Tag: serious person

Half Measures

ilyagerner:

“So I think this is going to a very, very difficult year and I think, honestly, that HALF-MEASURES LIKE ASSASSINATIONS or sanctions are only going to produce the crisis more quickly. The better way to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons is to attack its nuclear weapons program directly, break their control over the nuclear fuel cycle.”

— John Bolton, who has endorsed Mitt Romney.

Half-measures like assassinations!

And but also, I’d like to know exactly how an attack is anything less than a half-measure? Even if said attack works perfectly, and utterly eliminates all nuclear facilities “known” and “unknown,” precisely how does this “break their control” over the nuclear cycle? Within six or nine months they are presumably already right back at it, with a deeper, or more secretive laboratory. Or they never stop because, you know, they already had a deeper or more secretive laboratory. And now you’ve done nothing more than provide indisputable proof that they need nuclear weapons. Only way to fend off these Americans and their constant nosing into our bidness.

Bolton’s “plan” only works, in fact, if you a) go nuclear and functionally exterminate all living matter in Iran, –or– b) conventionally or otherwise invade and govern Iran. There is no other way that has any reasonable chance of success. Period.

I suspect the American people would poll dramatically against either of those “kill ‘em all” style outcomes. Therefore it might behoove reporters to ask about them directly such that we are all clear exactly what this lunatic and lunatics like him are talking about. But they never do. Shrill. We have learned nothing from the W. Bush administration and, apparently, never will. So the Republic crumbles.

The DFS Gingrich Who Stole Mittmas

Disgraced Former Speaker Gingrich: [Mitt Romney] is a man whose staff created the PAC, his millionaire friends fund the PAC, he pretends he has nothing to do with the PAC – it’s baloney. He’s not telling the American people the truth. It’s just like this pretense that he’s a conservative. Here’s a Massachusetts moderate who has tax-paid abortions in ‘Romneycare,’ puts Planned Parenthood in ‘Romneycare,’ raises hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes on businesses, appoints liberal judges to appease Democrats, and wants the rest of us to believe somehow he’s magically a conservative. […] But, let’s be clear, which part of what I just said to you is false? Why is it that if I’m candid in person and I wanted to be honest in person, that’s shocking? If [Romney’s] PAC buys millions of dollars in ads to say things that are false, that’s somehow the way Washington plays the game. Isn’t that exactly what’s sick about this country right now? Isn’t that what the American people are tired of?
Very Serious Person Bob Schieffer: But Mr. [Disgraced Former] Speaker, what you’re saying is ‘Folks, Barack Obama is so bad that we’d be better off electing a bald-faced liar to the presidency, somebody that we would never know if he was telling the truth.’ That is pretty strong stuff
DFS Gingrich: Well, I’ll let you go and check his record, Bob. Look, you’re a professional reporter. Did he support Reagan in the ’80s or not? The answer is no. Did he vote as a Democrat for Paul Tsongas in ’92 or not? The answer is, yes, he did. Did he say that he didn’t want to go back to the Reagan-Bush years in ’94? Yes, he did. Did he run to the left of Teddy Kennedy? Yes he did. Now, why is it politically incorrect to tell the truth?
Lemkin: I’ve seen no evidence that Bob Schieffer is a “professional reporter,” Newt. Why do you lie so much? I’m surprised Schieffer didn’t punch him right in the nose. Shrill, I suppose. Better not to take sides…

On top of the terrible politics, they even admit that [Ryan/Wyden] dismantles Medicare but achieves no budgetary savings while doing so – the worst of all worlds. Thanks for nothing.

