Here is something I don’t understand. David Sirota is happy that the House voted today not to release the second half of the TARP money to the Obama administration. Sirota isn’t happy about the vote because it will actually stop the transfer of $350 billion of taxpayer money to the discretion of the Treasury Department. No, he knows that the Senate voted to release the money and, as a result, it will be released. Sirota is pleased because:
…this is a major victory for the progressive movement in that the House has formally gone on record against kleptocracy.
Is this really a major victory for the progressive movement? I looked at the vote and I noticed that all but four Republicans voted the way Sirota wanted. Then I noticed that almost the entire Blue Dog caucus voted the way that Sirota wanted. I did find a few progressives (e.g., Carol Shea-Porter, Bob Filner, Pete Stark, Jose Serrano) but the vast majority of the Progressive Caucus voted for the ‘kleptocracy’.
Now, I am open to the idea that the Republicans and Blue Dogs are right on this issue and the Progressives are by-and-large wrong. But I don’t understand how anyone can see this as a progressive victory when progressives didn’t vote for it. And it’s not much of a victory either, since it will change nothing and have no effect in law.
I think some people speak for progressives without knowing what most progressives think.
Sirota has confused me for a long time. What gets me most in this piece is the language. By his logic, giving Obama what he asks for is a victory for “kleptocracy”. Therefore it follows that Obama is a “kleptocrat”. I think that’s a stunning thing to say on this second day of his presidency, on an issue that divides “progressives” as much as it does everybody else.
I don’t see much reasoned argument in the article, just a lot of rah rah rah for “our” side. To me stuff like this is what keeps real progressives from making much headway in real-world influence. Sirota has become the director-general of the circular firing squad. Too bad — it deafens one to the the sharp observations he sometimes makes and makes Open Left less attractive (to me, at least).
This would be the first of a coming flow of folks blaming Obama for Bush deeds..
I agree that a huge amount of money was misplaced in the first half of the TARP distribution and that means there should be muuuch more transparency and forethought this time. Good thing everyone agrees and is well on point with all that.
that this is just a prelude to the coming progressive victory that Kirsten Gillibrand’s appointment to the Senate will purportedly represent. Way to go, Jane Hamsher!
Exactly Cabin Girl. I thought the netroots wanted liberals in the US Senate and loathed Corporate/Blue Dog dems. I guess it is about making points about nepotism. So what will Jame Hamsher write when Senator Gillebrand screws Obama and the dems?
Read this link about Gillebrand:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/01/the_new_frontru.php
I’m sure there will be some way to blame it all on Obama’s lack of progressive ideals…
It’s interesting to see the BlueDogs suddenly get some positive buzz from the netroots. Who would have guessed it would happen 2 days after Obama’s inauguration?
Seems to me he’s bullshitting and he damn well knows what he’s doing when he’s doing said bullshitting.
What are the third and fourth order consequences for attaching the name “progressives” to a vote against authorizing the TARP funds?
He’s trying to take credit for good old Blue Dog/GOP obstructionism as a “populist outburst” and trying to slap a “progressives caused this!” nametag on it.
It’s a nice try. Sirota is virulently against any more bailout funds, and he’s trying to make himself feel all cool by saying the House vote against it is a “progressive victory” the way John McCain’s loss in November was a “Victory for true conservatives” or something.
I dunno. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
Obama voted for the bailout– let’s not forget that. Yes, the same shitty bailout plan that put almost no controls on Henry Paulson as he dispensed our tax dollars to the very people who are responsible for the fiscal crisis that we are stuck in. So I’m hesitant about giving Obama another $350 billion to play with.
I don’t follow your logic. Obama is in a completely different position vis a vis the money than he was then. This time he gets to decide what to do with it. That doesn’t mean you have to be in favor of the bailout, but I don’t see that anything follows from the fact that he voted for the last one. Lots of congress folks who voted for the last one didn’t like it, and a special factor of pressure for Obama was that he was nearing the end of a hotly contested presidential camapign. Also the economic situation is now even worse.
