Stop Me Before I Vote Again

The Obot contortionist response to this has been pretty entertaining: if Obama actually institutes every Republican policy, then that leaves the Republicans with nothing to campaign on, and therefore constitutes some sort of victory.

I particularly enjoyed this specimen:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2010/3/31/2106/64867

Quality contorting! I don't think Booman realizes that his magnificent theory was once a bit of half humorous self-titillation for desperate progressives. Anyway, kudos to him for also finding a way to work in the Overton Window and Lakoffian framing, along with the usual magical boilerplate about pragmatism.

Ugh. One of these days, I'm going to remember to type the humor name in right the first time.

The swooning started here, with this delightful salvo:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raymond-j-learsy/obamas-brave-deciison-to_b_519836.html

We can cripple the oil companies, and the American addiction blah blah blah, if only we give them more money.

*

All is not lost, though. My nine year old just fought me to a standstill over doing the dishes before he goes to school. He's willing to do both, see, if I make a few concessions.

Defiant little bastard made me proud as the Devil on a Sunday morning...

Thanks Jack. The intro to that article really warrants being reposted here:

"In an act of vision and courage, given the hostage the nation has become to the oil industry, oil interests, and the likes of OPEC, the Obama administration is proposing opening vast expanses along the Atlantic coastline, the Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling.

This is a momentous moment and brings to mind the leadership of another time and another president. In the depth of the depression, President Roosevelt, with courage and imagination, sought different solutions to confront the crippling economic conditions that had descended on the nation."

Drill here, drill now = the TVA

Amazing

I can see the goo-goo logic. Obama is the cunning maitre d, and the oiligarchs are Mr. Creosote.

Ha! Shiny.

Speaking of eagerly swallowed supposed Bushisms: Hostage to the oil industry?

WTF do they think burns up all "our" oil?

Good support for my book on transportation dictatorship, though...

I find a post of mine quoted on this honorable site!!!

/swoon

...wakes up waving his hankie...

/swoons again

Related to this is that the official Obama Mouthpiece site, TPM has an article up from an Obama administration official saying that "cap and trade" is no longer in the lexicon.

Whatever the fuck that means.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/03/cap-and-trade_is_d-e-a-d.php?ref=fpblg

Cap and Trade was an already "let's just assume capitalism and the free markests are the most awesomest thing ever" tank of bilge. And now they've dumped that.

I'm moving to higher ground...

The Dems always did have a special affinity for self-conscious bad faith and Rube Goldberg casuistry. The two meld, and then war in their hearts with their special affinity for embarrassing mediocrity.

there ought to be a name for market phobes
of course agoraphobia is taken unfortunately

as there ought to be a clinical name for
market fetishists

what strikes me about this as it struck observers in 21-24 about pink reactions to NEP

what is this phobia based on
what makes
setting a certain rate for
a tax on carbon
some how qualitatively superior
to a carbon quota with traded warrents???

since the actual watch dog and measuring is identical
nothing i can see
except the two diffrent forms of uncertainty
in one case how much carbon
will legally get emitted
and in the other the price for its legal emission

where the revenues from the tax or
proceeds of the market go
are entirely seperate considerations

that bribes exist in the form of free warrents or rebated taxes is again another consideration

i've never understood the rational objective to cal and trade
at this level of abstraction

and
this site prefers
-- as i understand it at any rate--
the pigou tax approach --ala mankiw --
on the basis of sound practical
populist politics
--not crack pot realist politics of course --
the transparency of the tax and per capita revenue distributionits
has a simplicity that inspires
more mass confidence in the role of citizen monitoring

i buy that line

but this silly waving of cap and trade per se
as if its the devil's recipe
well
it's ...willfully ignorant

"Cap and Trade was an already "let's just assume capitalism and the free markests are the most awesomest thing ever" tank of bilge"

this from a rad needs
to be backed up
and not with chitter about the various pro corporate in fact corporate designed drafted and pushed
versions of a cap and trade
carbon emission reduction plan

listen let me be energy czar and i'd set up a cap and trade that would tickle the funny bone of every pinko with a brain in north america

the "class content " of either plan
is undetermined at the level
of either following pigou or coase

bukharinists unite

The hyper trot line
Which the august noam
Atributes also to lenin quite wrong headedly
Was refined into socialist accumulation plus maximal industrialization
By the party center
Once trotman and the other labor army maximalits
Were all
nicely out of the
Picture
The 5 year plan
Or how to strip
the peasants
Once it was the stalin way
Became the target of
The new deocratic trotman in exile
This utter saul paul transformation of comrade leon deseves wider currency
Much as his united front et al
with the sd's.

