GOP Politicians vs GOP Voters

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Michigoose

One of the continuing disconnects for me–since about 2004 or so–is what I hear from my Republican relatives and what I hear from the national Republican party and politicians. It turns out that I’m not alone, and while Steve Benen and Greg Sargent have both posted on this before, now I’m an administrator and can write my own post about it! Plus, while we don’t always agree, I do have respect for the opinions–and how they’ve been formed–of the folks on the other side of the aisle from me who post on this blog. So I’d like you to try to help me understand why the GOP seems to not be listening to their voters.

Here is the post from Benen on Political Animal this morning, and this is the pdf of the CNN/ORC poll he’s talking about. Four out of the five components of the American Jobs Act that were broken out and asked about individually were supported by Republicans (note: my wording, not exactly how it was asked in the poll. Favor cutting the payroll tax 58% – 40% opposed, favor providing federal money to states to hire teachers and first responders 63% – 36% opposed, favor increasing federal money for some infrastructure projects 54% – 46% opposed, and favor increasing taxes paid by millionaires 56% – 43% opposed). So why then, when Mitch McConnell or Eric Cantor or John Boehner, for example, talk about their opposition to these components do they always start their sentence with “the American people oppose X, Y and Z”? Do they not read the polls? Do they not believe the polls? Do they not care what their constituents think? Do they not know about crosstabs and think that it’s just generic Americans saying these things and not their fellow party members (and if they think that, shouldn’t they wonder about why they’re in the minority when it comes to those opinions)?

To quote Benen:

I mention this in part to show just how mainstream the American Jobs Act is, but also to note the chasm between Republican voters and Republican policymakers. With 63% of the GOP’s rank-and-file supporting, for example, aid to states to protect teachers’ and first responders’ jobs, it’s tempting to think at least some GOP lawmakers in Washington would support the idea. But in reality, that’s just not the case — literally zero Republicans on Capitol Hill are willing to even allow a vote on a popular jobs idea, during a jobs crisis, that even their own party’s voters strongly support.


Why? Is it Greg’s dreaded Beltway Feedback Loop? And why do they keep saying “the American people oppose” when that’s demonstrably not true?

Filed under: GOP, Polling | Tagged: | 36 Comments »

Occupy Wall Street

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Michigoose

This photo has been making the rounds on Facebook. . . rumor also has it that it has been photoshopped to add people. I don’t know one way or the other, but I loved this comment that I saw posted on it: What they forget, when they scuttle the economy and put alot of people out of work, those people have alot of time on their hands.

Filed under: OWS | 33 Comments »

A Few Billion Here, A Half A Billion There. . .

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Michigoose

I can’t remember if I’ve ever mentioned on this blog how much I like Matt Taibbi’s work. He’s an excellent investigator and even better writer–it would almost be worth getting a subscription to Rolling Stone just to read his column. Today’s is about the Attorneys General settlement with the big banks and how it’s falling apart. . . which is a good thing (full disclosure: I shamelessly stole the idea for this post from jnc4p, who posted the link over on The Plum Line).

If it does get done, expect a great deal of public debate over whether or not the size of the settlement was sufficient. Did the banks pay enough? Should they have paid ten billion more? Twenty? Even I engaged in a little bit of that some weeks ago.

But if and when that debate takes place, it will actually obscure the real issue, because this settlement is not about getting money from the banks. The deal being contemplated is actually the opposite: a giant bailout.

In fact, any federal foreclosure settlement along the lines of what’s been proposed will amount to a last round of post-2008-crisis bailouts. I talked to one foreclosure activist over the weekend who put it this way: “[The AG settlement] will be a bigger bailout than TARP.”

How? The math actually makes a hell of a lot of sense, when you look at it closely.

I know that Mark and quarterback have both written about their experiences with settlements like these, and how you often are recovering mere pennies on the dollar, but I hadn’t thought about the implications of that until I read this:

[A] private analyst this summer was estimating that just one bank, Bank of America, could face more in damages than the Obama administration and the AGs are now trying to “wrest” from all the major banks, combined, for all their liabilities.

