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The Treasury Department claimed earlier today that the latest scandal surrounding Tim Geithner's sweetheart deals to AIG doesn't matter, because AIG is on track to pay back the loan. Even if it were true, that response is still highly offensive, because it assumes that a few billion dollars of TARP--rather than, say, a crashed economy and government collusion to protect the people who crashed the economy--is all that made people upset about the bailouts.
But what's more, the Treasury Department's claim that AIG will pay back the full loan is completely false. The New York Fed forgave $25 billion of the loan to take an ownership stake in AIG that meant no actual control. From a letter Representative Alan Grayson sent to Ben Bernanke:
The New York Fed's entire loan was $25 billion. On top of low interest payments, no limits on executive pay, and other sweetheart deals, the New York Fed allowed AIG to be forgiven for 30% of the entire loan for utterly meaningless concessions in return. So, even though the Treasury Department's response to the latest scandal would have been offensive even if it were true, it isn't true at all.
Oh, and here are some more results of Geithner's decision to allow AIG to regulate itself. Most of the bonuses AIG execs promised to give back in order to avoid legislative action were not actually given back (hat-tip reader JD):
When word spread earlier this year that American International Group had paid more than $165 million in retention bonuses at the division that had precipitated the company's downfall, outrage erupted, with employees getting death threats and President Obama urging that every legal avenue be pursued to block the payments.
New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo threatened to publicize the recipients' names, prompting executives at AIG Financial Products to hastily agree to return about $45 million in bonuses by the end of the year.
But as the final days of 2009 tick away, a majority of that money remains unpaid. Only about $19 million has been given back, according to a report by the special inspector general for the government's bailout program.
I am angry about this not just as someone who finds the policies involved abhorrent, and not just as someone who has taken a really big hit because of the Great Recession. I am pissed about all of this as a Democrat. Watching the Obama administration and center-right Democrats in Congress continue to collude with the financial services industry is sickening (even apart from the bailout, check out the outcomes of the mortgage reform, student loan reform, and financial regulation fights). They are pissing away our generational opportunity to really help people, and seriously imperiling the Democratic Party at the ballot box in the process.
As Natasha reminded me earlier today, we worked as hard as we could to put these people in charge, and these are the results we are getting. It turns my stomach. What a waste.
Just now, the New Jersey Senate defeated marriage equality by a vote of 14-20. The defeat was not a surprise, but it is disappointing.
There are two things I want to get at before they start. The first is the likely chorus of "the Democrats have failed us! Primary them all!" that will come from advocates, since Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature and the governor's mansion. The same thing occurred after the New York State vote in which 75% of the Democratic caucus supported the bill and 0% of the Republican caucus didn't. In truth, we would have never gotten as far as we did in either state without Democratic support. Republicans wouldn't have even brought up the bill. In New York, the Democratic-controlled Assembly passed the bill not once, but twice, by similar margins in terms of caucus support. In NY and NJ, the Democratic-controlled Senate leadership kept their promise for a vote. Saying "The Democrats" failed us is self-defeating for three reasons. First, it causes activists and voters to think there is no difference between the two parties on this issue. That is false and unhelpful. Second, it will help hand over control to the Republicans and destroy chances of another vote for some time. Third, it leads to a misuse of resources in thinking the solution to this problem is just to primary all the Democrats. There is a target-rich environment of Republicans, too.
That's not to say you can't go after Democrats. If you want to assign blame and draw up a list of targets, be specific in naming the people responsible, and then go after them. Legislative wins are coalition-based, not Party-based. Build a coalition.
The second thing is that no doubt, the "time to shift to domestic partnerships!" folks (whose arguments I debunk here and here) will add this to their misleading count of states which have defeated marriage equality in some form, and use it as evidence that marriage equality as a movement has failed. However, I believe it was dealt a significant blow when Corzine, who campaigned heavily on the issue, lost in November. A defeat in New York State (which actually is also part of the media market in New Jersey) also hurt prospects. We also had a pro-equality Governor and very likely had the votes in the Assembly- same as in New York State. Garden State Equality failed to effectively organize, but we were also dealt a bad hand, and came close anyway. As with California, Maine and New York State, this is not some resounding defeat that prompts a major shift. We lost by a field goal, not five touchdowns, and it is a stumble on the road to full equality.
The good news is that I spoke today to Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, who told me Lambda Legal will announce it is going back to courts in New Jersey. As you may know, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in 2006, 7-0, that legislators must either amend marriage laws to give same-sex couples full equality, or create a "parallel structure", which led to the New Jersey legislature legalizing civil unions. As has been demonstrated by the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission set up to study how the new law was working, civil unions do not work.
