Here's the second part of last Friday's interview I had with Peter Welch. Part 3 will be out Friday.

JD: It seems that as one looks at the political struggles through history, there always seems to be some sort of tipping point. There's this conventional wisdom that we've had to deal with since Reagan, at least, the whole “government is always the enemy” thing. Do you see – there's this thing, I like to call it “free market fundamentalism” in that it's completely faith-based…

PW: That's a great phrase… They've totally, completely, and utterly failed. Those free-market fundamentalists are now coming hat in hand to the government.

JD: Yeah, like a corporate socialism…

PW: …asking to be rescued.

JD: Any time it seems we look at any regulation, it's “Wahh!!! Free market, free market!” How do you see this changing the game, if we have, well, a Democratic President, huge majorities.. are we getting to a situation where you can finally throw this up in their face, and say, “No, there is no free market like that anymore”? Does this give you the leverage that you need, are you even thinking about that at this point?

PW: I am thinking about it. I'm thinking about it a lot. You know, the American people are going to make a big decision this year, and I think a major part of it will be to choose to have a government that's much more activist and on the side of smaller business and average Americans. And that requires an activist role for government, one that's been rejected.

Here's an example. You know, I'm in these oversight hearings, you know these trillions of dollars on derivatives? All of these securities… trillions of dollars of business. You know how many people we had in the enforcement follow-up division of the SEC? One under George Bush. One person. Okay? On the Consumer Product Safety Commission? You may remember that story about the Chinese toys? Lead paint? Millions and millions of toys being imported here, and they're subject to inspection. You know how many inspectors we have in that organization?

JD: One?

PW: One. Bush had contempt, utter contempt for government. He didn't care about being competent, as we saw with Katrina. He actually wasn't even willing to be competent about policies he cares about, like the war.

JD: As I was listening to him speak today, I kept thinking, “This guy is so in over his head, it's not even funny.”

PW: Yes. So, we've gotta restore that and revive it. We have to have consumer protections, in protecting us against bad products, protecting us from the predatory conduct of Wall Street, protecting us against the unbridled arbitrary power of the credit card companies. One thing after another requires and activist response and I believe the American people are seeing the price of a free check.

JD: That leads me kind of where I wanted to go next, and that's… when I was out in Denver, I spent a day down at Civic Center Park where the protests were going on… did you read the book that Markos [Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos] gave you [Taking on the System]?

PW: I started to, it's amazing, actually.

JD: One thing in it that made sense to me… he talked about how some protest methods are a bit outmoded or outdated in today's environment, and I've always thought, in today's day and age, where we've been fighting this conservative infrastructure that's been in place since, I dunno, Goldwater? Watergate? You know, the Heritage Foundation and those other right-wing think tanks, that we're in a war of information and ideas, more than anything else. Controlling the narrative.

PW: Right.

JD: And we're fighting this entrenched idea, and by no means do I believe all Americans believe this, but this entrenched idea that you know, you're on your own, you know what I mean? And the frustration and the cynicism is likened to battered wife syndrome with the Democrats.

I'm looking for your thoughts on this… it seems like even since the Dems have taken over the House, you know, we've gotten the FISA capitulation, the war's still going on, we didn't get the renewal on the ban on offshore drilling, Leahy came in there in 2006 saying “Bush should be terrified!”, and Bush doesn't exactly look like he's shakin' in his drawers about anything, because he just ignores the rule of law, and there's little, if any, follow-up.

I'm just curious, how, we have a President who, I often like to say is about as popular as a spring-thaw dog turd on a warm late March Vermont morning, and what we just don't understand, especially those of us not in the Democratic Party but definitely on the left end of the spectrum, is time and time again, this letdown. Again and again. It usually starts out with Pelosi saying something really tough and strong, ant then it gets watered down more and more. The Republicans have been effective, simply by sticking to their guns. Maybe it's a lot harder to get liberals to all agree on something, and I think there's something to that, but what is it that keeps the Democrats from playing that hardball consistently?

PW: Well, I think it's two things. First of all, the Republican philosophy, the Washington Republican philosophy has been to basically to tear down government, okay, under the guise of talking about the individual, but do everything that helps the powerful individuals.

JD: But they wrap it up in a little mantle of populism.

PW: They wrapped it up like that, yeah. And so, they're anti-government, anti-tax, anti-regulation, and there's a certain simplicity and appeal to that. The reality is none of us like being regulated. The bloggers don't like it. It's a very diffuse process. So there's a lot to not like about it, especially when government can obviously overregulate, or it can overtax, so there's been a simplicity. And then, when the economy's been juiced up on the steroids of this credit bubble, then it can look like things are going fine. So shareholders who see their IRA's are going up don't get that upset about what's going on with some corporate executive ripoff pay. But we are now seeing the inevitable consequence of this “you're on your own” approach, with hollowing out of government and deregulation, so I think people have a different point of view on it now. I think the challenge for the Democrats is to focus on practical economic policies to start helping them.