Just a few days ago, news of more such suits came in. An Irish company called Sealink Funding is suing Chase and Bank of America, seeking $4.5 billion combined in connection to losses in mortgage-backed securities sold to them by those banks. Meanwhile, a German bank, Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg, is suing Chase for an additional $500 million in losses.

These huge amounts – a few billion here, a half a billion there – are coming from single companies, directed at single banks. And think about the Bank of America settlement for $8.5 billion: what’s the usual payoff in a lawsuit settlement? Ten cents on the dollar? Five?

In fact, the settlement amount in that case was just 2% of the face value of the loans when they were securitized ($424 billion), and represented just 4% of the principal still outstanding ($221 billion).

Why do those figures matter? Because the way these securitizations were structured, legally, Bank of America is obligated to buy back any loans that were sold fraudulently at face value – that is part of the legal language in the “pooling and servicing agreements” under which all of these mortgages were pooled.

So minus a settlement, Bank of America – one bank — had a potential liability of $424 billion just from its Countrywide holdings! And it got off for $8.5 billion, a major victory.

All of which puts in perspective the preposterously small size of the proposed AG settlement. $20 billion would be a lousy number if we were just talking about Bank of America. But all the big banks combined?

And an aspect of the whole Wall Street fiasco that hadn’t even occurred to me was who bought some of those derivatives (is that the right term, Scott?) CDOs (Michi):

To recap the crime: the banks lent money to firms like Countrywide, who in turn created billions in dicey loans, who then sold them back to the banks, who chopped them up and sold them to, among other things, your state’s worker retirement funds.

So this is bankers from Deutsche and Goldman and Bank of America essentially stealing the retirement nest eggs of firemen, teachers, cops, and other actors, as well as the investment monies of foreigners and hedge fund managers. To repeat: this was Wall Street hotshots stealing money from old ladies.

So now that California’s Attorney General has joined New York’s in deciding to not participate in this settlement, we may see some of these big banks, well, fail. Matt’s conclusion is that if they truly had to come to an equitable settlement it would cost them (in aggregate) a trillion dollars or more. That’s mindboggling!

Filed under: TBTF | Tagged: , | 64 Comments »

Apropos of Just About Nothing. . .

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Michigoose

But I can’t tell you how much I love this story. This is close to the area of Michigan that I grew up in and it takes me back to my high school days; we were a small, small, tiny school and I ran cross country and played basketball on the boys’ teams (more successful in cross country than round ball) and it wasn’t that big a deal once the guys got used to it. Homecoming queen was out of my league, though!!

On Friday, with Pinckney leading powerful Michigan rival Grand Blanc, 6-0, at the half, Amat, the first girl to play football for the school’s varsity, was asked to return to the field. When she arrived, she was told that her fellow students had voted her queen. When the tiara was placed on her head, she was wearing not a dress, like the other girls in the homecoming court, but her No. 12 uniform, pads and all.

A short while later, with five minutes to play in the third quarter, Amat was called to the same field to attempt a 31-yard field goal. She split the uprights.

The kick proved decisive as Pinckney held on for a 9-7 victory against a Grand Blanc team that had come into the game ranked seventh in the state in its division. It also earned Amat the nickname the Kicking Queen.
Emphasis added. This girl is my hero for the week!!

Filed under: Football, fun stuff | Tagged: | 10 Comments »

Bits & Pieces (Tuesday Evening Open Mic)

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Michigoose
Well, wouldja look at that. Reapportioning the congressional districts in order to improve governance. . . nice to know that at least one person who gets paid to blog has the same idea that I do!

. . . My preferred solution, which is plenty dreamy enough, is reapportion reform. If independent agents redrew the election districts in the states with the mandate to minimize the number of safe seats for either party, and to maximize the number that would be competitive, most of the extremism that characterizes our politics today would disappear. Both Democratic and Republican candidates would have to compete for the big middle. All views would still get aired, and the hardcore elements of both parties would still have influence. But no longer would they be able to shut down the political process as the GOP did during the debt ceiling issue.

