We are going to have a president who will side with regular folks.

President-elect Barack Obama said that union workers in Chicago who are protesting their factory’s sudden closure with a sit-in are justified in demanding their benefits and pay.

“I think they’re absolutely right,” Obama said today in response to a question at a Chicago news conference. “And understand that what’s happening to them is reflective of what’s happening across this economy.”

Obama, who gave up his Illinois Senate seat last month after the Nov. 4 election, was asked at a press conference today to weigh in on the protest at Chicago’s Republic Windows & Doors factory, which closed on Dec. 5 after Bank of America canceled its line of credit.

Obviously one could dream up a scenario where a president has to make a tough call that involves compromise. The real world is not simple, nor is it perfect.

But here we have Obama siding with workers who are simply demanding what is theirs. That is a profound change.

You never know how history will shake out when you are living it. But the workers at Republic Windows and Doors deserve not only their pay, but the thanks of the entire country for standing up to the corporate oligarchy. Who knows what their action will inspire? The financial sector thieves who brought this mess upon all our heads need to be held accountable, for starters.

Perhaps King County should also levy a special tax on shoes, strollers and wheelbarrows.

Dirty hippies with their feet, babies and dirt anyhow.

Not only did Clark County go for Obama, Evergreen High’s band will be in the parade on Jan. 20 back in DC.

Very very cool and congrats to Evergreen.

As Robert Reich points out here, under-employment is yet more yucky icing on a very nasty cake of unemployment figures. (Okay, Reich is far more eloquent and would never likely come up with such a pathetic analogy.) But still–yikes. From Bloomberg:

More Americans than ever worked only partial days in November as the deepening recession prompted companies to cut full-time employment.

The number of Americans saying they worked part-time last month due to economic reasons — either because their hours were cut or they couldn’t find full-time jobs — surged to 7.32 million, the most since records began in 1955, from 6.7 million in October, the Labor Department reported today.

The increase in part-time workers helped prevent the jobless rate — which rose to 6.7 percent last month from 6.5 percent in October — from climbing even more. Counting part- timers who would prefer full-time work, as well as discouraged workers who are no longer looking for jobs, the jobless rate would have jumped to 12.5 percent from 11.8 percent in October.

And to answer the question Reich asks in the title of his post, um yeah, it’s a Depression. I know it’s a matter of semantics, but since Karl Rove and Karen Hughes are busily trying to re-write history even as it happens, I think it’s only fair we get Bush’s name attached to this last bitter pill.

I propose we call it the “Bush Financial Depression,” at least for now. Hopefully it will not become Great Depression II. If things get that bad nothing can save one shred of the Bush-Cheney legacy.

At this point it’s not about blame. It’s about not listening in the future to people who have been clearly and repeatedly wrong about every last damn thing, military, economic and diplomatic. Basically, when a Republican opens their mouth, a traditional journalist should have a mental checklist about how many times that person has been utterly and completely wrong. Eight long years of right wing fantasy have led us to this point, and fantasy is something we can no longer afford.

So when you hear that state and local governments are facing tough times, this is what it means to communities. From The Columbian’s Michael Andersen:

What will change the most?

Probably public health, code enforcement, drug and mental health treatment and (don’t scoff) the county’s internal computer team.

The public health department will change radically, laying off a third of its staff by the end of 2009 and instead trying to recruit nonprofits to do the same work for less pay. The county will lose three of its seven code enforcement officers. Nobody knows yet where the cuts will come in drug and mental health treatment, because they depend on state decisions next year. And with five positions cut from the computer team, all the county’s computers will crash more and employees won’t be trained as well in using computers.

Will any county services improve?

The county sheriff’s road patrols will add four new deputy positions in 2010. The sheriff says that’s not enough to keep up with the population, so it’s an open question.

One thing worth noticing is that large portions of relatively urban areas are not incorporated in Clark County. We’re basically an unincorporated city being governed by county government, replete with all the resulting tension between urban and rural needs.

This area includes Salmon Creek, Felida and Hazel Dell, if you know the geography here. Lots of houses, schools and shopping areas were built in these places in the last fifteen years, but because of historical animosity towards Vancouver, the odds are the city will never be able to annex. Past efforts to form a separate city have failed miserably.

So we’re stuck being governed by a three-member county commission, the same system of government that we had at statehood. Right now control of that body is technically still in doubt as we await the results of an automatic recount in a county commission race, a recount which is being held up by a computer glitch. Most observers expect, though, that Republican Tom Mielke will hang on to win by about 200 votes.

