The Syrian Failure

"War is killing as many of your enemies as you possibly can and making life insufferable. If you can't do that, you're not going to win. And [Assad] is trying to punish everybody, because if the opposition ever were to unify, setup a good government where they supplied government services -- everyone would trample over to the other side. [The rebels] haven't been able to do that, [and Assad's] best ally is the fact that they're dysfunctional."

That's a quote from Joshua Landis, the Syrian expert behind the blog Syria Comment (which has been around long before the Syrian Civil War started), in the podcast I posted from journalist Lara Setrakian. I think that quote illustrates just how fucked the situation in Syria is, but do yourself a favor and watch the whole podcast.

As I've mentioned previously on this blog, the intervention I wanted in Syria should have happened 18-24 months ago; because that's when it would have been effective. The question being debated now is whether the US should intervene now, but nobody is discussing what that intervention should entail, whether it can be effective, and what are the unintended consequences?

All of these topics are more important than simply asking whether we should intervene, because what the intervention entails will determine if the intervention is successful. I'm not your classic peacenik who applies the imperial thought framing to every US military move. Indeed, anyone who thinks that Obama actually wants to go to war with Syria hasn't paid attention to the situation for the past couple of years; and I doubt half of those people could even find Syria on a map. But I'm not a hawk either, and my bar for deciding when to commit the US military is pretty high. Intervention and military actions must be pragmatic, with goals clearly set and plans to achieve those goals laid out and able to be executed.

So, my first question regarding intervention in Syria -- and not to be crass -- but what the fuck is the goal? Seriously, what is it? Do we want to topple the Assad government, or just drop a few bombs? Are we going to take out chemical weapons stock piles, or Assad government buildings? Since those stock piles and government buildings are likely in densely populated areas, how can we avoid killing Syrian citizens? Or do we arm the rebels? If we arm the rebels, how do we make sure that we're not inadvertently arming al-Qa'ida and other extremists? What happens if we topple the Assad government, will we commit 400,000 - 500,000 troops needed to quell the chaos and looting that comes after a government has fallen?

In short, what are we going to do? Amazingly, I haven't heard anyone ask this yet, the question has only been should we do something. The answer to that question is "Yes, if the outcome is positive." Like in Libya -- NATO intervention early stopped their civil war from expanding to levels of Syrian brutality.

If the Obama administration isn't going to present to Congress answers to these questions, then I hope Congress votes down his attempts to intervene in Syria. It's not that I wish to see the utter brutality of the Syrian civil war to continue -- I just don't want to see it get worse.

Syria will go down as Obama's primary foreign policy failure. He didn't stand up to Russia or China in the UN to intervene early when success would have been more likely; then he ignored the Syrian situation until Assad used chemical weapons. Despite Assad's egregious actions, Obama lost the support of even our stalwart ally Britain in his efforts to put together a coalition to intervene. Obama hasn't displayed any forethought or ability to plan ahead while witnessing the crisis in Syria unfold. Any action Obama takes now, without a clear plan, would only make the situation more grave. Haphazard bombing could quickly lead into a need for ground troops in a war where Assad will launch a chemical weapons attack on us. At that point, if Obama doesn't have the resolve to fight a war, he's going to lose. This is a situation that we cannot get involved in. Syria isn't Iraq, but Bush's misguided/criminal actions resulted in too many needless deaths of Iraqis and Americans. Enough is enough.

How to Create a Disaster [#syria #intervention]

The international community is playing with fire when they support foreign interventions, and there will be years of debate over whether NATO’s intervention in Libya essentially created a civil war there that led to 30,000 Libyans being killed.  Conversely, without intervention, the international community risks seeing the Syrian government commit another massacre similar to the Hama massacre in 1982, where 20-40,000 Syrians were killed.

I wrote this back in December, 2011.  These words are still haunting me. 

This was after the US put a coalition together to intervene in the Libyan conflict.  The result of that conflict and our intervention was a death toll of 30,000 Libyans — but the question is whether more would have perished without intervention?