You don’t understand, Boo. David’s a nationally syndicated columnist. It’s like Matt Taibbi’s comment about Tom Friedman: Once he says it, the argument’s over.
In all seriousness, look, the first $350bn round was a major fuck-up, from everything I’ve seen. I think Benny and the Inkjets have done more to unfreeze the credit markets than the bailout.
I probably would’ve voted Yay on it, personally, but I’d want a lot of strings attached.
The real thing I think we’re missing in the discussion is this: Obama needs to simply nationalize the banks and clean up the mess. The Sweden Program, I guess we could call it. It’s a pain in the ass, yes, but let’s do it right, or at least in a way that we know will work, rather than simply throwing money at it.
A vote no was a vote for continued kleptocracy. And as before, when progressives originally tried to block TARP,
the progressives, like Kucinich, Inslee, Conyers, etc. found themselves voting alongside the Republicans on this issue.
I think you need to figure out who’s progressive and who’s not. Sirota is right.
Blue Dogs appear to be more progressive than so-called progressives, by that standard.
with all due respect, the following progressives voted ‘no’.
Because, as I said, you DON’T know a progressive from a regular Democrat. Just looking at all the Dems you tossed up there on that list the very first one is suspect:
Ed Pastor hardly qualifies as a progressive when even the hispanics that make up the majority of his district feel disenfranchised by him.
Now I could go down that list and find progressives and not-so-progressives, but that would take more time than I have to responde. Barbara Lee is obviously a true progressive. Yet she voted to continue the kleptocracy.
The fact is, TARP is kleptocracy, plain and simple. The Republicans HAVE to vote against it because it is a slap in the face to their True Believers it’s such blatant kleptocracy. You see, they support ripping us all off, just so long as their constituents don’t understand it’s a ripoff. THIS, however, is even too blatant for them so they have to turn the the Dems, who believe the Government can intervene in the economy. The Dems are correct, the Gov CAN intervene. However, TARP is not intervention. It’s a scam.
Not all progressives realize this and many Dems are being swept up in Obamaism and go along with what was Bush’s plan and now is Obama’s because his economic team is all for it.
That his economic team is all for it and that his economic team is comprised of Chicago School of Economics Alumni, the same school that breeds “free trade” voodoo economists like rabbits, raises serious and valid concerns about Obama’s economic policies.
That it took a large proportion of die hard progressives such as Dennis Kucinich, the archetypical progressive candidate, Jay Inslee and John Conyers to ally with such unlikely people as the Republicans and the Blue Dogs and stop the further funding of this scam IS a major victory for progressivism. As Sirota said:
If you don’t understand that, I suggest you ask yourself what you think a progressive is and then go check that identification with what the progressive movement considers itself.
Then stop drinking the Obama Kool-Aid and come back to the reality based community. We need ya Boo!
The bottom line is that progressives voted in favor of the $350 billion at a higher rate than any other caucus in congress. So it is ludicrous to say that opposing the money was the progressive position. It was actually exactly the opposite. Opposing the money was the majority position only with Republicans and Blue Dog democrats.
I’m not saying that Republicans and Blue Dogs are never right, but I think you should get just a little nervous when so-called progressive economists and ‘populist’ demagogues walk you off on a branch and you find yourself all alone with hyper-conservatives.
I never claimed to like the bank bailout. I never claimed it was fair. I only claimed it was necessary. It was and still is. Most progressives agree with me and don’t appreciate the suggestion that a minority view is actually the majority one.
No, the bottom line is that Sirota is right, this is a major victory for the progressive MOVEMENT. Even though normally sharp progressives like Barbara were convinced this move was necessary.
Step back for a moment. Who ASKED for this? BushCo. The neocons asked for this. So look around at that branch YOU’RE on. This is a muddled mess from a right vs left perspective.
In the end, however, TARP is NOT going to help us out of this jam. We can’t afford to pay out this kind of money TWICE and so we better put it in the right hands – not the hands of the right, if you get my meaning – the first time around because we likely won’t get a second chance.
