You know, as a first thing, I think all of this government-shutdown stuff is mostly bark and no bite. 75% of federal employees will keep working and all the essential stuff (entitlement checks, military, pretty much everything except park rangers and other third-order stuff) keeps going. Resulting in savings during such a spell.

But as a second thing, a GOP insider says the "deal" is a lie.

“They are setting us up by saying there is a deal,” the source says, “so when there isn’t one by 4/8, they can claim they had a deal but we backed out.”

And the GOP has actually been saying that for at least a day, probably more than that. In an article published yesterday, Eric Cantor signaled that this talk of a deal was apparently only going on on the Democrat side of the aisle:

“Time is up here,” said the Virginia Republican, telling reporters that a short-term continuing resolution “without a long-term commitment is unacceptable” and that the leadership must push for the full $61 billion in spending cuts approved by the House last month.

“That is the House position. That is what we are driving for,” Cantor said. When asked specifically about a potential compromise framework that would restore about $26 billion of the House cuts, Cantor said he had no knowledge of those discussions from fellow Republicans.

“I have not been told by both sides that,” Cantor said. “So that is what I am saying. There is a difference in my knowledge base.”

Boehner's comments seem consistent with that:

Regarding the ongoing negotiations, the speaker said: “There are a lot of numbers that have been discussed and thrown around. The fact is there is not an agreement on a number and, secondly, nothing’s agreed to until everything’s agreed to.”

Yes, Boehner is talking a lower number (who knows what) but, he says, he hasn't agreed to anything.

Bear in mind that it takes two sources to confirm a story -- even if both of those sources are on the same team and can create a political advantage for themselves by claiming, falsely, a deal has been struck and it's the other side that's walking away from an honorably-negotiated contract.

I'm guessing that the media's sources for this deal are the Democrats they just love talking to. About movies, cute boys, how True Blood totally pwns Twillight... all sorts of things, gabbing and gabbing all night long.

Posted by: Ace at 07:09 AM | Comments (89)
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Everybody's biggest economic fear, right after the one about total economic collapse and anarchy, is that we may fall into the second trough of a double-dip recession. We had been seeing some improvement on the business front (not, as Monty points out, on the debt front) - several of the indicators were looking better, but the last few months have not been so encouraging. Today we're seeing Initial Claims data which are also not very uplifting.

This blog was one of the first to note that Initial Unemployment Claims stopped improving back in November 2009, and one of the first to point out that they started improving again in August 2010. So let us be the first today to say that it looks like the improvement might have stalled once more.

Today the Department of Labor reported initial claims of 388,000, down 6000 from a revised number of 394,000 for last week (last week's original number was 382,000: the +12,000 correction was one of the largest I've seen). It's encouraging that it stayed below 400,000, but as you can see from the plot, the lovely downward trend we've enjoyed since last August seems to have stopped in January. Now we're just crawling sideways. Again.

Posted by: Geoff at 06:24 AM | Comments (53)
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You can read this news two ways. Optimistic: Fewer people are losing their jobs! DOOM!: Labor force participation is at a 26-year low; job losses are decelerating because there's no one left to lay off. Still, since unemployment is a lagging indicator, this does give some strength to the argument that the "recession" ended about six months back.

Nicole Gelinas at NRO steps into the debate about whether public-employee pensions are sustainable or not. She agrees with Veronique de Rugy (and me) that the rate-of-return many states are basing their contribution calculations off of are basically nonsense, but somewhat agrees that pensions aren't the biggest budgetary problems facing states right now. My take? It's true that pensions aren't an immediate funding threat to most states (that problem is centered more on municipalities at present) -- but they are going to consume an ever-larger proportion of general-fund revenues in coming years, and if borrowing rates go up or returns are lower than actuaries expected (or both), five or ten years from now the situation may go from "bad" to "catastrophic" pretty damned quick. In states like California and Illinois, this situation has already arrived.

Ireland is "stress testing" its banks, and unless Ireland decides to go full retard and hide the gruesome results, either the ECB will have to pony up additional bailout funds (with the associated austerity conditions that the population is unlikely to accept), or to default in some way (preferable to the populace, but it's unclear how Ireland could do this and still retain the Euro as the currency).

