Sunday
Mar312013
The Commentariat -- April 1, 2013
As contributor MAG pointed out yesterday, Paul Krugman was not impressed with what he called David Stockman's "rant": "It's cranky old man stuff, the kind of thing you get from people who read Investors Business Daily, listen to Rush Limbaugh, and maybe, if they're unusually teched up, get investment advice from Zero Hedge." ...
... In a later post, Krugman adds, "As Mark Thoma points out, the verdict among everyone who knows anything is that Stockman’s piece, mysteriously given star treatment, was pathetic and embarrassing.... This is not a bipartisan problem of runaway deficits! Pre-1980, no problem at all; after 1980, deficits were very much a monopartisan issue until the financial crisis, which was a time when running deficits was appropriate. Anyone who says differently hasn't done his homework." ...
... Thoma gives Stockman 'the wingnut of the day award. ...
... Jared Bernstein: "... like most crazed rants, it's hard to pick out the argument, but I think it's this: for almost a century, economic policy makers have ... um ... made policy, and that's led to cheap money, high indebtedness, crony capitalism, and econo-moral-turpitude.... It's like hearing a crazy person on a street corner ranting against whatever: they invariably stumble on some profound and piercing insights, but it's mostly nonsense, and instinctually, we keep our heads down and move on." ...
... ** Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider: "The piece can truly be characterized as Hard Money Buzzword Bingo, as Stockman tries to get in as many scare lines as possible.... Probably the most telling and self-contradicting aspect, is the fact that he traces the original sin of the economy back to FDR taking the US off of the gold standard.... The problem is that the last 80 years, since then have represented a marvelous time for economic progress in America (and elsewhere).... Beyond that, the fact that things have gone on for 80 years without the gigantic collapse that Stockman has predicted is a sign that perhaps FDR's move wasn't so horrible." ...
James Surowiecki of the New Yorker does not directly address Stockman, but he does refute Stockman's assertion that the Fed has been profligate in gifting the big banks: "Currently, the big risk isn’t that the Fed will wait too long to raise interest rates; it's that pressure from savers will cause it to raise them prematurely."
<'>In his column today, Krugman writes, California's "problems bear no resemblance to the death-by-liberalism story line the California-bashers keep peddling. California is ... a state where a liberal majority has been effectively hamstrung by a fanatical conservative minority that, thanks to supermajority rules, has been able to block effective policy-making.... The era of hamstrung government seems to be coming to an end.... California's political story — in which a radicalized G.O.P. fell increasingly out of touch with an increasingly diverse and socially liberal electorate, and eventually found itself marginalized -- is arguably playing out with a lag on the national scene too."** Canadian professor Thomas Homer-Dixon, in a New York Times op-ed: "If President Obama blocks the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all, he'll do Canada a favor.... Tar sands production is one of the world's most environmentally damaging activities.... Also, bitumen is junk energy.... Both the [Canadian] cabinet and the Conservative parliamentary caucus are heavily populated by politicians who deny mainstream climate science.... [Canada] behaves like a gambler deep in the hole, repeatedly doubling down on our commitment to the industry.... Stopping Keystone XL would be a major step toward stopping large-scale environmental destruction, the distortion of Canada's economy and the erosion of its democracy." ...
... Steve Mufson of the Washington Post: "Exxon Mobil said that one of its pipelines leaked 'a few thousand' barrels of Canadian heavy crude oil near Mayflower, Ark., prompting the evacuation of 22 homes and reinforcing concerns many critics have raised about the Keystone XL pipeline that is awaiting State Department approval.... Many critics of the Keystone XL pipeline say that corrosion risks are greater in pipelines carrying low-quality bitumen-laden crude from the oil sands. They have urged President Obama to reject the Keystone XL permit application."
Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration has begun to search for a replacement for FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, and for the first time one of the leading contenders is a woman. One of several people under consideration, according to current and past administration officials, is Lisa Monaco, who left a senior post at the Justice Department this month to become President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser."
