Tag: nyt

At Mr. Ryan’s request, [the CBO] produced an estimate of the budget effects of his proposed spending cuts — period. It didn’t address the revenue losses from his tax cuts.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has, however, stepped into the breach. Its numbers indicate that the Ryan plan would reduce revenue by almost $4 trillion over the next decade. If you add these revenue losses to the numbers The Post cites, you get a much larger deficit in 2020, roughly $1.3 trillion.

And that’s about the same as the budget office’s estimate of the 2020 deficit under the Obama administration’s plans. That is, Mr. Ryan may speak about the deficit in apocalyptic terms, but even if you believe that his proposed spending cuts are feasible — which you shouldn’t — the Roadmap wouldn’t reduce the deficit. All it would do is cut benefits for the middle class while slashing taxes on the rich.

And I do mean slash. The Tax Policy Center finds that the Ryan plan would cut taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population in half, giving them 117 percent of the plan’s total tax cuts. That’s not a misprint. Even as it slashed taxes at the top, the plan would raise taxes for 95 percent of the population.

[…]

So why have so many in Washington, especially in the news media, been taken in by this flimflam? It’s not just inability to do the math, although that’s part of it. There’s also the unwillingness of self-styled centrists to face up to the realities of the modern Republican Party; they want to pretend, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, that there are still people in the G.O.P. making sense.

Paul Krugman grinding the aforementioned Paul Ryan into a fine powder-like substance.

While we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version of Section 701 that you forwarded to us.

Mike Godwin, general counsel to Wikimedia, in response (NB: PDF link) to an FBI request to take down an image of the FBI seal that accompanies a Wikipedia entry.
When, and only when, this sort of push-back becomes the norm (and not some delightful instance-of) will we get anywhere.

What, me worry?

In which Krugman and I disagree:

Republicans, by the way, seem less susceptible to this delusion. Since Mr. Obama took office, they have engaged in relentless obstruction, obviously unworried about how their actions would look or be reported. And it’s working: by blocking Democratic efforts to alleviate the economy’s woes, the G.O.P. is helping its chances of a big victory in November.

I think Krugman is being too kind by half. The GOP is unworried because they know their actions will not be reported; they therefore needn’t worry about appearances at all. There is, outside the blogoshpere, precisely zero coverage of across-the-board GOP obstruction. And, why should there be? The Democrat won’t mention it either. Obama is, even still, apparently heralding in a wonderful new day in which everyone works together.

And don’t for a second entertain the thought that, should the GOP capture the House in November, things will change because (why) they’ll have to start taking positions on policy. They certainly will take positions, but it will all be:

  1. The Tax elimination act of 2011
  2. The forced birth bill of 2011
  3. The immigration cessation bill of 2011
  4. The drill everywhere bill of 2011
  5. The Social Security “Personalization” and Welfare Elimination Act of 2011

And etc… That, of course, is ignoring (for now) all the weekly impeachment proceedings. Each of these will, of course, die a quick death in the do-nothing Senate. Well, except for that last one. Democrats will likely take it up in hopes of creating the appearance of bipartisanship. That and, we’ll see a high-minded compromise on #1; there we’ll raise taxes on the bottom 15% in exchange for deep cuts in social programs and an across the board tax decrease on the top 10% as well as elimination of capital gains and estate taxes. It’s win/win!

How do you stop it? Well, you know about it. You thus start talking about it. Now. Repeatedly. Every time a microphone is switched on and several times when one isn’t yet.

That, however, would be shrill.

…its members are falling away; background sounds once familiar have been silenced. The jangle of the pay phone on the wall, the click of the lighter, the snap and hiss of a match being lighted.

To those retired players in New York City bars, add the hulking workhorse in the back of the pit. It played all night: thunk, thunk, thunk, as the coins dropped into the slot, followed by the grinding crank of unseen gears as the rod was yanked out. The short solo ended modestly, like a tap on a high hat, with the whisper of a pack of smokes wrapped in plastic film sliding into the tray below.

The cigarette machine.

–Michael Wilson, bringing the poetry in an elegiac piece in the NYT about the passing of the old-school mechanical cigarette machine.

I always liked the Art-O-Mat idea: cigarette pack sized art projects you could buy out of re-purposed machines. Gumballs for adults.

As I understand the structure of the argument, [Josef] Joffe ridicules me because

  1. I have written a number of articles opposing fiscal austerity right now. This shows how foolish I am, because good economists never return to or elaborate on points they’ve made before. Milton Friedman wrote one article about the virtues of free markets, and never mentioned the subject again.
  2. European political leaders aren’t taking my advice. This also shows how foolish I am, because politicians always make the right decisions about economic policy.
Paul Krugman politely responds.

On the national level, bipartisanship usually means Democrats ignore the needs of the poor and abandon the idea that government can play a role in issues of poverty, race discrimination, sex discrimination or environmental protection

Barack Obama… in 1996

Oilbama

unsolicitedanalysis:

Obama WILL be blamed for the plight of poor MAJORITIES in the Gulf fishing and tourism industries.

Via the unfair, unrelenting criticism that Obama is about to receive – it’s coming, you best believe it’s coming, especially when those businesses die – liberals will atone for that sin.

This is utter nonsense. Look no further than noted asshat David Brooks:
(via chuckmore) for a moment of clarity on this:

“I persist in the belief that unless Barack Obama has a degree in underwater engineering that he’s not telling anybody about, there’s really not a lot, post-spill, he could be doing. Like you, I’m not a huge fan of presidential grandstanding. The idea that the president is the big national daddy who can take care of all our problems is silly.”

David Brooks

Yep

This crisis is the fault of BP and the total regulatory capture on the part of the oil industry. All of which happened over the past 20 years of conservative rule. But, sure, let’s just blame Obama and require “liberal atonement” for an event totally out their purview. After all, everything is always bad for The Democrat.