Not sure how many people know this about me, but I studied economics as an undergraduate and then got my MFA in film production. Most of the time, it's tough to reconcile how the two go together, but there are some movies out there that let two of my main interests overlap. The obvious, unbelievably quotable classic Wall Street comes to mind, and then films trying to be quotable like Wall Street... namely Boiler Room and Wall Street 2.
It's feels rare to have a movie about money not go for the Wall Street quotability factor, but the recently released Margin Call takes that chance and turns out spectacularly. In fact, the script by writer/director J.C. Chandor often gets praised for taking straightforward, no frills dialogue to an artform. But let's cover the Basics first.
The film stars Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Penn Badgley, Simon Baker, Stanley Tucci, and Mary McDonnell. The story takes place literally in the first 24 hours of the financial crisis as a fictional investment bank discovers just how screwed they set themselves up to be and tries to decide how to respond.
All of the actors turn in good performances with the slight but sometimes obvious separation between the movie vets and the TV stars. I was pleasantly surprised to see Demi Moore in this film because the last time I saw her in a Very Serious Movie About Grown Ups At Work, she was grabbing Michael Douglas' junk in the adaptation of Michael Chrichton's Disclosure. Here her work is far more subdued and intelligent, but I guess she and Michael Baker could be seen as the (very slightly) weaker links of the film.
Penn Badgley, Paul Bettany, and Zachary Quinto do a great job holding up the front half of the film while the "We're Screwed" puzzle gets cracked before handing it off to Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey to deal with the second half "How Do We Respond" moral slime realities.
While billed as a thriller, Margin Call isn't the type of thriller like The Firm with a Wilford "Diabetes" Brimley trying to convince the world he should absolutely be taken seriously as a killer. Margin Call stays completely in the realm of possibility. Everyone barks about how they need to get Stanely Tucci back ASAP, but there's no shadowy figure like in The Firm or the more recent Michael Clayton ready to drop the hammer. Instead Tucci felt free to say no and the more realistic buckets of cash acted as the carrot dangling at the end of the stick. While fictional, Margin Call felt very much like a peek behind one possible curtain at the start of the 2008 financial meltdown (J.C. Chandor's father worked at Merrill Lynch for nearly forty years, so that probably helped with the veracity).
As I mentioned, the script itself deserves some special praise as well. It's lean, skips the flowery speeches, and let's everyone say exactly what they need to say while still allowing the characters to have individual voices. I don't go for David Mamet style jerk-offs to the rhythms of words so that everyone sounds like stiff, speaking metronomes that never heard of a contraction (with the useless artificial cursing to substitute for real tough talk). I also don't go for the more tolerable set-ups and payoffs style of Aaron Sorkin (the opening five minutes of The Social Network physically caused me pain). So it was nice to experience a script that went in the other direction and did it really well.
One interesting note is that the script never completely dumbs itself down to let those who might be confused catch up. There are a few moments when one character gives the proverbial "explain this to me like I'm stupid" line, and what followed made it clear to the character in the film, but could leave laymen still a bit in the dark. I wasn't sure what to make of that at first, but the more I thought about it, the more that decision made sense. The point of the film isn't to explain the How behind the financial crisis, but to explore a bit of the Why. You don't need to know every detail to understand that investment banks (along with many others) acted unwisely to say the least. The second half "How Do We Respond" is obviously the heart of this film, and all you need to understand that is a moral compass.
In the end, I greatly enjoyed Margin Call. At 107 minutes, it's easy to get through, and the simultaneous theatrical and rental release makes it easy for areas that don't usually get smaller, independent films to take a look (I rented mine on the XBox). While Margin Call may not be as fun or melodramatic or quotable as Wall Street, it's actually better at getting to the heart of the matter.
Absolutely worth checking out, especially given how easy it is to rent. For a second opinion, here's a link to Margin Call's review in The New Yorker.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Apparently The Flaming Wreck Comes First...
