The Commentariat -- March 4, 2013
Annie Lowrey of the New York Times: The $85 billion in automatic cuts working their way through the federal budget spare many programs that aid the poorest and most vulnerable Americans, including the Children's Health Insurance Program and food stamps. But the sequestration cuts, as they are called, still contain billions of dollars in mandatory budget reductions in programs that help low-income Americans, including one that gives vouchers for housing to the poor and disabled and another that provides fortified baby formula to the children of poor women." ...
... Nelson Schwartz of the New York Times: "With the Dow Jones industrial average flirting with a record high, the split between American workers and the companies that employ them is widening and could worsen in the next few months as federal budget cuts take hold. That gulf helps explain why stock markets are thriving even as the economy is barely growing and unemployment remains stubbornly high. With millions still out of work, companies face little pressure to raise salaries, while productivity gains allow them to increase sales without adding workers. ...
... BUT, hey, Republicans are happy. From the Democratic National Committee:
... You all know this, but this video from Mashable is a fine restatement of the extent of (literally off-the-cart) wealth inequality in the U.S. Thanks to Julie L. for the link:
Obama 2.0. Annie Lowrey: "President Obama plans to nominate Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the president of the Walmart Foundation, as his budget chief, the White House said on Sunday." ...
... Charles Pierce: "Yeah, I'm completely comfortable that she only worked for the 'philanthropic' side of the world's most conspicuous sweatshop-enabler and government-services sinkhole, and now she's going to advise the president on exactly how much austerity he can 'bring to the table.' ..."
... Jeff Mason of Reuters: "President Barack Obama will announce his intent on Monday to nominate air quality expert Gina McCarthy to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz to head the Department of Energy, a White House official said. McCarthy would likely become the face of Obama's latest push to fight climate change. Currently the assistant administrator for the EPA Office of Air and Radiation, she would replace Lisa Jackson, who has stepped down as EPA chief."
Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "Reelected with strong support from women, ethnic minorities and gays, [President] Obama is moving quickly to change the face of the federal judiciary by the end of his second term, setting the stage for another series of drawn-out confrontations with Republicans in Congress. The president has named three dozen judicial candidates since January and is expected to nominate scores more over the next few months, aides said. The push marks a significant departure from the sluggish pace of appointments throughout much of his first term.... The new wave of [ethnically & sexually diverse] nominations is part of an effort by Obama to cement a legacy that long outlives his presidency and makes the court system more closely resemble the changing society it governs, administration officials said." The Post has a graphic here, demonstrating the diversity of Obama's new nominees.
Jessica Silver-Greenberg & Ben Protess of the New York Times: "The nation's biggest banks wrongfully foreclosed on more than 700 military members during the housing crisis and seized homes from roughly two dozen other borrowers who were current on their mortgage payments, findings that eclipse earlier estimates of the improper evictions. Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo uncovered the foreclosures while analyzing mortgages as part of a multibillion-dollar settlement deal with federal authorities.... In January, regulators ordered the banks to identify military members and other borrowers who were evicted in violation of federal law."
Reid Epstein of Politico: John "Boehner told NBC's 'Meet the Press' in an interview that aired Sunday the House will vote this week to keep the federal government operating through September, when the fiscal year ends, and avoid a potentially politically damaging shutdown." ...
... Steve Benen: "... the Speaker insisted, "[T]here's no plan from Senate Democrats or the White House to replace the sequester." Host David Gregory explained that the claim is "just not true.' ...
Well, David that's just nonsense. If [President Obama] had a plan, why wouldn't Senate Democrats go ahead and pass it? -- John Boehner, responding to Gregory
... "Now, I suppose it's possible that the Speaker of the House doesn't know what a Senate filibuster is.... The facts are not in dispute: Democrats unveiled a compromise measure that required concessions from both sides; the plan enjoyed majority support in the Senate; and Republicans filibustered the proposal."
... Kimberly Kindy & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Following Boehner on 'Meet the Press,' Gene Sperling, the chairman of Obama's National Economic Council, agreed that it appeared likely the two sides could avoid threatening a shutdown. That would mean the sequester would remain in effect until the end of the fiscal year. But Sperling insisted that Obama will work to undo its cuts in coming months as part of a broader discussion about continued deficit reduction."
I hope that him and I can put this behind us.... -- Gene Sperling, on his dust-up with Bob Woodward. I hope him got better grades in arithmetic than in English; if not, were doomed!
... Charles Pierce on the Sunday shows. ...
... Driftglass on the Sunday shows.