Syria isn’t Libya, but, unfortunately, I think we have an answer to that question. When you know that Syria, unlike Libya, had a history of killing tens of thousands of its civilians before their civil war began, the question goes from being merely academically inquisitive to burning; searing.  The question brands itself onto your conscience, and the shame rises up like steam that brings tears to your eyes.

I’m not for intervention in Syria now, I’m for it yesterday.  A year ago, or more.  Back when intervention would have made a positive difference.  I can’t think of positive aspects to the intervention being offered now.  By not wanting to take the situation seriously - as seriously as Libya was regarded, at least - Obama has painted himself into a corner by allowing over 100,000 Syrians to die before Assad’s chemical weapons attack.  Obama didn’t build coalitions in case the Syrian conflict escalated to this point, and now even Britain isn’t with us.  (Let that diplomatic blow sink in for a minute.)  Since 2011, violence in Iraq has skyrocketed and the world might see two full blown civil wars in the region, a destabilized government in Egypt, and blowback in Lebanon.  Israel might feel threatened and stage an attack.  What happens then? 

This is a nightmare scenario.  If Obama thinks it can be avoided by dropping a few bombs on Syria - likely killing more civilians than anybody else - then he’s out of his fucking mind. 

This is what happens with you let problems fester.  This is what happens when you see a wound and don’t treat it properly.  And this won’t just set back the whole MidEast region a couple generations of development, but it will also cause more people to lose faith in the US government. 

We certainly got the change that we voted for.  I’m not sure what happened to the hope, though.

The Republican's Perpetual Search for the Next Blowjob

Since Watergate — when a Republican president was rightfully impeached and forced to resign before being removed from office for legitimate crimes that he committed — the Republicans have deployed the strategy of trying to grind the government to a halt whenever a Democrat is elected president.  They deploy this strategy so the Democrat administration can get as little accomplished as possible.

Whenever you hear about a “scandal” involving a Democrat president, you must keep the GOP's "Stop Government" strategy in mind because, no matter what the scope of the scandal is, the Republicans will use it to the best of their ability to grind the government’s ability to govern to a halt.

The GOP certainly deployed this strategy when Bill Clinton was in office.  Beyond the budget battles that led to actual Federal government shutdowns, the GOP kept digging into the supposed crimes of the “Whitewater” real estate deal until, after not finding anything illegal, they centered on a blowjob — which isn’t a crime.  It’s a fucking blowjob.  But that didn’t stop the Republicans from using a fucking blowjob to finally grind government to a halt by using it to impeach Clinton.

Right now, there are three “scandals” circling the Obama administration.  The Department of Justice getting phone records of Associated Press journalists is the only legitimate scandal out of the three; and currently, there isn’t a bit of evidence pointing to Obama having knowledge of DOJ actions.  There is a vast gulf of difference between an employee of the executive branch committing a crime and the president directing those crimes; and the latter was the situation with Nixon and Watergate.  Also, due to warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency during the Bush administration being declared legal by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, there exists the very real possibility that the DOJ’s actions weren’t even a crime.  

Should there be Congressional hearings into this matter?  Of course.  But there is a difference between having hearings and grinding government to a halt — a difference that the Republicans, due to their post-Nixon strategy, purposely obfuscate.

As for the Benghazi “scandal”, that attack happened at a time of protests in Muslim majority cities around the globe.  There was absolutely no intelligence about an upcoming attack on a US consulate office in Libya’s second city.  After all, usually it’s the embassy in a capital city that is targeted, not a minor office.  We don’t even know if the Benghazi attack was planned ahead of time or just happened on the spot.  I've lived in Cairo, so I’m familiar with how streets in Arab cities in Africa look; and there’s not a lot of opulence in those streets.  If an American ambassador is driving into town in a rich American car, with security in tow, then the city residents can at least deduce that this is somebody important.  There are a lot of weapons available in a country that just went through a civil war, and from there the only organizing that takes place is a couple of on the spot telephone calls and, bam, you have an attack.

That’s.  It.  There was no conspiracy to hide information about this attack because there was probably absolutely no information at all until it happened.  And it happened at a time of global protests in Muslim cities, which was enough to make anyone question whether it was a protest gone awry or an attack.  Period.  End of story.  

