Another Possible Reason For Enthusiasm Gap?

A lot has been made of the “enthusiasm gap” that might or might not exist between Republican Teabaggers eager to take our country back to the 1750′s and the Democrats who would prefer to keep moving forward into the 2000′s.  To some extent, I think the enthusiasm gap does exist.  I have provided brief examples in the past few weeks that could help in deciding whether the gap exists and whether it should exist.

Here is the latest:

Mortgage companies enrolled in the Obama administration’s signature foreclosure-prevention initiative may be receiving taxpayer funds despite not having a legal right to the home or to the mortgage, a top Treasury Department official revealed Wednesday.

But despite faulty or missing paperwork, the Obama administration allows mortgage companies to boot homeowners from the program, sticking the borrowers with massive bills that often leave them worse off.

Call me a wild-eyed liberal, but when a Democratic President who campaigned on fixing the economic disaster we were hurtling towards does more to help out those who set us on the course for disaster instead of the rest of us who, for the most part, were simply trying to lead our lives, well, I think you might be able to guess what the result is.  How enthusiastic should those homeowners be toward the President or his administration?  Obama has been riding the campaign trail for fellow Democrats pretty hard since Labor Day, telling crowds that his administration stopped the U.S. from going into another Great Depression; telling crowds that his administration fights for the little person; telling crowds that the bankers should be held accountable for their actions.

Stump speeches are all well and good, President Obama.  But when the banks who first offered loans to people who they didn’t check to ensure could afford them then bundled them up (without the requisite paperwork) and sold them to make a profit, then bought insurance policies on the loans, bundled those up and sold them to make more of a profit, then bet short on the packages because they knew they were worthless to make even more of a profit, then got taxpayer money to bail them out from the mess they created now get more taxpayer money to illegally kick people out of their homes, how much support can you really expect from those homeowners and taxpayers?

Especially when your administration hasn’t forced the banks to actually unravel those packages and see how worthless they really are?  Those bad mortgage default swaps should be fully accounted for on the banks’ ledgers.  Yet your administration has allowed the banks to play accounting games so the losses don’t show up.  Are we really to believe that the only entities who didn’t suffer as a result of the mortgage crisis were the banks?  They didn’t turn unprofitable in the past 3 years; they’ve continued to set record profits.  How glad are American voters supposed to be about that?  By the way, those bad packages will have to come due sometime.  And if your administration continues to kick that can down the road, like you have to so many other cans in the past two years, the result when they do come due will be many times more painful and devastating to the American economy than if they had been handled in the past 2 years.

But by all means, keep campaigning and telling Americans that everything will be alright with you and your buddies in charge.  You didn’t create this mess, but by not taking responsibility for it during your term (much like Afghanistan), the mess will become defined as yours in the annals of history.  Perhaps taking care of the multiple crises you face can take a higher priority in the next two years than you chasing down non-existent Republican Teabaggers who will compromise with you.  They’ve told you there will be absolutely no compromise.  Believe them at their word and start moving this country forward again, Mr. President.

Thanks For The Awesome Job Market, Cons

Any Con worth their salt will tell you that the “free-market” will fix everything!  Their zeal to cram their fake religion down everybody’s throats led to the collapse of the U.S. economy in this first decade of the 21st century.  But there is a huge disconnect.  Thanks to both Cons and Democrats looking out for their Wall St. benefactors, most Americans haven’t and won’t feel anything close to a recovery for a long, long time.  While Wall St. has posted stunning gains since their lows earlier this year, millions more Americans have continued to lose their jobs and their livlihoods.

How bad have things gotten for the real average American?  How about a look at a paper published last month by Advance Realty and Rutgers: America’s New Post-Recession Employment Arithmetic.  Here are some choice figures for you to chew on [emphasis mine]:

• The combination of a weak economic expansion sandwiched between two recessions (2001, and 2007–2009) produced what will be a lost employment decade. As of August 2009, the nation had 1.3 million (1,256,000) fewer private sector jobs than in December 1999. This is the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930s that America will have an absolute loss of jobs over the course of a decade.

