From Time.com:

The $787 billion stimulus plan is turning out to be far less stimulating than its architects expected.

Back in early January, when Barack Obama was still President-elect, two of his chief economic advisers — leading proponents of a stimulus bill — predicted that the passage of a large economic-aid package would boost the economy and keep the unemployment rate below 8%. It hasn’t quite worked out that way…

Click here for the full story.

So they’re trying to fake us out. First, it was Sarah Palin’s nomination to run alongside John McCain in 08, in an effort to capture disgruntled Hillary voters. We were supposed to think the GOP was down with women. (Not.)

Then, after the Democrats put a Black man in the Oval Office, the GOP thought to itself, “There’s a bandwagon to jump on. Post-racial America, HERE WE COME!” Hence, the appointment of Michael Steele as chairman of the RNC. Hip-Hop makeover? Really?

And now, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, has become the latest iteration of this tired philosophy: When in doubt, put a Brown dude out. As Baratunde from Jack&Jill Politics described, Jindal sounded like a Muppet.

Well, we here at NewsOne figured if the GOP could cash in on Jindal’s face, so could we. We’ve got our eye on you, Governor…..

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America’s recession “probably” will end this year if the government succeeds in bolstering the banking system, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Sunday in a rare television interview.

In carefully hedged remarks in a taped interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Bernanke seemed to express a bit more optimism that this could be done.

Still, Bernanke stressed — as he did to Congress last month — that the prospects for the recession ending this year and a recovery taking root next year hinge on a difficult task: getting banks to lend more freely again and getting the financial markets to work more normally.

“We’ve seen some progress in the financial markets, absolutely,” Bernanke said. “But until we get that stabilized and working normally, we’re not going to see recovery.

“But we do have a plan. We’re working on it. And, I do think that we will get it stabilized, and we’ll see the recession coming to an end probably this year.”

Even if the recession, which began in December 2007, ends this year, the unemployment rate will keep climbing past the current quarter-century high of 8.1 percent, Bernanke said.

A growing number of economists think the jobless rate will hit 10 percent by the end of this year.

Asked about the biggest potential dangers now, Bernanke suggested a lack of “political will” to solve the financial crisis.

He said, though, that the United States has averted the risk of plunging into a depression.

Stimulus Prompts Transportation Projects, Creates 400K New Jobs | CLICK HERE

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“I think we’ve gotten past that,” he said.

It’s rare for a sitting Fed chief to grant an interview, whether for broadcast or print. Bernanke said he chose to do so because it’s an “extraordinary time” for the country, and it gave him a chance to speak directly to the American public. (A transcript of the interview was provided in advance of the broadcast.)

Bernanke spoke at a time of rising public anger over financial bailouts using taxpayer money. Battling the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, the government has put hundreds of billions of those dollars at risk to prop up troubled institutions and stabilize the banking system.

Institutions that have been thrown lifelines include American International Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp., mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and others.

Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have questioned the effectiveness of the rescue efforts and have demanded more information about how taxpayers’ money is being used.

Bernanke’s TV interview seemed to be part of a government public relations offensive. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner appeared on PBS’ “The Charlie Rose Show” last week, discussing the financial crisis and the Obama’s administration’s relief efforts.

The Fed chief on Sunday’s broadcast repeated his ire over the AIG bailout, saying that over the past 18 months, that was the case that angered him the most. He says he “slammed the phone more than a few times on discussing AIG.”

The government’s four efforts to save the troubled insurance giant total more than $170 billion. A collapse of AIG would have wreaked havoc on the global economy, the Fed has said.

AIG ignited fresh outrage over the weekend with news that it’s making $165 million in bonus payments to executives on Sunday, most of them in the unit that sold risky financial contracts that caused huge losses for AIG.

When the financial crisis intensified last fall, Bernanke and President George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson rushed to Capitol Hill for help. That led to the swift enactment of a $700 billion bailout package in October. Since then, banks have received billions in capital injections in return for government ownership stakes in them.

Looking back, Bernanke said the world came close to a financial meltdown. Asked how close, Bernanke responded: “It was very close.”

Bernanke admitted that the Fed could have done a better job of overseeing banks. Critics say lax regulatory oversight contributed to the crisis.

Bernanke said he believes all the big banks the Fed regulates are solvent. Big banks won’t fail under his watch, Bernanke said — though, if necessary, the government should try to “wind it down in a safe way.”

RELATED:

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President Barack Obama called Wednesday for international allies to sign on to more aggressive steps to jump-start their own economies, warning that U.S. efforts to pull its own economy back from the brink will falter without global coordination.

