Krugman Nudges Bernanke

Paul Krugman keeps nudging Ben Bernanke by reminding him of his own, past statements.

What could the Fed be doing? Back when, Mr. Bernanke suggested, among other things, that the Bank of Japan could get traction by buying large quantities of “nonstandard” assets — that is, assets other than the short-term government debt central banks normally hold. The Fed actually put that idea into practice during the most acute phase of the financial crisis, acquiring, in particular, large amounts of mortgage-backed securities. However, it stopped those purchases in March.


Since then, the economic news has grown steadily worse. And earlier this week, the Fed changed course — but barely. It now says that it will reinvest the proceeds from maturing securities in long-term government bonds. That’s a trivial change, basically the least the Fed could get away with without facing a firestorm of criticism — and far short of the major asset-purchase program the Fed should be undertaking.


Back in 2000, Mr. Bernanke also suggested that the Bank of Japan could move expectations by making announcements about its future policies. In particular, he argued that it could make private-sector borrowing more attractive by announcing that it would keep interest rates low until deflation had given way to 3 percent or 4 percent inflation — an idea originally suggested by yours truly. Since we are, if anything, in worse shape now than Japan was in 2000, an inflation target of at least 3 percent would very much be in America’s interest. But as chairman of the Fed, Mr. Bernanke has explicitly rejected any such move.


What’s going on here? Has Mr. Bernanke been intellectually assimilated by the Fed Borg? I prefer to believe that he’s being political, unwilling to engage in open confrontation with other Fed officials — especially those regional Fed presidents who fear inflation, even with deflation the clear and present danger, and are evidently unmoved by the plight of the unemployed.

I know Krugman get's labeled as shrill but the guy has been spot on for over a year and a half now. We have to hope that at some point one of his columns will spark somebody, anybody to act before deflation takes hold and we really are screwed.

Paul The Fraud

I don't know why some in the media keep falling for Paul Ryan's schtick, but it only gives Paul Krugman more opportunities to tear him a new one. 

And we already know, from experience with the Medicare Advantage program, that a voucher system would have higher, not lower, costs than our current system. The only way the Ryan plan could save money would be by making those vouchers too small to pay for adequate coverage. Wealthy older Americans would be able to supplement their vouchers, and get the care they need; everyone else would be out in the cold.


In practice, that probably wouldn’t happen: older Americans would be outraged — and they vote. But this means that the supposed budget savings from the Ryan plan are a sham.


So why have so many in Washington, especially in the news media, been taken in by this flimflam? It’s not just inability to do the math, although that’s part of it. There’s also the unwillingness of self-styled centrists to face up to the realities of the modern Republican Party; they want to pretend, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, that there are still people in the G.O.P. making sense. And last but not least, there’s deference to power — the G.O.P. is a resurgent political force, so one mustn’t point out that its intellectual heroes have no clothes.


But they don’t. The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future

.

So please, keep the praise coming lol!

If That's The Best You Got...

Krugman puts his foot squarely in Paul Ryan's ass over his understanding, or rather his lack thereof, of economics LOL.

I don’t even know where to start with this. What does Ryan think the fed funds rate is? (It’s the rate at which banks lend each other money overnight, usually to help meet reserve requirements.) He obviously doesn’t know the the Fed funds rate basically equals the return on federal paper, so that raising that rate would make banks more, not less, likely to stay with that federal paper. I’m sure someone will try to come up with a reason why Ryan is being smart here, but the truth is that he’s stone-cold ignorant.


Now, he wouldn’t be the only ignorant member of Congress. But wait — my colleague David Brooks tells me, this very morning, that

Paul Ryan, the most intellectually ambitious Republican in Congress, lavishly cites Brooks’s book. Over the past few years, Ryan has been promoting a roadmap to comprehensively reform the nation’s tax and welfare system.

So this is the smartest Republican Congress has to offer?

Calling Bullshit On Roger Ailes

Paul Krugman does the honors to the FoxNews executive...to his face no less!

All That Needs To Be Said About Harold Ford Jr.

Paul Krugman does the honors.

Wow. Harold Ford’s op-ed in today’s Times has to set some kind of new standard for cluelessness.

