The Commentariat -- Nov. 27, 2012
My column in the New York Times examiner is on Frank Bruni's love letter to "responsible" Republicans like Lindsey Graham & John McCain who have supposedly distanced themselves from Grover Norquist. My column is kind of a rehash of what we've been saying on Reality Chex, with a little from Marvin Schwalb, a little from Akhilleus, etc.
Robert Pear of the New York Times on the conflicting positions of various parties to the deficit reduction talks. "Mr. Obama and some Democrats in Congress say they are willing to squeeze savings from Medicare by trimming payments to drug companies, hospitals and other health care providers. They have generally ruled out structural changes that would increase costs for a typical beneficiary." CW: let's hope that's right. ...
... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "... while the GOP's rhetorical shift [on raising tax revenues] represents a break from their dogged opposition to revenue increases during previous budget negotiations, their public 'concessions' closely mirror the kind of policies voters overwhelmingly rejected: tax reform that does not increase marginal tax rates on the richest Americans, but includes eliminating tax loopholes and steep entitlement cuts that closely mirror the policies included in Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) budget.... The pitch is very similar to the plan presented by Romney, which was supposed to boost growth while lowering taxes and making up the revenue from closing loopholes...." ...
... Steve Benen: "... on the one hand, Republicans would get the tax rates they want. On the other hand, Republicans would also get the entitlement changes they want. And because Grover Norquist doesn't like it, this is considered the reasonable GOP offer. Democrats, after a very successful election cycle, are being asked to accept a deal in which Dems concede on tax rates, concede on entitlements, and accept the reward of Romney's revenue plan? This is what passes for bipartisan compromise in late 2012?" ...
... Leigh Ann Caldwell of CBS News: "White House spokesman Jay Carney said [Monday] that Social Security is one entitlement program that should be addressed on a 'separate track.' ... It's a similar position taken by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill, the number two Democrat in the Senate, on Sunday.... But Republicans have insisted that reforming entitlement programs, including Social Security, which constitute more than one-third of federal spending, must be part of the equation...." ...
... BUT, if we're to believe David Plouffe, we're also going to have to assume that President Obama dismisses Keynesian economic theory. Zeke Miller of BuzzFeed: "Obama senior adviser David Plouffe ... [says] President Barack Obama is committed to achieving the elusive 'big deal' on taxes and spending he and Speaker of the House John Boehner have tried to strike for more than 18 months." ...
... Peter Baker of the New York Times (Nov. 27 @ 6:09 am): "Mr. Obama will meet with carefully selected small business owners, middle-class taxpayers and corporate leaders over the next couple days, then fly to Pennsylvania on Friday to tour a toy manufacturer that he argues will be hurt if automatic tax increases take effect at the end of the year." ...
... More from Ken Thomas of the AP on Obama's PR tour. ...
... CW: last week I linked to a story that mentioned a proposed "tax bubble" that -- by removing the marginal tax system -- would hit the moderately wealthy but not the super rich. Frankly, I don't see this as a real problem because I can't imagine even this Congress would be stupid enough to enact such a tax structure. Nate Silver explains how it would work in detail (with charts!). "It is hard to see the economic rationale for creating a bubble in the middle of the tax code." ...
... Dean Baker follows up on Silver's post. And Baker nails Republicans for their hypocrisy on proposing this plan: "The Republicans had highlighted the fate of small business owners who they like to call 'job creators.' This policy would imply a higher tax rate on the vast majority of the job creators, while leaving the very rich little affected.... This proposal would seem to imply that the Republicans were willing to nail the job creators to benefit the very wealthy." CW: Who could have guessed all that talk about helping "job creators" was a ruse? ...
... David Corn of Mother Jones tells the story of what really happened in the Bush tax-cuts showdown of 2010. CW: Corn is right: Obama got more out of the Republicans than he lost even though he was in a much worse bargaining position than he is today. At the time, I ran links to a couple of stories on how the numbers actually worked out, but the narrative was always "Obama caved."