The other thing that's tough is, of course, the way our government works under the Constitution. It's a very conservative document, the Constitution, because it makes accomplishing something extremely hard. So in the House, we actually have a working majority. And leaving FISA aside for a moment, I'll come back to that, on the economic agenda, you know, we've passed pretty progressive legislation. We've passed legislation to get rid of tax breaks for the oil companies, but it dies in the Senate. Passed economic stimulus, dies in the Senate. We passed price negotiation on prescription drugs, dies in the Senate. We rolled back these special premiums for the insurance companies on these Medicare advantage programs, dies in the Senate.

So, a lot of people who are citizens look at this and say “What's Washington doing?” They don't say “What's the House doing?” or “What's Peter doing?” They say “They're all the same”. So that's just something that I have to labor under, but the Senate doesn't have a rules committee, and they have a filibuster, so it's very slow to move and conservative, and the President's got the veto power.

JD: But still, maybe this might change, but I've had this feeling over the last two years that the Republicans are still in charge of things, and I'm not alone in that sentiment. The blogger Atrios recently said something that was kinda snarky the other day, “The Democrats sucked as a minority party. They suck even more as a majority party.”, and I think there's a lot of people that can relate to that.

PW: Sure.

JD: Because, it's still, even though Bush is sitting there with his deer-in-the-headlights look, to many of us, it doesn't feel like the Dems are running the show. The Republicans are still calling the shots. I mean, the Jay Rockefeller thing, with FISA, again. I mean, you have something in the Senate, the GOP stomps their feet, and it gets stopped. And I know, you're not in the Senate, but in general, there seems to be this timidity that our side seems to have that the Republicans don't. I think a lot of people, even without party affiliation want to support Democrats, but they see that, and…

PW: Well, I understand that, and a lot of times people will express to me their frustration with what's happened and I'll sit down and explain what I've done, and they're okay with that. And I share the frustration with them that it dies in the Senate, but when you have a filibuster that's been institutionalized so you don't even have to go through the ordeal of standing up and debating until you fall asleep… Any Senator can say they're going to filibuster, and it takes 60 votes to overcome that.

You know, a lot of us on the House side really wish that the Senate would really make someone who says they're gonna filibuster, actually make 'em do it. Make 'em stand up there for three or four days.

JD: Can they?

PW: Yes, that's the Senate.

JD: Well, then why don't they?

PW: I don't have the answer to that question. I mean, you gotta ask the Senators that.

JD: Personal hunch? Gut feeling?

PW: I really don't know. I mean, on the House side… You know we got great Senators, with Bernie and Patrick, but the institution is very, very slow. And on the House side, there's often frustration that our legislation doesn't even get taken up. The filibuster's a rule. It's not a Constitutional provision. In the Senate, it's amazing. You know, in the House, if somebody wants to propose an amendment, they have to get permission from the Rules Committee. And it's got to be germane, in other words, it's got to be relevant to the particular bill, so if it's a highway bill, you can't come in with an amendment on healthcare, let's say. It's got to be related to the highway project.

Well, I favor that, because it allows you to get work done. And it allows, I think, voters to have more accountability, because when I vote, there's much more clarity on what I'm voting on. It's more specific, so you get to know, yes or no, where I stand on that.

JD: Yes or no?

PW: Yes or no, yea or nay.

JD: Yes or no?

(laughter in the background)

JD: I was making a reference about your meeting in Barre last winter. We'll get to that in a bit.

PW: Oh, right….thanks. That's funny.

But in the Senate, any Senator can put a hold on the bill, any Senator can make as many amendments as they want on any bill, and they can make them on any subject, so if they want to make a healthcare amendment on a highway bill, they can do it. It's the rules.

JD: And the House doesn't have this..

PW: Free-for-all…

JD: …this mechanism to just bring things to a grinding halt if they wanted to.

PW: That's right, and I actually think that the majority has to rule, and people have to get some clarity about where we stand as individual legislators on the major questions of the day, and if they don't like what the House or Senate is doing, they can replace the members.

JD: Let's talk for a minute about the bipartisanship that we hear tossed around so much. When I look at the extremists that control the Republican party right now, I don't really want to compromise with them. I know there's the reality of the numbers and everything like that, but it seems so often that instead of, especially on things not of massive urgency, like FISA…we could have let the provisions expire.

PW: Fine with me, as you know.

JD: Exactly. And, I'm just kind of at a loss, with the messaging,and the feigned outrage of the Republicans, they're the master of the feigned outrage. They'll get out when something goes down, they'll have a press conference, next thing you know, it's all over the news. We're seeing it a little more but we're generally not seeing that kind of thing coming from the other side of the aisle, and there's a lot of frustration out there because of it.

