Party favors.

Obama came rolling into office bipartisan guns a-blazin'. He met with congressional Republicans. He met with conservative columnists. He courted, compromised, and curried favor, but never seriously called them out on their incessant whining about insufficient (in their view) tax relief contained within the president's stimulus plan. Birth control provisions were dropped, tax cuts added. In the end, the stimulus package was far more modest on infrastructure related items than most economists think is demanded by a crisis of this magnitude. (100,000 jobs cut this week alone - good grief!) And yet, when it came to a vote in the House, not one Republican supported it. My first reaction to this news was, well... okay, then can we have the original package back - the one Democrats could have passed two weeks ago? What the hell - the G.O.P. acts like a dog that can't eat all his food, so he pisses on it. So much for bipartisan good will.

Personally, I think this notion of bipartisanship is way overvalued. For one thing, the ultimate expression of it is the one-party state (and we practically have that now). Aside from that, I don't see the point in bending over backwards to bring the G.O.P. along if it means adopting a large portion of their program - namely, the same supply-side, deregulatory, neoliberal nonsense that got us into this mess in the first place. Sure, a lot of Democrats - probably most - helped get us here as well, but they have become born-again Keynesians in the face of this almost unprecedented economic meltdown. Republicans are still selling the same old soap as before, whether it's McCain talking or Boehner or that brown haired buy who isn't Boehner: tax cuts. Not only that, but "fast-acting" tax cuts... which is to say the same kind as Bush passed (mostly benefiting the rich) with the term "fast-acting" stitched on to make it sound as though the savings would land in anyone's pocket before May 2010.

They've got it ass-backwards, of course. We need to raise taxes on all those folks who made out like bandits over the past 25 years (and particularly since Bush's last two rounds of tax cuts), including those Merrill execs who took multi-million dollar bonuses home from their failed company. We need to slap excess profit taxes on the oil companies retroactive to the last eighteen months or so. We need to slash the ludicrously bloated Pentagon budget, repurposing the billions mindlessly sluiced into useless aircraft carriers, Virginia-class submarines, joint-strike fighters, and missile defense, into useful projects. We should do all this and more, whether Republicans sit on their hands or not.

He's back. New Yorkers now have a new senator, a relatively conservative Democrat named Kirsten Gillibrand whom animal rights activists have dubbed "New York's Sarah Palin" (with some justice, as she is a gun nut / hunting freak). A bit unnerving to me was the sight of Al D'Amato on the podium at her public introduction... standing right behind her. Apparently he's an old family friend. Gaaaack. It took us 18 years to get that asshole out of the Senate... only so that Patterson could name one of his surrogates. Some justice there.

luv u,

jp