Today, President Bush held a press conference that dealt with many issues. One of the questions asked was about the Protect America Act. Bush once again said that it was necessary for our security, including the part about retroactive immunity for telecom companies. But he introduced a fun new argument into play that only Dick Cheney had used up to that point:

It was legal. And now, all of a sudden, plaintiffs attorneys, class-action plaintiffs attorneys, you know -- I don't want to try to get inside their head; I suspect they see, you know, a financial gravy train -- are trying to sue these companies. First, it's unfair. It is patently unfair. And secondly, these lawsuits create doubts amongst those who will -- whose help we need.

Financial gravy train? Who does Bush think is filing these lawsuits? I know that, in his mind, the only law firms that exist are giant, corporate law firms that sue to prevent dishing out workers compensation claims, but let's be reasonable! Giant, profit-making law firms are not engaging in these lawsuits. Non-profit organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are filing these lawsuits. They're not making any money! If they thought there were money to be made, giant, profit-making law firms would be leading the charge of class-action lawsuits against these telecom companies.

Posted by Mark at 9:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, Sen. Hillary Clinton lambasted Sen. Barack Obama for insinuating, through campaign mailers, that Hillary's healthcare plan will be mandatory and will punish people who don't join. "Sen. Obama knows it is not true that my plan forces people to buy insurance even if they can't afford it," she said today.

So, are these allegations true or false? Hillary appeared on This Week on Feb. 3. Even then, the Obama campaign was telling people that Hillary's healthcare plan would force people to purchase insurance. Host George Stephanopolous asked Hillary to answer these charges:

Stephanopolous: "They're claiming this issue of the penalty, and a lot of healthcare experts, many who side-- who worked with you in 1994, say that without these enforcement mechanisms, you simply can't get to universal coverage, you can't claim to have universal coverage, so there's no difference between your plan and Senator Obama's, and, and, and, I mean, you talk about automatic enrollment. Will you garnish wages of people who, uh, don't comply, don't buy the insurance?"

Hillary: "George, we will have an enforcement mechanism. Whether it's that or it's some other, uh, mechanism through the tax system or automatic enrollment--"

In what way do the words "whether it's that [meaning garnishing wages] or some other mechanism" not translate into forcing people to buy insurance? And incidentally, this controversy has been around since the beginning of February. Only now is Hillary drawing new attention to it as she tries -- desperately, I might add -- to win Ohio and Texas on Mar. 4.

Posted by Mark at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sure, we all knew it, but how big of a moron could he be?

Today, he writes about the economic stimulus package passed by Congress, which would put cash into the hands of taxpayers. Beck thinks the plan is flawed, but not for the right reasons. The real reason the plan is flawed is that consumers -- who got into this mess by racking up more debt than they could pay off -- are expected to use their $600 tax rebates to buy more stuff, especially durable goods, to boost the revenue of corporations, which will in turn have more money to buy capital goods from each other, invest, and hire new employees.

This will not happen.

For one, consumers will take that $600 and immediately pay down their debt. They're dumb, but they're not cretins. They already bought the 42" plasma TV. Now it's time to pay it off.

Second, with the number of jobs being outsourced, companies will indeed turn around and hire new labor -- in another country! China, Mexico, and India will benefit from this portion of the stimulus package. And it looks like companies don't want more labor, at least, not skilled labor. GM wants to buy out the contracts of 74,000 North American employees and replace them with less-experienced workers because the new workers are cheaper. You'll recall that Circuit City tried this last year, and it was a rousing success.

Just kidding. The fired employees were furious and customers were frustrated by the inexperienced new employees.

Glenn Beck objects to the stimulus package because it doesn't do enough for big business. The old supply-side theory works only if companies are investing in labor in this country. And they're not.

So, Beck's brilliant idea is to issue debit cards -- debit cards! -- for quick spending. Yes, that's the ticket: spend more money. He cites the success of the $2000 debit cards given to victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as an example of why his idea works. But his own precious FOX News reported in 2005 that FEMA scrapped their debit card program after it had existed for only two days. Cards were issued only to evacuees in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

See, debit cards give people money now, whereas tax breaks take some time to go into effect. Welcome to fiscal policy, Glenn. He also proposes that the cards have a six-month expiration date, forcing people to spend their money immediately or they lose it. What planet is Glenn Beck from? Does he really think that this is the answer: mandatory spending to fill the coffers of companies that may or may not, in their infinite sense of charity, use the money to make the economy better?

