Tea Bagging The Stimulus

The people streaming through Public Square today were not protesting the violence in our city streets or the Kellen Winslow trade. The fifty or so protesters parading around in the rain with home-made signs were there to voice anger over taxes and government spending and communism and the long slow march towards collectivism. It kind of looked like a mini McCain-Palin rally.

The hatred for the stimulus bill and revocation of Reaganomics it represents were the inspiration for the series of nation-wide Tea Party's that were held in America's city's. The events were championed by a coalition of conservative groups and bloggers and held in numerous cities. Even ones that are in desperate economic straits and could use a boost from federal spending.

Michelle Malkin even went as far as to brand the movement as a counterculture of fiscal responsibility . Such parlance is typical to movement conservatism. Where was the fiscal restraint the past eight years? The winger histrionics have started and we're only five weeks into the Obama era.

Apparently there are some people in the greater Cleveland area that took Bobby Jindal's tuesday night speech seriously. Why use the power of government action to sand off the rough edges of the recessionary downturn? Tax cuts will make things all better.

So get out there Cleveland and stand up for your right not to have new roads and bridges. Don't let the government increase the tax burden on your wealthier friends. Surely we can have our never ending war in Iraq and not pay for that either. Tea Party!

Mashing The Stimulus

The power of the collaborative and mashable web is being applied to potential stimulus bill projects. StimulusWatch is to the tracking the ARR projects as IamCaltrain is to transit scheduling. I'm going to follow this and see how it compares with the actual projects submitted. Don't let the mention on O'Reily Radar discourage you.

The developers of the sight are depending on crowdsourcing and the flexibility of platform to generate constructive observations and a real grassroots evaluation of the proposed projects. The mash-up includes real time favorability data to "evaluate project efficacy" based on the description and cost.

Mash Away
Two caveats about the site are in order. The first is that the data source for the site is the U.S. Conference of Mayors submission, MainStreet Economic Recovery Report. The report is a good proxy for what requests will be officially submitted but they are just that, requests. At some point StimulusWatch should shift to following the projects that actually get implemented. This will be easy if the folks at Recovery.org make their data set available in a useful format.

Secondly the site is susceptible to the normal vulnerabilities we see in Web 2.0 outlets like wikis. Trolls, histrionics over the descriptions of projects and bad information are par for the course. Getting caught up on the names alone is not necessarily the best way to harness the wisdom of crowds. Maybe it will encourage citizens to follow up with their own bit of research.

I trust the Obama administration and support the Keynesian thrust of the spending package. I just wonder how it will take Recovery.gov, the official home of ARRA to catch up with StimulusWatch.org? Maybe we will end up being surprised by the web savvy of the official government site once it gets rolling. Who better to break the mold of the technologically Jurassic government than an administration that has shown a knack for utilizing the Internets?

What about the other 33% of the $787 billion program? Can we have one of these sites to track the tax cut portion of the bill? At least the project portion can be scrutinized and measured.

Akron Mashed
Searching by city shows Akron has requested over $1 billion in projects, the largest being the Central Interchange project at a cool $50 million. This is classic infrastructure that should be expected to appease some of the critics. There are plenty of millions more of projects like this if meat and potatoes is what you crave.

The Akron City Schools have requested $111 million to rebuild or rehab schools including $58 million for two new high schools. Getting these projects would be a boon for APS. This money would supplant the borrowing that the system had planned to do as part of the CLC master plan. The benefit is two fold- the schools free up existing dollars for other projects and the future year debt payments are reduced. This is one example of capital dollars having a beneficial operating impact.

It doesn't look like anything has been submitted by the city of Cleveland yet. Apparently the City elders did not have anything ready for the Conference of Mayors report, always a reassuring sign. I’m hoping for a dome on Cleveland Browns Stadium will make it to the list.

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This Recall's Got The Jimmy Legs

A recall effort being spearheaded by the Professor at Poli Sci 216 is growing some legs. It's not clear whether those legs will go anywhere. Maybe an infusion of recall Requip will get them on the right track.

Dealing mostly in 330 this blog doesn't care one way or the other if this particular recall effort is successful at dethroning the commish. Being an observer of governance and public policy I can certainly see the appeal of a populist attempt to force change in County leadership. At some point forcing accountability becomes the only arrow left in the quiver.

Now on the other hand I've never been comfortable with recalls. The pitchforks and torches don't appeal to my sensibilities The more recent variety of recalls efforts have been quixotic or downright abusive of the system. Recent efforts in Norton and Akron come to mind. Not to take away from the seriousness of the oust Dimora movement. He certainly has his parallels to King George III.

