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Putting GOP Governors’ Stimulus Antics in Perspective
Levee worker in Louisiana c. 1930s
Jindal and likeminded conservative-Republican governors claim the stimulus bill requires permanent changes to their states’ respective laws concerning unemployment benefits, specfically who is eligible to receive said benefits.
Apparently, too:
Based on the media blitz by conservatives this weekend, it appears the stimulus bill delivers an ear boxing to states’ rights and will unilaterally kill all business development by increasing unemployment-insurance rates paid by employers. The truth of Jindal’s “permanent change” claim is unclear. According to Louisiana State Senator Robert Adley (R), the state legislature could revisit its UI policies in the future.
The stimulus language Jindal and Barbour are holding up as philosophically incongruous with their ideologies deals with incentives states can receive through the Department of Labor to “modernize” their unemployment-insurance [UI] coverage (Special Transfers in Fiscal Years 2009, 2010, and 2011 for Modernization). In order to qualify for these additional UI monies, states must, in part, agree to at least two of the following four stipulations:
- UI coverage for part-time workers;
- UI coverage for employees who were forced to leave work due to “compelling family reasons” (i.e., domestic violence, illness or disability in immediate family, relocation of spouse’s employment where commuting is untenable for the other);
- Extended UI coverage to workers “enrolled and making satisfactory progress in a State-approved training program or in a job training program authorized under the Workforce Investment Act of 1998″;
- Dependent allowance of $15 per week, per dependent, subject to state limits.
If a state wants to receive its UI incentive, it must decide which two provisions it will adopt. Obviously, the state can perform actuarial analysis to determine which of the four will be the most cost effective and least encumbering to employers. A state might even go out on a limb and select the provisions that promise to help the largest number of working people. Perish the thought.
Hang in. Dollars and calculations after the jump.
Far-Right Republicans Really Don’t Get Reciprocal Reasoning, Do They?
If you truly believe in a principle, you stick with it even when you don’t like where it leads you. Hence the famous phrase attributed to Voltaire: “I do not agree with a word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.” Especially when it comes to the First Amendment and every American’s right to free speech, it ought to be axiomatic in American discourse that every side is entitled to its part in the debate.
More often than not, though, Republicans on the far right don’t seem to get this type of principled rationalism. Rather, the GOP, at least at the fringes, seems to appropriate tropes or principles only when they compel their political goals, and toss them when they’re inconvenient. ((Nota bene: this obviously doesn’t apply to all Republicans, or all conservatives. Justice Scalia – love him or hate him – is one of the most principled Justices on the Court, at least in this manner. He NEVER drops textualism – even when it leads somewhere he wishes that it wouldn’t.)) Case in point, Michael Savage, who (suddenly) decided to wax poetic on an American’s right to disagree with the President:
We live in America, and we’re supposed to… ask questions, challenge the government, the government’s supposed to be responsible to the people. Many of you are so ignorant, you don’t even understand that we have this right in America.
It’s truly a remarkable coincidence, isn’t it, that Michael Savage realized the value of dissent in a democracy just as Barack Obama took office, and not a moment earlier? Let’s not forget that for the past eight years, he’s been calling anyone he disagrees with a traitor, from politicians to peace activists. Although “Dr.” Savage finally found the courage to disagree with President Bush, it’s not too long since he railed against President Bush’s doubters as “traitors” – the “Enemy Within,” if you will. Apparently, that same valued right to dissent is heresy when applied to a Republican:
The ultra-leftists traitors within our borders have unleashed a relentless barrage of words against the war on terrorism with their subversive tongues. These turncoats and their sympathizers spew a web of lies and anti-American hatred with unquenchable zeal. Their goal? Sabotage President George W. Bush’s effort to fight terrorism, that’s number one. [ . . . ] This is unbelievable to me. At a time of war, they bash the president and spit on the flag.” ((The Enemy Within, p. 74-75. Sorry, no Amazon link or full bibliographing: he doesn’t deserve either.))
Ditto on Barack Obama’s usage of executive orders: it’s “despotic” when a Democratic President controls the waging of war through executive orders, but “treasonous” to question the same when it’s George W. Bush. Say what you will about us lib’ruls. But when we believe in a principle, we don’t apply it just when it’s convenient.
Have a listen to the audio. The clip about the value of dissent is at 12:30, and the clip about “despot” Obama is earlier, mixed in somewhere with some seriously racist ramblings. He also singles out NYU Law as an example of an evil lib’rul law school: love it. I’ve never been so proud of my school. As to the audio, I claim fair use for criticism.
Happy Sunday!
Sadly, today’s too busy to allow for a post of its own. Instead, a preview of the week to come: religion in ABC’s “Lost,” and how some religious doctrines actively subvert science.
And, in the meantime, a picture of my cat!
