Tag: Politics

S&GOP

Ezra Klein:

My hunch is that S&P was making a political argument and felt the need to cast it as deficit arithmetic. Then, when their arithmetic proved wrong, they were left looking foolish. As it stands, you actually can’t coherently merge the first and second versions of S&P’s explanation of the downgrade. That should tell you something about how rigorous their framework is, even if doesn’t obviate the still-legitimate points they made about our political system.

I think Ezra is fundamentally right here. The problem is this: if S&P set out to make a political point, they did so in such a fumbling manner that the political message, the most important part, was utterly lost. The MSM has a fundamental inability to report on something negative relative to a single party. Obama offered at least four debt ceiling deals, including several that had previously been GOP deals. How was this reported? “Both parties unwilling to compromise; President unwilling to lead and/or deal”
S&P issues a report castigating GOP intransigence on revenues. Reported: “political system unable to deal with current crisis.”

If S&P truly intended to make a political point, the report itself needed to be called “The GOP’s Willful Destruction of The American Century” or “Political Nihilism and Today’s GOP: A Downgrade Story” and furthermore needed to be told through colorful pictures and in fewer than 50 words. There’s no way in hell a company like S&P is going to do this; they are fundamentally incapable of really making the political point that they seem to have set out to make, as such moves soon prove to be bad for business. (And don’t think for a moment the GOP will forget this slight. There will be GOP initiated investigations, damaging ones, into S&P at the first available opportunity). Therefore: you don’t do it at all unless you can back it up with hard numbers such that the conclusions are inescapable. Which they also couldn’t do. But that national embarrassment is a whole other post.
Assuming for the moment that they went there and made the political point utterly and inescapably explicit, even then, it would be hard to get the MSM to report it as such. They’d dodge with a “it’s all very complicated” or “let’s leave it there” or simply book only conservative guests and allow them to talk as long as they want to without challenge or correction. Above all else, they’d avoid any mention of what was actually written in the report. You know: pretty much what’s happened in the last several days.

Naturally, this all has to transpire alongside the slow-motion European financial collapse and its effect on global markets. Typically “USA über alles” reporting over-stresses the influence, if any, of the downgrade on global events. “Post hoc, ergo procter hoc motherfucker” may as well go on the Times masthead. People are stampeding for Treasuries!!! It must be the downgrade of that instrument’s backing that is causing them to do this!!! (Had the downgrade not occurred, at least FOXnews and maybe the broader media would have blamed the collapse in value on the Presidential birthday BBQ’s failure to durably impact jobs creation). The MSM response? Get some folks on to scream “I blame the Democrat and the dirty fucking hippies for this historic downgrade of the United States and the similarly timed collapse of the global markets. The only response is to slash the social safety net, cut taxes, and increase defense spending. Or a mandatory National Week of Constant Prayer. Whichever.” What other rational approach is even possible?“

This is why we fail.

[Rather than a double dip recession] we may be looking at 2 years or more where the growth could be in the range of 2.0 percent or even less. When we have 9.1 percent unemployment, this is an outrage. If we get people applauding because at least we are not seeing a double dip, then we have to calmly escort these ignorant beings to somewhere far away from economic policy discussions. They clearly do not have a clue and need to try a different line of work.

Finally, it is 100 percent nonsense to say that the government is out of policy options. We can do more stimulus. The financial markets are yelling at the government at the top of their lungs saying “borrow more money.” That’s what 2.6 percent interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds means. There are balanced-budget worshipping politicians who say that the government can’t do anything, but this is not true and the NYT has no business repeating it.

The Fed could also do more. […] Ben Bernanke has himself suggested: targeting a long-term interest rate (e.g. a 1.0 percent 5-year Treasury rate) or a higher rate of inflation (e.g. 3-4 percent). […]

The government could also try to create jobs by taking steps to lower the value of the dollar. The Chinese government has been making threats that it will stop buying up U.S. government debt if we don’t take their advice. The Obama administration could ask what they most want and then do the exact opposite. If the Chinese government stops buying U.S. assets then the dollar will fall against the yuan. This is equivalent to imposing a tariff on Chinese imports and giving a subsidy to U.S. exports. In other words, it should lead to a burst in net exports which will lift the economy and create jobs.

Dean Baker is either giving great analysis of the nation’s near term economic outlook and policy options –or– reciting a litany of facts, large and small, that you will never, ever hear on any MSM outlet. Even by accident.
I’m not sure which, though.
Source: cepr.net

“We’ve known from the beginning that bombing the moon would be a poison pill to any debt-reduction proposal,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor. See? Or: “President Obama needs to decide between his goal of bombing the moon, or a bipartisan plan to address our deficit,” said McConnell and Sen. on Kyl in a joint statement. Or: “First of all, bombing the moon is going to destroy jobs,“ said Speaker John Boehner. "Second, bombing the moon cannot pass the US House of Representatives — it’s not just a bad idea, it doesn’t have the votes and it can’t happen. And third, the American people don’t want us to bomb the moon.”

