An Important Lesson

Almost the first thing Obama set about doing as a US Senator was to try to make government transactions more transparent to the public. Color me hopeful.

But if the ripoffs are widespread, the current public consensus in favor of government activism could evaporate very quickly.
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Grrrr. That sounds like a nod to Schererian savviness.
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Of course the media should scrutinize gov’t spending. But that “some might say the consensus might evaporate” language is all too detached from merit.

Schererian or nay, he is right.
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But at least it will, graft here, corruption there, be spent doing some nation bldg. in the US. As opposed to 2.4$ trillion utterly wasted in Afghan/Iraq:
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http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN2450753720071024
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Color me less than hopeful that Obama is going to stop funneling a 1/2 trillion of your tax $ (annually) to the Pentagon nutters. But, hey, sh-t happens. On a brighter note, Hillary is coming, Hillary is coming! I’m ready to put on my thong and pasties and greet her in Tokyo tomorrow. She heralds, surely, a new world order in our fo-po.

These are two entirely different situations. the Iraq deal was a free for all. They loaded up the tractor trailers with money and shipped them to Iraq with absolutely no oversight. Probably everyone along the way grabbed a pocketfull or so. Some more than others. Those who took more than their fair share are now being caught and prosecuted. In this case when you catch one officer the military mindset is that you come clean so they rat out their fellow conspirators. This will go on and on. I have a feeling you will not only see military officers, but a variety of corporate leaders and most likely some high ranking Bush administration officials embroiled in this scandal. This will re-inforce the mindset that everyone must be careful with stimulus money.

Of course there is one important diffference in the two funding situations. The Bush administration didn’t care about graft and corruption. I am waiting to see if this whole corruption thing leads straight back to Halliburton and Cheney. Would be interesting to see if massive amounts of money (we are talking millions and millions) suddenly showed up in the accounts of high ranking administration, Halliburton or even Blackwater connected employees. Of course these would probably be Swiss accounts

Correction:
A. It is a basic law of human nature that when vast sums of money are distributed rapidly by government agencies without the duplicate oversight mechanisms that are standard in a bureaucracy, corruption ensues.
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B. It is a basic law of the press to look the other way from Republican corruption. (Only an idiot couldn’t have predicted that Republicans handing no-bid contracts to Republican contractors would end up resulting in graft.)

Aaron & newfloridian, your posts conjure up images in my head of the meeting of the Springfield Republican Party in The Simpsons. Rainer Wolfcastle (a.k.a McBain, a.k.a. The Governator), Monty Burns, Rupert Murdoch and Dracula sitting around a table in a dungeon, whilst lightning flashes outside. Try as we might to turn the Republican Party into cartoon villains, they are alas all too real.

Frank Rich has the sharp elbows out this morning. Great stuff!
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/opinion/15rich.html

Doggone it sgw, you beat me to it! But that doesn’t mean I can’t paste one quote from the Rich piece. David Axelrod on DC:
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“This town talks to itself and whips itself into a frenzy with its own theories that are completely at odds with what the rest of America is thinking,” he says. Once the frenzy got going, it didn’t matter that most polls showed support for Obama and his economic package: “If you watched cable TV, you’d see our support was plummeting, we were in trouble. It was almost like living in a parallel universe.”
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For Axelrod, the moral is “not just that Washington is too insular but that the American people are a lot smarter than people in Washington think.”
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So here is my challenge to JoeK. JoeK said: It will behoove the Obama Administration–and the media–to pay careful attention as to how the stimulus money is being disbursed in the coming months. You should also have noted that the repug party has proclaimed that they are going to hold hearing after hearing highlighting any little thing, real or imagined, that isn’t going right. They are going to play the “town talks to itself and whips itself into a frenzy” for everything they are worth. Are you going to cover that as it is, rather than as they want you to portray their actions? Are you going to challenge them at every turn? Are you going to, as Joe Sudbay said this morning:
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Ask the Republicans guests, including leading GOP drama queen Lindsey Graham, why they hate America? Because only people who hate this country would work so hard to defeat the stimulus package when our country is on the verge of economic collapse — a collapse enabled by those Republicans and their former leader, George Bush. (Their new leader is the former drug addict, Rush.) Now, we all know this is wishful thinking. The Republicans will never be forced to explain themselves by the inside-the-beltway pundits.
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Prove him wrong Joe.

