Balta1701

When Congress first created the TARP bailout, it required that the Congress had to approve any release of the 2nd half of the funds, so the current Secretary of the Treasury could only spend $350 billion without additional Congressional approval. I'm sure you know where this is going. By multiple counts, we're up to about $358.4 billion pledged. And of course, Congress hasn't released the 2nd half yet. Laws...HAH! And for some more bailout fun while I'm at it...a few weeks back, Elizabeth Warren sent along a few questions to the Treasury about how they were using the money. Basically, the Treasury's reply winds up being some version of "Ha-Ha, you suck". An example: They're copying and pasting talking points to fill space. These people can not be gone soon enough.

Fitz today filed a motion asking for a 90 day extension of the time granted to him to file indictments in the case. This should keep the details of the government's case under wraps until sometime mid-spring.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 31, 2008 -> 01:21 PM) As for Medicare/cade, do you really think if we just said everyone could have every treatment, everytime that the waste would go away? You can't be that naive, right. You realize that with our medical system falling apart from being overburdened now, that all of the new people added in, plus no need to be effecient about what health care you seek would collapse the whole system. We would have health care rationing, and we would still have bureuocrats deciding who gets treatment and who does, except on a much grander scale, instead of smaller. Other countries are able to come shockingly close to that goal while still spending a ton less than us on health care. France is of course the timeless example in that regard. Britain is closer to the rationing end of the scale, but even then, they still produce better overall results than our system does, at a cost significantly less than that of even France.

Alberto Gonzalez doesn't understand why everyone thinks he did something wrong. He takes shots at pretty much everyone who might have said anything negative about him in that piece.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 31, 2008 -> 01:03 PM) No offense but that is some scary logic you are using there. The fact that we have tolerated governmental waste at such a large rate, for such a long period of time is why we have such a bloated and ineffective government in the first place. There is no motivation to get things done right, except as far as keeping your job. And because it is nearly impossible to lose your overpaying government job, there really isn't much motivation. For example, you don't think it would be more beneficial to the general American economy to clean up waste in places like social security, welfare, medicare/cade etc, so that more people actually got what they were intended to get out of the program, instead of it going to an army of paper pushers. I love this. Medicare/Medicaid have dramatically lower overhead costs than comparable private insurance plans. Social Security's overhead costs are remarkably minimal. The idea of fighting government waste by focusing on those programs...while not mentioning the DOD, that's exactly what you're talking about, and you don't even realize it. You're tolerating by far the largest chunk of the waste to focus on programs that because of the focus on waste wind up running as efficiently as anything in the private sector. Of course, I'd be happy to cut waste in Medicare. The easy way to do that is to make it so that everyone is served by it and there's no longer any question of whether or not treatment needs done, whether or not insurance will cover treatment, etc. You can dramatically cut overhead and waste by killing the paperwork related to those insurance questions. Oh, and the problem with those giant CEO salaries is that it's not the most effective way in terms of job creation or anything else to spend the government monies. $25 million can fund a hell of a lot of jobs, but instead it goes to pay a bonus to a guy who ran Merrill Lynch for 1 month. Etc.

Coleman campaign blocks acceptance of the absentee ballot of one of Minnesota's election judges.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 31, 2008 -> 12:52 PM) What? Cutting waste does not help you out of the economic mess. It can improve the budget situation long-term, but it is unrelated to getting out of the economic mess. To fix the economic mess, I'm willing to tolerate some measure of waste, because waste can do things like keep people employed (i.e. the automobile bailouts, continued DOD spending on weapons programs we don't need, etc.)

