Why the Moronic Moralists Will Win This Election, Why They'll Make the Economy Worse, and Why This Candidate Doesn't Care If You Vote for Him or Not

If you've already voted for me or will vote for me tomorrow, thank you. I appreciate it very much although certainly there's no way that career politician Jeff Flake can lose his seat in Congress. A vote for me -- or for the fine Democratic candidate, Rebecca Schneider -- is basically a protest vote by someone who's actually living in the real world.

However, most of you who live in Arizona's Sixth Congressional District -- the East Valley cities of Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Apache Junction and Queen Creek -- are ignorant morons. That's why I don't give a fuck if anyone votes for me or not.

That gives me the freedom politician candidates don't have. I can say what I feel and do what I think is right without having to care about whether the unwashed masses agree. Maybe I'll get 100 votes or so, votes for which I'm grateful, but in the end, it doesn't matter.

The overriding issue in this election is the terrible economy. Unfortunately, morons like most Sixth Congressional District voters will just make things worse. In his New York Times column today, the Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman explains why. It's essentially Macroeconomics 101 for Dummies, and so most East Valley residents can use it:

“How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?” That’s the question CNBC’s Rick Santelli famously asked in 2009, in a rant widely credited with giving birth to the Tea Party movement.

It’s a sentiment that resonates not just in America but in much of the world. The tone differs from place to place — listening to a German official denounce deficits, my wife whispered, “We’ll all be handed whips as we leave, so we can flagellate ourselves.” But the message is the same: debt is evil, debtors must pay for their sins, and from now on we all must live within our means.

And that kind of moralizing is the reason we’re mired in a seemingly endless slump.

The years leading up to the 2008 crisis were indeed marked by unsustainable borrowing, going far beyond the subprime loans many people still believe, wrongly, were at the heart of the problem. Real estate speculation ran wild in Florida and Nevada, but also in Spain, Ireland and Latvia. And all of it was paid for with borrowed money.

This borrowing made the world as a whole neither richer nor poorer: one person’s debt is another person’s asset. But it made the world vulnerable. When lenders suddenly decided that they had lent too much, that debt levels were excessive, debtors were forced to slash spending. This pushed the world into the deepest recession since the 1930s. And recovery, such as it is, has been weak and uncertain — which is exactly what we should have expected, given the overhang of debt.

The key thing to bear in mind is that for the world as a whole, spending equals income. If one group of people — those with excessive debts — is forced to cut spending to pay down its debts, one of two things must happen: either someone else must spend more, or world income will fall.

Yet those parts of the private sector not burdened by high levels of debt see little reason to increase spending. Corporations are flush with cash — but why expand when so much of the capacity they already have is sitting idle? Consumers who didn’t overborrow can get loans at low rates — but that incentive to spend is more than outweighed by worries about a weak job market. Nobody in the private sector is willing to fill the hole created by the debt overhang.

So what should we be doing? First, governments should be spending while the private sector won’t, so that debtors can pay down their debts without perpetuating a global slump. Second, governments should be promoting widespread debt relief: reducing obligations to levels the debtors can handle is the fastest way to eliminate that debt overhang.

But the moralizers will have none of it. They denounce deficit spending, declaring that you can’t solve debt problems with more debt. They denounce debt relief, calling it a reward for the undeserving.

And if you point out that their arguments don’t add up, they fly into a rage. Try to explain that when debtors spend less, the economy will be depressed unless somebody else spends more, and they call you a socialist. Try to explain why mortgage relief is better for America than foreclosing on homes that must be sold at a huge loss, and they start ranting like Mr. Santelli. No question about it: the moralizers are filled with a passionate intensity.

And those who should know better lack all conviction.

John Boehner, the House minority leader, was widely mocked last year when he declared that “It’s time for government to tighten their belts” — in the face of depressed private spending, the government should spend more, not less. But since then President Obama has repeatedly used the same metaphor, promising to match private belt-tightening with public belt-tightening. Does he lack the courage to challenge popular misconceptions, or is this just intellectual laziness? Either way, if the president won’t defend the logic of his own policies, who will?

Meanwhile, the administration’s mortgage modification program — the program that inspired the Santelli rant — has, in the end, accomplished almost nothing. At least part of the reason is that officials were so worried that they might be accused of helping the undeserving that they ended up helping almost nobody.

So the moralizers are winning. More and more voters, both here and in Europe, are convinced that what we need is not more stimulus but more punishment. Governments must tighten their belts; debtors must pay what they owe.

