AlchemyToday

From his post tonight at The Politico:

Most CBC members bailout bill

While President Bush and Sen. McCain — not to mention House leaders — couldn’t reel in the House Republicans needed to pass the bailout, a key constituency over which Barack Obama has considerable sway also opposed the bill.

More members of the Congressional Black Caucus, whose heavily black districts include many of Obama’s most ardent supporters, opposed the bill than supported it.

Few of these members are in, or will ever have, tough re-elections.

Obama, it seems, could have helped deliver some of these votes if he had been more invested in the bill.

The insinuation that Obama somehow holds more sway over the CBC than he does over nay-voters like, say, the Hispanic Caucus, the Blue Dog Democrats, or generally far-left Dems such as Kucinich is the obvious problem here.  Why does Martin think Obama should hold more influence over his old-time enemy Bobby Rush than he has Nancy Boyda or Dennis Kucinich or Linda Sanchez?

Coming on top of attempts to frame the credit crisis as a result of forcing dangerous loans to unreliable Blacks and Hispanics, this is really beyond the pale.

Here’s the votes by the CBC members (quick tally; might’ve made a mistake):
Ayes (17): Bishop, Brown, Clarke, Clyburn, Arthur Davis, Danny Davis, Ellison, Hastings, EB Johnson, Meek, Meeks, Moore, Rangel, Richardson, Towns, Waters, Watt
Nays (22): Butterfield, Carson, Clay, Cleaver, Conyers, Cummings, Edwards, Fattah, Green, Jackson, Jackson-Lee, Jefferson, Hank Johnson, Kilpatrick, Lee, Lewis, Payne, Rush, David Scott, Robert Scott, Thompson, Watson

Martin’s right that most of the CBC opposed the bill (as one would expect when their proposals are dropped in negotiations to gain GOP support), but a group so akin to Obama that he’d be able to sway them specifically on the basis of shared skin tone should vote en bloc, no?

Furthermore, anyone following the bailout negotiations as closely as Martin has to recognize that provisions that were dropped in the negotiations regarding equity in bailed out firms, stricter restrictions on executive compensation, and especially funding programs to prevent foreclosure were disproportionately advocated for by CBC and CHC members.  One of the tricky parts of crafting a compromise between so many parties with the frequency that occurs in Congress is that you have to learn to follow through when you say, “my vote is contingent on this being in the bill.”  These votes were knowingly given up by the Dem caucus in crafting the compromise, and by all reports the Dems delivered as many or more votes than were expected by the leadership of both parties.

Frankly, Obama probably could’ve made the number of calls required to get Dem voters off the fence on from the left and the right, but it’s ridiculous to pin the blame on him and allow GOP negotiators to get what they asked for into the bill (or out of in the case of foreclosure prevention) without having to put their reputations on the line as well.

So there’s some to-do about Obama trying to get ads off the air by the NRA because of distortions of his record or some other legal issue, but I hadn’t seen anyone complain about the imagery involved in these ads.  I just saw an ad, Veteran, that includes images of the plane hitting the second World Trade Center tower as well as a soldier standing over fellow soldiers’ graves, who I presume don’t neccesarily approve of this message.  Here are the two images with the voiceover accompanying them in the ad:

On the front lines, I knew I served a real purpose: defeating terrorism

The freedoms that I fought for--that my friends died to defend

"The review for 'Shark Sandwich' was merely a two word review which simply read 'Shit Sandwich'."

Memo to John McCain, Reps. Boehner, Blunt, Cantor et al: today was not Nancy Pelosi’s responsibility.  She delivered the votes she promised and gave you the compromise needed to get your guys on board at the expense of enough Black and Hispanic Caucus votes to have won a more party-line vote to placate your endless paranoid bitching about provisions inconsequential to the broader economy.  Rather, your half-hearted support of the bill and utter inability to whip your caucus was on display with this brilliant display of support:

McCain: I’d like to see the details but hopefully yes and from the outlines that I have read of it, that this is something that all of us will swallow hard and go forward with.

Boehner: In a closed-door session with House Republicans Sunday evening, Minority Leader John A. Boehner called the $700 billion financial rescue deal a “crap sandwich” — then said he plans to vote for it.

Cantor: It seems that when the Democrats decided to bring the vote to the floor, they just didn’t have their votes together. Hopefully we’ll be able to reboot, and bring a plan back that meets the needs of the American people, and that will hopefully help us avoid falling into further economic decline… I think what you saw today was the will of the American people having a real impact, as it should, on the legislative body.

If this is the level of enthusiasm from the folks who were supposed to convince wary Republicans that they’d have their back a month from now if they took a bit of risk, it’s not hard to see who’s largely to blame.

Depression-era soup line

The S&P 500 retreated 106.59 points to 1,106.42, as only one company gained, Campbell Soup Co. The benchmark index for American equities slipped to a four-year low. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 777.68, its steepest point drop ever. The MSCI World Index lost as much as 86.99 to 1,163.38, giving it the steepest intraday percentage drop since its creation in 1970.