We’re already seeing Obama being hit over the head with his higher standards… or attempt at it. Bush and Co could loot and pillage and their standard was “we never said we wouldn’t”. Their cat-that-ate-the-canary grins were just right for the press corps to have a beer with.
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I’m sure the rip-offs will be “kept in perspective”. Obama will be impeached in the press if the cleaning lady takes ten bucks in loose change. Haliburton will never be mentioned again.

wvng
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Joke Line is just concern trolling. I mean I am SURE a big time columnits like him has definitely heard about recovery.gov where average citizens will be able to track the money alongside the governement. But Joke Line has to look strong for his conservative fans like he will hold President Obama accountable. Thats fair and balanced dontcha know?

columnist

Sgw, Hmmm. I preferred columnnits.
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But JoeK has fits of honest media criticism that need to be encouraged, nurtured. He does have it in him. Frankly, if every single beltway pundit and reporter was forced to read Rich’s column once a day, it might sink in that they behave in a profoundly silly way to the detriment of our nation.
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Yeah, that’ll happen.

sgwhiteinfla:

IN making a simple gramtifcal typing error you have appropraitely described columnits. They shall be know by that name forever.

Kristoff also had an excellent column today.
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So maybe I was wrong. I used to consider health care our greatest national shame, considering that we spend twice as much on medical care as many European nations, yet American children are twice as likely to die before the age of 5 as Czech children — and American women are 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as Irish women.
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Yet I’m coming to think that our No. 1 priority actually must be education. That makes the new fiscal stimulus package a landmark, for it takes a few wobbly steps toward reform and allocates more than $100 billion toward education.
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That’s a hefty sum — by comparison, the Education Department’s entire discretionary budget for the year was $59 billion — and it will save America’s schools from the catastrophe that they were facing. A University of Washington study had calculated that the recession would lead to cuts of 574,000 school jobs without a stimulus.

wvng
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Either Kristoff can’t read or he is being intentionally obtuse because I read through that study on teacher certification and it has nothing to do with whether teacher certification has an effect on performance. In that study they evaluated two groups of teachers, both of them being certified. The difference was how they came to be certified. And so far EVERY study has been conducted shows a marked difference between student achievement under a certified teacher vs student achievement under an uncertified teacher. But once again thats a zombie Village meme that won’t die.

Lots of blogosphere stories today about the disconnect between there is a real divide between what the chattering class inside the Beltway is saying and what the people of this country are saying. We saw the beginnings of this during the campaign, …
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If I were in a business that seeks to provide a product that people want, such as, say, TIME, I might see a business opportunity in committing serious objective journalism and eliminating purveyors of CW (see: Halperin, Mark).

Let us hope that other beltway columnits will follow Joe’s example. Thanks sgw.

I think recovery.gov will help people see the transparency of the process. It will also help if the Obama administration publicly highlights any corruption rather than hide it, because it will show that the administration is intent on rooting out the corruption rather than being apologists for it.

It is a basic law of human nature that when vast sums of money are distributed rapidly by government agencies, corruption ensues.
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Joe Klein:
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It’s another “basic law of human nature” that when state bureaucrats are given the power to spy on Americans in secret however and whenever they desire, corruption ensues.
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It’s also another “basic law of human nature” that when powerful oligopolists and government officials are found to be colluding in possible violation of the law, and the government acts to retroactively immunize the parties from legal consequences, corruption ensues.
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Why do your political prescriptions recognize a “basic law of human nature” one day, and not the next, Joe Klein?

Ruh Roh, SZ is asking some VERY uncomfortable questions of Joke Line. I wonder if he will respond.
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hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Hmmmmmmmm ^3

sgw, if you are around, would you mind visiting Political Animal and reinforce my request that Steve get his head out of his b#tt and report on the Waldman story about 60 votes required for the stimulus bill. Yes I reposted the Waldman link, again.
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It is pretty disheartening when even PA refuses to headline that story. I don’t get it.

