And now for something completely local - 16 Candidates

As a direct consequence of our new public financing rules for the mayoral race in San Francisco, we now have a cavalry charge of 16 candidates running for mayor. C.W. Nevius explains:

"It would be safe to say that many San Franciscans don't understand public financing...

Raise $25,000 and you get $50,000. Scare up $100,000 and you get a 4 to 1 match for $400,000. No wonder there are 16 candidates for mayor. It's political happy hour... this is a poor use of public funds. This is the first mayoral race with public financing and voters are learning that it allows candidates to get easy money and, in some cases, to waste it.

The weird catch-22 of San Francisco's system is that once the money is spent, a candidate can't drop out of the race unless he or she pays it back. The problem is that a 2007 change in the law made it possible to start pulling in the money nine months before the election. By the time August rolls around, candidates may be hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hole and can't afford to quit."

So we have candidates who are only in the race because we the citizens of SF are paying them to run for mayor with our money. And the peculiarities of our public finance rules mandate they stay in the race in order to continue to suckle at The City's bountiful teat. But this is all fine because - you know - we in SF have a lot of extra money lying around to finance any candidate who wants to run for mayor. Why would we not want to spend $9 million of our tax dollars for the privilege of sorting through sixteen mayoral candidates? I sure can't think of anything better to do with that money.

As Ron Popeil might say - "But that's not all!" At no extra charge we will now throw all sixteen candidates into the mix-master of our first ranked voting / instant runoff election for mayor. On November 8th, all San Francisco voters will cast three votes for mayor in rank order of preference. "Rank" being the operative word in that sentence. Rich Deleon ruminates about the election and The City's progressive future in Sunday's SF Chronicle Insight:

Digby is not amused.

Jon Stewart is on top of his game this week, skewering media coverage of the Madison Madness and offering some laugh-out-loud commentary:

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

For reasons that elude me, this bit was one step over the line for liberal blogger Digby at Hullabaloo who expends almost 800 words to explain why Jon Stewart is not funny and a traitor to the cause:

"I'm fairly sure that the only people who listen to Stewart are liberals who are getting the idea that it's wrong to get in the streets or call out the other side in rough language. Conservatives just think he's a useful idiot. I find this attitude very perplexing coming from a comedian, especially one who commonly does things which could be perceived as unfair, silly and undignified.

This is why Colbert's satire is so much more effective and, frankly, much braver. His satire is firmly aimed at the right, so he cannot take both sides. That's why it works --- it takes a position. By contrast, I'm increasingly not finding Jon's church-lady finger wagging all that funny, much less cool, and I fast forward though his opening segments more often than not."

While Digby was not amused, I found her pompous church-lady finger wagging at "Jon's church-lady finger wagging" to be vaguely bemusing in its own meta-bizzaro "you've-got-to-be-kidding" kind of way.

From the peanut gallery, Shakesvile, Bob Cesca, and Matt Christie sniff their approval at Digby's take-down.

James Joyner also took note of Digby's displeasure:

"The reason I watch Stewart (and Stephen Colbert, who I’ll turn to shortly) and not more vitriolic liberal comics like Bill Maher is precisely because of his civility. While his bits are aimed at people who generally agree with him, he’s not insulting to those who don’t. He’s welcoming and engaging conversation, treating his audience like intelligent, decent people. We tend not to agree on the issues but he rightly calls out the BS on both sides. Given his political leanings, he naturally sees more of it on the Right than the Left. But he at least tries to be intellectually honest and consistent in his principles."

I suppose I could take a cheap shot by noting the similarity of Digby's screed to Mao's dictum that "art must serve the interests of the workers, peasants and soldiers..." but I won't go there. Let's just say that if anyone ever needed an example of the stereotypical humorless liberal, I think we found Exhibit "A".


UPDATE: Replaced entire post with better version cross-posted at "Donklephant"

Divided and Balanced.™
Now that is fair.

Elections Have Consequences - Wisconsin Heart of Darkness Edition

Wisconsin Favorite Sons
Cannibals Jeffrey Dahmer and Eddie Gein

Memeorandum informs us the Madison, Wisconsin protest story crested the Yossarian* threshold and is now a mandatory post for all political bloggers.

Full Disclosure: Your loyal blogger has a few issues with the state of Wisconsin. I have driven the full length of the state more times than I care to remember, as there is no choice when transiting from Chicago to our family lake-side cottage in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Wisconsin produces little that is edible with deep-fried cheese curds the epitome of state cuisine, is responsible for foisting tasteless macro-brewed beers out of Milwaukee on the rest of the nation, is best known as the premier breeding ground of world-class serial killers (Eddie Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer being two examples of note), experiences periodic outbreaks of widespread community madness (Black River Falls), famously re-enacts the Vietnam war during deer season (with real bullets), and not coincidentally - is the home of the Green Bay Packers. Yes I am still bitter about the NFC Championship game. But I digress...

Having won the Wisconsin gubernatorial election in November, Republican Governor Scott Walker set out to do exactly what he said he would do as a candidate. This outraged many Democrats and liberals both in and out of the state, who apparently believe he should govern more like the Democrat who lost.