The irony is that in their determination to punish the undeserving, voters are punishing themselves: by rejecting fiscal stimulus and debt relief, they’re perpetuating high unemployment. They are, in effect, cutting off their own jobs to spite their neighbors.

But they don’t know that. And because they don’t, the slump will go on.

¿Comprende?

Look at This Fucking Politician

See him get elected to an umpteenth term in a week. He'll do it without breaking a sweat or spending much of the millions he's got in the bank in campaign contributions from oligarchs, plutocrats and fat cats.

Watch him do nothing. Again.

Just stand there and gape for another two years.

Repeat. Forever and ever, till he wants to leave.

Because Jeff Flake owns this congressional district and whatever one will replace it two years from now. Because East Valley voters are mostly morons. Elementary, my dear Watson.

No shit, Sherlock.

If You Believe That TARP and the 2008 Bailout Was a Complete Failure, You're a Typical East Valley Idiot and a Typical Ignorant Jeff Flake Voter

Americans are dumb, Arizonans are even dumber, and the majority of voters in the East Valley's Sixth Congressional District are the dumbest of the dumb: the willfully ignorant Republicans who will vote like robot morons for the sleazy professional politician Jeff Flake, who's done nothing for eight years but serve the interests of the billionaire corporate CEOs and special interests whose lackey he is.

Take TARP, the Trouble Assets Relief Program, passed in the Bush administration in the wake of the financial collapse in the fall of 2008. You hate "bailouts" and are glad that do-nothing Jeff Flake voted no because you believe it was a failure and a tremendous waste of money that made the economy worse.

That's because you're a fucking idiot. National Public Radio listeners know better, having heard this yesterday on All Things Considered:

ROBERT SIEGEL, host: The Troubled Asset Relief Program - most commonly known as the TARP -officially expired two days ago. Congress passed the massive $700 billion bailout back in October 2008 at the height of the financial panic when the stock markets were tanking and credit markets were freezing and the threat of another Great Depression loomed large.

At the time, the TARP was passed with bipartisan support. Many economists agree that the program, in large part, has been a success. And yet, as described by Herb Allison, TARP has become such a dirty word in our nation's discourse, few terms elicit such anger from voters or from politicians.

Herb Allison oversaw TARP at the Treasury Department for the last 15 months, and he joins us now from our bureau in New York. Welcome to the program.

Mr. HERB ALLISON (Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability): Thank you very much, Robert. Great to be here.

SIEGEL: This program is being vilified in this political campaign season by both Democrats and Republicans, and yet, by most accounts, it's been a financial success. How do you reconcile those two things?

Mr. ALLISON: Well, first of all, no one liked to bail out the big banks, and it's been described as a moral hazard that the taxpayers' money was put to work to protect the interests of the few in the banking industry. But, as a matter of fact, Robert, there was really no alternative at the time given the depth of the crisis. It was a true national emergency, and there was really no alternative.

And I think that, you know, it's hard to prove a negative. It's hard to really demonstrate what the economy would have been like if TARP had not been created. It kind of reminds me, though, of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" because, as you recall, in the movie, George Bailey is shown what his hometown would have looked like had he not lived, and things were pretty tough.

SIEGEL: Do you think America would have been reduced to a national Potterville or Pottersville if there have been no TARP?

Mr. ALLISON: It might well have. In fact, there is an attempt to illustrate what the country might have looked like without TARP, and that's the study done by Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi where they indicated without TARP and some associated programs, you might have seen unemployment at 16 percent or more, and the economy literally grinding to a halt.

SIEGEL: Let's talk about the actual numbers here. The original $700 billion, that amount was never actually spent. It was capped at $475 billion, is that right?

Mr. ALLISON: Yes. And, in fact, only about $387 billion was actually invested. And I'm very pleased that at this point we've already recovered more than half of the funds that were invested. We're now down to about $180 billion. And three-fourths of the money that was invested in banks has been returned, and the government - the taxpayer in other words - will earn a profit on the money that was invested in banks.

SIEGEL: Eighty-two billion dollars went to the auto industry, to Chrysler and GM. Money also went to their financial arms and to auto suppliers. How much of that money will be recouped ultimately?

Mr. ALLISON: Well, we've already received some of that money back to taxpayers. And, as you know, GM has announced it intends to do its initial public offering as a new company in November, and that will pave the way for the government to sell its common stock ownership in GM over the next several years. And we expect that we'll recover the large portion of that funds, if not perhaps all the funds, over a period of time.

