The Big Fail

Jerry Moran? Who's Jerry Moran? It wouldn't be very surprising if even Kansans couldn't come up with the name of their Senator — but it was Moran, along with Mike Lee, Susan Collins, and Rand Paul who spared their fellow Republicans the jeopardy of voting on so-called "repeal and replace."  Here's how the New York Times counted the votes:

The "no" group consists of the four named above plus the forty-eight Democrats.  We can be sure that the "no" Republicans were personally selected by Mitch McConnell -- discipline is tight.  Collins is the party's token moderate; Paul and Lee can claim ideological purity and avoid being "primaried" from the right; but what about Jerry Moran?

Moran gained some cover by "teaming up" with Lee in announcing his opposition, and it well could be that fellow Kansans Charles and David Koch (who bankroll primary challenges from the right) preapproved Moran's "defection."  Be that as it may, somebody had to save those thirty-four "unclear" and "concerned" Republicans from the political damage they would have suffered by voting for an extraordinarily unpopular bill.

It's interesting that the three Republicans selected to prevent consideration of a straight repeal, with no replacement, were all women.  As Republicans know, women are allowed to have "soft spots" — they can be forgiven a failure to be unfailingly "tough" on the poor.

The Theology of Health Care

Back in the 16th century, when European merchants were energetically inventing capitalism, John Calvin arrived to tell them they could forget all that stuff about camels passing through the eyes of needles. God, he assured them, rewards His favorites in this life as well as the next, so their wealth was a sure sign they were saved. It followed that the poor, being congenital sinners, were not deserving of any consideration at all.

The twenty-first century version of Calvinism is called "Meritocracy." Meritocrats assume that those who prosper have earned their wealth by being better than the rest: their success is the fruit of their personal "genius" and "grit."  They claim to "make their own luck," and discount the importance of institutional barriers faced by others — like inequality of opportunity or discrimination. Hence, to their minds, those who fail to prosper deserve to fail; and certainly don't deserve any share in the wealth of their betters. It follows that taxing the rich in order to provide health care for their inferiors is nothing less than a crime against nature.

There seem to be some Republican Senators who genuinely believe in the New Calvinism (and some who still believe in the older version.) Many more, though, are just the lazy lackeys of their major donors, content in their safe, Red-State seats, mindlessly voting with their leadership.  A few, though, face more complex political situations -- and there even may be one or two who see a moral choice awaiting them after the Fourth of July.  Let's hope they bring their camels along.

Financial regulation

On health care, the Obama administration sat back and waited for Congress to come up with something — anything. On financial regulation, the bill came straight from the administration, and it sailed right through the House.

Obama, as I've noted in the past, picked the wrong Bob — Rubin, rather than Reich. That left us with Geithner and Summers, zombie slaves of the financial industry. I'd feel a lot happier about the package from the White House if it had been written by people less ideologically committed to Wall Street. When a bill starts out weak, it only can end up as an even weaker law.

Oddly enough, I find myself in agreement with the likes of Richard Shelby and John Cornyn on at least one point: it is time to revisit the 1995 repeal of Glass-Steagall, one of the most unfortunate legacies of Robert Rubin's time in the Clinton administration. Commercial banks and investment banks should, once again, be separate — if for no other reason than to reduce the overall size of the largest institutions. Even if that were done, though, there are some institutions which would need further whittling down to ensure that there no longer are any that are "too big to fail."

At this time, the biggest banks have an unfair competitive advantage over smaller banks, in that they can borrow money at lower rates. They get those lower rates because it is assumed that government will not allow them to fail, no matter what pledges come out of Congress and the White House — and they use their surplus profits not to invest in productive businesses, but to place bets in the high-stakes casino Wall Street has become over the past fifteen years.

I can see absolutely no reason for synthetic CDOs to exist. They are nothing but side bets on real economic activity, but bets large enough to disrupt the financial system and create crises. Credit default swaps on synthetic CDOs were a large part of what brought down AIG, and made its government bailout necessary. If the very rich want to make bets on whether bonds they don't own will or will not default, let them open their own betting parlor and gamble with their own money — not with our pension funds.