You should also have noted that the repug party has proclaimed that they are going to hold hearing after hearing highlighting any little thing, real or imagined, that isn’t going right. They are going to play the “town talks to itself and whips itself into a frenzy” for everything they are worth.
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Obama’s long game has already beaten them to the punch. Did everyone else miss his youtube address where he announced the website where stimulus spending will be tracked and published? He challenged state and local governments to do the same. I can’t remember the url now, but it’s set to go online within the next week or so.
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So while Joe is right, and it’s virtually inevitable that someone downstream will try to stuff his pockets with the cash, he’s already inoculated himself against criticism if someone in BFE Idaho tries to dip into the kitty.
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Then there’s the main point: we can expect much less corruption in the case of the stimulus than in Iraq for several reasons, but the main one is: the point of the stimulus wasn’t to allow friends of the administration to help themselves to taxpayer largesse. Honestly, Joe, it astounds me how many of you media “insiders” still don’t recognize that a plausible excuse for raids on the Treasury on behalf of GOP patrons was one of the main real reasons Bush started the Iraq war. QED, my friend. If you’re running a war to win, you listen to your generals, you make sure your troops are well prepared and equipped, you send enough of them to do the job, you plan for the aftermath of victory, etc etc etc. You don’t start into it with the idea of handing out billions in no-bid contracts. Which is exactly how they started it out. By their actions shall ye know know their hearts, Joe.

well, actually, that was more of a res ipsa loquitor than a QED, but you get my drift.

jennofark: So while Joe is right, and it’s virtually inevitable that someone downstream will try to stuff his pockets with the cash, he’s already inoculated himself against criticism if someone in BFE Idaho tries to dip into the kitty. Maybe among us, but not in the beltway. Never in the beltway.
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In 1993, former Speaker Newt Gingrich notoriously whipped the House GOP into opposing President Clinton’s major initiatives, ranging from the budget to health care reform. The New York Times reports that Gingrich has been advising the GOP leadership to follow the same path with President Obama’s agenda:
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And their actual leader:
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Just this past Friday, Limbaugh reiterated his desire to see Obama fail. “I want everything he’s doing to fail. … I want everything he’s doing to fail,” Limbaugh said.
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A successful stimulus requires the American people to have confidence that it can succeed, and the repuglican party is on record as planning to do everything they can to convince the American people that it can not. There is absolutely no reason to think the media won’t help them at every turn.

Wow. This is almost savage. I loved it. The SNL opening skit on a House GOP strategy meeting:
http://widgets.nbc.com/o/4727a250e66f9723/499846dfca4efc3d/4998243896ee9ba2/1164bdf4/-cpid/a63936a0aeb731b2

Non-villager: Rich, dead nuts on, as always.

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Villager: Broder, not so much.
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021302513_pf.html<

MSM would rather see the country fail, it makes better articles,TV and radio. They were complacent in the build up to and during the Iraqi war. They never said a word when the Bush Administration basically sacked the Treasury and transfered probably billions of dollars to Iraq. They of course will now cover the news of corruption as if they had nothing to do with the enabling of the Bush administrations plans. They will provide the same enabling cover for the Republican’s efforts to wreck the economic recovery of the US economy. The press once was the teller of truths, the grand Fifth Estate who stood up to the powerful, righted the wrongs, etc. Today they are the enablers who allow their own biases to shade the truth, to even mis-represent the truth for the protection of their belief systems and the gathering of the all important STORY!

Interestingly at this point, mainstream America is not listening to them. They have formed their own opinion of Obama and believe his is making an honest effort to right America. The press will now concentrate on attacking those beliefs to facilitate a continuing period of economic devestation because it means better stories. In today’s instant communications era the pressure and requirement to generate stories is so immense that they will do what they can to generate those stories. The MSM press has become the enemies of middle class America.

“It is a basic law of human nature that when vast sums of money are distributed rapidly by government agencies, corruption ensues.”
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Hmmm, let me try a variation Mr Klein:
It is a basic law of human nature that when vast powers are given to government agencies to conduct surveillance, corruption ensues.
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Hey that makes sense! Same concept and everything! Too bad you Beltway types weren’t as deeply concerned when they were throwing bundles of cash around like footballs in Iraq in 2003-2004.