Today's Edition of Corporations Are People, My Friend
Another Reason Not to Shop at Wal-Mart. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos: "Two days after Saturday's fire at a Bangladeshi garment factory that killed at least 112 people, Walmart was neither confirming nor denying that the factory was one of its contractors.... But pictures taken after the fire showing clothes from Walmart's Faded Glory label appear to settle that question.... The Bangladeshi factory lacked enough emergency exits, and some of the 112 people ... died ... jumping out of the eight-story building.... Walmart had given the factory an 'orange' safety rating in May 2011, which means that even by Walmart's low standards, there were significant risks." In an update, Clawson writes, "Walmart is now claiming that it had severed ties with Tazreen, only to have a supplier with whom they had contracted subcontract to this factory in violation of Walmart policies, and that the supplier has been terminated." CW: allow me to remind you that the Walton family owns as much wealth as the lower 40 percent of Americans. Up with how much of this will we put?
Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times: "Hostess ... failed because the people that ran it had no idea what they were doing. Every other excuse is just an attempt by the guilty to blame someone else." An excellent, brief rundown of Hostess management's epic failures & their depraved indifference to their obligations to their employees.
Brian Montopoli of CBS News: "United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice will meet with senators on Capitol Hill Tuesday to answer questions about the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya. CBS News has learned her appearance will include a morning meeting with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has been among her biggest critics since her initial remarks on the attack." ...
... UPDATE. Mark Landler & Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, conceded on Tuesday that she incorrectly described the attack on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya, in September as following a spontaneous protest, rather than being a terrorist attack. But she said she based her statement on the intelligence available at the time and did not intend to mislead the American public. Ms. Rice's acknowledgment, in a meeting on Capitol Hill with three Republican senators who had sharply criticized her earlier statements in a series of television interviews after the attack, seemed to do little to quell their anger." ...
... NEW. Charles Pierce: Graham & McCain "are a pair of cowards, with a feckless rookie in train, and they are playing dangerous games with the country's security. They hereafter should be ignored and, if Graham goes through with his threat of putting a hold on Rice's nomination, Harry Reid should move his desk out onto Constitution Avenue, and no Democrat should cooperate with this clown ever again." ...
... NEW: Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post: "Instead of focusing their needed attention on the deadly security lapses at the consulate in Benghazi, McCain and crew continue their petty nitpicking of Rice's statements."
... Pierce didn't take to MoDo's advice to President Obama any more than I did. ...
... Andrew Rudalevige in the Monkey Cage on the value of schmoozing with the enemy. Also read the comment by Norm Ornstein.
... AND Pierce throws Young Douthat to the gray wolves. ...
... CW: I'm with P. D. Pepe. If had listened to Greggers instead of letting Charles Pierce do it for me, there would be a stylish pump sticking out of my busted teevee. The American tragedy is that millions of Americans don't understand that that Greggers' Gang are nothing but shills for the suits in the suites upstairs.
Voter Suppression
Dara Kam & John Lantigua of the Palm Beach Post: "A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.... Former GOP chairman [Jim Greer] and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law's main purpose: GOP victory." ...
... Charles Pierce: "OK, Eric Holder, it's time.... Ball's in your court."
Right Wing World
Bruce Bartlett's confessions of a reformed supply-sider is getting a lot of attention & is an interesting read, particularly because of his claims about the right's reactions to his "evolution." ...
... Krugman gives him kudos.
CW: In case you think Republicans aren't really racists but just exploit the racism of their despicable constituents, Jamelle Bouie of American Prospect highlights a piece by David Brooks' favorite "conservative intellectual" Charles Murray. Murray "reasons" that Asian-Americans are all alike & blacks & Latinos don't have desirable values.
Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM: Birther-in-Chief "Donald Trump says the Republican Party needs to be more appealing to minorities if it wants to survive into the future." CW: to my great surprise, the Donald blamed the negative tone on Mitt Romney & took no responsibility for his own racist antics. ...
... Jamelle Bouie: "... in case you've forgotten, this is the same Donald Trump whose demagoguery compelled President Obama to reveal his birth certificate in a press conference, and who offered to give $5 million to charity if Obama would release his college transcripts and prove that he is 'qualified' (read: not an affirmative-action beneficiary) to be president."
