Once Again ... (Not That the Facts Matter)

How did the U.S. run up so much debt?

The crucial turning point came back in 2001. At the time, Uncle Sam was actually running surpluses, and "the outlook was so rosy" that forecasters were predicting the U.S. could pay back every dime it had ever borrowed. That's when President George W. Bush made a pivotal decision: Rather than use surpluses to pay down the national debt or fix Social Security, Bush elected to push through two massive tax cuts, on the grounds that "the surplus is the people's money."

Bush and Congress then financed two wars at the cost of $1.3 trillion, spent $272 billion on a Medicare prescription benefit, and expanded other defense and domestic spending. When the economy cratered in 2008, it cut deeply into revenues already diminished by Bush's tax cuts. All told, Congressional Budget Office statistics show, Bush's policies account for more than $7 trillion of the debt the U.S. has accumulated over the past decade. President Obama's policies, including his $719 billion stimulus program, have added $1.7 trillion to that debt.

Today, future budget forecasts "are unrelievedly gloomy, showing huge deficits essentially forever." And, it all began with a choice, 10 years ago, to cut taxes to their lowest level in 60 years, with

no cuts in spending.

[Lifted from Lori Montgomery, who covers U.S. economic policy and the federal budget for the WashPost, focusing on efforts to tame the national debt. She has written extensively about every major piece of legislation to pass Congress since 2008, including the TARP bank bailout, the Obama stimulus package and the Democratic overhaul of the health care system. Hattip: K&BM]

There's Money in Jail

Sure, it's fine to have a brand new county prison like Ashe County's, but we're not so sure about the wisdom of bragging in public about how much money you're making by incarcerating prisoners from other counties.

Thanks for Precisely Nothing, Sen. Burr!

During the last six weeks, some 20,000 unemployed North Carolinians were shit out of luck when their unemployment benefits simply ran out. Today, over the strenuous objections of Sen. Dick Burr, those unemployment benefits will be extended with the breaking of the Republican filibuster. Every Republican senator, save Olympia Snowe of Maine, voted along with Sen. Burr to deepen the misery of out-of-work citizens suffering through this economic collapse through no fault of their own.

Despite the fact that there are (on average) five applicants for every job opening, Biggus Dickus continued to blame the victims of unemployment for their own predicament.

Questions for the Tea Party Folks

Guest Blogging: Matt Robinson

Barack Obama's election and relentless pursuit of health care reform led to the emergence of a new political movement -- the "Tea Party" -- which claims the Obama presidency is reckless and irresponsible in its spending. Their evidence is quite limited and includes the new health care law, priced at $940 billion over 10 years, or $94 billion per year. Never mind the fact that the costs of the health care law are paid for without adding a penny to the national debt.

What I'd like to know from any "Tea Party" member is ... where were you during the Bush administration? The costs of the war in Iraq are now $721 billion over seven years, or $103 billion per year, more than the health care law. And all of the war costs under President Bush were paid for using emergency appropriations outside of the normal budget process. Thus every penny spent on the Iraq war is added to the national debt!

Perhaps "Tea Party" members see war and health care reform as apples and oranges. I agree. The health care bill pays for itself and helps people, while the war adds to the debt and kills people! Assuming we just ignore the war, though, what about President Bush's Medicare expansion in 2003? This law costs $720 billion over 10 years, or $72 billion per year, and every penny of the costs were added on to the national debt. Yet this did not upset you enough to form a "Tea Party" movement.

And what about the $700 billion bailout of big business by Bush? No "Tea Party" movement for that either (in fact, you guys seem to think it was Obama that organized the bailout!). Yet you attack Obama for the 2009 stimulus plan, priced at $787 billion. Criticisms of the stimulus aside, many economists say it did save our economy from a major depression, and it is even helping expand Highway 421 here in Boone!

Your lack of criticism of President Bush is clear proof that your criticism of President Obama is not rooted in principles such as small government or fiscal responsibility but instead in partisan ideology. In other words, you are out in the streets because Obama is a Democratic president, plain and simple. So spare us the "devotion to the Constitution."

Analysis of White house budget data shows that the three presidents who most added to the national debt were all Republicans, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. Yet neither of the Bush administrations prompted a "Tea Party" movement, and you hold President Reagan up to be this godlike figure who supposedly stood for conservative values such as small government and fiscal responsibility. It is just not true.

Almost nothing the "Tea Party" members say can be taken seriously. I'd laugh out loud if it were not so scary and dangerous. There are thousands of angry and uninformed people who actually believe Obama is a socialist, a communist, a Muslim, a totalitarian dictator, a foreign citizen, and even the anti-Christ who wants the terrorists to win! And they're generating societal unease based on these absurd beliefs.

