Political chatter is all about whether the drastic step of nationalization of some of the country’s banks puts us officially in the company of South American juntas, failed Eastern European regimes and, of course, current Communist countries.

But it seems to some that this is all semantics.  We “nationalize” banks all the time.  Those that failed are taken over by the U.S. government until they can be righted and sold back to the private sector or orderly liquidated, all the while, of course, protecting depositors under the FDIC limits.  Wasn’t the resolution Trust simply temporarily “nationalizing” the savings and loans?

But those who support bailing out the banks without demanding scalps and accountability seem to want to suggest that “nationalization” will lead to gulags and communes.

We often hear about the fiscal wreck that awaits Social Security and Medicare in the not too distant future.  I myself have argued that there does need to be some reform.  Social Security should be means tested.  Someone who has a retirement income of $100,000 (or perhaps less) should not be receiving Social Security benefits while others are trying to live on a few hundred dollars a month.  Yes, I know it’s their money and that the program was not promoted as insurance.  But I know of at least two people in my extended family who had to survive on less than $500 a month, one whose husband worked an entire lifetime and another whose husband deserted her with two young children.  That’s not right.  It’s also fair to ask people to work longer in an age when people live much longer, healthier lives.  I also think Social Security should tax the entire income, though I respect the argument against that, especially if we means test.

But Robert Kuttner makes the cogent argument in The Washington Post today that much of the attack on “entitlements” is an ideological attack, “dressed up as fiscal high-mindedness” with disingenuous arguments.

Social Security is financed by taxes on wages — and since the mid-1970s, wage growth has stagnated. If median wages rose with productivity growth, as they did during the first three decades after World War II, Social Security would enjoy a big surplus. Even without a raise for working America, Social Security needs only minor adjustments.

The argument that Social Security problems, minimal though they may be, are traceable to the declining incomes of the middle class is one that progressives should make ad nauseam on the talk shows.  Social Security is only a problem, albeit a minor one, because we have tilted the table so far in favor of the rich.

Regarding Medicare, the problems are real but a better solution than restricting care is to reform health care more broadly, Kuttner argues. 

If we just cap Medicare, needy seniors would get bare-bones care while more affluent people could supplement their insurance out of pocket. The decent cure for Medicare’s cost inflation lies in comprehensive universal health insurance so that the entire system is more efficient and less prone to inflation. You don’t hear many budget hawks supporting that brand of reform.

I would argue, from personal experience, that Medicare also suffers from well-heeled people like my mother who abuse it.  She constantly worries about her health and is forever seeing doctors to get nothing but reassurance that everything is OK.  She lives in an independent living situation.  When she found out that Medicare would pay for someone to come to her room whenever she needs a blood test, though she is fully capable of going to the in-house clinic and saving the taxpayer money, she now asks for the in-room service.  Your tax dollars at work, or more precisely, abused.

But Kuttner’s best argument is for more investment for the young.  We’re not only leaving them with huge debts, but we’re cutting funding to the things they really need — education, child care and health insurance. 

Child care costs have been forced upon the middle class by an economy that makes it increasingly difficult for a family to survive on one income. Again, it’s another cost that families have become “owners” of due to the economic policies that have devalued the incomes on the middle class.

But fiscal conservatives seldom call for increased investment in the young. Today’s young, of course, will be tomorrow’s retirees, and they will need social insurance, too.

Three points progressives need to argue incessantly:

1. Social Security is threatened by the decline of middle class wages.

2. Medicare reform cannot be independent of healthcare reform.

3. Shortchanging the younger generation will come back to haunt us.

I have to say, as much as I respect the craft, too often her point, though old news, is well taken.

“You people are really nuts,” she told a New York Times reporter who called her home. “There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip.”

Good story today in The Washington Post regarding a new effort by the SEC to look at the repsonsibility — or lack thereof — of corporate boards. 

With few exceptions, boards have received little media attention as the country has sought explanations for financial firms’ taking on such perilous risks. These boards — which typically consist of a dozen or more well-known executives, politicians and other influential people — were ultimately responsible for the decisions of the Wall Street companies, housing firms and banks at the heart of the crisis.

The boards signed off on the risks the companies took and the compensation packages awarded to top executives. But many corporate watchdogs say the boards of top financial firms had characteristics that promoted risky business practices and harmed shareholders.

Quoted in the story is Nell Minow, co-founder of the Corporate Library.  Check out its web site.  From  there you can find links to her appearances.  She’s articulate and has a a great frame for the argument for pay restrictions on companies receiving taxpayer funds:  The government is acting like any other capitalist; when you put money into a company, especially when it’s critical to the company’s salvation, any capitalist would ask for give backs.  It’s simply a quid pro quo.  An elegant argument against those who otherwise extol the virtues of capitalism.