If this cat wins an election for dog catcher in New York I am moving out to the hills and becoming one of those militia men because the Apocalypse is surely upon us.

Dysfunctional

Paul Krugman has a must read today about the need to reform the Senate filibuster rules. As I said on another blog, if you think Lieberman et all pissed everyone off with this health care bill, just wait till financial regulatory reform and climate change are up for debate.

An Armey Of Dumbasses

Paul Krugman tries once again to kill the zombie lie that negras and various other poor brown people caused the financial crisis which Dick Armey tries his best to resurrect. This line pretty much says it all.

But in Dick Armey’s world, in fact on the right as a whole, the affirmative-action-made-them-do-it doctrine isn’t even seen as a hypothesis. It’s just a fact, something everyone knows.

The Incoherence Of Being A Blue Dog

Color Paul Krugman confused, something that doesn't happen a lot.

So what are the objections of the Blue Dogs?

Well, they talk a lot about fiscal responsibility, which basically boils down to worrying about the cost of those subsidies. And it’s tempting to stop right there, and cry foul. After all, where were those concerns about fiscal responsibility back in 2001, when most conservative Democrats voted enthusiastically for that year’s big Bush tax cut — a tax cut that added $1.35 trillion to the deficit?

But it’s actually much worse than that — because even as they complain about the plan’s cost, the Blue Dogs are making demands that would greatly increase that cost.

There has been a lot of publicity about Blue Dog opposition to the public option, and rightly so: a plan without a public option to hold down insurance premiums would cost taxpayers more than a plan with such an option.

But Blue Dogs have also been complaining about the employer mandate, which is even more at odds with their supposed concern about spending. The Congressional Budget Office has already weighed in on this issue: without an employer mandate, health care reform would be undermined as many companies dropped their existing insurance plans, forcing workers to seek federal aid — and causing the cost of subsidies to balloon. It makes no sense at all to complain about the cost of subsidies and at the same time oppose an employer mandate.

So what do the Blue Dogs want?

Maybe they’re just being complete hypocrites. It’s worth remembering the history of one of the Blue Dog Coalition’s founders: former Representative Billy Tauzin of Louisiana. Mr. Tauzin switched to the Republicans soon after the group’s creation; eight years later he pushed through the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, a deeply irresponsible bill that included huge giveaways to drug and insurance companies. And then he left Congress to become, yes, the lavishly paid president of PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry lobby.

One interpretation, then, is that the Blue Dogs are basically following in Mr. Tauzin’s footsteps: if their position is incoherent, it’s because they’re nothing but corporate tools, defending special interests. And as the Center for Responsive Politics pointed out in a recent report, drug and insurance companies have lately been pouring money into Blue Dog coffers.

But I guess I’m not quite that cynical. After all, today’s Blue Dogs are politicians who didn’t go the Tauzin route — they didn’t switch parties even when the G.O.P. seemed to hold all the cards and pundits were declaring the Republican majority permanent. So these are Democrats who, despite their relative conservatism, have shown some commitment to their party and its values.

Now, however, they face their moment of truth. For they can’t extract major concessions on the shape of health care reform without dooming the whole project: knock away any of the four main pillars of reform, and the whole thing will collapse — and probably take the Obama presidency down with it.

Is that what the Blue Dogs really want to see happen? We’ll soon find out.

I think it comes down to the fact that being a conservative, whether a Democrat or a Republican, is often times confusing because the ideology itself is rarely consistent in practice. But the other side note of course is the health care insurance industry money lining the pockets of so many Blue Dogs. I'm not quite as charitable as Krugman though, I think many of them ARE looking at going the Tauzin route and are focused on getting paid. And that's also the reason why I think the Democrats in the House should just bring the healthcare reform bill to the floor and make these folks vote against it.

See as I have said before for these Blue Dogs to win in purple or red districts they usually need some Republican votes. But what they HAVE to have is almost unanimous support from the Democrats in their district. If they vote against health care reform, a plank of the Democratic platform for years and years, they will sign a death warrant on their political careers. Now maybe for some of them it won't matter much because they will have lucrative jobs in the health care industry waiting for them after its all said and done. But I am almost positive that more than half of the Blue Dog coalition won't have such a safety net protecting them and when push comes to shove they will want to keep their job.

