Blog Archive: March, 2011

Oh, Democrats, Democrats, Democrats. Your party's symbol's an ass - a word that was on John Boehner's lips this week, and maybe some other people's too.

Here's how it went down: First House Republicans proposed $32 billion in cuts. The President offered $6.5 billion. The House passed a bill cutting $60billion. Then the Tea Party demanded $100 billion. Now we're told that everybody has agreed to a "compromise" number: $33 billion.

That's just one billion more than the Republicans in Congress originally demanded. Way to negotiate, Democrats!

That's why we need an independent movement that will fight for the public's best interests.

Put up your hands and fight like a gentleman, sir!

In the bloodbath that is modern American politics, the courtly Dems still want to fight by Marquis of Queensbury rules. In the budget battle, they've once again put up their dukes for a polite "bout of fisticuffs" while their opponents pummel them with knives, clubs, brass knuckles, numchucks, AK-47's, and tactical nuclear weapons.

The imagery's just a figure of speech, of course.

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This morning Representative Jan Schakowsky responded to Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's statement that Social Security and Medicare "cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be." Schakowsky said, more »

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What did people expect would happen when they voted for Reagan, Bush and other conservatives, or supported their policies? In the Holland (Michigan) Sentinel community columnist Ray Buursma writes, American workers got what they deserved. more »

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How to sound like a total ass in one easy lesson:

At a town hall meeting in Polk County, Wisconsin earlier this year, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) was asked whether he'd vote to cut his $174,000 annual salary. Duffy sort of hedged, and went on to talk about how $174,000 really isn't that much for his family of seven to live on. Then he went on to say he supports cutting compensation for all public employees, along the lines of what Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has proposed for the Badger State...

Duffy also said that he pays more in health care costs and retirement savings than he did when he was a district attorney before he ran for Congress. That said, Duffy said he'd support the idea of "public employees across the board" taking a compensation cut.

"Let's all join hands together and say 'I'll take a pay decrease, absolutely," Duffy said.

The median household income in his district was $50,520 in 2008. This guy makes more money than 95% of Americans.

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"Dance with the one that brung you." It's an old saying, and an unwritten rule in politics: stick with the strategy and/or constituency that "brung you" to power, if you want to stay in power. Dance with the one that brung you, or you might not dance at all.

But sometimes "dancing with the one that brung you" to the party can ruin your chances of getting invited back. It's looking more and more like that's the case with the GOP and the Tea party, according to a recent CNN poll.

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Wisconsin continues to spin out of control and a constitutional crisis looms as a judge this week again ordered Walker’s administration to halt implementation of his bill stripping Wisconsin public workers of collective bargaining rights. Walker's team moved to publish the law in defiance of the court order last Friday night and began implementation of the bill on Saturday. more »

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• MORNING MESSAGE: The Mortgage Crisis Dwarfs Almost Everything
• Major Cuts May Avert Shutdown
• House Looks To Whack Medicare In 2012 Budget
• Major Bailout Disclosure Today
• Ohio Latest To Strip Civil Servant Rights
• Obama Takes "All Of The Above" Energy Tack
• Tea Party Carries Corporate Water

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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:

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On Tuesday Sam Seder and I had a brief discussion during his daily web broadcast The Majority Report that touched on some points I made in my post here last week The Empty Rhetoric of School "Reform" (with bro more »

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Bloggers always wonder why Democrats couldn’t get anything done even when they had a solid majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate, while Republicans get everything they want even when they are in the minority. Take the current budget negotiations, for example. more »

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