So now you have Portugal, Greece, and Ireland on the brink of default, and the ECB seems to be at a loss as to what to do next. Everyone insists that bond-defaults are not being seriously considered, but everyone also knows that this is a lie. Apparently, everyone is waiting for the Deus Ex Machina to descend from the clouds and magically resolve the situation. Somehow.

The old greenback, she ain't what she used to be.

Reason magazine looks into how Ohio Gov. Kasich plans to cut government spending...by increasing spending by 11%. It's a new thing we call "government math". You peasants just don't understand. (This is also why I despair of the GOP ever really getting a handle on our budgetary mess at the state and local level. They tend to love spending taxpayer money just as much as the Democrats do, just on different stuff.)

[UPDATE]: Wal-Mart CEO: Get ready for some serious inflation. As John McClane would say: welcome to the party, pal!

[UPDATE 2]: *Snif*. I'm so proud. If you type "california boned" into the Google, guess what pops up first?

[UPDATE 3]: Aaaah. This is how I like my DOOM!: fresh and piping hot. Bill Gross of PIMCO says that without entitlement reform, default is inevitable. Plus he uses a cartoon skunk as a framing device, which garners originality points.

[UPDATE 4]: John Tamny of Real Clear Markets says that GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a nonsensical term. (He also says the same of "macroeconomics".) I'm not sure I agree entirely -- you have to have some way of measuring the output of a politically organized region, and while GDP is not the best way to measure output it's not the worst either. But Tamny understands that trade, and hence that amorphous beast we call "the economy" is truly global now, and completely interlinked. And this isn't true of just manufactured goods, either -- it applies to service industries as well (particularly in IT).

Doom! DOOM! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

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Posted by: Monty at 05:44 AM | Comments (60)
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The guy just kills me sometimes. President Accepts Government Transparency Award in Secret, Undisclosed Meeting.

The secret presentation happened almost two weeks after the White House inexplicably postponed the ceremony, which was expected to be open to the press pool.

This time, Obama met quietly in the Oval Office with Gary Bass of OMB Watch, Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org, without disclosing the meeting on his public schedule or letting photographers or print reporters into the room.

He's officially launched more cruise missiles than any other Nobel Peace prize recipient in history, AND he's the most transparentest open President ever.

Keep in on the DL.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:19 AM | Comments (75)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:04 AM | Comments (145)
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Was out all day and only just got home. So tonight's ONT will have twice the suckage at half the cost. Such a deal!

Yet More Ukulele

Longtime readers know that I have an unhealthy abiding affection for the Hawaiian instrument. Well this time it's an electric ukulele played by 22-year-old Hawaiian virtuoso Taimane Gardner. A little Carmen at first then she's on to Bach's Toccata and Fugue.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:29 PM | Comments (491)
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Wow. Just wow. What can you say?

The GOP proposed $61 billion in cuts, after promising $100 billion. The Democrats made a secret offer of $30 billion in total cuts. We've now agreed to $33 billion, I guess, which, unless I'm failing at math here, is a whole lot closer to $30 billion than $61 billion and nowhere at all near $1.6 trillion.

What have I been arguing against the whole time? Please do not sell us out on current substance and tell us "well we're going to fight on some proceduralist changes that will kick in in the future so it all balances out."

No, it doesn't balance out, because you never actually do that. If you give up on cuts today, you'll also give up on them tomorrow.

Well, that does in fact seem to be the deal we're being offered:

“Senate Republicans will finally unveil their balanced budget amendment tomorrow, this time with leadership (I.e., McConnell) on board.”

Great, an amendment that won't pass. Something for us to get all worked up about as if it matters.

I love this bargain. Because I'm stupid.

Today's GOP

We spent the country's last fifty trillion dollars but check out these wicked-awesome Magic Beans we got in return!

Posted by: Ace at 03:29 PM | Comments (467)
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So, they took your critiques to heart, and distilled, from your comments, that you wanted Wonder Woman to look less like a stripper and more like a demented bag-lady who thinks she's at a middle-school dance on Halloween night in 1983.

Hot ghetto mess:

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Posted by: Ace at 03:08 PM | Comments (189)
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There is no issue about her that can't turn into a fight immediately.

When Governor, Sarah Palin signed into law a bill granting subsidies to TV and film productions shooting n Alaska. The subsidy was 30% of all money spent in Alaska.