“We can do a really good job here at home, with a whole host of policies, but if you continue to see deterioration in the world economy, that’s going to set us back,” Obama told reporters after receiving an Oval Office briefing from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Geithner is headed to Britain this week for talks with the finance ministers of 20 advanced and developing nations. Those meetings are a precursor to a leaders’ summit on the global financial crisis that is taking place in London early next month.

Geithner said there have been many ideas passed among the nations, and good progress made, but that the time for talk is over.

“It’s time now for us to move together and to begin to act,” he said. “Everything we do in the United States will be more effective if we have the world moving with us.”

Obama said the United States has two goals for the so-called Group of 20 summit: to make sure there is “concerted action around the globe to jump-start the economy” and to achieve consensus on regulatory reform to take place in each country.

He did not directly criticize other nations, such as in Europe, which have been reluctant to adopt the kind of expensive stimulus packages for their own economies that have been approved in the United States. But his message that allies are not doing enough compared with the United States was clear nonetheless.

“The United States has actually taken a significant lead on a number of these steps that are required,” he said. “As aggressive as the actions we are taking have been so far, it’s very important to make sure that other countries are moving in the same direction, because the global economy is all tied together.”

Obama has met with several G-20 leaders already in the lead-up to the summit, including Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, hammering home the notion that they only benefit from a strong U.S. economy. The president said those talks have made him “optimistic about the prospects” for a good agreement to come out of London.

“They’re rooting for our success, we got to make sure we’re rooting for theirs,” Obama said.

From The New York Times:

Kansas will widen U.S. 69 to remove a bottleneck outside Kansas City, along with a few other expensive projects. Maryland will spend its money in smaller pieces, resurfacing dozens of rutted roads and highways. Colorado will build an interchange on Elk Creek Road in Jefferson County, complete with an underpass for the elk.

There is nothing monumental in President Obama’s plan to revive the economy with a coast-to-coast building spree, no historic New Deal public works. The goal of the stimulus plan was to put people to work quickly, and so states across the country have begun to spend nearly $50 billion on thousands of smaller transportation projects that could employ up to 400,000 people, by the administration’s estimates.

Click here for the full report.

Barreling ahead on a mammoth agenda, Barack Obama is ready to offer a detailed sketch of the first year of his presidency, casting the nation’s bleeding economy as a tangle of tough, neglected problems.

In a prime-time speech from the House of Representatives, Obama will make his case Tuesday that much more has to be done to turn around the economy — a message he knows he must explain.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday that Obama will provide more details about his financial stability plan and measures to help the economy while delivering “a sober assessment about where we are and the challenges we face.”

“He’ll say we’re on the right path to meeting these challenges, and there are better days ahead,” Gibbs said.

Already, the nation is nearly dizzy keeping up with what’s emerged from Washington during Obama’s first weeks as president, from a staggering $787 billion stimulus plan to a revamped bailout for the financial sector to a rescue plan for struggling homeowners.

The president has also said reforming health care, including burgeoning entitlement programs, is a huge priority.

Although Obama is too new in office to be delivering a State of the Union address, his speech will have all the same trappings. It comes two days before he delivers a budget blueprint to Congress. Unlike that detail-driven document, his address will be broad, spelling out what he wants and how he will do it.

The economy, in its worst tailspin in decades, will dominate. Obama will touch on foreign policy, but that will largely be left for other upcoming speeches. This will not be a rollout of one policy initiative after another.

Obama will make clear that the trillion-dollar-plus deficit is one he “inherited.” In other words, he wants to remind people that President George W. Bush and the previous Congress left him a big hole, forcing him to pursue the costly stimulus package.

The president will push for movement on ensuring health coverage for all Americans. He will seek to expand educational opportunities, and diversify the country’s energy sources, and contain sacred entitlements like Social Security, and halve the soaring budget deficit in four years.

Gunning for so much at once is complicated, both in terms of the issues themselves and the politics. Senior presidential adviser David Axelrod acknowledged Monday there is a risk in taking on too much.

“I think the bigger concern,” he said, “is to not be aggressive at a time when a tepid approach could really consign us to a long-term economic catastrophe. We believe the times demand vigor and aggressive action, and so we’re having to do a lot of things at once.”

Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Obama’s speech amounts to a coming-out party.

“You never know what a salesman’s going to sell you until he shows up at your door,” Issa said of his expectations. “If he gives us a narrow set of priorities that can be executed, and they don’t just involve more spending, then I think it will be refreshing. If he gives us a long laundry list, which most presidents do, then although it will set the agenda … it won’t be as meaningful.”

In many ways, though, Obama will be speaking directly to the American people. Daily followers of Obama’s rhetoric are not likely to be surprised by Obama’s words, some of which will be repeats. He is trying to reach millions of people who don’t get to hear him every day.

