Regulation: It’s Not Just For Liberals Anymore

Former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart recently wrote an op-ed piece in the NYT predicting that the upcoming election will present the winner with the opportunity to create a new cycle of American history, an age of reform.

Hart dusts off the idea that American politics does run in cycles, or shifts between poles of conservatism and innovation, perhaps most prominently championed by historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Hart identifies the most recent cycles as the FDR New Deal cycle from 1932 to 1968 and the Reagan conservative movement from 1968 until now.

If we are indeed moving into a realignment and a profound restructuring of our politics, one of the keys to the coming cycle will be undoing one of the Reagan revolution’s major victories, the demonization and rollback of government regulation of corporations. Ralph Nader may have become a laughingstock due to his electoral crusades, but the message is still sound. Corporations have gone hog wild and need to be reined in.

An example of this coming new age rolled into my e-mail box this morning, a press release from U.S. Representative Barney Frank, chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services. The Committee announced a hearing where Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will testify on the restructuring of regulations governing financial markets.

Viva la revolucion!

Amateur Blogger Broke Both “Bittergate” and Bill’s “Scumbag” Meltdown

Mayhill Fowler broke two big stories during the Democratic political campaign: Obama’s description of marginalized working-class voters as “bitter” and Bill Clinton’s wild tirade against a Vanity Fair journalist in which he described the reporter as a “scumbag” among other derogatory terms.

What’s interesting about Ms. Fowler is her employer. She’s an unpaid volunteer in the Huffington Post blog experiment called “Off The Bus”, where volunteer bloggers follow the campaign and write stories that the mainstream media presumably might miss.

Ms. Fowler got herself into the closed Obama event for donors where he made his impolitic remarks because she is a Obama supporter, donating the maximum $2,300. This is certainly something that mainstream journalists wouldn’t be allowed to do, even those supposedly “in the tank” for Obama. Ms. Fowler muses that she hestitated in releasing the “bitter” comments because she knew the effect it would have on the Obama campaign. She also tried to minimize the effect of the “scumbag” remarks by dumping them onto the internet on Friday afternoon, but to no avail.

The question in my mind is what value does Ms. Fowler add to the campaign? As an Obama fan myself, I was upset at the attention paid to “bittergate” by the media. But its value is the focus that the Obama campaign needed to make on people not naturally inclined to support Barack. Of course, the mainstream media, the Clinton oppo reseach team and the Republican hate machine all tried to spin the story into the mainstream mold: elitist latte-drinking limousine liberal just doesn’t understand real folks. That Obama was able to refocus the campaign on what his Presidency would do to help all Americans was beneficial, despite the short-term blowback.

The Bill Clinton “scumbag” flap was more like the tripe the mainstream media throws out and calls news these days. Yep, Bill was increasingly losing his shit out on the hustings. Bill blames everyone for his wife’s slowly eroding campaign EXCEPT his wife, her handlers and himself. Big deal. The Vanity Fair article was also of questionable merit. Find upset staffers to squeal about the shortcomings inside the campaign and to throw innuendo on the fire about Bill’s personal life. Ms. Fowler’s piece had some staying power because a lot of people have fond memories of our former President and are not used to seeing ex-Presidents being that earthy.

I haven’t read much of the “Off The Bus” stuff, but what I have seen is relatively good–instead of just soaking up the stale campaign circus and reporting on the horserace, some of the bloggers actually seek out real voters and interview them. Now that’s some innovative reporting that I’d like to see spread out of blogging and into the mainstream media. Ms. Fowler’s batting .500: and that’s good in any league.

Finally, Change Even I Can Believe In

I don’t have to hold my nose when I pull that Democratic lever, I don’t have to choose between the lesser of two evils, I don’t have to protest vote Green. The election I’ve always wanted. We defeated the evil Queen, bring on the old dude.

Incredible!

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

The Primary Process

New York Times columnists Gail Collins and David Brooks go back and forth in a nicely humorous way, comparing and contrasting the Democrat and Republican primary systems.

However much I appreciated the snark, the serious pull quote from this article was from David Brooks:

“I hope at least the Dems can get rid of the superdelegates. A party in a democracy should not so completely distrust their own voters.”

Now I understand why the Times felt compelled to hire Bill Kristol to anchor the right-wing lunatic position amongst their columnists. While Brooks was thought to be able to hold down the fort for the righties when Bill Safire retired, he is entirely too reasonable and thoughtful. Yes, he is conservative, but he ain’t a hater.

