Blog entry

Let's Bank On Rebuilding America

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:48:40 -0400

Instead of a silly argument over a "gas tax holiday," we desperately need a serious discussion about the nation's infrastructure. And there is a good legislative proposal that could be the basis for that discussion.

There are bills in the House (HR 3401) and the Senate (S 1926) that would create a national infrastructure bank. It could be one way to bring some common sense to the task of rebuilding America's roads, bridges, sewers and public buildings. The creation of this bank should be part of the effort progressives are making in Congress to enact a second stimulus bill this month.

Such a bank would allow the federal government to finance these projects in the same way that states do: by issuing long-term, tax-exempt bonds or by making loan guarantees.

Both Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have said they support the idea of an infrastructure bank, although it rarely comes up in their campaign speeches. And that's a shame, because they both need to spend their time reinforcing an emerging national mandate for repairing and improving our crumbling foundations.

Just last month, the blog Infrastructure Watch notes, the Government Accountability Office estimated that the nation's total water infrastructure needs would cost between $485 billion to $1.2 trillion. However, funding for the largest federal drinking water and wastewater infrastructure programs have been flat or declining.

Also, the Congressional Budget Office told Congress last year that the Highway Trust Fund, which is made up largely of the revenue from the gasoline tax, will run out of money in 2009. Spending is outpacing money flowing into the fund. (High gasoline prices, in fact, worsens that problem. When high prices force cutbacks in driving, less money flows into the fund; the federal gasoline tax is a per-gallon tax; it does not increase proportionately to the cost of a gallon of gasoline.) One key reason for the exhaustion of the fund is that prices for materials such as asphalt and concrete are exceeding the general rate of inflation.

In March, the president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, David G. Mongan, reminded the House Banking Committee that in 2005 the organization gave a grade of "D" to the state of the nation's infrastructure and said that an investment of $1.6 trillion by 2010 would be needed to bring the fix these public resources. At the time, that bad grade got a fair amount of attention. Since then:

Nothing approaching that level of investment has been made. Indeed, little has changed in the three years since we handed out that dismal grade, and establishing a longterm plan to finance the development and maintenance of our infrastructure remains a pressing national priority.

This nation continues to under-invest in infrastructure at the national level. The total of all federal spending for infrastructure as a share of all federal spending has steadily declined over the last 30 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

One of the more shameful examples of what Robert Kuttner adroitly calls "the squandering of America" is the failure of America to take care of its basic public assets, especially after the Bush administration inherited a government with a budget surplus that gave it the leeway to tackle that challenge intelligently. (Colleague Bill Scher has linked to some NBC News reports on how we're literally falling apart and is asking why the media, including NBC, isn't doing more to press this into the national debate.) Under the guise of controlling spending, the administration has shifted an increasing share of the national burden to state and local governments—where the same conservatives who say the federal government shouldn't tax to pay for these needs make the same argument at the state and local level—or encouraged turning public assets into private profit centers.

Now that the country is moving through a recession, there is an even more critical need to target government resources on projects that will produce jobs in the short run and leave the nation in the long run with the clean water, transportation, schools and other public facilities that a nation needs to be healthy and economically vibrant. As Congress considers a second economic stimulus package for short-term relief this month, it should authorize the creation of that infrastructure bank. Then let's have a serious debate about how to fund it and how to use it when the next president takes office.

A Patriotic Day

Bill Scher — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:13:52 -0400

Today is Tax Day, the deadline for filing our tax returns. It is fundamentally a patriotic day, the day where we citizens fund our own government. We are no longer ruled by monarchs who govern by the power of their own wealth. With taxation, we have representation. We fought a revolution about that.

It is our money, and it is our government. Part of our patriotic duty is to demand that our tax dollars are invested wisely by our government. How's that been going?

In short, terribly. Conservatives rammed through reckless tax cuts primarily to those earning more than $200,000 a year. More than $500 billion has been wasted on the occupation of Iraq, with the eventual bill expected to hit $3 trillion. Meanwhile public investment in our nation's health, energy, education and infrastructure has been starved.

It's time to restore tax fairness and responsibility. As we slog through a recession and rising costs, some temporary reduction in taxes for middle-class families is in order. But that won't get medical, energy and education costs down for good.