So Obama will say that the crises facing the nation are so large they can only be solved in bipartisan ways. He will be blunt about the country’s woes but try to balance that talk with optimism. He will talk about his travels as president so he can focus on the stories of communities outside Washington.

Asked in an MSNBC interview how the president plans to make good on his pledge to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, Gibbs said, “The biggest thing we’re going to do is cut the amount of money we spend each year in Iraq.”

He said Obama also planned to talk about necessary investments and about taxes.

“I think the president believes very clearly that we have to be honest about where we are,” Gibbs said. “Tonight, he will tell the country that we’ve faced greater challenges than we face now and we’ve always met those challenges.”

There is sure to be ceremony as Obama arrives in the well of the House. His speech is tentatively at 45 minutes, accounting for applause time.

Economic stimulus legislation at the heart of President Barack Obama‘s recovery plan is on track for final votes in the House and Senate after a dizzying final round of bargaining that yielded agreement on tax cuts and spending totaling $789 billion.

Obama, who has campaigned energetically for the legislation, welcomed the agreement, saying it would “save or create more than 3.5 million jobs and get our economy back on track.”

The $500-per-worker credit for lower- and middle-income taxpayers that Obama outlined during his presidential campaign was scaled back to $400 during bargaining by the Democratic-controlled Congress and White House. Couples would receive $800 instead of $1,000. Over two years, that move would pump about $25 billion less into the economy than had been previously planned.

Officials estimated it would mean about $13 a week more in people’s paychecks when withholding tables are adjusted in late spring. Critics say that’s unlikely to do much to boost consumption.

Millions of people receiving Social Security benefits would get a one-time payment of $250 under the agreement, along with veterans receiving pensions, and poor people receiving Supplemental Security Income payments.

An additional $46 billion would go to transportation projects such as highway, bridge and mass transit construction; many lawmakers wanted more.

The House could vote on the bill as early as Thursday, though Friday seemed more likely. The Senate would follow, but its schedule is less certain.

The Obama plan offers a 60 percent subsidy to help unemployed people pay health insurance premiums under the COBRA program and divvies up $87 billion among the states to help them with their Medicaid costs for the next two years. It provides $19 billion to modernize health information technology systems, even though such funding will create few jobs right away.

To tamp down costs, several tax provisions were dropped or sharply cut back. A provision popular with Republicans and the big business lobby that would have awarded about $54 billion to money-losing businesses over the next two years was instead limited to small businesses, greatly reducing its cost.

A $15,000 tax credit for anybody buying a home over the next year was dropped; instead, first-time homebuyers could claim an $8,000 credit for homes bought by the end of August. Car buyers could deduct the sales tax they paid on a new car but not the interest on their car loans.

But nothing could shake negotiators from insisting on including $70 billion to shelter middle- to upper-income taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax, originally passed a generation ago to make sure the super-rich didn’t avoid taxes.

The move is aimed at easing headaches that would follow if Congress passed it later in the year — rather than creating jobs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that provision will have relatively little impact on the economy.

In late-stage talks, Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pressed for $8 billion to construct high-speed rail lines, quadrupling the amount in the bill that passed the Senate on Tuesday.

Reid’s office issued a statement noting that a proposed Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas rail might get a big chunk of the money.

Scaling back the bill to levels lower than either the $838 billion Senate measure or the original $820 billion House-passed measure caused grumbling among liberal Democrats, who described the cutbacks as a concession to the moderates, particularly Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who are feeling heat from constituents for supporting the bill.

Specter played an active role, however, in making sure $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health, a pet priority, wasn’t cut back.

After final agreements were sealed Wednesday afternoon, staff aides worked into the night drafting and double-checking in hopes of officially unveiling the measure Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announces agreement on stimulus.

Congressional negotiators are closing in on a final version of a sweeping economic recovery package, and the bill could be voted on by both the House and Senate by Friday.

Multiple sources have confirmed that the new plan is budgeted at $789 billion, a figure smaller than in the bill that emerged from the House last month and the one approved by the Senate on Tuesday.

It appears that House Democrats have succeeded in restoring some funds that were stripped out by a group of Senate moderates last week, including $44 billion in aid to struggling state governments and $6 billion for school construction and modernization. Both line items were important to the White House.

Those additions ostensibly will be offset by reductions in tax breaks in the Senate plan, although Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said this afternoon that 35% of the bill would still be devoted to tax cuts.

“There are the votes there for passage, that is clear,” Baucus said during a break in negotiations. He said there had been compromise on all sides and described the process as “nip and tuck” and “shaving here and there.”

Added Baucus: “Everybody is working toward an agreement.”

But Sen. Tom Harkin, a liberal Democrat from Iowa, said fellow Democrats had surrendered too much in a bid to accommodate three moderate Republicans who can ensure passage in the Senate.