What this particular movement needs is a bit of seriousness. Sure the Facebook page is a sensible rallying point, its visible and collaborative (Web 2.0 and all that). They are still going to need sheer volume to get this thing it the serious realm.

On top of the momentum there needs o be an infusion of a plan post-recall. If the thing is successful, what next? That tends to be the problem with recalls. Replacing bad with worse is a distinct possibility. That doesn't mean new blood isn't warranted in Ohio's largest county. Most of the time the natural election (or selection) process is the best cure for situations like the Dimora fiasco.

Back to the question of seriousness. Look at the followers the professor mentioned, Bob Bennett and the mouth breathers at WTAM. You mean Bob Bennett is interested in the recall effort, no way. I'll bet Jeff Hastings is on board also. It seems the Dimora recall effort may be the only way the hapless Cuyahoga GOP can get a candidate within a hundred miles of elected county-wide office.

I'm sure there are plenty of good citizens fed up with what they are seeing elected officials getting away with at the County. If you think Bennett has the good people of Cuyahoga County as his top concern then I've got a Deibold voting machine to sell you.

Oh yeah, back to potential successors. I hear that Jim Trakas is available.

In the end this has to be about clawing back some real estate for concerned citizens tired of front page corruption stories and deserved of accountable officials . It shouldn't be about the loyal opposition's pipe dreams or publicity for some guy with a PhD in blogging.

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I Am The Stimulus

... I am the walrus.

Imagine if the Democratic party hired the PR firm that created the 'I am Tiger Woods' campaign to plug the ARR Act. I envision a one minute add with flashes of ordinary people saying "I am the stimulus".

A guy on an assembly line, a kid in a classroom or gal in a hard hat on a job site. Simple three second vignettes making the point that the thrust of the legislation was to help the average middle class citizen in a variety of ways.

I'd volunteer to be in that spot. Some of the so called gimmicks will impact my family in a direct way. We are attempting to sell our home. Surely the tax incentives for first time buyers will boost the number of potential buyers in the market. More participants means a quicker sale at a better price. It doesn't stop there.

The lease on our vehicle is up this year and I do plan to take advantage of the associated tax credit for car purchases. The federal dollars that will flow to infrastructure and green energy are front and center in my line of work, local government.

There are plenty of projects that are being submitted on behalf of the NEO local governments that will be able to go forward as a result of the funding. In these tough economic times we'll take what we can get. By my estimation there is nothing fringe about the Recovery Act.


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Academics Plotting Coup In Akron 8

I will not buy my milk and paper towels at the West Point Market. In fact I may not even buy a gourmet dessert there if I so choose. I refuse to own a cat and I will not stop reading the online version of the New York Times.

Life in Akron's ward eight neighborhood could be changing soon. City Council has appointed Raymond Cox III, a University of Akron professor, to the ward eight council seat. Cox is replacing Bob Keith, a humble business owner who vacated the seat to become council clerk (and increase his PERS retirement payout) last month.

Ward eight appears to be home to an inordinate amount of U of A professors. They come for the charming Tudor homes and proximity to Stan Hywet Hall. Nothing beats being within walking distance to Ohio Mart. Now one of their own is about to consolidate their power over the fiefdom.

Cox, According to the West Side Leader, is a professor of public administration. That doesn't bode well for ward eight. I happen to have an MPA and know all about the academics in that field of study.

They feel like they have something to prove. Public administration is stuck in a hopeless pursuit of finding an identity. Come on, the giant name in P.A. was a guy named Dwight Waldo. His last name was Waldo. I had a prof. in graduate school lecture us not on the virtue of public service but on the evils of comma misuse in our writing.

With Cox in power we are sure to see all kinds of crazy ideas of good governance being offered up at council meetings. He may even look beyond the details and focus on the policy aspect of the job. There could be more to council than allocating new sidewalk work and paving streets. That will probably ruffle some egos on council.

What's next? Block watch parties where Tapas is served? Will the ward be divided up along academic lines? The social sciences given free reign over the ward and the other studies forced to stay north of Garman Rd.?

I accept the professor's new authority but I don't have to like it. I refuse to bring a chair to music in the park, I will not go to Ohio Mart...

My Pick For HHS Secretary

The Obama camp should move quickly to fill the remaining open cabinet positions.

The HHS post is the most pressing of the two spots left to fill. The pick for HHS should be a bold one that restores confidence about the vetting process. I suggest this guy.

Strike while the iron is hot I say.