SIEGEL: Although at the moment, the GM public offering, it hasn't yet taken place, but it looks like the value of the company is a little bit less than had been hoped for.

Mr. ALLISON: That could be. We'll see what the market is like when the actual offering takes place, but we're hopeful that the public will receive most of the money back and perhaps all of it.

SIEGEL: Again, the biggest share of the money went to the banks, but there was also $70 billion that went to the insurance giant AIG. Any hope of actually seeing that money back?

Mr. ALLISON: Well, as we're reporting today in a two-year retrospective on the TARP program, if you valued our stake in the company at the current market value of the firm, we ought to get back all of the money on behalf of taxpayers and perhaps earn a profit.

SIEGEL: I've seen it claimed that perhaps the real net cost to taxpayers from all this, it's far from that original $700 billion that was never spent, it's more like $50 billion?

Mr. ALLISON: Yes. And if you look at the Treasury's overall holdings, including TARP and some other holdings with AIG, the total cost to Treasury may be as low as $30 billion.

SIEGEL: What do you make of this? I mean, you, first of all, I should point out, you were a holdover from the Bush administration. You were a former financial chair for John McCain's first presidential run. You're not a partisan Democrat by any means. Do you think part of the problem was that the big banks seemed to recover all too quickly? That is, given the size of the effort, they were, within a matter of a few months, How is it that you could say for 30 billion or almost $50 billion spared the country the risk of a huge depression with 16 percent unemployment. And if you went out there and tried to campaign for a seat in Congress on that right now right there you could knock 10 points off your showing. Why is this so unpopular?

Mr. ALLISON: Well, again, I think people were outraged that their tax money was being put to use to so-called bail out financial institutions. But I think we have to look more deeply at what was the real moral hazard that caused this problem. It certainly wasn't TARP. TARP was part of the solution.

The real moral hazard was evident during the height of the boom when banks were acting with extreme recklessness. And when things eventually collapsed -because they were almost bound to - it was the public that paid the price in terms of the value of their stockholdings falling about 50 percent. They lost 50 percent of the equity in their homes. And unemployment rose from about 4 percent to close to 10 percent.

People were outraged. They felt betrayed by the system. They couldn't understand why the government would prop up the very system that had caused the problem. But, again, there was really no choice at that time.

All Jeff Flake Supporters and Other East Valley Republicans Should Join the October 30 D.C. March to Keep Fear Alive

Maybe there'll be a hurricane or freak snowstorm or something that will keep you grounded in Washington so you can't come back for Tuesday, November 2, Election Day.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
March to Keep Fear Alive
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

And remember: it was socialists who pioneered early voting.

If You Are Anti-Hispanic/Latino, Anti-Immigrant, Racist, Islamophobic, Homophobic, Anti-Semitic or Misogynistic -- Don't Vote for Richard Grayson

You can vote Republican instead. I don't want your vote.

Why We Need a Second Stimulus - and Why Radical Laissez-Faire Conservatives Like Jeff Flake Were Wrong About the First One

Today we'd like to reprint today's New York Times op-ed by Laura Tyson, the Berkeley economics prof and former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council. We agree with her totally as to "Why We Need a Second Stimulus" (emphasis ours):

OUR national debate about fiscal policy has become skewed, with far too much focus on the deficit and far too little on unemployment. There is too much worry about the size of government, and too little appreciation for how stimulus spending has helped stabilize the economy and how more of the right kind of government spending could boost job creation and economic growth. By focusing on the wrong things, we are in serious danger of failing to do the right things to help the economy recover from its worst labor market crisis since the Great Depression.

The primary cause of the labor market crisis is a collapse in private demand — the same problem that bedeviled the economy in the 1930s. In the wake of the financial shocks at the end of 2008, spending by American households and businesses plummeted, and companies responded by curbing production and shedding workers. By late 2009, in response to unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus, household and business spending began to recover. But by the second quarter of this year, economic growth had slowed to 1.6 percent, according to a government estimate issued Friday. Clearly, the pace of recovery is far slower than what is needed to restore the millions of jobs that have been lost.

Households and businesses are on a saving spree to rebuild their balance sheets. Their spending relative to income has fallen more than at any time since the end of World War II. So there is now a substantial gap between the supply of goods and services the economy is capable of producing and the demand for them. This gap is starkly reflected by the 23 million Americans who are looking for full-time jobs and the millions more who have left the labor force because they could not find one.

