Dammit!

The one bulwark of sanity in the entire Bush administration is leaving...and he's the last vestige of the Clinton administration:

One of government's chief internal watchdogs resigned yesterday, as Comptroller General David M. Walker, an outspoken gadfly and frequent witness on Capitol Hill, announced his plans to lead a new foundation focused on U.S. fiscal responsibility.

Walker has led the Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative agency, for a decade.

Walker was an outspoken critic of the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare spending -- issues on which the Democratic-led Congress, and Republicans before it, have had trouble building consensus.

This means George W Bush will get to appoint a partisan Comptroller who will be all over any Democratic Presidency with respect to economic issues, a linchpin of the next four years as we struggle to steer a course through a depression.

On any number of occasions in the past, I've written admirably about David Walker. He hasn't been afraid to call a spade a spade, going so far as to call America bankrupt, to highlight the problems facing returning Iraq invasion veterans, and to dispute the casualty rates the Pentagon has released.

In short, he's spoken up for solutions, when everyone else prayed the problem to go away quietly. And he managed to do all this with both a hostile Congress and administration opposing him at every turn.

In fact, the only real black mark against Walker, the recent contract troubles within the GAO, even served a progressive purpose: the first new governmental union in the past fifty years. In such fires, wise men make tools for progress.

His resignation takes effect on March 12. Had he not resigned, he could have served during Hillary Clinton's first term, as his term would end in 2013. The one saving grace is that the Democratic Congress will have a hand in naming his successor, who must be nominated by a bipartisan commission and confirmed in Senate hearings.

His is a shining example of what a political appointment should do, and demonstrates the depth of quality that was a hallmark of the Clinton administration.

The Ground Game

Michael Tomasky, with some back-up from alleged moderate David Frum, have it right on the reasons for the Walker recall vote. But he misses the point.

I never got very invested in the recall Walker movement. I was cheering for the other outcome, obviously, but I always figured recalling a governor after just two years in office when he's not accused of a crime is a pretty tall order. You see I didn't write that much about it. The margin of Walker's win is a little surprising, but then, he outspent the other side six or seven to one.

As Frum notes over on his blog, the outcome points to a bleak future for public-employee unions, where the next decade will likely see "its pay relentlessly ground down, as private sector pay has been ground down over the decade past." The scope of this loss ought to make these unions and the Democratic Party think twice about what their long-term strategy is going to be here. They're not going to win recall elections against governors who do things they don't like, and even Democratic governors are going after their benefits. It's a terrible thing that the pressure on all wages (except for the top 5 percent or so) is downward, and that private and public employees making, say, $45,000 a year are being pitted against each other, but that's the situation.

Both have begged the question (Tomasky admits that's not what interested him about the recall): why is this so?

How have conservatives so effectively purchased the heart and minds of the average Republican voter as to convince them to be angry at the nurse who takes home $50,000 but to worship the hospital CEO who takes home ten or even twenty times that, nevermind the HMO head who takes home a hundred times that who exploit them for profit?

In Tomasky's defense-- and I've followed his writings since his days at the Village Voice, so I know whereof I speak-- he's a stellar reporter who does amazing work uncovering facts and digging for truth. This kind of analysis is not in his wheelhouse.

But Frum, a political hack who's probably sat in on more "strategerey" sessions than I've had hot meal, ought to be a bit more candid about how this has happened.

After all, he sat in the same room as Karl Rove for years.

A telling stat in Tomasky's piece was the exit poll question where 17% of Obama supporters voted for Walker. Obama was particularly quiet on the vote, and my suspicion is his private polling put the results in less doubt than the public polling. No sense wasting precious political capital on a quixotic venture.

The theory is that recall elections without an actual criminal allegation hanging over the incumbent's head are hard to justify-- Gray Davis had his own issues with a then-popular celebrity leading the charge-- and that these 17% agreed that Walker should be given his legally-won term.

Fair's fair. And there's no guarantee they'll vote for him in 2014. They, like many in 1998, simply felt the complaints lodged didn't rise to a level commensurate with removal from office.

But move that 17% from the Republicans to the Democratic incumbent in November, and the election in Wisconsin becomes an Obama mandate. Too, Walker may have lost the state senate, which is a sign that the support for Walker personally is woefully weak.