Rebutting the Buttheads

The official response to the passage of the stimulus bill given by Sen. Murkowski highlights the GOP 's detachment from any semblance of rational thought:

Democrats, it seems, settled on a random dollar amount in the neighborhood of $1 trillion and then set out to fill the bucket. Republicans, on the other hand, thought that we should figure out what was at the root of the problem, and then see how much it would cost to fix.”

Let's review. The objective of the stimulus plan was to fill in the projected GDP output gap. That gap is expected to be $2.9 trillion in the next three years. Okay, here's the hard part Senator. Divide 2.9 by three and you get a number close to one (trillion).

Furthermore we know what the root of the problem is. The economy is in a recession. No need to investigate that point anymore.

Full Frontal Nationalization

The stimulus bill is out of the gates and the money will start flowing in the next few months. Count me in the Krugman camp . I think the bill was inadequate in size but it will go part of the way to plug the projected GDP gap and stave off unemployment.

The State of Ohio already has a web portal set up to start accepting project requests from interested parties. Visitors to the site are reminded that anticipated demand for dollars will well exceed the supply. What's interesting is that the State portal has no verification requirement for submitters. Anyone can make up a request and submit it on the website.

The Bailout Spectrum

Using government spending to increase employment was a straightforward approach to attacking the economic crisis. The financial system woes are not as easy to tackle. The focus of the Obama economic team (Geithner, Summers, Roemer et al) will be the ailing banking system. By banking I mean any financial institution but certainly the 18 or so money center banks in the hot seat.

As I see things the range of solutions can be viewed along a Bailout Spectrum. At one end of the continuum is doing nothing or tough love. Kind of like the market fundamentalists having their way.

Let nature take its course. No capital infusions, no buying toxic waste off the balance sheets no TARP no mercy. The taxpayer fronts nothing to prop up the banks and the whole system is left to rot on the vine. The only problem is that taxpayers, the government and everything will be along for the ride. There is no decoupling from the financial system.

The middle of the spectrum is populated by ideas that we've already employed. The original TARP plan to buy assets from banks resides here. The actions taken with the first round of $350 billion that Hank Paulson oversaw. This included the injection of equity and partial taxpayer stake in large institutions and the hundred billion dollar backstops placed behind pools of crappy assets. All these attempts reside in the lukewarm area of the spectrum.

Moving further down the road we have the unveiled by a sheepish Tim Geithner last week. This plan laid out more asset guarantees, more room for capital injections using convertible shares and a public private vehicle for purchasing more bad assets. The current plan is more a less a back door variety of nationalizing.

The perception is that the government control is less direct if the methods are more opaque. These tactics have been tried to some degree and there's no indication that they will get the system back on its feet anytime soon.

What the Geithner plan in its purported form would do is prevent a rapid move to nationalize the banks. A move that the Obama administration may not view with alacrity at first but the reality on the ground will force a change

Full Frontal Nationalization

The opposite end of the spectrum is full frontal nationalization. The government and the taxpayer gets the bank, the assets and most of the upside. This option is viewed as taboo in a supposed free market society like the U.S.

We're all bankers now. There is a wave of sentiment building for the nationalization strategy. Simon Johnson, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubin i and other economists have been pressing the issue for weeks now. The latest entrants into the nationalize are - GOP members of Congress . It's gotten so bad that the party of free market devotion is throwing in the towel.

Call nationalization something else like preprivatization or bank reincarnation to make it more palatable to Wall Street. The key thing is to get through this tough period and begin restoring the confidence and efficacy of the banking system. The full frontal approach also provides plenty of control and upside for chief investor the taxpayer. So what if we do something not viewed with love by Friedmanites of the world.

If you're not convinced read this"ransom" note from a large bank to the American taxpayer that was discussed on NPR's Planet Money.

Clearing Ideological Blockage

In the past Presidential press conferences were a call and responses of ill-formed questions followed by a rambling and amusing response from the previous president. The events were actually entertaining if not painful at times.

It's clear after watching Obama give his first prime-time presser that message and style make all of the difference. This president has a more professorial approach to answering questions. His style entails fielding one question and turning it into a smaller version of a policy speech. The key is to not sound preachy or condescending to the audience He was able to make about a dozen questions last nearly an hour. It also prevents the answer from being chopped to pieces by incessant follow ups.

Gone are the embarrassing moments and fumbling on the words. The juvenile nature of some of the questioning is sadly still around in some cases.

Several questions were centered on the new era of bipartisanship that Obama has tried to usher in. Maura Eliason from NPR had the most well formed question on that issue. The answer gave the president the best opportunity to explain what his approach has been and will be for getting buy-in from his GOP adversaries.