So I ask you again: Where were you during the Bush administration? And the other Bush administration? And the Reagan administration? And why do you believe these ridiculous things?

Additionally I am curious if you know that your movement is led by lobbyist-run think tanks including "Americans for Prosperity" and "FreedomWorks"? These groups are not about fiscal responsibility or small government. They are for getting Republicans elected, no matter what. It's just politics, plain and simple. Finally, why do you even call yourselves the "Tea Party"? You are citizens, and you have representation! So there's no need to dump tea in the harbor!

Foxx Votes Against Workers (Again!)

The U.S. Congress busted the Republican impasse in the Senate yesterday (Jim Bunning, anyone? ... among other obstructionists) and voted to extend unemployment benefits for those thrown out of work in the first year of the George W. Bush Recession. Three Republican Senators voted for the bill and 49 Republicans in the U.S. House voted for it.

Virginia Foxx voted against it. I know ... HUGE surprise.

Why should she care about people out of work and grasping at any life raft on the tossing sea? Her net worth has done nothing but go up since she was elected to Congress. Congress critters are allowed to report the "range of worth" of their assets and not exact amounts, so Foxx's financial disclosure forms reveal a very wide and capacious berth for her personal wealth.

In 2004 she reported assets totaling from $2,377,042 to $5,369,000.

In 2008, after two full terms in Congress and a whole lot of kvetching about how hard she works for such little pay and bragging about how poor she used to be, she reported assets totaling from $2,637,053 to $8,982,000. (All figures publicly available at Open Secrets.)

She's getting filthy rich while the unemployed get a few more months of unemployment benefits, but to hear her tell it, the unemployed, purely by virtue of having their grubby little hands out, are simply RUINING the Republic for the likes of her and her rich, richer, richest friends.

HOLD THE PHONE, JETHRO!
Just noticed that U.S. Congressman Patrick McHenry was one of the 49 Republicans who crossed the aisle to vote for the extension of unemployment benefits. OMG!

ADDENDUM
Congressional candidate Billy Kennedy issued a statement about Foxx's vote this morning, which is quoted in full over at Down With Tyranny:

"Virginia Foxx continued her assault on working families in the fifth district with a vote against the continuation of unemployment benefits. With unemployment now reaching as high as 15% in many counties of the 5th district, Foxx shows how callous and indifferent she is to her constituents. You see, Foxx doesn't have to sit around the kitchen table trying to figure out whether to pay the electric bill or the mortgage because she is the richest North Carolina representative in the House. While the people of the 5th district try to figure a way to keep their homes out of foreclosure, Foxx continues to accumulate her extensive real estate holdings. Virginia Foxx, in other words, is making a killing off her incumbent political position while blaming her constituents for financial woes they are experiencing through no fault of their own. Foxx's message to those in distress in the 5th district: 'tough luck.' "

Dick Burr, Banking Genius

"Tonight, I want you to go to the ATM machine, and I want you to draw out everything it will let you take. And I want you to tomorrow, and I want you to go Sunday," Senator Dick Burr told his wife Brooke following a briefing on the looming banking crisis by the Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson last year. "I was convinced on Friday night that if you put a plastic card in an ATM machine the last thing you were going to get was cash."

After the senator's rather revealing confession made a national ripple yesterday, Burr's spokesman tried to damp down the amazement: "The senator is simply trying to express what was on his mind as Congress was attempting to respond to the financial crisis last fall."

What was clearly on his mind was grabbing all the cash he could before the rest of the country found out what he'd been told as a privileged individual who gets briefings from the Treasury Secretary.

A panicky senator with little to no understanding of the U.S. banking system, combined with the "me first" attitude of your run-of-the-mill survivalist ... that's our North Carolina boy!

Cutting Shuler Some Slack

...and pretty soon that blue dog is sleeping on the neighbor's porch.

Long profile piece about how people feel about Shuler in the NC-11 in today's Smoky Mountain News. Mainly, people feel just swell about the fourth most likely Democrat in Congress to vote with the Republicans, especially Republicans.

Some Democrats are not so thrilled. Jane Allison, a Swain County Democrat, said that while it was maybe "cute" two years ago for Shuler to vote with the Republicans, since "the Democrats weren't going to get anything passed anyway," it's not so cute now with the whole country struggling to get out of the Bush depression.

The Unbearable Lightness of Virginia Foxx

Screwing her puss up into that perpetual scowl of the Right-Wing Republican Beset by a Democratic President, Virginia Foxx clicks her tongue in advance of President Obama's speech tonight:

...she hopes that Obama will avoid such words as "crisis" or "catastrophe" when talking about the state of the economy.