A few days ago Rachel Maddow sounded the liberal alarm and, as is often the case, her clarion call is the clearest articulation of the progressive case. We learn from Rachel that nothing less than the entire future of the Democratic Party is at stake in Madison, Wisconsin. Recall that the Democratic Party was characterized as a juggernaut only two short years ago, riding an unstoppable permanent demographic realignment over Republican Party roadkill with an open highway of political dominance rolling out before them. Yet now, suddenly and inexplicably the Democratic Party is facing political extinction in Madison, Wisconsin:


There is a downside to being crystal clear in your argument. You can be shown to be clearly wrong. Such is the case with the first claim of Maddow's case, that the state fiscal problems were all ginned up by the new governor. Politifact reports she clearly got her facts wrong:

"There is fierce debate over the approach Walker took to address the short-term budget deficit. But there should be no debate on whether or not there is a shortfall. While not historically large, the shortfall in the current budget needed to be addressed in some fashion. Walker’s tax cuts will boost the size of the projected deficit in the next budget, but they’re not part of this problem and did not create it. We rate Maddow’s take False."

The rest of Maddow's argument - that this is really all about money flow to Democratic Party - has merit. In fact, the right and left completely agree on this point. John Fund via Da Tech Guy:

'Labor historian Fred Siegel offers further reasons why unions are manning the barricades. Mr. Walker would require that public-employee unions be recertified annually by a majority vote of all their members, not merely by a majority of those that choose to cast ballots. In addition, he would end the government’s practice of automatically deducting union dues from employee paychecks. For Wisconsin teachers, union dues total between $700 and $1,000 a year'

This is what this is all about, nothing else, that’s why the biggest guns in the democratic party are fighting this fight. They know those dues will end up funding their campaigns, if they lose this fight here it’s all over..."

Isn't it great when the right and left, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives can come together, be of one mind and agree on the facts? Krugman echoes Maddow's thoughts, saying this is all about power for Republicans, yet with a partisan blind spot as big as Wisconsin, he fails to notice that this is also all about power for Democrats. And no - this is not a "false equivalency". This is as equivalent as it gets.

Democrats believe that Republican politicians are the beneficiaries of corporate largess and consequently vote taxpayer funds into profits for private contractors, "public-private" partnerships, and contracts for unnecessary weapon systems, with the expectation that portions of said profits are funneled back into supporting Republican campaigns. Republicans believe that Democrats continually increase spending on the size of the public sector and legislate union-friendly rules in order to increase the base of forced dues payed into union coffers which in turn funnel money back into supporting Democratic campaigns. They're both right. May the circle be unbroken. Kumbayah.

This is one reason (among many) why The Dividist is so adamant that neither party can ever be trusted with all the keys to the castle. Ever. Without exception. Regardless of individual candidates. But I digress...

Meanwhile, back in Madison, the public sector unions have again organized protests at the steps of the capitol to exercise their Democratic right to shut down the Democratic process and subvert the Democratically expressed wishes of the Wisconsin electorate, in order to be sure that the money flow to the Democratic Party is not interrupted.

The irony was not lost on Joe Klein:

"An election was held in Wisconsin last November. The Republicans won. In a democracy, there are consequences to elections and no one, not even the public employees unions, are exempt from that. There are no guarantees that labor contracts, including contracts governing the most basic rights of unions, can't be renegotiated, or terminated for that matter. We hold elections to decide those basic parameters. And it seems to me that Governor Scott Walker's basic requests are modest ones--asking public employees to contribute more to their pension and health care plans, though still far less than most private sector employees do. He is also trying to limit the unions' abilities to negotiate work rules--and this is crucial when it comes to the more efficient operation of government in a difficult time...

Public employees unions are an interesting hybrid. Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership. Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed... of the public?

The events in Wisconsin are a rebalancing of power that, after decades of flush times and lax negotiating, had become imbalanced. That is also something that, from time to time, happens in a democracy."

Patrick McIlheran finds support for the Governor from a surprising historical source:

"Roosevelt's reign certainly was the bright dawn of modern unionism. The legal and administrative paths that led to 35% of the nation's workforce eventually unionizing by a mid-1950s peak were laid by Roosevelt. But only for the private sector. Roosevelt openly opposed bargaining rights for government unions. "The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, "I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place" in the public sector. "A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government."

As Klein notes, the politics of power has a way of balancing itself out. The media and Democrats exclusive focus on the union power-play fight over the union give-backs in the "Scott Walker Budget Repair Bill", have allowed some of the possibly more egregious issues buried in this bill to remain relatively unnoticed. As with Democrats in 2009, the seeds of destruction for the resurgent Wisconsin Republicans are being planted now in 2011. Perhaps in this very bill.

I think the Democrats and unions are seriously misreading the temperament of the Wisconsin voters who just elected this Republican governor and legislature. Particularly when Democrats talk about initiating recall campaigns for Wisconsin Republican politicians. As noted above, Wisconsin does have a history of madness and a long standing tradition of eating their own, but this recall campaign is truly delusional, and likely to backfire on Democrats in a big way. Who is more likely to get recalled? Republicans doing what they were elected to do four months ago? Or Wisconsin Democratic legislators shirking their responsibilities and hiding out in Illinois motels?

Well, Democrats are always welcomed in Chicago. Maybe the Wisconsin legislators should stay in their Illinois hideouts. They may find that they will be more welcomed in the President's old Cook County stomping grounds than back in their home districts.

*Paraphrasing Joseph Heller's famous protagonist from Catch 22 - "What if everyone was blogging about about the Wisconsin protests?" I can only respond as did Bomber Pilot John Yossarian: "Then I'd be a damn fool not to".

Divided and Balanced.™
Now that is fair.

Gridlock is really good. Really.