Then again, he is the same person who told Keith Ellison (D-MN), America's first Muslim congressman, "[W]hat I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.'" He also supports an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting flag burning.

I'd make him a SEDHE Villain of the Forever, but to be a Villain of the Forever, a person has to take actions that harm the United States. Glenn Beck just spouts stupidity, and thankfully, no one listen to him.

Posted by Mark at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By now, pretty much everyone knows that "payday loans" are a big scam. Or, if they don't know already, they should read more. A payday loan is an advance on your paycheck. It's used by people who live paycheck-to-paycheck to support themselves in between paychecks. The problem is that these same people can't secure real loans from normal banks. Banks' interest rates are capped by the federal government, but since payday loan companies aren't banks, they aren't regulated as such. This means they can engage in usury, the practice of charging illegally high interest rates (at least, the rates would be illegal if these payday loan companies were banks).

Most payday loan places are located in low-income areas, where people don't have the collateral or credit score to get real loans. It's a good sign that your city or town is on the outs if payday loan stores start popping up.

You'll recall that this is the same behavior that has caused the bulk of our current financial crisis, except instead of dealing with a thousand or two thousand dollars, we're dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars per person.

Payday loan places charge as much as 400% APR. This means that, in order to get a thousand-dollar loan to tide you over between paychecks, it may cost you four thousand dollars. In this story from The Denver Post, it took four years and $8,000 for Linda Medlock to pay off a $500 payday loan.

Want to sue a payday loan company for usury? If the contract you signed with them contains an arbitration clause, you'd better think again. In 2006's Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc. v. Cartagena, the Supreme Court denied respondent Cartagena the right to sue Buckeye Check Cashing for usury, since the contract contained an arbitration clause. Since arbitration clauses are severable from contracts, the Court ruled, any issues about the enforceability of the contract go into arbitration, not a court. And we know how fair and balanced mandatory binding arbitration is.

Now, with a new wave of recession coming over the country -- a wave in which even middle-class people are being affected -- companies that you never thought would get into the check-cashing business have found new opportunities. Say's Law is right: supply does create its own demand. In this case, it's tax season and there's a supply of people who need fast money. H&R Block and others have created the "refund anticipation loan," a loan granted to you by H&R Block based on what you think your tax refund will be. Don't be fooled; H&R Block is selling you the same bologna as the variable-rate mortgage companies and the payday loan companies:

What you may not notice is the exorbitant annual percentage rate on that loan. But consumer groups have. They say these short-term, high-interest loans prey on the very people who can least afford them.

Critics of refund loans, as the loans are commonly known, point to the disparity between the tax advances and other credit offerings aimed at wealthier customers.

Tax preparers, both independent operations and major chains, charge interest rates that can run on an annualized basis well into triple figures, all for the privilege of getting money a few days earlier. The IRS further mitigates the risk to lenders with its Debt Indicator service, alerting them to any claims (child support, unpaid federal student loan) against refund-loan applicants' refunds.

What's worse is that many people who get a refund anticipation loan don't understand that it's a loan on their refund, and once they get the refund, they'll need to pay back the loan, plus an exorbitant interest rate. So, if you get that $600 refund from George W. Bush, don't put it into a refund anticipation loan. And for crying out loud, don't go buy a refrigerator like the president wants you to; use it to pay off your debt!

Posted by Mark at 6:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In an essay for The Atlantic Monthly entitled "Goodbye to All That," Andrew Sullivan presents a novel reason why Obama is fundamentally different from any candidate we've seen in our generation:

Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future.

[...]

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce.

Vietnam and the culture wars of the 1960s, says Sullivan, have informed political discourse ever since then, and only Obama is young enough not to have politically matured during that time. He has not been affected by the "triumphant post-Reagan conservatism" that has kept Democrats on the defensive since the 1980s. Even today, it seems, Democrats have to justify to the country why their ideas are not ludicrous, while Republican ideas are accepted as normal. Going to war in Iraq? Sounds great. Suggesting we don't go to war in Iraq? Whoa, there, buddy! You'd better have a good reason for us not to go to war. The beauty of the Iraq War is that President Bush didn't have to do very much actual convincing. The narrative of our nation's politics said that the Republicans knew how to protect the nation, so Bush knew best.