PW: For me, it's about, “How do you get things done?” So, if I can work with somebody to get something done, I do. It's that simple. You know, I actually reached out to some Republicans to try to get them to agree to my stabilization fund on the bailout. The Republicans came up with this so-called “insurance plan” that was not workable, because they didn't have a way to pay for it. But the idea of it was similar to my notion of the stabilization fund paid for by the financial services industry to get us through this crisis. So I went over to some Republicans, and I said, “Look, this idea is really very similar in concept to the insurance proposal, whadya think?”

And I got a lot of them who were quite interested. Now, ultimately it was unsuccessful because by this point it was totally politicized and even if some members wanted to work with me, their leadership wanted a different agenda. So, for me, it's a pragmatic thing, just like it would be if, you know, I lived in a town and we're trying to figure out how to get uniforms for the kids on the baseball team, and here's a bunch of parents with different points of view, but you want to solve a problem, so you work with people on the same page to get things done.

JD: But do you think…I remember early on, one of the big criticisms of Obama being the “kumbaya candidate” and all that stuff… Issues like single-payer healthcare, for example. I don't know of too many Republicans that are going to support something like that.

PW: No.

JD: Well, how do you sit at the table with those people, then? Do you reach a point where their ideas are so antithetical to progress that… how do you do that?

PW: Well, there were a lot of people in the Vermont legislature and there are a lot of people in Congress who I just never get to common ground with. But, it's a case-by-case situation.

Down in Washington, there's been a lot of, like your phrase, free-market fundamentalism, and it just gets in the way of making any practical progress. Folks that believe that are against any solution that includes government. And, obviously, there's not much common ground there, so for me it's kind of a case-by-case kind of approach, you know? And it's really about – take your issue, like on regulation: I really think we have to be regulating the financial services industry. I think we should be putting much more limits on credit card companies and what they can do. Well, if somebody starts out and is flat out against doing anything, well, there's just no common ground. On the other hand, if they have some concrete proposals, and they say, “you know, the way you're doing this, can we do it this way? And here's why.” I listen to that. And if there's some way to essentially achieve the underlying purpose that I set out, but in a way that's somewhat different, and that can get more support, there's some political benefit to doing that.

JD: The compromise.

PW: Well, there's a difference between compromising principles and compromising on tactics, or specific means by which you accomplish a given goal.

Jim Douglas ought to be eminently beatable this year. Sure, he’s the incumbent, and Vermonters rarely boot incumbents. But he has a weak record to run on (his main TV ad touts his milktoast economic plan, which clearly indicates his lack of ideas), early polling indicated surprisingly high negatives for him, he’s presided over the Vermont Yankee mess, he preaches the same conservative orthodoxy that’s fallen into complete disrepute — and now the Democrats are steamrolling toward an epic victory across the country.

Obama’s got double-digit leads in a lot of polls, and Republicans are abandoning McCain in droves. (Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh asked Sarah Palin about her future political plans, implicitly conceding the election.) The Dems might get a super-majority in the US Senate: not only are they going to pick off the low-hanging fruit like John Sununu The Lesser, but they might ring up red-state wins over the likes of Liddy Dole, Mitch McConnell, Saxby Chambliss, and the guy warming Trent Lott’s seat. Hell, a damn comedian is poised to cut down Norm Coleman. (Yes, I know Franken is a liberal commentator and activist of note; but he’s had to overcome all the stupid things he said and did in his life as an entertainer.)

Meanwhile, here in liberal ol’ Vermont, we can’t lay a glove on Jim Douglas?  

We shouldn’t have to be desperately hoping for a three-way split — we should be counting the hours till Jim’s concession speech. If Douglas does win this year, I imagine the Dem and Prog leadership will blame Vermont’s track record of rewarding incumbency. In fact, they will have absolutely blown an historic opportunity to shut the GOP out of power once and for all.

(Let me make sure to spread the blame equally. Pollina has run a disorganized, underfunded, and generally pointless campaign. He had the chance to take the honorable way out by running for Lite-Gov on a tacit “unity ticket,” but his ego was too damn big for that, yessir. Then he abandons his party on filing deadline day for reasons that have never been adequately explained or explored. Pollina has, in short, jumped the shark. And no, I don’t believe that outlier poll that puts him in second place, not for a minute.)

Odum’s “Open Thread” post cited rumors that prominent Dems are staying away from Tom Costello in order to keep their options open for 2010. I wonder if some of the same thing isn’t going on with Symington; how active are other top Dems in campaigning and fundraising for Gaye? If any Democrat is slacking off or actively undermining this campaign for the sake of some potential personal edge in the future, then s/he is a complete and utter hack who should be banned by the party from consideration for any higher office anytime in the future.

Do I sound angry, incensed, frustrated? To quote a certain Miss Wasilla, you betcha.  