“I think our side gave in too much in order to appease a few people,” he said in a hallway interview in the Capitol. Harkin said Democrats should have dared Republicans to filibuster and “see what the public outcry” would have been. “I think the people are getting shortchanged.”

Negotiators have scheduled a public session later today, when the outline of a deal may be presented. And the House could vote on the package as early as Thursday, with the Senate following on Friday.

What remains unclear is whether the three moderate Republicans who supported the $838-billion Senate bill — Susan M. Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania — would support the agreement. They, along with some moderate Democrats, have suggested that if the bill deviates too much from the Senate package, they will not vote for it.

President Barack Obama will face a barrage of questions from ordinary Americans and skeptical reporters on his plans to reinvigorate the economy with a massive stimulus bill and additional billions in bailout money for the financial markets.

Two trips to cities hurting under the economic meltdown and a prime-time news conference are signs that Obama and his advisers are worried about a looming Senate vote on the stimulus bill, which failed to gather meaningful Republican support during rare weekend debate. The question-and-answer sessions will allow Obama to go directly to voters for grass-roots backing of his plans.

Both trips were added to Obama’s schedule as difficulties with the legislation on Capitol Hill increased. Originally, aides had insisted his time would be better spent in Washington to shepherd the bill rather than traveling the more traditional presidential route around the country, pressuring lawmakers from his bully pulpit.

The $827 billion Senate version of the plan was expected to pass the Senate on Tuesday. However, it must be reconciled with the House version, which totaled $820 billion in spending and tax cuts. With Senate and House negotiators preparing to deal, Obama is likely to push for a bill on his desk for his signature by mid-month.

“The president’s top man on the economy is the president,” Larry Summers, the chairman of the White House National Economic Council, said on “Fox News Sunday.” Summers added: “He listens to advice from all of us, and he sets his direction.”

For his first direct pitch to citizens, Obama scheduled a town hall meeting in Elkhart, Ind. He was to return to Washington for the news conference Monday night. On Tuesday he plans to visit Fort Myers, Fla., an area hit hard by foreclosures.

“Americans across this country are struggling, and they are watching to see if we’re equal to the task before us. Let’s show them that we are. And let’s do whatever it takes to keep the promise of America alive in our time,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

The Elkhart-Goshen region in northern Indiana saw its unemployment rate soar to 15.3 percent in December, up a whopping 10.6 percentage points from December 2007. The region has been bruised by layoffs in the recreational vehicle industry. Hundreds of workers have lost their jobs at RV makers such as Monaco Coach Corp., Keystone RV Co. and Pilgrim International.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the meeting would give the president a chance to hear Americans’ concerns about the bill, which was set to have a key vote in the Senate on Monday afternoon.

“I think this is another chance for the president to talk directly to the American people about what he thinks is at stake,” Gibbs said. “Watching millions lose their jobs, and having in front of Congress — and hopefully in front of him soon — a plan to save or create millions more jobs and get people back to work, putting money in people’s pockets, getting help for state and local governments so they don’t have to lay off firefighters or teachers or police officers.”

Here’s a just the beginning of the list of what got cut from President Barack Obama’s stimulus package:

Partially cut:

• $3.5 billion for energy-efficient federal buildings (original bill $7 billion)

• $75 million from Smithsonian (original bill $150 million)

• $200 million from Environmental Protection Agency Superfund (original bill $800 million)

• $100 million from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (original bill $427 million)

• $100 million from law enforcement wireless (original bill $200 million)

• $300 million from federal fleet of hybrid vehicles (original bill $600 million)

• $100 million from FBI construction (original bill $400 million)

Fully eliminated

• $55 million for historic preservation

• $122 million for Coast Guard polar icebreaker/cutters

• $100 million for Farm Service Agency modernization

To read the entire list, click here!

By some accounts, for every one phone call coming into congressional offices in favor of the stimulus, one hundred are coming against it. The vaunted organizational skills of the Obama campaign appear to be sitting in neutral now that Obama is President. Meanwhile, the administration’s best weapon, the historically popular President himself, has arguably been spending too much time in the nitty gritty of policy work and not enough time trying to influence public opinion. Perhaps the administration was surprised by the unanimity and tenacity of GOP opposition to the still-popular stimulus. Perhaps it didn’t anticipate such extraordinarily negative media coverage. Whatever the explanation, Obama has now begun a more significant personal crusade to influence the debate.