There is no reason for the Republicans to drag this Benghazi story out for months, but they have anyway.  Why?  Because they are trying to grind the government to a halt.

Besides the Department of Justice and Benghazi, we have the other new “scandal” revolving around an IRS office in Cincinnati targeting new organizations with words like “tea party” and “patriot” in their name applying for non-profit status as 501(c)4 groups.  The decision to target conservative organizations was, most likely, made at a middle management level in a satellite IRS office outside of Washington DC, so how, exactly, is Obama responsible for this?  Furthermore, groups that wish to qualify for 501(c)4 non-profit status should have a stated purpose and goals for “social welfare”.  One of the groups that was targeted, called “Tea Party Patriots”, spent most of their time rapidly organizing against Obama before the election.  Their biggest accomplishment was producing an anti-health care act movie called “The Determinators”, publishing it on DVD and sending it out to hundreds of thousands of Americans.  How, exactly, is that working towards aiding the “social welfare” of society?

The  IRS saw a sharp increase in organizations claiming 501(c)4 status after the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case.  And, quite frankly, if you have conservative organizations steeped in anti-tax and anti-government ideology forming blatantly political organizations that were applying for non-profit status as 501(c)4 “social welfare” groups, wouldn’t you be curious, too?  Yes, all organizations are supposed to be judged equally, but this targeting of conservative organizations was likely borne out of IRS employees looking for better ways to manage their workload.  Let’s face it, these conservative organizations are pretty suspect.  Besides the fact that this wasn’t ordered by the Obama administration, how exactly is this a scandal?

Should there be a hearing or two?  Of course.  But will Republicans pretend this is the end of the world?  Of course.  Why?  Because they are trying to grind the government to a halt.

In light of all of these “scandals”, wherein evidence of direct involvement from the Obama White House doesn’t exist, it’s worth mentioning two actual scandals from the Bush administration that Republicans (and their savant-like stenographers in the mainstream media) cared nothing about — two non-scandals that had evidence of the Bush White House being directly involved.

The most important non-scandal of the Bush administration was the Downing Street Memo.  Published in the British press on May 1, 2005, the memo proved that the Bush administration was lying to the world about the evidence we had regarding Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction during the run up to the Second Iraq War.  That unneeded war killed over 4,800 soldiers, injured over 32,500 soldiers, and likely killed over 120,000 Iraqi civilians.  I could get into the monetary costs that we’re still paying off, but the human toll is sick enough.  Why didn’t the Republicans or the mainstream media regard the Downing Street Memo as a scandal?

The second non-scandal is one I mentioned previously, the National Security Agency executing warrantless wiretaps.  This was initiated by the Bush administration after 9/11, and Republicans weren’t appalled by it.  In fact, one of the groups who was spied upon took their case to court but it was recently thrown out in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.  The case has yet to make it to the Supreme Court, and lawyers the group spied on fear that an appeal to the Supreme Court would only uphold the ruling from the 9th Court because of the conservative-leanings of the current Supreme Court justices.

Why didn’t the Republicans use these two scandals, with direct connections to the Bush White House, as a reason to host a number of hearings and grind government to a halt?  Why do they only care when lesser crimes are committed that don’t have any apparent connections to the Obama White House?

The answer is simple: Republicans want power, period.  That’s why they’ll turn a blind eye when one of their own commits impeachable atrocities against the Constitution and humanity.  But when a Democrat is in office, then they’re constantly searching for the next blowjob.

Obama's Student Loan Plan

When the president does something right, I don't have much to say (I'm so good at criticizing things). I'm also very critical of Obama on this blog. So, even though I don't have much to say about it, but Obama's student loan plan is fucking good idea.

Unfortunately, it won't effect students paying off private loans. But if Congress could get their shit together and rectify that...

