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So Goolsbee will be gone soon. Is this a signal that the administration wants to take a new direction, or will they replace him with someone just like him, because to do otherwise is to admit they're doing something wrong on the economy?

WASHINGTON -- The White House says Austan Goolsbee, a longtime adviser to President Barack Obama, will resign his post as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers this summer to return to teaching at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Goolsbee has been the face of the White House on economic news, and is a regular every first Friday of the month explaining the administration's take on the latest jobless numbers.

Goolsbee served on the three-member economic council since the start of the administration. He advised Obama during his 2004 Senate race and was senior economic policy adviser during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Here's Ezra Klein on the news:

For two years now, economists on both sides of the political aisle have been begging Congress to cut the obvious deal: significant short-term stimulus paired with two or three or four times as much long-term deficit reduction. We're nowhere near cutting that deal. About half of official Washington is now pretending that tax cuts have nothing to do with deficits and tax increases have no place in closing deficits, a position even conservative economists consider extreme.

Is that why Austan Goolsbee is leaving? Perhaps not. The Chicago economist has been with Obama since the campaign (and in fact worked on his initial Senate campaign). That's a long time to be in the political pressure cooker. It's a long time to be away from your university, and to ask your family to accomodate a new city and new hours and new responsibility and new notoriety. But it can't have helped. If Goolsbee was spending his days crafting major economic policy to help the country dig out of this hole rather than trying to wanly explain that a slow recovery is nevertheless a recovery, the job would've been rather harder to vacate.

Which suggests that the real question isn't who his replacement will be, but whether he or she will matter. The job of the CEA chair is to give the president good economic advice. That's a very important job if the president can take your advice. It's a very dispiriting job if he can't.



Social Security isn't out of the woods yet

While everyone else has their head turned at the latest shiny thing, please note what is taking place with regard to the budget talks.

The Hill:

House Republicans on Friday introduced legislation that would allow workers to partially opt out of Social Security immediately, and fully opt out after 15 years.

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, and several other Republicans introduced the Savings Account for Every American (SAFE) Act. Under the bill, workers would immediately have 6.2 percent of their wages sent to a "SAFE" account each year.

That would take the place of the 6.2 percent the workers now contributed to Social Security.

Another 6.2% is sent to Social Security by employers. Under the Sessions bill, employers would continue to make this matching contribution to Social Security, but after 15 years, employers could also send that amount to the employee's SAFE account.

Sessions said this transition to a private retirement savings option is needed because Social Security last year began paying out more money than it took in.

Repeat after me: Republicans want to privatize everything, starting with Medicare and Social Security. This proposal is no different than what Bush proposed.

Digby:

Of course, what this would really do is remove money from the Social Security system right now, thus endangering the system for all older workers who will still be in the system 15 years from now. I'm beginning to wonder if my demographic group is going to be the guinea pig in a Soylent Green experiment. (Sure, they'll eventually figure out that his whole thing is unworkable, but it will be too late for the last half of the baby boom.)

Will someone please notify the Democratic messaging machine? Digby is exactly right: They want to strip Social Security of cash flow at the time where they need it the most. By the way, the Social Security trust fund has a surplus intended to deal with the expected actuarial projections of negative cash flow, so that's just another bogus excuse for Republicans to further dismantle the social safety net.



Our Economy's Best Chance

The terrible wrongness of the Ryan budget plan combined with the strangest, craziest Republican presidential candidate field ever makes it rather obvious how important it is to get President Obama re-elected. To have extreme right Republicans (that seems to be pretty much all of them these days) control every branch of government would do even more damage now, as weakened economically as we are, than the 2003-2006 run they had with Bush and Congressional Republicans running everything — and think how ugly that was for the country. The good news is that Republicans are doing a very good job right now showing how bad they are, with this weak field of presidential hopefuls in all-out pander mode to the far right of their party, and the lockstep support for the Ryan budget showing how extreme they are — not just on Medicare but on a wide range of other major issues. And I feel good about many of the Obama team’s moves so far this cycle, especially creating Democratic unity around opposition to Ryan’s budget.

However, as is obvious to pretty much everyone who follows politics at all (and probably a fair share of people who don’t), the continued problems with our economic trajectory is going to remain a serious problem dragging down the President’s re-election chances. Conventional economists and D.C. politicos, who generally focus on fiscal policy to the exclusion of just about everything else, feel stymied because they feel like the economy needs another fiscal stimulus package, and they know that is the exact opposite direction that House Republicans want to go. As a result, most people in Washington have pretty much given up on improving the economy between now and the 2012 election, and are devising strategies for Obama around running without the background of an improving economy.