Phillip Rawls of the AP: "The vice president and black leaders commemorating a famous civil rights march on Sunday said efforts to diminish the impact of African-Americans' votes haven't stopped in the years since the 1965 Voting Rights Act added millions to Southern voter rolls. More than 5,000 people followed Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma's annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee. The event commemorates the 'Bloody Sunday' beating of voting rights marchers -- including a young Lewis -- by state troopers as they began a march to Montgomery in March 1965. The 50-mile march prompted Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act that struck down impediments to voting by African-Americans and ended all-white rule in the South." ...
... Mount Rushmore but for Vietnam:
Ezra Klein backs off the thesis of his pollyannish column in which he suggested Democrats & Republicans could make a deal if they only established better communications. "... as long as the GOP's position is they won't compromise, there's not going to be a compromise." CW: Read the whole post, which provides a fascinating illustration of Jonathan Chait's argument that "If Obama could get hold of Klein's mystery legislator, [who said if Obama would only agree to chained CPI, a deal was do-able,] and inform him of his budget offer, it almost certainly wouldn't make a difference. He would come up with something -- the cuts aren't real, or the taxes are awful, or they can't trust Obama to carry them out, or something."
Jake Miller of CBS News: "In a wide-ranging discussion [on Fox "News"], [Mitt Romney] and his wife, Ann Romney, opened up on the reasons for their loss, their adjustment to life after the campaign, and President Obama's leadership since his reelection, making clear that they were disappointed by the loss, but even more disappointed about the direction the country has taken since then. 'Nero is fiddling,' Romney said...." ...
... You can watch the interview here. ...
Caroline Bankoff of New York: "Despite son Tagg's December claim that his father didn't even want to be president, the couple seemed pretty bummed about the outcome of the 2012 election. 'I mourn the fact that he's not [in the White House]," said Ann, who admitted that she still sometimes cries about the loss. "You know, the great Princess Bride line, 'mostly dead?' I'm mostly over it, but not completely. You have moments where you, you know, go back and feel the sorrow of the loss. And so, yes, I think we're not mostly dead yet.' When asked about what it's like to watch Washington from the outside, Mitt responded, "I wish I were there. It kills me to not be there, to not be in the White House doing what needs to be done." Thanks to contributor MAG for the link. ...
... We did very well with the majority population, but not with minority populations, and that was a failing, that was a real mistake.... I think the Obamacare attractiveness and feature was something we underestimated, particularly among lower incomes. And, uh, just didn't do as good a job in connecting with that audience as we should have. -- Mitt Romney, explaining his November loss ...
... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "During the course of the interview, Romney agreed with [Chris] Wallace that his '47 percent' comment -- his claim that 47 percent of the country will vote for Obama because they are 'dependent upon government' ... -- hurt his campaign.... Nevertheless, the explanation [he gave Sunday for] ... his loss is reminiscent of the explanation he gave his donors for his defeat shortly after the election -- Obama won because of 'the gifts' he gave to African-Americans, Latinos and young voters."
What I said is not what I believe. -- Mitt Romney, on his 47 percent remark ...
... Ouch! Daniel Larison of the American Conservative: "Romney supporters often relied on his record as a famously unprincipled political weather-vane to defend him against any substantive criticism of what he said during the campaign on the grounds that he didn't or couldn't 'really' believe it.... Of course, it never mattered whether Romney 'really' believed what he was saying, because it became clear years ago that he would have said almost anything to win.
I'm happy to blame the media.... It was not just the campaign's fault -- I believe it was the media's fault as well. He was not being given a fair shake. -- Ann Romney, on one reason her husband lost the 2012 election ...
... Problem: The campaign controlled the media's access to the candidate, so blaming them both at the same time is a touch precious.-- Erik Wemple of the Washington Post ...
... Problem: Mitt is an all-around pandering, lying dickhead & Ann is a pompous bee-otch, so blaming them both at the same time seems just about right. -- Constant Weader ...
... Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs: "... can you believe these spoiled whiny multi-millionaires? They lost the election because the American people saw through the pandering to the true Mitt Romney: the rich elitist snob who held them in contempt, and would blatantly lie in his quest for power. With every ungracious word out of their mouths, the Romneys just confirm that this impression was dead on." ...
... Charles Pierce: "The one thing I can say for absolute certainty, after watching Willard Romney try to impersonate a carbon-based life-form for over a year, is that 'people' got as good a look at who he really is as they have of any candidate in the past 20 years. His problem was that he couldn't even fake being a fake well enough."
