Where’s the Urgency?

Henry J. Aaron provides must read stuff over at Brookings:

To see what the Boehner rule means, consider the following facts. Based on projections done last August by the Congressional Budget Office, the national debt will increase over the next decade by about $12 trillion under current law. To cut spending over the next decade by $12 trillion, it would be necessary to cut annual spending by an average of $1.2 trillion a year. Since total non-interest spending over that period will average $4 trillion a year under current law, about 30 percent of projected spending would have to be eliminated. Because big cuts are impossible next year or the year after, the required cuts toward the end of the decade would have to approach 50 percent to satisfy the Boehner rule. As it happens, no one in either party—and, most tellingly, none of those insisting on the dollar-of-cuts-for-a-dollar-of-increase-in-the-debt-ceiling trade-off—has indicated where spending cuts of even one half this amount should come from. Even so, they have declared that they will oppose any increase in the debt ceiling unless these terms are met. And they have the votes to make their commitment hold.

My only real complaint is calling any of these “rules” in the House rules. Hastert, Boehner, what-have-you: they have no force of law and only exist as a “rule” in the sense that washing one’s hands after using the toilet does. If one does so, one is following the rule. If not, well, uh not much really. The Boehner Affectation, or the Boehner Most Dangerous Strongly Held Opinion. Whatever, just not a “rule.”

But: yep. And the reason no one “has indicated where spending cuts of even one half this amount should come from”? Because they don’t give a shit about the deficit. This whole “crisis” was created and continues to exist as a useful cudgel to extract tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the poor. Period, the end. Positive deficit impacts of said policy, be they large or small, are purely coincidental and entirely unintended.

Read the whole thing.

Where’s the Urgency?

The 51%

Bloomberg is reporting that Obama is the first President since Ike to win two elections by a 51%+ popular vote margin. Yes, not even Saint Reagan, he of stayin’ up late and workin’ cross the aisle with ole Tip, managed the feat. And if we hear anything about that era, we hear about Reagan crushing History’s Greatest Monster and Son of History’s Greatest Monster. Steve Benen at the Maddow blog points out that Obama now joins a list of six Presidents with 51% or more in two elections: Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the aforementioned Eisenhower, and now, Barack Obama.

But, of course, the GOP in the House must be allowed to set policy for the country. Obama has achieved no mandate; not in 2008, not in 2012. Whatever in the hell it is that happened in November is certainly not a mandate to govern. Any serious person realizes this implicitly. If anything, he should look for GOP goodwill by moving quickly to eliminate Social Security and Medicare. Then I’m sure they’ll come right around to his way of thinking.

Lead, Lead?

Kevin Drum lays out a convincing case that the now-receding crime boom was primarily caused by leaded gasoline (in fact, the pattern repeats itself in country after country: as lead goes out of use in gasoline, crime goes down). Intriguingly, none of the major interest groups seem to care:

Political conservatives want to blame the social upheaval of the ‘60s for the rise in crime that followed. Police unions have reasons for crediting its decline to an increase in the number of cops. Prison guards like the idea that increased incarceration is the answer. Drug warriors want the story to be about drug policy. If the actual answer turns out to be lead poisoning, they all lose a big pillar of support for their pet issue.

Read the whole thing

Lead, Lead?

This Exchange Happened

Real Clear Politics’ Alexis Simendinger: After the Republicans run down the alley from which there is no exit, will the president be standing there or calling them?
WH Spokesman Jay Carney: The dangers of throwing out metaphors is that people pick them up and, what I am confident of is that they don’t have, at the end of that alley, like, a Batplane to fly out, you know, to their own rescue… Do you remember that scene? It was good. It was a good scene.
Other Reporter: Does the president have a Batplane?
WH Spokesman Jay Carney: I can’t talk about that. It’s classified.
Rush tomorrow: Why won’t the President’s handlers come clean about his Batplane? And, isn’t it really more of a Batcopter? Why does this man lie so often?

What Apple understands and its critics did not (and still do not) is that many people, from all walks of life, simply appreciate nice things. They accuse Apple of pretension and elitism, but it’s they, the critics, who hold that the mass market for phones and tablets is overwhelmingly comprised of tasteless, fickle shoppers who neither discern nor care about product quality. That Apple’s lead in these categories is simply because they were first out of the gate in them, not because their products are so good.