Ezra Klein replaces mention of taxes with “bombing the moon” and ends up with a more cogent set of statements.
Also: strangely, he wasn’t going for a Mr. Show reference.
Source: Washington Post

Almost 60,000 average Americans had the courage to go out and charge those beaches on Normandy, to drop out of airplanes who knows where, and take on the battle for freedom. Average Americans. The very Americans that our government now, and this president, does not trust to make a decision on your health care plan. Those Americans risked everything so they could make that decision on their health care plan.

Rick Santorum, mulling the true evil of Hitler: an under-appreciated penchant for wanting to provide affordable health care.
Source: tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com

To the ChristieChopper!

Turns out getting Chris Christie to little league games is a National Security Issue:

Gov. Chris Christie arrived at his son’s baseball game this afternoon aboard a State Police helicopter […] the 55-foot long helicopter buzzed over trees in left field, circled the outfield and landed in an adjacent football field. Christie disembarked from the helicopter and got into a black car with tinted windows that drove him about a 100 yards to the baseball field.

I guess we should be happy the car didn’t take him to another, smaller chopper that could land on the dugout or somesuch.

As for the chopper, it’s one of two $12.5 million helicopters purchased for the state police. The intention was to use them for “homeland security duties and transporting critically injured patients.”

GOP: trusted on the economy and National Security. Who among us doesn’t rest assured that the GOP is always taking the common sense line on spending and the appropriate limits of government. Thank FSM that folks like Christie are out there on the ramparts, Defending Freedom with Our Tax Dollars.

Keep in mind, this is the guy the GOP Commentariat are begging to get into 2012. Need more helicopter fuel? Chris Christie suggests we cut Medicaid or dump infrastructure projects. These are, after all, the only reasonable, Serious Person approaches to funding the truly important things in life.

To the ChristieChopper!

Suck it, Granny

Brian Buetler, TPM: If the Biden group comes up with big cuts, trillions of dollars worth of cuts, but without substantially [cutting] Medicare, it won’t get your vote?
Mitch McConnell (R, KY), Senate minority leader: Correct
Lemkin: I mean, what’s the point of governing if you can’t tell a few old people who’ve finally run out of money to kindly go die in the streets? They should have thought of this before they agreed to take part in Medicare and/or get sick. It’s all about personal choices. Also: Death panels. Real ones. Run by Mitch McConnell and his cronies. Trillions in cuts aren’t the point of any “deficit reduction” talk by the GOP. All they want, all they have ever wanted is an excuse to foist the same old laundry list of punitive attacks on the social safety net coupled to lavish giveaways to their chosen few at the very top. That is all this is, was, or ever will be about. Time for the Democrats to start messaging accordingly. Well past time, in fact. After all, Mitch McConnell stands a pretty good chance of being Senate majority leader in 2013.

[The Republicans are being advised to spend] 2012 accusing the Democrats of sponsoring death panels. The Democrats will spend 2012 accusing Republicans of ending Medicare. Whichever party demagogues best wins.

David Brooks, outdoing even his own unusually high standard for making exceedingly stupid statements. One of these is simply not like the other. “Death panels” have been fully, categorically, absolutely, and completely made up from whole cloth. Lies. The biggest lie of 2009, in fact.
The Ryan plan, on the other hand, demonstrably ends Medicare. It transforms the program over the course of ten years from a government-run, single payer system into a voucher-based private insurance steeplechase for Granny and Gramps. If they can’t make the difference between the voucher payment and the cost of coverage, then they can go die in the streets.
Yes, David, a program called Medicare will still exist, and I know it’s terribly hard for you to square that circle inside that mind of yours, but it’s clear to a four year old that that Medicare, the one described in the preceding paragraph, will be nothing like the Medicare we have today.
Furthermore, that David Brooks feels confident pitching this sort of brazen false equivalency from his airy perch at the nation’s finest newspaper is a big indication of just how punishingly stupid our discourse is. Is there an editor in the house? George Will routinely spouting horseshit at the Washington Post is one thing; you’d think the Times still has a standard or two.

A number of economists tell us if we can cut spending it will lead to a better environment for job creation in America

John Boehner, Speaker of the House.
Exactly what number of economists would that be, John? One? Two? Because the vast preponderance of economists, at least those located anywhere on the Earth think otherwise. And you don’t have to throw your lot in with a bunch of pointy-headed intellectuals either, because that’s an experiment that’s been tried. In fact, they’re trying it right now in the UK and, hey presto!, it’s costing jobs not creating them. And the UK’s experience is far from being an outlier in this regard. Cutting government spending to “create” jobs is something that’s never been shown to, you know, work. Ever.