Which brings us to why Obama would make a great president: "He is among the first Democrats in a generation not to be afraid or ashamed of what they actually believe, which also gives them more freedom to move pragmatically to the right, if necessary." Nowhere was the polarization of something as basic as an opinion demonstrated than in 2004. On the one hand, we have George W. Bush, a man who believes so much in his own opinion -- and others' faith in his opinion -- that he has not once changed his mind about anything. He has made no mistakes, and he has no regrets. Undoubtedly, if someone asked if he would do anything about his preidency differently, he wouldsn't have an answer. Even when he is wrong, he refuses to back down, as though his own stubbornness is prima facie evidence of how correct he is -- because, seriously, how could someone who is wrong be so unwilling to admit he's wrong? He dares people to call him on his hubris, and largely, his supporters never do, assuming that he's either completely correct or a totally tactless moron.

John Kerry was on the other end of the spectrum, constantly changing his mind when he realized it would be politically expedient to do so. He famously said of a defense spending bill, "I voted for it before I voted against it." This only gave his opponents more ammunition in their gunfight to demonstrate to voters that he didn't have any firm positions. A successful "Google bomb" shot John Kerry's campaign website to number one as the search result for "waffles."

The fear of Republicans is driving this congress. It's the reason why Democrats have consistently refused to stand up to President Bush when he is urging for the passage of stupid laws, like a provision for warrantless wiretapping. It's the reason why they haven't done the investigations they should be doing. Democrats take Bush's comments about them to heart and are terrified that, after twelve years of being browbeaten by Republicans, the hard-earned gains of 2006 will disappear when voters believe it when the president says that Congress is spending too much money and wasting time with investigations and attempts to end the war in Iraq.

Obama knows that the president is bluffing. He knows that Democrats don't pay any attention to what he says, and the president's conservative audience already doesn't like the Democrats, so there's no reason to pander. Obama isn't afraid of Bush and he isn't afraid of Republicans. It takes a certain amount of idealism to think that you're doing what's right. Bush has that idealism, but he's carried it too far, to the point where he's doing what only he thinks is right and doesn't come to a consensus with anyone. When the Senate intimated that it might not confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General, Bush was fine with that. We just won't have an Attorney General, then, he told the Senate. In no uncertain terms, he told them that they would be confirming Michael Mukasey, and if they didn't like it, then he would publicly blame them for the lack of an Attorney General. He would not be nominating anyone else.

Obama, though, is not unilateral. But he's not a chicken. And, says Sullivan, he brings with him more than pragmatism:

If you believe that America’s current crisis is not a deep one, if you think that pragmatism alone will be enough to navigate a world on the verge of even more religious warfare, if you believe that today’s ideological polarization is not dangerous, and that what appears dark today is an illusion fostered by the lingering trauma of the Bush presidency, then the argument for Obama is not that strong. Clinton will do.

Posted by Mark at 8:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For some reason, CNN keeps giving superdelegates to candidates. "Superdelegates" are delegates that are not pledged to a specific candidate. For example, Arizona has 67 delegates and 11 superdelegates. This means that, after the Feb. 5 primary, 67 delegates will be obligated to vote for a particular candidate, and 11 will be free to make up their minds how they want. Liken them to "at-large" delegates. But their allegiances are far from certain.

CNN makes guesses about who gets superdelegates, adds them to the pledged delegate totals, and then puts the sum on their Election Center front page. It's 725 for Hillary to 636 for Obama, which sounds like quite a disparity, until you remove the superdelegates. In terms of pledged delegates, Hillary has 532, while Obama has 530. The race is much closer than it initially appears.

Posted by Mark at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bloomberg News reports that Hillary Clinton "took in $823,087 from registered lobbyists and members of their firms in 2007." And Barack Obama? None. Obama "doesn't take money from registered lobbyists." How can Hillary Clinton talk about change while she takes money from the very people for whom change is bad?

Posted by Mark at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

With 22 states poised to have primaries on Tuesday, the battle for the Democratic nomination could be decided in a few days. Barack Obama is the best choice for the Democratic nomination, hands down.

A year ago, I was hesitant to consider Barack Obama due to his lack of experience. He has been a U.S. senator for only three years; what could he possibly have to offer? It seems, though, that Obama's perceived lack of experience is not as important as what he could bring to the table. Obama likes to say that he offers "hope," and this is true: Obama doesn't behave the same way that Hillary does. His outlook on the way government ought to work is different from Hillary's, and it's different from the way that politics has been conducted as far back as I can remember.