A few months ago, I wrote the following entry:
We will soon have the answer to that question, and it looks like the answer lands squarely on the flaming wreck side.
That post covered a news story from NPR's Planet Money that examined the Congressional Super-Committee through the lens of traditional game theory. When Congress tied their own shoelaces together and then decided to run around carrying open flames this summer, the result was our country's debt ceiling debacle. Luckily, a few people finally realized that tripping around while carrying open flames might burn the house down, so a default was narrowly avoided (but not avoided enough for our AAA credit rating to get knocked down on account of Crazy).
But to the credit of Congress, they had the maturity to look in the mirror and admit they might just be batshit crazy, out of touch, selfish, delusional, ineffective, useless, etc...
So they came up with a solution to avoid repeating the debt ceiling crisis. A super-committee consisting of twelve people, six from each side of the aisle. They needed to agree upon $1.2 trillion in budget cuts before Thanksgiving or else automatic budget cuts would take effect, hitting everyone's sacred budgetary cows.
My previous post link above talked about games of chicken, rationale minds swerving at the last second, traditional theories on persuasion, and how those theories often go out the window when small, more intimate groups of people are involved. Essentially, the super-committee idea set up a much more conducive atmosphere for compromise.
So now you're probably thinking, "Hey, Thanksgiving is three days away." Which means it's time to find out how our super-committee did.
Not surprisingly, they failed.
I've said it before, but maybe not on this blog. If I were as bad at my job (which happens to be millionaire playboy yacht racer man about town) as Congress collectively is, I would probably spend three hours a day crying and wondering aloud why God made me such an incompetent loser.
Instead of a small group where cooler heads could prevail, we seemed to have gotten a microcosm of the typical ineffective Congressional crap. I'll post some choice quotes, but I'm guessing you can already predict how they'll play out.
Half the cuts are required to come from defense, so I guess it's good that our time in Iraq is about to end. Still, the idea of not providing for those who put their lives on the line for this country doesn't feel good. Not surprisingly, top people in the military have already gone on record protesting these "doomsday" cuts.
So who else gets the shaft? The EPA and chunks of Medicare, but Social Security and Medicare programs for those most in need are exempt.
Given that failure seems the most likely outcome, what happens next? Well, the doomsday cuts aren't set to go into effect until 2013, so the impact wouldn't be immediately felt. But there is an incompetence loophole built into the procedures. Technically these mandates and super-committees are just the result of Congressional votes. There's nothing stopping Congress from throwing up some more votes that change the rules or negate the process entirely.
Apparently failure always is an option whenever Congress is concerned, and luckily that jockstrap stink of ineffectiveness doesn't have to go away anytime soon.
We will soon have the answer to that question, and it looks like the answer lands squarely on the flaming wreck side.
That post covered a news story from NPR's Planet Money that examined the Congressional Super-Committee through the lens of traditional game theory. When Congress tied their own shoelaces together and then decided to run around carrying open flames this summer, the result was our country's debt ceiling debacle. Luckily, a few people finally realized that tripping around while carrying open flames might burn the house down, so a default was narrowly avoided (but not avoided enough for our AAA credit rating to get knocked down on account of Crazy).
But to the credit of Congress, they had the maturity to look in the mirror and admit they might just be batshit crazy, out of touch, selfish, delusional, ineffective, useless, etc...
So they came up with a solution to avoid repeating the debt ceiling crisis. A super-committee consisting of twelve people, six from each side of the aisle. They needed to agree upon $1.2 trillion in budget cuts before Thanksgiving or else automatic budget cuts would take effect, hitting everyone's sacred budgetary cows.
My previous post link above talked about games of chicken, rationale minds swerving at the last second, traditional theories on persuasion, and how those theories often go out the window when small, more intimate groups of people are involved. Essentially, the super-committee idea set up a much more conducive atmosphere for compromise.
