Goldy

When the House rejected the first Wall Street bailout bill on Monday, the markets responded by shaving 777 points off the Dow, and posting even larger percentage gains off the broader indices, prompting more than few congressmen (and from what I hear, a lot of scared constituents) to reconsider their vote out of fear of a crash of 1929 proportions.

When the wise men and women in the Senate acted on this renewed sense of urgency, passing a goody-crammed bill by a commanding 74-24 margin, the Dow responded by shedding another 350 points.  And today, after dozens of representatives flipped their vote to assure passage in the House, the Dow immediately dropped another 300 points, eventually ending the day down 157 points at 10,325.

That’s some thank you.

Despite a mid-week recovery, the Dow closed down 818 points for the week, a 7.3% decline that leaves total returns during the Bush era in negative territory, the worst market performance during any administration since that of Herbert Hoover.  What should be obvious by now is that a mere $700 billion of taxpayer money can do little to assuage the hunger of a market that can (and has) shed twice that from its total value in less than a day of trading.

The bailout package may indeed prevent some large financial institutions from failing, or at the very least, from failing fast and hard, and in so doing no doubt might stabilize the financial markets a bit.  But the problem is that the Dow and the other indices we tend to obsess on are perhaps less connected to our real economy than at any time in their history.  These are feel good numbers—or feel bad numbers, depending on the day—that have little direct impact on the majority of Americans, most of whom live paycheck to paycheck.  So the implied promise that somehow this bailout would pump up the markets was not just illusory, it was mostly meaningless to the majority of taxpayers who are being asked to foot the bill.

The truth is, our economy sucks, and there are no quick fixes.  This bailout may save the jobs of executives at a handful of financial giants, but it will not prevent the recession in which most economists believe we are already mired, nor end it more quickly; and by emptying our coffers of yet another $700 billion we don’t have, the bailout has left the next adminstration with fewer tools with which to address our ever worsening economic crisis.  We now have $700 billion less to spend on fiscal stimulus, or to serve the ever growing social needs of our nation’s unemployed, or to address the multi-trillion dollar infrastructure deficit (roads, bridges, water, sewers, schools etc.) that threatens to undermine our future health, welfare and prosperity.

Monday’s 777 point drop in the Dow made for great headlines, and in that vice I was as guilty as anybody else, but this bailout was never about the Dow, or rather, it was always about the Dow, but never should have been.  Sure, this bailout was good for Wall Street, or at least, some people on Wall Street… but if you were expecting the markets to rebound and the economy to recover with a simple wave of President Bush’s pen, well, I think you just got played.

You read it here first, the story HA broke about the Washington State Republican Party’s illegal spending on behalf of Dino Rossi, and while the allegations were pooh-poohed at the time by the usual Rossi apologists, WA State Attorney General was left with no choice but to bring suit against his own party and former top aide, WSRP chair Luke Esser.

The Republicans spent “exempt” funds, for which there are no campaign contribution limits, on “non-exempt” activities, for which there are strict contribution limits, essentially laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal contributions on behalf of Rossi and his wealthy patrons like Rufus Lumry and Skip Rowley.  And as I wrote at the time, the charges were “pretty cut and dry“:

This isn’t rocket science.  It’s Campaign Finance 101.  All the political candidates, consultants, committees and parties know damn well what is or is not allowed.  And yet the WSRP chose to blatantly violate campaign expenditure laws that have been in place for the past 16 years.

The question now is not whether the WSRP will be penalized, but rather, will they be penalized enough to discourage future such violations, and whether the court will be willing to issue an injunction barring similar activities between now and the election.  It appears that Rossi, the WSRP and the BIAW are willing to do whatever it takes to win this election, and have made the crass calculation that a Rossi victory is well worth any potential penalty, as long as it is incurred after the fact.

And as long as our media continues to withhold moral judgment of an obviously unethical and illegal strategy until the final court decision is issued months hence, then Rossi and his surrogates will have calculated correctly that crime does indeed pay.

I’ll be on KUOW’s The Conversation for 5 to 10 minutes today, sometime during the 1PM hour, talking about last night’s Veep debate.  I’ll let you know when I know a more specific time frame.

UPDATE:
I’m told I’ll be on around 1:40PM.

Well, all I can say is we better damn well hope this bailout package does what we’ve been promised to do… that it preempts a financial market collapse, prevents our economy from sliding into a prolonged recession, and essentially pays off a dividend as the junk debt we acquire eventually matures at face value.

Otherwise, Republicans will use this vote to beat the Dems into a bloody pulp in 2010, take back control of Congress and impeach Obama for, well, whatever in 2011.  Or at least, I’m betting, that’s their cynical plan.

The revised Wall Street bailout bill passed by a wide margin this morning, 263 to 171.   That’s a pretty big flip, considering a stripped down version of the bill failed last week, 205 to 228.  Who knew the pirate vote was that big?