…was to get back to blogging.  Check the date.  This hasn’t gone so well.  But as they say, better late…

Brad DeLong, speaking economically,

…these are not moderate times. To be moderate now is to be radical. To be radical is to be moderate.

With its devastating loss three weeks ago, the GOP’s mantra has been, “Still, we are a ‘center right’ country.”   They draw that conclusion, in part, by pointing to polls that show only 22% of voters identify themselves as liberal, while 34% say they are conservative and 44% are moderate (read “center”).

What these poll results and the losers’ neat description of the U.S electorate tell us is this:  Absolutely nothing.

What is a liberal?  Is it my wife, who calls herself a liberal, but supports capital punishment and opposes gun control?  Is it one of her friends who is liberal about every social issue in the book, but being in the upper echelon of income earners, goes apoplectic about higher taxes?

Isn’t it conservative to believe the government should not be in our bedroom or a hospital room, or that our foreign entanglements should be measured?

And who exactly is a moderate?  Can you imagine a moderate saying that gays should have the right to live their love with the same rights as traditional marriages that fail 50% of the time?  Or would a moderate believe that marriage is only for a man and a woman?  Would today’s moderate believe that the rich, whose marginal tax rate has fallen from 90% (during the 50s when our economy was booming) be offended if people making a quarter million dollars a year pay another percent or two (and less than 35%)?   Or would a moderate say if government were more efficient, it could do with less of our money?  Would a moderate object to torture as a national policy or believe that sometimes we need to take extraordinary measures to protect our country?

I don’t know.  Do you?

The idea that we can make assumptions on what a legislative agenda should be based on what people call themselves is ludicrous.  

Most of this post was written last night.  This morning I awoke to this analysis in The Washington Post. It covers some of the arguments I make here.  But it concludes that it will be Obama’s success or lack thereof that determines if we move right or left.  It suggests that this election was transformational and cites the attitudes of young people as evidence.

In the 2007 [University of California at Los Angeles graduate school of education poll of more than 270,000 first-year students], three-fourths of the students said the United States needs “a national health care plan . . . to cover everybody’s medical costs.” Nearly 57 percent favored legalized abortion. Six in 10 said they thought “wealthy people should pay a larger share of taxes than they do now.” Two-thirds said they believed “same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status.” Eighty percent said “the federal government is not doing enough to control environmental pollution.”

The article goes on to describe these students as “more liberal” than non-college educated young people and suggests we are moving towards being a “center left” nation.

I would argue, however, that most of the views cited above are not radical leftist positions.  Today, they are more moderate positions.  Are they center left?  Perhaps.  But not because we have decided to call ourselves leftists and leave the past behind.

We have evolved, the radical right’s prohibition against evolution notwithstanding.

It is not so much that we have transformed ourselves.  Rather, we are seeking new solutions as the old ones, cloaked in “right-wing” ideology, have failed us.

What has and will change over time is likely not the percentage of people who call themselves conservatives or liberal.  I would be surprised if those 22, 34, 44 numbers change, even if Obama succeeds with his policies prescriptions. 

All that will change is how we define them.

The smartest politicians with power (read Democrats) will be those who seek real solutions they can sell to the public.  Initially, those prescriptions might be considered leftist.  If the GOP opposes those solutions and then gains power, their solutions will be considered right wing. 

But no matter how they are now perceived, if those solutions succeed over time, they will be described as “moderate.” 

or How the Blind Led the Blind

I am stunned silent at the silence of the McCain campaign’s media gurus, who later were stunned after the Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin.  According to reports, they thought it would be a walk in the woods because the interviewer was a woman.  So they didn’t prepare Palin.  They gave her nary an encouraging word.  Which contradicts earlier stories that Palin refused prep work.  I wonder if the McCain PR wonder boys and girls also thought because Couric had suggested earlier than Hillary Clinton received sexist treatment, the CBS anchor would lob questions underhand for Palin. 

Of course, Couric overpowered Palin, though not with fastballs.  Asking what papers you read shouldn’t be a hard question.  Which, because they already knew after the Charlie Gibson interview that Palin wasn’t going to challenge Henry Kissinger to a game of Foreign Policy Trivial Pursuit, makes it the more incredible that they didn’t prepare her.  They had to know at least the minimum Couric guaranteed them in air time, and prepared accordingly.  Even if it was initially only going to be a one-time airing, after CBS uncovered the goldmine that is Sarah, they would have quickly figured they had a long-running series on their hands, though unsure if it was comedy or tragedy.