News Ledes
New York Times: "With public pressure mounting, President Mohamed Morsi appeared to pull back Monday from his attempt to assert an authority beyond the reach of any court. His allies in the Muslim Brotherhood canceled plans for a large demonstration in his support, signaling a chance to calm an escalating battle that has paralyzed a divided nation." CW: hmm. The headline in this Guardian liveblog is "Morsi refuses to back down." ...
... Washington Post Update: "Egyptian opposition forces rallied across the country Tuesday in the biggest show of dissent against the country's first democratically elected leader since he precipitated a political crisis last week with an apparent bid to assume near-absolute power."
Reuters: "New York state and New Jersey need at least $71.3 billion to recover from the devastation wrought by Superstorm Sandy and prevent similar damage from future storms, according to their latest estimates."
New York Times: "Finance ministers from the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund patched up their differences over a bailout for Greece early Tuesday with a spate of measures bringing closer the release of long-delayed emergency aid. The parties reached the deal after their third meeting in three weeks aimed at finding alternative ways of giving Greece relief in light of opposition by creditors like Germany and the Netherlands to so-called haircuts that would involve forgiving some Greek debt."
New York Times: "Two of the most senior figures at the British Broadcasting Corporation said on Tuesday that there had been 'basic' and 'elementary' failures of the organization's journalism when it wrongly implicated a former Conservative Party politician in sexual abuse, compounding a scandal that cost the BBC's director general his job and plunged the organization deeper into crisis."
Guardian: "Europe's debt crisis remains a far bigger threat to the world's economy than the 'fiscal cliff', according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In its latest report the economic think tank says an escalation in the ongoing European crisis could drag Europe into a deep recession in the next two years and the US along with it."
Reuters: "Online sales jumped on Cyber Monday, sending e-commerce retailers' shares higher and suggesting strong growth from earlier in the holiday shopping season is continuing for now. Sales on eBay Inc's online marketplace were particularly strong and Amazon.com Inc continued its rapid holiday shopping season growth, according to early Cyber Monday data...."
Reuters: "Forensic experts took samples from Yasser Arafat's buried corpse in the West Bank on Tuesday, trying to determine if he was murdered by Israeli agents using the hard-to-trace radioactive poison, Polonium."
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Reader Comments (21)
I am not an economist but I don't quite get the idea of how taking money from a working person, then giving it to a retired person who then spends it in the same economy has a negative effect on the economy. Isn't a dollar spent a dollar spent?
Am I missing something?
Well, I have a comment on the commentariat several days ago showing the N-M catalog photo. I just got around to going back to look through the catalog which, of course, I have never seen. (But why of course? Some of the catalogs I get are absurdly out of my price range.)
And why did I have to post--the gray robe looking like grandpa's old bathrobe reminded me that, when my grandfather died, I inherited his trench coat which was much too long as he was thin but tall, and I considered the coat to be the coolest thing I owned. 1950s chic.
Decided to post this because this way I am not interrupting the flow of relevant comments.
alphonsegaston:
sometimes images say it all. the bathrobe and the zillion dollar chicken coop tell me all i would ever want to know about the 1%.
and:
in today's Guardian is a trailer and some images from "Chasing Ice." i saw this film in a movieplex and had no idea it was being distributed as a documentary. i will be heartbroken if it is treated as an art house flic and generally ignored.
images can be powerful.
and relevant.
Go back and read Charles Pierce's absurdist drama relating the "Meet the Press" gabfest from last Sunday, but this time imagine that it is being read and performed by Lewis Black. Go ahead. Funnier than a night at Second City improv!
I normally no longer watch the Sunday talkies, but last Sunday happened to see and hear most of what Pierce related, and realized that it is really wiser to catch those shows on CSPAN radio in the afternoon - if at all. Even though the cost of flat screens has really dropped in the past three years, it is much better to throw a small radio across the room than to heave a coffee mug into the pixel generator.
I understand those people get paid to appear on TV. That, too, is funny. Sort of.
Re: You gotta have friends; Jacques Derrida (no friend of mine) began a speech with; "Friends, I have no friends...". If I read one more essay on why Obama needs to be chummy with the rummies I'm going get sick.
Being President is like being the Pope; your position has elevated you above "friends".