Bloomberg via Wonkette via Sullivan.

Twitter’d Sunday morning:

Prediction: The bailout bill will go to the floor with the idea that it’s got substantial House GOP support, but they’ll vote against it.

There’s no reason for the House GOP to vote for the bill (none of the credit and all of the blame from challengers) and every reason to oppose (run reelection campaigns against the bailout and government waste and away from your record).  On top of that, although Blunt and Cantor (the GOP whip and deputy whip) eventually voted for the bill (reportedly, House.gov is currently out of service as millions of international financial officers scramble to figure out who the hell is in charge over here, anyway, and make some calls), they spent all day yesterday and this morning bemoaning it, and boy is this ever a compelling call for help from your caucus by Minority Leader Boehner:

In a closed-door session with House Republicans Sunday evening, Minority Leader John A. Boehner called the $700 billion financial rescue deal a “crap sandwich” — then said he plans to vote for it.

From The Page:

On “Fox and Friends,” McCain aide Pfotenhauer said McCain “very quietly behind the scenes” worked toward the financial package, then went straight to Friday’s debate. ” “No debate camp for him in Florida, he didn’t need it.” Said Couric offered Palin “a series of trap-door questions” and called Couric “one tough reporter.”

From Johnanthan Martin:

John McCain did a few hours of high-level debate prep in his Arlington, Va., condo last night with podiums and mock questions, a top aide said today.

After taping interviews for the evening newscasts, McCain returned home and practiced for his first faceoff with Barack Obama, a session that included aides tossing out potential questions and coaching his performance, Mark Salter said to the campaign pool reporter en route from Washington to Memphis. Apparently, the practice took place between phone calls, as McCain aides said last night he had been working the phones with congressional leaders and administration officials.

This was, by the way, after McCain “rushed” back to DC to first meet with John Boehner, then went to the White House meeting where he refused to say anything, then went home at 6:30PM after taping some interviews.  Urgency!

Jim Lehrer tried his damnedest to get any answer to this question:

What priorities would you adjust, Senator McCain, because of the financial bailout costs?

It was repeated over and over and addressed at both candidates.  He eventually elicited an across-the-board spending freeze proposal from McCain, but Obama missed a huge opportunity to knock McCain’s tax cuts again. I think that Obama drawing first blood on tax cuts was his best moment in the campaign, but he had a chance to revisit the issue and knock it out of the park by saying:

Jim, one proposal that I won’t have to adjust and will bring before Congress and the American people in my first 100 days is my tax plan.  I will cut taxes for 95% of Americans and roll back Bush’s tax cuts for the top 1%.  Independent analysts have looked at my plan and found out that it pays for itself… we actually make a little bit of money!  The same analysts have looked at Sen. McCain’s plan and found that it will cost hundreds of billions of dollars.  Specifically, John needs to address is exactly where he intends to find the money for his plan, and whether he thinks it’s better to spend money giving $300 billion to the richest Americans, or spend that money helping regular Americans who can’t pay their bills or afford health care or afford to retire with dignity.  If John McCain is elected President, I won’t vote for such an irresponsible giveaway to the richest Americans, and I don’t know many people in Congress or many people I’ve met across America who would support it, either.

ElectionTaxes.com is a collaboration between Quantrix and Jeffrey Gramlich at the University of Southern Maine that plays the same game as my ObamaTaxCut.com with a lot more rigor.  Being a bonafied Prof. of Accounting, Gramlich has run the numbers himself rather than relying on the overly coarse calculations by the Tax Policy Center.

At the bipartisan meeting at the Whitehouse to discuss the economic bailout package, McCain reportedly contributed nothing to the conversation other than throwing out this brilliant idea:

Towards the end, McCain finally spoke up, mentioning a counter-proposal that had been offered by some conservative House Republicans, which would suspend the capital gains tax for two years and provide tax incentives to encourage firms that buy up bad debt. McCain did not discuss specifics of the plan, though, and was non-committal about supporting it.

Tax cuts!  And not just tax cuts, but tax cuts for the richest of the rich.  Let’s ask the Tax Policy Center Who Pays Capital Gains Tax?

Assuming that everyone pays the 15% capital gains rate (very, very little of the tax is paid by folks at the 0%/5% rate), this chart shows that 83% of this cut will go directly to the pockets of the top 3% of taxpayers.  And, as far as I can tell, there’s no requirement that investors benefitting from this windfall invest in the United States, so it won’t even directly help American growth.

On top of the basic unfairness of a plan that McCain’s apparently seriously considering, the effects on Federal revenue would be disasterous.  Without this plan in effect, the government would receive between $200 and $300 billion in revenues from capital gains taxes over the next two years.  With the plan in effect, it will receive $0 in revenues, and smart investors will undoubtedly cash out post haste to realize gains within the two-year window.  That means less capital gains revenue than expected once the two-year law sunsets and the pressure to sell during the window will probably lead to unnaturally low prices.

Yes, McCain, let’s seriously consider Rep. Cantor’s retarded idea for a few days so that you can bail on a debate.