patrick.net

msilenus says

Obama won't back SOPA.

The qualifier in the first paragraph is important: "if it encourages censorship, undermines cybersecurity or disrupts the structure of the Internet..."

Censorship, means the act of an official(s) deciding what speech is permissible.

That's not the issue with SOPA. It creates no government censors whose job it is to discover, investigate, and remove websites that violate some kind of official guidelines on speech.

There was a great cartoon on the front page that showed the connection between Censorship and overzealous enforcement of IP rights, a few days ago.

What SOPA does entail is establishing a system that is so biased towards IP "rights" owners, that it is almost as bad - maybe worse - for free speech than "real" Censorship.

An IP Rights Holder files a complaint, and a US based website is nixed from the internet without a hearing, or even a warning. The entire Onus in the process is on the website owner, who has to fight to get his site back up, the same way the Drug War forfeiture laws work.

I don't think I go out on a limb when I say that Disney probably has a lot more money than Patrick.

*DING*, on the "Censorship" issue, Obama will sign, as it is about IP enforcement, not "real" censorship.

A great friend of SOPA, Lamar Smith, was also quoted in the same article. He seems confident that it will be signed into law:

U.S. Representative Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said his Stop Online Piracy Act meets the administration’s tests. Smith announced on Jan. 13 that he would remove a provision that would require Internet service providers, when ordered by a court, to block access to non-U.S. websites offering pirated content or counterfeit goods. The bill’s opponents say this could hurt the domain-name system.

In a statement yesterday, Smith said that censorship doesn’t include enforcing laws against “foreign thieves” who steal content.

The domain name issue was a problem (and also, it opens a can of worms about which nation - or nations - can exercise "control" of the internet "backbone", a fight I suppose the US does not want to start right now) Now it's not.

It also means that the biggest offenders, the sites that *DO* abuse US copyrights, mostly located in China, Russia, etc. are immune.

*DING* Structure issue solved, Obama will sign.

I leave the cybersecurity issues for somebody more technologically astute than I to explain. I don't know much about that aspect of the bill, though I dimly remember reading something about how implementation of SOPA may create security issues.

After writing the above, I went and read the WH Blog:

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small.

The qualifies are different here than the apparent paraphrase in the BW article:

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

Freedom of Expression in the United States is not unlimited, of course. Is the government giving more tools to assist IP holders in going after "IP rights violators" a reduction of freedom of expression?

My earlier assertion that aggressive IP Enforcement processes are not being considered a form of Censorship is still reasonable, I think. The freedom of expression generally doesn't exclude the idea that you are "violating IP rights", which is not a "Lawful Activity".

This statement I think encapsulates the WH's position:

That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response. We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of legitimate American values.

Here's what's going to happen. Obama needs to please two industries that are at loggerheads over SOPA: Internet Companies like Google and Facebook on one hand, and the Entertainment Industry on the other. Both big sources of money for his 2012 Campaign as well as the Democratic Party.

The best case scenario for him is that the bill is pushed back past the Elections, and he will use all his charm to convince the voters, the Internet Companies, and the Entertainment Industry he's going to only sign a bill that has the best of what they all respectively (don't) want if he is relected.

It's also the worst case scenario for the public, since a second term Obama won't have to pander to the Techie Voters and Liberal Base and can sign an Entertainment Industry friendly bill without any consequences for himself.

Failing that, he's going to push to water down the provisions that penalize or require onerous compliance for Online Advertisers, Search Engines, etc. At the same time, he's going to let the current SOPA process more or less continue as it is when it comes to websites, to satisfy the members of the MPAA and RIAA --- and DLC Piper.

Oh please. You have to see that someone else could just as easily invert your formatting to get:

That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response. We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of legitimate American values.

Yours is, of course, the typical liberal reaction to victory: scrambling desperately to find defeat in it. From my second link:

Clinton did enjoy one major triumph in his first year, when he passed a budget bill that raised the top tax rate, expanded the earned-income tax credit, created a new national-service program for graduates, and reformed other parts of the budget. This was the progressive apogee of the Clinton administration. Liberals at the time viewed it as a sad half-measure. The focus was on deficit reduction, not public investment, and each iteration of the legislation that worked its way through the congressional machinery emerged less inspiring than the last. “The Senate’s machinations on President Clinton’s budget plan have left many Democratic House members feeling angry and betrayed,” noted a New York Times editorial.