Other derivatives must be openly traded, on an exchange like the one provided for in the bill now before the Senate Agriculture Committee, but with no exceptions for companies that are particularly large or well-connected. Markets cannot operate properly when they operate in secret.

Naturally, I don't expect much of the current effort to improve financial regulation, but hope it might be a step in the right direction. Yes, my fingers are crossed — but I'm not holding my breath.

The Harold Ford Strategy

Harold E. Ford Jr., former Congressman from Tennessee, appears ready to mount a primary challenge against current New York Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand. Why?

Look no further than Wall Street.

Gillibrand is considered vulnerable, because she was appointed to fill Hillary Clinton's seat by now less-than-popular Governor David Patterson, who himself gained office by virtue of Elliot Spitzer's little problem with prostitutes. Gillibrand has not attracted much attention from the media, but she has been a dependable vote with the Democratic caucus in the Senate — what some, including Ford, might call a "hack."

Ford came to New York to take a job as a vice-chairman at Merrill-Lynch (now part of Bank of America), and it is with the encouragement (and, no doubt, the contributions) of his buddies on Wall Street that he will be making his primary run. Let's see how that could work out:

1. He could lose his primary bid, but the contest would deplete the Gillibrand war chest, thereby making her more vulnerable to a Republican challenger.
2. He could win the primary and the general election, thereby giving Wall Street another "moderate" Democratic shill in the Senate — from a state with a largely liberal population.
3. He could win the primary and lose the general election, thereby giving Wall Street a typical Republican stooge in the Senate.

However Wall Street looks at it, backing Ford in a primary challenge is a great idea — and I have no doubt that there are thoughts of downstate black voters finding him more appealing than a white woman from Albany. It's almost diabolical. (Well, maybe deleting the "almost" would make that last statement more accurate.)

Okay, then, what do you want — a hack, a shill, or a stooge?

Me, I'll take the hack.

Understanding Joe Lieberman

Last post, I risked being thought racist. This time, I'll risk being thought anti-Semitic. It's probably a good thing that nobody actually reads this blog.

I'm not at all surprised that the Democratic caucus voted to keep Lieberman today, and let him keep the chair of the Homeland Security Committee. With Lieberman on board, there's a slim chance the Democrats can grab a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Without him, there's no chance at all.

Anyway, Joe Lieberman really is a Democrat. Look at his voting record, and there's absolutely no doubt. If Lieberman really was McCain's first choice for running mate, McCain's judgment -- politically, at least -- is even worse than indicated by the Sarah Palin choice. Lieberman diverges from the Democratic line in just one area -- foreign policy. You see, there's one group that claims greater loyalty from Lieberman than the Democratic Party -- and it's not the voters of Connecticut. That group is AIPAC -- the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Iraq never presented a threat to the United States. Even if somebody actually believed the hype about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and associated delivery systems, there was no threat to the United States. There might have been a threat, however, to Israel. Threat or no threat, the idea of a U.S. puppet government in Iraq must have looked pretty good to a lot of Israelis. The real threat, of course, is Iran -- and permanent U.S. bases next door in Iraq could not help but improve Israeli security.

Fiasco notwithstanding, the U.S. staying in Iraq for however long it takes to achieve "victory" is a policy that works for AIPAC, and, hence, for Lieberman. Given decades of indoctrination by AIPAC and his Orthodox rabbis -- not to mention Connecticut defense contractors -- Lieberman had to side with Bush, McCain, and Exxon-Mobil rather than Obama and the Democrats in the recent election.

The hell of it is that AIPAC isn't a particularly good representative of Israel. AIPAC is a much better representative of Likud, and its leader Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, than of Israel's current Kadima government. Rightist Likud naturally tends to allign itself with the rightist religious parties, and Lieberman is an Orthodox jew. Go figure.

It might be helpful if somebody could arrange a meeting between Joe Lieberman and Tzipi Livni, Israel's new Prime Minister. Maybe she could convey to Lieberman that support for AIPAC is not necessarily support for Israel.