Among his media stops yesterday was an interview with Katie Couric. Here’s part of the exchange he had with her yesterday:

Couric: Sen. Mitch McConnell said over the weekend that surely you’re privately embarrassed by some of the product that came out of the house version and let me just mention some of the spending in this package: $6.2 billion for home weatherization, $100 million for children to learn green construction…

Obama: Lets take that example. I’m stunned that Mitch McConnell use this as an example … We’re going to weatherize homes, that immediately puts people back to work and we’re going to train people who are out of work, including young people, to do the weatherization. As a consequence of weatherization, our energy bills go down and we reduce our dependence on foreign oil. What would be a more effective stimulus package than that? I mean, you’re getting a threefer. Not only are you immediately putting people back to work but you’re also saving families on your energy bills and you’re laying the groundwork for long term energy independence. That’s exactly the kind of program that we should be funding.”

This is the sort of work that Obama and his allies need to be doing relentlessly. And, unsurprisingly, Obama does it well here. But its worth pausing here for a moment to underline what a disaster our mainstream media are. If you or I interviewed Obama, we could be forgiven for offering poorly thought through examples of “embarrassing” spending in the stimulus bill. But, what’s Couric’s excuse? Presumably she prepared diligently for the interview. She’s not preparing for it alone, either, of course. She has a large staff of researchers and CBS news has access to an army of economists and other consultants to fact-check themselves. Perhaps you’re inclined to accept the extremely charitable explanation that Couric raised the weatherization example just to set Obama up to explain clearly what stimulus actually looks like. More likely though is the extraordinary fact that in all her preparation for this interview, none of Obama’s arguments ever occurred to her or to any of the people who helped her prepare for the interview. That all she knew was that weatherization sounded kind of tangential to economic stimulus and that Republicans, who always get their arguments aired, no matter how mindless, attacked it.

This is just one small example of the kind of uphill battle Obama faces in making sure that he gets a good bill through Congress – negotiating a relentless barrage of right-wing disinformation, refereed by an ignorant media.  To succeed, he needs to drop his arguably unhealthy attachment to “bi-partisanship” and to start seeing this for what it is – a gun fight to which Obama needs to bring a loaded weapon.

The House of Representatives has now passed its version a currently $800 billion-plus stimulus package. In what some view as a surprise, not a single Republican voted for it. It is likely that when the Senate votes on this, at least one Republican – Olympia Snowe of Maine – will support it. But the vote results in the House highlight what should already be obvious – the GOP is simply acting in bad faith when it insists on being heard in negotiations over the stimulus. As Josh Marshall and others have convincingly explained, a successful stimulus package is a political disaster for Republicans and they have no intention of voting for one. If it works, it only enhances Obama’s and the Democrats’ political standing. And, on a deeper level, it drives another stake in the heart of Reaganism – the belief that “government is the problem, not the solution.” This is why Republican office-holders and right-wing media have spent considerable energy lately trying to argue that the New Deal was a failure. Reaganism was born as a successful attack on the legacy of the New Deal. That attack was central to its ability to tear apart the political coalition that arose at the time of FDR and had made Democrats the dominant political party for most of the period from 1932 to 1980.

The financial collapse now under way, on top of the other disastrous failures of the Bush administration, threatens to accelerate the unraveling of the modern GOP and bring about another period of lengthy Democratic ascendancy. This is on top of the demographic changes that helped bring Obama to power and threaten to destroy the competitiveness of an evermore authoritarian and intolerant Republican Party, less equipped by the day to speak meaningfully to an increasingly diverse country.

There are three lines of argument currently in widespread circulation that signal the combination of ideological extremism and lack of commitment to forging a serious solution to the current problems.

1) In addition to the predictable attacks on FDR’s New Deal policies as ineffective and responsible for prolonging the Great Depression, current right-wing talking points include the laughable point that Herbert Hoover, the President history has charged with sitting on his hands as the Great Depression deepened, was actually a “progressive” and a spend-thrift whose FDR-like policies were the real cause of the economic catastrophe of that era.

In a normal political culture, such arguments would be too idiotic to ever be uttered in public by national political leaders. But, such is the nature of the current GOP and the misnamed “liberal media” that acts as if these are serious arguments.

2) The GOP’s lame arguments against the stimulus. The above-mentioned Josh Marshall has been all over this, so let me quote him:

“Over the last few days I’ve been trying to take stock of an essential element of the current stimulus debate: namely, Hill Republicans have been getting a lot of air time and minimal press criticism for a series of arguments about the stimulus that are in most cases transparently ridiculous. For instance, I heard several House Republicans yesterday making the straight up argument that the renovation of the Capitol Mall wouldn’t create any jobs or stimulate the economy. Well, obviously any major building project creates jobs. Nothing could be more straightforward. Whether it’s the best long-term use of the money, in the sense of whether the building project will have spin-off effects creating greater productivity and growth over time is a decent question. And looking at what’s in the bill I find myself wishing that more of the more was being spent in a more concentrated fashion — largely on infrastructure projects. But every major building project creates jobs.”