To truly tackle the rising costs eating away at the middle-class, we need to pool our resources, make the up-front investments that pay off in the long-run, and quit blowing money on proven failures.

We need to invest in health care for all, clean domestic energy and energy-efficiency, and accessible education. We need to end the foreign policy quagmires jacking up energy prices, scrap a health care system designed for drug and insurance company CEOs, and stop saddling our kids with massive debt to the student loan companies.

Since it is Tax Day, you can expect another round of tax demagoguery from conservatives -- as if the mere existence of taxes is the cause of the recession, and conservatives never got their way for the past seven years.

For example, Sen. John McCain's latest attempt to address the economy fully embraces the Bush tax cuts he originally scorned, offers a fat tax cut for business owners, while throwing in a few extra scraps for the masses -- like a summer-long repeal of the 18-cent gas tax, which amounts to a sliver of the $2.00 a gallon gas rise in the Bush Era. But no proposals to invest in our weakening foundation, so all Americans can flourish in the global economy.

Washington conservatives push tax cuts regardless of the economic climate, because they are not interested in having an economy that works for all. They are interested in a shrunken government that works for the elite few.

The progressive vision is for a public tax system combined with public investment strategy that raises revenue fairly and invests our resources wisely.

It's our money. We decide what to do with it. If we didn't like how conservatives squandered our resources over the last seven years, we can make a change.

And we can thank taxation with representation for that.

Would You Close Your School To Pay For Iraq?

Bill Scher — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:54:55 -0400

When Gen. David Petraeus testifies today about the status of the Iraq occupation, I'll be thinking about my neighborhood elementary school.

Because the Bridge Street School in Northampton, Mass., may have to close for lack of funds, while we continue to waste billions on a failed foreign policy.

My town is facing a shortfall in our school budget between $800,000 to $1 million. We are forced with a choice between closing an entire school, which doesn't even make up the entire gap, or a series of cuts across the entire school district, including teaching positions, school buses, special education, music and arts education and supplies.

We're not alone in Massachusetts. The Boston Globe reports:

Across Massachusetts, cities and towns face the prospect of deep cuts in what appears to be the grimmest fiscal year since 2003. Local revenue and state aid can't keep up with such rapidly rising expenses as employee health insurance, heating oil, and even street paving. School costs, like special education requirements, are sapping local budgets. And now beleaguered residents are seeing home values dip even as taxes continue to rise.

And it's not just Massachusetts, school budgets are being squeezed across the nation.

While we are starved for investment in our schools—not to mention our health, our energy, our environment and our infrastructure—the occupation saps our resources. As Joseph Stiglitz, co-author of "The Three Trillion Dollar War," said on MSNBC yesterday:

Spending on the war is the worst form of spending. I mean, just think about it. Paying a Nepalese worker to work in Iraq doesn’t stimulate the economy in the same way that spending that same dollar in the United States.

Watch it below:

Paying for cheap Nepalese labor (sometimes lying to lure them into Iraq) doesn't even help rebuild Iraq's economic foundation, let alone ours.

How does this relate to the Bridge Street School's possible closing?

According to the National Priorities Project, while my town of Northampton faces a school budget gap of nearly $1 million, Northampton's share of the cost of the occupation is a massive $55,800,000.

It is critical that we invest in America's foundation if we are to thrive in the global economy of the 21st century. If we're wasting our money on a failed foreign policy, we won't have the resources to invest in the next generation.

War always has costs. If war is a strategic necessity, then those costs may be worth sacrificing.

But the conservative goal of this war, a permanent military occupation of Iraq, is a dangerous and destabilizing goal not worth one penny or one life.

And we're paying far more than that.

You can find out from the National Priorities Project how much your town is paying for the occupation.

A Lot of Fat In The "Pig Book"

Bill Scher — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:39:04 -0400

It's an annual Beltway ritual. The group Citizens Against Government Waste releases the "Pig Book," detailing all the so-called "pork" coming out of Congress. Outrage is ginned up over all the wacky things congresspeople are funding: Fruit fly research! Bear DNA! Opera houses! Green spaces!