Dammit, in my defense, I posted before reading SZ comment which is basically the same as mine. Here’s something interesting….why are the same wingers who’ve been running around w/ their hair on fire about socialist takeover of America now saying we should nationalize the banks?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/15/graham-nationalizing-bank_n_167048.html
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Will anyone in the MSM call them out?

Nah. If you smoke pot, you’re a liberal pinko pot smoking hippy, but if you’re selling pot…

cincinnatus:

Of course they want to nationalize the banks, has nothing to do with socialism. They are focusing on acts which would cause the maximum amount of pain and suffering for average Americans. They know there are still vast numbers of Americans who have financials in their portfolios and in their 401K in mutual funds. They know if nationalization happens that people will blame the Democrats and Obama for this act. And no the MSM doesn’t care about calling them out. Again they want destruction and angry people for their story needs. Unfortunately Waters (D) is as dumb as the hot rock on the window sill and is marching right along with them. Obama understands the dangers of nationalization and the fact that when it doesn’t work that he gets the blame.

By the way this is a great story to depress the stocks of Bank of America and others such as Sun Trust come Tuesday. I’ve been buying and selling the downs and ups on financials the last few weeks. Up about $8,000 in the past two weeks on small investments in these stocks. There is some manipulation of financial stocks occuring recently with the wild swings of 10-20%. Wouldn’t surprise me if some of these Republican politicians are gaming the system and generating headlines to deliberately depress financials stocks creating buying opportunities that translate into quick 15 to 20% gains. Someone is doing it that is for sure based on these stock movements recently.

Free my comment?

Related to 53_3′s “Nah”: MSM Derides Bloggers For Asking Hypothetical Bad Question

But what about Bernanke’s “free range” robbery of the Treasury?
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Oops. I forgot. We agreed to a handout of at least $7,200,000,000,000 with no oversight whatsoever when we voted for Bush in 2004!
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Now how could I have overlooked such an obvious fact?

newfloridian:
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They already gamed the system. They’ve already got the money and they are running like hell for the hills.
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All the while, they are yelling over their shoulders about how irresponsible Obama was to spend so much!

In other news:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7891434.stm
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I guess the Isrealis were trying to fix that little problem…

Joe, have you taken a look at this RIVETING Bill Moyers interview with Simon Johnson about the power struggle between the banks and the administration? http://pbs.org/moyers/journal/02132009/watch.html

Johnson says the banks figure they’ve already locked this one up, and no one can break their hold on the levers of power.

(Which explains why they all wore such blank and shameless looks in Congress last week. For over $100M you’d take a drubbing on national TV, too. They’re laughing all the way to the… er, home.)

Viewers have headed right over to Johnson’s website (http://baselinescenario.com/2009/02/13/bill-moyers-journal-tonight-american-banking-oligarchs/) and are getting ready to take out their pitchforks and head to Wall Street–which anyone would want to do after they had a look at this.

Joe does it again!

Not only did he express zero interest in the corruption and loss of pallets full of cash in Iraq, while it was going on, in real time, when there was something that could be done about it. . . . (We DFHs were following that story, so thanks for getting around to it five years later, Joe – whadda scoop!)

Not only does he avoid recommending any investigation or punishment for the perpetrators of the graft. . . .

He manages to turn it into a warning for _OBAMA_ — a cautionary tale about the corruption he is already picturing occuring with Barack at the helm.

Pukeriffic stuff, Joe.

I will spell it out for you, Joe:

The missing money was PART OF THE REPUBLICAN PLAN. The corruptions was PAYBACK TO POLITICALLY-FAVORED DONORS.

See, Joe, it’s the Republicans who want to convince you that government can’t work. That’s what they dedicate themselves to doing: to wasting money so you’ll never trust government again.

Obama is taking a slightly different approach with his administration.

So it’s a wee bit unfair to tar Obama with a big BUSH BRUSH.

God, I hate your stupid commentary. You really have no clue.