Robert Reich: The Republican Death Wish

Oh hell yes:

robertreich:

Can we be clear about that budget problem? It’s driven not by Medicare. It’s driven by the same relentlessly soaring health-care costs that are pushing premiums through the roof and causing middle-class families to shell out more and more money for deductibles and co-payments.

Some features of Obama’s new healthcare law will slow the rise — insurance exchanges, for example, could give consumers clearer comparative information about what they’re getting for their insurance payments — but the law doesn’t go nearly far enough.

That’s why Democrats should be saying this: We need to allow anyone to sign up for Medicare. Medicare is cheaper than private insurance because its administrative costs are so much lower, and it has vast economies of scale.

If Medicare were allowed to use its potential bargaining leverage over America’s hospitals, doctors, drug companies, and medical providers, it could drive down costs even further.

And it could force the nation’s broken health-care system to do something it must do but has resisted with a vengeance: Focus on healthy outcomes rather on costly inputs. If Medicare paid for results — not tests, procedures, drugs, and hospital stays, but results — it could give Americans better health at lower cost.

Emphasis added to point out that this is exactly what Democrats need to be saying. The steadily rising cost of Medicare is only indicative of the problem, it is not the problem. Never was, never will be. Paul Ryan wants to “solve” the issue by simply setting an amount that the government will pay and then telling anyone who can’t meet the difference to kindly go die in the streets.

Democrats, on the other hand, want to solve the problem by solving the problem. And how does the GOP respond? By trying to undo the ACA and any other cost-containment measure. By trying to end Medicare. And, of course, by redirecting the money harvested from the end of Medicare to the richest of the rich. Who so desperately need it.

Robert Reich: The Republican Death Wish

The Kitchen Table

I’ve said before that the “kitchen table” meme needs to die. But before it shuffles off this mortal coil, President Obama should put it to use one more time:

“My fellow Americans, we in the United States are like so many of you, sitting at your kitchen table and wondering where to come up with money to cover an unexpected expense while still keeping the lights on and food on the table. As you may have heard, the National Bureau of Economic Research recently reported that most Americans couldn’t produce $2000 on short notice without selling possessions or finding a lender to borrow it from. The government faces these questions all the time; like right now, with some members of Congress moving to prevent us from providing emergency funds to help the victims of the terrible tornado in Joplin, Missouri.

"In some ways, the problems of deficits and the debt that the federal government accumulates are no different from you, at your kitchen table, trying to come up with that desperately needed $2000 on short notice. As you all know, the United States has seen historic shortfalls over the last several years as government income has dropped dramatically as a direct result of the downturn in the global economy. At the same time, of course, we’ve had to increase various outlays and spending just to maintain existing programs or fund new recovery efforts and, of course, continue fighting two wars.

"Now, because of all this, we in the government find ourselves sitting around our kitchen table talking about the budget and our debts. The Democrats in Congress and I have suggested various cuts and other ways to tighten our belts, just like all of you have had to do through this time of economic hardship and struggle; but we also believe that since the government can currently borrow at historically low rates, we should take advantage of that capability while it’s here. More to the point: we think it would be foolish not to. It’s the difference between spending on large, unnecessary purchases and recognizing a genuine opportunity that also carries with it a long-term but sustainable debt. Much like when you bought your first home, or a car, or started a small business and the bank ensured that you could actually meet the payments at the interest rates offered; in the same way, the world market believes that the US government will remain solvent and thus continues to offer money at very low interest. This will not always be so, but we Democrats believe we should take advantage of it while we can and that we should use that extra buying power to empower the American economy on its road to recovery.

"The Republicans, on the other hand, are suggesting that we sell the furniture at whatever price the first person offers us, put the children to work at dangerous jobs, eat tainted food and dirty water to save a few cents, and finally default on our existing financial obligations such that we can pay down that mortgage on the house as quickly as possible, even if that action means incurring penalties, and they want to do all of this despite the fact that we have access to stable, reasonable long term interest rates and also have the wherewithal to make payments long into the foreseeable future. It’s like they want us to finance a car on a high interest credit card instead of through a traditional bank loan just because they want to give the people at the credit card company some more money. It doesn’t make any financial sense for the country and only functions to create wealth for the handfull of people at the very top of the financial system.

"I think I know which road you as Americans want us to take. So why not sit down at that kitchen table of yours and write or call your Congressperson and let them know?

"Thank you for listening. Good night, and good luck.”