All the ladies in the house say ‘ooohhhhh’!

Also, click here. Incredible – what a difference a new president makes.

Slash and burn

For those wondering why House Minority Leader John Boehner’s complaints about the stimulus including $350 billion worth of aid to state and local governments were the height of destructive stupidity, look no further than Mayor Bloomberg’s dire NYC budget for next year. The terrifying budget, forced into such gloom by uncertainty over when and how much assistance the federal (and state) government will give to the city, includes:

23,000 job cuts (including 15,000 teachers, 500 firemen, 500 housing authority workers, and this month’s Police Academy class, among others)
A sales tax increase – 8.375% to 8.75%
Cuts in construction projects
City employees will be forced to pay for health care
Homeowners will lose their $400 rebates

15,000 teachers and other educators – the United Federation of Teachers president said it “would be devastating,” and I can’t imagine how it wouldn’t be. Money needs to get flowing to state governments – which, generally speaking, can’t run deficits and have a much tougher time issuing debt – immediately, so that these budgetary catastrophes can be headed off at the pass.
Two things of note here:
1)    A lot of the problems states are running into – Medicaid rolls are surging, social services are being strained to the limit (and beyond), and other costs are increasing at the exact moment tax revenues are plunging – are results of the pro-cyclical nature of state spending. Basically, states spend lots of money when times are good, and cut back precipitously when times are tough, which is precisely when they need to increase spending so as not to worsen the recession and leave citizens, deleteriously affected by the downturn, out to dry. Unrelated to the stimulus, reform of this consistent problem is a must. For a pretty sobering look at the problems states are facing right now, check out this report summary (with a link to the report itself) on state budget crises by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
2)    As far as cuts in construction projects go, this is a terrible time to be cutting back. As the private sector shrinks, now is actually the best time to be pushing ahead with construction projects, as there is far less competition from the private sector. There are a lot of unemployed people, especially in construction, who could be put to work getting these construction projects done right now (it would cost less to get them done during a recession as well, and the multiplier effect of this type of shovel-ready, or mid-shovel, project spending is pretty significant). Once the private sector starts hiring people again, a lot of these big-ticket public construction projects run the risk of getting crowded out by the private sector.

Welcome to the new Middle East, same as the old Middle East

On the depressing, all-too-expected news front Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s (likely) next Prime Minister, has stated that he won’t be bound by current PM Ehud Olmert’s promises to evacuate West Bank settlements and withdraw from the territories.

“I will not keep Olmert’s commitments to withdraw and I won’t evacuate settlements. Those understandings are invalid and unimportant,” Netanyahu said.
…
He said he would invite Kadima and all the Zionist parties to join his coalition providing they agree to his guidelines – no division of Jerusalem, no return to 1967 borders.

While this really isn’t surprising – Netanyahu has always been an obstructionist hawk, and likely always will be one – it certainly casts an enormous shadow over a potential peace deal. With Obama in office and George Mitchell as the region’s envoy, hope for at least some minimal advancement on the peace process front was looking good, provided the Israelis and Palestinians were willing to come to the negotiating table. That’s out the window now, if Netanyahu keeps his word, as East Jerusalem and the evacuation of the settlements were vital elements of the quid pro quo that any peace deal would need. Now that Israel has removed the quid (or the quo), there’s no legs left for a potential peace deal to stand on.
What I don’t understand here, though, is what Likud’s strategy is. It’s clear it isn’t aimed at ending the conflict – it almost seems as if Netanyahu is just saying he prefers the status quo. Aside from the Palestinians – they, clearly, are the ones who are suffering the most in this conflict, and will continue to suffer the most as a result of this obstructionist posturing – the same old, same old isn’t good for Israel, either. The longer the conflict slogs on, and the longer Israel occupies the territories, the more and more it becomes a pariah state. Aside from just being unpopular, though, the uncertainty of the country’s future – and the ugliness and brutality of its present – is causing a lot of Israel’s young people to find their future elsewhere. It’s a brain drain, of sorts, that is directly associated with the occupation, as the uncertainty in the region means less investment, less business opportunities, and less money available for young, smart people.  It’s a vicious circle, and gets more vicious by the day.
The big problem with this idea, though, is the longer Israel delays a two-state peace plan (like the Arab Peace Initiative, for example), the less likely it becomes. And while Likud and other likeminded parties may not want a Palestinian state, preferring instead the continuation of its indistinguishable-from-apartheid policies in the territories (and increasingly within the country itself), this strategy is not a viable long-term solution. Eventually the pressure for the bestowal of legitimate human rights on the occupied Palestinians will become so intense – from the Palestinians themselves, as well as from the world at large – that the justifications for the occupation will crumble, leading to a one-state solution (as the growth of the settlements will soon make the two-state solution impractical and unfeasible, if it hasn’t already). And a one-state liberal democracy in Israel wouldn’t be Jewish anymore – the millions of newly enfranchised Palestinians would outnumber Israel’s Jews, likely leading to a secular democracy, a thought intolerable to Zionists like Netanyahu and his fellow Likud-niks.