 

The analysis you're going to hear all day is two-fold: Obama will lose Wisconsin (already shown that won't be the case) and unions in this country are dead.

 

That last may be a bit more true, but there's a problem with that analysis and it begs yet another question.

 

See, it ignores the fact that the recall took place in the first place. Yes, Walker won and yes, by a large margin, but that doesn't mean it's an endorsement of his first term as much as it's a "leave the guy alone, let him finish it out." There are two points to be made there: one, he won't be nearly as cocky and aggressive (especially if he loses the Senate) since the theme is out there that he's a brutal tin-pot dictator and second, he now knows he has a lot less time to set up his re-election effort and a lot less support.

 

And I'm not sure he's going to run again. He may have become so politically damaged in this recall that he confronts himself and decides to run for Senate, thus bowing gracefully out of a job he almost got kicked out of. Remember, he's only the third sitting Governor to be recalled. That's not a feather in his cap that he won: it's an albatross around his neck that he was even recalled. To allow himself to be defeated in re-election is a surefire way to shatter any potential future in politics.

 

I realize that I've begged the whole "why did this happen?" question as well. The short answer is, I haven't given it enough thought, but I do know one thing.

 

Every conservative that I come across who gloats about the "death of unions" will be asked the question I asked earlier.

 

How can you be so angry at the nurse who takes home $50,000 but worship the hospital CEO who takes home ten or even twenty times that, nevermind the HMO head who takes home a hundred times that, who exploits you for profit?

Going to Hell (In a Handbasket)

A 'fiscal hurricane' on the horizon

By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY
Tue Nov 15, 7:05 AM ET

The comptroller general of the United States is explaining over eggs how the nation's finances are going to hell.

"We face a demographic tsunami" that "will never recede," David Walker tells a group of reporters. He runs through a long list of fiscal challenges, led by the imminent retirement of the baby boomers, whose promised Medicare and Social Security benefits will swamp the federal budget in coming decades.

The breakfast conversation remains somber for most of an hour. Then one reporter smiles and asks, "Aren't you depressed in the morning?"

Sadly, it's no laughing matter. To hear Walker, the nation's top auditor, tell it, the United States can be likened to Rome before the fall of the empire. Its financial condition is "worse than advertised," he says. It has a "broken business model." It faces deficits in its budget, its balance of payments, its savings - and its leadership.

Walker's not the only one saying it. As Congress and the White House struggle to trim up to $50 billion from the federal budget over five years - just 3% of the $1.6 trillion in deficits projected for that period - budget experts say the nation soon could face its worst fiscal crisis since at least 1983, when Social Security bordered on bankruptcy.

Without major spending cuts, tax increases or both, the national debt will grow more than $3 trillion through 2010, to $11.2 trillion - nearly $38,000 for every man, woman and child. The interest alone would cost $561 billion in 2010, the same as the Pentagon.

Gee, US Today finally woke up and smelled the sour coffee these assholes have been peddling for five years?

I've posted my admiration for Walker several times on this blog. As a Clinton appointee, he's the only sitting administration official with the nerve (and the insulation) to tell the truth about the fiscal policy of these economic rapists. This article ought to be required reading for any Regressive Bushinista.

Hat tip to my able assistant, Katrina.

If You Want The Truth, Speak To A Democrat

Anyone who's been a long time reader of Simply Left Behind (which basically means since the Red Sox won the Series) knows I have an huge hard-on for the Comptroller General, David Walker, a Clinton appointee (the CG is a seven-year appointment. It will be a sad day for America when he has to step down).

Let's just say that he does not have good news for us:

Despite improvement in both the fiscal year 2006 reported net operating cost and the cash-based budget deficit, the U.S. government’s total reported liabilities, net social insurance commitments, and other fiscal exposures continue to grow and now total approximately $50 trillion, representing approximately four times the Nation’s total output (GDP) in fiscal year 2006, up from about $20 trillion, or two times GDP in fiscal year 2000.

As this long-term fiscal imbalance continues to grow, the retirement of the “baby boom” generation is closer to becoming a reality with the first wave of boomers eligible for early retirement under Social Security in 2008.

Given these and other factors, it seems clear that the nation’s current fiscal path is unsustainable and that tough choices by the President and the Congress are necessary in order to address the nation’s large and growing long-term fiscal imbalance.