We have all the challenges of other urbanized areas: traffic, crime, a need for more family wage jobs, etc. But our form of government is the same as when everyone grew peaches for a living. Don’t know if there were a ton of untreated mentally ill folks wandering around peach orchards back in the day, but it looks like one possible future for life in Clark County. Such are the costs of the Bush Depression.

Wow.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has extended the life of his minority Conservative government until the new year after Governor General Michaelle Jean today granted his request to suspend Parliament.

Jean made the unprecedented decision after a lengthy meeting with Harper this morning at Rideau Hall.

Her consent to prorogue Parliament means the work of the Commons has been discontinued, allowing Harper’s Conservatives to escape a confidence vote next week that would have meant the defeat of his government.

Okay, obviously there’s a whole lot more to the story, including the fact the opposition parties were seeking to form a coalition with the Bloc Québécois, but just wow. The representative of the Queen of England, the governor general, just kept the Conservatives in power in Canada.

According to this story in the Vancouver (B.C.) Sun, that may be just fine with most Canadians.

Best of wishes to our friends to the north. That vestigial royal power thing is truly fascinating.

Yet another “this must be some weird dream” moment happened today:

During a hearing in the U.S. Senate, the chiefs of General Motors Corp. (GM), Ford Motor Co. (F) and Chrysler LLC were responding to a question from Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. Dodd asked whether they would be willing to work within a structure similar to that established for the federal bailout of the former Chrysler Corp. in 1979-1980.

GM’s Rick Wagoner, Ford’s Alan Mulally an Chrsyler’s Robert Nardelli said they would.

While there’s been a lot of Sturm und Drang over whether the auto companies deserve a bailout, both from the rump remains of the allegedly free market Republican Party and from consumers frustrated by decades of shoddy products and environmental destruction, it’s kind of hard to see how it is in the national interest to allow that sector to go belly up. I think we really would be talking about the Second Great Depression at that point. And while I freely admit to engaging in hyperbole at times, in this case I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.

Arguments that we might need the assembly plants for national defense strike me as a bit naive. We’re not in wars that require tens of thousands of tanks, we’re in wars that require smart intelligence, smart diplomacy and a nimble military. The argument over the fate of Detroit is an economic one more than a military one, although of course nothing happens in isolation. If we hollow out what’s left of our manufacturing capacity, what exactly is it that we do as an economy? There is unrealized potential in green power, and high-tech is often beneficial, but are we really going to be able to continue buying cheap plastic shit forever on credit from overseas?

Anyhow, supposedly one in ten American jobs are directly or indirectly related to the automotive industry. If those go away in short order, we’re left with having tried to bail out the financial sector to little effect, which raises questions about exactly whose money we are going to manage. Even the Saudis and the Chinese have their limits.

Could we have a deflationary spiral from hell? Don’t know, but if Congress can bail out AIG and the rest of the financial sector to the tune of (potentially) trillions of dollars, they might want to think long and hard about doing nothing to help the auto industry. There’s plenty of blame to go around here, but in the end fixing the underlying economy (which was wrecked in the first place by the financial industry) has to be the top priority.

I don’t like it anymore than the next person, but there it is. Bail out the automakers, Congress, and let’s get on with the next thing. Maybe we’ll get lucky and a small South American military junta will foolishly invade an obscure island or something.

From the P-I:

The state’s incoming superintendent of public instruction says Washington lawmakers are about to get a wake-up call about what it means to do their work during an economic downturn.

Randy Dorn predicts the Legislature will be forced to think about raising taxes to meet the needs of the state, especially because he says cutting one of Washington’s biggest dollar commitments — education — should not be on the table.

As a former state lawmaker, the new school chief knows few things may be sacred during a major economic downturn.

And he plays the “paramount duty card:”

“It’ll be a real choice of — what are the priorities. And to me there isn’t a choice on what is a priority. The priority’s already been determined by our constitution. That’s the paramount duty. They take an oath of office. It’s pretty simple to me,” Dorn said.

Look, we all know it’s going to be an insanely tough session. Nobody wants to see health care pitted against education, or corrections and law enforcement. Or whatever.

But the broader public is going to need to understand that their neighborhood schools are going to be affected, possibly in significant ways. I’m not so certain that is sinking in around the state.

Education is a point of contact with the state for many folks who otherwise have little interaction with it, other than routine trips to license vehicles and such. Frankly a lot of parents may not understand exactly how education is funded in this state or what could happen with drastic cuts.

Dorn is right to start making noise. It’s probably unrealistic to hope that no cuts will happen, but parents and students involved in both K-12 and higher education better start making plans right now to fight like hell.

Yeah, I know. Gov. Chris Gregoire made a promise not to seek tax increases. Well, a hell of a lot has happened just in the last four weeks, and a hell of a lot is likely to happen in the next four weeks. From a macro-economic standpoint a tax increase is about the last thing that should happen, but then again, the consequences of major damages to education are also severe.