So now you're probably thinking, "Hey, Thanksgiving is three days away." Which means it's time to find out how our super-committee did.
Not surprisingly, they failed.
I've said it before, but maybe not on this blog. If I were as bad at my job (which happens to be millionaire playboy yacht racer man about town) as Congress collectively is, I would probably spend three hours a day crying and wondering aloud why God made me such an incompetent loser.
Instead of a small group where cooler heads could prevail, we seemed to have gotten a microcosm of the typical ineffective Congressional crap. I'll post some choice quotes, but I'm guessing you can already predict how they'll play out.
"I'm going to be waiting all day," Washington Sen. Patty Murray, Democratic co-chair of the committee told CNN's Candy Crowley on "State of the Union."
"I'll be at the table, as I've been, willing to talk to any Republican who says, look, my country is more important, this pile of bills is not going to go away, the challenges that we have is not going to disappear. We need to cross that divide," said Murray.Senator Murray continues:
"I'll tell you one of the problems has been a pledge that too many Republicans took to a Republican wealthy lobbyist by the name of Grover Norquist, whose name has come up in meetings time and time again," Murray said, adding she was optimistic a compromise would be reached.Ready for the cliche response from the right?
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, reiterated the GOP mantra that Bush-era tax cuts should continue and entitlement spending be cut. Democrats are keen on letting the Bush-era cuts expire for the highest-income Americans in 2012.
"In Washington, there are folks who won't cut a dollar unless we raise taxes," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"If you want to get serious about the deficit, our country has to grow economically," Kyl said. "You can't grow, if you raise taxes in the middle of a recession."So there you have it, all that hard work and we end up punching ourselves in the groin just like we did over the summer. So I guess it's a good time to recap who gets screwed by the automatic cuts set to take place.
Half the cuts are required to come from defense, so I guess it's good that our time in Iraq is about to end. Still, the idea of not providing for those who put their lives on the line for this country doesn't feel good. Not surprisingly, top people in the military have already gone on record protesting these "doomsday" cuts.
But those cuts affect more than just the brave men and women serving on the front line. Military contracts provide massive amounts of jobs.
Some quotes to get the numbers out there.
The cuts could hammer Everett, Wash., where some of the 30,000 Boeing employees are working on giant airborne refueling tankers for the Air Force, or Amarillo, Texas, where 1,100 Bell Helicopter Textron workers assemble the fuselage, wings, engines and transmissions for the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.
Billions in defense cuts would be a blow to the hundreds working on upgrades to the Abrams tank for General Dynamics in Lima, Ohio, or the employees of BAE Systems in Pennsylvania.
In Tewksbury and Andover, Mass., deep defense cuts could have serious ramifications for thousands of Raytheon employees working on the Patriot, the air and missile defense system. It was heralded for its effectiveness during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and is now sold to close to a dozen nations, including South Korea, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates.Take a moment to go back to some of Senator Jon Kyl's comments above about not being able to grow a country by raising taxes in a recession. Seems like you can't grow a country by slashing massive amounts of jobs either. I guess we all have our opinions on which is the lesser of two evils, though.
So who else gets the shaft? The EPA and chunks of Medicare, but Social Security and Medicare programs for those most in need are exempt.
Given that failure seems the most likely outcome, what happens next? Well, the doomsday cuts aren't set to go into effect until 2013, so the impact wouldn't be immediately felt. But there is an incompetence loophole built into the procedures. Technically these mandates and super-committees are just the result of Congressional votes. There's nothing stopping Congress from throwing up some more votes that change the rules or negate the process entirely.
Apparently failure always is an option whenever Congress is concerned, and luckily that jockstrap stink of ineffectiveness doesn't have to go away anytime soon.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Overreaching Sometimes Results In An Armpit In Your Face
This headline from The Christian Science Monitor states it perfectly:
The words missing from the end of that headline? "On Tangents..."