The status quo is bad for the Palestinians, it’s bad for Israel, and it’s bad for the region – and the sooner Israel realizes it, the sooner this long nightmare can be over. I’m not holding my breath, though.

A Few Golden Nuggets

I’m in a slightly bitter mood about the whole stimulus bill fiasco, so I thought I would rattle off a couple of fantastic quotes from Republicans in the past week or so.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, Republican congressman Bill Young, and Republican Missouri Sen. Kit Bond all suggested that Gitmo detainees should be sent to Alcatraz. You know, the national park and museum off the coast of San Francisco. That Alcatraz. It’s as if they’re trying to show how much they hate San Francisco by publicly announcing that they literally have no knowledge of anything related to the city. When it was pointed out that Alcatraz was a national park, Boehner – the HOUSE MINORITY LEADER – said, “It’s very secure.” Incredible.

Rep. Steve King of Iowa, also discussing the closure of Guantanamo Bay, dropped this gem on the world:

Let’s just say that, that, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, is brought to the United States to be tried in a federal court in the United States, under a federal judge, and we know what some of those judges do, and on a technicality, such as, let’s just say he wasn’t read his Miranda rights. … He is released into the streets of America. Walks over and steps up into a US embassy and applies for asylum for fear that he can’t go back home cause he spilled the beans on al Qaeda. What happens then if another judge grants him asylum in the United States and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is on a path to citizenship. I mean, I give you the extreme example of this.

Does this actually mean anything? Does King seriously think this fantastical series of events could actually happen? And is he forgetting that the biggest problem facing the prosecution of Mohammed – far from not reading his Miranda rights – was that he was tortured? And that any evidence gathered while he was being tortured likely won’t stand up in court? This, of course, is a silly thing to worry about – I, too, am far more worried that he’ll be granted asylum and end up an American citizen. I mean, honestly. King is an elected representative. Of actual people.

And while I already linked to this today, it bears repeating. I present to you the unparalleled economic genius that is Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona (via Talking Points Memo):

Earlier today we heard Flake claiming that tax cuts have no stimulus effect if they go to low-income earners who pay payroll taxes and not income taxes.

Now he’s explaining how capital spending on AMTRAK is also not stimulus because AMTRAK doesn’t run a profit. Again, total non-sequitur. I think rail is something we should be spending a lot more on. But you can certainly disagree with that on policy terms. But you can’t claim that that capital spending on rail stock and rail upgrades doesn’t provide jobs. Of course it provides jobs. And whether Amtrak is profitable or not is completely beside the point.

Where did they get this guy?

Actually, I forget. He’s a chief GOP spokesman on this whole issue.

My big question here is whether he is willfully lying, willfully ignorant, or just woefully idiotic. I’d wager on number three, but I may just be bitter right now. TPM tackles the Amtrack fallacy, and as far as tax cuts having no stimulus impact if they go to low-income earners, I’m at a loss as to how he doesn’t get this. How does a congressman not understand how this works? OF COURSE tax cuts to low-income earners work, and work far better than tax cuts to high-income earners for that matter, simply because low-income earners spend a lot more of their income than high-income earners, because they don’t have much. If you give $1,000 to a family with $2,000 in the bank, they’re probably going to spend that money on something, whether it be food, utilities, or consumer items. When you give $1,000 t0 a family with $200,000 in the bank, they’re probably going to bank that money, because they already have that $1,000 to spend in the first place. It’s not really difficult to figure that out. And it’s why payroll tax holidays, for example, have a higher multiplier effect than do corporate tax cuts – exactly because they affect more poor people, who are more likely to spend that suddenly disposable income (it also has to do with the fact that businesses are unlikely to invest money in a recession, but the first point still stands). Once again, not that difficult to understand.

Consider my gears grinded, as it were. Argh.

Photosynth Awesomeness

The title above is a bit of a misnomer – I have a Mac, and thus I can’t run Photosynth on it. But Slate had an enthralling article about Photosynth today, and I remember watching the video of Microsoft’s presentation of Photosynth and being completely blown away by it. Essentially it takes a multitude of digital photos – doesn’t really matter how many, though the more the better – and creates a 3-D image using all of them, where you can actually image-travel (made up term) through structures and events, diving through a digital recreation of whatever it is you’re looking at. It’s stunning stuff, and I urge you all to check out the presentation below (sounds boring, but it really, really isn’t):

For those with Windows, you can check out Photosynths of various events on Inauguration Day, and, from what Manjoo writes about in the Slate article, it sounds incredible. Manjoo calls Photosynth “the best thing to happen to photography since the digital camera.” I can’t vouch for him, due to Microsoft anti-Mac trickery, but the video certainly showed that type of promise. Let me know what it was like if you get a chance! I heart technology.

Here’s the article with all of the relevant links. This is so cool.