Later, her reality show benefited from just this law. On this last point, I think there's nothing really to talk about -- she could not have foreseen being an indirect beneficiary of this law. Further, she was just an indirect beneficiary -- Mark Burnett was the producer and would be doing the business end of things. Sarah Palin was the talent -- the talent usually doesn't do a lot of tax planning for the production.

But back to the first point, about the subsidies themselves. Some are making hay of this, because it seems to be contrary to the Tea Party spirit of very, very limited government intervention in the markets.

Let me propose something that people don't seem to take into account: We've been experiencing some serious ideological swings in opinion lately. What seemed to be a respectable opinion for a conservative to hold a few years ago has now become almost an anathema.

And people don't seem to even take this into consideration when judging politicians, except vindictively, to attack those they don't like.

Example: People used to attack no-longer-a-possible-presidential candidate Mike Pence for proposing a "touchback" compromise during the amnesty fight. I didn't like that nonsense compromise, but here's the thing: Conservative opinion on immigration and a possible amnesty changed in a matter of weeks as the fight occurred, and people finally started picking sides and deciding what they really thought.

A lot of people -- not just politicians, but conservative voters -- were wishy-washy before amnesty but as the debate crystalized became committed to one side or the other. I started out not thinking an awful lot about it, for example. When the lead blogger at PoliPundit (if I recall this bit of internet imbroglio right) declared that no coblogger on his site could have any position except firmly anti-amnesty, way back before the actual fight, like in 2004 o4 so, I wondered why he was so determined on an issue that seemed -- to me, to ignorant me -- so speculative and so far off.

Well, it turned out the issue was coming to a head more rapidly than I guessed. Where I'd once been squishy on it -- mostly because I hadn't really given it much thought or attention -- I became fairly convinced on the anti-amnesty side (or at least the "enforce first, confirmably, stop illegal immigration for at least 4 or 6 years and then we'll talk about some kind of limited amnesty or 10-year get-your-affairs-in-order visas for current illegals").

My point in defending Pence wasn't to say he was right to have attempted a lame compromise in a fight that really allowed for little compromise (either we'd have amnesty now or not, after all); but that mainstream conservative opinion on the matter had changed in a month from "leaning against amnesty but willing to consider it" to "no amnesty, at least until demonstrable, provable near-complete-success on border enforcement."

And my problem was that nailing him too hard on that touchback thing seemed to be a case of carpet-yanking -- we had changed our opinions (as a group) pretty swiftly, and had to provide some kind of grace period to allow stragglers to catch up with the group.

And as I always noted, too: Sarah Palin spoke nicely about John McCain's basic pathway-to-citizenship plan.

I give Tim Pawlenty a break on his cap-and-tax nonsense, too, because, if you remember, a short five years ago it seemed like we were pretty much destined to lose completely on this fight. I didn't (and still don't, actually) mind a little window-dressing to let Environmental Saps think we're really working on cars that run on sunshine and pixie-sweat.

I think of that as the Stupidity Tax -- the tax we must all pay to the stupid to be left alone from their plodding economic manslaughter. Obviously you want to pay as little in Stupidity Tax as possible, but sometimes, your choice is really between a low-ish Stupidity Tax (offered by a Republican giving dumb squishes some window-dressing) and a very, very high Stupidity Tax (offered by idiotic liberals who really believe this crap).

Anyway, that situation, too, has changed quickly, and I am willing to grant Pawlenty forgiveness -- a temporary insanity plea, if you will -- so long as I never hear this crap coming from him again. (Except for some window-dressing Stupidity Tax.)

Back to Palin: There are actually two strands of thought here, which aren't necessarily related:

1. That limited government is mostly a matter of actual cash-money tax rates -- taxes should be as low as possible on enterprise, and it doesn't matter much if this low-tax regime is achieved through special breaks and subsidies for wealth creators.

2. That limited government is not merely a matter of cash-money tax rates, but also of the goverment's busybodying, bullying, hectoring and subsidizing; its intrusions into the marketplace, basically, and that government should be as non-interventionist as possible, and therefore there should be as few earmarks as possible and no special breaks or special tax subsidies for wealth-creators, either.