• To put this new millennium experience into perspective, during the final two decades of the twentieth century, the nation gained a total of 35.5 million private-sector jobs. During the current decade, America appears destined to lose more than 1.7 million private-sector jobs.

• This 1.3 million annual increase in the labor force means that in terms of private-sector payroll employment, the nation has to create an estimated 920,000 jobs per year.  Adding this to the actual private-sector job losses accumulated during the 20 months (to date) of recession equates to an August 2009 employment deficit of 8.6 million jobs. Given conservative estimates of further employment declines (even if the recession ends in the third quarter of 2009) and the continued increase in the labor force, the nation’s employment deficit could approach 9.4 million private-sector jobs by December 2009.

• Erasing this deficit will require substantial and sustained employment growth. Even if the nation could add 2.15 million private-sector jobs per year starting in January 2010, it would need to maintain this pace for more than 7 straight years (7.63 years), or until August 2017, to eliminate the jobs deficit! This is approximately 50 percent greater than the length of the average post–World War II expansion (58 months).

The “free-market” cannot and never will fix this.  It’s going to take the concentrated effort of the federal government working with the private sector to pull us out of this disaster.  Thanks again, Cons!

[h/t MB]

Bill in Portland Maine’s Excellent Question

Dear Conservative Free-Market Capitalism Muckety Mucks,

Why haven’t you fixed the economy yet?

It’s a shame it took a serial snarkist to ask the most pertinent question of this whole Great Recession.  Want more?

I’m asking because conservatives in fancy suits keep telling me—okay, screaming at me—about how fundamentally sound their ideas are, and how the private sector, not the government, is our best and greatest hope for making the economy leap back to life…

We’ve been in a recession since December of 2007. Why aren’t things all better yet for ordinary Americans? You were so awesome at making the mess, but cleaning up the pile of poopies you left on the nation’s living room rug seems to be proving a bit more, um, problematic. Why?

You’ve got an army of giant, throbbing brains in your right-wing think tanks working day and night. The Heritage Foundation has never been wrong…just ask ‘em! And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce never misses an opportunity to proclaim their infallibility in multimillion-dollar ad campaigns. So…why are we still in Sucksville?

And don’t try and hide behind the fact that there’s a Democrat in the White House. He’s been shoveling money into your coffers faster than Sarah Palin shoveling bullshit through Twitter.

Fix the damn economy on Main Street already, you Ayn Rand-worshipping free-market capitalist wizards. Show us how it’s done. Be the heroes we’ve been holding out for. I’ll check back on your progress in 30 days. I expect Americans to be squatting over solid gold commodes by then. That’s how much I believe in you.

They can’t, of course, because their version of the mythical “Free Market” isn’t designed to help the little person.  It’s always been designed to make the rich filthy rich.  It’s always been designed to screw the little person over.  But they’re damn fine questions.  And I know Billy will check back in 30 days. 

Urban Areas Lose Stimulus Funds To Rural Areas

In a continuation of a trend that has been around for too long already, metropolitan areas around the country are being short-changed funds from the first stimulus bill passed just a few months ago.  Despite providing more than three-quarters of the nation’s economic activity (read: providing more than three-quarters of the tax dollars going to the federal government), and despite the fact that two-thirds of Americans live in urban areas, those same areas have received less than half of the stimulus funds from the largest stimulus source of funds.

I have the same opinion on this as I do the unfair tax and funding mechanisms that are regularly in place: it needs to stop.  It makes no sense to send more tax dollars to areas that didn’t provide the money.  Federal spending needs to go to areas that provided the funds in the first place.  If rural areas want infrastructure and projects, they need to come up with ways to fund them themselves.  It amazes me that urban-dwellers are constantly lectured about not having “values” like rural-dwellers do.  I don’t think greed is a value worth having.  I don’t think you should steal from your neighbor then complain they’re doing nothing to help you, don’t care about you and have no values.