If you're a regular GMD reader, you probably don't spend too much time with the Obama haters. Thankfully, neither do I. Sure, we read about them in TPM, with their yells of “Terrorist” and “Kill him”, but they don't seem to rear their ugly heads around here too much.

I just got exposed to them, not exactly in person, but in enough of a dose to get a real sense of their vicious attitude. Over at Facebook they have a group called Anti-Obama and Damn Proud of It, and these people will give you a view of every backwards, misinformed, bigoted attitude you could ever hope to see.

For example, one of the first things you see is a joke about Obama being assassinated after he's inaugurated. No kidding. Then, if you delve into the discussion boards, you can find such highly relevant discussions as the one speculating about whether Obama is the antichrist. And they're not kidding about it.

 You can see repeated claims that Obama supporters think he's the Messiah., more than anyone's fair share of ridiculous posts rehashing minor slips of the tongue, and a rich and plentiful supply of posts making liberal mention of his middle name, his claimed religious background, his claimed racial background, mocking the very idea of racism in the United States; oh yeah, and unfounded questions about whether he was actually born in the United States.

There is one young guy named Rishi who has posted a large number of pro-Obama stories, and I just friended him to support what he's doing.

You might want to jump over there and see what it's like. It's pretty annoying to read, but on the other hand, this is really all they have, and these people are the best and the brightest among the Obama haters. In other words, they're totally out of ideas.

• Boys on the Side: This from Hallenbeck at vtbuzz:
  

  Independent gubernatorial candidate Anthony Pollina is taking the Rasmussen poll and running with it.

  He is trying to get Gov. Jim Douglas to agree to a debate, town-meeting-style, between just the two of them. No Gaye Symington.

• Web woops. The VDP’s website at vtdemocrats.org (first domain name I ever reserved…) was down most of the day, replaced by one of those generic catch-all sites on display instead. A quick whois search suggests (not confirmed) that they forgot to renew, but have made a hasty payment today and its likely the change back hasn’t propagated yet. What makes it bad timing is that its been discovered as folks click on the links from an email from Leahy’s leadership PAC encouraging folks to RSVP to the Election Eve Party, which comes up as nuthin.’ D’oh!
• So why have so many big name Dems been AWOL in regards to Lite Guv candidate Tom Costello? BP took Senator Shumlin to task for his less-than-ringing-endorsement a few diaries down, but Shumlin’s not the only one. Where is everybody?

  According to the scuttlebutt, its because all the various Dems who might be considering a run for the Governor’s office in 2010 (especially if a Leahy retirement creates a game of musical chairs) aren’t all that enthusiastic about the prospects of a Costello win and how that might impact their positioning.

  In a word: yuck.

by Dan DeWalt

Thomas Hermann for Congress Campaign

The Democrats in Congress,  abetted by the Republican leadership, have once again succumbed to fear and threats and have sold the American people down the river to the tune of over 700 billion dollars. Just as the Bush/Cheney administration used the uncertainty surrounding the attacks of  September 2001 to push through the previously prepared, draconian and un-American USA PATRIOT Act, so they now have taken advantage of financial turmoil to pillage the Treasury. The bankers and speculators needn’t be jealous of their war profiteering friends any longer; the government has graciously decided that the rest of us can pitch in and help them maintain their august stations.

Saying that Bush’s bail-out plan did not address the cause nor offer a solution to the problem, Peter Welch voted no and helped to defeat the first version of the bill. The defeat shocked Congress, but they did not recognize the foolishness of their haste. Rather than listening to the advice of scores of economists, including Nobel Prize in Economics Laureate, Joseph Stiegliz, who wrote them ,saying that the sky was not falling , that they had time to work out a plan that would actually address the problem, Congress instead chose to hold themselves hostage to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, twisted each other’s arms, added another $150 billion in tax breaks, pork and raising FDIC insurance, and lo and behold, Monday’s prowess and principles turn into Thursday’s shuffling into line and “reluctantly” voting yes.

This vote proves once again that Peter Welch’s first loyalty is to Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party leadership, with the interests of everyday Vermonters coming second.

To his credit, Bernie Sanders understood that this bail-out was wrong from the start, and he represented Vermonters well by voting no.

Vermonters have a clear choice and opportunity to let Peter Welch know that we do not approve of his vote for the bail-out. A vote for Progressive Party nominee Thomas Hermann, an Iraq war veteran serious about ending the war, is also a vote to resist the corporate influenced Democratic leadership that has neither the will nor the wherewithal to stand up to Bush/Cheney outrages. A vote for Thomas Hermann will tell Mr. Welch that we’re not going to be bamboozled any longer. If the government needs to rescue Capitalism from its excesses, taxpayer money should be used to stabilize the equation from the homeowners’ side, re-writing mortgages to reflect current market conditions, and providing jobs by spending on things like roads and bridges, health care and education, not keeping afloat the investment banks who have created this mess for their own profit. Taxpayers should not have to sacrifice critical needs, let alone our homes, to bail out the speculators.