...

Harry Truman has become the patron saint of dispirited Democrats, the fighting populist whose example is invariably cited in glum contrast to whatever bumbling congenital compromiser happens to hold office at any given time. In fact, liberals spent the entire Truman presidency in a state of near-constant despair. ... Liberal columnist Max Lerner decried Truman’s mania for “cooperation” and his eagerness “to blink [past] the real social cleavage and struggles,” attributing this pathological eagerness to avoid conflict to his “middle-class mentality.” (Some contemporary critics have reached the same psychoanalysis of Obama, substituting his bi-racial background as the cause.) The New Republic’s Richard Strout lamented how “little evidence he has shown of being able to lift up and inspire the masses.” The historian Richard Pells has written that in the eyes of liberals at the time, “the president remained an incorrigible mediocrity.”

...

For almost all of the past 60 years, liberals have been in a near-constant emotional state of despair, punctuated only by brief moments of euphoria and occasional rage. When they’re not in charge, things are so bleak they threaten to move to Canada; it’s almost more excruciating when they do win elections, and their presidents fail in essentially the same ways: He is too accommodating, too timid, too unwilling or unable to inspire the populace. (Except for Johnson, who was a bloodthirsty warmonger.)

Rupert Murdoch, on this issue, has his head on straight. He understands that he lost, and has the good sense to be livid about it:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/15/murdoch_twitter_rant_sopa/

msilenus says

The focus was on deficit reduction, not public investment, and each iteration of the legislation that worked its way through the congressional machinery emerged less inspiring than the last.

Interesting times we live in, when tax increases for the purpose of debt reduction is seen by some as a MAJOR liberal/progressive victory. From my view it was a victory in the sense that a President was permitted to do good, but I don't know about "progressive apogee."

I guess when a democratic President is allowed to be successful, which risks the possibility of his one day pursuing progressive policies, or even worse, being reelected, it is a progressive victory of sorts.

In the context of today's Congress, it looks like a coup. To the GOP of 2012, admitting that raising taxes can shrink the deficit is grounds for being drummed out of the party, and any proposal that raises taxes by even one penny is worth filibustering forever. They're men of their word, and they signed their oaths.

I read that passage and was overcome by nostalgia for a saner day.

If you want to understand why attacking the deficit with tax increases is a liberal victory, I recommend reading this piece on tax cuts:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-we-miss-when-we-talk-about-tax-cuts/2011/08/25/gIQAwAiftP_blog.html#pagebreak

An obvious corrolary is that closing a deficit with tax increases protects progressive programs.

See also some of these graphs:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/we-read-so-you-dont-have-to-cea-chair-alan-kruegers-inequality-speech/2011/08/25/gIQAlma9tP_blog.html

Government is inherently redistributive when it's funded progressively. Clinton achieved that with his budget.

msilenus says

An obvious corrolary is that closing a deficit with tax increases protects progressive programs.

True. IT's stunning how far to the right we are now. Basically on a trajectory for either outright fascist dictatorship, or a major political backlash swing in the other direction, after they start denying basic government services to the masses.

But then the PTB would do anything to prevent that.

marcus says

Basically on a trajectory for either outright fascist dictatorship, or a major political backlash swing in the other direction...

Marcus, you seem like a generally level-headed fellow. I honestly don't understand how you fall prey to hyperbole of this sort.

The U.S. is allergic to authoritarianism. It's deeply ingrained in the culture. America simply doesn't produce many men like Hitler, Stalin, Mossolini, and we're too suspicious to elect them when we do. The worst we've done in recent memory was Bush. Say what you will about him, he wasn't interested in internal suppression. He wasn't interested in subverting Democracy. He expanded executive power to be sure, but he worked within the system to do it. When courts ruled against him, he abided.

Buck up, chap. We're doing alright.

Nomograph says

Go spend years of your life and millions of dollars creating something of value, give it away for free, and then come talk to me.

Was it invented from scratch, or did one stand on the shoulders of giants?

If somebody invents a chip, did they share theur royalties with all the physicists, chemists, and metallurgists who came before them and made their invention possible with their discoveries - much of which was thanks to public research funding and/or was never copyrighted or patented to begin with?