David Sirota in Salon: "... in a coincidental turn of events, the president's visit [to Colorado Wednesday] will occur at the very moment the Colorado Republican Party is making a high-profile effort to derail Democratic legislation that would disarm domestic abusers.... The president is swooping in to the home of Columbine and Aurora to draw national attention to the gun extremism of the Republican Party -- and he will be able to point right to the state capitol where that Republican Party is opposing legislation to simply enforce federal law that is supposed to be protecting women from gun-wielding domestic abusers. Not only that, he will be in the state where Democrats' have most maximized their inherent advantage with women." ...
... Niall Stanage & Amie Parnes of the Hill: "Vice President Biden is calling his former colleagues on Capitol Hill on a near-daily basis as he mounts a full-court press to achieve new gun control measures. Biden has already held private meetings with Republican senators including John McCain (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Johnny Isakson (Ga.), according to a senior administration official. The official added that Biden would also be spending considerable time on Capitol Hill in the weeks to come." Via Greg Sargent.
Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times: "As Republican leaders try to woo Latino voters with a new openness to legal status for the nation's illegal immigrants, the party remains at odds with America's fastest-growing ethnic community on another key issue: healthcare. Latinos, who have the lowest rates of health coverage in the country, are among the strongest backers of President Obama's healthcare law. In a recent national poll, supporters outnumbered detractors by more than 2 to 1. Latinos also overwhelmingly see guaranteeing healthcare as a core government responsibility, surveys show. Yet congressional Republicans continue to make repeal of the 2010 Affordable Care Act a top agenda item and have renewed calls for deep cuts in health programs such as Medicaid, which are very popular with Latinos." ...
... AND the GOP has this itty-bitty problem. Jonathan Martin of Politico: "... as some [(Oxymoron Alert!) Republican] party intellectuals openly wonder if the heyday of the religious right has come and gone, social conservatives are responding with ferocity, indicting John McCain and Mitt Romney for their losses and bluntly warning that the GOP will cease to exist if the party abandons those voters who are in the party because of, not despite, its platform on values. If cultural conservatives are headed toward extinction, they are making clear they won't go away without a fight." ...
... MEANWHILE, Greg Sargent reports that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee "has launched online video advertising that hits 17 vulnerable House Republicans over their support for Paul Ryan's 'Robin Hood in reverse' fiscal vision for America":
Michael Catalini of the National Journal: "The efforts to woo a moderate Democrat to defeat [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell are part of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's plans to compete in the most inhospitable territory for Democrats -- for open seats in Georgia, South Dakota, West Virginia, and possibly, even in Kentucky against the powerful and well-funded Senate minority leader. Facing a challenging political landscape in 2014, the party is close to landing credible candidates in all of those states." ...
... Our Political Aristocracy. Beth Reinhart of the National Journal: in other red states, Democrats are relying on the scions of political dynasties -- like Mary Landrieu of Louisiana & Mark Pryor of Arkansas.
** The Evolution of Harry Reid. Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: Harry "Reid’s evolution from a proponent of gun rights to the shepherd of legislation that would expand background checks, among other gun control measures, emerges from a complex web of political calculations that have come to define his leadership style over the last decade.... After the Senate returns from its recess next week, it will consider a bill that would expand background checks and increase penalties for so-called straw purchases...."
Susanne Craig of the New York Times: "Since the financial crisis, compensation for the directors of the nation's biggest banks has continued to rise even as the banks themselves, facing difficult markets and regulatory pressures, are reining in bonuses and pay."
Neil Irwin of the Washington Post, in an adaptation of his new book: "... over three days and four nights in May 2010 is essential to understanding the economic predicament in which the world still finds itself. In that moment, the major Western central banks -- and their leaders, Ben S. Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Mervyn King of the Bank of England, and [Jean-Claude] Trichet of the ECB -- made a series of decisions that created the world economy we inhabit today, and likely far into the future."
