election distilled the toxic elements from the Republican Party. Perhaps pure conservatism will rise out of the tenuous pastiche of disparate elements once Scotch-taped together by Karl Rove. Perhaps fiscal conservatives, libertarians, populists and open-minded moralists will coalesce and offer new, promising ideas in 2012.

Ronald Reagan once defined conservatism: If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals -- if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is

Less government interference. Less centralized authority. More individual freedom. These are principles that many of us could get behind. But for the Republican Party of the past decade, these values are puffed up and marketed with no movable inventory on the sales floor. They gather dust in the partisan stock room. We've been waiting for the offer of merchantable goods by the GOP longer than Guns N' Roses's Chinese Democracy.

For me, for my vote, a purging of the Neocons and inexorable religious fundamentalists is a good place to start. If that's too big a step today, how about some restraints on the ceaseless pandering to unbridled prejudice and bigotry masquerading around the back country as moral piety.

"His Choice?"

Normally I resist posting campaign ads produced by either ticket, but this one put a charge in me. Very simple. Very topical. Very true:



I've exceeded my video quota for the day, but reserve the right to post a clip of McCain and Palin's faces superimposed on Bill Allen and Lori Loughlin bike-dancing to "Send Me An Angel" by Australian band Real Life in the seminal eighties film Rad.*

*Shout out to Defective Pants for daring to dream.

When Dems Win on Taxes, Dems Win, Period

Despite the spectre of Joe the Plumber, Betty the Baker, Tony the Taxidermist, Peter the Pederast or any of the other Chaucer-like descriptions used by the McCain/Palin campaign to describe the working-class people that allegedly support their tax plan, it turns out that most Americans (or most Americans who participate in telephone polls, that is) are favoring the Obama plan.

Turns out that appealing to 95% of Americans by saying you'll lower their taxes, and saying that over and over again, while your opponent instead tries to explain how lowering taxes for 95% of people is a bad thing, garners you pretty solid public support with that 95% you are talking about helping.

McCain's "Joe the Plumber" argument is probably giving him some headway but interestingly, Obama still maintains a ten-point lead over McCain -- 51 to 41 percent -- on who voters trust more to handle the issue of taxes, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post Poll.

The last Democrat to hold that sort of an advantage over his GOP opponent on economic issues going into an election: William Jefferson Clinton. And we see what a disaster for the economy that administration turned out to be. Let's just hope Obama doesn't leave us with a trillion dollar surplus or something absurd like that. We'll just spend it on booze.

How Randolph and Mortimer Duke ruined the economy

I'll admit it, I know even less about the economy than John McCain, and believe me "my friends," that's saying a mouthful. What little I do know did not come from watching shouty douche-nozzle Jim Cramer, or any other self-anointed experts. No, I learned everything I know about the economy from Trading Places, and what is happening in our economy can be explained by reference to it.

For instance, the reason AIG needed to be bailed out is because they didn't have enough money to cover all of the bad mortgages they insured through CDOs. Consider the following:

[after breaking a vase]
Billy Ray Valentine: Hey, sorry about that.
Randolph Duke: It's perfectly all right William. It was your vase.
Billy Ray Valentine: That was a cheap vase, right? That was a fake? Right?
Randolph Duke: I believe we paid $35,000. But if I remember correctly, we valued it for the insurance company at $50,000. You see, Mortimer? William has already made us $15,000. [Coleman, Mortimer, Randolph, and Billy Ray start laughing]
Billy Ray Valentine: You want me to break something else?
Randolph Duke, Mortimer Duke, Coleman: NO!

The principle is that you can break stuff if you value it more highly than it's worth and you make money doing it. You only have to stop breaking things when the insurance company runs out of cash because everyone is breaking their stuff.

The current crisis on Wall Street similarly can be explained by Trading Places:

Randolph Duke: Exactly why do you think the price of pork bellies is going to keep going down, William?
Billy Ray Valentine: Okay, pork belly* prices have been dropping all morning, which means that everybody is waiting for it to hit rock bottom, so they can buy low. Which means that the people who own the pork belly contracts are saying, "Hey, we're losing all our damn money, and Christmas is around the corner, and I ain't gonna have no money to buy my son the G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip! And my wife ain't gonna f... my wife ain't gonna make love to me if I got no money!" So they're panicking right now, they're screaming "SELL! SELL!" to get out before the price keeps dropping. They're panicking out there right now, I can feel it. [on the ticker machine, the price keeps dropping]
Randolph Duke: He's right, Mortimer! My God, look at it!

Bottom line: I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, because when I was growing up, if we wanted a jacuzzi we had to fart in the tub, but I sure am good looking.

*Pork bellies, which is used to make bacon, which you might find in a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

Posted by Jack Knowledge