A “Very Senior” Democratic Aide weighs in on the Ryan/Wyden “plan” to save Medicare by dismantling and replacing it with a system already shown to be at least 25% more costly. The problem here is that Serious People know that Medicare must be destroyed. The only thing they are more certain of is Social Security’s imminent end. Therefore, anyone favoring Medicare as it stands (or, gods save us, the atheistic but sharia-mandated nightmare that would be Medicare for All) is going to be fighting the GOP, some non-trivial number of Democrats, and the always totally objective, non-partisan MSM “referees” running this rotten discourse of ours.
So get ready. They’re coming for this. This is who they are. All the deficit whinging is merely prologue for a pitched fight to end every part of the already dwindling social safety net.
I’d also advise anyone who thinks voting doesn’t matter to go ahead and take the long position on stock in whatever company is going to clear the dead from the streets. Halliburton, presumably. Once your vote didn’t really matter because there’s no difference anyway, there’s going to be a lot of business in that particular sector.
Source: tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com

Should the Republic Survive…

Newt Gingrich, GOP debate 12/10/11: If we do survive, it will be in part because of people like Rick [Santorum] who’ve had the courage to tell the truth about the Iranians for a long time.
Dan Drezner, Foreign Policy: Even a nuclear-armed Iran led by the current regime of nutball theocrats cannot threaten America’s survival. I get why the United States is concerned about Iran going nuclear, and I get why Israel is really concerned about Iran going nuclear. The only way that developments in Iran could threaten America’s survival, however, would be if the US policy response was so hyperbolic that it ignited a general Middle East war that dragged in Russia and China. Which… come to think of it, wouldn’t be entirely out of the question under a President Gingrich.
Lemkin: Yep. In line with suddenly making this “rotten discourse day” around here, this is just one more symptom, to be filed under “imaginary foreign policy | Serious Person edition.” Yes, existential threats to the United States and to “civilized” life on Earth as we know it are real and do exist. Climate change is very, very high on that list and may, in fact, far outweigh any other risk currently facing either the United States or, more generally, humanity itself in a truly existential fashion. That one party is allowed to categorically deny its very existence in defiance of the preponderance of evidence and inevitably in the name of journalistic integrity or “not taking sides” will be, perhaps, marveled at by whatever future race digs through the ashes of our long forgotten society. But there is simply no way a nuclear Iran poses an existential threat to these United States at any time in the near- to mid-term future. It is the height of folly to think otherwise and utterly laughable to suggest it on the national stage in the hopes of being taken seriously. And yet one party is allowed to do so frequently and in direct contradiction to any reasonable estimation of the empirical reality of the Iranian situation specifically or Middle Eastern policy in general. And, what do you know, here we are, back at our rotten discourse again. Funny that.

Upstairs/Downstairs

John Kyl (R, AZ), Saturday: [tax increases are] the wrong medicine for our ailing economy, […] [any possibility of a potential future increase only serves to] put a wet blanket over job creation and economic recovery.
John Kyl (R, AZ), Sunday: The payroll tax holiday has not stimulated job creation. We don’t think that is a good way to do it. [Thus we want to raise taxes on every American that currently receives a paycheck]. The best way to hurt economic growth is to impose more taxes on the people who do the hiring. As a result, the Republicans have said, ‘Don’t raise the existing tax rates on those who do the hiring.’ [That is to say, the 1%. Who aren’t, uh, actually hiring. But still. Don’t raise THEIR taxes. Raise the 99%’s taxes. Only that will get the old economy going again!]
Lemkin: Again, the MSM will see no dissonance whatsoever in these positions. Of course raising taxes on most everyone in the country to avoid a tiny tax increase on a tiny fraction of the country makes the best economic sense in an aggregate demand-based economic downturn. What other conclusion is even possible given this data? Surely both sides are at fault for low aggregate demand in the 99%; this is only fixable if both sides agree to lower taxes on the 1%. Again: what other conclusion is even possible?

The Rub

In all the rush to cast a pox on both houses, most Serious People seem to be missing the underlying point here.