The (lack of) Communications of Fear

One of the scariest tenets of the modern right is their inability to rationally talk with anyone who disagrees with them.  We see this on a micro, intra-party level when Pam Geller of Atlas Shrugs launches verbal bombs against Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs.  I also thought LFG was among the heaviest wingnut blogs around, but when Geller rants "Charles Johnson - poster boy for the left," you'd think the man just had the highest recommended diary on Daily Kos.  What is Johnson's crime?  Offering up criticism of Glenn Beck's insanity.  That's just too much indifference for righties like Geller, who demand carte blanche obedience.  Shorter Geller: Don't like Beck? Well, I don't talk with you, Obamabot!

We see many examples of this anti-social behavior on a macro level, too -- the most recent example is Obama's handshake with Hugo Chavez.  As is wholly predictable these days, this handshake has caused the right to go apoplectic.  Malkin asks if anyone smelled sulfur during the handshake; after calling it a "terrorist fist bump," Tom Maguire quips "When socialists salute!"  Etc., etc.  Apparently, there has to be a purity test world leaders must pass for us to talk with them -- somebody tell that to the King of Saudi Arabia!  Oh wait, the right only cared about Obama's meeting with Abdullah because they could scream about the supposed bowing act -- the fact that Saudi Arabia continues to be a leading human rights violator, not an issue.  Clearly, in their eyes, heads of state can be shitty, oppressive people as long as they're not socialists as well.

Not to digress on the hypocrisy too long (once you start, it's tough to stop), but the point of this post is just how scary this asocial behavior is.  Could you imagine the world today if this obedience-first, anti-social style of Republican occupied the White House in the post-WWII era?  We didn't have that, of course.  Despite the fact that the Soviet Union was more fearsome and brutal than Chavez could ever hope to be -- with a massive nuclear arsenal and ICBMs, too -- the Republican Eisenhower administration kept diplomatic lines open with them.  When the impromptu "Kitchen Debate" took place in 1959, Vice President Nixon had a direct, face-to-face meeting with USSR president Khrushchev.  Reflecting on politics today, let that sink in for a moment...  Could you imagine former Vice President Dick Cheney meeting with any one of today's lesser enemies while he was in office?   Now that just sounds silly.

The direct correspondence between Khrushchev and the White House continued into the Kennedy administration, and not only was present during the Cuban Missile Crisis but played a key role in averting total nuclear war.  Robert McNamara, Kennedy's Defense Secretary, discussed the cabinet meetings and tense diplomacy during the crisis which ultimately led to its resolution:

McNamara: Kennedy was trying to keep us out of war. I was trying to help him keep up out of war. And General Curtis LeMay, whom I served under as a matter of fact in World War II, was saying "Let's go in, let's totally destroy Cuba."

On that critical Saturday, October 27th, we had two Khrushchev messages in front of us. One had come in Friday night, and it had been dictated by a man who was either drunk or under tremendous stress. Basically, he said, "If you'll guarantee you won't invade Cuba, we'll take the missiles out." 

Then before we could respond, we had a second message that had been dictated by a bunch of hard—liners. And it said, in effect, "If you attack, we're prepared to confront you with masses of military power." 

So, what to do? We had, I'll call it, the soft message and the hard message.

At the elbow of President Kennedy was Tommy Thompson, former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow. He and Jane, his wife, had literally lived with Khrushchev and his wife upon occasion. Tommy Thompson said, "Mr. President, I urge you to respond to the soft message." 

The President said to Tommy, "We can't do that, that'll get us nowhere." 

Tommy said, "Mr. President, you're wrong." Now that takes a lot of guts.

Kennedy: We're not going to get these missiles out of Cuba, probably anyway, by negotiation.

Thompson: I don't agree, Mr. President. I think there's still a chance.

Kennedy: That he'll back down?

Thompson: The important thing for Khrushchev, it seems to me, is to be able to say, "I saved Cuba, I stopped an invasion."

McNamara: In Thompson's mind was this thought: Khrushchev's gotten himself in a hell of a fix. He would then think to himself, "My God, if I can get out of this with a deal that I can say to the Russian people: 'Kennedy was going to destroy Castro and I prevented it.'" Thompson, knowing Khrushchev as he did, thought Khrushchev will accept that. And Thompson was right. 