It is a very bad thing that Republicans, for all their lip service about jobs, don’t want to do anything to actually promote, and that their budget policies will force many more people to lose their jobs as well. But the ironic thing is that President Obama does not have to depend on Republicans to provide a major boost to the economy right now. What the President can do to boost the economy is to put his energies into restructuring and rebuilding the housing market. The fact is that the single biggest thing dragging the economy down right now is the housing sector, which is in terrible shape right now and continues to get worse. Home prices, already at lower levels than at the worst point in the housing crash of 2008-9, are dropping like a stone. Almost 30 percent of mortgage holders are underwater (what they owe on the house is more than what it is worth). Foreclosures are sky high for the foreseeable future. With middle-class families’ biggest financial asset by far being their house, and home prices low, while foreclosures are high, it means middle-class assets are being decimated. And with no one buying homes, it means no one is building homes either. With the housing sector as huge a part of the economy as it is, as long as these kinds of trends prevail, we are not going to make the economy work well for the broad middle class.

But look at what could happen if we address this issue head on. SEIU did a report a few months back on the economic impact of shoring up the housing market, and it showed some pretty remarkable things. Here’s what I wrote when their report came out:

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Pain at the Gas Pump? Blame the Kochs.

Lee Fang has been on a roll lately with his expose´ of the Koch empire and the various tentacles of the Kochtopus. But his latest may be the one with the most pain attached. It seems that not only does Koch Industries avail itself of the profit-taking available by speculating on oil prices, but they were the authors of the whole damn scam.

Writing on his political blog, an attorney working for Koch’s law firm angrily replied to our initial investigation by claiming that Koch is solely a bonafide hedger, meaning that it only participates in speculative markets to reduce risk for the oil the company refines (he also bizarrely argued that speculation has no relation to the price of oil). The spin obscures reality: much of Koch’s oil trading business is actually akin to a hedge fund, buying and selling financial products based on oil with little interest in the actual delivery of the product. In fact, Koch pioneered the risky speculation industry that dominates the world’s oil markets today, first by inventing oil derivatives back in the ’80s, then by working to kill off regulations. ThinkProgress has delved into the history of Koch’s oil speculation business and the following timeline spells out Koch’s leading role:

Read the rest

The timeline is particularly interesting. In a nutshell, the very first oil derivatives were born in 1986, during the Reagan presidency. With the help of Phil Gramm in the Senate, and his wife Wendy Gramm, oil speculation was deregulated and the Kochs were laughing all the way to the bank. Wendy deregulated oil derivatives on the very last day of the George HW Bush administration, just before Bill Clinton took the oath of office.

This is so representative of how Republicans and their corporate masters conduct themselves. In public, they cry out about how rotten government is while in private they work hard to create proof for their claim, with voters' help.

Rick Perlstein wrote a great article recently about the corrupt media and how it has evolved into one that not only overlooks right wing lies; it actually perpetuates them. As I considered that article against the revelation that the Kochs were the architects and authors of oil speculation, I heard all the various "pain at the pump" stories echo through my head. They didn't come only from Fox News. They were on ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and CNN.

Not one of them paid more than a casual nod to speculators' dirty business and the effect on gas prices. Not one. Instead we get garbage like this Washington Post headline, "wondering" whether President Obama is intentionally driving up gas prices (the author answers the question with a big "no", but the link bait was enough). Or we get Rick Santorum whining that it's all that mean Democrat's fault that we're paying more at the pump, and the media just nods and drools while writing it all down on their little notepads.

While I give Lee Fang a ton of credit for the outstanding work he's doing unmasking the Kochs' malfeasance, where is our media in this? When do they start to do even a modicum of investigative reporting. For that matter, why the heck isn't Andrew Breitbart all over it, now that he thinks he has been forever inducted into the "legitimate media" category?

And what are we going to do about it? That's really the question.



Crossposted from Video Cafe

Thom Hartmann loves to bring these conservatives and libertarians on his show to debate different topics with them and one of the things he doesn't always do that well is set up for the audience just who some of them are that he's debating. I'll get to that shortly, but the guest here is Jane M. Orient, M.D., director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons who's recent article is Who’s Pushing Granny over the Cliff?

I would have expected the debate here to focus more on the Paul Ryan ad showing him literally throwing grandma off of a cliff that the title of her article addresses, but Hartmann spent almost all of the time during the segment debating her about another assertion she made in the article, that the Social Security trust fund is a Ponzi scheme filled with worthless I.O.U.'s.