From a minister delivering the opening remarks at a McCain rally in Davenport, Iowa:

“There are millions of people around this world praying to their god-whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah-that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens,” said Arnold Conrad, the former pastor of Grace Evangelical Free Church in Davenport.

That’s right, god. If McCain loses, don’t bother showing your face around this planet anymore. All the other gods will be snickering behind your back, and all your followers will know you’re a wimp.

These people are just bizarre sometimes.

Last Friday, I sat down with Congressman Peter Welch in Burlington for about an hour. We had a conversation that touched upon the current financial mess, Democratic capitulation, Iraq and a few self-reflections. I'll be posting it throughout the next week or so.

JD: The bailout is what's on everybody's mind right now. It's funny, after you voted against the first bailout bill, and I mentioned to some people that I was meeting with you, they told me to tell him “nice job”, and after the second vote, I got a few emails saying “tell him I want to take that back!” It was obviously a difficult vote either way, if you read on GMD, odum kind of took you to task for it.

PW: Yes.

JD: You originally said in the article quoted in the Times Argus, “We're at the point that we have to choose, it's this bill or no bill – no bill is an absolute catastrophe.”, and, well, some of us see this as a false choice. And probably some of this comes from skepticism about the Bush administration, at this point how can you trust anything they say?

PW: Well, first of all, I don't trust anything they say. There was nothing in my final decision that was based on trusting George Bush at all.

JD: Do you trust Hank Paulson?

PW: It's not about trusting him; he's not the ideologue that Bush is, but my vote was not based on the credibility of Paulson. This – whether we like it or not, first of all, it's not surprising that this is happening. Many people who have said that is was reckless for us to allow such deregulation predicted at one point, we'd pay a price for it, because it was a house of cards.

You know, we had an economy that was built on credit, rather than an economy that was built on production, okay? So if you step back, a lot of people who were critical of the bailout, their criticism rightly goes back to the whole house of cards that was constructed and eventually, we didn't know when, it was just a question of when, not whether that house of cards would collapse. And so, I was not surprised.

Some folks raised this WMD question, that was a big deal, with Bush coming in, but there's a fundamental difference.

JD: When you refer to the WMD's, do you refer to the notion that Bush is basically –

PW: … making it up.

JD: Okay.

PW: But the reality of it is that these things were blowing up all around us – at AIG, Lehman Bros., Bear Sterns, Washington Mutual, Countrywide – Citibank losing 20 billion dollars, with these executives in there with these ripoff salaries and golden parachutes. The evidence of this financial meltdown was real, and these huge firms that made billions of dollars, in effect by running this speculative enterprise, were so excessive that they shot themselves in the head. Lehman Bros. Was borrowing at a 35 to 1 ratio, and as long as the housing market wsa going up, they were fine. Once it flattened and came down, they not only brought down a lot of innocent bondholders including an Arizona teacher's fund, a city in Norway, they destroyed their own business.

So, even the people who had a self-interest in having this continue, they were so reckless that they destroyed their own livelihood. So, I didn't need a lot of evidence that there was a problem, because it was hitting us in the face. What I needed, what was tough on this, there was two things. I was adamantly opposed to in the first bill that the president presented that was a three page bill, giving a total blank check, with literally no oversight and no taxpayer protection. Number two, a challenge and question for any of us, even those of us who have been harsh critics of deregulation, was what practical steps could we take to try to protect the taxpayers, Vermonters, Americans who did not participate in this reckless conduct but were going to suffer from the consequences.

The fact is, we're in uncharted territory, because of this credit crisis, and that's unique to this economic downturn that we have now.

JD: As I was doing some research about this, I came across a study pointed out by David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer prize-winning economist, and he mentioned a study by the IMF and they studied 42 banking crises around the world in the last 37 years, and they concluded that bailouts usually don't work, and they often make things worse.

Do you feel like, in a sense, this is a big wager, a 700 billion dollar wager? I mean, how convinced are you that this is going to work, do you honestly just not know?

PW: We do not know. I mean, here's what I thought. Start with the beginning. I was convinced there was a crisis, and that the nature of this crisis was different than any other cyclical downturn we've had. In normal cyclical downturns, unemployment goes up, wages get depressed, tax revenues decline, and usually, since the Second World War, responded to that with stimulative economic activity. The government increases spending, you try to get the jobs programs going, to get consumer demand back up and unemployment down. We have that now. But what's so threatening, and so unique, in where we don't have the tools in the toolbox, is this credit squeeze. And that credit squeeze has happened because of deregulation, and creation of these exotic, basically casino bets collateralized debt obligations, credit deferred swaps, the mortgage-backed securities.

And, you know, in a way, it's important for me to explain the mortgage-backed security and how complicated it's gotten, because that gives people some perspective of how difficult the situation is that we're in. In the old days, if you were gonna buy a house, you'd go to your local banker, he'd check your credit, knows who you are, and he'd give you a loan, right?