Now think about that for a minute.  Not only did the Kennedy administration have direct communication with the USSR, but in the cabinet meeting Kennedy had somebody who knew and formerly lived with President Khrushchev.  Given that the stakes were nuclear war, it's no exaggeration to suggest that the world would be a much more different, desolate place today if the US/USSR direct diplomacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis didn't exist. 

Talking with your enemies brings peace.

Of course, one person sitting at that cabinet meeting thought Kennedy and everyone else were full of shit, and that's General Curtis LeMay.  A hardline Republican then, LeMay is analogous to what the Republican party has become today.  Had Kennedy listened to LeMay, none of us would be sitting here today, blogging about it. 

The LeMay factor of today's Republican leaders is what scares me the most about them; and if this wing of the party ever takes power again.  They don't want presidents to talk with anyone who doesn't pass their political litmus test.  If these anti-social Republicans were in power in the 1960s, or even the Eisenhower Republican era of the 1950s, we wouldn't have had diplomatic communications with the Soviet Union.  We wouldn't be here. 

Compared to such a bleak future, I hardly see where Obama shaking Chavez's hand is a mistake.  I'm more scared of not talking to him, or any other world leader.

The Plan for what, exactly?

[Since this post is rather critical of the president, let me preface this with "Speaking only for myself" - tas]

From the Treasury Department:

To address the challenge of legacy assets, Treasury – in conjunction with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Reserve – is announcing the Public-Private Investment Program as part of its efforts to repair balance sheets throughout our financial system and ensure that credit is available to the households and businesses, large and small, that will help drive us toward recovery.

The italics are mine. Let me translate this: Nobody in their right mind will invest in banks with their own money right now because the banks are broke. But the country needs banks to start lending again if we expect our economy to get better.

With that in mind, here's the jist of Geithner's plan: The Government begs private investors to front a minimal amount of capital to bid on toxic mortgage assets by saying, "Hey, we'll pay you $6 for every $1 you spend on mortgage debt." This takes bad debt off bank balance sheets, investors are then willing to place more money in banks again because they'll be able to start making loans again.

Theoretically. Unfortunately, this plan raises a lot more questions than it answers.

Wall Street loves it, as evidenced by stocks shooting up today. And why shouldn't they? The Obama administration just told them, "Hey guys, great news! We don't intend to break apart the huge mega banks that got us into this mess, and we're going to give you billions -- possibly a trillion -- in taxpayer dollars!" This people are all for preserving status quo since it makes them rich, and no matter how hard they fuck us they won't be reprimanded.

But the plan might not even work. Currently, it's slated to purchase $500 billion in toxic assets; possibly rising to $1 trillion. This is supposed to clear bad debt off banks' balance sheets, thus allowing investors to place money in banks again since they'll be solvent, thus allowing banks to make loans, etc. But as I've mentioned here before, just with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac we see, at most, $5.4 trillion in bad mortgage debt. So does the plan address this debt or just the debt from banks that the government didn't have to gobble up, like Citibank and Bank of America? If the plan doesn't address the Fannie/Freddie debt, what will? Additionally, discounting the Fannie/Freddie debt, just how much toxic mortgage debt are we looking at with Citibank and Bank of America?

To give you an idea of the scope of that last question, as of December 2008, Bank of America's total liabilities were over $1.6 trillion; and Citibank's liabilities are almost $1.8 trillion. Will $1 trillion from the Fed/FDIC -- much less $500 billion -- be enough to convince investors to place money in these institutions again? It would certainly be great to know just how much of that $3.4 trillion in liabilities is bad.

The part of this plan that I really find galling, though, is that the government is willing to fork over hundreds of billions to Wall Street to get them to purchase mortgage debt. This is our money, and essentially our money is being used to pay off mortgages -- but by giving it to investors who can afford to put up a few million to pay for them. These investors can then turn around and ask home owners to pay up on mortgages that their tax dollars just bought.

If this is the case (and I could be reading the plan wrong, but...), what's with the middle man? If the government intends to pay for these mortgages, why not just forgive them? Why not just give banks 85% of what the mortgages are worth -- which they should very well be happy with -- and everyone goes on their merry way?

