The Commentariat -- January 7

Lesley Hazleton reads the Koran:

Justin Fox of the Harvard Business Review: "There doesn't have to be a problem with a revolving door between government jobs and non-government jobs. The fact that people in the U.S. can easily pop back and forth between government, academia, and the private sector has for most of the nation's history been more strength than weakness.... The Wall Street connection is something different.... This gap between what ... Wall Street [employees] ... make and the money to be earned in government or other sectors of the economy is huge — and it cannot help but have consequences.... With that kind of pay differential [nearly 3,000 %!], Wall Street inevitably begins to emit a giant sucking sound as it hoovers up smart, self-interested people." ...

... Felix Salmon of Reuters: "Government is perfectly capable, were it so inclined, of shrinking the financial sector and making it much less profitable.... But it’s not going to happen, because the public servants who could enact such a change currently have the ability to earn millions ... when they leave DC....  The real value of a government position, especially in the economic team, is in the marginal net present value of all those juicy future earnings that you’ll be offered.... [Conversely,] people like Hank Paulson or Bill Daley have already made their Wall Street millions.... The problem in these cases is that after so many years on Wall Street these people have internalized the worldview of the financial sector...: what good for Goldman Sachs is good for America."

Ken Terry on B-Net: "Even as congressional Republicans try to repeal the healthcare reform law, and as a federal court in Florida nears a decision on its constitutionality, evidence is emerging that that legislation is benefiting small companies by making health coverage more affordable. Considering that small businesspeople are among the most reliable Republican supporters, this unexpected bonus to small firms is another blow to the GOP’s claim that it has a popular mandate to overturn reform." Terry mentions an underlying Los Angeles Times story by Noam Levey, which is here. ...

... CW: Ezra Klein has better, less dismissive answers to David Brooks' objections to the healthcare bill than I did. ...

... And here's Klein's argument against the irrational Republican Tea Party-bred disdain for public sector workers: "The main argument against the Obama administration is that it hasn't saved enough jobs. But in the public sector, which is obviously where the government has the easiest time savings jobs, the argument is that they've saved too many of them." ...

... Felix Salmon explains the reality behind today's jobs number: "... For those keeping track at home, that’s employment up by 103,000 and unemployment down by a whopping 556,000.... We need to see 150,000 new jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth.... Unemployment is down ... only for those who have been out of work for less than 26 weeks. The ranks of the long-term unemployed are still rising. Meanwhile, the numbers of 'discouraged' people continue to rise very fast." ...

... Michael Powell & Sewell Chan of the New York Times: "The rate of growth — 103,000 jobs in December — is an indication that the unemployment rate will likely remain high through the rest of President Obama’s four-year term."

Constitutional law Prof. David Cole has found a WikeLeaked copy of "The Conservative Constitution of the United States," & has unveiled it to Washington Post readers. The Preamble:

We, the Real Americans, in order to form a more God-Fearing Union, establish Justice as we see it, Defeat Health-Care Reform, and Preserve and Protect our Property, our Guns and our Right Not to Pay Taxes, do ordain and establish this Conservative Constitution for the United States of Real America.

Here's something else that's LOL funny, and it's real. Jonathan Allen of Politico: "In a letter to be distributed Friday night, Reps. Pete Sessions and Mike Fitzpatrick apologize to all 433 of their House colleagues for voting after missing out on taking their official oath of office.... The swearing-in of members of Congress is required by Article 6 of the Constitution, and Republican leaders scrambled to come up with a fix to rectify their invalid votes." ...

... Anthony Weiner has a lot of fun at Republicans' expense. Think Progress reports:

This [Pentagon] budget has basically doubled in the last decade. And my own experience here is in that doubling, we've lost our ability to prioritize, to make hard decisions, to do tough analysis, to make trades. -- Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs ...

... Mark Thompson of Time on Mullen's remark: "Such profound truths are rarely heard on-camera inside the Pentagon." Thompson's take on the Pentagon's proposed budget trims is worth reading. Basically, he says the cuts aren't as big as the headlines suggest.

** "The 'Benjamin Button' Congress." Ron Brownstein of the National Journal: "House Republicans' ... agenda revolves almost entirely around reducing Washington’s role.... Politically, their strategy rests on the assumption that Americans who recoiled from the president’s agenda to expand government will welcome Republican efforts to diminish it.... But ... in several respects, this second round of conflicts could allow Obama and Democrats to frame the choices in ways more favorable to them." ...

... Also, Brownstein on "White Flight": "By any standard, white voters’ rejection of Democrats in November’s elections was daunting and even historic. Fully 60 percent of whites nationwide backed Republican candidates for the House of Representatives; only 37 percent supported Democrats.... These results ... could carry profound implications for 2012. They suggest that economic recovery alone may not solve the president’s problems with many of the white voters...."

