Steele Plays The Race Card, While On The Hot Seat.

Talking Points Memo writer John Marshall weighs in on the Michael Steele GOP debacle.

He writes.

But let's be honest: everything about Michael Steele's tenure running the RNC is about race.

Michael Steele got the job for one reason: Republicans needed someone who could be the point man for bashing Barack Obama while being immune not only from charges of racism but any discussion of the fact that the current GOP is a party made up pretty much 100% of white folks. As is common with Republicans, Steele is the mirror image, ersatz Obama. Whatever else you can say about the 44th president, in the 2008 campaign and to a great degree still, he was a phenomenon, a meteoric political figure whose power on the political stage was much greater than the sum of his parts.

Marshall points out how transparent the move to hire Steele was, and how it will be hard to fire him for the same reasons.

In different ways race played into the Obama phenomenon. But Republicans were always basically full of it and barking up the wrong tree when they tried to claim either that Democrats picked Barack Obama because he was black or that he was winning because he was black. So what did the Republicans do: turn around and hire someone to lead their party pretty much for the sole reason that he was black. As is so often the case, the critics of racial progress, because they don't comprehend it, resort to a parody of it.

Steele was hired because he was black. And the other truth is that now he can't be fired, in significant measure, because he's black. Because canning Steele now would only drive home the reality that Republicans were trying to paper over, fairly clumsily, when they hired him in the first place. So Republicans are stuck with his myriad goofs and #pressfails and incompetent management and all the rest because of a set of circumstances entirely of their own making.

Steele on GMA.

Why We Regulate.

CAFE standards or Corporate Average Fuel Economy have not been raised in a long time. Which begs the question, what have the car companies been doing for the last 20 years?

For those of you who insist that the Government should stay out of the way of business at all cost, because they believe business knows best, I ask you, what have the American Automotive Industry been doing in terms of fuel efficiency? Where is the innovation?

The Vine writes about CAFE Standards today.

The changes have been long overdue. While engine-efficiency technology has continued to improve, the country’s fuel-efficiency standardshave not followed suit. The standard for cars has been stuck at 27.5 mpg since 1990, while the light-truck standard rose from 20.0 mpg in 1990 to just 23.5 mpg in 2010. Due to these minimal increases the country’s average fuel efficiency has barely risen in the past two decades.

My life thesis is this. Government and Big Business must continually be at odds, in terms of regulation and stimulation, for the every man to benefit.

What I mean by this is simple. If Big Business is left unchecked for too long you get what we are seeing now, in terms of fuel efficiency, 2-4 mpg increases in 20 years, Wow really innovative. Without regulation, Big Business makes the same car at a cheaper price, but we don't get a cheaper car. They get a larger margin.

Big Business, in this case American Auto Manufactures, are not going to redesign the wheel if they do not have too. Which not only keeps us dependent on Foreign Oil, but more of it as our population increases, which is bad for the people, but good for Big Automotive.

The Vine continues.

In the case of today’s announcement, the increases to 39.5 mpg for cars and 29.8 mpg for light trucks—all by 2016—mark a drastic about face. And there are quite a few reasons to like the change. First, it will reduce auto-sourced environmental pollutants. Second, it will reduce both our national consumption of oil and purchases of foreign oil. Third, it will save American households a projected $3,000 in gas purchases over the life of a new vehicle.

These new standards should spur innovation, while making us less dependent on foreign oil.

Regulation is not Socialism, One State Owned Car Company is.

Quote of the Day.

Paul Krugman wrote about Financial Reform in his column the other day.

Quote of the Day.

Now, it’s impossible to devise a truly foolproof regulatory regime — anyone who believes otherwise is underestimating the power of foolishness.

Give his article a read it is a good one.

Follow the Money: Climate Deniers, Koch Industries.

Greenpeace USA has put out a report on the amount of money Koch Industries has flushed into the anti-science of Climate Denial.

Here is a picture of the amount of money Koch Industries spends in its lobbying efforts. Only to be outdone by Exxon Mobile and Chevron.

Koch Industries spent a total of $37.9 million on oil and gas lobbying from January 2006 to December 2009. During this period in the oil and gas sector, Koch Industries was outspent only by ExxonMobil ($87.8 million) and Chevron Corporation ($50 million).

• 2009: $12.5 million total, $9 million spent on in-house lawyers.

• 2008: $17.93 million total, $15.3 million spent on in-house lawyers

• 2007: $4.17 million total, with $40,000 to Pyle and Associates and $100,000 to the Rhoads Group (Thomas Pyle worked at Rhoads Group before starting Pyle and Associates and is now President of IER and AEA).

• 2006: $3.36 million total, with $140,000 to Rhoads Group.