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 31, 2008 -> 12:51 PM) So, here is something for the minds here to ponder. A lesson from this year about oil. One thing we learned, seemingly, is that the demand for oil is much more elastic than most anyone thought, expert or otherwise. That being the case... 1. Why is that? Did it change recently, or was it always that elastic and we were all wrong? 2. What does that mean for oil and energy prices going forward? I think the best metaphor is a newtonian fluid with a yield stress. A newtonian solid/fluid behaves elastically up to a point. You can push and push and push on it and the stress you get is always proportional to the strain. But at some point, there is a failure. Imagine squeezing a steel rod at both ends...you can constantly up the stress on it, but eventually it fails and bends. Same deal here. You push hard enough on it, and eventually the economy that is doing the pushing finally breaks. If we don't get a realistic alternative energy policy in place rapidly, I think that we may well enter a new type of economic world, where energy and resource scarcity becomes a hard limit on economic growth. Until this point in recent history, every time the economy has grown, there has been resource production that can grow with it. But now, if the economy wanted to grow more, there would be a resisting force, because you'd just drive another price shock in the resource markets since there's just no more cheap energy to be produced.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 31, 2008 -> 12:44 PM) Certainly this is the issue - the economy is stalling, and needs huge attention. But you need to attack this is a smart way - by prioritizing spending, cutting waste, and making sure your grants and tax breaks are targeted in a way that makes sense. By the way, I am not saying that right now is the time to pay down debt either - as you say, the economy needs money. I am saying, we need to do better with the spending levels where they are already at. And we also need to be better at collecting due revenues, and finding REAL waste to cut. Cutting waste does absolutely nothing to help you out of the current economic mess. Intelligent spending or intelligent tax cuts yes, but the key is they need to be BIG. I could see a return to these spending levels in a couple years as a reasonable thing, but right now, a major infrastructure investment package taking advantage of the low interest rates and at the same time serving as a major economic stimulus is the only choic.e You want to talk long-term...yeah, then we might be able to come to some measure of an agreement. I'd say it was quite shameful that we failed to take advantage of the last economic expansion to pay off some of the federal government's debts, but then people would just discard my statement because of the man who made the decision to stay in debt then. And on the waste issue...this is constantly talked about, but the reality is...there are only a couple ways we're going to actually clean up waste in the government, because every administration comes in and tries to do it. Either we're going to have to make major cuts to the war department (and remember, spending on wars is not real spending, or at least that's how it's been treated the last 30 years) or we're going to have to perform a major overhaul in the health care sector (hopefully coming in a few months). It would be nice to have some measure of competence appear in government at a number of levels in terms of "reducing waste", but again, that's going to be an attack on the people currently making the decisions. There's a ton of useful, productive programs that simply get squeezed out because of the focus on "reducing waste." The reality winds up being that you can save small bits here and there by dropping things like abstinence-only education or various other projects, but the only real waste that will actually matter is the DOD and Health care.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 31, 2008 -> 12:39 PM) No, no, no. When your debt is already overwhelming your budget with interest such that you can't dent the principal - which is the case here - then taking on MORE debt is dangerous and stupid even if it can be had for very low rates. It just puts you in a far larger hole later. For a personal set of incomes, that is true. The reality with the government though is that it doesn't work like that. When the governments revenues go down and the government borrows more, the additional government spending can also work as a stimulus to pull the economy back out of the down times that it's gotten itself in to. An economic downturn is the case where treating the government's spending like you would your own bank account is a bad thing, because of the feedbacks. If the government right now does not take on significantly increased amounts of debt, then there's going to be nothing left to keep the economy from collapsing completely. That's the logic behind the stimulus package we'll hopefully be passing in a couple weeks.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 31, 2008 -> 12:35 PM) Only true if you are starting from a reasonable baseline, which we are not. If you are already in heavy debt, even if debt is cheap, taking on more doesn't make any sense. Its more to pay off later, much later. We are already in far too big a hole to play that game, trying to accelerate out of debt with more debt. That's incredibly dangerous. Well, the other argument I can make is that it'd be dramatically more dangerous to not take on additional debt and just let the economy spiral its way completely down the liquidity trap.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Dec 31, 2008 -> 12:35 PM) Are you talking about individual debt? I was talking about the federal deficit. I'm referring to the federal debt also. Right now is perhaps the best time in decades for the federal government to be going in to debt to spend money, for a huge number of reasons, the lack of interest being just the first.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 31, 2008 -> 10:43 AM) Cutting down our debt, getting off oil, and taking a less invasive approach to foreign policy would all greatly benefit the security of this country. On the debt part, right now in particular, I disagree. Just look at the bond markets. Right now, the U.S. can basically take out debt without having to pay interest just because it's the only thing people have confidence in. It makes no sense to try to cut down on debt when you can take on debt for free.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 30, 2008 -> 06:22 PM) Given the winning super bowl QB list, I absolutely disagree. If that's the case, then logically it follows that every year or two, you ought to spend your first round pick on a QB and try to land in the top 10, because that would therefore be the only realistic way of getting a super bowl championship.