How about their high school science teachers, Comp Sci 101 professor? Do they get a share of the royalties? How about the office gal who made sure their paychecks arrived each month? Or their mommas who fed them and sent them to college so they could learn to teach them? They couldn't have done what they did without 'em.

There is no such thing as intellectual property. Let me know what the metes and bounds are of the intellectual property, or how much it weighs and how wide it is. Restricting information retards progress.

That god modern IP rights didn't exist in the 19th Century, or we'd still be working on the combustion engine.

Even so, I'm not opposed to moderate, 7-14 years of exclusive rights as a reward. But not eternal privileges to immortal fictional persons.

Democratic Moderates don't want to win. That's why they keep pissing on their liberal base.

You know, the people who pound the pavement, man the phones, register voters, bus in the poor and homeless voters to the polls. Screw them! We need to triangulate. Funny that the Republicans do the exact opposite, and make their own (insane) case without apologies, yet attract enough independents to win much of the time.

It's amazing to me that we live in times where:

1. The previous democratic president and his third way pals supported a massive push for deregulation, from the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to the Commodity Futures "Modernization" Act.
2. Liberals from deep blue sections of the country who warned against deregulation in the mid to late 90s had their concerns dismissed by their own party leadership.
3. Congress passes bills to eliminate 4th Amendment Protections and empowers the President to determine who gets them and who doesn't
4. Torture was widespread and systemic (not a few rotten apples)
5. America is actively bombing four countries over a one year period (Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and Libya). And that's just what we know about.
6. Despite a Financial Industry failure exponentially worse than the S&L Crisis of the 80s, not a single major executive has seen the inside of a prison. Reversion to the prior regulatory regime that had a fantastic track record, has not occurred.
7. Gitmo, America's biggest black hole of prestige since My Lai, remains open.
8. America reserves to itself the right to capture or assassinate civilians outside of the United States at the whim of the President without any judicial review or oversight.

... But we live in the most progressive times ever.

msilenus says

Rupert Murdoch, on this issue, has his head on straight. He understands that he lost, and has the good sense to be livid about it:

Didn't his organizations hack into people's phones? Yeah, that's the guy to talk about "stealing" information with.

marcus says

Basically on a trajectory for either outright fascist dictatorship, or a major political backlash swing in the other direction, after they start denying basic government services to the masses.

I think the latter is in the cards, but it may not even take further attempts to steal our pre-paid benefits ("Entitlements") to keep the status quo functional, Pax Americana in particular. The Demographics and the timing of cyclical attitude changes are with us, and underemployed, overeducated adults can be quite ornery. Negative trends are not reversed by doing the same things more slowly.

I'd like to think we're at the tail end of about 40 years of a conservative cycle. 1930-1970 saw a liberal period, with victory over fascism, widespread agreement on developmental and Keynesian economics, and expanding social justice in civil rights and union membership.

1970-2010 has been the Counter-Reaction; an emphasis on rugged individualism and freedom, expressed in neoliberal economic policies, while various attempts were made to impose harsh punishments of personal behavior. Even in religion, we saw the decline of traditionally communitarian mainline Christianity and the increase in membership of individualistic (even Greedy: "Jesus wants you to be Rich!" "Name it and Claim it!) and fundamentalist Evangelical and Pentecostal churches: obscurantism. Self-help and self-empowerment was the name of the game.

Like in the stock market, political fortunes seem the most hopeless the moment they about to improve drastically.

At least, this is how I feel in my more optimistic moments. We could also get the reverse, a double-down on stupidity. However, I don't think Weimar is a good fit for the US: Germany had less experience not only as a democracy (1918), but also as a unified Country (1871).

thunderlips11 says

Democratic Moderates don't want to win. That's why they keep pissing on their liberal base.

http://nymag.com/news/politics/liberals-jonathan-chait-2011-11/index4.html

Activists measure progress against the standard of perfection, or at least the most perfect possible choice. Historians gauge progress against what came before it.

By that standard, Obama’s first term would indeed seem to qualify as gangsta shit. His single largest policy accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, combines two sweeping goals—providing coverage to the uninsured and taming runaway medical-cost inflation—that Democrats have tried and failed to achieve for decades. Likewise, the Recovery Act contained both short-term stimulative measures and increased public investment in infrastructure, green energy, and the like. The Dodd-Frank financial reform, while failing to end the financial industry as we know it, is certainly far from toothless, as measured by the almost fanatical determination of Wall Street and Republicans in Congress to roll it back.