But nonetheless, I'm glad to see that message sent regardless. Yesterday, voters in Maine, Ohio, Mississippi, Arizona, and even a little bit in North Carolina, went to the polls and cast their ballots to the "what the hell are you doing?" side of the issue.
Ohio voters overturned their GOP-lead effort to abolish collective bargaining rights. Maine voters overturned their GOP-lead effort to abolish the ability to register to vote when you show up at the polls (despite GOP efforts to introduce the Gay strawman into the equation):
Mississippi voters shot down a "Life Begins At Fertilization" law that would have not only instituted draconian anti-abortion measures, but could have made certain types of birth control (the pill, IUDs, morning after pills) and possibly in vitro fertilization, illegal. Arizona recalled the man that put together their controversial "Papers Please" law.
In North Carolina, Wake County gave control of their school board back to the democrats after GOP members tried to segregate schools based on socio-economic status.
But not everything came up roses for the liberal conspiracy looking to hate America from the inside. While Mississippi did vote down the anti-abortion measure, they passed a law that will make it tougher to cast your vote next election. From the Christian Science Monitor article at the top:
One quote:
Mitt Romney continues to be the iceberg lettuce of the republican field - it fills out the sandwich without adding any flavor whatsoever to the overall experience. Herman Cain continues to baffle. Aside from not knowing anything...
... he also happens to be a serial groper (something he also knows nothing about). Here's a little bit of how he's handling the whole scandal (two parts from Jimmy Kimmel Live):
After mentioning how the Cain campaign saw donations explode the same day these sexual harassment allegations broke, Kimmel jokingly asked if other Republican candidates should hire women to charge them with sexual harassment. Laughing, Cain said, "If they're smart, they will."
Funny stuff... really funny stuff. Thank goodness women are just gold-digging liars who aren't guaranteed the right to vote by the 19th amendment.
The Cain Train, nothing can stop it and it will probably grab your ass.
The words missing from the end of that headline? "On Tangents..."
But nonetheless, I'm glad to see that message sent regardless. Yesterday, voters in Maine, Ohio, Mississippi, Arizona, and even a little bit in North Carolina, went to the polls and cast their ballots to the "what the hell are you doing?" side of the issue.
Ohio voters overturned their GOP-lead effort to abolish collective bargaining rights. Maine voters overturned their GOP-lead effort to abolish the ability to register to vote when you show up at the polls (despite GOP efforts to introduce the Gay strawman into the equation):
Mississippi voters shot down a "Life Begins At Fertilization" law that would have not only instituted draconian anti-abortion measures, but could have made certain types of birth control (the pill, IUDs, morning after pills) and possibly in vitro fertilization, illegal. Arizona recalled the man that put together their controversial "Papers Please" law.
In North Carolina, Wake County gave control of their school board back to the democrats after GOP members tried to segregate schools based on socio-economic status.
But not everything came up roses for the liberal conspiracy looking to hate America from the inside. While Mississippi did vote down the anti-abortion measure, they passed a law that will make it tougher to cast your vote next election. From the Christian Science Monitor article at the top:
Mississippi voters approved a proposed constitutional amendment to require that voters present government-issued identification at the polls – a move that critics see as a effort to diminish minority voting. Thirty states require all voters to show ID at the polls – many of them in the Deep South, says the National Conference of State Legislatures. Fourteen of the 30 require photo ID.Similar laws are taking affect in other states, like Florida (which never has any important impact on national elections) and South Carolina. Not sure how those laws address the sagging economy or job creation, but I guess that's what's getting done in some states. If you need more proof that people who should be working on the economy are ignoring the issue, please refer to this Washington Post article:
One quote:
“In the House of Representatives, what have you guys been doing, John?” Obama said, calling out House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).
“You’ve been debating a commemorative coin for baseball. You’ve had legislation reaffirming that ‘In God We Trust’ is our motto. That’s not putting people back to work,” Obama said. “I trust in God, “but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work.”Maybe that's partially why the Christian Science Monitor points out that while yesterday's election did send a message, it didn't necessarily blast trumpets of confidence for President Obama in 2012.