Is this idea too dreamy? Not really. Fair play is a core American value, and instinctively we repel against the most extreme of the gerrymandered districts, regardless of which party we favor. Moreover, increasing competition is a neat market solution is an inherently comprehensible path to take in a country that likes market solutions to problems. This is a path that would open up with only a little pushing. Already California has moved in this direction, and as California usually goes, so goes the nation. It’s too late to do anything about reapportionment this time, but reform should be advanced now, while the concept is fresh in the public’s mind.

— Michigoose

This strikes me as just a little bit odd. Financial traders are more reckless that psychopaths??? Really??? [I thought they were about equally reckless; surprised to find out they are more reckless – KW]

A new study from a Swiss University finds that financial traders are more uncooperative than psychopaths, and also that they have a greater tendency for lying and risk-taking.

As part of their executive MBA thesis at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, forensic psychiatrist Thomas Noll, a chief administrator at the Pöschwies prison near Zurich, and co-author Pascal Scherrer studied the behavior of 28 financial traders in a decision-making game, comparing their performances with those of people who were diagnosed as psychopaths.



They expected to find that, like the psychopaths, the traders would be uncooperative with others, but that they’d perform better at the game because, as Mr. Noll said, traders “are supposed to be good at making money. In social interactions, they’re supposed to be good at performing.”


But the two authors were shocked to discover that the traders were actually more uncooperative and egocentric than psychopaths when playing a prisoner’s dilemma game — a type of gaming scenario where participants can choose to cooperate or betray each other.

Moreover, even though the traders lied and took risks more than their psychopathic counterparts, their performance at the game was about the same as the control group. This means the traders not only didn’t play well with others, they also didn’t do any better at the game than regular Joes.

— Michigoose

Maybe this was discussed over the weekend, but the media ran amuck with stories about Obama criticizing his base following his speech in front of the Congressional Black Caucus. I thought this was in interesting take from an interestingly named blog that turned the usual “liberal media” perspective on its head. — Ashot

The floor is yours, kids!

Filed under: Bits and Pieces | 31 Comments »

Monday Morning Opening (or, Ramblings From a Tired Mind)

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Michigoose

She’s baaaa-aaaack!

I’m going to throw this up as a somewhat rambling morning thread, since I’ve spent bits and pieces of the last 24 hours going through PL and ATiM threads to get caught up. I’ll just throw out there that moving is the pits, but it does tend to clear out the rubble!

What a weekend! Starting on Thursday, when I went offline due to moving and associated intertubes interuptions, I’d like to make a few quick hits to get up to speed:

NoVA: An absolutely wonderful post that I’m going to re-read and comment on later. I really appreciate the time and effort you put into writing this, and I just wish that 12BB would get her fourth point of contact over here to read it. Does anybody know why she seems to be boycotting us?

lms: I can’t make a direct connection, but it really burns me up that healthcare insurance works the way it does. It’s one of the few perks that we (state) government lackeys have, and one of my last bills for my ex came in at $17K for a less than 72 hour stay in a hospital. I’m not paying it for several reasons, but part of it is that they don’t seem to be able/willing to break it down. . . you can’t convince me that they provided $17K of care to a man who didn’t need divine intervention to make him better (I’ve seen what they do: stick an IV in his arm, pump him up with vitamins and let him sleep it off. For $17K??????) And because I’ve got such great insurance that’s what they’d “bill” me. . . except I don’t have to pay anything other than the deductible, because they’re passing the cost on to people like you. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

Troll: Your PT was done at a physician-owned practice, which goes against many ethical guidelines in the PT world (my ex spent several years working at the Federal level on practice guidelines and scope of practice rules.) While it isn’t illegal, it’s considered unethical in many ways for PTs to work directly for orthopods, so it doesn’t surprise me that you were less than happy with your tennis elbow rehab. Having said that, I had a similar injury that just couldn’t be rehabbed, no matter what was tried. About five years later it spontaneously got better. . . so I hope that happens for you!

okie: Sounds like you ran a marvelous event–congrats! If it makes you feel any better, I failed to get the starting pistol to the Honorary Chair who was starting our Race For the Cure last May because I was trying to figure out why our trash cans hadn’t been delivered. There he was (County Mayor), reduced to saying “Bang!” at the start. . .

