Republicans

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Republican Hysteria

So the head of the RNC, Michael Steel thinks the Recovery Act is no good because it only produces work and not jobs.  Alan Keyes doesn’t think President Obama is really a citizen and besides, he, Obama, is a well known communist.  Today a number of Republican Governors have rejected stimulus money.

Bob Cesca has a good post on Huffington Post.  His rant is excellent.  I don’t think he would be able to talk Rachel Maddow down about this.  One great observation

Yes, the Republicans have claimed to have “found their voice.” If this is true, then their “voice” sounds exactly like Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge and Michelle Malkin, depending on the day.

So what are these voices saying exactly?

For starters, Rush Limbaugh — the de facto leader of the Republican Party — said on his show Tuesday that the entire economic meltdown was actually precipitated by a conspiracy between George Soros and a cabal of billionaire liberals who deliberately sought to sabotage the world economy in order to get Barack Obama elected.

He, of course, has no real evidence for this, other than what the shadow people told him while he was tweaking his TV remotes.

Okay, so I made up the part about the shadow people, but the rest is seriously what Limbaugh was telling his audience of dittoheads yesterday. What Limbaugh doesn’t know, however, is that Soros is actually a hobbit who’s conspiring with Elvis to fake another Moon landing. (Shh!)

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They have indeed totally lost their shpadoinkle and despite purely involuntary spikes in my blood pressure, it’s so much fun to watch. By successfully debunking their lies, rising above their bait and merely presenting a contrast of character, President Obama is making the Republican A-listers appear small, petty and absolutely befuddled. They’re frantically struggling to figure out how to counterpunch, so they’re grabbing, borrowing or downright plagiarizing ideas from anywhere, irrespective of the general quality of the idea. And if the Republicans are at all interested in continued survival, someone they respect should probably smack their hands and scold: Drop that filthy Limbaugh quote! You don’t know where it’s been!

But if this is their “voice” and they’re satisfied with it, I for one welcome the new Republican “voice” and wish them a hearty and very sincere: Good luck with that.

But seriously.  I think Alan Keyes, the New York Post cartoon, and other Republican outbursts come very close to threatening the President’s life.  Political opposition is one thing:  inciting violence is totally different.

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Republican Stimulus

I have Chris Matthew’s Hardball playing in the background.  He is interviewing two Republicans are still pushing business tax cuts and the same old Republican agenda.  One of them wanted to know what the money for the arts will do to create jobs. The answer is every musical or theatical production, every symphony orchestra, every movie employs people other than the artists.  Look at the jobs created- and the lasting contribution made –  by the art projects funded by FDR.  Arts money can also be used to maintain arts programs in the schools – which will employ teachers.  Jobs.

The whole “this is a Democrat bill” drives me nuts.  Didn’t the Republicans lose the election?  Luckily Paul Krugman had some advice in his column from January 26:

…So as a public service, let me try to debunk some of the major antistimulus arguments that have already surfaced. Any time you hear someone reciting one of these arguments, write him or her off as a dishonest flack.

First, there’s the bogus talking point that the Obama plan will cost $275,000 per job created. Why is it bogus? Because it involves taking the cost of a plan that will extend over several years, creating millions of jobs each year, and dividing it by the jobs created in just one of those years.

It’s as if an opponent of the school lunch program were to take an estimate of the cost of that program over the next five years, then divide it by the number of lunches provided in just one of those years, and assert that the program was hugely wasteful, because it cost $13 per lunch. (The actual cost of a free school lunch, by the way, is $2.57.)

The true cost per job of the Obama plan will probably be closer to $100,000 than $275,000 — and the net cost will be as little as $60,000 once you take into account the fact that a stronger economy means higher tax receipts.

Next, write off anyone who asserts that it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.

Here’s how to think about this argument: it implies that we should shut down the air traffic control system. After all, that system is paid for with fees on air tickets — and surely it would be better to let the flying public keep its money rather than hand it over to government bureaucrats. If that would mean lots of midair collisions, hey, stuff happens.

Today Bob Herbert calls the Republican arguments “The Same Old Song“:

What’s up with the Republicans? Have they no sense that their policies have sent the country hurtling down the road to ruin? Are they so divorced from reality that in their delusionary state they honestly believe we need more of their tax cuts for the rich and their other forms of plutocratic irresponsibility, the very things that got us to this deplorable state?

The G.O.P.’s latest campaign is aimed at undermining President Obama’s effort to cope with the national economic emergency by attacking the spending in his stimulus package and repeating ad nauseam the Republican mantra for ever more tax cuts.

My favorite line of the Herbert column is

The truth, of course, is that the country is hemorrhaging jobs and Americans are heading to the poorhouse by the millions. The stock markets and the value of the family home have collapsed, and there is virtual across-the-board agreement that the country is caught up in the worst economic disaster since at least World War II.

The Republican answer to this turmoil?

Tax cuts.

They need to go into rehab.

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Donkeys, Elephants and your money

I’m  still struggling to understand basic economics, but the New York Times had an op-ed chart today which was very revealing:

Since 1929, Republicans and Democrats have each controlled the presidency for nearly 40 years. So which party has been better for American pocketbooks and capitalism as a whole? Well, here’s an experiment: imagine that during these years you had to invest exclusively under either Democratic or Republican administrations. How would you have fared?

As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index* would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only, although that would be $51,211 if we exclude Herbert Hoover’s presidency during the Great Depression. Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years.

See the graphics here.  The author, Tommy McCall, used to work for Money  Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/10/14/opinion/20081014_OPCHART.html

So who has the better economic ideas?  Can it just be an accident that the Democrats do better even forgetting about poor Herbert Hoover?  I somehow don’t think so.  I think this means that a vote for Barak Obama is a good idea.  I’m starting to look at quarterly statements and see retirement fading off into the distance.

On a totally personal note, I had the closest brush with fire this afternoon that I’ve ever had in my 60+ years.  The house next door – separated by a narrow grassy area and a tree – caught fire this afternoon.  I had been at a conference and after a late afternoon meeting was cancelled decided to just drive home and stay there taking a personal hour.  Suddenly the doorbells to the house starting ringing frantically.  It was a neighbor trying to find someone to call 911.  There were flames shooring out of the roof of the house next door.   We rounded up our four cats and put them in carriers.  I found our passports and then went out into the park across the street to watch.  I have to say the Boston Fire Department was pretty amazing.  They wet down our house, the house on the other side which was attached to the one on fire and put out the active fire.  It took a suprisingly long time as they had to tear the parts of the neighboring roof and attic area apart to find all the fire.  I think they considered this pretty minor and routine, but I certainly didn’t.  I couldn’t even count the fire trucks on our little one-way street – 7, I think.  So three families are temporarily homeless…  The whole thing was really, really scary.