And Now The Work Begins

Yesterday was a lot of fun, even if I did get the stomach flu sometime in the afternoon. The crowd in D.C. was incredible, the speeches and songs were inspiring (save for parts of Warren's invocation) and the day was filled with joy. From the time Obama went to have coffee with Bush to the last inaugural ball, it was truly a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation. Now that the parties are over, it is time to get to work. Thankfully, President Obama already knows that and is doing a fair amount already.

So far:

He's halted the trials at Guantanamo Bay as to review the entire process and get ready to change it.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has put a halt to all of George Bush's last minute regulation changes.

The United States now helps other countries with birth control efforts again.

And it isn't even ten in the morning here on the East Coast. There is so much to be accomplished in the next four to eight years, but I am confident that we are well on our way to mending the damage done to our country by the Bush Presidency, and hopefully the Bush Sr. and Reagan Administrations as well. As long as we work alongside the President and push for a progressive mandate, the possibilities are endless.

President Bush Busies Himself Before Christmas

Ah, so much to do before the holiday and especially the last day in office for the current Pretzeldent:

W. Blames H.W. For Our Economic Mess

Oliver Stone's movie "W." purports that a lot of conflict occurred between George H.W. Bush and his miserable failure of a son. A lot of that takes place in our President's earlier years, but as we can clearly tell today, there's still something between the two. The outgoing Executive is doing a round of interviews and is spreading the blame for his mess as fast as he can, including a little mud set aside for dear old Dad.

From ABC News:

"I think when the history of this period is written, people will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived," he said.

Karl Rove likes his fuzzy math, but a third grader can tell me that a decade or so (eight to ten years) minus the year Bush was elected (2000) equals approximately 1988 to 1992. When that kid studies social sciences later this year, he or she can tell you who was President at that time.

Bush Working On One Last Shot To Wreck Our Government

George Bush may only have eighty days and change left in the White House, but that doesn't mean he isn't hard at "work." Economists have been bashing the deregulation policies of the last twenty to thirty years as the main problem of our fiscal crisis but that won't stop the Pretzeldent from enacting more of the same failed policies. In one last trick on the American people and another treat for corporate America, a whole array of regulations that protect the environment and consumers will go out the door if Bush gets his way.

From The Washington Post:

The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.

Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.

Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandated reanalysis.

"They want these rules to continue to have an impact long after they leave office," said Matthew Madia, a regulatory expert at OMB Watch, a nonprofit group critical of what it calls the Bush administration's penchant for deregulating in areas where industry wants more freedom. He called the coming deluge "a last-minute assault on the public . . . happening on multiple fronts."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto says that they have the "best interests of the nation in mind," but we know he is completely full of shit. The Republican Administration is doing everything in its power to make things as difficult as they can be for the next (presumably Democratic) President. The wealthy elite are going to miss their confidante in the Oval Office so they are hoping that this one last push will help them get through until the next time they can trick the people into voting against their own interests.

Hopefully that day will never come.

Alan Greenspan Admits He Isn't God

For far too long, Alan Greenspan was considered a financial deity for leaders on both sides of the aisle. He was there for Bush Sr., Bill Clinton and until Bernake stumbled in, for the current failure-in-chief. As the head of the Federal Reserve Board, Greenspan helped direct and advocate for deregulation in the market. Unfortunately for the great majority of us, politicians happily followed his advice and were paid handsome rewards by the financial sector. Now that we are seeing the consequences of those policies reverberate through the economy everyone is looking for answers, even the man who had the wrong ones for all these years.

From The NY Times:

Although he defended the use of derivatives in general, Mr. Greenspan, who left office in 2006, told members of the House Committee of Government Oversight and Reform that he was “partially” wrong in not having tried to regulate the market for credit-default swaps.

But in a tense exchange with Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the committee, Mr. Greenspan conceded a more serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root of a superior economy.

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” Mr. Greenspan said.

Referring to his free-market ideology, Mr. Greenspan added: “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”

Reading these words, I have to shake my head in disbelief. How can someone that is considered so smart not know that the greed of the rich will ultimately bring us all down in flames? Putting a value on debt that is worthless is absolutely ridiculous when the chance of it crumbling is greater than a house of cards exposed to the wind.

I honestly do not think Mr. Greenspan is such a fool, he should most certainly be aware of what his tenure has helped to "accomplish" in our country over the last twenty years. Greenspan must certainly have made quite a deal of wealth in his time with his policies that have made so many of us poor. Deregulation stripped away the protections in the market that were instituted to prevent the crisis of the Great Depression. They were put there for a good purpose Mr. Greenspan and the only reason to get rid of them is to re-enact the boom of the 1920s while recklessly disregarding the consequences in the 1930s.

Now it does not please me to see Greenspan's heavenly aura stripped away in such a manner that Waxman provided today. He certainly deserved it but the truth is that he should have never been given the throne that was given to him by either party.

Government Does It Better When You Let It

Call me a socialist, but the fact is when it comes to utilities (and other things) government-run agencies work better and more efficiently than private companies. Neo-con ideology be damned, Bill Kristol can argue til he's blue in the face but the facts are the facts. Californians would be the best opponents of deregulation if only most of them knew why. The most recent example was highlighted in the conservative NY Post of all places, showing that New Yorkers lost billions of dollars due to electricity deregulation.

From The NY Post:

October 29, 2007 -- State rules aimed at curbing electric rates are instead shocking New Yorkers' wallets, sending the price of power surging by 18 percent, a new study says.

Electric deregulation cost New Yorkers $3.4 billion in the 12 months that ended June 30 - as if each of the state's 19 million residents forked over an extra $176 to power companies, according to data in the report from Power in the Public Interest.

And since deregulation took effect seven years ago, New Yorkers have overpaid a whopping $14.3 billion, the data shows.

Albany is taking note of the study by Marilyn Showalter, the group's executive director and a past president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.

Albany doesn't need to take note, they need to take action. Corporations are greedy bastards and in the case of electricity, they need to be shut down and the power (pun intended I guess) must be handed back to the people. I'm glad the NY Post saw this and reported on the story when it actually affected them personally.

Now corporations aren't all bad, sometimes they do something good (because they did something bad) for the people. So maybe I'm not a socialist or even a pinko commie bastard, but one thing is for sure, we need re-regulation.