The Commentariat -- July 6

I've posted another Open Thread on Off Times Square for today. I've added my comment on Maureen Dowd's column. There's another lively discussion going on today. And teevee shows!

The differences in this debate could not be clearer. Republicans want to end Medicare and target the middle class while protecting millionaires and billionaires. We are focused on cutting wasteful spending and ending special treatment for the wealthy elite and the well-connected. That’s what this debate is all about. -- Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.)

 I meant to post this sooner, after a reader mentioned it, and I forgot. So better late than never:

Twitter: "... at 2pm Eastern Time, the White House will hold its first Twitter Town Hall, and United States President Barack Obama will answer Twitter users’ questions about the American economy -- live at askobama.twitter.com.... Tweet your questions on the economy and be sure to include the hashtag #AskObama.  You can track the conversation in three great ways: Watch the event live at http//askobama.twitter.com,  follow live Tweets from @townhall, or search the hashtag #AskObama."

David Rogers of Politico (yes, Politico) has a terrific summary of where the debt ceiling talks stand. ...

... Jay Newton-Small of Time on "The Five Stages of Washington Theatrics." ...

... New York Times Editors: "The poor and disabled people who rely on Medicaid to pay their medical bills could be in grave jeopardy in this sour I’ve-got-mine political climate.... President Obama ... must be careful not to trade away his goal of near-universal coverage to burnish his credentials as a deficit-cutter." ...

... So I guess we can say we’re beginning to talk about something with this rather pathetic response from the majority leader. I’m not happy about that. -- Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), on the Sense of the Senate Resolution (pdf) proferred by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, which declares, "It is the sense of the Senate that any agreement to reduce the budget deficit should require that those earning $1,000,000 or more per year make a more meaningful contribution to the deficit reduction effort." ...

While today, obviously, we’re not going to have anything really serious to talk about — it’s just a sense of the Senate — my sense is that very quickly we’re going to have something before us that actually is real. -- Bob Corker (R-Tenn.)

... Apparently, nothing irritates Republicans more than the prospect that millionaires and billionaires might be asked to share in the burden of deficit reduction. -- Adam Jentleson, spokesperson for Reid ...

... Both Sessions and Corker are multi-millionaires. -- Constant Weader

... Steve Wamhoff of Citizens for Tax Justice: "Many corporate leaders have noted that other OECD (European) countries have lowered their corporate tax rates in recent years, but fail to mention that these countries have also closed corporate tax loopholes while the U.S. has expanded them. As a result, the U.S. collects less corporate taxes as a share of GDP than all but one of the 26 OECD countries for which data are available." (pdf) ...

... Fanatic to Brooks: "To Hell with Deficit Reduction." Alex Seitz-Wald of Think Progress: After David Brooks criticized Republican “'fanatic[s]' with a 'sacred fixation' on tax cuts," Paul Ryan responded on Laura Ingraham's radio talk show: "What happens if you do what he’s saying, is then you can’t lower tax rates.... If you take away the tax loopholes without lowering tax rates, then you deny Congress the ability to lower everybody’s tax rates and you keep people’s tax rates high." That is, Ryan refuses to close tax loopholes to reduce the deficit, but he might close them in exchange for some other new tax breaks (probably for the rich). CW: as Paul Krugman and others have said many times (here, for instance, and here), so-called "deficit hawks" like Ryan do not care about the deficit at all; they just use the deficit as an excuse to cut government spending. ...

... PLUS, Digby writes: "The only 'loopholes' they [Republicans] want closed are those that benefit working people --- like the Earned Income Tax Credit." ...

... Jim Newell of Gawker: "So why won't Republicans accept this deal? Probably not because New York Times elite Republican David Brooks waited so long to point out how sweet it is. Instead, there are 17 days remaining until the Administration's imposed deadline for a debt-ceiling deal, which is 17 more days to wean concessions from the concession-friendly Democratic party." CW: besides the serious point Newell makes, this is a pretty funny post, & comes complete with this photo we can never get enough of:

... "Bloggers Bop ... Brooks." Reid Epstein of Politico: Aw, poor Brooks is getting no love from the left or the right. CW: But he got the love from me, because -- despite the fallacy of his opening argument & even if, as I suspect, Karl Rove (who has no love for the Tea Party) ghost-wrote the piece -- his admissions that his party was overrun with immoral fanatics was a great ideological breakthrough for Our Mister Brooks.