Paul Krugman: Florida Gov. Rick Scott's support for the Medicaid extension to the Affordable Care Act "came with a condition: he was willing to cover more of the uninsured only after receiving a waiver that would let him run Medicaid through private insurance companies.... This is all about spending taxpayer money.... And despite some feeble claims to the contrary, privatizing Medicaid will end up requiring more, not less, government spending, because there's overwhelming evidence that Medicaid is much cheaper than private insurance.... As long as the spending ends up lining the right pockets, and the undeserving beneficiaries of public largess are politically connected corporations, conservatives with actual power seem to like Big Government just fine."
Steve Rattner, in a New York Times op-ed: "Slapping a catchy acronym like the JOBS Act on a piece of legislation makes it more difficult for politicians to oppose it -- and indeed that's what happened with the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. Unveiled a year ago by House Republican leaders, the proposal was rushed into law with large majorities just two months later; its provisions are gradually taking effect.... The JOBS Act has little to do with employment; it's a hodgepodge of provisions that together constitute the greatest loosening of securities regulation in modern history.... The largest number of jobs likely to be created by the JOBS Act will be for lawyers needed to clean up the mess that it will create.
John Burns of the New York Times: "Britain's most senior Roman Catholic cleric, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, acknowledged Sunday that he had been guilty of sexual misconduct, a week after he announced his resignation and said he would not attend the conclave to choose the next pope. The moves followed revelations that three current and one former priest had accused him of inappropriate sexual contact dating back decades.... Many analysts saw the cardinal's resignation and absence from the conclave as a result of papal pressure, and British newspapers have cited unidentified Vatican officials as saying Pope Benedict -- who stunned the world with his own announcement on Feb. 11 that he would step down -- had ordered the cardinal to remove himself." ...
... There's always been sinners in the church but there's always been saints. -- Cardinal Cormac O'Connor, on O'Brien's hypocrisy. Later, O'Connor said he have forgiven Gene Sperling for him's ungrammatical remark
Local News
Tara Culp-Ressler of Think Progress: "Arkansas' GOP-controlled legislature has voted to override their governor's veto of a 'fetal pain' abortion ban, ensuring the legislation will immediately take effect. Gov. Mike Beebe (D) vetoed the measure on Tuesday, explaining he felt the 20-week ban would run afoul of women's constitutional right to an abortion under Roe v. Wade, but Arkansas lawmakers can override the governor with a simple majority in both chambers."
News Ledes
Reuters: "Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday there was 'finite' time for talks between Iran and world powers on its disputed nuclear program to bear fruit, but gave no hint how long Washington may be willing to negotiate. Israel, Iran's arch-enemy and convinced Tehran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, has grown impatient with the protracted talks and has threatened pre-emptive war against Tehran if it deems diplomacy ultimately futile."
Locusts!
Reuters: "Roman Catholic cardinals filed into the Vatican on Monday for preliminary meetings to sketch an identikit for the next pope and ponder who among them might be best to lead a church beset by crises." ...
... AP: "Swarms of locusts have descended on Egypt, raising fears they could spread to Israel ... ahead of the Passover."
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Reader Comments (14)
For Akhilleus and any other classically educated people:
Happy Exelaunei Day!!!
@Victoria. Now that is obscure. The militaristic topic of the poem, however, seems to make celebration of Exelaunei Day somewhat inappropriate for readers of Reality Elénchous. March forth, indeed.
Marie
P.S. Yes, I hadda look it up. All of it.
Thank you, Julie, (and Marie) for that video mit chart. It's extraordinary graphics leaves one a little breathless even though we know the facts.
As Pepe said, the charts used to describe wealth inequality leave you a little stunned, even while already knowing the general facts. This video is a good intro. to an article by Nelson Schwartz on the front page of the NYT with its lead-in that reads,
"Experts estimate so-called budget sequestration could cost the country about 700,000 jobs, but Wall Street doesn’t expect the cuts to substantially alter corporate profits or threaten stock markets."
First of all, how do these facts not incite fury and anger toward our political clown class? In a time of record unemployment, our coward congress critters impose budget cuts that they know will put around 700,000 people out of work. At a time when good-paying jobs are a rarity and the competition already fierce. Those fucking assholes.
And all this deficit mongering is being financed by the 1% Pete Peterson asswipes that need MORE wealth/power than they already have. It's really an incredible spectacle to watch.
And despite the social harm and the army of unemployed these self-imposed shenanigans are creating, Wall Street and Corporate Inc. don't skip a beat. Hell, they're seeing record growth! This is the face of unregulated capitalism. And this is the future of my country and its future generations who will scrap and claw for their share of the shrinking pie living within the borders of the richest nation on earth.