Our stupid, regressive tax system has us boxed in big time.

Kansas leads candidates for bio-defense lab:

Kansas emerged Wednesday as the leading contender for a new $563 million federal biodefense lab also fiercely pursued by Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and other states.

Federal officials said that a Manhattan location was better than five other finalists and nearly 30 spots considered overall for the home of the new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, according to documents obtained by The Kansas City Star.

Research expertise at Kansas State University, particularly in its College of Veterinary Medicine and Biosecurity Research Institute, an available work force of scientists and state financial support topping $200 million helped push Kansas to the top.

Kansans were wise to ultimately reject the assault against their education system by Seattle’s Discovery Institute, which repeatedly sponsored efforts to impose creationism in the guise of “intelligent design” on Kansas children. Back and forth battles over control of the Kansas School Board eventually led to Discovery’s defeat there.

You can’t have a quality state university system if the high school graduates are hamstrung by ideological balderdash sponsored by stink tanks like the Discovery Institute. Now both Kansas and all of America will benefit from actual science that will help defend us. It could have been different, if the religious extremists had won. But they didn’t, and we should all be thankful.

Robert Reich sounds the alarm nationally about the fact we are bailing out Wall Street even as our education system faces drastic cuts.

Frankly I’m a little disappointed Gov. Chris Gregoire didn’t seem to really mention education while at the National Governor’s Association meeting. Or maybe she did and it just wasn’t widely reported.

Granted, infrastructure and health care funding are important, too, but why not stress to the president-elect the serious threat to “human capital,” as Reich refers to well-educated workers? If we wind up yanking a couple of billion out of K-12 and higher ed, as certainly seems possible, that’s a deferred disaster of monumental proportions.

Former Republican state chair Chris Vance, writing at Crosscut:

Dino Rossi lost because voters realized Republicans don’t have a freaking clue about economics.

Pretty much.

A floating pirate ship shooting pepperoni would look pretty killer if you ask me. Call Sea-Tac.

The important thing at this time of national and international crisis is for Obama to “Sister Souljah” the unions and the dirty bloggers.

That will definitely reduce house foreclosures by an estimated 15.72% per quarter, according to my calculations.

It’s interesting how vital it is to some traditional journalists that dirty bloggers get their comeuppance. On the one hand we’re an inconsequential collection of fact-impaired rabble, and on the other hand we must be dealt with! And we’re all the same!

Personally I think Obama should “Sister Souljah” NBC News and E! That’d learn them magic picture box people.

Sad:

In the two months since federal regulators seized and sold Washington Mutual’s banking operations to JPMorgan Chase & Co., WaMu employees have been resigned to the likelihood that thousands of them would be out of work.

On Monday, they found out just how many: 3,400 employees, out of 4,300 the company had in Seattle at the time of the takeover.

And mad:

Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

“These mortgages have been considered more safe and sound for portfolio lenders than many fixed rate mortgages,” David Schneider, home loan president of Washington Mutual, told federal regulators in early 2006. Two years later, WaMu became the largest bank failure in U.S. history.

In more ordinary times the failure of WaMu would be the business story of the year. Instead it’s basically a tragic footnote, although it’s not a footnote to the 3,400 “lucky duckies,” to borrow a phrase from Atrios.

It’s not just Washington state that is facing huge budget shortfalls.

State governments are forecasting more than $100 billion in budget gaps over the next two fiscal years, according to a new report from an association of state governments.

Twenty states have already cut $7.6 billion from their budgets for fiscal 2009, and 30 states have identified additional shortfalls totaling more than $30 billion, according to a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) to be released at 11 a.m. Monday.

Twenty-five states also have identified shortfalls of $60 billion for fiscal 2010, according to the report provided to the Wall Street Journal. Based upon previous budget actions and a continuing downturn, the NCSL projects cumulative budget gaps of more than $140 billion for the next two financial years.

Some of the states facing serious budget challenges include Minnesota, California and Florida. Astute observers will notice something those three states all have in common. (Insert “Final Jeopardy” music here.)

That’s right, they all have Republican governors. The proper response, of course, is: so what?

The global economic crisis was caused in large part by a corrupt, nearly unregulated financial sector that made foolish decisions, and it happened during a Republican administration in Washington, D.C. To blame any governor for the challenges now facing the states is a bit like blaming a homeowner for the arsonist that just torched their house, because they should have known someone might pour a five gallon can of gasoline all over and toss in a lit match.

Luckily, we have a president-elect who seems interested in helping all the states and all the citizens, instead of looking the other way while Grandma Millie takes it in the shins.