Beneath these headline measures is a second tier of accomplishments carrying considerable historic weight. A bailout and deep restructuring of the auto industry that is rapidly being repaid, leaving behind a reinvigorated sector in the place of a devastated Midwest. Race to the Top, which leveraged a small amount of federal seed money into a sweeping national wave of education experiments, arguably the most significant reform of public schooling in the history of the United States. A reform of college loans, saving hundreds of billions of dollars by cutting out private middlemen and redirecting some of the savings toward expanded Pell Grants. Historically large new investments in green energy and the beginning of regulation of greenhouse gases. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act for women. Elimination of several wasteful defense programs, equality for gays in the military, and consumer-friendly regulation of food safety, tobacco, and credit cards.

Of the postwar presidents, only Johnson exceeds Obama’s domestic record, and Johnson’s successes must be measured against a crushing defeat in Vietnam. Obama, by contrast, has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes—expanding targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime. So, if Obama is the most successful liberal president since Roosevelt, that would make him a pretty great president, right?

If this is what getting pissed on feels like, then it would behoove the base to learn to enjoy a good golden shower. They don't come along very often.

msilenus says

http://nymag.com/news/politics/liberals-jonathan-chait-2011-11/index4.html

Excellent article msilenus. Patrick, you should post it.

Chait is doing what Limbaugh did when the Republicans passed Medicare Part D without providing a lick of additional revenue to support it.

Limbaugh was fielding calls left and right from outraged Conservative Base members and explaining to them that passing it would enable the Republicans to collect the Senior Votes.

Republicans passed Medicare Part D as a handout to the RX industry in hopes of getting campaign contributions for 2004. Moderate democrats want to pass SOPA as a handout for their Entertainment donors. U
msilenus says

His single largest policy accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, combines two sweeping goals—providing coverage to the uninsured and taming runaway medical-cost inflation—that Democrats have tried and failed to achieve for decades.

The most important provisions have yet to become active. The pre-existing conditions stuff doesn't come into effect until 2014.

Other parts of the bill have already been repealed before they even went into effect.

It also has nothing to do with single payer. It is merely an attempt to salvage a rotting plant by trimming back some branches. It's a modified version of the Romney inspired Massachusetts laws.
msilenus says

Likewise, the Recovery Act contained both short-term stimulative measures and increased public investment in infrastructure, green energy, and the like.

Handouts for Democratic Party contributors.

msilenus says

The Dodd-Frank financial reform, while failing to end the financial industry as we know it, is certainly far from toothless, as measured by the almost fanatical determination of Wall Street and Republicans in Congress to roll it back.

It creates a bunch of toothless agencies and adds reporting requirements. Big Deal.

Brooksley Born was supposed to have had the power to regulate derivatives trading, but Greenspan and Rubin got Clinton to nix that in the bud. Just like Geithner, Summers, et al. will get Obama to nix any new alphabet soup agency's recommendations. The same will happen to any these new agencies that tries to regulate.

I remember when I saw Obama's advisers on the campaign and said "This looks good". Then we he got elected, they were all shunted to powerless panels while Wall Street veterans got the positions of power in the administration.

It'll be just as effective as Sarbanes-Oxley, which did nothing to prevent the Financial Crisis.

Why not re-enact Glass-Steagal instead? Because Wall Street gave 3x the money to Obama they gave to McCain.

Creating more alphabet soup agencies is less important than bringing back a set of regulations we know from experience worked to prevent the kinds of outrageous stuff we see today, and did so for almost 60 years.

msilenus says

Of the postwar presidents, only Johnson exceeds Obama’s domestic record, and Johnson’s successes must be measured against a crushing defeat in Vietnam. Obama, by contrast, has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes—expanding targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime. So, if Obama is the most successful liberal president since Roosevelt, that would make him a pretty great president, right?

How about Nixon? Expanded Food Stamps, EPA, Clean Air Act, OSHA, etc.

All of which have far more oomph than the token reforms of our utterly broken and unreformable health insurance system or financial regulatory system. Our last liberal President was a Republican.