In the new days, I'll give you an example of Lehman. They hire a mortgage origination firm, they go to neighborhoods that are often times low-income people, and persuade them to borrow far more money than they'll ever be able to pay back, and they reassure them it's no big deal, you can refinance, and your house price will be up, you know, 30 percent. So the mortgage originator gets you to sign a loan, so you borrow $300,000. Unlike your banker, he doesn't care whether you pay it back. Literally doesn't care. They make 2%, they make $6000 and walk away. They sell it to Lehman. Lehman then slices that loan up into thirty different pieces. They sell the first three years of repayment to, say, the New York Hedge Fund, the second three years to the Arizona Pension Fund, the next three years to the state employee's association, somewhere else.

JD: A big mess, basically.

PW: Exactly, and each time they slice it and dice it, they make a fee. They sell a huge chunk to the Bank of China. China is enormously invested in these mortgage-backed securities.

JD: They do seem to own a lot of us now –

PW: And, so it creates this incredibly complex problem once the real estate value goes down, because even if you default, you want to work something out, let's say you got laid off from your job or a pay cut,so you want to get a loan extension and work it out.. Well, you have to find the Bank of China, you've got thirty different people that own your loans. It's not like going down to the banker and asking to work something out.

What's also happened is lots of banks have these asset-backed securities on their balance sheet, and the reason the lending is drying up is because every bank is afraid to lend to another bank, fearing that while their money is over at the other bank, the regulators will come in a la Lehman and say “you're going into receivership” and the fear is that they're not going to get paid.

JD: Now that's where the nationalization of the banks come in. Thoughts on that?

PW: I actually prefer it to what we did, and we put in the legislation the authority for the Treasury secretary to do that. In other words, in looking at this, the initial reaction to the bailout is one of outrage, because the anger that Vermonters and Americans have towards the excesses on Wall Street is well-deserved. And my calls came in with people expressing that fury. But they also expressed some fear, because at the end of the day, our outrage is not a policy to get us out of this. And if we could wall this off, and say, “Well, this is Wall Street and those guys are getting what they deserve, let 'em go,” I would say “Absolutely.” But if what's happened there is coming here, and our job is to protect Vermonters as taxpayers and as folks with jobs, folks who are saving for their kids to go to college, then we have to ask the question, “What do we do?”

And, anyone who tells you they know exactly how to get their way out of this, they're kidding you, because this is a unique situation. Once we decided we had to act, my goal was to get the best possible bill, and we were a long way from the best possible bill. When that first one came up, there was a gun to our head, and the one thing I have from Vermont is the leverage of the vote they've given me. So I'm gonna use that to the last minute. And what I had been working to, to try to accomplish, some of it we got, some of it we didn't.

JD: What about the “NO BAILOUT” bill? The progressive caucus had that no bailout bill they were floating around.

PW: I favored that.

JD: You favored that?

PW: Yeah.

JD: Well, what were the realistic chances of something like that? Because I…

PW: They were zero.

JD: Because I noticed that Barbara Lee, Donna Edwards, they eventually all signed on to this one that passed.

PW: A lot of us were in the same boat. I mean, a lot of the most progressive members of the caucus did what I did. We fought to the last moment, for the best we could get, so we had to make a decision, yes or no, on the last legislation. And my judgment was that doing nothing would be even worse than the flawed bill.

And I'll you why. What got us here? What got us here was a hands-off, head-in-the-sand approach by government, acting as thought the government has no role in proper regulation that's necessary to protect consumers and businesses, okay?

JD: Like the Cato Institute was running the government or something.

PW: Exactly. So now we get to the inevitable consequence of deregulation, where Wall Street was allowed to run amok and they did. That says to me that we've got to act. And we have to act even though we don't necessarily get it perfect. We can't put our head in the sand and do nothing.

JD: In terms of the accountability, as I understand it , a chunk of the money is released right away, then there's another chunk that comes out at the discretion of the President?

PW: There's a lot of authority for the President.

Here's where the accountability is. First of all, let's be clear that i as a major decision for congress to authorize this bailout.

JD: But why not just 150 billion, and when they need more, to come back for approval again?

PW: I favored that. I was unsuccessful. Okay, there's a number of things that I thought would be much better,and a lot of my progressive friends fought for that we didn't get. One was bankruptcy protection. We need that because if we're going to unwind some of these loans, and you have 30 different borrowers, you really have to have the judicial process so there's some authority…

JD: So a judge can step in and renegotiate a rate…

PW: That's right. And tell people to go in a room and work it out, and if you don't, I'll settle it. Barney Frank worked hard for bankruptcy. We couldn't get it through the Senate.

JD: Where was the opposition? Republicans?

PW: The Senate. Yeah, Republicans.