If those outcomes signal that many voters believe Republicans overreached coming out of their victorious 2010 midterm elections, it's hard to read Tuesday's overall results as giving any major boost to President Obama's bid for reelection. He will be battling high disapproval ratings over his own performance and public frustration over the weak economy. Traditionally, high unemployment rates pose a big obstacle to retaining the White House.
"Based on the likely state of the economy in 2012, President Obama faces a steep uphill task to secure reelection," said a recent analysis by economists at the forecasting firm IHS Global Insight, based in Lexington, Mass. "A Republican opponent lacking broad appeal could tilt the balance back in favor of the president. But it does appear that this is an election that is the Republicans' to lose."Since yesterday's elections had essentially nothing to say about the state of our economy, and since some politicians continue to sit on their hands whenever bills to help fix the economy come up for a vote, I could see how Obama couldn't personally take too much away from the results. Given that, I agree with the last sentence of that last quote... this should be an election that is the Republican's to lose. Luckily they are doing their best to make sure that happens.
Mitt Romney continues to be the iceberg lettuce of the republican field - it fills out the sandwich without adding any flavor whatsoever to the overall experience. Herman Cain continues to baffle. Aside from not knowing anything...
... he also happens to be a serial groper (something he also knows nothing about). Here's a little bit of how he's handling the whole scandal (two parts from Jimmy Kimmel Live):
After mentioning how the Cain campaign saw donations explode the same day these sexual harassment allegations broke, Kimmel jokingly asked if other Republican candidates should hire women to charge them with sexual harassment. Laughing, Cain said, "If they're smart, they will."
Funny stuff... really funny stuff. Thank goodness women are just gold-digging liars who aren't guaranteed the right to vote by the 19th amendment.
The Cain Train, nothing can stop it and it will probably grab your ass.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Hoping To Make Sunlight Obama's Stained Dress
From CNN:
The Congressional committee investigating the Solyndra scandal voted to widen its net for subpoenaing White House documents.
You may have heard about this scandal already, but the recap goes... the Department of Energy floated Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturing company, $535 million in loans back in 2010. Last summer, the company filed for bankruptcy, taking that federal loan down the toilet with it. What makes it troubling for Obama is that reviewers warned there were potential problems with the company back in 2009, but the White House urged for quick approval of the loan.
There's also stuff like this:
I actually wouldn't recommend watching the whole thing because it's pretty dry, but it's basically CSPAN footage of Obama doing a bit of comedy, then talking about how awesome Solyndra will be. There's also stuff like this:
It's not crazy to say that the White House took personal pride in this Solyndra deal, and here was Obama's response to Solyndra's failing:
Even though $535 million is a lot of money, it's true that there are risks involved with any loan, so there are a lot of people (probably led by Obama and Biden) who want to paint the whole Solyndra fiasco as regrettable, but otherwise not a big deal. The Washington Post disagrees:
Essentially, emails indicated that the White House wanted the loan review rushed so that Biden could announce the approval at a Solyndra ground-breaking press event. From the WP article:
And another:
All of this led to an FBI raiding Solyndra looking into potential wrong-doing. That led to a Congressional investigation, which led to hyperbole.
Green jobs declared guilty by association. I'm not saying what happened with Solyndra should be overlooked, but here's a factoid from the following article:
Specifically:
But going back to the CNN article at the top, this expanded subpoena stuff feels somewhat similar to Congressional investigations of the Clinton White House that led to the President himself committing perjury over a blow job. It started as Ken Starr's investigation into Whitewater, but, a hundred million dollars later, it ended up about Lewinsky (and to Starr's impeccable detecting credit, he never really found much to go after, including Lewinsky, which was dumped on his lap by Linda Tripp).