In a similar vein, Republicans have complained that spending on things like Pell Grants, Amtrak, other construction projects and Medicaid are not stimulus, proving nothing so much as the fact that they lack the most elementary understanding of what the word actually means.

3) And, of course, resorting to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “report” that did not actually exist to claim the stimulus would not be sufficiently stimulative.

Unsurprisingly, the only plan under consideration that more than a tiny trickle of Republicans were willing to support is one that focused exclusively on tax cuts, despite the fact that mainstream economics accepts as nearly categorical the fact that spending is a better stimulant than are tax cuts.

Obama may merely be playing smart politics by trying to court some Republican support for his plans. But the bill that passed the House yesterday is already arguably too tilted toward tax cuts to provide the bang for the buck the country needs right now. And it’s tilted that way in part because Obama wanted Republican input into the legislation. His reward for that was, to repeat, zero Republican votes.

To the extent that the modern Republican Party has an agenda, it is simple and straightforward, as I wrote three years ago:

“For many, Reaganism was the touchstone of what “true” small government conservatism really was. But, it’s worth asking, did conservatives during the Reagan era decry the war on drugs, the massive expansion of the prison-industrial complex, the larger expansion of executive/policing power in the United States, a Christian-inspired agenda intent on legislating the private social affairs of ordinary Americans, all massive efforts to expand the power of the modern American state?

What has bothered right-wing conservatives about “big government” was whom it was helping….But the idea that conservatives really wanted to restrain the power of government per se is crap. Since 1980, dominant conservatism has whole-heartedly embraced government as an instrument to advance their preferred interests – corporations, the religious right, the military-industrial complex and so on.”

In other words, there is no principle behind current GOP opposition to the stimulus, save their general aversion for helping those most in need. There is only political calculation and of a particularly craven nature.

When the chattering classes turn to talk of bi-partisanship, it is worth recalling how hollow its meaning is in the current circumstances, as Glenn Greenwald bluntly explains.

There is no reason to idealize any of the Democrats, including Obama, in all of this. They have their own often narrow corporate interests to serve and, it’s a truism to say that political motivations figure into their calculations about the optimal shape of the stimulus package. But only one party is even trying at this point. The other, as Greenwald says, “has degenerated into the crazed, primitive, regional mess that it is today,” captive to the fanaticism of the Texas Republican Party and its ideological soul mates. Consequently, sitting Republican House members, concerned only that they face even more far-right wing challengers in their 2010 primaries in their evermore right-wing districts, catering to the most extreme elements in their party, are now struggling to come up with any serious reasons at all to try to stem America’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The president-elect on Friday was to tour a northern Ohio company that manufactures parts for wind turbines, a fitting backdrop to promote alternative energy dollars included in the mammoth stimulus package that could top $1 trillion by the time Congress sends it to the White House.

Obama’s campaign-style event is the first of a series he’s expected to hold to generate support for his plan to pull the country from recession. His trip comes a day after the Senate approved giving him access to the second half of last fall’s $700 billion financial industry bailout and after House Democrats unveiled a stimulus plan largely shaped by the president-elect’s team.

Citing an economy in crisis and worsening, Obama has spent the past two weeks securing lawmakers’ backing for the eye-popping plan that has drawn skepticism from both Republicans and Democrats because of its price tag and tax provisions. He’s now taking his pitch directly to the public — and trying to sell the sweeping package to lawmakers’ constituents.

The stakes are enormous for Obama. Passage of the plan, and bipartisan passage in particular, would mark a significant achievement at the outset of his presidency as he inherits a recession in its second year from President George W. Bush. Defeat would be a blow, coming not just in his first weeks in office but also as joblessness increases, bank failures continue, investment portfolios shrink and home prices drop.

Either way, the success or failure of the plan could well set the tone for his first 100 days in office, if not his first year or longer.

After nearly two weeks in Washington, Obama scheduled a meeting with workers at the Cardinal Fastener & Specialty Co. in Bedford Heights, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb, to explain how he believes such companies and their workers would benefit from his plan.

Founded in 1968, the company recently announced the creation of a wind power division to respond to what the company says is a surge of demand for their parts in the wind turbine industry. Obama argues his plan would create nearly 500,000 jobs by investing in alternative energy.

Ohio is among a large swath of the industrial Midwest that’s been hit especially hard by the recession.

The most recent figures available show that Ohio’s unemployment rate was higher than the national rate at 7.3 percent in November, with 435,000 out of work, up from 5.7 percent the year before. Foreclosure activity rose 26 percent in Ohio in 2008, putting it among states with the highest foreclosure rates. And demand for food stamps, Medicaid and unemployment benefits are on the rise.

