Conservative Economics at Work

In 1992, Republican and Libertarian economic principles won the day in Colorado. No longer would Big Gummint be able to spend money whenever it thought it needed to and raise taxes to pay for it. The cause of Liberty was served and was poised to become the freest and happiest state in all the land. According to Wikipedia, "[T]he voters of the state amended Article X of the Colorado Constitution to the effect that any tax increase resulting in the increase of governmental revenues at a rate faster than the combined rate of population increase and inflation as measured by either the cost of living index at the state level, or growth in property values at the local level, would be subjected to a popular vote in a referendum." In other words, any tax increase -- except in circumstances so rare as to be nonexistent -- would have to survive a referendum. Called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights or TABOR, this was clearly what the founders intended. Now that more than a decade has passed, let's see how things are going with this triumph of fiscal sanity, shall we?

Denver Post Editorial Board:

We have abdicated our responsibility to manage our elected officials by resorting to the referendum and forsaken our role in a representative democracy. The founders did not establish a direct democracy for a reason. We tamper with this at our peril.

We have foolishly allowed political charlatans to convince us that government in and of itself is evil and should be shrunken to the point that, as famously put by Grover Norquist, the government can be drowned in a bathtub.

Well we are there and the results are ugly indeed. Mandatory furlough days, diminished services, state budgets drenched in red ink. State employees will not receive pay raises and will steadily lose ground to inflation and as retirees leave their positions won't be filled. Schools cannot afford new books and some are struggling to pay for heat and busses for the students. Colorado, once one of the leaders in education in the nation is now 40th in per student spending. Serious conversations around a 4-day school week are occurring in many of our districts.

Cities such as Colorado Springs and Pueblo cannot afford to hire replacement police officers or firefighters and the infrastructure we all depend on such as roads, water systems and sewage treatment plants age into obsolescence.

Yay for conservative common sense!

Even TABOR's supporters acknowledge that things aren't going so well. Colorado Springs Mayor Lionel Rivera, who calls himself "a strong supporter of TABOR," has called for a three year "time out" -- which probably isn't so constitutional. At any rate, suspending or waiving the requirement every time it becomes a roadblock kind of defeats the whole purpose. If Rivera's call is heeded, TABOR would effectively be dead.

TABOR is widely seen as a fiasco. At one point, the state of Ohio was considering adopting a similar amendment and Republican Brad Young, a one-time chairman of both the Colorado Joint Budget Committee and House Appropriations Committee, warned them that it was a really, really, really bad idea.

"The proposed amendment here in Ohio is, at its core, the same as the one in Colorado -- its impact would be the same," Young said. "After twelve years, TABOR is now forcing the state to make draconian cuts to key government programs, especially in higher education and human services. There is no money for capital construction and maintenance or for transportation. Businesses are very concerned that our community colleges and universities are not getting the resources they need to produce a good workforce; health care and infrastructure cuts have created a less attractive business climate for companies to relocate jobs. TABOR will do the same thing here in Ohio."

The problem here is the conservative idea that taxation is the be-all and end-all of economic development. The idea in Colorado -- as in so many states -- was that if you could keep taxes lower than other states', businesses would come flocking. But business owners look at more than just tax rates; as Young pointed out, they look at infrastructure as well. If the schools are junk, then business owners will have a hard time recruiting employees. If fire and police protection is weak, investments will be at risk. If the roads are bad, they'll have a harder time getting the resources they need for their business to thrive. It's like anything else; if your product is cheap crap, you're not going to have the most popular box on the shelf. Your attempt to bring in consumers has the opposite effect. So businesses leave Colorado in favor of states where things actually get done.

And, of course, under economic voodoo like TABOR, this all has a cascade effect. Revenues begin to fall and you have no way of raising them, because people will almost always vote down a tax increase -- that's the entire purpose of TABOR. Too many voters really do believe you can have your cake and eat it too, especially if you've got a lot of people who listen to talk radio and watch FOX News. And this just makes everything worse. In the end, your business climate is as attractive as a case of the swine flu.

In Colorado Springs, buses now stop running at 6:15 PM, cutting employees off from employment and employers from employees. Three city pools have closed. The parks go to weeds. Police are cut to the point where they have trouble keeping up with crime and, to make matters worse, most streetlights are turned off at night.

So what happens when Republican and Libertarian economic principles win the day? Economic disaster.

-Wisco


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Who Cares About the Unemployed? We've Got an Election to Win!