Best of luck to Lambda Legal, and let's keep the fight up.
NOTE: I was going to post this tomorrow, but since the scandal is moving at light speed, I wanted to posted it right now as a follow on to Chris's rightfully enraged post, because the history of what's going on really explains how significant this story is. - D
Way back in May of 2009, I and others here at OpenLeft said President Obama needed to fire Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner because he was either lying or incompetent when it came to AIG. Per the norm, we were lambasted as part of the supposed fringe for saying this, just as we were lambasted for saying that the no-strings-attached bailout was a blatant giveaway to Wall Street. Now, while I'm not going to say "I told you so," I will note it's become more acceptable to say Geithner must be fired - especially after a new report that Geithner's New York Fed instructed AIG to refuse to disclose to SEC regulators some of the worst financial shenanigans surrounding the AIG bailout.
As I'll show using characters from the movie Wall Street, this kind of thing makes Gordon Gekko and Bud Fox's shenanigans look petty.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer's payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.
AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008.
That is bad enough. The Treasury Department's offensive response to these revelations shows just how clueless and pro-Wall Street they actually are (emphasis mine):
The Treasury's response this morning is, essentially, no harm no foul. Meg Reilly, a Treasury spokeswoman, released a statement: "In the transaction at the heart of this dispute... the FRBNY made a loan of $25 billion which is on track to be paid back in full with interest so that taxpayers will be made whole. Somehow that fact that the government's loan is 'above water' gets lost in all the consternation despite its mention on page 2 of the SIG-TARP report (and weekly updates on the FRBNY's web site."
Here is my response to this response, which is hardly the first of its kind around the nation: fuck you. Made whole? Seriously, fuck you. And then fuck you again.
Geithner and the Treasury Department seem to think that the only thing Americans care about in this deal is that AIG pays back their loans. What they care about is that the economy was crashed by people like AIG. What they care about is that these fuckers are not only not being punished for fucking millions of people, but that they are getting deals from the federal government that preserve their bonuses and offer them interest rates no individual American could ever receive.
Tens of millions of Americans are facing crushing debt payments because interest rates on the loans they received are so high. They are losing their jobs. They are losing their homes. They would love to get the kind of help that people like AIG got. Loans with little or no interest would be fantastic. Loans like that could actually be repaid by Americans facing crippling mortgage, college, credit card and other debts.
However, the only people getting deals with loans large enough, and at low enough interest rates, and with direct-possibly illegal--assistance from the government, are the same fuckers who crashed the economy. Those people are being helped by the government. Everyone else is still suffering. It reeks of an unholy alliance between big business and big government designed to frock over everyone else.
Made whole? Fuck you. You just don't fucking get it at all.
Uh-oh for D.C. political writers: it looks like the Democratic retirements on Tuesday were actually a net positive for the Democratic Party's electoral chances. Colorado, too:
Now that Colorado Governor Bill Ritter has said he will step down rather than run for reelection, Democrats may be more competitive in this year's gubernatorial race. Ritter trailed former GOP Congressman Scott McInnis by eight points a month ago.
New Rasmussen Reports polling of likely Colorado voters shows that two of McInnis' potential Democratic opponents are a bit closer than that.
Three Democrats running for statewide re-election retied on Tuesday (a fourth Democratic retirement came from a Lt. Governor in Michigan seeking a promotion). The retirements in Colorado and Connecticut were helpful to Democratic causes, while the Democratic retirement in North Dakota was not. On balance, that makes so-called "Black Tuesday," almost universally defined as a negative for Democrats among D.C. political writers, a net positive for Democrats.
Of course, be wary when the first set of blind quotes you read from party strategists after a retirement is "[Fill in the blank's] decision may turn out to be a blessing." As we wrote above, that's probably true regarding Dodd.
And then, at the end of the same paragraph:
The fact is that retirements, party switches, etc. hurt a party -- period.
Yeah, retirements always hurt a party. PERIOD!!!!! Except that, at the start of this same paragraph, the author wrote that Dodd's retirement helped Dems. Awesome.
To put it in completely ungenerous terms, the claim that retirements are always bad for an incumbent party is just plain stupid. There are lots of cases where an incumbent retiring either is, or would be, good for the incumbent's party. Claiming otherwise is simply to cling to entirely qualitative, entirely fact-less, conventional wisdom rather than looking at the actual numbers.