The Dividist has complained in the past about the propensity of pundits and bloggers to conflate the concepts of "divided government" and legislative "gridlock". The terms are often used erroneously as interchangeable synonyms. Yet, even the Dividist has occasionally employed this semantic shortcut, such as in the July, 2010 post "Gridlock is Good." In that post the beneficial aspects of partisan legislative gridlock was presented in the form of gridlock preventing a negative outcome - specifically stopping bad bills from being passed into law (see legislative abominations - Porkulus and Obamacare as examples of the damage done when one party has the power to pass legislation on pure partisan votes). The underlying common sense notion is that divided government and partisan gridlock prevent the worst instincts of either party from becoming law. When the moderating influence of legislative gridlock is bypassed, we get legislation no one really understands, except the special interests that helped craft it. So we are treated to the spectacle of our legislative leaders explaining that we won't know what sweeping legislation will accomplish until after it is signed into law. Our legislators may not know what they are passing, but once it gets to the agencies administering the law, the special interests do.

In a recent Cato Institute Policy Analysis, Marcus E. Ethridge (University of Wisconsin Political Science Professor) outlines a new positive argument for the inefficient, constitutionally divided, and often gridlocked legislative process. Ethridge offers a compelling case that our inefficient checked, balanced, and divided government is far less susceptible to special interest influence than the more efficient executive branch agency rule-making process preferred by Progressives impatient for rapid change.

Cato Institute Policy Analysis #672 - The Case for Gridlock:

"In the wake of the 2010 elections, President Obama declared that voters did not give a mandate to gridlock. His statement reflects over a century of Progressive hostility to the inefficient and slow system of government created by the American Framers. Convinced that the government created by the Constitution frustrates their goals, Progressives have long sought ways around its checks and balances. Perhaps the most important of their methods is delegating power to administrative agencies, an arrangement that greatly transformed U.S. government during and after the New Deal. For generations, Progressives have supported the false premise that administrative action in the hands of experts will realize the public interest more effectively than the constitutional system and its multiple vetoes over policy changes. The political effect of empowering the administrative state has been quite different: it fosters policies that reflect the interests of those with well organized power. A large and growing body of evidence makes it clear that the public interest is most secure when governmental institutions are inefficient decisionmakers. An arrangement that brings diverse interests into a complex, sluggish decisionmaking process is generally unattractive to special interests. Gridlock also neutralizes some political benefits that producer groups and other well-heeled interests inherently enjoy. By fostering gridlock, the U.S. Constitution increases the likelihood that policies will reflect broad, unorganized interests instead of the interests of narrow, organized groups."

This is an important read but not an easy one. Etheridge challenges conventional thinking about why special interests hold such sway over public policy. He explores the mechanism by which their financial and lobbying muscle are applied to maximum effect influencing public policy and resources in direct contradiction to the public interest and even legislative intent. Distilling his 20 page argument into a blog post is difficult if not impossible. We will instead excerpt a few representative paragraphs, comment briefly on salient points introduced in his analysis and encourage you to read the whole thing.

San Francisco Values - Hamburger Edition

Our hometown supervisors have yet again set up The City for national ridicule and general hilarity, this time with the ban on Macdonald's Happy Meal toys. I guess it is a good thing that in these trying times we can offer ourselves up to the rest of the nation as civic clowns to help lighten the national mood.

I do understand that - in the most liberal major city with the most liberal governing body in the country - it is impossible to resist the temptation to succumb to their core belief that no one is capable of making any decisions for themselves or their family without their benevolent dictates gently guiding forcing us in the right direction. But... when even the Daily Show is pointing and laughing at us - you'd think our Supes might get a clue.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
San Francisco's Happy Meal Ban
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

That is SF Supervisor Eric Mar being made to look particularly stupid by Daily Show comedian Asaif Mandvi. It's not like that is particularly difficult thing to do with our Board of Supes, but Asaif did it with an extra helping of much deserved derision.

The local fishwrap transcribes the funniest bit:

"But the most brutal part comes when Mar explains that his 10-year-old daughter, Jade, doesn't like fast food anymore after watching the documentary "Super Size Me" with him. Those opposed to the to ban maintain it's up to parents, not McDonalds, to ensure their kids learn healthy habits.

Mandvi: "So she learned from her parents?"

Mar: "That's a large part of it."

Mandvi: (staring in wide-eyed disbelief) "Would it be hard to pass a law to force Netflix to send 'Super Size Me' to every parent in San Francisco?"

Mar: "We can't force Netflix, a private company, to do something like that."

Mandvi: "Are you serious right now?"

Mar: "We have no power to force Netflix or a private company like that to change a business practice."

Mandvi: "So on one hand, you're like, 'We can't do that' but on the other hand, you are doing that."

Mar, looking very tired, shakes his head, stumbles over one of the progressive supervisor's favorite words, equitability, and mercifully the interview ends. Oy."

The good news is that four of our Supes have termed out and will be leaving office this week. The bad news is that Eric Mar is not among them.

Reason TV also took note:


The Taiwanese news animators have apparently fallen behind the cultural curve on this story. I am looking at you NextMedia.

Defending Divided Government

The good news - I am seeing more attention paid to the divided government meme from the main stream media than at any point in the four+ years that I have been beating the drum for this voting heuristic.

The bad news - As we close in on election day, much of the attention is in the form of an attack from the left on the intellectual foundation of the divided government voting rationale. This is problematical, because in two years they will all be making the argument for divided government. It won't look good. Truth be told, I don't really believe this is bad news. This is a case where any publicity is good publicity. Particularly since the arguments against divided government are so weak.

The reason for this recent spike in attention is not hard to understand. The Democrats biggest erosion of support from '08 to '10 is from the independent, moderate, centrist, libertarian vote. For the most part, these voters are not choosing to vote Republican in 2010 because they like the Republican candidates or because they suddenly have embraced GOP values. They are voting Republican to divide the government in the hope of reining in the Democratic agenda and restoring some semblance of fiscal rationality. The only surprise is that it has taken this long for the left to understand that their core problem was not ennui in the base. Their core problem is they have lost the center.