Now we have a Congressional investigation that hasn't really been able to find anything that sticks, so they decide to dig deeper. It's not necessarily a bad instinct as long as it's honorable and not a "long as it takes, as much as it costs" witch hunt.
And like the Clinton scandal, there are a few hypocrites working the opposing side (what's up former Reps and admitted adulterers Henry Hyde, Robert Livingston, Newt Gingrich - a possible two or three time offender, Dan Burton, and Helen Chenoweth-Hage).
We'll turn here for the full timeline:
The quick takeaway from that article:
I know it's not as sexy as Clinton being hounded for marital infidelity by a bunch of adulterers, but, to put it in Clinton-era BJ terms... the angle of the dangle does depend on the heat of the meat or something. It's the mentality that I feel permeates Congressional republicans when a democrat sits in the White House. Any opening needs to be turned into an effort to bring down the Presidency as fast as possible. One term is fine, but what if we impeached on that BJ perjury charge?
It's one thing to investigate on the merits of the case, it's another to hypocritically grandstand. Of course, there's no shortage of hypocritical grandstanding on either end of the political spectrum, but I feel the weaponization of that grandstanding is something the right has down a bit better than the left.
Regardless, it's part of the rot attacking our legislative core.
The Congressional committee investigating the Solyndra scandal voted to widen its net for subpoenaing White House documents.
You may have heard about this scandal already, but the recap goes... the Department of Energy floated Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturing company, $535 million in loans back in 2010. Last summer, the company filed for bankruptcy, taking that federal loan down the toilet with it. What makes it troubling for Obama is that reviewers warned there were potential problems with the company back in 2009, but the White House urged for quick approval of the loan.
There's also stuff like this:
I actually wouldn't recommend watching the whole thing because it's pretty dry, but it's basically CSPAN footage of Obama doing a bit of comedy, then talking about how awesome Solyndra will be. There's also stuff like this:
It's not crazy to say that the White House took personal pride in this Solyndra deal, and here was Obama's response to Solyndra's failing:
Even though $535 million is a lot of money, it's true that there are risks involved with any loan, so there are a lot of people (probably led by Obama and Biden) who want to paint the whole Solyndra fiasco as regrettable, but otherwise not a big deal. The Washington Post disagrees:
Essentially, emails indicated that the White House wanted the loan review rushed so that Biden could announce the approval at a Solyndra ground-breaking press event. From the WP article:
“We have ended up with a situation of having to do rushed approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end of the week),” one official wrote. That Aug. 31, 2009, message, written by a senior OMB staffer and sent to Terrell P. McSweeny, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, concluded, “We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews.”And another:
In one e-mail, an assistant to Rahm Emanuel, then White House chief of staff, wrote on Aug. 31, 2009, to OMB about the upcoming Biden announcement on Solyndra and asked whether “there is anything we can help speed along on OMB side.”
An OMB staff member responded: “I would prefer that this announcement be postponed. . . . This is the first loan guarantee and we should have full review with all hands on deck to make sure we get it right.”
And another:
In August 2009, e-mail exchanges between Energy Department staff members pointed out that a credit-rating agency predicted that the project would run out of cash in September 2011. Solyndra shut its doors on the final day of August.Finally:
Questions about the selection process were first raised in a July 2010 audit by the Government Accountability Office. It concluded that the Energy Department “lacked appropriate tools for assessing the progress” of the loan program and that the department treated applicants inconsistently, “favoring some applicants and disadvantaging others.”So the White House was clearly guilty of being overeager... but they claim they had no interest in swaying the decision of the loan package, they were just annoyingly curious about the timing of the decision. They might say that maybe if the Energy Department had done its job competently, none of this would have happened.
All of this led to an FBI raiding Solyndra looking into potential wrong-doing. That led to a Congressional investigation, which led to hyperbole.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of that panel’s oversight and investigations subcommittee, said last week that the FBI raid confirmed their belief that the “darling” of Obama’s green-jobs program was a “bad bet” from the beginning.