Apparently the doctor doesn't think that Treasury bills are worth anything and that there is not currently a surplus in the trust fund because those I.O.U.'s are going to have to be paid back by retirees children and grandchildren in her words. Never mind that raising taxes on the wealthy right now would take care of that problem instead of assuming it would have to be taken care of by the working class. And as Hartmann pointed out, if we raise the income cap on taxes for SSI that would take care of any of the program's long term solvency problems.

What Hartmann didn't fill the viewers or listeners in on before he brought her on the air is her group's background. Here's some info from Sourcewatch on the AAPS:

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a group of conservative activist doctors who oppose the 2010 health care reform law, the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act."[1] Members of the group also believe that President Obama may have hypnotized voters and that climate legislation is a threat to human health. Some of the group's former leaders were members of the John Birch Society. Mother Jones wrote of the group, "Yet despite the lab coats and the official-sounding name, the docs of the AAPS are hardly part of mainstream medical society. Think Glenn Beck with an MD."[2]

The group describes itself as "a non-partisan professional association of physicians in all types of practices and specialties across the country. Since 1943, AAPS has been dedicated to the highest ethical standards of the Oath of Hippocrates and to preserving the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and the practice of private medicine."[3]

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Since whatever they've told us about the Fukushima plant has only been part of the story, I wonder if this means No. 4 (the one that's leaning -- remember, the cat's on the roof!) is melting down as we speak:

Tokyo (CNN) -- Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday.

The nuclear group's new evaluation, released Monday, goes further than previous statements in describing the extent of the damage caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

The announcement will not change plans for how to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the agency said.

Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said.



Mike's Blog Round Up

Sensen No Sen: Condemning the U.S. to repeat history, Republicans want to party like it’s 1937.

Balloon Juice: Republican obstructionism keeps Nobel Prize-winning economist off the Federal Reserve…and a record number of Obama judicial nominees off the federal bench.

Fablog: A look back at the AIDS crisis thirty years later.

South Texas Chisme: Texas Governor, would-be secessionist and possible GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry invites other 49 governors to join him at “a day of prayer and fasting on behalf of our troubled nation.”

The Progress Report: Ten years of the Bush tax cuts.

Speaking of which, your quote of the day: “You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase." (President George W. Bush, February 8, 2006)

Guest blogging Mike's Blog Round Up this week is Jon Perr from Perrspectives. Send your tips, recommendations, comments and angst to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.



Open Thread

I thought this the perfect video to post today. Susie Bright talking about evolution when it comes to Left, Right, and sexuality.

Open thread below....

Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir
Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir
Author: Susie Bright
Price: $13.19
(As of 06/07/11 03:45 am details)



C&L's Late Night Music Club With Johnny And June Carter Cash

Crossposted from Late Nite Music Club
Title: If I Were A Carpenter

Tonight's song was written by Tim Hardin and recorded by almost everyone under the sun. This version is my favorite. What's your favorite duet?

16 Biggest Hits
16 Biggest Hits
Price: $8.99
(As of 06/07/11 05:38 am details)


He better hope supporters don't Google his name to find his campaign website:

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum formally launched his campaign for president Monday, offering himself as a tested leader with the "courage to fight for freedom . . . to fight for America" against the power of an expanding social-welfare state.

"President Obama took that faith that America gave him and wrecked our economy and centralized power in Washington, D.C., and robbed people of their freedom," a smiling but combative Santorum told several hundred supporters jammed on the plaza of the Somerset County Courthouse.

A former two-term senator who lost his seat in 2006 to Democrat Bob Casey by 18 percentage points, Santorum has been most known in his career as a leader of social-issues conservatives, but the case he built against Obama on Monday was mostly economic and spiritual, in the sense that Santorum argued an increased reliance of citizens on government threatens the national character.

"I believe now that Americans are not looking for someone that they can believe in - they're looking for a president who believes in them," Santorum said.[..]

As he has on the campaign trail in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Santorum said the "linchpin" of efforts to erode personal freedom was Obama's health-care overhaul, which requires people to buy health insurance.

"Why do you think they ignored the polls and jammed it down the throats of the American people?" Santorum said. "Power. . . . They want to hook you, they don't want to free you.

"They don't want to give you opportunity. They don't believe in you. They believe in themselves, the smart people, the planners, the folks in Washington who can make decisions better than you can."

Far be it for me to point out that once again, Santorum is completely missing the pulse of the American people, aka the voters that would vote for him. Overhauling Medicare is proving to be a loser idea as polling shows and to actually threaten current recipients' benefits? Well, those are not the ideas that will propel you into the White House.

But hey, l'm all in favor of Santorum out there while people are hurting and scared and demonstrating just how heartless and inhumane his particular brand of conservatism is. Maybe that's what we need to invalidate these ideas one and for all.