I never knew what the fuck Jac was trying to express(that's a joke) but I will expand on his theory. "Friends" the word implies a grouping, a common understanding, a common need, a common goal among many other images that formulate in one's mind when hearing the word.
Now all we hear from the MSM and the right is that Obama needs to be more friendly, more accessible, more reasonable, in essence, more like themselves or better, as they see themselves.
I think skin-tone is at least some of the unspoken dialog behind this reasoning. " He's black, for god's sake, no wonder he won't dance with us." "He doesn't like white people, for some inexplicable reason." "He's too smart to like people."
In politics friendship is an illusion, everybody in DC knows this. To press the President to be more friendly is a canard.
Fuck'em Prez, call those blue dog Democrats into the Oval Office and say, "Friends...or not.".
CW: I'm moving this comment by Marvin Schwalb forward because my nasty spam filter dumped it yesterday:
"I am not an economist but I don't quite get the idea of how taking money from a working person, then giving it to a retired person who then spends it in the same economy has a negative effect on the economy. Isn't a dollar spent a dollar spent?
"Am I missing something?"
@Marvin Schwalb. Generally speaking (as a fellow non-economist), I'd say you're right.
But we should probably also emphasize that taking from the rich to give to the poor in many cases gives the U.S. economy a boost. Say you take a dollar away from Mitt Romney & give it to another retired person (Romney, you may have heard, is retired). This would actually improve the economy rather than simply leave it flat. Mitt would have put a percentage of his dollar in the Caymen Islands and/or in some other foreign investment scheme where it won't do the American economy any good. If the retired person gets Mitt's dollar, however, s/he is likely to spend it here. Taxing the rich to support programs that help the poor -- especially one that help the poor work their way into the middle class -- is a way of improving the economy, contra the Republican fake mantra about jobs creators & their trickle-down beneficence.
Marie
@alphonegaston. As I write I am wearing a denim shirt that I inherited from my father when he died -- in 1985. I have a few "fancy" items of vintage clothing that I wear for particular occasions and I have an old quilt that gets daily use in the winter, so it should not surprise me that something as flimsy as fabric is more enduring than we are. Still, it is a bit disquieting. I think I get why that guy built the Taj Mahal. Fear of the ephemeral.
Marie
Yesterday I clicked onto the Neil deGrasse Tyson video which had other links to various videos. One that caught my eye was a debate between Chris Hitchens and a Frank Turek––the latter some sort of evangelical minister who was clearly out of his league arguing with Hitchens–––but no matter, I was just interested in listening to Hitchens who delights me no end in debates (except the ones before the Iraq War). The topic was "Does God Exist." It was during Hitchen's debunking of Turek's "we need a savior to guide us and save us from our immoral ways..." how can people be moral without a god to guide us and so forth––in which he was working his message of the believer's dependance on such a deus ex machina and likened it to a slave/ master relationship. Suddenly I thought of how Republicans distain dependance on the government––want to shrink it to half its size–-this whole business of individual boot straps stuff along with the Randian moochers and makers––Alan Simpson referring to those sucking on the social security teat––and yet--and yet these same people have no trouble depending on their personal god while invoking religious dogma into our government business. This is a new thought for me; I never made that connection before.
Well color me shocked that the special meeting, "desperately seeking Susan", with the terminally stupid trio of Senators, was a set-up. The oxpecker Graham plants himself on McCain, cleaning up pests relentlessly. Ayotte is just desperate to be noticed, like a conduct disordered kid in a classroom. Attention positive or negative, doesn't matter.
In his statement, Graham compared how mean the Democrats were to John Bolton and prophesying the same for Rice. Clearly an accurate equivalency argument in what remains of Lindsey's pathetic brain. Sincerely, Ms. Frida's single rolling marble is capable of deeper thought.
There is absolutely no nexus between the actual death of the Ambassador and his guards /staff and Rice's statement AFTER the fact. The "American People needed to know the truth" is horseshit. Like any of us could formulate a response, scramble the planes or for the most part, even know where the F-K Benghazi is. Now American Idol ( yeah we ought to encourage our children to idolize wanna be singers) or dancing with the low lives - hell yeah. The single most important question that I want to know is this: if Ambassador Stevens asked for extra security to go to Benghazi and didn't get it, why did he go there on 9/11?