But how exactly does CAGW decide what goes in the "Pig Book?" In their own words, any project that meets as little as one of the following criteria:

Requested by only one chamber of Congress;
Not specifically authorized;
Not competitively awarded;
Not requested by the President;
Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;
Not the subject of congressional hearings; or
Serves only a local or special interest.

What's missing that from list?

Does the project have a worthy objective? Will it contribute to our economy, our health, our safety or our environment? Is the approach a proven success?

The quality of the project is simply not a factor.

That's an indication that rooting out actual waste is not the actual objective of the "Pig Book." It would appear that furthering the conservative movement objective of stoking distrust in our government is really what CAGW is after. (The conservative TownHall.com is listed as a "partner" on the CAGW homepage.)

That's why CAGW plays up silly sounding things like fruit fly research, even though such research helps with sustainable agriculture, controlling pests without the use of chemical pesticides.

I can't vouch for the quality of any specific program mentioned in the Pig Book, but neither it seems, can the Pig Book authors.

Surely there's some actual pork in the Pig Book, but also good works unfairly tarred. And surely there's wasteful spending not mentioned in the Pig Book (subsidies to oil, drug and insurance companies; tax incentives to outsource jobs; a little disaster called Iraq) because it doesn't meet CAGW's process-oriented criteria.

CAGW's credibility is further demeaned by it's history lobbying for tobacco companies and agribusiness. (See the great reports from the St. Petersburg Times, via Daily Kos' tojojo.) It's not interested in a government that works for everyone, but a government that works for it clients.

Progressives should certainly stand against real wasteful spending, be it a "bridge to nowhere" or a destabilizing occupation. It's critical for voters to know that the progressive vision for our government invests our money wisely, not spends it recklessly.

But the "Pig Book" is not a serious attempt to root out waste. It's merely a front for undermining trust in our government as an agent for change.

Forty Years Later, Still Far From the Mountaintop

Isaiah J. Poole — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:14:38 -0400

“You know, Jesus reminded us in a magnificent parable one day that a man went to hell because he didn't see the poor. … And I come by here to say that America, too, is going to hell, if we don't use her wealth. If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty, to make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life, she, too, will go to hell.”

You might think those words were recently uttered by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, hurled in the latest guilt-by-association attack against the presidential candidate. In fact, that was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., addressing sanitation workers in Memphis just a little more than two weeks before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

This is the Dr. King that the nation tends not to commemorate when we honor his birthday in January, the man who 40 years ago this week was at the side of workers fighting for fair wages and preparing to take his case for economic justice to Washington. Since that battle, his message has too often been scrubbed clean of anything that would hold the nation accountable for making racial equality an economic fact of life.

A report released today by the Service Employees International Union seeks to undo that travesty.The economic implications of King’s movement and message are explored in “Beyond the Mountaintop: King’s Prescription for Poverty,” prepared by the University of California at Berkeley Labor Center and the Howard University Department of Economics.

Podcast

Listen to William Spriggs, Howard University economics department chairman, discuss what he calls the illusion of progress for African Americans 40 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and what a progressive economic policy true to King's vision would look like.

That report concludes that 40 years after King spoke of a promised land of social and economic justice, “we seem to be paralyzed outside the gates of the city.” It is true that African Americans “have made amazing progress to get where we are. Black educational attainment is three times higher than in 1968, for example. Our out-of-wedlock birthrate has fallen in half. And countless positions of authority—from school boards to political offices to the boardrooms of Fortune 500 corporations—are now filled with black women and men.”

And yet, today African Americans still face what the report calls “a two-dimensional job crisis: high unemployment and low wages.” Four out of 10 black people over the age of 16 were jobless in 2006, the report notes, and 31 percent of black full-time workers earned less than $25,000. Thus, even as the education gap between black people and white people has narrowed dramatically in the past 40 years, the racial economic disparities have not.

The unemployment rate among African Americans today, 7.9 percent, is higher than it was in 1969, when it was 5.3 percent, and in 1999, when it was 6.3 percent. The median income for black men actually fell between 2001 and 2006 in inflation-adjusted terms, from $23,673 to $22,609. Childhood poverty, after being cut in half during the Great Society years of the late 1960s, is now at 32.6 percent, only slightly lower than it was in 1969 and higher than it was in 2000.