Put the best Democratic bill on the floor and make them sign their name to a no vote and see just what kind of resolve these people have.

They Miss The Soundbites And Bumper Stickers

I really think our media was somewhat spoiled during the Bush years in that because he spoke in such simplistic and nonnuanced terms belying his lack of substantive thought, the press core didn't have to think too hard to do any reporting on him. Now that we have President Obama in office and he can actually answer a question in more than a slogan or a ready made soundbite, the Villagers are quite miffed. The reaction to President Obama's grasp of the issues during the health care reform press conference on Wednesday was particularly laughable as Steve Benen points out.

AN AVERSION TO SUBSTANCE.... MSNBC's First Read had an item yesterday about the president's prime-time news conference, which it called a "snoozer," and criticized Obama for his depth and substantive responses. (via DougJ)

"Honest question: Is there a point when the president knows too much about an issue?" First Read asked. "He got into the weeds a number of times on a number of different aspects of health care, which is what his diehard supporters love, but might not grab the attention of the average viewer."

Apparently, the president may have done more to impress if he'd talked down to the country.
Paul Krugman is right to seem frustrated.

The talking heads on cable TV panned President Obama's Wednesday press conference. You see, he didn't offer a lot of folksy anecdotes.

Shame on them. The health care system is in crisis. The fate of America's middle class hangs in the balance. And there on our TVs was a president with an impressive command of the issues, who truly understands the stakes.

This might be less frustrating if it weren't so common. There are notable exceptions, but too many major media figures not only steer clear of policy details, they seem genuinely annoyed by those who prefer more substantive in the discourse.

People had better wake up to the reality that our lazy press corps don't care about keeping us informed. They just care about being able to do their job while exerting as little mental effort as possible. And with something as important to all of us as health care reform the stakes are too high to rely on these idiots to give us the facts.

I thank God for the internet, every single day.

In The Company Of Genius

It seems that some of the smartest men on the planet also believe that President Obama did a great job at his press conference last night. Check out Paul Krugman's revue as well as Johnathan Cohn's more extensive assessment.

Suck. On. That. MSNBC!

Godwin's Law Was Made For Them

Steve Benen examines the ease with which wingnut Republicans compare their foes to Nazis

Brad DeLong Breaks With Dr. Krugman And Others

There has been so much blog chatter about the New York Times article on the "leaked" details of Tim Geitner's banking plan that its hard to decipher what is right and what is wrong. Yesterday Paul Krugman and several other noted economists came out and blasted the plan to smithereens. Because of the fact that so many progressives, myself included, hold Dr. Krugman's opinion in such high regard this spread around the liberal and progressive blogosphere with stunning speed. I however in reading the actual article wasn't convinced that it was this humongous failure just looking at it from a common sense view. Because of this I said last night that I would wait to hear the official details of the plan before I made up my mind either way on its merits. According to economist Brad Delong we all would probably be wise to do just that.

Q: Why isn't this just a massive giveaway to yet another set of financiers?

A: The private managers put in $30 billion, but the Treasury puts in $150 billion--and so has 5/6 of the equity. When the private managers make $1, the Treasury makes $5. If we were investing in a normal hedge fund, we would have to pay the managers 2% of the capital and 20% of the profits every year; the Treasury is only paying 0% of the capital value and 17% of the profits every year.

Q: Why do we think that the government will get value from its hiring these hedge and pension fund managers to operate this program?

A: They do get 17% of the equity return. 17% of the return on equity on a $1 trillion portfolio that is leveraged 5-1 is incentive.

Q: So the Treasury is doing this to make money?

A: No: making money is a sidelight. The Treasury is doing this to reduce unemployment.

Q: How does having the U.S. government invest $1 trillion in the world's largest hedge fund operations reduce unemployment?

A: At the moment, those businesses that ought to be expanding and hiring cannot profitably expand and hire because the terms on which they can finance expansion are so lousy. The terms on which they can finance expansion are so lazy because existing financial asset prices are so low. Existing financial asset prices are so low because risk and information discounts have soared. Risk and information discounts have collapsed because the supply of assets is high and the tolerance of financial intermediaries for holding assets that are risky or that might have information-revelation problems are low.

