Fuck You, the Economist

The fact that world news from other countries tends to be better than what we get over here may sometimes lead one to expect that when a foreign publication comments on America, that they'd understand us better than we do them.

The Economist has seen fit to remind me that I ought to jettison that expectation just as soon as I can manage.

You can tell right away that the author(s)' concepts of political science are stuck in the UK. Despite clearly stating that the crisis is entirely a political one, they continue on to state that the House GOP was acting reasonably within its electoral mandate from 2010 in being the first American majority caucus in history to refuse to raise the debt ceiling.

What, pray tell, is this mandate? According to The Economist, it's "to hold the government of Barack Obama to account."

Yeah, we get it. They have Parliament where you live and you don't know how a proper democracy works. Here's a hint-- politicians are supposed to be elected to do the will of the People, not to play Thunderdome with other politicians. We don't have a paradigm where there's a coalition whose job is, officially, to oppose the majority. It has to do with the fact that our system of representative government was designed on purpose, not retro-fitted to a constitutional monarchy. And while we've made plenty of our own mistakes, a lot of what we got right are things that we recognized were horribly wrong with the British system, one of which being the fractious nature of the British Parliament.

Nowadays, the phrase "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition" gets floated as a justification for the GOP's chauvinistic obstructionism by American pundits who are too piss-scared of being seen as a part of the Liberal Media to speak honestly about the Republican Party. It's bullshit. That's not how the system was built to work; there are far too many mechanisms built in that grind everything to a halt. Operating our government like it's a Parliamentary system has been nothing short of disastrous for the American People, and the Economist's failure to grasp that basic fact ought to disqualify any commentary it offers on American politics.


When we send politicians to Washington, it's to do the job that the prior incumbents aren't doing well enough. And in 2010, that was create jobs. Which the polls confirm. The electorate is concerned overwhelmingly with jobs and the economy.

You'll notice that "just fuck with Obama a lot" isn't on that list.

The Economist is claiming, essentially, that a populace whose top 6 priories were (in descending order) The Economy, Jobs, Terrorism, Social Security, Education, Medicare, issued a mandate to Republicans to betray five of them in the service of their sixth priority, deficit reduction, while leaving tax cuts--which only 42% rated as a top priority-- alone

It's pretty easy math, The Economist. Isn't math supposed to be a feature of your discipline?

The math gets easier when you consider that those medicare cuts were originally part of a budget plan that also slashed taxes, and only would have significantly reduced the deficit if you assume quite a lot of nonsense. The Ryan plan was quite clearly not about the budget. In order to support the thesis that government is bad, evidence to the contrary must disposed of. It's only natural to target the nation's most popular government program.

The thing is, all of this has been available to anyone with a cheapass computer and the ability to find a WiFi hotspot somewhere. Does part of getting an Economics degree necessitate having the part of your brain capable of parsing this shit get cut out? Did Paul Krugman just not show up that day?

Was it a burning need to break out the "pox on both your houses" that persuaded the Economist to chide Obama for not finding a way out of the deficit crisis in the same breath that it had proclaimed said crisis to be a politically manufactured one?

I didn't even have to get into the utter lack of precedent for the debt ceiling vote being tied to ten-year budget outlooks to demonstrate just how clueless these wankers are.

And yeah, plenty of American outlets have been this fucking idiotic or worse in their coverage of the debt ceiling talks too, and none of them have resulted in me taking to the blogs.. But if the Economist is going to look down over the rims of its glasses at America without actually understanding what's going on, they've opened themselves up to ridicule.

Monday Anthem-- Dedicated to Nancy Pelosi.

One of the greatest Speakers to hold the title-- and Forbes be damned, the most powerful woman in the history of this country-- is getting up off the mat.






Fuck yes, Madam Speaker.  This song is for you.

Available in two flavors:  Original




And Crunchy.




Give 'em hell, Congresswoman.

The Shape of Things to Come

I'd like to plug my friend David Harewood, who has written today's featured article over at InformedPlanet.com.  Check him out.

So as it turns out,  I was right when I predicted a 53-47 split in the Senate (not in any way that was recorded, so I guess you'll have to trust me.  Or not.  Whatever.)  I didn't make a prediction for the House, but if I had, it would have been wrong.  Not that I was particularly surprised.  History dictates big wins for the opposition the first midterm election following a new President's inauguration, as well as during hard economic times.

But consider this:

In the past two years, under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, House Democrats passed a truly astounding amount of legislation-- including major reforms such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Credit CARD Act, and  the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  Not to mention the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which just today I discovered was being put to use to repair a stretch Cambridge Street in Somerville, MA that had fallen into such disrepair that its potholes have cost me a bike tire, a wheel and a brake cable.

But I guess John Boehner doesn't want me to have a bike.

In any case, Nancy Pelosi has been regarded by historians as one of the best Speakers of the House in the past hundred years.  In addition to those specific bills I mentioned, she passed 430 bills through the House, all of which had majority support in the Senate, and yet none of which passed.  Because Senate Democrats were too scared to make Republicans own up to their obstructionism and actually read from the phone books to stop them from passing bills covering, among other things, infant nutrition.

The Public Option, which 50% of Republicans supported, died in the Senate.  As did a significant portion of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which it is now abundantly clear wasn't enough.  Unemployment benefit extensions, small business tax credits, a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and additional infrastructure programs all languished due to the Democrats' unwillingness to challenge the notion that requiring 60% of the Senate to pass anything was normal.

And yet?  It's Speaker Pelosi who loses her job title in January, whilst  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid keeps his gavel.

Whiskey.

Tango.

Foxtrot.

So what now?

We have divided government yet again, but unlike in 1994, the Senate remains in Democratic hands.  With the House controlled by the opposition and the Senate still incapable of action, Democrats aren't going to be able to have any kind of a legislative agenda unless the filibuster gets changed.  As luck would have it, the rule's two greatest defenders (Chris Dodd of CT and the late Robert Byrd of WV) are no longer in the Senate.  Evan Bayh, who was the first Senator to ever threaten to filibuster his own party's bill, and indeed was the first to do so before the bill made it to the floor for debate, is also gone, though he seems to have had a deathbed conversion vis a vis autocratic obstructionism.

So where does that leave us?

It takes 50+1 to change Senate rules upon the convening of a new Congress.  And of those in the current Senate, Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, Jay Rockefeller, Mark Pryor, Dianne Feinstein, Daniel Akaka, Carl Levin, and Jon Tester are going to need convincing.  Four of them need to vote yes in order for a change to be made.

It's going to be an interesting first session, I tells you.

After that, my advice to Democrats is to pass jobs bill after jobs bill in the Senate.  Simple pieces of legislation whose impact on employment can be easily quantified.  And keep a running tally of the number of jobs that would be added to the economy had it not been for Republicans refusal to move on legislation simply because it was passed by Democrats.  Run three-second TV spots featuring the number and a URL with the details and phone numbers for local Senators and Representatives.  Either something will give, or the American People will know why it didn't.