We rebutted an attack from academia a few days ago, now a new front has opened up in the the left-o-sphere and op-ed columns of the main stream media. Leading the liberal wolf pack attack is progressive journolist policy wonk Ezra Klein (you don't suppose this is being coordinated do you?) No matter, I don't really care. Let us deconstruct, starting at the source. Ezra Klein at the Washington Post dismisses the notion that divided government will result in lower deficits in "Handicapping the deficit under divided government":

"When you get concrete, in other words, it's much easier to see how divided government worsens the deficit and very hard to see how it reduces it. The vehicle for worsening the deficit already exists and has Republican support. The vehicle for reducing the deficit doesn't. And that's before we talk about health-care reform, where Republicans have supported both repeal and, more specifically, repeal of the bill's cost controls, either of which would worsen the deficit picture further."

To some degree, this is a red herring. The intent is to distract from the massive increase in federal spending under the last two years of One Party Democratic Rule, which was a primary contributor to the contemporaneous exploding deficit. Ezra does not speak specifically to the spending question, because he knows that the historic correlation of federal spending increases in the modern era when comparing divided and one party government is unambiguous and unassailable.

Divided government restrains the growth of spending. Full Stop. This has been documented beyond any reasonable doubt by economists and political scientists like Niskanen, Van Doren, and Slivinski. Klein does not really challenge this historical fact, instead he contends that extending the Bush tax cuts are more likely under a divided government, and no spending cuts can overcome that negative impact to revenue. This is nonsense. For one thing, the consensus in Congress to extend most of the cuts is as bipartisan as it gets. Even the administration supports extending most of the Bush cuts. After this election, it'll be practically unanimous. Moreover, the fiscal insanity of One Party Democratic Rule under the Obama administration has set the bar of improved fiscal responsibility very low. It will not be hard to improve on this:


I don't need to respond to Ezra's demand to name where the specific cuts will come from to know that the new divided government will find a way to improve on the 2009-2010 fiscal disaster. I will, however, make this counter offer should Klein find his way to my obscure corner of the blogosphere: I'll take your bet Ezra. You name the stakes. Should the GOP take the majority in either house of Congress, I'll bet the 2011-2012 deficit will be lower than 2009-2010.

Mathew Yglesia follows Ezra's lead, quotes a supporting article by Jackie Colmes in the New York Times, asks and answers the question "Will Divided Government Lead to Deficit Reduction? Will it lead to anything?":

"Jackie Calmes writes in the New York Times, however, that she thinks it’s unlikely a new GOP majority in the House of Representatives would lead to a bipartisan coalition for deficit reduction. She paints this picture in fairly broad terms whereby “incumbents otherwise inclined to make deals are now wary, Republicans say privately, mindful of colleagues who lost primary challenges from Tea Party candidates.” I think we should assume that Calmes is right, but I would put forward another hypothesis about this. There’s unlikely to be a bipartisan deficit reduction deal because conservatives don’t care about the deficit... But conservatives don’t favor deficit reduction. They favor tax cuts. When the budget was in surplus, both George W. Bush and Alan Greenspan defined the existence of the surplus as a problem for public policy—one that should be solved with tax cuts. You can’t compromise without some element of common purpose."

More nonsense. Yglesias uses Calmes article as a launching point for little more that an anti-conservative diatribe. Moreover, he ignores her concluding paragraph, wherein Calmes explicitly outlines a scenario whereby divided government leads directly to deficit reduction. It is not a very attractive scenario, but by itself refutes what both Ygelsias and Klein assert in their posts.

Yglesias should know better, as he cites David Mayhew's definitive work Divided We Govern earlier in the post. Mayhew showed that bipartisan legislative productivity in Congress is not correlated with the government composition but rather is correlated with a "palpable public mood for change". If the public really wants spending restraint and deficit reduction - the public will get it under a divided government. Right now, both Republicans and moderate Democrats understand that this is exactly what the public wants. And on that basis Mr. Yglesias - I'll offer you the exact same wager.

For Round two, Ezra Klein cites John Sides blogging at the Monkey Cage (h/t Ricketson), who is in turn citing the Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias posts above. Sides promises a blogging series on what political science can tell us about divided government in "What Divided Government Does: Deficit Edition". His first finding in the series is a paper from James Alt and Robert Lowrey on which he bases some fairly extravagant claims:

"Based on their model and evidence, divided government usually makes deficits worse. Here's some of their theory about situations where different parties control each chamber, as is likely to result from next week's election... Their data come from the American states during the period 1968-87. Their central finding regarding divided government is:

'We show how, faced with an unexpected recession or inheriting a deficit, unified party governments not subject to deficit carryover laws might allow it to grow (if they remained in office) while those subject to such laws eliminate deficits more quickly. States with split legislatures also adjust less, regardless of the legal situation, in large part because divided legislatures do not appear to adjust revenues in response to surpluses and deficits.'

...The more general point from this piece: divided government makes it harder to reduce the deficit. Doing this often entails coordinating on unpopular choices -- something that becomes more difficult when opposing parties are simultaneously in charge."

Do I even have to say it? There is absolutely no basis for assuming what happens in a state government is applicable to what happens at the federal level. None. Zero. Nada. Sides is making a huge leap across a bottomless chasm carrying a finding on apples to support his sweeping conclusion on oranges. It is as ridiculous as studying hung governments in a parliamentary system in Italy, and claiming it is applicable to the US federal divided government (or vice versa).