Boxers or Briefs? Who Cares? Scalia Doesn't Read Them. Although -- as Ezra Klein points out -- the American Sociological Association presented an amicus brief in the DOMA case which states flat-out, "Whether a child is raised by same-sex or opposite-sex parents has no bearing on a child' wellbeing," Scalia opined -- based on his "feelings," I guess -- during oral argument that "there's considerable disagreement among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not." Actually, Nino, there's no disagreement at all.
Now is the time to furlough the consultants, and tune out the pollsters, send the focus groups home and throw out the political scripts, because if we truly know what we believe, we don't need professionals to tell us. -- Sarah Palin, at CPAC
Palin's PAC spent $5.1 million in the last election cycle (more than it raised in that time period, raising some questions about Palin's claims of fiscal responsibility). how donors' money was actually doled out: just $298,500 to candidates. The bulk of the rest of it, more than $4.8 million, went to -- you guessed it -- consultants. -- Jon Avlon of the Daily Beast
... CW: I avoided linking to this story this weekend because I don't really care what Cardinal Timothy Dolan has to say about gay relationships, but since most of the press is making a big deal out of it, I guess readers should know that the head of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops says you gay peoples should not be having sex with each other. So cut it out right now. With video. ...
... ALSO, Ross Douthat, the Vatican's Emissary to the New York Times, says you're ruining straight marriage after all: "Since [David] Frum warned [in 1997] that gay marriage could advance only at traditional wedlock's expense, the marriage rate has been falling faster, the out-of-wedlock birthrate has been rising faster, and the substitution of cohabitation for marriage has markedly increased. Underlying these trends is a steady shift in values: Americans are less likely to see children as important to marriage and less likely to see marriage as important to childbearing (the generation gap on gay marriage shows up on unwed parenting as well) than even in the very recent past." CW: Maybe by way of penance you could take Dolan's advice. ...
... The Father (Dolan), the Son (Douthat) & the Holy Spirit (Noonan). Charles Pierce comments on both & throws in Peggy Noonan's random ramblings on the abortion thing. Amen.
Rick Hertzberg has a terrific piece on the word "entitlement(s)." Especially if you're prone to use the term &/or think it "makes sense," read Hertzberg.
Awesome Homemaker Was Pretty Good Rocket Scientist, Too (for a Girl). Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon: "When Yvonne Brill, who died last week at age 88, was remembered in the New York Times over the weekend, the first paragraph of her obituary described her as a woman who 'made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. She was also, according to her son Matthew, "The world's best mom."' It was only in the second graph that the paper of record got around to mentioning that stroganoff champ, husband follower and awesome mom Brill also 'invented a propulsion system to help keep communications satellites from slipping out of their orbits.' Oh, that too." (NYT obit, now altered, is linked in March 30 Ledes.)
Right Wing World
Google's War on Easter, Ctd. The Guardian has a funny piece on the right's outrage over Google's honoring Cesar Chavez Day, made all the more hilarious by the screamers' inability to distinguish Cesar Chavez from Hugo Chavez. Also, it's Barack Obama plot. What's funny is not the story -- it's a straight news piece -- but the content. ...
... Eric Dolan of Raw Story names some of the usual freaked-out suspects.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Elwin Wilson, a former supporter of the Ku Klux Klan who made repeated apologies late in life for racist acts he committed decades earlier — including the bloody beating of a civil rights worker who later became a member of Congress [Rep. John Lewis {D-Ga.}] -- died on Thursday at a hospital in South Carolina. He was 76."
New York Times: "The Indian Supreme Court rejected a Swiss drug maker's patent application for a major cancer drug Monday in a landmark ruling that will allow poor patients continued access to many of the world's best drugs, at least for a while. The ruling allows Indian makers of generic drugs to continue making copycat versions of the Novartis drug Gleevec.... The ruling's effect ... will help maintain India's role as the world's most important provider of inexpensive medicines, which is critical in the global fight against HIV/AIDS and other diseases."
The New York Times has more on the assassinations of Kaufman County, Texas, district attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia McLelland.
Reuters: "President Hamid Karzai held talks with Qatari leaders on Sunday ... on a visit the Kabul government has said would seek to explore the possibility of talks with Taliban insurgents on ending Afghanistan's war."