The Republicans want tax rates to remain at current (i.e. Bush/Obama tax cut) levels or to be lowered. To do that without collapsing the Federal Government, they have to end Medicare. Period, the end, no other way to do it. Zero the non-military discretionary budget and you still aren’t getting particularly close. Thus, this:

…committee Republicans offered to negotiate a plan on the other two health-care entitlements–Medicare and Medicaid–based upon the reforms included in the budget the House passed earlier this year [this is what is commonly referred to as the “Ryan plan”; it ends Medicare but leaves in place a voucher system which seniors would use to try to buy coverage on the open market. Good luck with that, seniors. Anyone paying attention will recall that this is the issue Medicare was created to solve. At any rate, under Ryan’s plan everyone that fails to find coverage they can afford with regard to the differential between voucher and actual cost: go die in the streets.]

Republicans on the committee also offered to negotiate a plan based on the bipartisan “Protect Medicare Act” authored by Alice Rivlin, [which would allow seniors to] choose from a list of Medicare-guaranteed coverage options, similar to the House budget’s approach–except that Rivlin-Domenici would continue to include a traditional Medicare fee-for-service plan among the options.

So, the GOP “choices” here are: completely voucherize and functionally end Medicare under the Ryan plan, or vastly extend Medicare Advantage and get to Ryan’s plan stepwise. After all, Medicare Advantage has bee such a smashing success; it’s the plan that delivered a ~14% more costly version of Medicare, the program it sought to “revolutionize.”

Democrats, on the other hand, believe that a return to Clinton era tax rates fundamentally solves the near- to mid-term budget issues. This is widely known to be true; it is also known to be true by Republicans, who are simply using the current “crisis” (which, not coincidentally was invented by them during the run-up and denouement of the debt ceiling “crisis”) as an excuse to attempt various long-held policy goals, most notably: ending Medicare.

Long term issues in our budget do indeed exist, these can only be handled by bringing health care costs under control; Democrats wish to work towards that goal, Republicans choose to address the issue by simply ending that program entirely. This is the point at which it’s worth noting that, if we paid for medical care the per-capita rates that our next-nearest “competitor” pays, we’d be facing surpluses as far as the eye can see. Right now.
But, a massive step in that “solvency” direction would, in fact, be Medicare for all. Instead, the GOP demands Medicare for none or they blow up the country. Those are your two GOP-approved choices. They simply don’t want to talk about it in public, because eliminating Medicare is a wildly unpopular position to hold. You’d think someone in the media would mention something as explosive as this from time to time. Doesn’t ever seem to come up.

Clearly, though, both parties are equally at fault here. Truly a triumph of 21st Century Journamalism.

Do nothing, Congress. Ezra Klein and EJ Dionne both write today about the benefits of simply letting various existing policies expire…doing so would net $7.1 TRILLION in deficit savings over the same decade that the “Super-committee” can’t find a way to reliably extract $1T. This path requires no votes, it requires no legislation, it requires no GOP assistance of any kind. Gridlock is all that’s required to make it happen.
So why is it no Serious Person (to whom deficits are, always have been, and always will be the preeminent policy question come-what-may) ever talks about the biggest deficit reduction plan currently out there, a plan that outstrips all other extant deficit plans by several orders of magnitude? Because they don’t actually care about deficits. None of them do. Because deficit reduction is not the goal. The GOP and their media enablers do not care about deficits. They care about eliminating social spending in this country to lower taxes on the richest 1%. Period. Everything and anything else that happens is collateral damage to that desired policy outcome.

Gridlock works. Gridlock will help America. Relying on gridlock is the best possible negotiating tool for Democrats. Period. Be prepared to end the Bush tax cuts. All of them. Be prepared to end the “doc fix.” All of it. Be prepared to end it all. Then you begin to drive policy decisions and have actual governing authority to get jobs bills and other things done.

Instead, they will, of course, continue to negotiate with themselves and parrot right-wing talking points. This is why they fail.
Just sit there quietly and let it all expire. Whenever the GOP talks about deficits, you bring up the $7T you are cutting deficits by over the next decade.
When the GOP gets tired of that, realizes you are serious about this, and is ready to talk, they’ll come to you. Then you set the terms. Then you begin to govern. This is how politics works. The Democrat seems to have largely forgotten this. Again: this is why they fail.

