Republican Party

The mortgage crisis in this country doesn't get much attention in Washington these days, but it's huge. It's so huge, in fact, that it dwarfs most of the economic issues that have Washington in their grip. It's so huge that it's dragging down our entire economy. It's so huge that the numbers can be difficult to picture.

The scale of the crisis is, in a word, staggering.

Here are seven charts (and another that was borrowed from the Wall Street Journal) along with some facts and figures that will help sketch out the scope of the problem. The numbers that follow are most likely understated, if anything, because we've left out some forms of reduced spending (like that which takes place when homeowners who have paid off their mortgages lose home value.)

The budget cutters push the idea that there's a dichotomy between the heart and the brain, and that they're on the "brain" side. But the numbers don't lie: Ignoring the foreclosure crisis is both heartless and brainless.

See for yourself.

By the time you read this ...

How big is the mortgage crisis? Pick an adjective: astronomic, colossal, enormous, gigantic, ginormous, humongous, jumbo, mammoth, massive, monstrous, mastadonic, monumental, prodigious, tremendous, vast, very big, very large, whopping. Here's how big it is. Let's assume that you're reading these words one day after I wrote them. That means that:

More »»

Today we saw state troopers in Madison tearing peaceful protesters out of their own capitol after the Senate voted to deprive them of their rights.  Video footage of that event should come with a label:  Brought to you by the State of Wisconsin, a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries.

Right now Wisconsin is serving as the prototype for United States 2.0, a newly reconstituted nation where corporations have all rights of personhood without any of the responsibilities - and people have all the duties of personhood without any of the rights.

Welcome to your future.  They're preparing it for you right now in America's heartland. more »

More »»

Call it a "general strike" ... from above. Republicans in Congress are trying to paralyze the government with their new budget bill, using a "disrupt and defeat" strategy to prevent it from delivering services promised to the the nation's citizens and required under current law. It's fiscal sabotage, plain and simple. Will people fight back?

The GOP'S first attack is on Social Security, slashing its budget in order to deprive people of vitally needed services. While the "austerity economics" crowd talks disingenously about future Social Security cuts in the coming decades, they're actually trying to cripple its activities starting right now.

House Republicans passed a budget which cuts $1.7 billion from the operating budget for the Social Security Administration (SSA) for the rest of 2011. That would damage its ability to deliver the benefits that were paid for by the working men and women of America. And remember: These same Republicans just held the government hostage in order to win a tax break for the wealthiest of Americans -- a deal that will cost the public treasury hundreds of billions of dollars. Now they're turning on the elderly, the disabled, and people who have lost a loved one. more »

More »»

George Orwell would be proud. The latest Washington catchphrase deserves a place of honor in the 1984 lexicon, right between "War Is Peace" and "Love Is Hate." It's a virus of the language that's spreading faster than the stomach flu.

"The President's budget punts on entitlement reform," reads a statement by House Republicans. "Our budget will lead where the President has failed, and it will include real entitlement reforms." "You have to do entitlement reforms if you are serious about this budget," says Rep. Paul Ryan.

Reality check: Nobody's proposing 'entitlement reform.' That term is a cloaking device for some very ugly intentions. It's a meaningless manufactured phrase cooked up by some highly-paid consultant, and it diminishes the sum total of human understanding every time it's used. The phrase is a euphemism for deep cuts to programs that are vital and even life-saving for millions of elderly and poor people, but it's politically unpalatable to say that. So it became necessary to come up with yet another cognition-killing term designed to numb us from the human toll of our political actions. "Entitlement reform" is the new "collateral damage."

More »»

In my last two posts I reviewed the deficit reduction aspects of Paul Ryan's Republican response to the SOTU. But Ryan also placed considerable emphasis on the idea of “limited government” in his response. In this post, I want to evaluate what he had to say on this theme. more »

More »»

Here's Part Two of my textual analysis of the deficit reduction portion of Paul Ryan's Republican response to the SOTU.

Then the President and his party made matters even worse, by creating a new open-ended health care entitlement. more »

More »»

Many of my recent posts have focused on fairy tales I thought the President would tell in the SOTU and also those that he did tell. more »

More »»

I get it. Believe me, I get it. Every day I talk to people - especially progressives - who are deeply disappointed with the leaders they worked so hard to elect. The litany of letdowns seems endless: Guantanamo. The public option. Don't ask, don't tell. Too big to fail. And, looming over all of it, the battered economy and a sense that the case for more government action wasn't made when it should have been.

Many of the hard-working activists I've met, people who can usually be counted on to encourage others to vote, aren't even sure they'll go to the polls themselves this year. They're saying that we've learned in the last two years just how corrupt the system has become. They're asking, what's the use? Even I, Mr. Glass Half-Empty, have been a little surprised at the level of pain and disillusionment.

The disaffection among core voters is there, and it's real. more »

More »»

GOP candidates are making a point of running against "bailouts" this year. Yet even as they rail about rescuing big banks, they're working on a plan that would slip those same banks an estimated $90 billion in taxpayer money ... and that's just in the first ten years.

"Fiscal conservatism," anyone?

It was always hypocritical to slam a bailout that they and their party initiated. But it turns out they were just warming up. Now they're trying to pull a fast one on the American public, tapping Tea Party rage about big government spending even as they prepare to slip the big bankers some big bucks. They're planning to siphon off $90 billion meant for America's college students and their families and give it to Wall Street.

Any Tea Partier who votes for these guys is being played for a sucker. more »

More »»

A full 90 members of Congress who voted to bailout Wall Street in 2008 failed to support financial reform reining in the banks that drove our economy off a cliff. more »

More »»