Fox Slips Closer to Tabloid Status
What can I say? Know thy enemy. Last night, Fox left a glaring typo on their front page for at least few hours – I’m not sure what the hell “LULIN LUKRS” means, but I think they were trying to say, “Lulin, a comet scheduled to transit past Earth, lurks nearby.”
Using “lolcat” font (all-caps Impact bold) doesn’t really help their case, either. Nor does a front-page story about Atlantis. It’s only a matter of time before Fox starts reporting on “Evlis” sightings.
Campus Politics, and What Liberalism Can’t Become (Again)
This morning, a forty-eight hour “sit in” orchestrated by “Take Back NYU!” (around a fairly schizophrenic agenda) ended in suspensions and the loss of campus housing (“rustication,” for you Rice alums) for the organization’s ringleaders. This despite generous offers of clemency from the NYU administration, who throughout the “occupation” treated TBNYU with greater respect than they were almost certainly due.
The response among the NYU community has been fairly and resoundingly negative, as students and administrators across the political spectrum criticize TBNYU for resorting to methods that bordered on incitement to riot, and left one NYU security officer in the hospital. In fact, apart from the excellent reporting by NYU Local’s Charlie Eisenhood – truly a triumph of modern journalism – it’s hard to find anything to praise in this private little war. Not only did TBNYU allow the situation to escalate far beyond any measure of proportionality, but they hypocritically abandoned their own guiding principle (“openness”) by zealously keeping any journalists out of their private discussions.
In making sense of such wanton and wasteful violence, I suggest we try to look for some silver lining by reading TBNYU’s abortive “occupation” as a cautionary example of what NOT to do in political movements. Among America’s youth, there’s a justifiable sense of optimism now, that concerned and active citizens can do anything – even elevate a liberal black man to the U.S. presidency, despite the nation’s lingering racism and staunchly conservative elements. But just because we can doesn’t always mean we should.
There are certainly causes in the world worth fighting for, and good ways to fight for them. But TBNYU, in its frantic lashing about for a raison d’etre, didn’t seem to hit on a good cause, and certainly didn’t approach it with anything resembling tact. Nothing is accomplished by violence, and save for those few circumstances when it matters most (like the civil rights movement), little is accomplished by large-scale, grandiose protests. In a way, we as a nation are still paying for right-wing backlash solicited by what became a liberal overreach of the late 1960s-’70s. Liberalism is just becoming relevant again: it’d be a shame to blow it so early by going right back to where we left off in the ’70s.
Then again, maybe I’m getting old. “I once believed in causes too, had my pointless points of view…”
Must See T.V.! Frontline: Inside the Meltdown
On Tuesday, PBS aired Inside the Meltdown, Frontline‘s investigation of major events in 2008 that resulted in the near-total collapse of the financial markets in late September. The hour-long documentary is mesmerizing not only for its detailing of the speed with which the market seized but its look at (former) Treasury Secretary Paulson’s perceived philosophical struggle between the theoretical ideal of the free market and the regulatory and interventionist imperatives of the modern, post-industrial, global economy. If anything, it is clear House Republicans’ galvanizing mantra of “no intervention” is grossly irrelevant. As Barney Frank (D-MA) notes:
Paulson and Bernanke say, “Hey, you know, reality counts.” The House Republicans say: “Who cares about reality? I’m sticking with my view.” …
Everyone wants to know what caused the crisis. What was the trigger, the fuse, the actual atom that split? I can only say there is plenty of blame to go around. Some activites had more direct influence than others. For instance, predatory lending and the actual drafting of bad loans (and the institutionalized tricks for doing so) to people who had no business taking on such debt can be considered a direct cause: Mortgage defaults were the first dominoes to fall. Also direct was the bundling of mortgages into CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) and their sale to other entities, which meant loan originators had no interest in whether the debt was settled. The slicing of CDOs into graded risks, where the riskiest components paid the most and last, while the safest parts paid least and first is problematic, too, because rating agencies, who — at best — were asleep at the wheel, apparently rated CDOs based on their least risky contents, as if the riskiest, highest-yield parts didn’t exist. Thus, the CDOs were a way to get a cake (high rating) and eat it, too (high yield).
We had an entire market based on an innovative investment product that, theoretically, is fine if it were constructed with sound loans and rated accurately, but since CDOs were not entirely sound, all of the products deriving from them were likewise unsound. Notwithstanding this, er, small detail, as long as the housing market was growing, why not create entire product lines that could not fail? Hence, we have the development of complex derivatives like, dangerously, credit default swaps (CDS). If the CDOs, theoretically, are the closest representation of the lender-borrower relationship (at least to the last entity holding the CDO), derivatives and CDSs represent bets against the failure of the CDOs. A CDS is an insurance purchased by a CDO owner. (AIG failed because it sold CDSs all over the market. When the CDOs stopped paying, the insured came-a-knockin’.) I consider the derivatives market a mid-level contributor to the crash. There is nothing inherently wrong with CDSs and other derivatives, except when parties inaccurately assess risk, out of greed or laziness or ignorance … It doesn’t matter.