With medical precision Obama suggested that perhaps over time the ideological blockage would be removed. Like a clogged artery or a maybe a boil.

Then there were the silly questions. Chuck Todd was concerned that consumption was the cause of the current economic crisis. Silly Chuck you are no Tim Russert. Chip Reid weighed in on bipartisanship then Major Garrett from Fox attempted to create controversy related to something Joe the Biden said. That's the same guy who reported two weeks ago that the "Making Work Pay" tax cut was dead on arrival. The problem with that story is that its' well, false.

Two things occurred that highlighted the way times are a chaning at the White House. One was Sam Stein from HuffPo was called on for a question. Consider it recognition that old media models are quickly fading away. The second was the presence of progressive talker Big Eddy Schultz seated in the front row next to Helen Thomas. Not something I'd expect to see but welcome none the less.

What's The Point

I thought winning an election meant the victors have some political capital to expend on shaping policy. Now it looks as if President Obama's first major policy achievement is being derailed in the name of appeasing a few moderates in the Senate. As the Senate version of the plan has taken shape it's lost the edge and won't have the intended impact unless the current formulation is changed.

A group of three moderate GOP Senators (five of you include Sens. Nelson and Konrad) somehow managed to get their hands on the controls and rework the thing. The resulting makeover has transformed the Senate version of the spending bill into neutered shell of the original. A crowning achievement of Centrism. The ability to boost employment and cover the gap in GDP will be hamstrung but, three GOP Senators now support the bill. What's the point?

I don't even see how this can be considered centrism. Wouldn't the even-keeled approach to pare down the bill taken into account both sides of the equation? If the goal was to reduce the size by $100 billion then a true centrist approach would be to look at both spending and tax cuts.

The compromise that came out of the Senate on Friday only cut spending. Even though tax cuts are a form of spending and are not nearly as stimulative as direct spending the tax cuts won out. The goal was to make the bill leaner than before yet as effective in stimulating the economy but this new version is almost half tax cuts.

The failure of this bipartisan folly is evident in largest of the reductions taken in the compromise. I of course am referring to the $40 billion in direct aid to State governments. Economists supporting some kind of stimulus approach agree that this form of spending is one the most effective ways to impact the economy. Mark Zandi's work at Moody's Economy.com has the multipliers for these spending increase ranging from 1.36 to 1.64. Seems to me you would leave this stuff in and go after less targeted spending. That is if you were truly working in good faith and not trying to make political treatments.

That $40 billion would be used by States like (let me think) Ohio. Governor Strickland's was counting on using over $3 billion of that money to plug a budget deficit. Without that money in hand the administration will almost assuredly have to cut much deeper to achieve an balanced budget. The only way that can happen now is through layoffs and possibly tax increases.

So the posturing by our moderate friends will have had the reverse effect of what the stated goal of the stimulus bill is. States cut jobs unemployment goes up but, the tax cuts will still be there as a life line.

Is it time for a group of progressive senators to scuttle this centrist monstrosity before it gets approved? Should the compromised bill be held hostage until the aid to States gets put back in? Surely some of the tax cuts could be removed to offset that addition as to not grow the cost and ruffle feathers. Calling all governors (except Mark Sanford) get up and say something or the future is not going to look too good.

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That's The Point

I just watched the President Obama give an impassioned plea to the House Dems to stand tough and get a working economic stimulus bill passed.  That speech was some powerful stuff.  No more cool Barry.  He infused his inspirational style from the campaign trail with the newly acquired leverage of the bully pulpit.  The result was a searing and targeted rebuttal of the last forty-eight hours of GOP childishness on the stimulus bill.

Unfortunately the whole messaging thing that Obama is expected to excel in was not going to well the past few days.  You have the word "pork" showing up along side the stimulus bill in media reports on an increasing basis. The GOP pushback has been successful in muddying the waters by focusing the public eye on minutiae that doesn't even add up to 1% of the bill and ignoring the ridiculous amount of inane tax cuts being left in the plan.

The appearance was part of a ramping up and reclaiming the message campaign that also included a speech earlier in the day as well as this op-ed in the WaPo. I think he would do the cause well to take some of the more direct points in tonight's speech and embed them in the media echo chamber for the next few days. 

I can hear it now, "That's the point of a stimulus bill, you spend money" being repeated all over cable news land.  Enlisting the governors to not only get out there and pump up the plan and make one last plea for increased aid to states and infrastructure spending wouldn't hurt either.

It would be a damn shame if this thing ends up passing as a watered down shell with little chance of having an impact on job creation and GDP growth.

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