Q: So?

A: So if we are going to boost asset prices to levels at which those firms that ought to be expanding can get finance, we are going to have to shrink the supply of risky assets that our private-sector financial intermediaries have to hold. The government buys up $1 trillion of financial assets, and lo and behold the private sector has to hold $1 trillion less of risky and information-impacted assets. Their price goes up. Supply and demand.

Q: And firms that ought to be expanding can then get financing on good terms again, and so they hire, and unemployment drops?

A: No. Our guess is that we would need to take $4 trillion out of the market and off the supply that private financial intermediaries must hold in order to move financial asset prices to where they need to be in order to unfreeze credit markets, and make it profitable for those businesses that should be hiring and expanding to actually hire and expand.

Q: Oh.

A: But all is not lost. This is not all the administration is doing. This plan consumes $150 billion of second-tranche TARP money and leverages it to take $1 trillion in risky assets off the private sector's books. And the Federal Reserve is taking an additional $1 trillion of risky debt off the private sector's books and replacing it with cash through its program of quantitative easing. And there is the fiscal boost program. And there is a potential second-round stimulus in September. And there is still $200 billion more left in the TARP to be used in other ways.

Think of it this way: the Fed's and the Treasury's announcements in the past week are what we think will be half of what we need to do the job. And if it turns out that we are right, more programs and plans will be on the way.

Q: This sounds very different from the headline of the Andrews, Dash, and Bowley article in the New York Times this morning: "Toxic Asset Plan Foresees Big Subsidies for Investors."

A: You are surprised, after the past decade, to see a New York Times story with a misleading headline?

Q: No.

A: The plan I have just described to you is the plan that was described to Andrews, Dash, and Bowley. They write of "coax[ing] investors to form partnerships with the government" and "taxpayers... would pay for the bulk of the purchases..."--that's the $30 billion from the private managers and the $150 billion from the TARP that makes up the equity tranche of the program. They write of "the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will set up special-purpose investment partnerships and lend about 85 percent of the money..."--that's the debt slice of the program. They write that "the government will provide the overwhelming bulk of the money — possibly more than 95 percent..."--that is true, but they don't say that the government gets 80% of the equity profits and what it is owed the FDIC on the debt tranche. That what Andrews, Dash, and Bowley say sounds different is a big problem: they did not explain the plan very well. Deborah Solomon in the Wall Street Journal does, I think, much better. David Cho in tomorrow morning's Washington Post is in the middle.

Keep in mind that every reaction to the "Geitner Plan" is really a reaction to the NYTimes' EXPLANATION of the Geitner plan. We don't know who is right and who is wrong at this point. Really for all I know the NYTimes is right and DeLong is wrong. However I think it behooves all of us to wait it out for a bit until we get the actual announcment of the plans and get the more accurate analysis of all the various economists, Dr. Krugman and Brad DeLong included.

Stepping Up To The Plate

I haven't been much of a fan of George Stephanopolous and his "This Week" show, but today he was in rare form. First he grilled Larry Summers about the cuts in the "compromise" bill soon to be passed by the Senate. The best part was when George grilled Summers over Paul Krugman's article in today's New York Times that criticized the cuts as dropping 600,000 jobs from the stimulus plan. It was amazing watching Summers do his damnest to not side with explicitly agree with Krugman........while implicitly agreeing with Krugman. I know some have questioned if Krugman has done more to help or hurt the cause on the American Recovery and Reinivestment Act because of his constant criticism that it wasn't big enough. I hope that exchange helps to answer that question for good that he has been a much bigger help than hurt.

Then Big George methodically and tactically smacked around Michael "Step N Fetchit" Steele but good over his ridiculous assertation that government doesn't create jobs. On a side note, does this fool not realize that by saying construction jobs and government jobs aren't real jobs he is alienating the blue collar base of this country which historically votes reliably Republican? Yeah, this might be the shortest tenure in RNC chairmanship history.

By some quirk ABC News doesn't provide an embed code for their videos so I had to link them. But if they come up on youtube I will throw them up later.