Um, as an accountant, let me translate this for you: The US is broke. Flat out, bankrupt. Further mucking this picture up is that the government's accounting system is so screwy that the GAO refuses to certify the report that it is required to make to Congress on an annual basis!

Now, that may not mean much to you, but if you're investing in, say, General Motors, and GM's accounting firm issues a financial statement at the end of the year, and puts a disclaimer in it that it was unable to perform a full audit of the books because of GM's accounting systems, you'd better sell and fast, because GM is about to tank.

Actually, it probably already has if you're reading about it in the financial report.

Keep in mind, as well, that this is just what they can vouch for, and that their report specifically has to exclude future payments such as Social Security and Medicare, because by law, they cannot assume the level of those payments will either increase or decrease. And none of the long term costs of the Iraq and Afghani wars are included, estimated to be another $2 trillion dollars.

All to pay for some tax cuts for the rich, who aren't even putting the money back into the American economy.

Thanks a lot, Dubya!

(hat tip to Miss Cellania for pointing out a report on this quietly-released report of December 15)

snarkasm, snarcasm, snarky

Bush

This Is Just Sad

Insufficient combat stress help for US troops faulted

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Only 22 percent of U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan seen at risk for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder have been referred by Pentagon officials for mental health evaluation, a report has found.

Thursday's report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found the Pentagon did not provide reasonable assurance that troops who needed referral for evaluation for combat-related stress actually got it.

Investigators found that 9,145 of 178,664 troops -- about 5 percent -- who served in Iraq or Afghanistan may have been at risk for developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder based on responses they gave to a Defense Department questionnaire. Among Army soldiers, the figure was 6.4 percent.


Of those at risk, the report found that Pentagon health care providers referred 22 percent for further mental health evaluations, with the rate differing among Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force personnel.

The study looked at troops deployed through the end of September 2004.

So the data is at least two years old, AND was only one-third of the man-hours troops have fought in this war.

Want to bet those percentages now read more like ten percent of the troops, 13% of Army soldiers and 11% seeking assistance?

The report said the Pentagon did not identify the factors that its health-care providers used in determining which troops merited mental-health referrals.

Which is kind of like diagnosing AIDS based on a breathalyzer, I suspect.

Time and time again, I have sung the praises of the GAO and the Comptroller General, David Walker. Thank god SOMEONE, no matter how marginalized he has been made, is making a stink about this in a position to do something about it. I only wish more Congresscritters, Dems and Repubs, took a little more interest in the folks who, as Michael Moore said at the end of "Farenheit 9-11"

the very people forced to live in the worst parts of town, go to the worst schools, and who have it the hardest are always the first to step up, to defend us. They serve so that we don't have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is remarkably their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm's way unless it is absolutely necessary.

We'll be paying for this war with our tax dollars for generations. These soldiers, they'll be paying with their lives.

Shame on you, Wimp and Blimp.

Bring this report to the attention of your Congresscritter and your local paper. This needs to get out there.

snarkasm, snarcasm, snarky

Bush
Cheney
Iraq

The Destruction Of The Republican Party

 

OK, the 2012 election will be a watershed, not because Barack Obama will win re-election, but because we will witness the destruction of the Republican party as we know it.

 

David Frum lays out the various scenarios here.

 

You'll notice that, even the positions where he has Republicans winning, the road is much tougher than it is for Obama. For example, assume Mitt Romney is nominated. He has a hard time corraling 30% of the GOP vote now in the primaries. That lack of enthusiasm will work against him, as it did McCain, in 2012. It's unlikely that a candidate who can't pull a third of his own party a year out will win an election against a popular center-right Democrat.

 

If Romney is nominated and loses the general (the most likely scenario,) the Tea Party could bolt the Republican party completely. "See? We told you. Nominate someone we don't like, and he loses. It's happened twice now!"

 

And if by some dint of luck, a Teabagger like Perry or Palin is nominated, and loses, the establishment Republicans will throw their hands up in disgust. It will be a cold day in hell before the moneymen start ponying up for the party, prefering to sit it out and wait for a better crop of candidate to pop up.