You just dismissed more than two hundred billion dollars in direct spending with the statement "Handouts for Democratic Party contributors."

Don't feel the need to substantiate that claim. It's only two hundred billion dollars. Surely you've read a few reports of corruption in distributing the money, and that's representative of the whole picture. The direct spending we're talking about is only about a quarter of the budget for the whole Iraq war, or about four Gulf Wars.

Your cynicism is breathtaking.

Did liberals really expect more? I didn’t. But when you dig deeper, liberal melancholy hangs not so much on substantive objections but on something more inchoate and emotional: a general feeling that Obama is not Ronald Reagan. Obama invited the contrast with Reagan himself when he noted during the campaign, “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.” And yet so far at least, this country does not feel fundamentally, systemically changed by Obama in the way that it is remembered to have been by Reagan.

But here again, memory is problematic. Reagan, you’ll recall, spent most of his administration raising taxes, signing arms-control treaties, and otherwise betraying right-wing dogma. Yes, his accomplishments were more substantive than Nixon’s or Clinton’s, but they were not quite the sweeping, nation-transforming stuff liberals enjoy recalling in horror. In terms of lasting change, Obama probably has matched Reagan—or, at least, he will if he can win reelection and consolidate health-care reform and financial regulation and tilt the Supreme Court further left than he already has.

And yet Obama will never match among Democrats Reagan’s place in the psyche of his own party, as reflected in the endless propaganda campaign to give him full credit for the end of stagflation and communism, the dogmatic insistence that everything the great hero said offers the One True Path for all time, and the project to name every possible piece of American property after him. Republican Reagan-worship is a product of a pro-authority mind-set that liberals, who inflate past heroes only to criticize their contemporaries, cannot match. If recent history is any guide, they are simply not capable of having that kind of relationship with a president. They are going to question their leader, not deify him, and search for signs of betrayal in any act of compromise he or she may commit. This exhausting psychological torment is no way to live. Then again, the current state of the Republican Party suggests it may be healthier than the alternative.

msilenus says

You just dismissed more than two hundred billion dollars in direct spending with the statement "Handouts for Democratic Party contributors."

The job creation from the stimulus was greatly overstated. Another "Green Business" and stimulus recipient just laid off 40 people:

http://www.toledoblade.com/Energy/2012/01/17/Solar-panel-company-lays-off-40-employees.html

Unemployment is not so much declining from job creation so much as large numbers of people are dropping out of the work force entirely.

I'm not a liberal, I'm a broad left-wing libertarian. But I've noticed the democratic party has not attempted to expand the welfare state in decades. In fact, they've been complicit in letting it atrophy.

In 1986, the poverty line was $11,000 for a family of four. Today, it's barely over $22k. The Democratic Party allowed this to happen. There's absolutely no way in hell the cost of living merely doubled in the past 25 years.

Chait is blaming a segment of the Democratic Party that has had little power within the party, or in the American consciousness, since the 80s.

Chait isn't blaming anyone for any problem. He's pointing out that liberals might not be capable of being satisfied with a Presidential record in the real world. The last time that actually happened was during the depression, when the populace was capable of expanding the Democrats' congressional support throughout a liberal presidency. Eventually FDR had enough power to rehape the judiciary's understanding of the constitution.

That's the kind of power it takes to satisfy the base. It doesn't actually happen in this day of filibusters and knee-jerk tea-party reactionism. When the electorate is capable of keeping an eye on a ball long enough for the President to have a super-majority for a whole year or more, we'll see what we can get. In the meanwhile, compromise is the name of the game, and expectations need to be realistic.

- -

We've been talking past each other in this debate. You've been trying to show that Obama (and now the Democratic party) is a failure. I've been describing how your bias in perceiving the world is a perfect example of what Chait is talking about. You focus relentlessly on everything you dislike, and drum up charges that you don't bother to adequately support to discredit successes. You seem to have these vague impressions of big issues, like the 200 billion dollar dollar stimulus bill, that can be reduced down to a 40-job layoff.

One simply cannot get an accurate view of the world using the analytical tools you're employing. All you can do is color in the framework created by your bias. Your bias is exactly as Chait describes: to climb up on a cross and bemoan how persecuted you are. (Or to interpose oneself between a man and his urinal, if you prefer that metaphor.)