“Solyndra was the hallmark of the President’s green jobs program and widely promoted by the administration as a stimulus success story, right up until its bankruptcy and FBI raid,” Upton and Stearns said in a statement on Tuesday. “Let’s learn the lessons of Solyndra before another dollar goes out the door.”
Green jobs declared guilty by association. I'm not saying what happened with Solyndra should be overlooked, but here's a factoid from the following article:
Specifically:
Solyndra proves that energy-loan guarantees are a flop. Not exactly. The Energy Department’s loan-guarantee program, enacted in 2005 with bipartisan support,has backed nearly $38 billion in loans for 40 projects around the country. Solyndra represents just 1.3 percent of that portfolio — and, as yet, it’s the only loan that has soured. Other solar beneficiaries, such as SunPower and First Solar, are still going strong. Meanwhile, just a small fraction of loan guarantees go toward solar. The program’s biggest bet to date is an $8.33 billion loan guarantee for a nuclear plant down in Georgia.So the plan on the whole seems to be working out (maybe because those loans weren't rushed).
But going back to the CNN article at the top, this expanded subpoena stuff feels somewhat similar to Congressional investigations of the Clinton White House that led to the President himself committing perjury over a blow job. It started as Ken Starr's investigation into Whitewater, but, a hundred million dollars later, it ended up about Lewinsky (and to Starr's impeccable detecting credit, he never really found much to go after, including Lewinsky, which was dumped on his lap by Linda Tripp).
Now we have a Congressional investigation that hasn't really been able to find anything that sticks, so they decide to dig deeper. It's not necessarily a bad instinct as long as it's honorable and not a "long as it takes, as much as it costs" witch hunt.
And like the Clinton scandal, there are a few hypocrites working the opposing side (what's up former Reps and admitted adulterers Henry Hyde, Robert Livingston, Newt Gingrich - a possible two or three time offender, Dan Burton, and Helen Chenoweth-Hage).
We'll turn here for the full timeline:
The quick takeaway from that article:
To set the record straight, Climate Progress is publishing this timeline — verified by Department of Energy officials — that shows how the loan guarantee came together under both administrations. In fact, rather than rushing the loan for Solyndra through, the Obama Administration restructured the original Bush-era deal to further protect the taxpayers’ investment
So it starts with the 2005 passing of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 which establishes a fund for these kinds of loans. Bush tries his hardest to get the loan approved, even going so far as a last ditch effort right before leaving office so that he could take the credit. Obama's team comes in and restructures the review of the loan, their own push follows, and then the collapse.
Rep. Cliff Stearns leads the subcommittee subpoenaing the White House. He's quoted above knocking Obama's green jobs initiatives. Last year, he lobbied to get one of those green jobs things built in his district:
Saft America, a lithium-ion battery manufacturer, built a plant in Jacksonville, FL, a part of the district Stearns represents. From the article:
”Nearly half the cash for the new Saft America Inc. facility was provided through a cost-sharing arrangement funded through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act” — a stimulus program that Stearns has campaigned against.I guess he opposes the Act as a whole but still helped get Saft America built in Jacksonville with the Act's money.
I know it's not as sexy as Clinton being hounded for marital infidelity by a bunch of adulterers, but, to put it in Clinton-era BJ terms... the angle of the dangle does depend on the heat of the meat or something. It's the mentality that I feel permeates Congressional republicans when a democrat sits in the White House. Any opening needs to be turned into an effort to bring down the Presidency as fast as possible. One term is fine, but what if we impeached on that BJ perjury charge?
It's one thing to investigate on the merits of the case, it's another to hypocritically grandstand. Of course, there's no shortage of hypocritical grandstanding on either end of the political spectrum, but I feel the weaponization of that grandstanding is something the right has down a bit better than the left.
Regardless, it's part of the rot attacking our legislative core.
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