Gas Taxes & Strawberry Statements

A favorite book of mine has always been James Simon Kunen’s account of his experiences as a student at Columbia, especially during the 1968 student uprising and takeover of administration buildings. The Strawberry Statement was one of my favorite books as a young high school and college student. It’s a great meditation on how events, even major ones like the Vietnam War and a campus riot, effect ordinary people. Kunen even referred to himself as a “single revolutionary digit.”

The current brouhaha over the Clinton-McCain gas tax holiday reminds me of two points in Kunen’s book. The title of the book was a reference to a statement made by a Dean at Columbia. Dean Herbert Deane allegedly said that students’ opinions about University policy had as much effect on his thinking as if the students told him they enjoyed eating strawberries. In other words, their opinions were irrelevant. Hillary Clinton’s “Strawberry Statement” is her recent declaration that she didn’t care if not one professional economist could be found to ratify the fiscal sanity of the gas tax holiday: “I’m not going to throw my lot in with economists.”

So now Hillary has changed the rationale for her campaign. Out is Hillary’s earnest appeal to well thought-out policy (as opposed to Obama’s ethereal and detached rhetoric). Clinton’s new rationale is her steadfast support of real folks, despite what those elitist always-did-their-homework-on-Friday-nights economists think.

Clinton justifies her position by declaring that a lot of well-thought out policy (and a lot of awful Bush policy) does nothing but make it harder for middle class families to eke out a living. This reminds me of another thought from Kunen’s book. During the disturbances at Columbia classes were cancelled and radical activists started offering “liberation classes”, sort of glorified teach-ins. Kunen mused that liberation classes weren’t going to do any good for say, the student studying classical music. Kunen noted that a lot of people get screwed by events over which they have little control and no say.

Clinton is correct when she notes that middle class families are being screwed and often public policy does nothing to help them, and possibly makes their problems worse. However, even the beleaguered middle class doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Their lives exist in a world of choices and decisions. Real leadership often requires elected officials to tell people that the decisions they have made cannot be sustained if the entire nation is to prosper.

America cannot continue to claim 25% of the world’s non-renewable energy resources. America cannot expect to see oil prices significantly decrease in a world where oil company production is falling every year and demand is booming due to the increase in the number of motorists in India and China. It is irresponsible and the opposite of leadership to tell middle class families driving SUV’s and living in the sprawl cities of the exurbs that their way of life (dependent on cheap gas) is in any way sustainable. Minimize the damage now instead of kicking the can down the road.

Stupidest.Policy.Ever

The gas tax holiday proposal by both John McCain and Hillary Clinton has been widely derided both by economists for its total ignorance of basic supply and demand theory and by environmentalists concerned that Americans are continuing to live in a dream world where 5% of the world’s population can continue to consume 25% of the world’s non-renewable energy.

The best rant on this policy is by Tom Friedman in a New York Times article entitled “Dumb As We Wanna Be.”

The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.

However, the sheer stupidity of the gas tax holiday proposal has fostered an interesting contest. James Fallows, the wonderful writer for the Atlantic, asked readers of his blog to nominate the stupidest bipartisan public policy enacted by the federal government.

Among the worthy submissions:
farm bill and its subsidies to wealthy factory farm corporations
Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which declared Iran’s standing army a terrorist group
1986 Anti-Drug Abuse act, set up sentencing distinction between crack and powder cocaine
Patriot Act

The winner was mandates and subsidies for ethanol production and use.:

“I think bi-partisan support for ethanol is more stupid [than the McCain-Clinton 'gas tax holiday' plan], because it’s actually harmful and because it not only panders to the public … worse it panders to a special interest group (Midwest farmers and their regional politicians).
It’s harmful because: 1) it helped to catalyze higher levels of food inflation, 2) it consumes as much energy to make and distribute as it provides, 3) it deflects attention from developing trying sound policies to enhance our energy security, 4) it didn’t allow for removal of taxes on the import of truly energy efficient ethanol produced in Brazil from sugar, and 5) it’s a such an extreme example of government disfuntionality it causes people like me to become truly disillusioned with the political process.”

I’m not quite sure if my choices were bipartisan, but it’s hard to beat the stupidity of the Savings and Loan deregulation in the 1980’s and the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The former, combined with the Reagan administration’s hatred of government oversight and regulation allowed S & L ’s to be looted by corporate pirates, forcing taxpayers to bail out the system to the tune of $5 billion. The latter repealed the provision forbidding bank holding companies from owning other types of financial companies. many economists feel that this created the corporate climate that has resulted in the current meltdown of the mortgage market. That $5 billion S & L bailout will seem like peanuts when we’ve come through the worst of the credit mess today.