They could have given one or two choices, and taught her how to deliver in as humble yet encouraging voice as she had, of answers for foreign policy questions that allowed her to pivot away from her obvious lack of knowledge.  They could have prepped her with an answer about how she learns to give reassurance that she, well, has learned something before.  She has shown that she can read, a speech at least.  It wouldn’t have been an easy prep session, but they could have taught her how to recall the two or three key messages she wanted to deliver and frame the other answer in those messages.  Hell, at the very least, they could have helped her know when to shut up.  Her biggest problem wasn’t just her lack of knowledge but that she seemed so willing to share it all with us.

The condescension and the sexism the McCain brain trust displayed toward Couric aside, this was a remarkably clueless group, message wise. 

 

 

 

ABC anchor Chris Cuomo, perhaps trying to prove he’s not a Democratic flak given his family heritage, keeps coming at William Ayers, the 60s radical who became a bogeyman in the election, in their “Good Morning America” interview.  Cuomo clearly wouldn’t take no for an answer to the question, “Was Ayers a close friend and confidant of Obama?”  The first question wasn’t even a question, it was an accusation.

First question: “You did have a meaningful relationship with Barack Obama, didn’t you?”

Ayers says he knows Obama like thousands of other people know him and wish he knew him better.  So Cuomo plows ahead.

2nd question:  “But thousands of people were not asked to start his political career in their home.  That’s an intimacy.”

When Ayers says he was asked by a state senator to host a coffee and that was the first time Ayers met Obama , Cuomo was undeterred.

3rd question:  Cuomo then says that Ayers called Obama a “family friend” and that signifies something of “a closer relationship.”

Ayers then says that “family friend” alludes not to how he characterized the relationship but how the blogosphere did.  Cuomo presses on.

4th question:  “There seems an evasiveness here….Someone’s in your home, you’re introducing them…Certainly, you must have gotten to know Barack Obama before you did that.  Didn’t you?”

Ayers again says no.

5th question:  “But when you’re measuring the content of a man’s character…Certain information about his friendship slash coffee slash association with a man who has the history that you have…You must understand how that can be a concern.”  Note  how Cuomo accepts the GOP characterization that if Ayers had a coffee for Obama, there must be a closer association. 

Ayers calls the narrative dishonest. 

6th question: Cuomo cuts him off and says, “The relevance here is that Obama is campaigning to be president.”  Cuomo then goes on to make the analogy that if McCain had a coffee of the home of someone who had bombed an abortion clinic, “you don’t think that would be relevant?”

Ayers says no again and that the analogy doesn’t hold.

7th question:  “Clearly you have to understand the sensitivity.  You can’t say that someone is a family friend, have them in your house trying to launch their political career and then say this is nothing.  Because you make it sound like it’s something by saying it’s nothing.”  (Figure that last line out and you win the kewpee doll.)

Ayers, in again saying he didn’t know him, says you have to admire that Obama is willing to talk to people of different views is a good thing.  Another opening for Cuomo.

8th question:  “But then you have to come clean and say that I’m one of those people.  Cuomo then goes on to suggest that Obama sought out Ayers to discuss his radical ideas.

Ayers denies that and then interview ends — and without asking if Ayers still beats his wife.

If there is any more evidence of mainstream journalism’s descent into the world of Matt Drudge, here it is.

At least that’s the view of Mark Haines, co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk On the Street, after the New York Times columnist gave an impassioned political argument (at end of segment) for a carbon tax.

Friedman has been everywhere the past few days.  I’ve seen him on The Daily Show, Hardball and on CNBC to make the argument that responsibility for the U.S. automakers’ problems should be largely shared by Michigan lawmakers who have for years bent to the will of whatever the automakers and the unions wanted, rarely challenging them to insist on higher fuel mileage and less onerous labor packages.

According to an interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Paul Ingrassia this morning  on NPR’s Morning Edition, non-American automakers are successfully running plants in the U.S. while paying salaries and benefits comparable to what the Big Three offer.  They are not union shops, however.  According to Ingrassia, they save money by having more flexible work rules and co-pays and deductibles in their health care plans.

Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli, one of my favorite whipping boys as the guy who drove Home Depot into a ditch and was rewarded with a $240 million golden parachute, is certainly one who should be replaced if taxpayers bail out the automakers.  Friedman and Ingrassia think not just the CEOs, but top management and the boards of directors, should be replaced if government rescues bails them.  At the very least.  There also needs to be government oversight of the plan moving forward.  Remember, taxpayers already bailed out Chrysler once, and here they are with a failed leader showing the light to oblivion.

But unions will also need to make concessions.

One of the greatest challenges for the Obama administration will be to reform unions.  Friedman in the interview this morning wasn’t willing to take on the unions.  I’ve always been a fan of the working man and would like to see unions strengthen and expand.  But they must be reasonable and recognize the changes in global market.  They need to look to how they can sustain the industry, and hence their jobs, rather than leap from contract to contract trying to sustain the status quo.