Consider the personalities: who is leveling personal attacks? When Barack Obama said that he thought Ronald Reagan took advantage of a time when the country wanted to hear his new ideas, Hillary took the comment and spun it wildly out of control, claiming that Obama revered Ronald Reagan and thought that he had better ideas than the Democrats. When Hillary Clinton said that Martin Luther King, Jr., couldn't have accomplished his dream of civil rights reform without Lyndon Johnson in the White House, everyone in the media pounced on her, assailing her for daring to suggest that King had any flaws. The media turned that comment -- which is, actually, probably true -- and spun it into an issue of "race." But guess who didn't jump on that bandwagon? Barack Obama, the very person who would have benefitted most from such spin.

Most of their policies are pretty much the same. Healthcare reform, for example. Both Hillary and Obama want to allow people to buy into the same kinds of federal health plans that Congress uses. Both of them would allow people to keep their private insurance, if they wanted. Both of them want to cover children (although Obama says explicitly that he wants mandatory healthcare coverage for children) and both of them want to allow the use of generics where possible, with Obama adding that he would allow the purchase of drugs from other developed countries. Neither candidate is out to create a Canadian or British-style single-payer system. That's a shame, but it's also realistic. Moving to a federal healthcare system for people who can't afford private health insurance is the first step toward creating a single-payer system. Both Hillary and Obama would strengthen oversight over the healthcare industry and modernize the systems they use, so as to keep costs down. (Paul Krugman, the columnist Republicans love to hate, estimates that 25% of the money we spend on healthcare is eaten up by administrative costs; that is, pushing paper from one place to another.)

Even though she is more in favor among Latino voters, Hillary's website doesn't go into specifics about her immigration policies. Obama is unsurprisingly centrist about immigration, not using the "a"-word, but not allowing for an exploitative guest worker program. Under an Obama immigration policy, illegal immigrants would pay a fine and then go to "the back of the line" to get their citizenship, a process that can take up to fifteen years on a good day (which includes a few years to get an immigrant visa, a few more years to become a permanent resident, and then several years after that to become a citizen). Our immigration and naturalization system is tremendously bureaucratic and broken. Obama won't fix that to my satisfaction. Neither will Hillary.

What are we left with? The Iraq War. As a state senator from Illinois, Obama was opposed to the Iraq War. Hillary voted to use force in Iraq. During last week's debate, she attempted to spin her support for the war as though she had no idea the president would actually use force. She voted, she said, for the president to enforce U.N. Resolution 1441, something she thought he would do through diplomacy.

Are we really supposed to believe this? A president beats the drums of war for months before invading, and Hillary is naive enough to think that he won't go to war? She never admitted that she was naive, or that she was duped, or even that she was wrong. That sends her on the path to the Dark Side toward a policy of never admitting you're wrong, kind of like a certain president I know.

Hillary has also never said definitively if she would remove troops from Iraq. She has said that she might do it, but there are no guarantees. Obama is explicitly promising a withdrawal from Iraq. This is something that I find necessary in a candidate. The Iraq War was a sham and a mistake from the very beginning, and to continue it is to continue legitimizing that lie. The war has to end as soon as possible, and only Obama has promised to do it.

The impression that I get out of Obama is that he will actually act as a voice for change. Not since 1994 have the Democrats had a candidate so charismatic and so promising. The Al Gore of 2000 was not the Al Gore that spoke passionately about global warming; the Al Gore of 2000 was boring and didn't seem nearly as amiable as George W. Bush. In 2004, the Democrats trotted out John Kerry, a candidate who gained the support of people who didn't want to vote for George W. Bush. Kerry was, if at all possible, less enigmatic than Gore and conceded defeat despite obvious voting irregularities in Ohio. Hillary has too many political and corporate connections to be a real voice of change. She -- and her husband -- have the same penchant for secrecy that George W. Bush has now. We will never know how the Clinton healthcare plan was formed, since the records are still secret. A Hillary presidency may attempt to stonewall government transparency, but I believe that an Obama presidency never will. He has never been anything but honest with the American people.

Hearing Obama speak cogently and honestly about the issues at hand actually does give me a sense of hope, as though the evil of the last eight years can be undone, our government can be made to function once again, corruption can be placed under control, and our cynical war for money in the Middle East can end. No wonder the Obama logo looks like a rising sun.

Posted by Mark at 9:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)