Ever the merry oppositionist
He

The attempt by lerner
To convert him to market think
In the late 30's
Failed as I understand

democracy is a bourgeois right
It would seem
Whereas in pinkoland
Open markets are
A bourgeois wrong

Chomsky is quite keen to see the. Market utopians as
Enlightenment souls
Dreaming of markets without capitalists

Worker owned and operated firms
And all

His objection
Doesn't seem to be possible at this stage

All the facts
all the values
And
none of the concrete steps

Harmless shamanism

Owen, the easiest way to measure emissions is not by what comes out of plants, but by what goes into them. A cap and trade that capped extraction and input would encourage efficiency. The existing proposals and practices are worthless, as far as the ostensible goals go. The recession has been more effective.

op,

I'm curious: What's your take on Deng?

That Fat Man looks suspiciously like Daniel Day Lewis for a few seconds about 1:09 in. My Left Food. There Will Be Blub.

Booman sez Obama treats him like a grown-up. A grown-up what?

OP, I would have preferred a direct tax on carbon as you can tell. An honest cap and trade system would work too but from what I can tell it wouldn't have been as effective. I'm no expert on the issue, just going on the various things I've read about the two approaches. Of course, I don't trust "free markets" and capitalism to always end up doing the right thing so that plays into my views.

But since cap and trade isn't in the lexicon anymore according to the Obama administration, I guess it's all moot now.

I can't tell what their plan is other than "drill, baby drill".

A cap and trade that capped extraction
is a simple ration system
best handed out thru an auction
with retrade exchanges

that would amount to a vraiable tax
on carbon content
the rate /secondary market price
depending on final demand for the products
it is inputed into

input use waarents
ie user rationing would be a way to exert additional pressure on selected industries
the experience with all these systems suggest they work best in this double down fashion
both pushing and pulling
one could rebate parts of the ration price depending on reduced carbon release in use
you'd have to prove your case of course
similar to guilty till proven innocent systems

i like that

if you make something with it like plastic
pretty straight forward rebate process
but use it by burning it
then you gotta demo its carbon pollution
reduction
------
" I don't trust "free markets" and capitalism to always end up doing the right thing so that plays into my views"

that combo is a mighty nasty one
that never does the right thing until it implodes itself into a crisis

however market mechanisms per se
as in a carbon cap warrent system
with an auction and a regulated secondary market could easily work as designed ....
particularly as part of a gosplan II
an it will too
under the next full scale
dictatorship of the proletariat

we'll get another crack at it mates
for better or worse

--------

deng ???

hey with stalinoid gosplan I
in the end you get deng
or you get worse
one varient or other of wishful thinking
and back stage muscle
that leads thru yeltsin back to 1913

btw i suggest we re visit vi lenin
circa NEP
and his take on gosplan I
and simply stare at it really hard
and try not to conflate him then
with bukharin circa 1928
or Deng 1999
it's prolly useless senseless jabberwocky

are you referring Lenin's take on war communism?

"it's prolly useless senseless jabberwocky"

what do you mean?

"are you referring Lenin's take on war communism"

no
that was just a very high falutin name
for maximum rrequisition
there was a complete break down of all market activity

the best parallel to a war communist model
realized intentionally
pol pot's DK circa 75-77
where similar radical means were
in this case conciously and deliberately
with fore thought implemented
to supplant totally
the domestic commodity system ...
money... markets etc

------

"what do you mean?"
"it's prolly useless senseless jabberwocky"

as in what does "it" refer to ???

various prior efforts
to congeal a coherent model
of
a market solution to socialism in one country
under a minority working class dictator ship
and the interactions
of central plans and markets

What we need is targeted competition with the capitalists, within so-called "markets," plus new infrastructures that obviate as much of the problem as possible, by changing physical output rather than pollutions rights.

So: Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030, expanded even bigger and fully funded and done in every burg, plus USARail with copying of France and Japan, plus USA toothpaste and organic foodstuffs, national free phone and data links, plus a Public Media Pentagon. Do all that, end the wars, and let marketeers do as they please in the new conditions.

http://www.deathbycar.info/2010/02/portland-bike-plan/

i've already buried several fresh corpses (not all human babies, thx) as an investment for when higher oil prices support backyard exploration