The report authors point to three factors: the erosion of civil rights enforcement under the Bush administrations, the decline in the value of the federal minimum wage as it was held to $5.15 an hour through the 1990s until it was finally increased last year (in effect, imposing a one-third cut in the bottom rung of the wage ladder from its value in 1969), and the decline in union representation from 28 percent of the workforce in 1969 to just 12 percent today.

“With weak anti-discrimination enforcement, a declining real minimum wage and falling unionization rates, Dr. King would not find it surprising that poverty rates are stubbornly high even in the face of a growing economy,” the report said.

An economic justice agenda that would address the continued economic crisis in African-American communities and would be true to the spirit of King, the report concludes, would generate full employment, fight discrimination, protect workers’ freedom of association and right to join a union, and raise the minimum wage so that it keeps pace with prices.

William E. Spriggs, chairman of the economics department at Howard University, said that the focus on pathologies in the African-American community, while it has its place, must not be allowed to distract from structural problems in the economy, such as the fact that minimum wage workers today, who make $5.85 an hour, earn a wage that would have been illegal in 1968, when it was, in 2006 dollars, $7.71.

The parable that King referenced in his speech in Memphis was of a beggar named Lazarus who did not receive help from a rich man who passed him every day. The point of the parable, in King’s mind, goes beyond the superficial message that the rich man should have shown kindness to his fellow man in need. “We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace,” King said in a 1967 speech. “But one day we must come to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring."

When the current economic policy debate is placed under the light of that statement, it is clearly found wanting. What we are getting from the major parties is constrained financially by the war in Iraq, which presents the same diversion of resources to an unjust war that Vietnam was for King in 1968, and constrained ideologically by fear of the conservative political machine, which has in many cases worsened America’s race and class disparities but has succeeded in deflecting blame.

Echoing King, Spriggs said that the nation needs an economic plan that doesn’t just give a few coins to beggars along the side of the road but addresses “our responsibility to build a society that would not create beggars along the side of the road.”

An America that commits itself to that ideal is an America worthy of blessing.

Privatizing Our Security, Wasting Our Money

Bill Scher — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:56:20 -0400

In the final debate of the 2000 presidential campaign, Vice-President Al Gore argued he would spend more on defense than his opponent. Then-Gov. George Bush retorted, "If this were a spending contest, I would come in second."

A fair point. When it comes to public investment, it's never just about the price tag. It's about whether we invest our public dollars wisely and effectively. Are we picking the right priorities, allocating a sufficient amount, and investing in what works?

That's not what happened on Bush's watch.

The Washington Post reports today:

Government auditors issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon's biggest weapons systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.

The Government Accountability Office [GAO] found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion.

$295 billion wasted. To put in perspective, Bush vetoed more health insurance for kids supposedly because $35 billion -- $7 billion a year over 5 years -- was too much to spend.

Presiding over a wasteful defense budget is not a "strong on defense" position. It is, however, a conservative position.

Part of the problem is rooted in the fundamental conservative belief that government is bad, and key government functions should be privatized.

That ain't working. From the GAO report:

GAO has noted that the DOD [Dept. of Defense] workforce faces serious challenges and has expressed concerns about DOD’s reliance on contractors to perform roles that have in the past been performed by government employees. Without the right-sized workforce, with the right skills, we believe this could place greater risk on the government for fraud, waste, and abuse.

In part, this increased reliance has occurred because DOD is experiencing a critical shortage of certain acquisition professionals with technical skills as it has downsized its workforce over the last decade. For example, in a prior review of space acquisition programs, we found that 8 of 13 cost-estimating organizations and program offices believed the number of cost estimators was inadequate and we found that 10 of those offices had more contractor personnel preparing cost estimates than government personnel.

The upside is that your tax dollars paid the GAO auditors who found this waste. It would be an even greater waste of our money to ignore their good work.

If we're going to invest well in America's foundation -- in our health, our energy, our environment, our education, our infrastructure and our defense -- we need people managing our government who believe in public investment and public accountability, and who and know the difference between smart investment and wasteful spending.

This is merely one way conservatives failed that test.