In other words, "limited government" can be charted on two axes -- one in terms of total government bite, and the other in terms of the level of interventionist subsidies and discouragements to this or that industry or this or that style of lightbulb. Whereas once the the Republican position was more to the right on one axis and sort of in the middle on the other (the picking winners and losers one), it now has shifted to be to the right on both axes.

Palin's tax breaks for TV and film crews would be "limited government" on axis 1 but not really "limited government" on axis 2.

I think people have to keep in mind that until five years ago there was no serious push against earmarks (a sudden shift in priorities that also caught Palin on the wrong side), and until recently the true libertarian, non-interventionist, leave-it-where-it-lie style of conservative limited government was also much, much less dominant -- the GOP, until recently at least, was in fact for generally keeping tax rates low but also, in the appropriate case, in favor of special breaks for what we call "wealth creators" and what other people call "businesses and rich people."

There has been, it seems to me, a pretty sharp turn towards the Libertarian concept of limited government -- and that means far, far fewer breaks, subsidies, and especially-favorable corner-case tax rulings -- and that it's kind of unfair to condemn Sarah Palin as Infidel for proposing a few years ago what was, at the time, considered perfectly ordinary "pro-growth" conservative meddling in the markets.

A lot of people are wedded to the idea of politicians as ideologues and thought-leaders. I'm not. They get elected, usually, by representing a consensus of opinion either on the right or the left, and usually -- let's just say "always" -- that consensus is itself a muddled and contradictory thing. Even on this site, which might be considered pretty darn heterodox on the matter of spending cuts, we do have a big minority (maybe 35%? 40%?) of readers and commenters who are pretty firm on the idea that spending cuts do not mean Entitlement spending cuts.

Some politicians are extraordinary, and are thought-leaders, and actually become successful not by creating a consensus but by making a new consensus; Reagan, obviously. But the fact that I am just writing "Reagan" instead of "Reagan, and X, and Y, and of course Z, and who could forget Z the Younger" should indicate how rare that is.

Most of the time a politician isn't going to have a terribly coherent ideological undergirding for his surface (expressed) positions; he usually just assembles a bunch of surfaces that are attractive to a majority of the constituency he seeks to govern.

Many in the party once considered "business-friendly" to include special advantages for this or that business. Actually, many in the party still do think that's what business-friendly means. But many have turned away from that and are now seeking a cleaner, more transparent, less interventionist, less feudal style of government with almost no winner/loser picking at all.

It's really not fair to slam Palin for having not made this ideological commitment to strict libertarian non-intervention before most of us made it ourselves.

The "mainstream" of conservative thought has changed pretty seriously in the past five years. If we're picking our candidates according to who was in the current mainstream five years ago, well ahead of the pack, on every single issue, well, I don't know who exactly would fit that profile. (Ron Paul!!1!! -- true, I'll grudgingly say the mainstream has moved closer to Paul on many issues, but still not close enough for Paul to actually be mainstream himself.)

Politics, like fashion, is always changing. Some lead the trends, others follow them. I'd concede it's better to be a thought-leader than a thought-follower but so long as someone is on my side now, when it counts the most, that's the most important thing, and I can excuse a little lateness in getting here, so long as they do get here.

Posted by: Ace at 02:01 PM | Comments (172)
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National Review is sounding the alarm bells -- this is the left's first attempt to litigate the 2010 election.

It is important that conservatives nationwide make this campaign their own. What is at stake in Wisconsin is not just one piece of legislation or one bill restoring a measure of sanity to the state budgeting process. The question to be answered in Wisconsin is: Who works for whom? Do the public employees work for the citizens, or are the citizens mere cattle to be disposed of at the pleasure of the bureaucrats and their union bosses? Every arrow in the quiver — court cases, judicial elections, recall, lawsuits, lies, libels, and brute thuggery — will be thrown at this case, along with lots of money derived from the union dues that state and local governments helpfully deduct from their employees’ paychecks on the unions’ behalf. Wisconsin may seem an unlikely battleground, but a line must be drawn, and this is the place to draw it.

You can't donate to Justice Prosser, but, oh, lookie here, it turns out you can donate to two groups running ads in his favor: The Wisconsin Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Conmerce.

Posted by: Ace at 12:35 PM | Comments (91)
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