"We keep hearing it's a catastrophe, a crisis, it's all negative. I fear that his continual talking down of the economy down is really doing damage, because people won't spend. They're scared to," she said.

Because, ya see, the downness of the economy is all a function of Democrats talking about the reality of the economy. It's just that simple. There's no history to consider here, nothing to remember about the Republican administration of the last eight years. Just President Obama saying those dangerous, hateful, totally consequential words.

Madam Foxx was one with the Bush administration in denying that any problems even existed, as the Republicans deregulated us into this current house of cards. Then when she and her fellow foxes could no longer deny the obvious, her solution was to do nothing. Absolutely nothing. She'd offer to pray for us. She'd use her right knee for Catholic prayers and her left for Baptist ones. What she would NOT do was use her vote for anything remotely helpful to the struggling citizens of the Fifth District.

Lowe's Goes Slow

Hardware-and-lumber mega-giant Lowe's Corp. is freezing executive salaries ("all vice presidents and above") and reducing raises for everyone else. In a housing-market collapse, you'd pretty much expect housing-construction and home-improvement businesses to crash out, wouldn't you?

"Right now, shoppers are avoiding big-ticket, professional renovation projects that propelled the recent boom, and it's unclear whether sales in that category will ever return to the level of a few years ago."

But, so far Lowe's is doing slightly better than its (larger) chief competitor Home Depot.

The Republican Economy

HT: Progressive Pulse.

Unemployment in Watauga

The Employment Security Commission of North Carolina released new out-of-work figures for every county in the state today, and Watauga's unemployment went up from 5.1 (Nov. 2008) to 5.7 percent in December ... a much smaller increase than in several other counties. North Carolina counties with unemployment rates over 10 percent exactly doubled, from 17 counties in November to 34 counties in December.

Worst city for jobs: Rocky Mount, with 11.7 percent unemployment.

Best city for jobs: Durham, with 6.1 percent unemployment.

Furloughs Coming to ASU?

UNC President Erskine Bowles says he's going to ask for authority to furlough university employees in response to cuts in state appropriations. The Chancellor of NC State jumped in and said that "faculty leaders" at his institution are willing to volunteer for unpaid furloughs in order to save support staff jobs. Mighty nice of 'em.

Hard times comin' for the North Carolina higher education workforce ... as for everyone else.

Meanwhile, Virginia Foxx and the Mummy Party say (a) the American economy can still basically take care of itself and (b) it's all the Democrats' fault.

No Honeymoon for Virginia Foxx

NC-5 Rep. Virginia Foxx, critiquing President Obama's Inaugural address:

Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-5th, said she thought that Obama was "too negative" in his assessment of the economy in his inaugural address.

Foxx said she is sympathetic with those who have lost their jobs in the current downturn, but said she thinks that the current problem is "not the worst situation we've faced in this country economically since the Great Depression," citing the stagflation of the 1970s.

"I think it's possible to talk down about the economy to the point that it hampers the economy," Foxx said in an interview. "Yes, we have problems, and I'm quite familiar with them, but we don't solve our problems by being negative."

Apparently, we'll solve our problems by being relentlessly ideological.

Well, at least she's finally acknowledging that "we have problems," though she's clearly prepared to start blaming them all on President Obama for being too negative in his assessment.

Bottom Drops Out for Recyclables

It seems counter-intuitive to us, that the market for recycled cans, paper, plastic should have collapsed, since one might think that in a down-economy, salvaging use out of discards would be a smart move.

But no. High Point, N.C., is currently stockpiling recycled cans and paper because the market for them is so down that the city will lose money ... from what had been a fairly profitable transaction. Greensboro had projected a profit of $450,000 from its recycling program in fiscal 2008, until the bottom dropped out.

"We've seen prices where we have to pay to get rid of it," said a regional manager for North Carolina municipal recycling. Ouch.

Running on Empty?

Haven't seen a peep in the local press about automobile sales, but The Smoky Mountain News, which covers mountain counties south of Asheville, is reporting today that sales have slumped down there anywhere from 15 to 60 percent. Particularly hard-hit are domestic makes (duh). No mention in the article of foreign car dealers, though we can't imagine that they aren't feeling the pinch, since money for car loans has tightened up across the board.

"One big problem with the auto business in Western North Carolina is that there are too many dealerships," said the co-owner of Smoky Mountain Chevrolet in Franklin. He also noted that part of GM's plan, if it gets the government bailout (mighty iffy), is to close hundreds of dealerships. (Note to the co-owner of Smoky Mountain Chevrolet: all three U.S. reps for the NC mtns -- Foxx, McHenry, & Shuler -- voted against the bailout yesterday in the U.S. House.)