This is NOT a “necessary evil”. It’s the endgame OF evil.
Donna Edwards, darling of the netroots, voted NO?
John Lewis voted NO?
Maxine Waters voted NO?
Doesn’t that kind of shoot holes in the whole “corporatists voted no” meme?
I think someone (Sirota) assumed something without looking at the actual vote breakdown…
This will grow into a major fissure in the Democratic party and the so-called “progressive” movement. I guess the corporatist part of the party still wants to use the label of “progressive”. The word has become so malleable that it may not even be meaningful any longer. And you’ve identified the one policy area where it doesn’t work and people are confused: bailouts and bank regulation and “fixin'” the economy.
Let me flip the question on you.
How can someone like Barney Frank call himself a progressive if he’s willing to meet with Citibank before he advocates mortgage cram downs in bankruptcies? Where is the proposal for pro-consumer, pro-average-American, bankruptcy reform to at least get us back to before 2005? Where’s my bailout? Do you really believe Barney Frank and the other Democrats are not in the banks’ back pockets? The banks made huge sums of money when the Democrats agreed to deregulate (in fact those Democrats that were influential in this are now influential in the administration) and now they are simply giving us the same Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bernanke, Greenspan, Rubin solutions of throwing money at banks–a top down solution that so far has been an abysmal failure. This is a huge waste of our precious little public resources and an immense crime. It’s a crime covering up a crime. I don’t know what worse. The crime (the corporatist takeover of our government and economy) or the cover-up (e.g., throwing a T.A.R.P. over the body, or something). I can’t believe you don’t see the folly and injustice . . . . and goddamit the criminal intent. Where is the American people’s bailout? Where is my bailout? When do the rules get changed in the average person’s favor for once? Why is everything top down? Throw money at the banks and hope they fix things. That hasn’t worked thus far and the real damage has not yet been ascertained (or, more precisely, the full extent of the crimes have not yet been determined, but, they are clearly numerous and mounting).
If you took a Democratic party member from 30 years ago and showed him or her how the Democrats have pretty much caved-in on consumer protections, especially when it comes to banking, he or she would shocked that the modern Democratic party even pretends to support consumers (i.e. the average American). Look at the predatory lending and the usury that is rampant in this country. Look at the credit card industry. Look how the Democratic party has adopted top-down Reagonomics and has given the banking industry everything it wants. It still meets with the banking industry before in proposed legislation. I don’t know what “progressive” means but I thought it meant standing up for those with little bargaining power, the average American, that takes out a credit card or a loan from a bank or a mortgage or goes through bankruptcy.
You’re onto something though. There are sloppy definitions and people are confused.
But eventually you’ll figure out the scam as Sirota has figured out the scam. We’re talking about the biggest transfer of wealth in history–taken from you and me and we the people and given to bankers (they got the majority of the ill-gotten profits on the way up and got the first and most massive amount of public funds on the way down–now the rest of us will be fighting over the scraps as soon as we realize there are only scraps left). Call yourself a progressive or not but the two words we should all wrap our heads around are these: SUCKERS and CROOKS. Right now that’s all I see around me. And the Democratic “progressives” like Barney Frank may be both.
When former Black Panther member Barbara Lee is part of the corporatist wing of the Democratic Party, you just might have a minor flaw in your analysis.
What really matters here is what is the right thing to do. Mileage varies. But if the black hole is as big as many think, then putting more money into it is a terrible idea. We first need to know what’s in the vaults before any rational decision can be made. That isn’t happening, quite suspiciously. That’s number one: Exactly how bad are the losses?
If I didn’t know better I’d say he was employing the ‘strawman’ technique of taking both sides of an argument. Do I know better ? http://www.logicalfallacies.info/
What is the damage ? A $1.4 trillion economy owing $3.6 trillion ( having just recently given away an amount costing more than Iraq’s Occupation to banks )…could be in difficulty balancing the books.
It’s two days now. If everyone could just stand in a circle I’ll pass our the firearms.