While some will rightly point out that people would get free houses under such a scenario, which they certainly don't deserve, under this plan the business school rejects who placed the economy in hot water are now being rewarded by having the government give money to banks to pay off these mortgages, and turning around to give these mortgages to the business school rejects with instructions to squeeze as much profit out of it as they can. In short, the business school rejects have the potential to reap huge profits off home owners since they paid $1 for every $6 the Obama administration would give them to buy their mortgage.

And you know, I don't think these assholes deserve the money.

The more I think about it, the more unsure I am of exactly what this plan is supposed to accomplish. Do Obama and Geithner (shamefully) intend to give Wall Street what's maybe the biggest bonus in history? But if so, how can this plan deliver such when it may not accurately address all the bad debt that exists? In the former scenario, normal Americans -- you and I -- bend over and take it; but in the latter the plan just doesn't work.

Here's an idea for a plan that could work: restructure the mortgages so their value reflects the median value of a home based on its value from 2005 to the present; adjust interest rates so they are lower; then spend enough money on job creation (like infrastructure repairs) which give people jobs, kickstarting the economy and giving everyone money to pay down their debt. But that plan doesn't give Wall Street a big fat check, now does it?

Makes me wonder what's really important to the Obama administration right now.

The $5.4 trillion we'll pay if the stimulus package doesn't work

A major sticking point with the bailout discussion is cost. Republicans have blared endless about just how much a trillion dollars is -- a stack of $100 totaling a trillion could reach Pluto or something, go around the globe at the equator eight zillion times, etc. One facet of the stimulus package story that nobody is discussing, though, is how much the government will pay (with our money) if the package doesn't work. A cursory glance at the details of our country's budget problems makes $1 trillion look like a bargain.

Last month, Harper's Magazine had a cover story that I wish they would make available online because the link would go viral, and you would get better pictures of the graphs in it then crappy ones I take with my cell phone camera. Anyway, the story is titled "The $10 Trillion Hangover" and it details the money added to our national debt by the Bush administration. $10 trillion is actually a conservative estimate -- the debt could balloon to $13-15 trillion. Why? Ask Freddie and Fannie.

I made a photocopy of the article (and went at it with a highlighter, which I may not have done if I knew I would post a photo of it online in the future), and to your right is a crappy picture I took showing one part of one graph in the article -- the mortgage back securities debt part. The full graph itself is called "The Bill" and it succulently details all the debt added to the government over the past eight years. Now the graph attributes $.1.6 trillion to the government taking over Fannie and Freddie, but that's a low estimate. This blurb from the article shows why the mortgage debt is a real wild card:

When the federal government took over these failing residential mortgage giants, it also assumed their $5.4 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and outstanding debt.

Cutting straight to the point, that $1.6 trillion the government is responsible for now will balloon -- potentially to $5.4 trillion -- depending on the amount of home foreclosures in the future. Those are costs the government will have to account for. And whose money will they use? You guessed it, yours.

This makes current discussions on the cost of the stimulus bill silly. $1 trillion? Pshaw! Try $5.4 trillion if the stimulus bill doesn't work. A trillion has now become pocket change.

The choice for the Obama administration is simple: get real stimulus done. If this means hopping off the bipartisan pony ride and even, if necessary, brutally bludgeoning that pony to death, do it -- or we all suffer the consequences. And what are those consequences? It could be a repeat of the 1930s... Do you want to find out? You shouldn't. I certainly don't.

Just a bit of complaining...

Let me preface this rant with yes, I know we need a bailout. But...

President Obama has promised to make government more open, a task which shouldn't be too difficult in the computer age where information can be digitized, indexed, and searched with querying assistants like Google. So for the bailout, Obama has launch "Recovery.gov" for government openness on how the bailout money is spent.

There's one problem, though: Recovery.gov currently contains none of that information, just a message which says "Check back after the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to see how and where your tax dollars are spent."

How about I know what the bailout wants to do with my money beforehand?

