Day: May 6, 2009

Did Specter Step On His Johnson?

It would appear that Arlen Specter may have spoken too soon when he annouinced that there was no guarantee that he would be a loyal Democrat.

On Tuesday night, 5 May 09, the Senate voted to strip Sen, Arlen Specter of his seniority on committees.

He had been  assured him he would retain his seniority in the Senate and on the five committees on which he serves. Specter’s tenure ranked him ahead of all but seven Democrats.

On a voice vote, the Senate approved a resolution that made Specter the most junior Democrat on four committees for the remainder of this Congress. (He will rank second from last on the fifth, the Special Committee on Aging.) Reid himself read the resolution on the Senate floor, underscoring the reversal.

Democrats have suggested that they will consider revisiting Specter’s seniority claim at the committee level only after next year’s midterm elections.

Specter had switched parties because he saw the writing on the wall that he would be defeated in 2010 Pennsylvania Republican primary.  The loss of seniority could prove costly to Specter in his campaign to win reelection in 2010, denying him the ability to distinguish himself from a newcomer in his ability to claim key positions.

Looks like the Senate Democrats took Specter at his word, when he said:  ” I’m ordinarily pretty correct in what I say. I’ve made a career of being precise.”  Why would the Dems want a person who is not a team player to lead any of the committees?

So when Specter said he would not necessarily be a loyal Democrat, he step hard onto his johnson.

The Humor That Is The GOP

Republicans, who have suffered two consecutive electoral beatings in Congress and a Senate defection this week, launched on Saturday the first of a series of forums and town hall meetings to engage the American public in policy discussion.

The National Council for a New America (NCNA), a caucus of Congressional leaders gathering the expertise of national leaders and doers.

The NCNA will bring together citizens from across the country to begin a dialogue with the American people through a series of forums, town halls, and an online effort that will engage people in a discussion to meet our common challenges and build a stronger country through common-sense ideas. The NCNA will be a dynamic, forward-looking organization that will amplify the common-sense and wisdom of our fellow citizens through a grassroots dialogue with Republican leaders.

The GOP hates the term “comeback”, but what would you call it?

Hard to imagine the likes of Cantor, Boehner, Barbour, McCain, et al as the face of a new America.  Are not these the same guys that have put the party in the crapper?

Sorry, I digress.  The NCNA has a wealth of issues they will be promoting.  These include:

Economy: Real Solutions for Economic Recovery

As the country battles through the worst economic crisis in a generation, we must remain focused on the foundations and institutions that have made us the most prosperous people in the world and the ideas that create jobs and grow our economy. At the same time, we must learn from the mistakes that led to the current crisis and to prevent similar situations from ever occurring again.

Healthcare: Building a 21st Century, Patient-Centered System

No one doubts that our nation’s health care system is in need of reform, but we must strike the right balance that builds on what works and fixes what is broken. All Americans deserve access to high-quality, affordable care. But such coverage cannot come at the expense of their ability to choose their own doctor and have access to the right care, at the right time, in the right setting without waiting in line while sick. In addition, we must continue to focus on the innovation and science that have resulted in thousands of treatments and cures for life-threatening or debilitating diseases while allowing America to remain the leader in research and development worldwide.

Education: Preparing Our Children to Succeed

A high-quality education should not be dependent upon a parent’s income or address. All of America’s children deserve an education that will prepare them for the opportunities and the challenges that await them in the global economy. Yet today, thousands of American children, especially in our inner cities, receive a substandard education or find post-secondary education unaffordable. We must return power from Washington to parents and well-paid teachers who know what’s best for our children.

Energy: Solutions for Energy Independence

American families and businesses cannot afford an energy policy where we are held hostage by foreign oil cartels and dictators. As a nation, we can no longer send billions of dollars overseas each year, often to countries that help fund our enemies. We must implement a comprehensive energy policy that includes traditional fuels, alternative energy, and conservation resulting in affordable, reliable domestic energy. Such a policy will stabilize costs for families and businesses while at the same time creating much-needed jobs here at home.

National Security: Defending American Liberty and Freedom

The threats posed to our nation are more varied and evolving more than perhaps at any other time in our history. Modern communications, technology and the proliferation of weapons of all types have empowered our enemies and those who support them. Our national security policy must reflect these realities while allowing us to maintain technological superiority, support the most well-trained and well-equipped military in the world and have the intelligence capabilities to uncover and prevent attacks before they occur.

Now if you have read their positions on the named issues, what did you learn?  First, you learned that it is the same old lines they have always used.  Second, there is nothing new in the NCNA.  Not the issues and most certainly not the members of this caucus.  Third, the GOP is losing all support, with the exception of the rural South and old white guys.  Fourth, it would all be humorous if it was not so sad and pathetic attempt to “revitalize” a dying institution.

Democrat Specter Leads In The Polls

Senator Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party appears to be paying off with a poll on Monday showing him ahead in his 2010 re-election race in Pennsylvania. Last week Specter, 79, abandoned the Republican Party to run for re-election as a Democrat, a move denounced by fellow Republicans.