UPDATE: Rick finds more privatization making us less secure, over in the State Department's passport office.

In which the Big Con reflects on an E.coli conservatism New Year's resolution

Rick Perlstein — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 11:12:46 -0500

I made a resolution this past January 1, in the wee small hours of the morning: put the E. coli back in E. coli conservatism. I launched this blog last April with a post that began, "First they came for the spinach...." That was our manifesto: the sine qua non of our mission, demonstrating the stomach-churning failures (literally and figuratively) of conservative "government" to deliver up the basic requirements for a civilized national existence.

Then I dropped the ball, moving on to other universes of conservative negligence—so many to choose from!—perhaps because this food stuff was so horrifying to contemplate.

I shall no longer shrink from my duty. I shall no longer shrink from my duty. I shall no longer shrink from my duty.

Yesterday the good folks at the Goverment Accounting Office released an outstanding bird's-eye of the ruins, tho' the title hides the carnage behind polite bureaucratic language: "FDA's Food Protection Plan Proposes Positive First Steps, but Capacity to Carry them Out Is Critical."

Let's render that in blunter English, in fact only one word: clusterf*ck. From the report:

• The United States Department of Agriculture is in charge of the safety of 20 percent of our food supply—but, confoundingly, gets the majority of the federal food safety budget. "In contrast, the FDA accounted for only 24 percent of expenditures even though it is responsible for regulating about 80 percent of the food supply."

• The danger: increasing exponentially. "Specifically, the number of FDA-regulated domestic food establishments increased more than 10 percent from fiscal years 2003 to 2007..... Additionally, FDA notes that therehave been dramatic changes in the volume, variety, and complexity of FDA-regulated products arriving at U.S. ports, and recently reported that the number of food entry lines has tripled in the past ten years.

• Federal resources to protect us from those dangers: decreasing in inverse proportion. "[S]taffing for FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) has decreased.... the number of staff years for CFSAN operations at headquarters dropped about 14 percent, from 960 in fiscal year 2003 to 812 in fiscal year 2006. During that same period, field-based staff responsible for carrying out inspection and enforcement activities for CFSAN-related products dropped by 255 staff years, or about 11.5 percent.... In addition, while CFSAN-related funding at headquarters and in the field increased from $407 million in fiscal year 2003 to $439 million in fiscal year 2006, this represents a decrease in real terms from about $457 million to about $451 million during that period."

• "One consequence is that foreign inspection have declined: GAO analysis of FDA data show that inspections of foreign food firms, which number almost 190,000, decreased from 211 in fiscal year 2000 to fewer than 100 in fiscal year 2007.

This is your government on conservatism. Feel safe yet? In fact, if I were one of those Islamofascist terrorists conservatives are always telling us to get so panicky about, I would study documents like this awfully carefully. Exploiting the cracks in this manifestly horrid situation could undermine the very psychic balance of a nation.

All those number, those: very abstract. Let's put it bluntly. Here's one thing all these statistics spell: torturing cows to coverup potential cases of deadly ovine spongiform encephalopathy—mad cow disease. John Aravosis of Americablog explains, and includes video you do not want to see:

A shocking video from the Humane Society about how cows, whose meat is used in America's school lunch program in 36 states, are allegedly being treated by a leading cattle slaughterhouse in California. In an effort to get sickly-looking cows to stand up for inspection by the FDA, the slaughterhouse allegedly shoots water up cows' noses, uses a forklift to shove the animals, jabs them in the eyes, and then uses an electrical prod to shock the cows' rectums. Beyond the inhumanity of it all, there's a reason we don't waterboard cows. Cows that are lying down and refuse to get up may, for example, have Mad Cow disease. That's why we don't want to "fake" inspections.

Two things you should do. First, read more in the Washington Post:

"These were not rogue employees secretly doing these things," the investigator said in a telephone interview on the condition of anonymity because he hopes to infiltrate other slaughterhouses. "This is the pen manager and his assistant doing this right in the open."....

In the 2004-05 school year, the Agriculture Department honored Westland with its Supplier of the Year award for the National School Lunch Program....

Second: vote for conservative candidates in November. Because their solution to the problem is just the ticket: more tax cuts.