Andrew Sullivan has a good piece up right now on Obama. He's defending him from the right, which you'll hate; but it fits, since you're attacking him from the right on the stimulus.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/15/andrew-sullivan-how-obama-s-long-game-will-outsmart-his-critics.html

The right claims the stimulus failed because it didn’t bring unemployment down to 8 percent in its first year, as predicted by Obama’s transition economic team. Instead, it peaked at 10.2 percent. But the 8 percent prediction was made before Obama took office and was wrong solely because it relied on statistics that guessed the economy was only shrinking by around 4 percent, not 9. Remove that statistical miscalculation (made by government and private-sector economists alike) and the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do. It put a bottom under the free fall. It is not an exaggeration to say it prevented a spiral downward that could have led to the Second Great Depression.

What a shitty President.

msilenus says

You seem to have these vague impressions of big issues, like the 200 billion dollar dollar stimulus bill, that can be reduced down to a 40-job layoff.

Actually, there are 11 more failures now, according to CBS; five have already filed for bankruptcy.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/01/13/cbs_news_11_more_solyndras_in_obama_energy_program.html

Contrast that with the 2005 Highway Spending bill a republican Congress and Administration got into law, that spent $244B. Remember the Bridge to Nowhere?

How much do you think the 2005 Highway Spending bill lowered the unemployment rate by?

If memory serves the Recovery Act was about $800B, but more than half of it was tax cuts. Of the remaining half, only a portion was new spending that wasn't aid to states and localities to keep jobs. That makes the stimulus around $200B.

msilenus says

One simply cannot get an accurate view of the world using the analytical tools you're employing. All you can do is color in the framework created by your bias. Your bias is exactly as Chait describes: to climb up on a cross and bemoan how persecuted you are. (Or to interpose oneself between a man and his urinal, if you prefer that metaphor.)

Well, we have to agree to disagree. To me, Chait's job is to make excuses for the Democratic Party, he is a professional apologist. He's been hammering out article after article talking since last summer bemoaning liberal criticism.

Pointing out that the Great Deregulation which led to the Great Recession was enabled by moderate democrats is a truth some would rather us forget. Knowing that, being suspicious of the lack of re-regulation is reasonable behavior.

I had a feeling Obama was going to be a disappointment the moment I found out who his key economic cabinet posts were going to.

I'm not getting distracted by the Lilly Ledbetter act, which basically amounts to extending the period for filing a discrimination lawsuit. Nice, but it's in a far different category than getting a democratic majority congress to re-enact Glass-Steagal or veto the NDAA.

Basically, Chait's encouraging liberals to gather around the leader, while complaining that they shouldn't see Obama as the Left-wing Ronald Reagan. Why gather around a let-down of a leader with nothing but a token achievements on a few non-pressing issues?

thunderlips11 called the $220 billion of direct spending in the stimulus act

Handouts for Democratic Party contributors.

thunderclips11 supports the characterization with this much evidence:

CBS News counted 12 clean energy companies that are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES' subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra.

You've alleged widespread corruption, but you've come nowhere near showing that there was any corruption at all. Instead, you've backpeddled to pointing at some undetermined fraction of 3% of the stimulus funding that you think was merely waste.

When we get down to numbers, the support for your blanket dismissal of the stimulus act as raw corruption is at least 97% ignorant assumption of bad faith, and at most 3% mischaracterization of alleged waste.

And you seem satisfied with how you go about assessing reality.

If you want to understand the impact of the stimulus act, don't extrapolate from the worst anecdotes about a tiny sliver of its activity. That's foolish. Ask a goddamned macroeconomist or three if you want to understand the impact:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html

msilenus says

You've alleged widespread corruption, but you've come nowhere near showing that there was any corruption at all. Instead, you've backpeddled to pointing at some undetermined fraction of 3% of the stimulus funding that you think was simply waste.

