Politics notes

Alaska's bipartisan investigation ends with the conclusion that "Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act." Read it for yourself. It's obvious that she got in trouble for lying about it more than anything else. And the stonewalling didn't help either.

The whole ACORN thing deconstructed.

After seeing his inflammatory rhetoric result in lots of blowback, Sen. McCain tried to walk back the harsh attacks on Obama's character today at a rally. He was booed. He called for "respect"...simultaneously, and with no hint of irony, McCain is running the "blind ambition" ad accusing Obama of "lying" about Ayers. Not that they'll bother to document this "lie" since it would expose their own.

Meanwhile, Cindy broke the irony meter when accusing Obama of running "the dirtiest campaign ever..."

Maybe Obama should release a video smearing Palin? Never mind.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz explains the causes of the current financial crisis:

The new populist rhetoric of the right—persuading taxpayers that ordinary people always know how to spend money better than the government does, and promising a new world without budget constraints, where every tax cut generates more revenue—hasn’t helped matters. Special interests took advantage of this seductive mixture of populism and free-market ideology. They also bent the rules to suit themselves. Corporations and the wealthy argued that lowering their tax rates would lead to more savings; they got the tax breaks, but America’s household savings rate not only didn’t rise, it dropped to levels not seen in 75 years. The Bush administration extolled the power of the free market, but it was more than willing to provide generous subsidies to farmers and erect tariffs to protect steelmakers. Lately, as we have seen, it seems willing to write blank checks to bail out its friends on Wall Street. In each of these cases there are clear winners. And in each there are clear losers—including the country as a whole.
...
The federal government needs to give a hand to states and localities—their tax revenues are plummeting, and without help they will face costly cutbacks in investment and in basic human services. The poor will suffer today, and growth will suffer tomorrow. The big advantage of a program to make up for the shortfall in the revenues of states and localities is that it would provide money in the amounts needed: if the economy recovers quickly, the shortfall will be small; if the downturn is long, as I fear will be the case, the shortfall will be large.

These measures are the opposite of what the administration—along with the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain—has been urging. It has always believed that tax cuts, especially for the rich, are the solution to the economy’s ills. In fact, the tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 set the stage for the current crisis. They did virtually nothing to stimulate the economy, and they left the burden of keeping the economy on life support to monetary policy alone. America’s problem today is not that households consume too little; on the contrary, with a savings rate barely above zero, it is clear we consume too much. But the administration hopes to encourage our spendthrift ways.

What has happened to the American economy was avoidable. It was not just that those who were entrusted to maintain the economy’s safety and soundness failed to do their job. There were also many who benefited handsomely by ensuring that what needed to be done did not get done. Now we face a choice: whether to let our response to the nation’s woes be shaped by those who got us here, or to seize the opportunity for fundamental reforms, striking a new balance between the market and government.

BTW, Stiglitz is the most-cited economist in the world.