Corruption cases are one obvious, glaring example that proves retirements can sometimes be good for an incumbent party. Take, for example, the Louisiana 2nd congressional district. There is no possible way Democrats would have lost that campaign in 2008 if the incumbent, William Jefferson, had retired. Further, take the California 50th congressional district as an example. There is no possible way Republicans would have held that seat in 2006 if Duke Cunningham had remained the Republican nominee, even if he had escaped jail time.
If an incumbent is unpopular, and his or her district is leans in favor of his or her party, then his or her retirement absolutely helps that party's electoral chances. PERIOD. This is why, as Kos pointed out yesterday, Democratic chances in Nevada and Arkansas would be improved with Harry Reid and Blanche Lincoln stepped aside, respectively. Reid and Lincoln are personally unpopular in Nevada and Arkansas, and a "generic Democrat" has a relatively better chance of winning either state. As such, their retirements would help Democratic electoral chances.
The same goes for Jim Bunning's retirement in Kentucky, which moved an almost certain Democratic pickup into toss-up / lean Republican territory. There is no hard and fast rule about whether an incumbent retirement, in and of itself, helps or hurts the incumbent's party. The effect of incumbent retirements needs to be examined on a case by case basis, using actual, scientific, empirical evidence (aka, polls).
Using such evidence, and engaging in such detailed examination, is not a strength of political writing from well-financed, established, national news organizations. And I'm not going to hide my agenda here: poor political writing from those organizations is what really angers me in this case. After spending years dismissing us, these well-financed, established, national news organizations are now stealing market share from smaller, independent, political websites by paying people lots of money to write "blogs" of their own. It pisses me off that they are able to do this even though those "blogs" are largely replicating the same, crappy conventional-wisdom and non-fact-based political writing that led to the rise of independent (in the institutional, rather than partisan sense of the word) political websites in the first place. They are beating us because they are able to pay people a lot more money, and because they are attached to well-established brand names, not because they have actually improved their writing all that much. This is exceptionally frustrating.
With the rare exceptions of people like Greg Sargent, Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias, who established themselves as independent bloggers before they became big media bloggers, most big media "bloggers" couldn't get even one million page views a year if they started independent political websites of their own. They certainly couldn't get the eight million page views of even a mid-range independent political website like Open Left. They would be nobodies without their institutions. Instead, they are well paid "bloggers" who help define the conventional wisdom. And yeah, as someone who has spent the last six years trying to make a living as an independent political writer, that really does piss me off. Effectively, with their move to "blogs," these news organizations are just yet more crappy superstores pushing small businesses to the side, to the benefit of absolutely no one except the superstore investors.
It is both small comfort, and an important lesson, for public option advocates that Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson have become the most unpopular and electorally imperiled members of the entire Senate. This has happened largely because of their hostage-taking actions on the healthcare bill.
Joe Lieberman's actions on the health care bill antagonized constituents both for and against it, and in the wake of that he finds his approval rating at just 25% with 67% of voters in the state disapproving of him.(...)
It's clear that his actions on the Senate health care bill have made a large contribution to his falling popularity. 68% of voters say they disagree with how he handled the issue to just 19% giving him support. Among people who support the health care bill 84% say they disapprove of Lieberman's actions but even among those opposed to the initiative 52% say they disagree with how Lieberman handled himself.
This isn't the first poll showing that Lieberman took a big hit over his backstab on the public option. Two weeks ago, CNN polling showed the exact same results, much to the mystification of D.C. political writers.
Lieberman's actions appealed to no one. Now, he is toast, even among Republicans. A warm body will defeat him in 2012.
If Governor Dave Heineman challenges Nelson for the Senate job, a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows the Republican would get 61% of the vote while Nelson would get just 30%. Nelson was reelected to a second Senate term in 2006 with 64% of the vote.
Nelson's health care vote is clearly dragging his numbers down. Just 17% of Nebraska voters approve of the deal their senator made on Medicaid in exchange for his vote in support of the plan.
Nelson, like Lieberman, did not make himself more popular among those who oppose the health care bill, or the public option, with his actions. Both supporters and opponents of both the health care bill and the public option were largely disgusted with what they viewed as personal power aggrandizement.
Their actions earned both Nelson and Lieberman featured appearances on Sunday D.C. talk shows, but it also made voters of all sorts loathe them. It would appear that people don't like members of Congress who take enormous pieces of legislation hostage for personal reasons. Nelson and Lieberman are now the most unpopular Senators in their home states in the entire country, far more unpopular than even Harry Reid, Chris Dodd or Blanche Lincoln.