JD: Democrats and Republicans, or mostly Republicans?

PW: Mostly Republicans, mostly the Senate. We couldn't get it through the Senate. Obama says he's for the bankruptcy provision. That'll make a big difference.

The second thing that I thought was really important that we didn't get, but I fought for, I mean, I was really a leader on this, was the stabilization fund. And I proposed to have a transaction fee on every stock transaction, .25 cents (note from JD – that's .25 of a cent, not 25 cents), that would raise 150 billion a year,and I was told they couldn't get that thought the Senate.

JD: What did you think of the Sanders amendment?

PW: I was fine with Bernie's bill, but I don't even think he got a recorded vote on it.

JD: No, it was a voice vote.

PW: Frankly, I prefer my approach on this, as I think we're going to have to have a tax increase on the high income folks who've gotten the break, to use that for health care and rebuilding our roads and bridges. What I wanted to do is much like deposit insurance at the local bank. If you have money there, it's insured. But that's paid for by a premium, a small premium on your deposit. Well, I wanted to fo a similar thing on the financial services industry, and have that be available to offset any taxpayer cost.

Now, I'm going to go back and fight for that again. Obama tells me that he's for it.

JD: Okay, it's a flawed bill. Do you think this is some sort of victory? A defeat? Neither?

PW: For me, it was a necessary step to begin the process.

JD: You don't feel good about it?

PW: I feel terrible about what's happening to our economy, and I don't make any claim that there's a magic bullet here. Just think about it. We're ten years into a system of deregulation and laissez-faire. It was wildly abused by Wall Street and the financial services industry, and no one believes that you can pass a single law that would suddenly unwind this mess.

But what we have to do is, number one, reassert the responsibility of government to work on behalf of the consumer and the average person.

JD: Okay, what ideas do you have in terms of going about that?

PW: Number one, we start reregulating again. And there were a lot of Democrats who went along with this, so I'm not here defending the party. Not at all. One thing was the refusal of Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin to regulate derivatives. No one even knows what the heck they are, even Warren Buffett. Literally. But what they are is this huge web of debt relationships that are so obscure that no one knows who owes what to whom – the total amount of them is at least 62 trillion dollars.

There was a woman who was the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the 90's that tried to regulate 'em. Ed Markey in '92 tried to start regulating them. And bothe were solidly rebuffed by Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin. They were wrong. Dead wrong.

Second was the decision by Christopher Cox of the SEC, a former Republican member of Congress, a big friend of the securities industry, and he was appointed by Bush to be the head of the SEC. He allowed these investment companies like Lehman to increase their ability to borrow from a ratio of 12 to 1 to 35-40 to 1. So what you had were these investment houses that were literally betting the house. For every dollar they'd put in a deal, they were borrowing 35. When the market was going up, they were really making a killing, but once it went down, they got clobbered.

JD: Okay, now, let's talk about Bob Rubin for a second. He's part of Obama's economic advisory team right now.

PW: Yeah, and that worries me. He did two things, you know. He opposed regulating derivatives. Wrong. Number two, at Citibank, he was on their investment committee, and Citibank lost billions of dollars in bad investments in these mortgage-backed securities,and it's astonishing to me.

JD: Have you talked to Obama about that at all?

PW: No, but if asked, I'd say that. I just think that somebody who was on the wrong side of this regulatory obligation we have is not somebody I'd give a lot of credibility to in working our way out of it.

****

Next up, the future of “free markets” and I ask Peter why the Dems cave in so often.

Brent Curtis pens a front page piece in the Times Argus/Rutland Herald today on the rise in infant homicides in Vermont. The first few brief paragraphs present his thesis, after which he goes into examples. If you turn to the rest of the article on the back page, you get a fair amount of details, including the opinions of “experts” on the reason for the grim phenomenon. For example, conditioning:

“I think to some extent that in general girls are brought up playing with dolls and being taught to nurture,” she said. “Dads don’t always know how to do that.”

Stupidity:

“I think that in a number of instances, these parents come to the belief that ‘Gosh, that’s a successful strategy’ without fully realizing the damage they’re doing,” Dale said.

Stress, despair and poverty:

Dr. Stephen Sarfaty, a forensic neuropsychologist in Connecticut, said the two most common elements in child abuse cases are a lack of resources for the parent, combined with a feeling of helplessness.

Curtis himself adds, on the back page, that there “is no typical profile” of the abusers.

Why, then, on the front page and in the first few columns, which present Curtis’s thesis for the piece, does he make this statement?

Experts say young fathers are more likely to abuse their babies because they don’t have the emotional strength to nurture crying infants.

With all his research and quotations, and in the face of a serious problem, what does Curtis present as a front page thesis? That young men simply can’t handle parenting. Absolutely outrageous.

Firstly, his own article offers a variety of reasons, from a variety of “experts,” but the repeated theme seems to be economic – lack of resources, eductaion, etc. The common theme, as Curtis says, is being “pushed past the breaking point.”