More “blame” and Frontline interview excerpts after the jump.
Student Riots: First as Tragedy, then as Farce
American South, 1960s: brave black Americans refuse to budge from segregated restaurants, risking injury, imprisonment, and death to stand for equality. China, 1989: college students take to the streets, many giving their lives to stand for democracy. Iran, 1999: college students riot, risking their lives to stand against theocracy. Manhattan, 2009: privileged white college students risk a slap on the wrist to stand for… a look at the school budget, and redress for self-inflicted wounds.
Starting yesterday, and continuing through this afternoon, a group calling itself “Take Back NYU!” stormed the undergraduate student center, “occupying” it and holding it ransom for a group of “demands,” ranging (mostly) from the vain to the mundane. The “protest” has since degenerated into a frat party, complete with needless, TBNYU-authorized property destruction and nudity (NSFW). Call me a jaded, privileged sell-out, but speaking as an NYU law student, I’m embarrassed for these kids. If these tactics are ever justified, they’re not the least bit proportional to the change demanded, and seem more Woodstock than MLK. For your own sake, kids, leave the building, get a frappucino, and go home, before someone gets hurt, and before you ruin any chance of accomplishing the few laudable goals on your “demand” list.
Meeting massive national political upheaval with silence, and mild administrative complaints with panic, violence, and bedlam: that’s post-1960 “student activism” for you.
Houston, We Have a Plan.
Protection from the big, bad wolf
And Phoenix, and Miami, and Los Angeles, and Las Vegas … and all communities drowning in foreclosures.
On Wednesday, Obama announced his admini-stration’s plan to stabilize the housing market. The stock market didn’t love the plan, but it didn’t hate it either, the Dow closing even. I’m sick, sad, and sorry that the country is in the mess we are in, but I understand that drastic action has to be taken even if dastardly, irresponsible people benefit. I can see House Republicans harping most loudly on this point, but as their squawking increases, so does their irrelevance.
In the meantime, Obama laid out a plan with a good amount of detail (unlike Geithner’s dreamscape last week) that will have a three-prong approach to curbing the foreclosure epidemic:
- Incentives to lenders to refinance loans to homeowners who are current but who are paying relatively high interest rates and cannot refinance due to loss of equity in market downturn.
- Incentives to lenders to adjust loan terms for at-risk homeowners (i.e., lowering interest rates, extending payment periods, lowering principle) with the goal of bringing monthly payments to 31% of the borrower’s monthly income.
- $200 billion capitalization of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae so that these institutions can provide increased mortgage backing.
Obama is also asking Congress to pass legislation enabling bankruptcy judges alter mortgage terms. Says the New York Times:
The banking industry has vehemently fought that proposal for more than a year, saying it would make investors unwilling to finance future mortgage lending. But Democrats in Congress strongly support the idea and banking executives are putting up less resistance than before.
The plan is estimated to help nine million homeowners. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has already characterized Obama’s plan as a handout to the undeserving. The page cites delinquency rates on mortgages that were renegotiated via previous plans in the last fiscal year, quoting the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision:
The number of loans modified in the first quarter that were 30 or more days delinquent was 37 percent after three months and 55 percent after six months. The number of loans modified in the first quarter that were 60 or more days delinquent was 19 percent at three months and nearly 37 percent after six months.
BUT … the WSJ goes on to admit (my bold):
Those who favor Mr. Obama’s plan say that many of these modifications haven’t lowered monthly payments the way the new plan does. True, and the more taxpayer dollars are spent subsidizing a particular borrower, the more affordable a loan becomes.
Furthermore, the second report by the Congressional Oversight Panel [COP], one of the entities overseeing administration of TARP, discusses some of the problems with previous programs to modify mortgages, like the Streamlined Modification Program:
The Streamlined Loan Modification Program (SMP) is an entirely voluntary program. … Its key feature is a 38% front-end debt-to income (DTI) target for modifications. … Litton Loan Servicing, a Goldman Sachs affiliate, uses 31% DTI as its initial target, FDIC has proposed a general modification program using a 31% DTI target, and Bank of America/Countrywide’s settlement with the state Attorneys General requires use of a 25%-34% DTI standard. Indeed, the GSEs’ [Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae] own initial underwriting guidelines suggest a maximum 25%-28% front-end DTI. Moreover, most loans already have a front-end DTI of less than 38%. Only around 10-15% of prime and alt-A and 25-30% of subprime are already above this threshold.