I am suspicious but I think Rice is a first swipe and the real goal for these idiots is impeachment of the President. McCain cannot let it go. His ass ( old, white, sagging and wrinkled) was handed to him and he wants revenge. If you notice, his statement's and his oxpecker's are referencing the President more and more. Soon, Rice can be dropped entirely and relegated to she's just a woman who is "not too bright". The real target will emerge.
@Diane Good takes, just read the NYTimes story on the Terrible Threes (thinking, damn, why didn't I move to New Hampshire...there would have been one less vote for Ayotte!) She appears to me an opportunist latching on to two ought-to-be irrelevant Senators at this point. And, I wandered by chance over to Esquire...and Pierce is already on it with a biting critique of all. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/susan-rice-john-mccain-meeting-112712
Pierce: "McCain and Graham — and the hapless Ayotte, who is clearly, and pathetically, looking past Rice all the way to the 2016 Iowa caucuses — have nothing. They want to beat up on Rice simply because they can't beat up on the president,..."
Diane,
Republicans who cry about Democrats being mean to them have a warped sense of what that means and are completely bereft of a sense of proportion.
Democrats were mean to John Bolton?
No.
Democrats, and any other citizens with functioning brains, were incensed at the choice of John Bolton for anything other than an extra in the next John Carpenter movie. You know, one of those movies where people run around frothing at the mouth threatening to kill people who get in their way.
The guy is a lunatic who couldn't be trusted to hand out meds to other asylum residents, never mind representing the United States on international issues. Like most Bush neocons, Bolton's idea of international relations was "Fuck all you towel heads and assorted furriners. Do what we tell you and STFU!"
Mean?
In a much fairer world no one would be mean to Bolton because he'd have been locked up. Preferably in a cell at Gitmo the size of a small doghouse.
But now Republicans want to equate a smart, professional, highly accomplished diplomat with a wild-eyed, xenophobic, woefully unqualified, misanthropic, drooling maniac.
Typical.
A-K. Agree with everything you said in re: Bolton. My addition is on a less intellectual plane. He has visible nose and ear hairs. Yech.
Diane, on an even lesser intellectual plane...Bolton has always reminded me of the cartoon character: Yosemite Sam. Jus' plop a ole ten-gallon hat on him and he'll bang! bang! away!
Diane,
Those ear hairs are what he uses to pick up marching orders from his masters on the planet Zog. The nose hairs? Who knows?
MAG,
And like all neocon pretenders he used those six guns for target practice on his pedal extremities.
He hardly ever missed.
Will the world end on Dec. 21? Will Obama cave on restoring taxes on the wealthy? Which is more probable? The answer to the latter will probably come first. I'd love to be wrong, of course--if Obama sticks to his guns, like Google search results insist he will, I'll be delighted to eat crow. Being wrong can be a great thing. Such as, when predicting the world's end. Or neo-con political victories. (Same difference.)
By the way, what "end of the world" is allegedly coming? The end of our planet or the end of everything? Or just the end of cable? The end of cheap housewares?
During the Iraq War there were several HUNDRED contractors that died and except for one incident I do not remember anyone getting wet pants over it. I find this whole Susan Rice situation despicable. AK's "desperately seeking Susan" explains it all in three little words.
P.S. Just finished reading Barlett's piece––Wow! Reminds me of David Brock's "Blinded by the Right" years ago––people he thought were friends deserted or ignored him,too. Too bad I don't shop where Bruce does, cuz if I did I'd corner him in the dairy section and invite him for dinner, toast him with a spectacular wine and he could whine all he wanted while we dine.
Thomas Ricks comment that no one involved in a firefight knows for sure what the fuck is going on (although he didn't put in exactly those terms, but that was the gist of his comment). Someone needs to ask "Senator have you ever been in a firefight?" Foolishly flying back over the target and getting your ass shot down doesn't count. It's my belief we never will know what happened for sure barring capturing one of the perpetrators.
I've been wondering if part of the reason Susan Rice is getting hammered by the GOP may be to force Obama to nominate John Kerry to Secretary of State. Thus, opening up a senate seat to Scotty Brown.