As for the partisan divide, Democrats voted for the bill 172 to 63, while Republicans slightly opposed it, 91 to 108… you know, the bill that both President Bush and John McCain begged them to pass.

No word yet on how the WA delegation voted, and whether any of our reps flipped.

UPDATE:
Inslee flips, joins rest of the Democratic delegation in voting yes. Our Republicans, Reichert and McMorris-Rodgers voted no.  (Oh yeah, and Hastings.  I always seem to forget Hastings for some reason.)

UPDATE, UPDATE:
I was looking at the wrong roll call vote (the motion to reconsider), and the House Clerk’s office website was slowwww to respond.  Inslee did vote no.  In fact, it was McDermott who flipped, from yes to no.  I’m waiting for a statement.

Gosh, Republicans set an awfully low bar for their candidates…

Shanna Sheridan, 25, a producer for local conservative talk-radio station, KXLY-AM (920), said in the end Palin was good enough.

“All she had to do is get up there and not sound completely stupid,” Sheridan said. “She did that.”

Yeah, well, I guess, after eight years of George W. Bush, not sounding completely stupid would be a step up.

Rep. Dave Reichert was coy the morning of last week’s House bailout vote, apparently indicating that he was waiting to see whether it would win or lose before casting his vote.  The bill failed, and Reichert voted no.

Well, now that it looks like the revised bailout is going to pass the House, will Reichert join a number of his colleagues, and flip to the yes side?  That would of course be classic Reichert, voting both no and yes on the same bill, so that he could take either side of the issue depending on the audience he’s speaking to.  (Or both sides of the issue if he’s talking to the Seattle Times editorial board, who apparently view such flip-floppery as a sign of moderation.)

We’ll soon know.

Looking back on my year and a half radio career, and comparing myself to a successful host like Bill O’Reilly, I guess my greatest mistake was that I was not a big enough asshole.  If only I had invited guests on my show only to shout them down, I might still have a job.

I’m just sayin’….

My daughter had soccer practice from 6:15 to 7:15, so I couldn’t watch most of tonight’s Veep debate, but I did manage to listen to most of it on the radio.  I’m not sure how much the lack of visuals influenced my impressions, but I thought I’d offer a brief analysis nonetheless.

I’ll start with obvious: Sarah Palin didn’t fall flat on her face.  She stayed composed, she sounded confident (even when her clear lack of knowledge on an issue suggested she shouldn’t be), and she kept her energy up throughout the evening.

That said, she wasn’t very good.  If the kind of performance she gave at the convention was the kind of performance she gave tonight, McCain would have enjoyed zero bounce in the days that followed.  Her answers were erratic, wandering, mostly content free, and often had nothing to do with the questions asked… and to my ear, her performance grew steadily weaker over time.  (I don’t know if that’s because she actually got worse, or because she just plain wore on me.)  I’m sure a lot of folks on my side are probably disappointed that Palin wasn’t as embarrassing as she was in the Katie Couric interviews, but towards the end of the debate, I’m not so sure she wasn’t.  That sort of monumental ineptitude is hard to sustain over a full 90 minutes, but I bet you could find a handful of 30-second clips, particularly near the end, that could stand alone as the Palin we’ve all come to know and mock over the past couple weeks.

We all knew from her convention speech that Palin could act, but the big question tonight was whether she could do improv?  Um… not really.

Biden on the other hand did just fine, and actually grew stronger as the evening wore on.  I wish he hadn’t laughed out loud at her insults—that came off as a little creepy—but I noticed no major gaffes, and he certainly appeared in command of the issues.  He also seemed to focus mostly on McCain, not Palin, which in the end is a winning strategy.

So who won?  On points, clearly Biden, a take that appears to be supported by the instant polls.  But in the end, I don’t think it matters anymore.  The Palin surge has long since faded, and I’m not sure there was anything Palin could have done tonight to put the bloom back on the rose.  McCain appears to be losing the battle for the swing voters, and while Palin may not have done him much harm tonight, I don’t think she did him much good either.

One final comment.  There was much debate both within and without the netroots over the proper response to Palin’s nomination, and there were many who strongly warned against attacking her personally, for fear of creating a backlash.  But for those of us who persisted in relentlessly savaging both her qualifications and her character, well, I think tonight we enjoyed the fruits of our labor.  For Palin, tonight’s debate was all about personal redemption, an effort to reclaim some of those post-convention highs, and reassure voters that she is prepared to stand a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the Oval Office.  She did okay in that regard, but I’m not sure she succeeded.

Meanwhile, while Palin was essentially defending herself, Biden was busy attacking McCain, which is, after all, the role of the Veep nominee in a presidential campaign.  Perhaps Palin helped herself a little tonight, but she failed to take even a sliver out of Barack Obama’s hide, and in that sense failed utterly in her primary role.

At least, that was my take from listening to the debate on the radio.  I suppose the tracking polls over the next few days will prove whether my impression was right or wrong.

I guess I should just let them break the news in their own words:

The Spokesman-Review will cut about one-fourth of its editorial staff this month, laying off as many as 27 employees in a move its publisher says is a reaction to economic conditions of the newspaper industry.

