When teh poor get fucked.

The Safety Net Will Not Catch the Poor This Time

Unemployment insurance is not as generous now. Yet the unemployment rate is at 6.5 percent and some forecasters say it could top 8 percent next year. It hit 10.8 percent in the early 1980s.
This is also the first severe economic slump since President Bill Clinton overhauled the welfare system and made it tougher to qualify for, and keep receiving, benefits. Many people who lose their jobs now and fall into poverty may not qualify for public assistance. Other programs designed in part to counter hard times — like job training and housing subsidies — have also been cut back.

If you are a follower of my blog or know me personally, you have probably picked up on some anti-Bill Clinton sentiment. The primary reason for my President Clinton hate is the 1996 PRWORA welfare-reform bill which should serve as primary example as to how triangulated policies result in very bad policies. I will get to the NYT article, but first let me point out TANF's (welfare) failures:
1. By establishing welfare as a maintenance-of-effort grant, states are tasked with setting benefit levels themselves. This has the effect of fracturing the risk pool. By doing so, it is impossible for high poverty risk states (poor states like Mississippi) to be subsidized by the low poverty risk states (wealthy states like Connecticut). This has made it impossible for TANF to actually reduce poverty rates as the states where poverty is concentrated cannot afford to payout enough benefits to the impoverished.MORE

sickening

There is something horrifying about killing people in teh manner of a video game

Well, noone ever accused Republicans of lacking gall when breaking the law.

Dear Weakkneed, spineless Dems,

THIS is what happens when you let Republicans walk all over you.

When the Bureau of Land Management announced that they were going to allow uranium mining along with oil and gas drilling around the Grand Canyon, Congress members who cared about the canyon, or national parks, or the environment, or common sense were more than a little miffed, and fortunately for them (and us) Congress had a means to act that didn't involve issuing a subpoena.

The 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act gives the House Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee the power to order the Secretary of the Interior to put a temporary hold on allowing mineral extraction on public land. So they did. The House Natural Resources Committee voted 20-2 to block block mining in the area the BLM had proposed to open. And, well. First they refused to follow the law cause they said not enough Repubs were in on the vote. No, I am not joking. And THEN...

Oh. And whole they are at it:


I. I just. And we'll let them get away with it of course. Just like we let Nixon get away with it. And all those NIxon era guys came back and did WORSE. And teh next time the Republicans get back into power? All the Bush people? And going to fuck us to hell.


Oh, and

On Election Day---when people were probably thinking about one or two other things---the Interior Department announced plans for oil and gas leases on lands adjacent to Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and Desolation Canyon in Utah. It gave the public until December 19 to raise objections.
Among those objecting was John Podesta, President-elect Obama's transition chief, and Rep. Raul Grijalva who sent a letter to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne objecting to the leases as a "last-minute fire sale."
Even the Interior Department's own National Park Service raised concerns about drilling rigs right next to our parks, and the BLM relented, pulling 22 of the original 90 leases.
On Tuesday, the BLM temporarily deferred leasing on some additional sites near Nine Mile Canyon, a famed archeological site with thousands of panels of Native American rock art.
So, a couple of partial and temporary wins in Utah. But there's still well over 100,000 acres there up for leasing before Bush leaves office.MORE

insert expletives here

via: giandujakiss

Remember this?

The article goes on to account how, in 1997, Greenspan got into a spat with the ead of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. She wanted to regulate derivatives; he didn't. Greenspan joined forces with Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his deputy, Lawrence Summers, to resist her plan.

“Greenspan told Brooksley that she essentially didn’t know what she was doing and she’d cause a financial crisis,” said Michael Greenberger, who was a senior director at the commission. “Brooksley was this woman who was not playing tennis with these guys and not having lunch with these guys. There was a little bit of the feeling that this woman was not of Wall Street.”

“All of the forces in the system were arrayed against it,” [Rubin] said. “The industry certainly didn’t want any increase in these requirements. There was no potential for mobilizing public opinion.”

Well then. Deja Vu!

And what do we find Barack Obama's Treasury Secretary, RUBIN's PROTEGE Tim Geithner, doing...

