The Fact of My Ignorance

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up that there will be plenty more posts coming up over the next several weeks so keep your eyes open. I’m finally through my mid-block round of finals and I’ve got 6 weeks or so until the next one. And we’re now getting into some semblance of a schedule with Jonah so I’ll finally be able to write some of the articles I’ve been building up here. And to start things off here’s a quick one.  You may have heard something about the G20 summit coming up this week and like many people you may have wondered, “What in the world is the G20?”.  Well that bastion of trivia, MentalFloss, put up an article about it today so just click “continue reading” for a quick definition. Continue reading

Okay well I know the stimulus bill is passed and settled now so this will likely be my last post on the subject.  But I’ve had several questions recently about whether or not there’s any truth to accusations of pork in the stimulus and while I’ve mentioned some stimulus myths in a previous post (see “ACORN, Fieldmice, Banning Prayer, Socialized Medicine and other Stimulus Fear-Mongering“) and I’ve talked a little bit about pork in some of my previous posts, I haven’t yet focused on it specifically.  So with this post I intend to answer this question to the best of my ability: “Does the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka. The Stimulus Bill) contain pork-barrel spending?” Continue reading

I think this video does a fantastic job of explaining the credit crisis in simple terms.  It doesn’t really discuss some of the newer developments, and it certainly over-simplifies some of the issues at points along the line.  But it explains the events that initially got us into this mess about as clearly and succinctly as they can be explained.  If you’re new to the economics of the credit crisis, you may still be a little shaky after a single viewing, but you’ll certainly understand things much better.  And even if you consider yourself a financial pro, you’ll likely have a clearer understanding of how the various problems facing banks, lenders, investors, and homeowners are connected after watching this.  It’s 11 minutes long but its definitely worth it.  And don’t forget to share your thoughts about it in the comments!

From Vimeo via MentalFloss

Well I’m a little late to the game on this one but for those of you who missed it, here’s Obama’s speech to the joint session of congress delivered tuesday night.  It was a great speech, which I thought was surprisingly informative, with a fair amount of detail.  He struck a more hopeful tone than he has in the past, which is probably what we need, and what we are ready for.  I was surprised at how many of his statements brought the Republican legislators in the room to their feet.  Of course its in the bizarre format of all Presidential speeches to congress, where everyone claps after every other sentence.  If you don’t want to deal with all of that then you can just read the transcript here.   

One thing that struck me during this talk, but which I’d like to develop further in the future, is how similar all of our values are in America.  I think, as much as political pundits like to portray political differences as a war of values, in most cases we all have very similar basic values and goals, just different ideas about how to go about achieving those things.  Obama touched on values a lot in this speech and when he was talking about those things was there really much there for any of us to disagree with?  If there are some conservatives in the audience maybe they can let us know in the comments.

At this point I think most political observers agree that the selection of Tim Geithner for Treasury Secretary was not one of President Obama’s best decisions.  Its not his tax evasion that gets me, though that’s disappointing in its own right, its his apparent inability to recognize the great importance of image in his position.  I’ve just recently watched Geithner’s debut press conference from last week and it was shockingly poor.  Part of Geithner’s problem is that, while he’s undoubtedly an intelligent person with nearly ideal experience and education for his position (he has graduate degrees in East Asian Studies as well as International economics), his boyish features make him look like he’s still a frat boy from some angles.  And his jilted speech, constant eyes on the tele-prompter, nervous rocking back and forth, and deer-in-the-headlights facial expression make him come-off… Continue reading

Screenshot from real life political computer game: "Take Back Illinois"

Well the Monday night deadline for CA politicians to agree on a budget came and went so Schwarzenegger was forced to send out 10,000 layoff notices to state employees.  The reason for the stall?  They were one vote short in the state senate.  California has a very unusual arrangement that requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of congress for a budget to be passed.  And after months and months of negotiations and concessions to republicans (the bill now consists of millions more in spending cuts than tax hikes) they were only able to entice 2 of the necessary 3 GOP senators to support the bill.

So when everyone woke up the next day and 10,000 more Californians were facing unemployment, did any of the senators who had voted against the bill, have second thoughts?  Did they acknowledge in anyway that thousands of CA families would now be suffering (and not to mention on the unemployment and/or welfare roles of the state) because of their posturing?  Nope.  In fact they gave a big raspberry to bi-partisanship and ousted the senate minority leader who helped negotiate the compromise bill.  The reason for these legislators’ ire?  The bill still contains tax hikes.  Literally, many of them will not vote for the legislation if it contains any tax hikes at all.