The woman who was kinda sorta alleged in the most vague way possible to be having a possibly inappropriate possible relationship with possible candidate John maybe McCain by the New York iffy times is suing the paper for defamation. This should be fun for all sides. (Did I adequately capture the number of qualifiers the NYT put in their original story there?)

Here's a bit from the wall street journal showing once again, using actual data, that the idea that the community reinvestment act caused the housing bubble (basically the argument that we shouldn't have forced lending to minorities) is simply wrong.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 30, 2008 -> 05:10 PM) So Obama has time to break from his Hawaiian vacation for talking about Burris, but won't say a word about Israel and Gaza? Interesting priorities. I don't see a thread here about the Israel/Gaza matter either . One could certainly argue that as long as he's only the President elect, he shouldn't be making statements about foreign policy matters that would interfere with the work being done by the current president.

FWIW, here's the statement from the closest thing this country currently has to a President.

Seems we now have official charges and an idea of how much time he could face.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Dec 30, 2008 -> 01:03 PM) All true statements, but I mean a lot of people gave Blagojevich campaign money for various reasons so we can't just look at everyone who did and think "oh, they must be as corrupt as he is." All of us already knew Blagojevich was corrupt, and I can't just look Burris making donations and jump to conclusions. It's a pretty inaccurate gauge of corruption just by itself which is why I put the caveat "in and of itself." Not speaking about the corruption part...but you know what I think the best argument is for why Burris is an unacceptable choice for this seat? Because he accepted the nomination from Blago. Knowing everything else that is public already, knowing about the Dems statement already, knowing about the impeachment procedure, etc., he still accepted the nomination. That alone makes him an unacceptable choice IMO.

2 members of the Congressional Black Caucus (Congressmen, not Senators, the only African American senator is on his way to the white house) have spoken out in favor of the nomination. Davis (D-IL) and Rush (D-IL).

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Dec 30, 2008 -> 12:41 PM) A special election is the only reasonable solution to the empty senate seat While I agree, you also have to consider that holding a special election for that seat would almost certainly require an amendment to the Illinois State Constitution making it allowable. Given the time that would take, combined with the time for primaries, an actual campaign, etc., you'd probably be looking at the seat being vacant for at least a year, in which case you'd almost have to appoint someone as a tentative holder of the position anyway.

The Illinois Secretary of State is also saying he'll try to block the nomination by refusing to accept the paperwork. May not work, but guaranteed to result in a multi-month court challenge that if nothing else will hang everything up until the impeachment moves along.

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Dec 30, 2008 -> 10:44 AM) They may not be able to legally. And frankly, if this guy isnt one of the prospective candidates named in the investigation, they shouldnt stop it. Illinois should have full Senate representation. The Senate is fully within its rights to refuse to seat anyone based on whatever criteria they choose. And regardless of whether or not this particular candidate is connected to Blagojevich's scandal or not, when the scandal first broke, within 24 hours, the Senate Dems had released a strongly worded letter signed by every single dem in the Senate saying that they would refuse to seat anyone named to that seat by Blagojevich. That was the right thing to do, and regardless of who he named, following the policy they outlined is also the righ tmove.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Dec 30, 2008 -> 12:04 PM) Blago's crony Pat Quinn should appoint the senator? just as bad IMO. The senate should refuse to accept any appointment that comes from the Blagojevich crimal orgainzation If the Lt. Gov is also unqualified or corrupt, then it's the Illinois Legislature's job to remove them. The Senate can't just keep that seat vacant forever.