NEW. Jamie Dimon, America's Biggest Welfare King (Would Not Stoop to Driving a Pink Cadillac). Jesse Eisenger of ProPublica: The "bailout never ended. 'In effect, we nationalized the biggest banks years ago," [former investment banker Herbert] Allison said. 'We implicitly guaranteed them. The taxpayers are still the ultimate owners of the risk in those banks -- they just don't get equity returns for that ownership.' So when taxpayers hear a bank chief, like Jamie Dimon, complaining, it's worth keeping in mind that his 10-figure paycheck is largely coming courtesy of us."

News Flash. Ezra Klein: "Most authorities don’t think the stimulus failed. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, for instance, says it created between 1.2 million and 4.6 million jobs 'compared to what would’ve happened otherwise.' IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com all estimate that the laws ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. Economists Mark Zandi and Alan Blinder put it at 2.7 million jobs."

NEW. Joe Klein of Time: Illegal immigration from Mexico to the U.S. has fallen from about 500,000 a year to less than 100,000. Klein says this is because "Increased surveillance and fencing have made it tougher to cross the border. Decreased economic activity in the U.S. has made border-hopping a less attractive option. And life seems to have gotten significantly better, with greater options for success, in Mexico. This is lovely news." CW: I've always said that the long-term solution to the problem of illegal immigration was a better standard of living in the sending countries. I did not say a lower standard of living in the U.S. was a great idea, but that's what we've got.

John Broder of the New York Times: "In the next weeks and months, Lisa P. Jackson, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, is scheduled to establish regulations on smog, mercury, carbon dioxide, mining waste and vehicle emissions that will affect every corner of the economy. She is working under intense pressure from opponents in Congress, from powerful industries, from impatient environmentalists and from the Supreme Court, which just affirmed the agency’s duty to address global warming emissions, a project that carries profound economic implications.... No other cabinet officer is in as lonely or uncomfortable a position as Ms. Jackson, who has been left, as one adviser put it, behind enemy lines with only science, the law and a small band of loyal lieutenants to support her." CW: I have to say I was afraid Jackson would be a Ken Salazar-type doll, but she is proving to be one tough lady. Three cheers!

New York Times Editors: "News of the World, a sex-and-celebrity pillar of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire," is accused of having hacked into the cellphone of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old British girl who had gone missing. "A lawyer for Milly’s family, Mark Lewis, said that after she vanished but before her body was found, News of the World hacked into her cellphone, recording anguished voice messages from relatives and friends.... When the phone’s memory was full, the paper’s operatives deleted some messages to make room for new ones. This baffled the police and made Milly’s family think she was alive, deleting the messages herself. News of the World faced prosecutions and lawsuits for hacking phones of movie stars and British royals. That was slimy. The news that it violated the privacy of a family during a criminal inquiry sends it off a moral precipice." ...

... Jeremy Peters & Brian Stelter of the New York Times: "... the widening voice-mail hacking scandal at the British tabloid News of the World threatens to stain the company’s image in a way that other embarrassing incidents at News Corporation’s far-flung media properties — which also include the Fox networks and The New York Post — have not."

Adam Serwer of American Prospect: "... Jewish voters remain firmly in the Democratic camp, and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon. But no matter — 'Jews abandoning Democrats' is one of those zombie memes sustained by the futile efforts of Jewish conservatives to make it a self-fulfilling prophesy, and as long as it remains a seductive storyline for political reporters and commentators, it’ll never die no matter how many times it’s shown to be false."

Jim Dwyer of the New York Times: Oh, there's still a case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. (Link corrected.)

Right Wing World *

The legislation the President has asked for – which would increase taxes on small businesses and destroy more American jobs – cannot pass the House, as I have stated repeatedly.  The American people simply won’t stand for it.  And their elected representatives in Congress won’t vote for it. -- Speaker John Boehner, in a press release ...

... The American people won't stand for it, Mr. Speaker? Actually, yes they will, you Lying Scum, Sir. In fact, an overwhelming majority has consistently demanded it. Look at the responses to Question 14 on these WashPo/ABC News polls.

Dog Whistling to the Radical Right. Ed Kilgore of The New Republic, on what Michele Bachman really means when she prominently & repeatedly describes herself as a "Constitutional conservative": "... the ... label hints broadly at a more audacious agenda ultimately aimed at bringing back the lost American Eden of the 1920s, if not an earlier era.... Restoring the Founders’ design ... means overturning Roe v. Wade and abandoning the idolatrous fiction of church-state separation."

Eve Conant of the Daily Beast: "Former (and current) Neo Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Confederates, and other representatives of the many wings of the 'white nationalist' movement are starting to file paperwork and print campaign literature for offices large and small, pointing to rising unemployment, four years with an African-American president, and rampant illegal immigration as part of a growing mound of evidence that white people need to take a stand. Most aren’t winning—not yet. But they’re drawing levels of support that surprise and alarm groups that keep tabs on the white-power movement...." ...