Update: As promised here is your new RNC Leader Michael Steele making a total ass out of himself.

What Is The Price Of Bi-Partisanship?

Well according to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman...

Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast — because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects — and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out.

My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.

600,000 jobs for three measly votes. Welp when the economy doesn't turn around in two years I guess all those "centrists" like Harry Reid who allowed the Blue Dogs and WingNuts to hijack the bill instead of forcing a filabuster and that are up for reelection will see just how much appreciation the voters show for their "bi-partisanship" won't they?


Update: I had my own objections to Tom Daschle being the head of HHS but its hard to argue with Cenk here when he says that allowing him to go down in flames over his taxes was showing some form of weakness. And thats the same weakness we are seeing with this stimulus bill. And also just like he said if the Republicans were in a similiar situation they would tell Harry Reid to blow it out his ass and have at it if he wanted to filibuster a bill whose expressed purpose is to save our economy. At some point we are going to need to see the Majority Leader ACTUALLY LEAD!

Just forward to 3:29



The Nancy Kilifer bit about how the Republicans would have handled it was both hilarious and true.
(h/t Benen)

Krugman Off The Top Turnbuckle

Paul Krugman had two great contributions to American society today. First he wrote this column in the New York Times breaking out his own whupping stick about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. For example:

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

snip

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

snip

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

I am just hoping that President Obama is still reading the Grey Lady.



And second he kicked Joe Scarborough's teeth in with the facts on Morning Joe. Damn I wish I could wake up to this kind of entertainment EVERY morninig!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Krugman's Letter

Paul Krugman, nobel prize winner in economics, has penned a letter to President Elect Barack Obama in Rolling Stone. The whole thing is a very interesting read as he gives his opinion for what Obama should do regarding the economy and at the end in regards to prosecuting people in the Bush Administration. There is one part I want to excerpt though because of some of the things I have seen on liberal and progressive websites.

IMHO to a certain extent we (liberals and progressives) have caught some of the "ideologue" bug when it comes to tax cuts/stimulus checks. Its interesting when you stand back and watch it because now we are willing to take the word of wing nut economists when they say the first round of stimulus checks didn't work. Well I dont think you can even begin to quantify whether they worked or not in light of the jobs lost last year and the mortgage crisis. I expressed my reasoning about this yesterday at the Swampland blogs and Krugman kind of makes the same case. What we should take great care to do now that we have the Presidency and Congress is avoid taking totally ideological and partisan stances against policies that might have a great benefit. When President Elect Obama put forth his stimulus plan there was no shortage of belly aching because it contained tax cuts/stimulus checks for middle income families, tax cuts that Obama actually campaigned on. But most if not all of the criticism never even took into account of WHY they might be needed as a part of an economic stimulus plan. Well here is Krugman speaking on it in Rolling Stone:

You can also do well by doing good. The Americans hit hardest by the slump — the long-term unemployed, families without health insurance — are also the Americans most likely to spend any aid they receive, and thereby help sustain the economy as a whole. So aid to the distressed — enhanced unemployment insurance, food stamps, health-insurance subsidies — is both the fair thing to do and a desirable part of your short-term economic plan.

Even if you do all this, however, it won't be enough to offset the awesome slump in private spending. So yes, it also makes sense to cut taxes on a temporary basis. The tax cuts should go primarily to lower- and middle-income Americans — again, both because that's the fair thing to do, and because they're more likely to spend their windfall than the affluent. The tax break for working families you outlined in your campaign plan looks like a reasonable vehicle.

But let's be clear: Tax cuts are not the tool of choice for fighting an economic slump. For one thing, they deliver less bang for the buck than infrastructure spending, because there's no guarantee that consumers will spend their tax cuts or rebates. As a result, it probably takes more than $300 billion of tax cuts, compared with $200 billion of public works, to shave a point off the unemployment rate. Furthermore, in the long run you're going to need more tax revenue, not less, to pay for health care reform. So tax cuts shouldn't be the core of your economic recovery program. They should, instead, be a way to "bulk up" your job-creation program, which otherwise won't be big enough.