Stimulus Deal: the Bane of Bipartisanship

Robert Borosage — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:18:13 -0500

Barbara Ehrenreich memorably called the talk about the stimulus "clitoral economics." And that was before we got screwed.

The stimulus deal just announced is being praised more for its existence than its content. Much lamented partisan bickering was overcome; bipartisan cooperation that got it done. With Wall Street bankers in panic, better something than nothing. So the parties came together and split the difference and created an agreement (which still has to survive the minefield called the U.S. Senate).

It's worth taking a look under the hood. Despite approval ratings rivaling those of Idi Amin, President Bush set the terms: Tax cuts only. No spending on public works (that is, nothing for stuff we need that actually puts people to work). No increase in food stamps. No strengthening of our tattered unemployment system. (That is, no money to those who we know will spend it on basic needs). Must include a big package of business tax breaks (tax write-offs for investments that would be made anyway, according to any reputable economic study). No money for states that are about to be forced to cut billions to balance their budgets, largely by cutting education and Medicaid spending and deferring basic infrastructure spending. (Remember the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis or the sewage valve that shut down lower Manhattan?)

Democrats, despite having the majority in both Houses, accepted those terms. They demanded, sensibly enough, that the tax cuts include 45 million in low-income families that the president would have excluded. They demanded the president take extending his tax cuts beyond 2010 off the table. They got some help for imperiled homeowners through the Federal Housing Authority and Fannie Mae.

So only $40 billion of the $150 billion package gets squandered on business tax boondoggles. The rebates — what Jesse Jackson calls Wal-Mart gift certificates — will get handed out by August at best. It might help a bit, although if the economy is still in bad shape in August, people are more likely to be paying down credit-card debt than buying a new TV made in China.

But $40 billion isn't the largest cost. The real price is the continued misdirection of the economy and miseducation of the country.

We need what the stimulus package excludes. We need long term investment in rebuilding America — spending money on mass transit, on basic sewers and water disposal, on the electric grid, on renewable energy, on a green rebuilding of our urban areas, on schools and teachers, pre-K and affordable college. We need to stop squandering money abroad in misbegotten wars — now approaching $1 trillion spent on Iraq. We need to revive progressive taxation so at the very least hedge fund billionaires stop enjoying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. We need to develop a national strategy for the global economy, ending our addiction to oil, curbing the casino speculation that will eventually bring down the house, and balancing our trade with the mercantilist nations while capturing the new green industries of the future.

None of this, needless to say, is in the stimulus package. Instead we're taught the wrong lessons: tax cuts are good, particularly business tax breaks; lower interest rates are a free lunch; the "fundamentals," as the president constantly says, "are good."

In fact, the foundation in crumbling. A fundamental change of economic strategy and priorities is vital. And the economic titillation of this bipartisan "stimulus" package will benefit the politicians with their press far more than the economy with its perils.

Please Just Send My Tax Rebate To Mastercard And Save Me The 41 Cents...

Jeremy Baker — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:06:35 -0500

As my fellow coworkers know, 2007 was a year of change for me. I moved to Washington, D.C., bought a house, married a fantastic woman, adopted a great dog and started a new job at Campaign for America’s Future.

On Tuesday I received my W-2 from our Operations Manager with great delight. Since we had bought a house, we are primed for a big tax return! While visions of a new truck or boat have danced through my head like a 4-year-old on Christmas Eve, I know exactly where our tax return is going. A large chunk will go into a savings account and the rest will pay off wedding debt. And you know what, I am pretty happy about that.

Today, I hear that President Bush is advocating for up to an $800 tax rebate per taxpayer as the main thrust of an economic stimulus package. So again, slightly modified visions of new parts for my truck or a much smaller boat begin to do the Electric Slide in my dreams. Then I remember that my little Ford Ranger is close to being paid off. $800 would pay it off and leave enough money to buy a new timing belt to put on it.

I applaud Washington for working together quickly to find a short-term fix to the looming recession. However, I worry that it is a fix designed to infuse the finance industry with cash, not jump-start a stalled economy or provide real economic relief to the middle class.