Specter said his philosophy was more in line now with Democrats than Republicans, who fired back that he was simply bending to the political winds in order to hang on to power.

A Quinnipiac University poll found Specter would defeat a conservative Republican who is in the race, Pat Toomey, if the election were held today by 53 percent to 33 percent.

You know if the GOP wanted to start rebuilding the party then why not dump Toomey in favor of Tom Ridge?   The poll found Specter leading Ridge by only a margin of 46 percent to 43 percent.

Ridge is a popular politician in the state and could help the GOP start reclaiming some of their old fire that has been lost in the last couple of years.  He is a conservative, but not liked by the far right, that is one reason he was not the choice as McxCain’s running mate in the last election.

The GOP has an opening to help redifine the party, but will they cease the opportunity or will they let is slip through their fingers?

Credit Card Crisis: Part 2

The more the recession deepens, the more concessions the banks are getting from the government.

President Obama held a meeting with prominent credit card industry executives during which he gave them some friendly advice that they should moderate their most egregious practices so as to deflect additional damage to their public image among the mass of the population. The executives listened politely, but gave no indication that they intended to follow Obama’s advice.

The banks remain determined to continue to exploit this, one of their few remaining sources of profits. Fitch Ratings reports that US credit card delinquencies and charge-offs exceeded record levels last month as a result of the economic crisis. Nevertheless, yields to the card issuers increased, indicating that terms are being manipulated to squeeze borrowers even more tightly.

The “scissors effect” between payment defaults on the one hand and rising interest rates and fees on the other is becoming ever more pronounced. The Washington Post reports, “Already some credit card issuers are seeing close to double-digit charge-offs. For example, Capital One Financial said its charge-off rate spiked to 8.4 percent in the first quarter, up from 5.85 percent in 2008 and 3.72 percent in the first quarter of 2007. The company said it expects further increases in its US credit card charge-off rate through 2009 as the economy continues to weaken.” Charge offs are losses that the companies remove from their balance sheets because they have no hope of collecting what is due. The amounts of money involved are substantial. According to Time, analysts predict credit-card defaults could total more than $75 billion this year.

Credit cards are a form of “predatory lending” as was the whole range of risky mortgages and mortgage-related “instruments” that have already blown up into a major financial crisis. Credit card debt has been “bundled” and sold off by the banks in a manner similar to what was done with subprime mortgages. For years, both of these investment categories were virtually unregulated mechanisms for banks and similar institutions to realize large profits by selling and reselling the same assets at increasingly inflated prices and with less and less relation to real value.

The credit card industry is raising the claim that government regulations, especially via legislation rather than the more easily reversed moves by the Fed, would simply result in greater restrictions on the availability of credit to “good” borrowers, making them pay for the mistakes of “bad” borrowers. The hypocrisy of such statements is colossal given that the banks are already engaged in a major triage of credit holders after having practiced outright usury on a massive and uncontrolled scale.

Tied to this is the myth of “good” verses “bad” debtors—the former being those who pay their bills on time, maintain balances below the maximum and don’t behave in ways that the banks consider “risky.” Good debtors deserve the government’s help, but bad debtors don’t. This mythology is intended to justify the ruthless behavior of the banks by demonizing people who are being hit by the economic crisis. As a consequence, cosmetic changes can be heralded as restoring “fairness” for the good debtors, while the banks are pretty much left to do what they like. Of course, as the crisis deepens, more and more people will be driven into the bad debtor category.

But yet there is a paradox here.  We argue that the credit companies are screwing the consuming public, but are they?

World Recession Continues

As the recession continues in the US, the world is not doing so well either.  The International Monetary Fund’s updated World Economic Outlook, released Wednesday, predicts world economic growth of negative 1.3 percent this year, marking “by far the deepest global recession since the Great Depression”. Not since the 1930s has the global economy undergone a collective contraction.The IMF predicts that the world economy will grow by 1.9 percent in 2010. Advanced economies will stagnate, with average GDP growth of exactly zero. These estimates may prove optimistic, especially given the Fund’s repeated revisions of the 2009 figures. In any case, IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard acknowledged that there would be no rapid recovery from the current economic crisis. He noted that, historically, wherever recessions are preceded by financial crises they are more severe and longer lasting.

The IMF is not the only source for doubt.

The global financial crisis could become “a human and development calamity” for many poor countries, the World Bank said, urging donor nations to speed delivery of money they have pledged and consider giving more.

Developing countries, its main constituency, face “especially serious consequences with the crisis driving more than 50 million people into extreme poverty, particularly women and children,” the bank said Sunday.

Ministers attending the IMF-World Bank meetings said they saw signs that the world economy is stabilizing, but it will take until mid-2010 for the world to emerge from the worst recession in decades. They said stimulus packages, bank recapitalization and other actions taken by governments and central banks to deal with the crisis are beginning to show results.