A Democratic Filibuster?

We have a deal on extending Bush's big tax giveaway to the wealthy. We'll continue to borrow money to cover a tax break for those who don't need one for the next two years, because it's so damned much better reach an unwise compromise than it is to fight for the right thing. Now Republicans will be allowed to continue to expand the deficit -- while blaming Obama and Democrats for growing deficits. It's frustrating that no one in the White House seems to see that coming.

Let's be clear; compromise for the sake of compromise is pointless. On any economic issue, one group will be right and one group will be wrong -- or, at least, more right and more wrong. Compromise insures that bad ideas from the cult of the wrong find their way into the final product. As a result, the "solution" is no solution at all. It's just not completely wrong. When you meet someone who's crazy halfway, the result is halfway crazy.

What do Democrats get out of this? More than we expected, frankly. We get an extension of unemployment benefits and we get payroll tax cuts -- the latter seems to have come out of the blue and will help the lowest income workers. If you don't get paid enough to have taxable income, you'll still get a tax break. There's an obvious Keynesian effect from this.

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Republicans Agree to Only Wound the Hostage

We'll start off with a clip of John Kerry on Meet the Press this weekend, along with commentary from The Atlantic's James Fallows:

By John Kerry, no less. On Meet the Press today. (Clip may start with an embedded ad):

Note to Administration officials: make these points, and just keep making them. The Administration is offering a plan with tax cuts for everybody, and the Republicans are saying no -- to that, and to extended unemployment benefits during a time of record joblessness -- unless there is a hugely expensive extra tax cut for the very people who are least likely to spend the extra money they get.

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Reconciled to Win

Big day tomorrow (or today, as you read this), so I'm writing this ahead of time. We're expecting the first major snowfall in the afternoon and I've got something else going that's going to take up most of my morning. This will probably be a little short, with three substantial blockquotes, so let's get right to it.

Talking Points Memo:

Using a wily procedural maneuver to tie Republican hands, House Democrats managed to pass, by a vote of 234-188, legislation that will allow the Bush tax cuts benefiting only the wealthiest Americans to expire.

Democrats were not united on the issue. Twenty voted with Republicans to kill the tax cut bill, as they hold out for extending additional cuts to wealthy Americans -- though 3 Republicans, including Reps. Ron Paul (TX) and Walter Jones (NC) voted for the tax cut extensions. However the outcome will (and was designed to) allow Democrats to draw distinctions between themselves and Republicans during the 2012 election cycle.

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Have Republicans Fixed the Economy Yet?

"Have Republicans fixed the economy yet?" That's the question every Democrat should ask, every time a reporter sticks a microphone in their face. GOP leadership has made it clear that they plan to take no responsibility for any of their actions, so that responsibility will have to be forced on them. Throughout this lame duck congress and on into the 112th, Republicans should own the economy. After all, they're responsible for the state it's in now. Of course, Republicans will ask when Democrats will stop blaming Bush for everything, but the answer to that one is easy: when it stops being Bush's fault. After all, Republicans have never really stopped blaming FDR for a whole raft of problems -- some real, most imagined -- so I think dems can go on blaming Bush until the economy is back on it's feet, at least.

Which is a problem for Republicans, because they seem committed to keeping the economy on its knees.

That video actually understates the severity of the consequence of failing to extend unemployment benefits. Associated Press reports that financial analysts predict that "annual economic growth could fall by one half to nearly 1 percentage point," that "up to 1 million more people could lose their jobs," and that "hundreds of thousands would fall into poverty."

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Megaleak

According to Wikipedia, Wikileaks was founded in 2006. That sounds about right to me. I remember reading about it at the time and thinking it was a good idea -- a sort of investigative journalism without the journalist middleman. I checked it from time to time, but soon found that -- ironically -- all that raw info was a little hard to make use of without someone taking the time to weed out all the trivia. In short, what I'd originally thought of as direct journalism required a journalist to make sense of it.

Still, in just four short years, Wikileaks has gone from a backwater site of interest to few to an international controversy. Founder Julian Assange has become an international fugitive on Interpol's Most Wanted list, for rape charges which may be trumped up. He's a frontrunner for Time's "Person of the Year" for 2010. He's hated by some and beloved by others. To lift a line from an ad campaign, he is "The Most Interesting Man in the World."

It's probably a mistake to think of Assange in journalistic terms. A former hacker, he's more of an information extremist. After releasing video of US soldiers mistakenly gunning down journalists in Iraq, Wikileaks had to move their site to the same host that filesharing site The Pirate Bay uses -- Pirate Bay founders are likewise free-information activists. It's a strange world these people operate in, where legal and illegal aren't as important as right and wrong and there's no need to obey unjust laws. The very existence of both Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay are acts of civil disobedience and protest. And, while they're making enemies around the world, they're gaining political support and power elsewhere, mostly as part of global anti-corporate and transparency movements.

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