But again, despite all this background, the conclusion he offers casual readers looking at the front page is:

Experts say young fathers are more likely to abuse their babies because they don’t have the emotional strength to nurture crying infants.

Clear. Unambiguous. Young men can’t parent babies.

This kind of essentializing nonsense is toxic. It’s needlessly insulting to all men, but in the long run it’s societal poison to women.

Why? Because essentializing an entire gender into neat little boxes like this doesn’t ever just work one way. You mess with the balance on one side, it affects the other. If men are told they aren’t emotionally as capable of handling parenthood, they simply will give up faster, as they’ll feel they’re at a hardwired disadvantage. If women are told that men aren’t emotionally capable of handling parenthood, they will be inclined to assume more and more of the parenting themselves.

And where does this take us?

1950, anyone?

Women’s place is in the home, men’s place is in the workplace. Period.

What’s particularly infuriating is the obvious linear connection to this attitude – which is still all too prevalent – and the very crisis discussed in the piece. Men still feel the pressure to be the breadwinner/provider, and still at some level question themselves and their identity if they can’t fullfil that archaic expectation. Common sense tells us that this is often going to be part of why, in situations where poverty is an issue and a family is in play, you see more men lose it and act out, often violently. Shaken baby syndrome is just one psychic rivet that could pop. You also see greater spousal abuse, substance abuse and suicide from men as you head down into the pressure cooker of poverty, where mental illness rates increase across the board. As you come out of poverty, gender differences that remain become less easily understood, but are still difficult to cleanly cast as nature over nurture in an effort to promote biological determinism.

So Curtis would spout a simplistic line to his audience that nakedly fuels gross gender stereotyping. And he does so even though it’s contradicted by reality, and the rest of his own article.

And at a time when a major economic downturn makes it all the more important that we get these things right.

With this thesis, Curtis adds whatever small amount of weight he has towards pushing us backwards, even though the real solution is precisely the opposite – men need to be encouraged and supported in sharing the burdens of economics, both in terms of their identity as men, as well as in terms of day to day living – and they need that support from their families and communities, just as women need comparable, mutual support from families and communities to move beyond their traditional gender/power pigeonholes.

Nothing is more crucial to our collective future than gender equity. In the 50s and 60s, that meant redefining duties and responsibilities. Despite much progress made on these fronts throughout the 70s and 80s, we still have a ways to go on. The only way to make that final progress is to start redefining the gender identities that still bind us to that past, and that keep pulling us back into the same pathologies and bad paradigms. And that means an end to obsessing over which gender has the monopoly on leadership, nurturing, aggression, compassion, courage or what have you.

Reporter Brent Curtis just did his part to work against that goal, and in an exceptionally crude and non-subtle manner.

My daily driving route is a mere 12 mile one-way commute from home to River Rock School in Montpelier, so it’s not like I spend a heckuva lot of money on gas. But rest assured, I have always hated buying gas even when it only cost $15 to fill up the tank. The dream of electric car ownership has always been “just a few years” away into a never-coming future. And when you actually see an electric car at Walker Motor’s, it’s about as practical as a moped, with a maximum speed of 25 mph.

So here are a couple of Sunday morning, coffee-sipping pieces on emerging electric cars. The Aptera caught my eye earlier this year, but now I’m looking at the Pininfarina B0 (pronounced bee-zero).

If you want to build a new car, even a small, economical car, get Pininfarina to design it. That lesson is made clear with the launch of the B0 at the 2008 Paris Motor Show, the best-looking small car we’ve seen here. The B0 has smart lines and a graceful arch between its front and rear wheels, yet maintains the dimensions and configuration to be a practical car. This car is actually a collaboration between Pininfarina and Bolloré, the latter being a consortium of companies with expertise in batteries and capacitors, and is intended to go into mass production late in 2009.

The B0 uses a lithium metal polymer battery pack occupying the undercarriage of the car, with an electric motor driving the front wheels. A super capacitor provides short-term storage for electricity recovered from regenerative braking. Solar cells set into the roof and front of the car trickle energy to the battery.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10057558-48.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=GreenTech

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The B0 is also reviewed in last Friday’s NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/automobiles/12PININ.html?ref=automobiles

Here is a 60 Minutes interview about the Karma and Aptera. But if you want to see exactly how sexy electric cars are, see the video below the fold!

Below the fold: “Electric Cars Are Sexy!” and other two more

under the heading of “Duh!” …

Here’s a link to C-Span’s coverage of a November, 2006 Alaska gubernatorial debate.

I forced myself to listen to the full almost 1 1/2 hour, and I heard a funny thing. Palin pronounced all the ‘ing’s and there was no “betcha” and no “guys ‘n gals”.

Compare the Palin of 2006 with the Palin of 2008 … talk about a manufactured public persona!