John Gruber writes what must be his most incisive, accurate paragraph in years. And he happens to write a lot of good paragraphs. There’s a lot more than a few thoughts about Apple in here; many, many segments of Our World could take a lot of useful advice by refiguring this conceptual framework into their own purview. Looking at you, Democrats. The great unwashed are a hell of a lot smarter, more engaged, and just plain interested than you ever give them credit for. Start acting like it.

…in the middle of one of the most dangerous regions in the world, even with clear Rules of Engagement, every time I went on gate duty, there was a piece of tape over my ammo clip on my M-16 and M1911 .45. Why? Because the most heavily armed military in the world did not want accidental shootings. If a situation arose, I would have to eject my ammo clip, remove the tape, and reinsert and work the action before I could fire.

This was in a combat zone. Yet I have spent the last two fucking days dealing with armchair commandos telling me they need unlimited firepower to be safe in… Connecticut.

If there are bigger pussies in the world than gun nuts, I don’t know who the fuck they are.

John Cole, speaking the truth over on Balloon Juice.
Source: balloon-juice.com

There Is No GOP Budget Proposal

Can we please at least agree that vaguely worded letters sent to the President do not constitute a legislative proposal? Or did the CBO start scoring letters that are 90% vacuous talking points; add to that the fact that these very empty talking points were soundly crushed by plebiscite just weeks ago?

Likewise, slightly less vague details provided on background do not a serious proposal make. These details are provided on background precisely so they may be disavowed at any moment. This is not “Boehner’s Proposal.” It is bullshit. But, even then, the GOP proposes extracting from the backs of the poor, elderly, and infirm a dollar value less than half of what Obama attains by slightly inconveniencing the very rich. Apparently this fact was not worth noting, background or otherwise.

Our media entertainment complex finds none of this worth noting. Math is hard and so very boring, but can’t we at least admit the vacuity and shady sourcing of this “plan” when reporting it? Apparently not.

Dictionaria

Clip and save this section for use during fiscal “negotiations”:

Serious (ser’ ee uhs) adj. any of a group of proposals that immiserates large numbers of ordinary people, either immediately or in the future, via cuts to broad-based social welfare programs.

Unserious (un ser’ ee uhs) adj. any proposal that slightly inconveniences rich people via modest tax increases or annoys military contractors via small cuts to the Defense Department.

Dictionaria

It’s really amazing to see political reporters dutifully passing along Republican complaints that President Obama’s opening offer in the fiscal cliff talks is just a recycled version of his old plan, when those same reporters spent the last year dutifully passing along Republican complaints that Obama had no plan. It’s even more amazing to see them pass along Republican outrage that Obama isn’t cutting Medicare enough, in the same matter-of-fact tone they used during the campaign to pass along Republican outrage that Obama was cutting Medicare.

This isn’t just cognitive dissonance. It’s irresponsible reporting. Mainstream media outlets don’t want to look partisan, so they ignore the BS hidden in plain sight, the hypocrisy and dishonesty that defines the modern Republican Party. I’m old enough to remember when Republicans insisted that anyone who said they wanted to cut Medicare was a demagogue, because I’m more than three weeks old.
[…]
I realize that the GOP’s up-is-downism puts news reporters in an awkward position. It would seem tendentious to point out Republican hypocrisy on deficits and Medicare and stimulus every time it comes up, because these days it comes up almost every time a Republican leader opens his mouth. But [journalists are] not supposed to be stenographers. As long as the media let an entire political party invent a new reality every day, it will keep on doing it. Every day.

Michael Grunwald writing for Swampland because such things just aren’t said in the polite company of mainstream journalism or even journalistic criticism like that on offer at Reliable Sources. Still: Huzzah. That anyone says it, even a lowly blogger out here on drugs, is a small victory. And, just as he concludes, it will take people screaming about this, every day, for decades, because that’s exactly how the GOP has done it since the late 70s. And it’s worked out pretty well for them.
Source: TIME