Afterall, the government stating where the money goes beforehand could help guard the bailout bill against attacks from the seemingly anti-economy right. And not to echo their talking points, but a column about the bailout in today's Wall Street Journal that the starboard side is yammering about does have me worried.

We've looked it over, and even we can't quite believe it. There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn't turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There's even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.

In selling the plan, President Obama has said this bill will make "dramatic investments to revive our flagging economy." Well, you be the judge. Some $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects. There's another $40 billion for broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities...

Another "stimulus" secret is that some $252 billion is for income-transfer payments -- that is, not investments that arguably help everyone, but cash or benefits to individuals for doing nothing at all. There's $81 billion for Medicaid, $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $20 billion for food stamps, and $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don't pay income tax. While some of that may be justified to help poorer Americans ride out the recession, they aren't job creators.

On the last point the WSJ makes, they are correct -- Medicare is not a "job creator". Of course, I (as well as anybody else on the left, I imagine) would argue that such social safety nets are need to keep money in American's wallets. One thing that knocked the recession of the late 1920s into the Great Depression is that money dried up -- period. People literally didn't have a cent. And when you don't have money, you can't purchase anything, so the business sector stops producing, more people lose their jobs without government benefits to fall back on, so more people have not a cent... You can see how it snowballs. Indeed, the "safety net" is no joke -- social programs help keep recessions as recessions.

But what's also needed is job creation. As far as I can see, the $30 billion going to infrastructure repairs is the bulk of the act's job creation -- and that's less than 5% of the bill's money!

And why not put the expenses for different programs in their own bill? Why do we have a 647 page recovery bill in the first place chockful of payments to different programs? While some of this I can agree with, like social programs and aid to keep Amtrak running, other items are bullshit. $650 million for digital TV conversion? Uhm, why? I know in the face of an $850 billion bill, $650 million is a drop in the bucket ... But why?

How many other needless payments are there in the bailout? Damned if I know -- Recovery.org certainly doesn't contain that information!

I haven't looked over the actual legislation documents -- congressional bills and such -- that FDR signed during his first 100 days in office, but they look like single acts; single pieces of legislation. The Civil Workers Administration act setup the CWA and what the organization was supposed to do; the Tennessee Valley Authority setup the TVA, etc. There was no lump sum -- one all encompassing recovery act that included these programs. Back during the Great Depression, we had acts meant to create jobs, provide relief, save banks, etc.

And one thing FDR was successful with doing was getting American citizens to trust the government. Indeed before FDR took office, our government provided virtually no economic protections for citizens -- and many Americans liked it that way. They were proud and didn't want the government paying for them. But FDR developed a relationship with Americans through his fireside chats, telling them about the legislation he signed and how it would help them. FDR told it straight and became a trustworthy figure.

With clusterfuck bills like the Orwellian named "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act", Obama is not following FDR's footsteps. I know people will jump on me for attacking Obama after he's only spent a week in office and he hasn't changed the culture in DC yet, but this kind of government looks the same as the government we've seen for the past two decades: complex legislation with hardly any way to check it unless you have the time to read 650 pages of Washingtonian legalese. I expected more openness from the Obama administration -- I expected better. And yeah, his inauguration is not yet a distint memory, but the Obama administration isn't going to earn the trust of the American people if it keeps this up.

Additional reading and differing opinions:

dday @ Hullabloo points out good parts of the bill, including aid to state (so they can balance budgets) and the poor.

Steve Benen points out that some Democrats do not think the bailout bill goes far enough.

Liberal Oasis points out that most economists support the bailout bill. Libertarians from the Cato Institute oppose the bill, but the last time I checked Ron Paul got .02% of the vote, so nobody gives a shit what they think.

Kevin Drum is another blogger who points out the disappointment over funding for infrastructure repairs provided by the bailout. Given that engineers have given the state of America's infrastructure a near-failing grade of D and...

...estimated that it would take a $2.2 trillion investment…over the next five years to bring it into a state of good repair.”

I think there's room for a lot more than merely $30 billion of infrastructure repair. $2.2 trillion is a hell of a lot of jobs.