COP was most concerned about efforts Treasury had (or, actually, had not) made in administering TARP to stem foreclosures. Treasury responded by touting the “breakthrough” SMP, which was voluntary, and did little to significantly modify mortgages to avoid foreclosures. The COP report continues:
A recent study of loan modifications found that 23% result in higher monthly payments and another 23% result in no change in the monthly payment, while most of those that decreased payments did so by less than $100/month. Not surprisingly, failure rates on modified loans are high.
So when we start hearing soundbites railing against repeated defaults and screaming that mortgage modification doesn’t work, remember the context of these failures.
Conservapedia Wants State Funding to Teach Your Kids
A while ago, we reported on the gross disservice putative “educator” Andy Schlafly is doing to his homeschooled students, and the parents that rely upon him. Far from giving te children a leg-up in the world through superior and rigorous education, a Schlafly education sets the bar incredibly low, both for instrutor and student, and clearly prizes ideological conformity far above intelligence, independent/critical thinking, or effort.
Sadly (and one would think impossibly), things have only gotten worse since then. In his latest course (World History), Andy explains away prehistory by saying, “There is no reason to think that man existed for thousands of years without ever expressing himself in written form,” and rewards students for explaining that Plato’s “Republic” is “the basis for our form of government in the U.S.” Interesting, because I don’t recall reading anything in the Constitution about philosopher kings…
Now Andy Schlafly wants to take his show on the road – at your expense – by getting himself accredited as a “Supplemental Education Service” for New Jersey. No Child Left Behind requires each state to develop these SES programs to function as private adjuncts to the public school system, funded and promoted by the state, charged with bringing remedial students up to speed. Given Andy’s noted distaste for public schools, this little stunt (if he follows through on it) is properly seen as his attempt to funnel the godless into his waiting hands, where they can be more easily converted: for the sake of New Jersey’s children, this can’t be allowed to happen.
Fortunately, there’s no reason to think he’ll pass the accreditation process. Most obviously, he seems to be on the “supply” side of the remedial students equation: the only difference between Andy Schlafly and an utterly incompetent teacher is that Andy uses religion to disguise his incompetence as “faith.” The extensive application for certification (PDF), we should hope, aggressively screens out such failures.
Even if Andy doesn’t flunk the certification based on soft estimates of his competence, a number of objective barriers stand in his way. Federal law requires SES providers to be “secular, neutral, and nonideological,” none of which are words that describe Andy, Conservapedia, or his “lectures.” ((See 20 U.S.C. § 6316(e)(5)(D) (2008) and 34 CFR 200.47(b)(2)(B)(ii)(D).)) Nor could Andy make the required certification ((Application p. 12.)) that, as an SES provider, he would live up to New Jersey’s Core Curriculum Content Standards. These standards would require that his students either understand ideas he doesn’t credit (evolution, the science explaining life’s origins, deep-time geology, hominid development), or learn methodologies he doesn’t teach (critical thinking in American and world history). Andy’s entire motivation for homeschooling is to enable him to legally ignore these standards: why he thinks they won’t apply to him the second he tries to step back into the public school system is beyond me.
A prediction: Andy knows this, and won’t follow through. When the deadline for applications rolls around on February 27th, he’ll either forget to file and subsequently pretend the whole thing never happened, or file a truly slipshod document and, when it’s inevitably rejected, blame liberals. If he takes the latter course, he’ll whine for a few weeks, gloat in the web-traffic he gets from gawkers based here or at similar blogs, and then pretend the whole thing never happened. Laughs will be had all around.
That said, there’s no accounting for government incompetence. Acccordingly, we’ll report back as this story develop, with contact information for New Jersey Department of Education officials if necessary.
North Dakota Takes Another Pass at the Windmill
It’s a recession. People are suffering; states near bankruptcy. In these grim times, what warped sense of priorities would prompt a state legislator to push for legislation, the inevitably futile legal defense of which would cost his state millions of dollars? Let’s see:
HB 1572: A BILL for an Act to provide legislative intent as it relates to references to individual, person, or human being.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF NORTH DAKOTA:
SECTION 1. References to individual, person, or human being – Legislative intent. For purposes of interpretation of the constitution and laws of North Dakota, it is the intent of the legislative assembly that an individual, a person, when the context indicates that a reference to an individual is intended, or a human being includes any organism with the genome of homo sapiens.
Oh, that. North Dakota’s House recently passed to the Senate, with its approval, a bill which would designate fertilized eggs as human beings. This provision (like the recent referendum voted down in Colorado) constitutes a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, could even function to prohibit some (but not all) forms of birth control, and openly flouts established Supreme Court precedent on both. If passed, the act’s survival against legal challenge would be nothing short of a miracle. That may be the Dakota House’s angle, but they shouldn’t count on it.
You have to wonder, when faced with such pointless conservative attempts at grandstanding, why the GOP thinks it’s entitled to complain about the Democrats not being sufficiently bipartisan.