Which stimulus? Are we discussing the Recovery Act of 2009 or some other bill? Only a couple of hundred bucks of the Recovery Act was real new spending. The rest mostly went to Tax Cuts and some aid to states to keep people employed. Very little was "New Spending".
msilenus says

Ask a goddamned macroeconomist if you want to understand what went on:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/economy/17leonhardt.html

Ask Goddamned Paul Krugman if you want to know why the Stimulus failed:

Those of us who say that the stimulus was too small are often accused of after-the-fact rationalization: you said this would work, but now that it hasn’t, you’re just saying it wasn’t big enough. The quick answer to that accusation is that people like me said that the stimulus was too small in advance. But the longer answer is that it’s all in the math: Keynesian analysis provides numbers as well as qualitative predictions, and given reasonable projections of the economy’s path in January 2009, the proposed stimulus just wasn’t big enough. Let’s go back to the tape, January 9, 2009:

Even the C.B.O. says, however, that “economic output over the next two years will average 6.8 percent below its potential.” This translates into $2.1 trillion of lost production. “Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity,” declared Mr. Obama on Thursday. Well, he was actually understating things.

To close a gap of more than $2 trillion — possibly a lot more, if the budget office projections turn out to be too optimistic — Mr. Obama offers a $775 billion plan. And that’s not enough.

Now, fiscal stimulus can sometimes have a “multiplier” effect: In addition to the direct effects of, say, investment in infrastructure on demand, there can be a further indirect effect as higher incomes lead to higher consumer spending. Standard estimates suggest that a dollar of public spending raises G.D.P. by around $1.50.

But only about 60 percent of the Obama plan consists of public spending. The rest consists of tax cuts — and many economists are skeptical about how much these tax cuts, especially the tax breaks for business, will actually do to boost spending. (A number of Senate Democrats apparently share these doubts.) Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center summed it up in the title of a recent blog posting: “lots of buck, not much bang.”

The bottom line is that the Obama plan is unlikely to close more than half of the looming output gap, and could easily end up doing less than a third of the job.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/how-did-we-know-the-stimulus-was-too-small/

msilenus says

You've alleged widespread corruption, but you've come nowhere near showing that there was any corruption at all.

http://influenceexplorer.com/industry/securities-investment/0af3f418f426497e8bbf916bfc074ebc?cycle=2008

Powerful people who work in certain industries don't contribute money to political campaigns in return for nothing.

One in five dollars Obama raised in his 2008 campaign came from Wall Street:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/22/usa-campaign-obama-idUSN1E76L0PJ20110722

That's why there's been no re-regulation.

thunderlips11 says

One in five dollars Obama raised in his 2008 campaign came from Wall Street:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/22/usa-campaign-obama-idUSN1E76L0PJ20110722
That's why there's been no re-regulation.

Now you're looking at 2008 donations to infer that Obama's been in their pocket over the last four years. Fallacy left as an exercise for the reader, but here's a hint:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/us/romney-perry-and-cain-open-wide-financial-lead-over-field.html?pagewanted=all

Employees of Goldman Sachs, who in the 2008 campaign gave Mr. Obama over $1 million — more than donors from any other private employer in the country — have given him about $45,000 this year. Mr. Romney has raised about $350,000 from the firm’s employees.

Since you've chosen to use Wall Street's donation behavior as a key heuristic for assessing the President (I wouldn't, but to each his own...) I'm sure you'll come around on this one.

Their response is rational, and a testament to the toothlessness of Dodd-Frank. ("no re-regulation"?)

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There's no contradiction between what Krugman is saying and what other economists are saying. Krugman's thesis is that the stimulus was insufficient to spur a vigorous recovery. Granted, and obviously the case. Others say that it was sufficient to blunt the worst impact of the recession. Also true. You (and he) are again exhibiting Chaitian liberal defeatism. Nothing short of perfect will ever be better than failure to you people. ("and their presidents fail in essentially the same ways: He is too accommodating, too timid, too unwilling or unable to inspire the populace")

The stimulus is what it is, and the quantitative estimates are reasonably consistent. We'd be much worse off without it. It is what it is. It ain't "Handouts for Democratic Party contributors."

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That's probably about all I have to say about this. I'm sure you have more Chaitian liberal doom-cant for me, and I've enjoyed wading through it to this point (thank you.) This is about all I have the energy for.

msilenus says

Nothing short of perfect will ever be better than failure to you people.

As I said earlier, all I care about is the earnest attempts to do this, even if it fails. I can get behind a try. I'll take a Truman, I don't need an FDR. But not a Clinton.

msilenus says

This is about all I have the energy for.

I agree, this argument is getting grindy.