Archive for September 17, 2008

Hannity Gets Owned (Updated, 10/08/08)

It took a mild-mannered, gray-haired professor type to both shout down Sean Hannity and show him for the failure he is.

On September 11th – just a week ago – Sean Hannity sought to rebut a “liberal” professor’s suggestion of the need for Democratic policies not by contesting them on the merits, but by (get this) arguing that the economy, under Bush, has been doing fine. If it wasn’t clear then who won the debate… I think it’s clear now.

**UPDATE**

Hannity got owned… again… as reported on October 8, 2008, for pushing the “guilt by association” game against Barack Obama.

Sarah Palin’s E-Mail Hacked; Nothing Interesting Found

Sarah Palin, who conducts all business by her personal e-mail account (raising concerns for the integrity of evidence needed for inquests into various scandals), has just become the subject of a major hack attack. Fox News is quick to condemn, and we concur: this is a major violation of privacy and, perhaps more importantly, resulted in the account’s justified deletion… erasing any potentially damaging evidence her inbox once contained.

The Perils of Deregulation

Like John McCain, I don’t know much about economics. The readers of this site, though, seem to know quite a lot about it, and recent threads have had a tendency to abruptly shift topic from creationism to tax policy. With so much good commentary, the choice for me, as a site author, is easy: make the best comment into its own post! So, without further ado, Athenian’s recent ringing rebuke of Republican economic policy. I’ll be happy to post the best rebuttal below the line when I receive it. Update: extensive rebuttal in the first comments.

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[Y]ou really need to catch up on your history. De-regulation did begin under Clinton, but was it an initiative started by Clinton? No. It originated with “conservative” Republicans in Congress. Much of the sub-prime loan debacle can be traced by to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which was a purely “conservative” bill passed by party line votes and achieving long-held goals of eliminating a broad swath of New Deal era regulations. The Savings and Loan crisis began in the 1980s and continued through the 1990s, and stemmed from other “conservative” attacks on long-standing and effective regulation. You will notice that that crisis, which ended up costing tax payers almost $200 billion predated Clinton, so you can’t use the “but Clinton” defense.

The national debt can’t be traced back to Social Security at all, as it has always run a surplus, and will continue to for a while yet. It has not contributed at all to the current national debt. Medicare’s costs have only recently begun to explode, and similarly the program has not contributed much to the current debt. The size of the debt and the increased size of budget deficits in recent decades goes back to Reagan’s supply side economic ideology, and his severe cutting of taxes without concomitant cuts in spending (this was not, contrary to “conservative” legend, due to liberal pressure from Congress, but Reagan’s absolute certainty that the cutting of taxes would increase revenue such that spending cuts were not as necessary – besides, he needed large outlays to pay for the 600 ship navy, SDI, and other pet projects). This policy caused the deficit and the debt with it to explode. If you look at Reagan, he inherited a debt from Carter that was about 32% of GDP, and left a debt that was 53.1% of GDP (it would have been much worse had he not gotten rational after the early years of his tax cuts, when the expected revenue enhancements did not occur and the deficit ballooned from less than $100 billion under Carter to almost $300 billion in 1985, and he then permitted tax increases to stem the flow a bit – another thing “conservatives” tend to forget). The debt then continued to increase to 66.2% under Bush I’s continuation of Reagan’s general economics before decreasing under Clinton’s administrations and his deficit reduction measures (which passed without a single Republican vote). Of course, then came Bush, and the deficit and debt have been both hitting records. Pretty much all of this debt has accumulated due to deficits in funding regular government activities, with entitlements subsisting on their own dedicated revenue streams.

Are the entitlements going to explode in the future? Yes, if nothing is done. However, it cannot be ignored that, had it not been for “conservative” recklessness with the budget since Reagan, we would be far better positioned to deal with those liabilities. As it stands, the “conservative” position that we should borrow whatever we need for what ever we want and leave the payment to the next generation down the road leaves us with few good options, little wiggle room, and a lot of pain down the road.

Finally, Social Security and Medicare do not take an “overwhelming majority” of our GDP. The US GDP stands at around $13 trillion per year. Social Security outlays are at about 4.3% of that and Medicare 3.2% as of 2007 according to the SSA Trustees Report. Last I checked, 7.5% did not even come close to a majority of that $13 trillion. Even if you project out some 80 years, the two together will only be around 16.6% of GDP by official projections. Where exactly are you getting your numbers?

I know “conservatives” hate education, but a little research would do you good.

Back on Topic: the Market Crash and its Silver Lining

If you’ve walked through the Times Square area recently, you’ve probably looked at the ten-story video wall that is was the Lehman Brothers façade and wondered, like me, what kind of company can afford a ten-story, continuously operating video wall in the middle of an economic downturn.

Apparently, not Lehman Brothers. The financial supergiant has just become the latest casualty of the subprime & credit crises, giving some credence to the doom & gloom speculation that Bear Sterns was the first, not the last.

This is bad news for America in the short term, but as for its lingering consequences, “we’ll see.” For one “silver lining,” last week it looked like America may honestly have been considering electing a president based only on “lipstick” & a vapid-but-populist running mate. Now, in the wake of this grim economic news, we have a chance of focusing on what’s actually important: the issues.

John McCain has spent the entire campaign running away from the issues, blocking substantive discourse by laughing about tire gauges, attacking straw-man crazy pastors, lying about his opponent, and alternately mocking & nominating empty political celebrities. Of course, if McCain has distracted the American electorate, Barack Obama has let him, rendering him at least partially culpable. But it’s time to refocus, and Obama knows it.

McCain is vulnerable on the issues. Even his chief economic advisers don’t think he’s the smartest fellow on the economy:

He continually violates Rove’s Law, issuing statements that, when clipped, sound idiotic:

And, more importantly, he’s the “incumbent” in a time of economic downturn and general malaise (I’d say “ennui,” but that sounds too “elitist”…). McCain voted against credit & derivative trading regulations, leaving billions of dollars off the books, unregulable, and unknowable. He voted against the Bush tax cuts, sure… but now he supports them. His economic policies are identical to Bush’s: even his advisers can’t meaningfully distinguish them. They even sound alike:

Let’s face it: if this election is about issues – and it’s finally about to be – McCain loses. Why do you think he’s leaned so hard on gimmicks? Obama needs to make this election about one, simple question: what part of the last eight years did you like?