The system's broken. I got into an argument with my economics professor the other day when taking about the future growth of the African continent. He praised the joys of so many people, so many consumers, so many opportunities for work! Let the market free upon African soil!
In my own humble opinion, however, with the exportation of Western-style "governance" since the 80's, from the political class to the entrepreneurial class, bottom lines outweigh any other outcomes. Do more with less has become the mantra to the worshippers of the Market.
Employ 10 people and share the wealth, or squeeze 5 employees until they work themselves to death and then maybe pick up a replacement? Number two wins EVERY TIME nowadays.
We could theoretically employ nearly the entire global working population, but it would require significant state intervention and shared sacrifice among the civil society. But when you cut out the government from its duty to serve the general interest (thanks Washington Consensus!) and open the door to private interests, collectivism goes out the door and the sacrifice turns into sacrificing others for yourself, and not vice versa.
Sorry for the rant, but this is among the biggest challenges my generation will face and the 1% finance doesn't show any signs of easing up any time soon. If things continue in this direction, I'm seriously considering moving to the mountains and living off the grid with nothing but a little garden, some goats, and a make-your-own-beer kit. Hopefully we'll have national wifi by then so I can still stay connected to Reality Chex.
Cardinal O'Brien was asked to remove himself???? As opposed to moving him on so he can continue to make like a predator with others. In the secular world its akin to "self deportation".
Where is Pope Gregory IX and his inquisitive minions who stamp out perversity, heretical or otherwise, when you need them. I think a good inquisition would do the trick.
Yikes. Lord and Lady Small Balls have slipped their guards. The Bastille personnel isn't as reliable as it used to be. They thoroughly stunk up the landscape in their endeavor to pilfer everything that wasn't nailed down. Their presence is no longer required or wanted. This is one of those moments when I feel nostalgic for the French Revolution, well...at least the guillotine part. (I do like frequent bathing, perfumed hankies to cover the stench not so much) Vive La France!!!!
The wealth inequalities that are stunningly exposed in the video graphics ought to be shown over and over in various media contexts. Perhaps it would wake a lot more people — and shame others! Unfortunately, not counting on the shaming happening much.
Moving on to laugh-out-loud-tears-rolling-down-my cheeks, Charlie Pierce in wicked good form: "I can say categorically that yesterday was the greatest day for gobshitery in the blog's brief history. Imagine! Bob Woodward invites the president to come along to his house with Gene Sperling! Actual journalism on Disco Dave's Disco Dance Party, for a moment, anyway! And Dennis Rodman, International Troubleshooter, stops by to chat with The Clinton Guy Who Was Shocked By Blowjobs. This was Disneyland for Gobshites.
Read more: What Are The Gobshites Saying These Days? - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Greatest_Gobshitery_Ever#ixzz2MaHuI3Y7
P.S. to CW: about Sperling's mangled grammar, I see that her and me concur!!!!
@MAG. You were with a quickness this morning. Pierce also had me laughing and snorting with both the Gobshitery and the Muffy and Biff Porno. He must have had a very good weekend for the braincells.
Victoria,
We classicists salute you. “Ave”, as the Romans would say.
March Fourth, indeed. I don’t know if a fondness for weak humor is a trait of classical education (a few professors I recall were no borscht belters) but it’s one of mine, and since March Fourth is more giggle than knee slapper, it qualifies.
Anyway, I tried to read the Anabasis years ago. The damned thing was so clunky I couldn’t get through it. Repetitive and a bit of a stretch. Of course the Iliad is a bit of a stretch (hippity-hopping about with curmudgeonly gods and the like), and Homer makes use of repetition through congeries of narrative formulas, but readers are blissfully spared any clunkiness, so I suppose I was spoiled. Maybe I’ll try to march forth again at some point.
Thinking of the value of classical education, I can venture another supposition that a fundamental reason for the difference in thought processes and cogitative abilities between, say, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and their cerebral peers, and Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, Ryan, Cantor, Paul and other au courant intellectual pygmies is the type and quality of their education. Can anyone seriously imagine Limbaugh or Palin contributing to the Federalist Papers? Perhaps some rolling papers or funny papers, but that’s about it. It’s not for nothing that the pseudonym selected by the Federalist authors was Publius.
But education is disparaged and now growing perverse under the carcinogenic influence of the Modern GOP for whom the original Publius is as much a cipher as major characters in Classical literature (Akhi-who?). Jefferson and Adams and their peers, in addition to their native tongue could read Cicero's Latin, Aristotle's Greek, Rousseau's French and Goethe's German. Today, Republicans would like to make it illegal to even think in a language other than their species of pidgin English. Is it any wonder that they hate learning and the learned? Better to be an ignorant ass(hole). It's no accident that some of the first people fired under any budget pinch are teachers; education wanes, superstition waxes. The GOP way.