... OR, as Jeff Neumann of Gawker puts it, "The current field of 2012 GOP presidential candidates is pretty boring. You've got several grouchy old men, a pizza magnate, and a walking anal sex joke. So why not a white supremacist? Sure, the GOP has noted xenophobes like Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, but they lack the panache of an openly racist candidate. But that could soon change, as 1990s throwback David Duke prepares to embark on a tour of 26 states to feel out his chances of putting the 'white' back in the White House."

WPA did not bring us out of the depression. The war did. We look back at the stimulus, nearly a trillion dollars gone down the drain. -- Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, who is stupider than shit, to wit: ...

... Steve Benen, in a post titled "The Biggest Stimulus of All Time": "Shelby may find this confusing, but the war helped the economy because the government was spending like crazy. Indeed, during the war, policymakers spent an enormous amount of money, imposed extremely high tax rates, and took on massive debts — and the economy soared."

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

President Obama holds a Twitter townhall at 2:00 pm ET. (See the July 7 Commentariat for the video.) ...

     ... Update: the New York Times Caucus report by Michael Shear on the Twitterfest is amusing. ...

     ... AND: "On average, Mr. Obama took 2,099 characters to answer his questions, the equivalent of about 15 Twitter messages."

New York Times: "Mexican truckers will be able to carry goods deep into the United States, and vice versa, under a deal signed Wednesday in Mexico City to keep a 17-year-old promise. As part of the deal, Mexico will eliminate tariffs on $2.3 billion of American goods and agricultural products as soon as the first Mexican truck obtains a permit and is allowed to enter the United States. As a preliminary step, the tariffs will be reduced 50 percent by the end of this week."

New York Times: "Lawyers for Dominique Strauss-Kahn emerged from a meeting on Wednesday with Manhattan prosecutors, characterizing the session as 'constructive.'”

New York Times: "Starting this week..., the White House will start sending condolence letters to families of troops who commit suicide in combat zones, which include Afghanistan, Iraq and some other areas that provide support services to combat operations. But families of military personnel who kill themselves in the United States and on foreign bases not considered combat zones will not receive the letters."

Washington Post: "In a marked shift, Republicans are now willing to close some tax loopholes as part of a final deal to raise the nation’s legal borrowing limit, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Wednesday. But Cantor said that raising taxes was still off limits in negotiations to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by the Aug. 2 deadline." ...

     ... The Hill Update: "Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) rejected the idea of a deal to increase the debt ceiling that includes closing tax loopholes while remaining revenue neutral. 'Our focus on tax loopholes seems to be putting Republicans on their heels on the issue of revenues. But if Republicans are going [to] say we can only close these loopholes in a revenue-neutral way, it is like taking one step forward and then two steps back,' Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday. 'The point isn’t to get rid of these loopholes simply to pay for new tax breaks elsewhere, it’s to do it in a way that contributes to the reduction of the debt.'" CW: exactly right.

AP: "House Republicans are siding with food companies resisting the Obama administration's efforts to pressure them to stop advertising junk food for children. Some food companies say the government is going too far with guidelines proposed earlier this year by several government agencies."

New York Times: "New allegations emerged on Wednesday in a scandal over phone-hacking by News Corporation newspapers in Britain, threatening to draw in Prime Minister David Cameron as political pressure mounted on Rebekah Brooks, a top executive of the company" (which is one of Rupert Murdoch's holdings). ...

     ... Story has been updated with a new lede: "Britain’s political establishment ventured onto new and perilous ground on Wednesday as more startling allegations emerged in the voicemail-hacking scandal, with government leaders promising to scrutinize the operations of freewheeling newspapers owned by News Corporation and others that were once seen as too politically influential to challenge."

AP: "More than a dozen men accused of taking part in a series of sexual assaults on an 11-year-old girl are expected in court Wednesday in a case that has divided and horrified their southeast Texas town.... The case shined a sometimes unflattering spotlight on Cleveland, [Texas,] after some in the town of about 9,000 residents suggested the girl was culpable in part for what happened, claiming she wore makeup and looked older. Some also accused her parents, immigrants from Mexico, of not watching her more closely.... Also complicating the case was a belief by many in the predominantly black neighborhood where several of the suspects live that the arrests were racially motivated. All of the suspects are black...."

AP: "Roger Clemens ... is going on trial Wednesday.... Like other players who have been indicted in baseball's steroids era, Clemens has not been charged with drug crimes but instead is accused of lying about drug use. Clemens told a House committee under oath in 2008 that he never used performance-enhancing drugs during a standout 23-season career...."