Steven A. Smith, who has been the newspaper’s editor for more than six years, is resigning as part of the reductions, which he called devastating to the news operation. The newsroom cuts will affect writers, editors, photographers and support staff.

Companywide, about 60 workers will be cut.

I’ve only been to Spokane a few times, but I have a special fondness for the Spokesman-Review.  It was with the S-R’s Olympia correspondent Rich Roesler with whom I had my first political interview, and… well… you always remember your first time.  It was Rich who first broke the story of my “Horse’s Ass” initiative, setting me on my accidental path toward political activism, and he’s always remained accessible ever since.

I was relieved to read on Rich’s blog that his name was not on that list of 27 newsroom staffers to get the axe, and that at least for now, his job appears safe.  You know, for a reporter.  I’d say he’s one of the best political reporters in the state, but given the circumstances I’m afraid that might come off as faint praise, considering he’s fast becoming one of the only political reporters in the state.

Meanwhile, I keep hearing rumors from Thurston County that the Olympian is considering some sort of merger with the Tacoma News Tribune, or perhaps ceasing operations entirely… though multiple contacts at the paper deny the rumor is anything more than that.  Still, with what we’ve been seeing elsewhere in the industry, anything is possible.

Huh.  Is this what the Republicans mean when they talk about strong leadership?

The Seattle Times has a front page article on Darcy Burner and her ties to “liberal bloggers” like me, and while I have no argument with the piece itself, I wish reporter Emily Heffter had managed to get a hold of me.  (We played telephone tag last week, but never connected.)

One of the main points I would have emphasized to Hefter is that this popular notion that the netroots represent some sort of radical-left fringe, is nothing more than a Republican meme that has been eagerly embraced by old media stalwarts who understandably fear the very real threat we bloggers pose to the media and political establishment.

Sure, there’s a fringe element to the netroots, but then everything (except perhaps, a black hole) includes a fringe, and as inclusive as we try to be there are often times when pragmatists like me roll our eyes or pull out our hair at the counterproductive and shortsighted antics of our own wacky left.  (And yes, personally, I am nothing if not a political pragmatist, a self-described “1970’s centrist” who, while occasionally radical in my methods and my writing style, is far from revolutionary when it comes to policy.)  Reichert would point toward Darcy’s mere attendance at Netroots Nation as evidence that she’ll do our “bidding” instead of that of 8th CD voters, but in embracing this classic Rovian divide and conquer strategy, who exactly is Reichert branding as “the other”?  As I reported from Austin back in July, we’re not exactly the “dirty fucking hippies” we’ve been made out to be:

I had planned to get to bed relatively early last night, but somehow found myself at 1:30 AM, sitting in an IHOP with Darcy Burner and a bunch of veterans. Vote Vets co-founder and chairman Jon Soltz sat across the table, passionately detailing the Veteran Administration’s many bureaucratic nightmares as he relentlessly made his way through an enormous, whipped cream topped stack of chocolate chip pancakes. On his own unexpected politicization Soltz described heading to Iraq a true believer, only to have reality—political, military and otherwise—rip the veil from his eyes. “It was like learning that your parents are not really your parents,” Soltz explained as he tried to relate the sense of betrayal that accompanied his own disillusionment.

Perhaps the biggest surprise for those who don’t know squat about the liberal blogosphere might be that while 20-year-old slackers in bathrobes are in short supply here at Netroots Nation, veterans and military personnel are out in full force. At last night’s keynote, Gen. Wes Clark called out various groups one by one to stand up and be acknowledged… teachers, medical professionals, candidates, first responders, social workers, etc…. but by far the largest group in attendance were the veterans, and it was for them that the crowd reserved its loudest and longest round of applause.

It is an inside netroots joke that we sometimes refer to ourselves as “dirty fucking hippies,” the inherent punchline being that this description couldn’t be further from the truth. If we are radicals, we are the radicalized middle, a segment of the population historically loathe to forsake economic security for the sake of a mere cause, yet somehow provoked into producing a populist uprising. That veterans like Soltz and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga provide two of our most outspoken voices should come as no surprise from a broad movement that draws support from nearly every corner of American life.

For those who hope or imagine that Darcy’s close connections with the netroots will ultimately prove to hurt her standing with her district’s suburban voters, well, you should have been at IHOP last night, where Darcy was literally embraced by veterans who trust that she will deliver the kind of leadership, respect and support that they deserve. Yet more evidence that we are in fact a netroots nation.

I’ve watched Darcy hugged by bleary-eyed veterans at 2AM, not because they believe she will do their “bidding,” but because they know that as a congresswoman she will always be there to listen to their concerns, and then do the right thing.  If that’s the sort of embrace that’s supposed to alienate Darcy from 8th CD voters, then I guess our critics are right, and “liberal” bloggers like me really don’t know the district.

Dow down 230 points at the moment.  Go figure.