Little more than two months ago, Obama won the state by four percentage points over Republican John McCain, part of his electoral landslide. Obama posted large numbers of votes in the state’s heavily Democratic northeast corner that is home to many blue collar workers and liberals.

A Democratic-aligned group, Americans United, was airing a TV ad in the state urging people to call GOP Sen. George Voinovich to express their support for Obama’s plan.

One of the largest bills ever to make its way through Congress, the legislation calls for federal spending of roughly $550 billion and tax cuts of $275 billion over the next two years to revive the sickly economy. It focuses heavily on energy, education, health care and jobs-producing highway construction.

Energy-related proposals include $32 billion to upgrade the nation’s electrical distribution system, more than $20 billion in tax cuts to promote the development of alternatives to oil fuels, and billions more to make public housing, federal buildings and modest-income homes more energy efficient.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., have promised Obama they would send him the legislation for his signature by mid-February.

The plan already is running into resistance.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio accused Democrats of thinking they can “borrow and spend their way back to prosperity” and complained that there weren’t enough tax cuts in the measure.

And House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., suggested more even money was needed, saying: “This product may undershoot the mark.”

“I don’t believe it’s too late to change course, but it will be if we don’t take dramatic action as soon as possible,” Obama said in a speech set to be delivered at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., outside Washington. Excerpts from his prepared text were released in advance by his transition team.

“A bad situation could become dramatically worse,” he added, painting a dire picture — including double-digit unemployment and $1 trillion in lost economic activity — that recalled the days of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

It was the fourth day in a row that Obama has made a pitch for a huge infusion of taxpayer dollars to revive the sinking economy.

His events have increasingly taken on the trappings and air of the presidency, with the speech — coming a full 12 days before he takes over at the White House — a particularly showy move. Presidents-elect typically stick to naming administration appointments and otherwise staying in the background during the transition period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, but Obama has clearly made the calculation that a nation anxious about its economic outlook and eager to bid farewell to the current president, George W. Bush, needs to hear from him differently and more frequently.

Indeed, the economic news is grim.

Consumers and companies are folding under the negative forces of a collapsed housing market, a global credit crunch and the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. The recession, which started in December 2007, already is the longest in a quarter-century.

A report due out the same day as Obama’s speech is expected to show that the number of newly laid-off people signing up for state unemployment insurance last week rose to 540,000, up from 492,000 in the previous week. The number of people continuing to draw jobless benefits is projected to stay near 4.5 million, demonstrating the troubles the unemployed are having in finding new jobs.

For all of 2008, employers probably slashed payrolls by at least 2.4 million. That’s based on economists’ forecasts for a net loss of 500,000 additional jobs in December, as well as the job losses previously reported. Some, however, think the number of jobs cut last month will be higher, around 600,000 or 700,000. The Labor Department will release that report Friday.

“For every day we wait or point fingers or drag our feet, more Americans will lose their jobs,” Obama said. “More families will lose their savings. More dreams will be deferred and denied. And our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.”

A day after the release of a stunning new estimate — that the federal budget deficit will reach an unprecedented $1.2 trillion this year, nearly three times last year’s record — Obama acknowledged the new stimulus spending will “certainly add to the budget deficit.” He also acknowledged some sympathy with those who “might be skeptical of this plan” because so much federal money has already been spent or committed in an attempt — largely unsuccessful so far — to get credit, the lifeblood of the American economy, flowing freely once again.

Such statements are coded to appeal to budget hawks in both parties, whom Obama wants to win over so that approval of a package draws wide, bipartisan support in the Democratic-led Congress.

To answer their concerns, he promised to allow funding only for what works. He also pledged a new level of transparency about where the money is going. A day earlier, he promised to tackle the out-of-control fiscal problem posed by Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs and named a special watchdog to clamp down on all federal programs.

Obama made broader arguments, too, saying that the private sector, typically the answer, cannot do what is needed now.

“At this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe,” he said.

Obama’s transition team and Democratic congressional leaders are working daily to hammer out the still-evolving package, expected to total nearly $800 billion. The initial hope had been to have a new stimulus package approved by Congress in time for Obama to sign it upon taking office on Jan. 20. That timeline has slipped considerably, into at least mid-February if not later.

The package is expected to include tax cuts for businesses and middle-class workers, money to help cash-starved states with Medicaid programs and other operating costs, and a huge share for infrastructure building, investments in energy efficiency and a rebuilding of the information technology system for health care. Much of the latter portions of the plan are aimed at what Obama likes to talk about as the need for “reinvestment” and not just “recovery.”

“It is not just another public works program,” he said in the speech. “It’s a plan that recognizes both the paradox and the promise of this moment, the fact that there are millions of Americans trying to find work even as, all around the country, there is so much work to be done.”