It is worth noting that Koch also hires outside lawyers to lobby on its behalf, in some cases the same firms that lobby for other groups of which Koch is a member. For example:

• Siff and Lake, $190,000 (2009), $220,000 (2008), $200,000 (2007), which also lobbies for Western Fuels Association.

• Mehlman/Vogel, $200,000 (2009), $120,000 (2008), $20,000 (2007) which also lobbies for API (2009, 2008),Business Roundtable (2009, 2008), EEI (2009, 2008) and Energy Future Holdings (2009).

• Pyle and Associates, $40,000 (2007), which also lobbied for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, of which Koch is a member.

• The Rhoads Group, $100,000 (2007), which also lobbies for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association of which Koch is a member.

• Hunton and Williams, $60,000 (2009), $150,000 (2008), $80,000 (2007), which also lobbied for National Association of Manufacturers (2009, 2008) and Americans for Affordable Climate Policy (2009), Edison Electric Institute (2009, 2008, 2007), Gas Processing Association (2009, 2008) and the Foundation for Environment and Economic Progress (2009, 2008, 2007).

• Capitol Tax Partners, $30,000 (2009), $240,000 (2008), $220,000 (2007), which who also lobbies for Edison Electric Institute (2009, 2008, 2007) and National Electrical Manufacturers Association (2008, 2007).

In addition, Koch executives serve on the boards of other organizations wielding influence against clean energy and climate policy. The Executive Vice President for Operations Excellence & Compliance at Koch Industries, James Mahoney, is also a vice-president of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA). NPRA significantly increased its lobbying budget in 2009, reporting $1.68 million in direct federal lobbying expenses. This more than doubled the lobby spending of the organization from 2008, when its total lobbying budget was $810,000.

People are trying to paint climate science as some sort of hoax. But the truth lies with the amount of money, Big Oil, Gas and Coal are injecting into the argument. If the Science was not strong, why would they invest so much cash into doubting it?

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Has Obama's Regulation Slowed the Economic Recovery?

Economist Tyler Cowen thinks not.

He writes.

Monday night I gave a talk at George Mason University on the jobless recovery; in the comments Pete Boettke summarizes some parts of the talk. One point I made is that the slow aspects of the recovery do not, contrary to some accounts, seem to stem from uncertainty about the plans of the Obama administration. I see at least two reasons for this doubting this account:

1. Output has recovered much more rapidly than the labor market; last quarter gdp growth exceeded five percent yet employment is essentially flat. The labor market is one of the least regulated sectors of the American economy, so it would be odd if regulation were causing the slow aspects of the bounceback. Many of the extant government-blaming hypotheses predict slow output growth, not rapid output growth and slow labor market participation.

2. Arguably health care and finance have been subject to the most regulatory uncertainty. Yet the health care sector has held up OK and banks have made a very strong comeback in terms of profits.

I believe the causes of the jobless nature of the recovery are unique to the labor market

Old School Corruption.

Matt Taibbi wrote a piece for Rolling Stone called Looting Main Street, where he points out the awful behavior of not only local politicians in Jefferson County Alabama, but also the predatory lending practices of companies like JP Morgan Chase.

As I have said a million times, Taibbi is the best at breaking down the financial crisis and how the players took advantage to make their billions.

Taibbi writes.

There were also a few bills that were unique to the area — like the $64 sewer bill that Pack and her family paid each month. "Yeah, it went up about 400 percent just over the past few years," she says.

The sewer bill, in fact, is what cost Pack and her co-workers their jobs. In 1996, the average monthly sewer bill for a family of four in Birmingham was only $14.71 — but that was before the county decided to build an elaborate new sewer system with the help of out-of-state financial wizards with names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. The result was a monstrous pile of borrowed money that the county used to build, in essence, the world's grandest toilet — "the Taj Mahal of sewer-treatment plants" is how one county worker put it.

Taibbi's Jefferson County article is a must read.

Was Bob Corker Elected by The People, or The Banks?

This is what Bob Corker "The Senate Loan Shark" is saying about Consumer Protection.

As Reported in The Tennessean.

Corker served temporarily as lead negotiator for the Republicans in the Senate banking committee, before U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut, moved the bill out of committee earlier this month with provisions in it that Corker was still trying to get changed, such as:

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Corker is not against the creation of an agency – but he wants banking regulators to have veto power over the rules created.

Let me get this straight. Corker wants the Regulators of Banks to be able to Veto Consumer Protection Laws? Sounds like a conflict of interest to me.

But Corker wasn't done.

• Requiring banks to hold onto five percent of the loans they create, rather than selling them all to other investors. “That’s not going to address the problem,’’

I think part of the problem that led to the Great Recession was simple. We have a nation that sells debt to other institutions. If those sellers of the debt have a 5% stake in the loan sold. It stands to reason they might be more prudent when loaning funds.

Kieth Olbermann talked about Corker's strange take on Consumer Protection last night.

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