The main bright spot? Maintenance departments at car dealerships are doing (relatively) well as more people hold on to older models.

Crap Sandwich

That's the term House Minority Leader John Boehner used to describe the financial rescue package, but he could have been speaking of any number of meals served up in the waning days of the failed Bush presidency.

Just this a.m. are headlines that would have attracted major fainting spells in any normal universe but which, under the present circumstances, get only yawns:

Citigroup Eats Wachovia Whole; Charlotte Can't Find Its Pulse

US Congress Passes $25 Billion Loan Guarantees to Fossils in Auto Industry

While her congressional leadership all prepare to munch on Bush's failure, Madam Foxx has been signaling furiously that she'll vote against the financial industry bailout. We think we'd join her in that. We think. Hard to know, since the wrong vote could actually be crucial in sending the whole she-bang into some bottomless tank.

He Shaved His Legs for This?

If there is a decided downturn today on Wall Street, John McCain owns it. It's his fault. Evidently, the market dropped 130 points in the first two minutes of trading, discouraged by Sen. McCain's race to put a monkey wrench into the agreement being worked out yesterday.

The Senator comes roaring back to Washington, crying, "I'll fix it! I'll fix it!" and then sits mute through the White House conference, offering precisely zero, while the House Republicans bail out of an agreement that Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, and the White House had basically agreed on (it was NOT the Paulson plan, which was dead as a doornail approximately 15 minutes after it was proposed).

Some House Republicans are apparently now comfortable taking the whole country down to prove a point: "According to one GOP lawmaker, some House Republicans are saying privately that they'd rather 'let the markets crash' than sign on to a massive bailout. 'For the sake of the altar of the free market system, do you accept a Great Depression?' the member asked."

Unless this is all just a giant fake-out meant to save John McCain's candidacy. Maybe it's all just a set-up so that today McCain could pretend to get the House Republicans in line, who were in line already all along but pretended otherwise. Now wouldn't that be something if McCain could ride triumphantly into Oxford, Mississippi, as the conquering hero who saved the American economy from complete collapse?

It was perfectly clear yesterday at the White House pow-wow that McCain had no plan of his own, other than grandstanding for the photo-ops. Meanwhile, the impression of the man as dangerously erratic sinks deeper into the American psyche.

The Hot (Warm?) Breath of the Law

Maybe there's potential job growth in one sector of our economy at least ... forensic accountants.

We learn this a.m. that the F.B.I. is investigating the American International Group (AIG), Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Bros., IndyMac Bancorp Inc., and Countrywide Financial Corp. for accounting fraud, insider trading, and failure to disclose the value of mortgage-related securities and other investments. In fact, F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller admits that he's got 24 large financial firms under investigation.

'Bout time.

But this news does raise another, related issue. The Bush administration wants Congress to donate up to $1 trillion to this bunch of thieves for their worthless paper "securities"? Boggles the mind.

1.4 Trillion

That's the projected cost to taxpayers, adding up what we've already spent on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and the new $700 billion Congress is being stampeded into passing before anyone thinks too hard and long about what we're doing.

So how do you like Republican Socialism? It's different from other socialisms. It's Trickle-Down. Bailouts for the already rich mis-managers of financial institutions with apparently no strings attached. Even foreign banks get some love but not the individual homeowner with an adjustable rate mortgage.

All of this has made John McCain hop faster and higher than a frog on a griddle. If the man ever did have a set of core principles, they're dust today. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has seen to that. McCain was Mr. Deregulator on Monday. He's not that today, or at least not in public.

But back to that $700 billion (maybe more) they're asking us to give to the Bush administration, which couldn't manage the aftermath of a hurricane (make that two hurricanes, if you've checked in on Texas lately) and which invaded a country we didn't need to invade on false pretenses. They don't want Congress asking too many questions about this bailout. They don't want us citizens to worry.

What, me worry?

Brokeback Presidency

El Presidente will be in Greensboro on Sept. 30th for a fundraiser for John McCain, and we can't help noticing the quick exit from his general vicinity of any Republican running in a tight race. Like Liddy Dole, who's already said (cough, cough) that she's planning an aneurysm that day or needs to be at her home in Washington, D.C., on the 30th to pet the cat and pull a dead leaf off the ivy.

But apparently, the 30% of Americans who still approve of George W. Bush mostly live in North Carolina (and some 65% of that 30% live in Blowing Rock!).

Watching El Presidente's (non) performance this past week during the financial market meltdown certainly identifies him as an intellectual partner to McCain. It must be a proud moment for both of them, presiding over the nationalization of private debt. The apotheosis of Conservatism.