Here’s how it works- Obama says something, Republicans completely lie about it, the media notes the lie is catching on without ever actually calling it a lie, the Democrats have to waste resources and respond to the lie, Republicans double down, this sucks the life out of everything else for a couple week, and in ten years this will be conventional wisdom that Obama called Americans lazy, just like Al Gore claimed to invent the internet and the rest of the bullshit that wingnuts have adopted as received truths (snow in November refutes climate change, the more you cut taxes the more government revenue you raise, if a bombing campaign does not make people like you it means you didn’t bomb hard enough or your targeting was off, liberals lost Viet Nam, waterboarding isn’t torture, etc).

We’re so fucked as a nation.

John Cole, to whom I’d only add that, should Obama fail to win reelection in 2012, his decision to nationally televise the “Lazy Speech” from the Oval Office while wearing an overly earth-toned, almost certainly focus group chosen sweater will be held out as a prime reason American opinion crystallized against him.
That these are easily proven to be lies and utter fabrications does not matter. Recall Cokie’s Law: if it’s out there, it must be treated as fact, uncritically and forever. Anything else smacks of journalistic bias.
And yes, we are so fucked as a nation.
Source: balloon-juice.com

the current hand wringing about the administration’s pledge [not to raise sub-$250k tax rates] feels like a distraction…especially given that we could achieve medium term sustainability without going there.

Jared Bernstein agrees that we can achieve neutral debt/GDP ratios without savaging middle class rates. Serious People sure love to wring hands. It’s as though they have a vested interest in the tax rates of the trans-$250k class. Oh, right.

Again with the Middle Class

It’s almost as if our media aristocracy of inbred Serious People have a vested interest in seeing to it that the middle class, and only the middle class, gets soaked in any economic “compromise.” Amidst reacting to a particularly poor NYT Magazine piece, Dean Baker nails it:

…the piece too quickly dismisses the possibility of getting substantial additional tax revenue from the wealthy. It presents the income share for those earning more than $1 million as $700 billion, saying that if we increase the tax rate on this group by 10 percentage points (from roughly 30 percent to 40 percent), then this yields just $70 billion a year.

However, if we lower our bar slightly and look to the top 1 percent of households, with adjusted gross incomes of more than $400,000, and update the data to 2012 (from 2009), then we get adjusted gross income for this group of more than $1.4 trillion. Increasing the tax take on this group by 10 percentage points nets us $140 billion a year. If the income of the top 1 percent keeps pace with the projected growth of the economy over the decade, this scenario would get us more than $1.7 trillion over the course of the decade, before counting interest savings. Of course there would be some supply response, so we would collect less revenue than these straight line calculations imply, but it is possible to get a very long way towards whatever budget target we have by increasing taxes on the wealthy.

Shocking. And but also, Baker smartly includes the most important issue in any truly serious discussion of American economics and the proper balance of same: the cost of health care:

We pay twice as much per person as people do in other wealthy countries. Since more than half of the tab for our health care is paid by the government, our broken health care system becomes a budget problem. If we paid the same amount per person for our health care as people in other wealthy countries, we would be looking at long-term budget surpluses rather than deficits. The reason that we pay so much more is not that we get better outcomes – we don’t generally. Rather it is that we pay too much to drug companies, hospitals, medical specialists, and others in the health care industry.

Baker’s being generous. We spend as much as five times more per capita than the best performing countries do, all of which achieve uniformly better outcomes than we do. Obviously, the only possible answer here is just get Big Guvmint out of the way so the poor can kindly go die in the streets. It’s the only serious answer to the problem. Well, that and lowering taxes on the wealthiest 1% of the country.

Read the whole thing.

Again with the Middle Class