As congress returns from the Fourth of July recess, they'll try once again to extended unemployment benefits for 2.14 million citizens whose benefits have run out. The problem here is Republican grandstanding -- with the unfortunate Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson joining in -- on the deficit. But the amount of money the extension of these benefits would add to the deficit is so miniscule and the stimulative effect of unemployment benefits are so great that it's hard to make any sense of the GOP's argument here. It's like saying, "Yeah, we could buy this new tractor and increase productivity on the farm, but it's a penny more than I'm willing to pay, so we're just going to have to lose all that profit." It makes no sense at all.

Part of the Republican defense is that extending unemployment benefits extends the amount of time people remain unemployed. But this is a crazy argument that assumes all situations are equal and that there are plenty of jobs out there waiting to be filled. There aren't. Economist Paul Krugman explains:

Do unemployment benefits reduce the incentive to seek work? Yes: workers receiving unemployment benefits aren’t quite as desperate as workers without benefits, and are likely to be slightly more choosy about accepting new jobs. The operative word here is "slightly": recent economic research suggests that the effect of unemployment benefits on worker behavior is much weaker than was previously believed. Still, it's a real effect when the economy is doing well.

But it's an effect that is completely irrelevant to our current situation. When the economy is booming, and lack of sufficient willing workers is limiting growth, generous unemployment benefits may keep employment lower than it would have been otherwise. But as you may have noticed, right now the economy isn't booming -- again, there are five unemployed workers for every job opening. Cutting off benefits to the unemployed will make them even more desperate for work -- but they can't take jobs that aren't there.

Further, Krugman argues that unemployment benefits help the economy for obvious reasons; if more people have money, more people spend money, and if fewer people have money, fewer people spend money. And no one is as guaranteed to spend money as the person who needs it. Fewer people spending money results in decreased demand, which results in even fewer jobs. This facet of the Republican argument has everything bass-ackward.

The problem here is that the Republican Party has lost their mind. Remember, on the day that Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, pundits were openly wondering if the GOP was going the way of the Whigs. Things had seldom seemed darker for them. Then came the Town Hall mobs, which grew into the Tea Party. Combined with growing impatience over economic recovery, the GOP -- so recently written off as dying -- was suddenly in a sort of ascendancy. They've grabbed onto this small but vocal group like a drowning man grabs onto a floating log. And, as a result, they've become as incredibly stupid as their new base.

A new Gallup poll shows that only among teabaggers and Republicans is the size of the federal debt a huge concern. Only in those two demographic groups does a majority say debt is an "extremely serious threat" to America's future. The poll has a massive flaw in that it doesn't include the economy as a possible threat, so the numbers will be a little weird. But otherwise, it's telling.

Another major concern of tea partiers is "the size and power of federal government" (49%), with 80% believing that "government is doing too much that should be left to individuals and businesses." This would be a lot easier to take if they didn't also hypocritically agree that "Government should promote traditional values" (57%). We all know what "traditional values" means by now, so we can translate these results as, "Big government extending unemployment benefits and guaranteeing healthcare -- boo for big gummint! Big government making sure that men only sleep with women, women only sleep with men, and some women remain pregnant against their will -- yay for big gummint!" The group who argue that the government that governs best governs least would be a lot easier to take seriously if most of them actually meant it.

But to go back to unemployment, these inconsistent tea party geniuses are the ones blocking debate. And make no mistake, the majority is one the sane side -- just not Republicans. Nor their teabagger brain.

To my knowledge, no poll has asked what I consider to be a central question; how many tea partiers are unemployed? From their positions on the issues, I'd say that very, very few are. And those few are stupid beyond words. The entire movement is idiocy run amok, driven by selfishness and ignorance and fear. This is today's Republican Party; terrified of everything, unwilling to sacrifice, and ignorant of both facts and the hypocrisy of their own positions. It's become an unhinged, drooling fool of a party, driven not by its brightest minds, but by the loudest voices in its head.

And this monstrous idiot of a party, this collection of so-called "rugged individualists" who think with one collective hive-mind, has decided to set economic policy for the nation. They are, not surprisingly, doing it wrong. But that doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is winning in November. Who cares if it helps the nation? Reelection is all that matters and the tea party nuts are key to that. The party that was once declared dead has risen from the grave and now, zombie-like, shambles off to do the bidding of its own teabagger zombie-plague.

-Wisco


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BP and GOP Attempting History's Largest Cover-Up

The oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is bad. Really bad. Mile after mile after mile of bad. This bad:

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Given the sheer size and scope of the disaster, it seems impossible that someone would even consider hiding it. Yet that seems to be what BP has in mind. Out of sight, out of mind. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that the company that caused the catastrophe by cutting corners in building Deepwater Horizon would also try to cut corners in cleaning it up. BP's attempts to keep the worst of the spill off the front page have been well-documented -- they turn reporters away, while sending their own "journalists" out to cover the story.