From the beginning of this blog, I have been meticulous about applying historical and economic scholarship on divided federal government to a voting heuristic applicable only to the federal government. Unless there is scholarship that shows findings at a federal level can be applied at the state level and/or vice versa , this is just plain wild ass guesswork (not even Scientific Wild Ass Guesswork) by John Sides, and intellectual sleight of hand.

The historical evidence at the federal level does show unambiguously that federal spending is restrained under divided government compared to single party rule. Combine that with Mayhew's finding that legislation follows public demand for change - and I am confident in a different conclusion. Confident enough to offer John Sides the same wager that the deficit will be reduced under the next two years of divided government.

Finally, we return to Ezra Klein one more time. For his third post in three days attacking divided government, Ezra presents an interesting chart attributed to staffer Alicia Parapaino, and then tells us what to think about it:

"What you're seeing there is that it's not the composition of the government, but the growth of the economy, that drives the deficit. Wide gaps open up during the 1973, 1981, 1991 and 2008 recessions, and they close as the economy recovers."

Actually, Ezra, the more pertinent information "you're seeing there", is that the average rate of federal spending during periods of single party rule is much larger than during periods of divided government. The federal government has a direct impact on federal spending. The federal government has, at best, an indirect influence on GDP and the macro economy. So there is no reason to expect an explicit linkage between federal government deficits determined by the macro economy and government composition, except to the degree that it is influenced by the direct correlation with federal spending.

There is one other really obvious thing "you're seeing there" - The rate of increase in federal spending during these last two years of One Party Democratic Rule swamps everything that has gone before.

Which brings me to my sweeping conclusion (everyone else is doing it) of what the electorate's preference for divided government in 2010 is really all about...

It's the spending stupid.

Divided and Balanced.™
Now that is fair.

It's the spending stupid - Part 13,665,926,643,255

That 13,665,926,643,255 number is the dollar amount that we, as American citizens, now owe to pay for all the spending that we demanded from the politicians that we elected. If you have a problem sorting through all those digits, that number is around $13.7 trillion. It doesn't look so bad when you write it like that.

CBS Reports: National Debt Up $3 Trillion on Obama's Watch

"New numbers posted today on the Treasury Department website show the National Debt has increased by more than $3 trillion since President Obama took office. The National Debt stood at $10.626 trillion the day Mr. Obama was inaugurated. The Bureau of Public Debt reported today that the National Debt had hit an all time high of $13.665 trillion. The Debt increased $4.9 trillion during President Bush's two terms. The Administration has projected the National Debt will soar in Mr. Obama's fourth year in office to nearly $16.5-trillion in 2012. That's more than 100 percent of the value of the nation's economy and $5.9-trillion above what it was his first day on the job."

It is not like we are not getting value for all that debt. We are paying for at least two wars, subsidizing the defense of Japan, Germany, and South Korea, policing the world, and attempting to rebuild several Mideast nations in our image.

Additionally, since coming into office, this administration and the One Party Democratic Rulers that we (meaning you) elected thought it important to step up the spending and borrowing because they decided our government needed to fund:

• Large increases in public sector jobs while private sector jobs are lost during a recession
• A record historically ginormous pork filled stimulus plan that does not stimulate.
• Taking over a corrupt bankrupt insurance company and two bankrupt car companies.
• Paying down and subsidizing risk the mortgages of people who cannot afford the houses they bought at wildly overpriced levels in a bubble (caused by government policy distorting the housing market by pumping dollars into home ownership for everyone).
  
• Bailing out the banks that made the bad home loans by investing in pools of securitized mortgage instruments that hold the bad loans (not to mention the Fed loaning banks money for free).
  
• A trillion dollars in new spending on a "reform" health care bill that does not control health care costs, does not cover everyone, is not paid for, and no one understands (least of all the Democratic legislators who steamrolled it over GOP opposition).

As reported by the CBO last week, all this largess added up to a record 21.4% increase in mostly unfunded additional Federal spending in the almost two years of One Party Democratic Rule.

For most people, this looks like a pretty easy equation. A massive increase in irresponsible unfunded spending over the last two years resulted in massive record setting increases in the deficit over the same two years. It looks superficially as easy to understand as 2 + 2 = 4. But that would be wrong. You see this is actually an example of "scared voters not thinking clearly".

To correctly understand what is happening requires the sophistication and big brains of a liberal Nobel prize winning economist. Paul Krugman is the man for the job. He explains that to understand this spending correctly, you need to consider the spending within the context of a completely imaginary GDP that is much larger than the one that is - you know - here with us on Earth, in the actual U.S. of A. in what we like to call - reality. Then he completely throws out several categories of spending where some of the biggest increases took place, and Ouila! Obama is a positively parsimonious small spender!

OTOH - for all you scared voters like me who are not thinking clearly about this election -

Ed Morrissey sums it up nicely:

"Clearly, while Republicans have been somewhat irresponsible in running up debt, Democrats have managed to be almost three times worse than Republicans. Just as clearly, they have no intention to cut spending to correct this, but instead plan to hike taxes to fund their spending spree. And they’re being led by a President who wants to spend even more, as his own budget projections show."

Or even more succinctly - It's the spending stupid.

Divided and Balanced.™
Now that is fair.

Robert Gibbs gives me an excuse to use my Obama morphing into Bush graphic again.

This is kind of fun...

First - Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tees off into the left rough:

"I hear these people saying he's like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested," Gibbs said. "I mean, it's crazy."