Now most of the liberal/progressive blogosphere swears by Krugman when it comes to economic policy. I think it would be wise to take note that he himself believes that tax cuts should be an integral part of any economic stimulus. If you are going to believe him when he advocates infrastructure spending then you can't be selective when he also advocates middle and lower class tax relief. In the end we need to be about results, not about how we accomplish them. To do any less would relegate us to the left wing version of Wing Nuts and make it even harder than it is now to get our voices heard.

Those Who Forget History Are Doomed To Repeat It

Update: Read Glenzilla on the topic also...


In the NYTimes today Paul Krugman makes a very strong case as for why the Bush Administration needs to be investigated and where warrented prosecuted for the abuses they perpetrated while in office. As you can tell from some of my recent postings I totally agree with Krugman on this. He makes some very salient points in his article and I will exerpt just a few:

Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration. “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law,” he responded, but “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.

Can anybody credibly argue against him on this point? Krugman addresses two of the going memes put forth by mostly conservative talking heads about why we shouldn't investigate.

Why, then, shouldn’t we have an official inquiry into abuses during the Bush years?

One answer you hear is that pursuing the truth would be divisive, that it would exacerbate partisanship. But if partisanship is so terrible, shouldn’t there be some penalty for the Bush administration’s politicization of every aspect of government?

Alternatively, we’re told that we don’t have to dwell on past abuses, because we won’t repeat them. But no important figure in the Bush administration, or among that administration’s political allies, has expressed remorse for breaking the law. What makes anyone think that they or their political heirs won’t do it all over again, given the chance?

Amen and Amen. History tells us that in the past when we have chosen to look forward and not back all it has led to is more abuses by our Commander in Chief and really who could blame them? Why WOULDN'T you abuse your office if there is historical precedent that you will never be held to account if you do so? Witness exhibit A.

In fact, we’ve already seen this movie. During the Reagan years, the Iran-contra conspirators violated the Constitution in the name of national security. But the first President Bush pardoned the major malefactors, and when the White House finally changed hands the political and media establishment gave Bill Clinton the same advice it’s giving Mr. Obama: let sleeping scandals lie. Sure enough, the second Bush administration picked up right where the Iran-contra conspirators left off — which isn’t too surprising when you bear in mind that Mr. Bush actually hired some of those conspirators.

And now people are wondering how we ended up in these messes we are in 8 years later. Its because 16 years prior we were hearing the same advice from the same jackasses being handed out now about letting bygones be bygones and not offending anyone's delicate sensibilities. Well its about time somebody stood up and said FUCK THAT! How many times do you have to see the same episode before you decide its time to change the channel. We have done the "just let it go" dance before and now we see to disasterous effect. If we as Americans REALLY believe in the rule of law and the Constitution how does that jibe with letting people off the hook simply because "its too divisive". If we don't have the courage to stand up for the justice then what does that say about us as a country?

Now, it’s true that a serious investigation of Bush-era abuses would make Washington an uncomfortable place, both for those who abused power and those who acted as their enablers or apologists. And these people have a lot of friends. But the price of protecting their comfort would be high: If we whitewash the abuses of the past eight years, we’ll guarantee that they will happen again.

When was the last time you heard that we should let a killer get away with murder becuase it might divide the country? When was the last time you heard someone say we should let a crook get away with robbing people because we just need to focus on making sure nobody gets robbed again? Never. Never would you hear such talk of leniency for some random nobody who commits a crime. And if we aren't pushing for them to get away with their crimes then we for damn sure shouldn't be pushing for our leaders to get away with theirs.

One thing that bothers me is that in my own personal life I haven't encountered anyone, even any conservatives who have said they don't want the Bush Administration investigated. So why is it that every pundit is trying to make it seem like the world would come to an end? Are we really supposed to believe that because it might be hard thats a good enough reason not to do it? Is that what America is about now adays?

Its also very curious to me that you will see poll after poll released these days about approval ratings on different issues, but I have yet to see a national poll about how the populous feels about whether Bush and his cronines should be investigated. I wonder why that is. I imagine because if those poll numbers came in and the will of the majority of people fell on the side of investigating the Bush administration then there would be no way to justify the lack of doing so. And of course the pundits wouldn't want that, would they?

Please vote in my unscientific and thoroughly useless straw poll over there --->