According to a whistleblower who spoke to CNN, BP is using dispersant not to mitigate the disaster, but to hide its magnitude.

Examiner:

In a shocking interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on June 29th, Allegiance Capitol Corporation V.P. Fred McCallister said that BP is deliberately sinking oil with the toxic chemical disbursant [sic] Corexit, to hide the size of the oil spill. By sinking the oil before it can be collected, BP won't have to pay fines on it.

McCallister said, "Everybody in Europe, where the standard practice is to raise the oil and collect it, is scratching their heads, and quite honestly laughing at what's happening in the Gulf." He added, "Everyone is looking at us and wondering why we're allowing this to happen."

This is one of my suspicions confirmed. Using dispersant never seemed to make sense to me. I could see using it near the well, where it would clear the water and improve visibility, but using it elsewhere just made no sense to me. It's not like dispersant makes the oil "go away."

And this isn't the only way BP is trying to cover up the damage and hide the oil. They seem to be trying (and thankfully, failing) to literally bury the story under tons of sand.

"BP is trucking in sand to cover up the oil," writes Shannyn Moore. "Let me repeat that -- instead of cleaning up the oil they are just bringing in sand from other beaches and covering it up. In the photos and the video you can see the layering of Grand Isle, LA sand, oil and then a sand of a different type. Photo-journalists have four independent confirmations by local Sheriff's in Grand Isle, Louisiana."

If BP needs help in covering all this up -- and it's clear they do, because it turns out the inept are unsurprisingly incompetent when it comes to hiding their ineptitude -- they don't have to look far. The Republican Party, eager to portray President Obama as an executive more bumbling than George W. Bush, is ready to pitch in on the effort. Want cover up everything? That's easy. Just say everything is Barack Obama's fault.

McClatchy Newspapers:

From former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to Arizona Sen. John McCain to junior members of the House of Representatives, conservative Republicans have accused President Barack Obama of failing to do all he can to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill because he hasn't waived a U.S. maritime law called the Jones Act.

That statute, established in 1920, requires that all goods transported between U.S. ports be carried on U.S.-flagged, U.S.-built and U.S.-owned ships crewed by U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Critics say that's needlessly excluded foreign-flagged vessels that could have helped.

"It's a little shocking to me that a president that has such a multinational orientation as this president didn't immediately see the benefits of waiving the Jones Act and allowing all of these resources to come in," former House Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-Texas, said in remarks to Newsmax.com, a conservative website.

"Totally not true," Mark Ruge, counsel to the Maritime Cabotage Task Force, a coalition of U.S. shipbuilders, operators and labor unions, told McClatchy. "It is simply an urban myth that the Jones Act is the problem." Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen says he's received no requests for Jones Act waivers -- because none are necessary in this case.

"If the vessels are operating outside state waters, which is three miles and beyond, they don't require a waiver," Allen says.

But the Jones Act lie as become the official stance of the Republican Party. In an act of political theater, the GOP will release a partisan "report," written by the unfortunate Rep. Darrell Issa, that claims, "According to local officials, the decision to not waive the Jones Act has impaired Gulf Coast clean-up efforts. The most likely application of a broad-based Jones Act waiver would be for the operation of boats equipped with skimmers, which is one of the most effective tools to clean up the oil. Rear Admiral Jim Watson conceded in a briefing to Chairman Towns and Ranking Member Issa that the Coast Guard does not currently have access to a sufficient numbers of skimmers."

Of course, these are Republicans we're talking about here. Lying is just part of the game for them. And Issa has a raging woody for impeaching Barack Obama -- again, lying is no impediment to this plan. In fact, it's necessary to it. Obama has broken no laws, so Issa has to make up crimes. He's been approaching the problem through a laughable attempt to trump up offering Joe Sestak an unpaid position into a crime, but that really doesn't seem to have any legs at all. If his big "Sestak affair" won't get the job done, maybe his "Jones Act affair" will. The point isn't to remove the president from office -- although I'm sure he wouldn't mind it -- the point is to tarnish Obama's boy scout image in time for the 2012 presidential elections. Speaking to Pennsylvania Republicans last month, Issa told them he'd use subpoena power to harass the White House and let corporations off the hook if Republicans gain control of the House in November.

"That will make all the difference in the world," he said. "I won't use it to have corporate America live in fear that we're going to subpoena everything. I will use it to get the very information that today the White House is either shredding or not producing."

And if inventing an Obama crime means helping BP cover up an actual crime, then cover-up it is. Because, let's face it, lying and protecting corporate interests are just what Republicans do.

-Wisco


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