Glenn Greenwald takes it personally, almost as if Gibbs is aiming directly at him:

"Robert Gibbs -- in one of the most petulant, self-pitying outbursts seen from a top political official in recent memory, half derived from a paranoid Richard Nixon rant and the other half from a Sean Hannity/Sarah Palin caricature of The Far Left -- is here to tell you that the real reason you're dissatisfied with the President is because you're a fringe, ideological, Leftist extremist ingrate who needs drug counseling...

The Democrats have been concerned about a lack of enthusiasm on the part of their base headed into the midterm elections. These sorts of rabid, caricatured, Fox-News-copying attacks on the Left will undoubtedly help generate more enthusiasm -- more loud clapping -- for the Democrats. I know I'm eager to go canvass and clap for Democrats after reading Gibbs' noble, inspiring vision. If it were Gibbs' goal to be as petulant and self-pitying as possible, what could he have done differently?...

I hope there are enough drug testing facilities to accommodate Talking Points Memo reporters, Charlie Savage, the lawyers from EFF, Bob Herbert, Anthony Romero, Russ Feingold, and The New York Times Editorial Board. I don't know anyone who asserts that Obama is the same as Bush -- I don't believe that and never asserted that -- but if anyone needs to be "drug tested," it would be those denying that many of Bush's most controversial policies and actions have been embraced in full by Barack Obama."

Ok - Gibbs really is aiming at Greenwald.

Finally, the voice of Reason - Matt Welch weighs in:

"And though the existence of progressive-left criticism of Obama has been one of the few heartening things about political discourse these past 19 miserable months, I wish more lefties were making the George W. Bush comparison on things like bailouts and spending binges and military surges and WoT detentions and entitlement expansion and Old Europe-tweaking and drug raids and obscenity prosecutions and general bullshittery."

Hey Matt - I'm doing my part.

Although - strictly speaking - I guess I am not a lefty now.

But I was in 2006, and hope to be again in 2012. Does that count?

UPDATE:
Mister Gibbs sheepishly "walked back" his earlier statement, describing it as "inartful".

My question is not why his liberal base is frustrated, that is pretty obvious. My question is what exactly was Gibbs trying to do? The initial rant was not "off the cuff". Lets get real. Gibbs is a Press Secretary. He serves up exactly nothing that is not first chewed, digested and excreted by Axelrod and Rahm. Then I read this in his artful walk back from the interview:

“In November, America will get to choose between going back to the failed policies that got us into this mess, or moving forward with the policies that are leading us out.”

Now I get it. They want to run against GWB again in 2010 because – you know – it worked last time. I mean - Bush was not running then... Bush is not running now... What's the difference?

But they really can’t run against Bush if the best and brightest in their base keep saying that Obama is acting just like Bush.

This was all about getting them to stop making that comparison. At least until after the election.

cross-posted at Donklephant

Divided and Balanced.™
Now that is fair.

It's baaaaaack... Divided Government rises from the grave.

After having an electoral stake pounded through its heart last November, after being exposed to the searing media morning light of a "permanent realignment" in the "center-left" American electorate, with a silver bullet in the brain of a "broken GOP brand", and with a garlic necklace strangling it's "sixty's culture war" neck, the corpse of "Divided Government" seemed dead and buried in the media for the foreseeable future.

But last week the undead meme was walking again:

The GOP's Best Weapon In 2010
History Makes The Case For Divided Government
By Gary Andres

"Inclement political weather rocked President Obama and his party this summer. Falling poll numbers and growing voter misgivings open the door for big Republican gains in next year's midterm elections.

But more storm clouds gather. With Democrats controlling the White House and Congress, the GOP can now use voter distrust of unified party control (the same party in charge of the presidency and Congress) as a tool to make major gains in next year's elections--a political weapon both parties could only unsheathe irregularly over the past half century.

Why are voters choosing to neuter a political party after it consolidates power? "Policy balancing" is part of the explanation, according to Fiorina. Does this mean voters say something like, "I voted for a Democrat for president, so now I'll choose a Republican to balance things out." Probably not. He believes voters engage in something a little less premeditated. "While not consciously choosing divided government, people may have a vague appreciation of the overall picture that plays some role in how they vote. People could be voting as if they are making conscious choices to divide government even if their individual decisions are well below the conscious level," Fiorina writes."

Morris Fiorina is a political scientist that wrote the definitive text on Divided Government, titled appropriately enough - "Divided Government". His comment in this piece goes directly to the raison d'être for this blog. To seek an answer to the never-ending DWSUWF question - "Rather than trusting the partisan balancing choice to a subconscious impulse, would we not be much better off if a few percentage of the electorate simply voted consciously for divided government?" Every time. Without exception.

And on that topic, two more recent articles on the same general theme:

Swing time is coming for Dems, GOP
By: Noemie Emery Examiner Columnist

"Calibrating the balance between the state and the free enterprise system is a delicate business, which is why the "big" and "small" government parties tend to take turns in power, so they can absorb and fine tune one another's achievements, and undo each other's mistakes. When the out-party wins power, it is given a mandate to tweak the controls and make a slight change in the country's direction, the key words being "slight change" and "tweak." Confronted with excess, the country enforces its own equilibrium, as when the Republican Congress crashed into Bill Clinton, frustrating both, but pleasing the country, creating welfare reform and a roaring economy. Divided government is a substitute for a conservative temperament, which is why it is frequently popular. The way things are going, it may shortly be with us again."

THE REAL REASON AMERICANS ARE ANGRY
It's the big government, stupid.
by Matt Welch

"It's been a hilarious August, watching media supporters of President Obama's health care package puzzle over the obscure motivations of the noncompliant Americans rallying against it.

"Racial anxiety," guessed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. "Nihilism," theorized Time's Joe Klein. "The crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy," historian Rick Perlstein proclaimed in the Washington Post.