Oh dang! Rumor has it that Tim Geithner, our Treasury Secretary-to-be, does not care for our beloved Sheila Bair and her maverick ways. Bair is the chairman of the FDIC and one of the few high-profile Bush administration appointees to very repeatedly and publicly bang the drum about how if our financial crisis is ultimately due to people’s mortgages going south, maybe we ought to work on fixing those bad mortgages. She’s a working class hero! So naturally, Giethner hates her guts. The problem is that she isn’t a “team player” or a huge fan of Citigroup, and for this she must be banished forever from Washington:

Geithner became increasingly wary of Bair as she worked with the other regulatory agencies on emergency bailouts of banks in recent months. The New York fed chief has been concerned that Bair was more worried about keeping the FDIC’s insurance program protected than she was about the entire financial system, one person said.
Bair twice sparred with her colleagues at the Fed and Treasury over efforts involving Citigroup. In October, she acquiesced to Wachovia Corp.’s agreement to a takeover by Wells Fargo & Co. days after agreeing to back an initial deal with Citigroup. … Wells Fargo offered about $15 billion for Wachovia, compared with Citigroup’s $2.2 billion deal to acquire Wachovia’s banking operations, and didn’t need any FDIC aid.MORE

Speaking of Rubin:

Our economic terminators

Last week, the New York Times penned a paean to Citigroup executive Bob Rubin, gushing about how amazingly wonderful his power and influence is inside the Democratic Party, and noting that the incoming Obama administration is heavily influenced both by the man himself and his disciples. This, despite the fact that most of the policies Rubin and Rubinites are known for have been intimately involved in the current economic mess. What was amazing about this story was not that Rubin and his intellectual offspring remain credible voices in the political system. That's no surprise in a country where Iraq War proponents are regularly billed in the media and treated by both parties as more Serious and Pragmatic than those who opposed the war. No, what was shocking was that the reality the Times presented still persists even as Rubin heads a bank at the center of the current crisis. In other words, not only has the guy been proven wrong on policy, he's actually intimately intertwined in one of the largest corporations at the center of this scandalous meltdown - and yet retains his "star power," as the newspaper called it.
Now, the question is whether he can retain that "star power" and influence with the incoming administration in light of this new report:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An investor lawsuit contends that Citigroup Inc insiders, including senior counselor and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, sold more than $150 million of their own shares at inflated prices while concealing the bank's true financial health... The shareholders contend that Rubin, former Chief Executive Charles Prince and other current and former executives engaged in "suspicious" stock sales that were "made at times calculated to maximize the personal benefits from undisclosed inside information."

MORE

Re: The Auto Industry A roundup.

The F Word: Distributing Responsibility

Transcript

Remeber the Treaty of Detriot?

Despite GM's Staggering Losses, CEO raked In Millions

The New Poll Porn: Automotive Sales Aren’t What You Think They Are

GM the Failed Business Model Pays Its Retiree Pensions; Exxon Doesn’t

Richard Shelby Wants To Place US Government In Bankruptcy And Eliminate Military Pensions And Benefits

The Difference between GM and Toyota: The Health Care

The Unions HAVE been making concessions. The news just doesn't report them


EPI: If Big 3 Fail 18% Unemployment in Michigan

We cannot survive on services alone

Basic Assumptions and Nationalisation

What About The Government “Bailout” Of Foreign Auto Makers?

USW Int'l. President Leo Gerard on the Automobile Industry Crisis

(no subject)

via americablog

In Maine, Women rule

Maine’s glass ceiling developed a few more cracks Wednesday as women were sworn in as Senate president and House speaker. And in one of its first acts, the newly seated Legislature elected Maine’s first female attorney general.

“It’s so good to see things moving ahead,” said Janet Mills, a Democrat who won bipartisan support to become the state’s 55th attorney general. “Just because there are a lot of firsts doesn’t mean there can’t be a lot of seconds, thirds and fourths along the way. Maine men and women are sharing responsibilities more than in many other states, most other states.”

Also Wednesday after the formal swearing-in of the Democratic-controlled Legislature, Sen. Elizabeth “Libby” Mitchell of Vassalboro was elected the chamber’s president and Rep. Hannah Pingree of North Haven was elected House speaker.

Both were elected unanimously after minority Republicans, in a gesture of bipartisanship at the start of what’s expected to be a difficult session, threw their support behind the two Democrats. It’s the first time both of Maine’s legislative chambers are being headed by women at the same time.

And Mitchell is the first woman to have served as presiding officer in both the Maine House and Senate.