Which is why, if these louts continue to have their way, the America perhaps hoped for by the founders can be waved off with a brusque “Ave atque vale”.
But until conservative Rapture visits us in the form of massive book burnings a la Fahrenheit 451, we can all enjoy Marching Fourth.
Thanks for the reminder!
Not to pile on, but does anyone else think the whole idea of Dennis Rodman (piercings, ink, dyed hair, and all) meeting with grayed out, straitlaced, mini-tyrant Kim Jong Un is beyond bizarre? Even weirder is the fact that Kim okayed the meet because he's a big fan of the Chicago Bulls! How does he catch the Bulls games? State run media has its own private ESPN feed?
So what did they talk about? Kim needs tips on gaining position in the paint? Or maybe some giggly insider stuff about Madonna and Carmen Electra? Or maybe he heard that Rodman once knew a lot about the Rockets and wanted some insight into why his keep blowing up.
Can we expect a John Adams opera celebrating "Rodman in North Korea"?
I see Robin Williams as Kim.
So the Rat gnashes his little rodent teeth wishing he were in the White House "...doing what needs to be done." What might that be, Mittens? Declaring war on Iran? Scuttling the ACA? Working on that auto-deportation plan? Ogling binders full of women?
Mostly it would have been reverse Robin-Hooding the ever-loving shit out of all but the one-percent douchebags.
And Princess Ann cries herself to sleep at night? Well boo-fucking-hoo. Cry me a river, you pompous harpy.
They can take the family yacht to the Caymans where they can lord it over their money and not worry about "you people" asking to see how they escaped paying taxes for the last 10 years or so.
Ahhhh...the schadenfreude abides.
I still love thinking about these two assholes and Tag (and WTF kind of name is that?) and his princely prick siblings whining, throwing darts at a picture of the president, still amazed that they weren't handed the keys to the castle.
Because it was their turn.
Tee-hee.
The "Wealth Inequality" chart, a.k.a. wealth distribution chart, is more aptly described as a wealth concentration chart, and more accurately still, a wealth hoarding chart. A peek under the skirts of the "job creators" further reveals it to be a record of plunder on a global scale. The ceremonial trumpets sound the new order of the rebooted and repiped economy which, owing to an arguably deliberate surplus of misery and suffering, will be affording subscribers an even more obscene profit through the marketing of false cures which, true to form, will be worse than the problems they were advertised to address. Successive cycles of this Munchausen by proxy descent into Stockholm syndrome-induced oligarchic ecstasy will be even more profitable for this narrow segment of motivated and entitled predators than the one before it. But we the people are many generations deep into this fantastic corporate adspeak designer utopia by now, even as we've launched the first few generations of fully-wired and web-dependent psyches ever seen on the planet. So it's anyone's guess what miraculous property of human capability will come to the fore and deliver us from the commodity-driven race to the bottom.
Thanks again to the Reality Chex community for keeping a dodgy body politic on life support. We have this time to prepare ourselves and our children to decode this prismatic information environment and survive the harsh march toward centralized authority, population marginalization, systematic and focus-group-sanctioned dehumanization, and the incessant barking of the soulless profiteers who feed us fortified rationals for the proper abuse of life on the planet.
Sounds a bit overwrought?
Give it time and you'll begin to see things are a whole lot worse than advertised. Still not enough to bust my joyful nature. Nor, do I wish, will it keep you from responding to yours. And if anyone knows how to get the big money proboscis out of politics and government, please write in because that's an excellent beginning.
@Todd_K:
You may already be familiar with this organization. Represent.Us representus@unitedrepublic.org It's still a David but the more publicity the hoarders--tough to eschew an alternate spelling of that word--get, the better its chances of growing into a Goliath. And even anti-money organizations can always use money...
The title of Elizabeth Drew's new piece in the NYReview might imply that we're home free if the Republican Party disintegrates, but you're right: the problem is bigger than any one party; it's, as they say, the money.
Ann Romney aka Lady SB said we didn't get to see "The Real Mitt."
I have news for you Sister. We did get to see "The Real Mitt," and we didn't like (no, hated) what we saw. His 47% lecture showed what an asshole he really is.
My favorite pope story thus far:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fashion/fashion-blog/2013/mar/03/pope-benedict-true-legacy-fashion-sense?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2