He also promised action to address the economy’s ills beyond the package, such as tackling the massive wave of home foreclosures many experts expect, preventing the failure of financial institutions, rewriting financial regulations and keeping accountable the “Wall Street wrongdoers” who engage in risky investing.

Micropphone check one two what is this?

More kids than ever are crammed into aging, run-down schools that need an estimated $255 billion in repairs, renovations or construction. While the president-elect is likely to ask Congress for only a fraction of that, education experts say it still could make a big difference.

“The need is definitely out there,” said Robert Canavan, chairman of the Rebuild America’s Schools coalition, which includes both teachers’ unions and large education groups. “A federal investment of that magnitude would really have a significant impact.”

Educators argue that spiffy classrooms help children learn and also remove health risks. But they warn that Obama’s school spending plan won’t stimulate the economy if it requires matching funds from state and local governments whose tax revenues have been slashed by the recession.

And they caution that throwing huge sums of money at programs that haven’t proven effective, such as the federal “E-Rate” program that gives technology discounts to schools, won’t help student achievement or the economy.

Obama is promising to give every student access to the Internet — the federal “E-Rate” program. Outgoing Education Secretary Margaret Spellings pointed out that billions already has been spent through the “E-Rate” program.

“It’s made very little difference in enhancing student achievement,” she said.

“We should never spend money in the public sector, especially in education, unless we’re getting something for it, unless it’s to some good end,” Spellings said. “I commend him (Obama) for taking that on. That’s another very ripe area. But not unless it’s moving the needle for kids.”

There’s widespread agreement, however, that improving classrooms helps student performance. Studies in Houston, New York City and North Dakota have made a link between classroom conditions and performance; in the New York study, researchers found kids in crowded classrooms scored lower in math and reading.

Nearly half the principals in primary and secondary schools said deteriorating conditions are interfering with learning, according to the Education Department.

Judi Caddick, a middle school math teacher in blue-collar Lansing, Ill., just south of Chicago, said in the older part of her World War II-era school, classrooms had just two power outlets, forcing teachers to string multiple extension cords into the rafters or to unplug a TV power point presentation in order to plug a computer in for a child.

“It looked like a spaghetti bowl,” Caddick said.

Special education classrooms flooded when plumbing backed up, leaving an unmistakable smell on hot days, not to mention allergy and asthma problems, despite efforts to clean the carpet, she said. And hallways were so dark and crowded, teachers often couldn’t see shoving and bumping in time to stop fights.

A new building to replace that old school is now almost complete. The last group of students, the eighth graders, moved in earlier this year.

“It’s a huge difference,” Caddick said. “We don’t have to have necessarily state-of-the-art and fluffy stuff. But at least when you don’t have mold problems, and you don’t have things that are broken, and you don’t have an inability to use the technology, it’s an investment.”

Upgrades can also make kids healthier; measures to prevent mold can decrease asthma, which is the No. 1 chronic illness making kids miss school.

Obama has given few specifics about his economic recovery plan, which could cost as much as $850 billion over two years. There is no word on how much of that would go to schools, or on how much would go toward repairs versus new construction.

The only dollar figure from Obama so far is that schools would share with roads in an immediate infusion of $25 billion for repairs and rebuilding.

It would take 10 times that amount or more to fully modernize schools, according to an analysis last month by the American Federation of Teachers. In all, schools need about $255 billion in maintenance, new construction, renovation and retrofitting for computer technology, among other things, the union said.

An earlier estimate from the National Education Association placed the cost even higher, in the range of $360 billion.

However, it might not take nearly that much money to make a dent. Federal dollars usually account for only a portion of construction and other school needs; state and local governments also kick in a share.

But with state and local tax revenues plummeting because of the recession, where would states get the money to match school upgrade dollars from the feds? Already, 19 states have lowered their tax revenue forecasts for 2009, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“If there is any kind of matching requirement, it’s going to be more problematic for state and local governments to match,” said David Shreve, education policy analyst for NCSL. “Because everybody is hurting badly and cutting everything else.”

The new Congress begins work on the economic recovery plan on Wednesday with a hearing by the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. California Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said school modernization will be part of the hearing.

Obama aides working on the stimulus package say they want projects that can start immediately, putting people back to work. A study by the Economic Policy Institute estimates that spending $20 billion on deferred maintenance in school districts across the country would create nearly 250,000 skilled maintenance jobs.

From Ada McMahon at Green For All:

Last week, President-Elect Obama announced that upon taking office he will enact an immediate and sweeping economic stimulus plan that will create 2.5 million jobs in 2 years, many of which will be green jobs.

Obama’s new plan is beefed up in response to what he now calls “a crisis of historic proportions.”

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