Disaster Averted, Roy Bernardi Passed Over As New HUD Secretary

OH, THANK GOD! Roy Bernardi, currently Assistant Secretary at the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, has been sidestepped by the Bush Administration for the top job. GW announced today that Steve Preston, director of the Small Business Administrationhas been named to succeed the disgraced and retiring Alphonso Jackson as the next Secretary at HUD.

Preston is evidently competent, working diligently to remake the SBA. Most governmental agencies run by Bush appointees feature a steel cage match between incompetence and corruption to determine standard operating procedure. Preston apparently prizes competence and results. The signature accomplishment of his tenure at SBA was cutting through the languishing backlog of assistance requests at SBA for small businesses wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. Preston pushed $6 billion in aid out the door in a matter of months.

Our nation has been spared the incompetence of Roy Bernardi, a political hack whose signature accomplishment as mayor of Syracuse was mismanaging the Finance Department so badly that the city had no idea what its accounts receivable balance was on any given day. This led to charges of fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission because when the city issued a bond, the information provided to investors on the city’s finances was just a guess.

A Bernardi-directed HUD would be unable to tackle the pressing problems facing our country in the mortgage foreclosure/credit crunch/undefinable derivative financial product /Wall St. land grab (take your pick) crisis. Wow, it is certainly a new day in Bushland–competence over cronyism.

As If I Needed Any More Convincing . . .

In a piece of news that is probably more important to this blog than any other in America: Bruce Springsteen has formally endorsed Barack Obama for President.

Summing up his feelings with a quote from his song “Long Walk Home” Bruce writes:

“LIke most of you, I’ve been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest. He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where ‘…nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.’ “

The New York Times notes another positive by-product of this endorsement. Now Hillary will have to stop playing “The Rising” during her campaign appearances.

Roy’s Our Boy, But A Cabinet Secretary?

Update:
Rep. Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services committee released a statement today asking President Bush to appoint an acting Secretary with the authority to: “work with us in making the decisions we need to deal with the housing finance crisis.”

Roy’s not your boy, Barney.

HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson resigned today. The resignation doesn’t become official until April 18th and he has pledged to help in the transition. Holy mother of god, this could mean Roy Bernardi, currently the number two guy at HUD, may be picked to become the next Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Deveopment.

Roy served 20 years as auditor of the city of Syracuse and seven and one-half years as Mayor. The highlights of his career in Syracuse include investigation for drunken sexual assault on a young lady (no charges were brought), eviscerating the city’s finance department staff to the extent that the city couldn’t accurately track it’s revenues and expenses (resulting in the SEC citing the city for making up financial figures in a bond issue it floated) and making reckless economic development loans that left the city repaying HUD over $20 million with money that otherwise would have gone to help low income folks repair their houses.

HUD has been working with Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the costs of the subprime mortgage crisis for homeowners threatened with foreclosure. Sports Illustrated used to have a weekly feature, a dubious sports highlight that was evidence “The Apocalypse Is Upon Us.” Roy Bernardi sitting at the table in a U.S. President’s cabinet is just such an event. May the good lord help us all. (The band may now start playing “Nearer My God To Thee”)

Obama’s Speech On Race

I didn’t have the opportunity to hear the speech by Barack Obama on race, I just read the transcript from the internet–but it was truly an amazing speech and an indication of why Barack Obama should be our next President. Unlike most politicians, he doesn’t fudge on the difficult parts.

For the first time in my life, a politician has talked honestly about the wounds our nation has suffered because of racism, discussed how both sides share culpability for sweeping this discussion under the rug and then pointed a way out of the wilderness.

Whites must acknowledge the pain and suffering that still exists among blacks. Blacks must acknowledge that society can adapt and change for the better. Both sides must accept that their destinies are entwined.

But, of course, he also admitted that this isn’t something that will be accomplished within the span of an election cycle or by a single candidate.

I thought the most telling distancing of the candidate from Rev. Wright and black liberation theology was Obama’s statement that his pastor’s biggest mistake was couching his criticism of both white racism and his admonishment of blacks towards self-improvement in an attitude that denies the ability of our culture to adapt and improve. That is as much a function of younger African-Americans who have seen and experienced the benefits of improved racial relations in distinction to civil rights-era African-Americans like Rev. Wright whose experiences tended to reflect more outright bigotry and hatred, to say nothing of legal segregation and violence.

An eloquent speech–hopefully it will be enough to derail the Republican hate machine (not to mention the Hillary War Room.)