Who is Mike? And I see that shrink has changed his name again (to mdash?).

And, finally, I have to say that these people strike me as idiots.

What else is happening this morning?

— Michigoose

Filed under: healthcare, Libertarians, religion | Tagged: , | 40 Comments »

Thursday Morning Opening Thread

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Michigoose
The Tea Party Strikes Again?
Hold onto your hats, it’s about to get bumpy out there again:
The U.S. House, in a surprise setback to Republican leaders, defeated a spending bill providing $3.65 billion in aid to victims of recent natural disasters and needed to prevent a government shutdown.

Republicans unhappy with the measure’s overall cost joined Democrats opposed to a proposed cut in an auto industry-loan program to derail the measure yesterday, 230-195. Opposing the legislation were 48 Republicans and 182 Democrats; backing it were 189 Republicans and six Democrats.

The defeat raises the prospect of a government shutdown because the bill would fund the government until Nov. 18. The current fiscal year ends Sept. 30, and Congress is in recess next week.
Roll call is here.
”Utah’s Sarah Palin”
I had not heard of this woman, and I have to say that I don’t think she’s got a snowball’s chance as the congressional district is configured right now, but she is mounting a run against my Blue Dog. Jim Matheson is really going to be in trouble if the redistricting commission goes with the “doughnut hole” approach (one CD centered on Salt Lake City on the Wasatch front and the other three dividing up the rest of the state). He isn’t liberal enough to carry the new urban district—the big reason why his re-election was so close last time was because liberals like me voted for a third party candidate rather than him—and Tea Party sentiment is running high in Utah and a candidate like Ms Eagar could carry the rural part of his existing district. Will she have the ‘Cuda’s ability to fire up the masses?
Greek Salad
From the BBC, Reuters, and Food TV. Although I, personally, would leave the green peppers out of the last one.
Who’s got a good joke to start the day?
Submitted for your consideration by Michigoose

Filed under: budget, government shutdown, Greece, recipes, redistricting, Tea Party | Tagged: | 29 Comments »

Tuesday Morning Opening Thread

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Michigoose
Mitt Romney really doesn’t have much of that populist touch sometimes, does he? (As a sidenote, note the author on that piece. Think he’s a relation?)

lms noted this yesterday, but I couldn’t be prouder that the Army was out in front, leading the way on the repeal of DADT.

I haven’t really paid attention before, but is the practice of S&P cutting countries’ bond ratings> something that has happened regularly in the past, or are they throwing their weight around lately?

Bad joke of the day (and I’m really hoping that Scott or someone will edit this post and add a good one): A turtle was walking down an alley in New York when he was mugged by a gang of snails. A police detective came to investigate and asked the turtle if he could explain what happened.
The turtle looked at the detective with a confused look on his face and replied “I don’t know, it all happened so fast.”
Happy Tuesday, all!

Filed under: joke | Tagged: , | 15 Comments »

Testing, Testing

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Michigoose


Here I shall insert an inbred cat:

And here is a video with a surprise ending:

http://www.youtube.com/get_player

And here is just a little bit of text so that I can see what it looks like.

line by lms

Filed under: Uncategorized | 13 Comments »

Sunday Morning Open Thread

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Michigoose

I’ll throw this up to start the day since I happen to be up and about.

Kevin has an interesting piece up on the role of Robin Hood in modern life that he posted late in the day/early in the morning last night. You should go check it out in yesterday’s archive.
Yesterday’s college football games went well for all of us, since Mark’s ‘Horns trounced UCLA, okie’s Sooners crushed Florida, and the Utes won the Holy War with BYU quite handily. Oregon also won, but I don’t know if shrink or bernie care.
I hope to have the FAQ sheet ready to throw up as the end-of-the-day Bits & Pieces for you all to look at, discuss, and edit.
As Greg would say, what else is happening? And do you have a joke for us, Scott?
Update: Kevin! You sly dog, you–you’ve already created the tab for the FAQ! Look up there next to the “Rules of Engagement” tab, guys.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 31 Comments »

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