While the commentariat's condescension is almost comical, the whole evil-or-stupid explanation misses the elephant in Obama's room: Americans of all stripes, it turns out, aren't very keen about the government barging into their lives."

One side benefit of watching the undead specter of divided government continue to haunt the media - We're just not hearing about how the United States is really a "center-left" country any more.

It may be a bit early for these proclamations and conclusions. We are still more than a year away from the midterms. But if this keeps up, DWSUWF may have to restore the Carnival of Divided Government to a monthly publication schedule.

I still think it will take until 2012 to get there, but when Chris Dodd, Arlen Specter, and Harry Reid are all in trouble, we can safely say that divided government has risen from the grave.

Divided and Balanced.™
Now that is fair.

Technorati tags: libertarian , Democrat, Divided Government, Republican, Liberal, Conservative.

Dear Libertarians, We're just not that into you. Love, Democrats

Whither the Libertarian Democrat?
A meditation on a failed affair.

Wherein your loyal blogger takes note of the current incarnation of the liberal/libertarian fusionist debate and relates a personal tale of attraction, commitment and rejection.

Attraction
Shortly after beginning this blog, I had my first exposure to the "Libertarian Democrat" - a post by Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos on June 7, 2006. I was still a blogging neophyte, feeling my way around the 'sphere and didn't read it until weeks after it was posted. It was a catalyst for me to join Daily Kos and leave the 900th of 900 comments on that post. I don't know if Kos coined the term "Libertarian Democrat", but it was the first I saw it. I found the notion attractive, as it reinforced the rationale with which this blog began - that Single Party Republican Rule represented a demonstrably clear and present danger to both our economic and civil liberties. This from an early post responding to a Ross Douthat argument that libertarians should remain aligned with Republicans:

"Douthat is advocating libertarian fealty to the Republican party, supported by the "enemy of my enemy" argument. This is nonsense. To support the acknowledged benefit of divided government by voting Democratic in the 2006 election, is not the same as "finding a home" in the Democratic party. It is simply tactical support to obtain an immediate and desirable result: Fiscal restraint and better federal governance through the mechanism of divided government. To continue to support Republican single party control of the Federal Government in the face of what has actually transpired over the last five years can only be read as a naked appeal to "pay attention to what Republicans say, but ignore what they do."

Courtship
While I was dubious about the long-term prospects of the relationship even then, I must admit that the concept of a Libertarian Democrat match was exciting. Sure, I was still on the rebound after the Republicans jilted me for a floozy - that big government, big spending, big deficit, neocon war mongering, faith-based "compassionate conservatism" bitch. So, I was primed and ready when shortly before the midterms, Markos kicked off a Cato Unbound series amplifying his earlier post and offering a proposal of marriage (sort of). There were plenty of libertarians playing hard-to-get or warning about marrying outside the faith, as evidenced by the 87 trackbacks on Markos' post. Nick Gillespie specifically warned that this was really about something a bit sleazier than a marriage:

"A couple of years ago, the great essayist and trash-culture authority Joe Bob Briggs told me about the heroic but–alas!–doomed search for a cinematic pot of gold that was called “couples porn.”... I thought about couples porn a lot while reading Markos Moulitsas’s “The Case for the Libertarian Democrat,” a concept every bit as titillating to me as an inveterate critic of the Bush-era Republican Party as couples porn was to X-rated movie moguls 30 years ago... the GOP won’t be getting anything like that kind of support [from libertarians] come this November or in November 2008. But it’s far from clear that many disgruntled libertarians will — or should be — moving to the Dem column in any straight-ticket way, especially if it means signing on to Meyerson’s “New Dealish,” Scandanavian social democracy (currently being rethought by its practitioners). Until Democratic partisans such as Moulitsas and Reed make a convincing — or maybe even a half-hearted — case for laying in with the party of Robert Byrd and Henry Waxman, they’re just peddling the political equivalent of couples porn."

Quickie Marriage
What the hell. I threw caution to the wind, ignored Nick's advice, and said "I do" to "A marriage of Convenience":

"...in 2006 we have made a match, and will consummate a marriage of convenience between democrats and libertarians. It may be little more than a fling, a star-crossed union that is destined to fall apart in a year or two. But, it'll have plenty of fireworks, and be fun and exciting while it lasts... Libertarians don't need to be looking for "couples porn" right now. Take my word for it, it is a lot more fun with a partner. Libertarians need to pop some viagra, and take a chance on romance with the Dems for the just next four weeks. Then we'll see how they behave. Sure, the marriage won't last. But it does not need to last longer than November, and who knows? - we might even give birth to something new and interesting. A potent libertarian political force."

Honeymoon
Ah - young love. It always starts out so promising. Markos thought the union made a real difference in the mid-terms, as did some libertarians. He said "Libertarian Democrats" was the subject of his next book. Terry Michael wrote a Libertarian Democrat manifesto. I even decided to move in and started cross-posting at the Freedom Democrats blog. Freedom Democrats was started by Logan Ferree, a tireless diarist on Kos, advocate for the concept of the Libertarian Democrat and also an early author of a left-libertarian manifesto.

Performance Issues
Of course it couldn't last. By the summer of 2007, the Kossacks were abusing their libertarian "significant other". Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats controlled Congress, slipped on the ring of power, liked it, and libertarians were filling Viagra prescriptions to keep up the interest. By 2008, with the Presidential campaign in full swing, the GOP was looking sickly. David Weigel was saying "I told you so" and Markos published a book that had nothing to do with libertarians.