The situation would be even worse without the $787 billion fiscal stimulus package passed in 2009. The conventional wisdom about the stimulus package is wrong: it has not failed. It is working as intended. Its spending increases and tax cuts have boosted demand and added about three million more jobs than the economy otherwise would have. Without it, the unemployment rate would be about 11.5 percent. Because about 36 percent of the money remains to be spent, more jobs will be created — about 500,000 by the end of the year.

But by next year, the stimulus will end, and the flip from fiscal support to fiscal contraction could shave one to two percentage points off the growth rate at a time when the unemployment rate is still well above 9 percent. Under these circumstances, the economic case for additional government spending and tax relief is compelling. Sadly, polls indicate that the political case is not.

Two forms of spending with the biggest and quickest bang for the buck are unemployment benefits and aid to state governments. The federal government should pledge generous financing increases for both programs through 2011.

Federal aid to the states is especially important because they finance education. Although the jobs crisis is primarily a crisis of demand, it also reflects a mismatch between the education of the work force and the education required for jobs in today’s economy. Consider how the unemployment rate varies by education level: it’s more than 14 percent for those without a high school degree, under 10 percent for those with one, only about 5 percent for those with a college degree and even lower for those with advanced degrees. The supply of college graduates is not keeping pace with demand. Therefore, more investment in education could reduce both the cyclical unemployment rate, as more Americans stay in school, and the structural unemployment rate, as they graduate into the job market.

An increase in government investment in roads, airports and other kinds of public infrastructure would be cost-effective, too, as measured by the number of jobs created per dollar of spending. And it would help reduce the road congestion, airport delays and freight bottlenecks that reduce productivity and make the United States a less attractive place to do business. The American Society of Engineers has identified more than $2.2 trillion in public infrastructure needs nationwide, and a 2008 study by the Congressional Budget Office found that, on strict cost-benefit grounds, it would make sense to increase annual spending on transportation projects alone by 74 percent.

Over the next five years, the federal government should work with state and local governments and the private sector to finance $1 trillion worth of additional investment in infrastructure. It should extend the Build America Bonds stimulus program, which in the past year has helped states finance $120 billion in infrastructure improvement.

The federal government should also create and capitalize a National Infrastructure Bank that would provide greater certainty about the level of infrastructure financing over several years, select projects based on rigorous cost-benefit analysis, invest in things like interstate high-speed rail that require coordination among states and attract private co-investors in projects like toll roads and airports that generate dedicated future revenue streams.

But can the government afford this additional spending? The answer is yes. Despite the large federal deficit, global savers, including savings-hungry American households, are snapping up United States government securities at very low interest rates. And they will continue to do so as long as there is ample slack in the economy and inflation remains subdued. Over the next few years, there is little risk that federal deficits will crowd out private investment or precipitate a crisis of confidence in the American government, a spike in American interest rates or a sudden drop in the dollar.

On the other hand, as long as private demand remains weak, the risk is uncomfortably high that trying to reduce the deficit — by cutting spending or increasing taxes — will tip the economy back into recession or condemn it to years of faltering growth and debilitating unemployment. In fact, either outcome would depress tax revenue and could mean larger deficits.

Faced with these risks, as long as the economy is operating far below potential, policy makers should do two seemingly contradictory things. First, they should provide additional fiscal support for job creation and growth. And, second, they should enact a credible multiyear plan now to stabilize the ratio of federal debt to gross domestic product gradually as the economy recovers.

By easing capital market concerns about the government’s future borrowing needs, such a plan would permit larger deficits and slower debt reduction while unemployment is still high. The long-run debt problem — the result of imprudent fiscal decisions before the recession, escalating health care costs and an aging population — must be addressed once the economy has recovered. But for now the priorities of fiscal policy should be jobs and investment.

That's not going to happen with laissez-faire out-of-touch corporate lackeys like Jeff Flake controlling Congress.

But most of you in the East Valley - even if you're out of work or your house is underwater or in danger of being foreclosed - are just too stupid to realize it, and that's why you vote Republican against your own interests. East Valley voters are largely the stupidest people on the planet Earth. (They're ugly, too.)

Tea Party Voters: You're Using the Wrong Utensil!

Instead of using a teaspoon, you should all go fork yourselves.