Couple the huge loss of home equity in the last two years with credit card debt, inflation, and economic uncertainty and I don’t think these rebates ever leave the bank. I’m betting most households use the rebate to pay down debt or boost savings. Everyone is planning for the looming recession that the middle class saw on the horizon and felt in their belly before anybody on K Street or Wall Street decided they should hold off on buying that new Porsche.

So, President Bush is going to send my tax return, hopefully a few thousand dollars, along with my $800 rebate to my Bank of America account. Then I’ll log on to my account the next day, transfer half of it to savings, then use electronic bill pay to send $748.00 to Suntrust to pay off my truck and the rest to Mastercard to pay down our wedding debt.

The net economic stimulus: I’ll give Napa Auto parts about $30.00 for a timing belt that I’ll put on my truck myself.

While the rebate does indeed pay down my debt, it seems like I’ll just be babysitting it for a few minutes before I give it to SunTrust and Chase Banks. I certainly wouldn’t call it economic stimulus.

WAIT!!! That’s it! Maybe that’s what the rebate was designed to do: Bail out the finance industry with a huge cash infusion of taxpayer money. The banks and credit companies are swimming in bad debt and taking losses because decent folk can’t afford to pay the loans they were told by “experts” they could afford. Stock prices are tanking and real regulatory and tax reforms are looming. So Washington's answer is to give a ton of money to debt-strapped taxpayers so they can pass it along to the banks and we can all avoid addressing the underlying economic problems. I call it trickle-up economics.

Voila! Wall Street crisis avoided, President Bush looks like a hero, and everyone can all get back to the business of building up the consumer debt that is the cost of chasing an American dream that is all but dead.

Mississippi Hypocrisy

Isaiah J. Poole — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:44:49 -0500

A $3.7 billion program that channels federal money to local communities for projects designed to improve blighted areas and help produce jobs has been in the Bush administration crosshairs almost from the day the administration took office. The Bushies never liked the Community Development Block Grant program, and has justified trying to kill it by rating it "ineffective." But killing it outright has been a step too far for even some Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have seen it as at least a convenient channel for pork-barrel spending in their districts and have thus helped Democrats keep it on life support.

So, unable to kill it—it is expected to get about $3 billion in fiscal 2008, down from $4 billion two years ago—the Office of Management and Budget keeps railing about how funds ought to be better targeted at its ostensible mission, which is to give a boost to poor communities where the free market isn't spreading the wealth on its own.

It's in that context that a news story in the Friday edition of The New York Times should make people furious:

Like the other Gulf Coast states battered by Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi was required by Congress to spend half of its billions in federal grant money to help low-income citizens trying to recover from the storm.

But so far, the state has spent $1.7 billion in federal money on programs that have mostly benefited relatively affluent residents and big businesses. The money has gone to compensate many middle- and upper-income homeowners, to aid utility companies whose equipment was damaged and to prop up the state’s insurance system.

Just $167 million, or about 10 percent of the federal money, has been spent on programs dedicated to helping the poor, mostly through a smaller grant program for lower-income homeowners.

And while that total will certainly increase, Mississippi has set aside just 23 percent of its $5.5 billion grant money — $1.25 billion — for these programs. About 37 percent of the residents of the state’s coast are low income, according to federal figures.

Mississippi is the only state for which the Bush administration has waived the rule that 50 percent of its Community Development Block Grants be spent on low-income programs, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which administers the program. It is also the only state to ask for such waivers.

Let's see if we have this straight. The CDBG program gets a bad rap from the Bush administration because it "does not have a clear and unambiguous mission" and the program's spending formula "does not effectively target funds to the most needy communities." But when Mississippi seeks a waiver of the rules so that the money can be spent more ambiguously and with less effective targeting, the White House says, "Oh, sure."

But this is par for the course for Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, the former Republican National Committee chairman and corporate lobbyist. He exemplifies the e. coli conservatism credo that government doesn't exist to serve the least of us, but it exists to serve cronies at the top, and if those at the bottom happen to get some crumbs, well, hey, thank the free market!

We've reported how this has worked throughout the whole Hurricane Katrina debacle in the hands of conservative ideologues like Barbour. This is the kind of duplicity that ought to be highlighted continually over the coming months. An ideology that allows for such hypocrisy with the people's money deserves to be shunned from the political landscape.