Unfortunately, CA is facing a 42 billion dollar deficit that absolutely cannot be fixed by spending cuts alone.  Governor Schwarzenegger recognizes this:

“If you think that you can do this budget without any increase in revenues then you have a big math problem because you can’t erase a $42 billion deficit without revenue increases,” Schwarzenegger said. “I hate taxes, but you when you are faced with that kind of reality, that’s what you have to do. We can only solve this problem with additional revenues and with spending cuts.”

We slashed 11 billion from the budget last year and the current budget has 15.2 billion in further spending reductions in the works.  I don’t think we can cut our way to solvency without unconscionably… Continue reading

One last stimulus post and then I promise I’ll take a break.  I have been utterly amazed at the creative reading skills of stimulus opponents over the last few weeks.  As they say a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth has finished putting its shoes on.  And the four outrageous claims discussed here have been passed around virtually unchallenged for a while now.

ACORN Nuttiness

The idea that there was money for ACORN in the stimulus was first invented by Fox news in the run up to the stimulus debate and its since been parroted by republican legislators including John Boehner and David Vitter.  In reality, of course, ACORN is not mentioned at all in the bill but what worries republicans is that 4.2 billion is set aside for local governments and (gasp) non-profit organizations to help them buy up foreclosed homes, fix them up, and sell them or rent them out.  So the logic goes 1.There is money in the bill for non-profits to buy up homes,   2. ACORN is a non-profit organization that does things vaguely housing related   3. The democrats are trying to sneak money to their buddies at ACORN!!!!!

Lest you think I’m exaggerating here is a quote from Louisiana Republican David Vitter on the subject: ”$4.2 billion dollars would be available to organizations like ACRON for so-called neighborhood revitalization. That’s just political payoff, quite frankly, not in spite of their voter registration fraud activity, really because of it, in my opinion, in terms of support from some of the liberals in Congress.”  … Wow.   That’s quite a conspiracy theory he’s put together there.  Never mind the fact that “ACORN Housing” is an entirely different organization than the ACORN that committed voter fraud, never mind that ACORN housing has never purchased a foreclosed home in its history and has no plans to do so, and never mind that… Continue reading

To continue the themes of my post earlier today, if you want to read the stimulus bill for yourself, the Senate compromise version can be found here: Senate Stimulus Bill.  If you right click on the link you can choose to download it to your computer for easier reading.  Its 778 pages.  But its 778 pages of double spaced, 16 point text that only takes up the middle third of the page.  So it reads much more quickly than one would expect.  Its brought to you via Readthestimulus.org.  And you can go there to find previous versions of the bill.  The new house and senate compromise version should be available soon.

Once again, if you can find some kind of pet project hidden in it then by all means notify news agencies because you’ll have some pretty exclusive information.  For all the talk of the “bloated, pork-filled stimulus”  I haven’t been able to find anything yet.

UPDATE:  See the way that the spending in the final bill breaks down through this intuitive little tool: CNN Stimulus Spending Chart

I thought these seven minutes were some of the most important of Obama’s speech and they can serve here as a springboard for discussing two important topics.  The first is the issue of partisanship.  I have been thoroughly impressed with Obama’s calm demeanor and mature perspective in regards to bipartisanship.  He has reached out across the aisle in an unprecedented way and he has been repeatedly slapped in the face by congressional republicans.  Yet he doesn’t turn on them, he doesn’t denounce them and give up, he talks about how his efforts are a long-term investment.  And he says he’s going to continue reaching across the aisle because its going to take a long-term investment to change the culture of washington.  That demonstrates humility and maturity that we have long expected of our neighbors and friends but which we, for some reason, have not expected of our politicians for a long time.  

He could easily use recent events to score political points against republicans, blaming the lack of bipartisanship on them, especially in light of all the political points they’ve been scoring on him lately.  But I like to think that he has more confidence in the American people.  He knows we can look at an issue rationally and won’t be deceived by strategist commentaries and media blowhards.  He trusts that we can judge a situation based on facts and long-term results and not on quotes and smears.  In short, he’s taking the high road, the same high road he stuck to during his campaign and that goes a long way in my book.

The second issue he talks about is pork.  I think its hilarious how conservative pundits have been able to redefine the word pork so that they can label this stimulus bill as such.  Or it would be hilarious if… Continue reading