Month: August 2009

Reynolds takes the bait:

Uncanny.

Despite the comparable size of their stimulus packages, China is rapidly outpacing the US in its economic recovery. Zachary Karabell explores why:

[T]he Chinese government, controlled as it is by an autocratic, hierarchical party formally known as communist, does not have to negotiate the challenges of the labyrinthine American system. The Beijing government decided to spend money, and within a few months, money was being put to work–primarily on infrastructure projects in the interior of the country, but also on stimulative measures such as handing out pre-paid cards to encourage consumer spending. The central government also mandated–from the People's Bank of China down to the thousands of local commercial bank branches–a more open approach to lending, which led to a substantial expansion of credit throughout the country.

TNR also has a photo slideshow illustrating how China is spending its stimulus. It's always easier to stimulate a less developed economy, of course. Obama has FDR's problem without FDR's easier industrial economy solutions.

David Corn wants Obama to go populist. I think Obama should be Obama: the one adult in the room. I.e.: a president.

A smoking memo to create the perception of a groundswell against reform.

Ross criticizes Obama for "pushing a blue-state agenda during a recession that's exposed some of the blue-state model's weaknesses, and some of the red-state model's strengths." To illustrate, Ross singles out the struggling blue state of California and the resilient red state of Texas (a comparison The Economist  featured in a recent cover story). But Benen sees it differently:

We're in the midst of a major debate over health care policy, and Texas is anything but a "model citizen." It is easily the worst state in the nation for the uninsured, and stands to benefit greatly from the White House's "blue-state agenda." For that matter, its poverty rate is second only to Mississippi nationwide. If Texas is a "model citizen" for taxes and fiscal balance, it's also a disaster for those families who are struggling with less.

Ezra Klein backs up Benen with some statistics, including this chart:

Fallows also takes issue with Ross's column, namely for excluding any mention of California's revenue-limiting Proposition 13 or Texas's constitutional ban on budget deficits. The Dish recently ran some Recession Views discussing Texas's ability to weather the downturn; read them here, here, and here.

Antony sings Beyonce's "Crazy In Love":

(Hat tip: Peter Suderman)

Here's a nicely devastating review of David Novak's jeremiad against marriage equality, "In Defense Of Religious Liberty." The whole thing is worth reading, as it helps explain, as I tried to do in The Conservative Soul, how the theocons view religious liberty and civil gay equality as incompatible. But I didn't realize that the theocons had begun to realize the actual words of the Declaration of Independence now obstruct them from their religious vision. At one point Novak

suggests that a slight change to the wording of the Declaration of Independence is required: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” should be replaced by “the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness” since this supposedly helps us to see how the pursuit of life must take its first form as—you guessed it—the pursuit of family through marriage. As for the pursuit of happiness, a short discussion leads Novak to conclude that it can be rightfully exercised only in order to fulfil “the highest good,” which, of course, “is inevitably pursued in the way most people have always sought God.”

It's healthy to see the crudely theocratic assault on modernity expressed so cleary. It clarifies why in fact the founders decided to phrase the meaning of America so precisely: to keep political freedom from the hands of the bossy and Godly.

Derek Thompson points to this chart:

The best explanation I've found for why the stimulus didn't work is this graph from the GAO analysis of the stimulus act. It shows pretty clearly that the 76 percent of stimulus spending through the first four months went to fill in the gaping holes in Medicaid and state budgets. In other words, the stimulus isn't acting like a pole vault lifting job creation above the baseline. It's been acting like a crutch to keep state budgets and payrolls from imploding.

(Hat tip: Consumerist)

It's working, as reports of possibly lethal sanctions bubble to the surface. Roger Cohen reports:

One of the first people I saw in Iran was Saeed Leylaz, an economist close to Moussavi. (Like many of Iran’s reformist intellectuals, Leylaz is now in jail.) He told me Obama’s outreach — his recognition of the Islamic Republic and pledge of “mutual respect” — had affected the campaign, unsettling hard-liners. “Radicalism creates radicalism,” Leylaz said. He was referring to the way President Bush’s talk of Iran as evil opened the way for Ahmadinejad to build a global brand of sorts through lambasting U.S. arrogance.

By contrast, a black American president of partly Muslim descent reaching out to the Islamic world — and demonstrating, by his very election, the possibility of change — had placed the Iranian regime on the defensive. One conservative Iranian official put it this way to Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “If Iran can’t make nice with a U.S. president named Barack Hussein Obama who’s preaching mutual respect and sending us greetings, it’s pretty clear the problem lies in Tehran, not Washington.”

For a closer look at Cohen's piece, Ackerman breaks it down. For an abridged version, see the Goldblog Insta-Translator:

The Making of an Iran Policy, by Roger Cohen

Iran is going to get the Bomb. This is okay. Iran's government is not nice. They used to be nice, but not anymore. It doesn't matter. Israel wants to stop Iran from getting the Bomb. One thing is clear: Them Jews is crazy. They must be stopped. Dennis Ross works in the American government. But he's Jewish. Is he too Jewish to talk to Iran? Maybe. But he could make the Jews learn to love the Iranian bomb. It remains to be seen.

The End