Reuters: "The condition of South Africa's former President Nelson Mandela has improved further, the government said on Sunday, as the 94-year-old anti-apartheid hero spent a fourth day in hospital receiving treatment for pneumonia."
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Reader Comments (10)
Ahh...April Fools' Day (happy birthday Sam Alito!).
A good day to consider other fools. To wit:
So David Stockman is back? Shit. I thought he was dead. At least I hoped so. But, sadly, no, he’s ranting on about something that has to do with the economy. I think.
It’s sad to see a young snake oil selling douchebag who knew he was a lying sack of shit turn into an old snake oil selling douchebag who believes he's the font of economic wisdom.
Let’s not forget that Stockman was, and is, a politician. He’s never been an economist and even admitted in a famous interview that he didn’t have fucking clue what all those numbers meant. His job as OMB director was to sell Reagan’s “Let’s Make All My Rich Friends Richer and Fuck Everyone Else” economic plans. Trickle down…remember that load of crap? More like Reagan giving his cronies the green light to piss on everyone else. Supply Side: another intellectual stink bomb that imbeciles still talk about as if it were a link in the Great Chain of Being.
Oh, you say, but he was a successful businessman too! Right. He scarfed billions off Wall Street cronies and went on to deep six several companies into bankruptcy. He would have done time too if the Justice Department had opted to pursue his malfeasance further (that would have made him the 752nd member of the Reagan Administration to be investigated, indicted, or locked up).
Let’s also not forget that when Saint Ronald took office the federal budget deficit was a tad under $80 billion. Just over four years later, with Stockman’s plans as the guiding light, the national debt had ballooned to nearly $2 trillion. Heckuva job, Davey.
And we're taking economic advice from this guy because why?
And let’s not miss the red flag here, 'cause it’s a big one. A kind of “How not to make that same mistake” lesson.
Hmm…let’s see….a politician with zero training in economics, who pretends to be a wonky non-partisan budgetary intellectual but whose rank, ideologically tainted work products stink to high heaven and promise nothing but decades of bad decisions based on lies and conniving advice designed to fuck the poor and middle class, and increase the debt as they further enrich cronies and oligarchs.
Remind you of anyone?
At least back in the day Stockman was able to come clean about the fraudulence of the whole thing, even if today he pretends to be Mr. Economics. Ryan isn’t waiting until he’s a cranky old curmudgeon to pretend that his shit is ice cream.
In the More Stupid Shit to be Outraged About, we find Christian wingers frothing at the mouth because Google wasn't on board to provide its full support for their belief system on Easter Sunday.
Not only didn't they celebrate Jesus, instead, they raised up a wetba....er, I mean a Mexican-looking type who was a Marxist to boot!
But let's take this a step further. Let's say for a moment that we do buy into the Christian belief system and we agree that God is the end all and be all, the creator of all things, the lord high muck-a-muck of eternity, the universe(s) and everything in between. He (and by extension, Jesus), can do anything, is all powerful, is the architect of our bodies, lives, minds, everything we think, say, and see and a whole lot more besides.
Does this entity really need the Google doodle to validate him?
If you believe in the all powerful being described above, what do you care that an internet company doesn't get with the program? I mean, according to Christian beliefs, all those Google types and everyone else who doesn't side with you are all going straight to hell, right?
So why care? Why all the enmity and hate from those whose belief system is supposedly based on forgiveness and love?
I'm surprised that Fox News hasn't had more to say about The War on April Fools Day.
@Jack Mahoney: they had planned to, but when Fox "News" researchers discovered that today was Rachel Maddow's birthday, they shifted to a 24-hour War on Rachel Maddow.
Alternate explanation: Fox is still working off the Julian Calendar, & April 1 is a couple of weeks off. Check back with Fox around April 14 (Gregorian).
Marie Burns
P.S. I can't convert from one calendar to the other off the top of my head. But I found a great calendar converter.
Marie,
Hey, if Fox IS working off the Julian calendar (great conversion site, btw), then they fucked up on their Washington's birthday celebration (are you surprised?).