 

But who? Marco Rubio, the Senator from Florida has his own "birther" issues, and if the Teabaggers do succeed in getting one of their own in, they will effectively gain control of the machinery. Rubio will be dead in the water. Rick "Lex Luthor" Scott? Not particularly popular even in his own state, and a similar problem faces Scott Walker.

 

They'd have to dig very very deep to find a plausible candidate in 2016. It's possible that Jeb Bush could make a run at rehabilitating the Bush name in time for that election, and there's always the Chris Christie card (but then, Christie will have had another four years to alienate his own state, yet again.)

 

And if you think on the final possibility, the impossible possibility of a Teabagger winning the election, we'll be stuck with four years of internal bickering that makes the battle between Democrats and Republicans look like a sandbox squabble.

 

While the nation burns.

 

The backdrop to all these machinations is the very collapse of American society, something Niall Ferguson gets into in his Daily Beast column. I rarely agree with his conclusions, but I think his analysis has some merit. It's very likely that we are watching the destruction of America as a society as we knew it. Not in the Roman fashion, with Vandal and Visigoth invaders, but in the manner of the Soviet Union, crushed under the weight of its own hubris and inability to understand jus thow devastated its citizenry was.

 

Complete with our own Solidarity movement, the Occupy Wall Streeters.

 

Ferguson breaks down the rise of western society around the 1500s into five separate sectors (what he clumsily calls "killer apps".) How many of these still apply to America, much less the west?

COMPETITION
Western societies divided into competing factions, leading to progressive improvements.

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
Breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology.

THE RULE OF LAW
Representative government based on private-property rights and democratic elections.

MODERN MEDICINE
19th- and 20th-century advances in germ theory, antibiotics, and anesthesia.

THE CONSUMER SOCIETY
Leaps in productivity combined with widespread demand for more, better, and cheaper goods.

THE WORK ETHIC
Combination of intensive labor with higher savings rates, permitting sustained capital accumulation.

We no longer have competition that grows us, ours divides us. Competition towards growth has been stifled by the very "capitalist system" we espouse. We no longer lead the world in scientific breakthroughs, altho this is less true in Europe than it is here. Law in America is a joke, as it can be bought and malleated by corporate money. Medicine, we may still lead the way in terms of quality of care, but that care is all but unaffordable and our research labs are dry as a bone for medical advances, having lost most of our good doctors back to the nations they came from (China, Korea, India.)

Consumer society speaks for itself. We've borrowed ourselves, at the behest of our corporate overlords, into bankruptcy.

And the work ethic is a sham. Americans work longer hours and are more productive not because they want to be competitive. They do that just to keep up the standard of living they've had for the past thirty years-- in other words, paying off that massive debt. They aren't earning more money for their efforts and there's no incentive to work any harder or more efficiently beyond that.

This, too, will impact the Republican party, the one most visibly tied to the failed capitalist system that we claim to espouse, the party with the closest ties to the corporatocracy that has killed America.

 

Eating Their Own

 

I love it when Republicans and Teabaggers go head to head.

 

This is the NY 26th Congressional district in Erie (some would spell it Eerie) County.

 

Meet Jack Davis, Teabagger

 

The 26th is best known as the district represented by Chris ("Don't Call Me Christopher!") Lee of Craigslist fame, who resigned in disgrace, forcing a special election later this month.

 

A solidly Republican district, the Davis dustup threatens the coronation of Republican candidate Jane Corwin, who faces a split in the Teabagger vote between Davis and David Bellavia, who had been running under another Teabagger faction but indicated he would throw his support behind Davis, which would put a real crimp in Corwin's plans.

 

And leave the door open, a la the NY 23rd back in 2006 and now-Senator Kirstin Gillibrand, for a progressive candidate. Meet Democrat (and Working Families Party) candidate, Kathy Hochul.

 

Or Green Candidate, Ian Murphy, best known for punking and exposing Governor Scott Walker's close ties to the Koch brothers in the midst of his ultimately-successful attempts to destroy the middle class of Wisconsin. (Have to love a candidate who LOLcats his own campaign website!)

 

See? Eerie County! If it was a normal election cycle of a few months, I'd be torn between who to support, but since Murphy seems to be rather...umm...self-effacing in his style, I'm going to go with Hochul.

 

Go toss her a couple of bucks, and Ian? Run again in the next election, because damn, I'd love to endorse you.