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post: "Republicans these days can't get through a sentence without tossing in their new favorite adjective, 'job-killing.' ... What's so curious is that it's hard to find almost any Republican concern about employment homicide during 2008, when George W. Bush was president and the economy was shedding 4.4 million jobs.' ... There is an unmistakable redbaiting quality to the 'job-killing' rhetoric." What's so ironic about the tactic is that it is Republicans who are proposing job-killing legislation.

** Matt Yglesias likes Gene Sperling, and here's why.

Matt Bai of the New York Times: "... if anything, this week’s appointments [of Bill Daley & the anticipated appointment of Gene Sperling] would seem to represent a continuation of the ideological course Mr. Obama has been following since before he took the oath of office, rather than any substantive shift in his worldview." CW: Obama was never a liberal, kids. ...

... Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "... in tapping Daley, Obama has begun to reach outside his comfort zone." ...

... Think Daley is a good choice? Well there's this from David Drucker of Roll Call: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell praised President Barack Obama on Thursday for choosing business executive William Daley to serve as White House chief of staff." ...

... On the other hand, there's this:

With Wall Street reporting record profits while middle class Americans continue to struggle in a deep recession, the announcement that William Daley, who has close ties to Big Banks and Big Business, will now lead the White House staff is troubling and sends the wrong message to the American people. -- Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org

... Royal Court Gossip. Toby Harnden of the Telegraph: "It’s being reported by John King on CNN right now that [Robert] Gibbs wanted to be a presidential counsellor ... but William Daley, the new chief of staff, nixed this.... So that’s why Gibbs is out. Additionally, King reports that Valerie Jarrett, whose sole qualification to being a senior counsellor seems to be that she’s a long-time Chicago buddy of Barack and Michelle Obama, will have her wings clipped. Daley, not Jarrett, will be the person speaking to the business community." ...

     ... Sam Stein: both Gibbs & Daley deny the story about Gibbs. CW: neither man says anything about Jarrett's "demotion." ...

... This story by Elizabeth Williamson of the Wall Street Journal is receiving a lot of attention today; headline -- "President Revs up Campaign to Make Peace with Business." Very reassuring. Because he was always so anti-business till now.

Oh, here's a surprise. Speaker Boehner can't think of a single military or homeland security program to cut:

Mark Landler & Scott Shane of the New York Times: "The State Department is warning hundreds of human rights activists, foreign government officials and businesspeople identified in leaked diplomatic cables of potential threats to their safety and has moved a handful of them to safer locations, administration officials said Thursday. The operation ... reflects the administration’s fear that the disclosure of cables obtained by the organization WikiLeaks has damaged American interests by exposing foreigners who supply valuable information to the United States." ...

... Intrigue! Kim Severson & Robbie Brown of the New York Times: "Odyssey Marine Exploration, a Tampa, Fla., deep-sea treasure hunting company, is using classified cables from the State Department [released by WikiLeaks] in its legal battle with Spain over who owns $500 million of gold and silver retrieved in 2007 from the wreckage of a Spanish galleon off the coast of Portugal.... Odyssey says [the cables] show that the [American] ambassador [to Spain] offered to assist Spain in the fight over the sunken treasure." A stolen Pissarro figures in! Nazis! Eric Holder is implicated! Congressmen are blaming Hillary Clinton!

Jon Stewart seems to disapprove of the Goldman Sachs-Facebook deal:

Bill Vlasic of the New York Times: "The Big Three automakers have made strides in fuel economy but still rely on light trucks and S.U.V.’s for profits."

State of the States

Paul Krugman: the conservative governor and legislators in Texas have left the state in a fiscal mess even after Gov. Rick Perry boasted/lied about the state's having a huge surplus. Oh, and they're not of a mind to make things right. Krugman sees Texas as an omen of what to expect in every state where conservatives reign. ...

... Kim Severson of the New York Times: A Georgia state Hope program, "the largest merit-based college scholarship program in the United States..., offers any Georgia high school student with a B-average four years of free college tuition. But the Hope scholarship program is about to be cut by a new governor and Legislature facing staggering financial troubles."

Aflockalypse. Seth Borenstein of the AP: "First, the blackbirds fell out of the sky on New Year's Eve in Arkansas. In recent days, wildlife have mysteriously died in big numbers: 2 million fish in the Chesapeake Bay, 150 tons of red tilapia in Vietnam, 40,000 crabs in Britain and other places across the world. Blogs connected the deadly dots, joking about the "aflockalypse" while others saw real signs of something sinister, either biblical or environmental. The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated."

Update on Ted Williams. JoAnne Viviano of the AP: "A homeless man whose silky announcing voice has catapulted him to national fame reunited Thursday with his mother, recorded a commercial for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and agreed to do voiceover work for MSNBC." CW: I sure hope this guy is getting some high-quality help.