Counseling
At the end of a troubled marriage, everyone has advice for the couple. Friends on both sides, co-workers, spiritual advisers, rivals, professional counselors and strippers all have something to contribute. Over the last few weeks, advice was being doled out with a shovel:

• Jonah Goldberg says "time will tell" but believes time has run out for this marriage.
• Mark Thompson thinks that libertarians have issues, notably a blind spot regarding ex-spouse Republican faults. The marriage would work better, he claims, if they would just preferentially ignore the Democratic faults instead.
• Will Wilkinson agrees with Mark, noting that libertarians should understand that being seen with the left is cooler than hanging with the right, and who wants an uncool marriage?
• Brink Lindsey, an early "Liberaltarian" matchmaker, brings some "tough love" to the economic apple of the Liberal's eye, expending a few thousand words to show that the "brilliant economist" Paul Krugman is promoting "reactionary fantasies." The Democrats will really like that. Let me know how that works out for you.
• Ross Douthat, having been jilted by libertarians in 2006 while begging them to come home to the GOP, consoles Will and Brink while - oh so gently - reminding them that a one handed relationship is not all that satisfying. Cue Jackson Brown singing Rosie.
• Later, Will admits the "Democrats are screwing it up", but he would still prefer to try to change the Democrats behavior. I think most marriage counselors would identify Will as an enabler in an abusive relationship.
• Ilya Solmin observes that the object of the Liberalitarian's affections, finding the milk free, no longer feel any particular need to buy the cow. I believe that Ilya is concerned that both Will and Brink may run afoul of anti-stalking legislation.
• Robert McCain indulges in some jilted conservative schadenfreude as he observes the end of the affair between the hot liberal aerobic instructor gold digger, and a deluded Libertarian Rotarian. Sure, she took everything that was important to you and destroyed your life. But - live and learn - your plain Republican cloth coat wife will take you back.
• Jonathon Chait magnanimously notes that Mark Thompson's notion of a mixed Liberal/Libertarian marriage will certainly work and work well, if the libertarians will only agree to convert to liberalism.
• Stephen Green reminds us of that time honored relationship advice - There are more fish in the sea. Well - ok - there are two fish. And they both stink, so it is time to get back to the one that stinks less.
• Jacob Lyle nets it out: "I always thought the libertarian-leftist alliance was doomed by the fact that they sort of hate us."

Divorce
I used the recent movie poster for the image at the top of the post. The movie got mixed reviews, and I probably won't see it until it shows up on my TV. But it precipitated one great quote from the Rolling Stone Peter Traver's review:

"This toxic wisp of a movie is based on a toxic wisp of a book by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo that was itself based on a toxic wisp of a throwaway line they wrote for TV's Sex and the City."

Heh. But I didn't take this post title from the movie, or the book, or the TV show. I took it from a toxic wisp of a January diary post on Daily Kos that garnered 130 mostly toxic comments. The diary and comments are not vastly different in tone or intellectual content than what I would find on a right wing site at the height of the "Permanent Republican Majority" era in 2003-2005. It represents the identical perspective of partisans in power that expect to stay in power, and I think it is a fair representation of the rank and file Democratic Party gestalt today. That wrapped it up for me.

My journey with the Libertarian Democrat meme starts with Kos and ends with Kos.

Can't we still be friends?
The fate of the Freedom Democrats blog is instructive. This was a vibrant site in 2006-2007. In a recent post, blogger DevP - who had been hosting the site - put the fate of Freedom Democrats (FD) up for consideration to the dwindling membership:

"I personally feel like I should disentangle from the site. FD is fundamentally about a "libertarian democrat" synthesis, and while I'm still a Democrat (and loving it), I'm no longer "libertarian" in any fashion that's meaningful in a political context."

I applaud DevP's honest assessment. You don't need a political synthesis, if you think you are holding all the cards. This is where Brink, Will, and other Liberaltarians are kidding themselves. Today there is no one in the Democratic Party or on the left that are even vaguely interested. There are no allies... There is no synthesis... There is no relationship... They are just not that into you. As it stands today, the liberaltarians are just libertarians playing with themselves. Nothing new there.

From the comments on that post, it looks like Freedom Democrats will indeed continue in one form or another. I am glad to see that and will continue to cross-post if they permit it. In fact - I'll post this on FD over the next couple of days to bookend my participation in the old site.

What about the kids?
A frequently heard Democratic complaint during the Republican ascendancy, was that Republican were only about attaining and keeping power, while Democrats were the party of ideas. I have no idea what the Republican Party stands for today. I really don't. But I understand perfectly what Obama and the Democratic Party is all about. They are all about attaining, maintaining and increasing power - just like the Republicans. That makes it crystal clear what libertarians and the libertarian leaning need to do now. Paraphrasing my comment on FD: The simple fact is this - All of the danger from the state now flows from the Democratic Party. They have all the power, or as close as you can get in what is left of the protection afforded by our constitutional framework. The small interest in libertarian issues that once bubbled up from mainstream Democratic blogs are now derided, discarded or ignored. The Democrats won. The "freedom" part? Not so much.

There is no point in trying to hold this marriage together for the kids. They are going to have their hands full paying for the six years of big government, big spending, big deficit Single Party Republican Rule followed up (after a short two year break) by at least four more years of bigger government, bigger spending, bigger deficit Single Party Democratic Rule.

It's the kids that always suffer in a divorce.

Poor bastards.

UPDATED: 02-Mar-09
Added links. Fixed typos. Edited for grammar and clarity.

Divided and Balanced.™
Now that is fair.

Technorati tags: libertarian , Democrat, Divided Government, Republican, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian Democrat, Liberaltarian.