According to the "old style" calendar, the old cherry tree chopper was actually born on February 11, 1731, not February 22, 1732 (a conveniently official way to make yourself younger).
I'm shocked, shocked, that Fox didn't have an official Day of Outrage to denounce the degenerate modernists who fucked with their beloved method for calculating days left over from days of the Roman Republic, back in the good old days when women had no rights and pretty much everyone who wasn't an insider or a citizen was sold as chattel, thereby messing with the civil holy day celebrating the birth of famous FFJ--friend of Jesus--Gen. Washington.
And, Jack, I don't think April 1 has any Christian significance (although that's not necessarily a reason not to be outraged) so the Fox ninnies can relax. But they have so long a time to wait until they can trumpet the next War on ________ (fill in the Christian holiday) that they may have to invent one or two to tide them over.
How about War on Praying Before Entering Interstate On-ramps.
Liberals are insisting that people not pull over to pray for half an hour or so while negotiating highway on-ramps.
Satan worshipers! All of 'em.
Re: "He (and by extension, Jesus), can do anything, is all powerful, is the architect of our bodies, lives, minds, everything we think, say, and see and a whole lot more besides."
Ak, You're talking about making bunnies deliver chicken eggs to undeserving children, right?
I got one; Why does the Christian Right think they have got a lock on Jesus? "Don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus."
When is someone going to say; "Don't fuck with my Jesus!"
I got a Jesus and He was absolutely stoked Cesar Chavez got a birthday shout out on Google. In fact I saw the card he sent;
" Dear Cesar, good to see you at Hugo's welcome party last week. Maybe too much Patron that night; Ah chihuahua; we'll do it again for Fidel when he get here, Feliz cumplianos amigo; tu compadre, Jesus
Another US torture center:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/01/british-troops-witness-us-torture
"...we should pause for a moment and reflect on this weekend's Easter benediction from Ross Cardinal Douthat, primate of the Archdiocese Of Stickupyerassistan."
Above, loved the apropos title bestowed on Douthat from this morning's blog batch of the wicked wit and wisdom of Charles P. Pierce (to which CW linked). The added bonus: the challenge of attempting to make sense of Peggy Noonan's befuddled remarks. It was nearly impossible to connect her subject/verb agreements (Not so much), cohesive thread (Nada. Zip. Ditto), clarity of points (ditto, ditto). Tell me again, someone, anyone... verify that she's really, truly, deeply, sadly a writer? More like ...the rambling wreck of talk show dreck (apologies to Georgia Tech for paraphrasing your lyrics). Ah, Peggy, Peggy...at a certain age, flirtatious cuteness simply doesn't get a girl very far.
Personally I'm surprised that the Cyprus bailout isn't getting more attention than it has been. The fact that they had initially included depositors of as little as 20,000€ (if memory serves me well) is unprecedented. I realize that our U.S. style bank welfare indirectly does the same by giving out taxpayer dollars to the banksters, but the one-time direct 7% tax on the typical family was an incredible idea. Changing the Cyprus deal to only depositors over 100,000€ surely saved some scalps, but the insistence that the bank's wealthy depositors and its creditors help foot the bill is quite revolutionary. And it appears that while initially coined as a "special case" that wouldn't be repeated, the cat's out of the bag now after the head of the Euro Group, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, told reporters that the Cyprus bailout could become a new "model" for future bailout cases......
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/cyprus-bank-bailout-model-has-increasing-numbers-of-adherents-in-eu-a-891849.html
What kind of effects could such a policy change create? I'm no financial wizard, so I hope ol' Krugman has something to say about this...
May I again remind you that our Lady of the Vapors, Ms. Noonan, when asked by a reporter some years back whom she considered to be the most important female person in history so far, she replied, the Virgin Mary. Ya'll gotta keep that little nugget in mind when we try and make heads or tails out of the Lady's incoherent ramblings; she lives in another world other than the one we do––one look at her rosary beads tells the whole story––they are worn down to fractions of their former selves or so I've been told.