All of this makes it quite amusing that ongoing hostage-taker, Bart Stupak, is strongly considering a run for Governor of Michigan. What a fool. It seems that he really believes that the only people who hate his hostage-taking actions are from New York City. The Nelson and Lieberman polling quoted above shows that very few people, whether in your home state or nationally, and whether among people who agree with your positions or not, like it when members of Congress take hostages in this manner.
Man, I hope Stupak does run for Governor. It would be an easy way to get him out of elected office altogether. It would also be nice to see another health care hostage-taker go down in flames, mystified about why people don't like him anymore.
Finally, I think this is a lesson for public option advocates, and our high-profile hostage-taking strategy called The Progressive Block. It seems clear to me now that a strategy like that only works if you build up public support for it (which we most definitely did not do among the Democratic primary electorate), or if the fight is far more low-profile (such as IMF funding in the Afghanistan supplemental). High-profile hostage taking just doesn't work from the left (or, as polling shows, from the right or the center, either) Voters of all sorts, including those on the left, just don't like it, and they will punish you given the opportunity. It is indeed small comfort that the mendacious hostage-takers who stopped us are now wildly unpopular both at home and around the country, but it is also a warning that we would have been in the same position if we had become the hostage takers ourselves.
There's no other way to read this story from Politics Daily and the Denver Post than to read it as Colorado Republican Rep. Mike Coffman admitting that government-sponsored single-payer health care "works":
Coffman, a former Marine who keeps buff at age 54, was jogging on the golf course bordering his home in Aurora, Colo., when he stumbled on a rock or some other obstruction hidden in the snow. He fell, cracking his ankle.
The congressman and his wife went to an urgent care clinic in a strip mall, where he paid $30 for a temporary cast and a prescription, and later he went to the famed Steadman Hawkins Clinic in Vail, where he paid $350 for an expert opinion, he told The Denver Post.
"I successfully tested our health care system," he said, with a laugh. "It works,"' he told the Post.
Of course the health care system worked for him, many Coloradans undoubtedly thought when they read the item in Saturday's Post. Coffman, a Republican member of Congress who voted against the health care reform bill in the House last year, is covered by the Cadillac of American health-care plans, the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Plan.
That's why his X-ray, temporary cast and prescription cost him only $30. But if he didn't have insurance -- like some 45 million Americans --- the tab most likely would be closer to $375 ($150 for the visit, $150 for the splint, and $75 for the X-ray, according to prices quoted at a popular downtown Denver urgent-care clinic).
The FEHB is a single-payer government-sponsored health care system. The federal government is the single payer in that system.* And as Coffman says very explicitly, "It works."
So why is Coffman, all Republican lawmakers, and a big chunk of Democratic lawmakers, so opposed to single payer that they ruled it "off the table" as part of the debate over national health care? Why aren't all Americans entitled to the very same health care system as members of Congress, if those members of Congress acknowledge their system "works"?
* NOTE: The FEHB is one form of single-payer - a form where the government is the single payer, but pays to insurance companies which administer benefits. There are other forms of single-payer where the government pays directly to health care providers (this is, for instance, the VA system). The point here is not to debate which of the forms are better - only to point out that the FEHB is a government-sponsored single-payer system - ie. the single payer is the government. It is exactly the kind of system that - if expanded to let everyone in - could be a single-payer system for the nation. And it's a system that Coffman says "works" - even as he rails on government health care.
As gruesome and cruel as this kind of passive aggressive bs may be, 'I'm a stranger who knows nothing about you or why you're at a women's clinic, but I loooooove you, so please don't kill your baby,' I suppose it isn't actually as gruesome as the cold-blooded assassination of women's doctors , or as aggressive as the garden variety physical intimidation and harassing crowds many women's clinic visitors face.
Yet as a commentor at the last BoingBoing link wondered, why can't women just get abortions in hospitals or at the regular clinics they go to so the disturbed, whackjob protestors don't have such an easy and obvious target? I mean, Planned Parenthood works on the side of the angels and all, but the same tireless efforts that make them a beacon to women in need have made them a magnet for the world's Randall Terrys.
I don't know, but maybe that's part of the point. There's nothing like a good public shaming to help the patriarchy channel underclass rage towards those even lower down the pecking order.
The abortion clinic just functions as a replacement for putting people in the pillory or making them wear scarlet letters, which it couldn't if health care providers weren't encouraged to isolate women's care.
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