States of Denial

Posted: February 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Economic Develpment, education, Elections, Federal Budget, poverty, Psychopaths in charge, public education, Republican presidential politics, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, unemployment, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 25 Comments

Gail Collins messed with Texas today. I’m rather glad she did because it shows exactly how much Texas seems to exist in a vacuum of its own making.  The head denier of reality is its wacko Governor who appears to get elected by saying the right things and doing very little.  The state that forces its antiquated views through textbooks onto the rest of the nation has a huge problem in the numbers of children having children.  This leads to all kinds of social problems that I probably don’t have to discuss here.

But, let’s just see how bad it gets down there with the denier-in-chief who seems to think abstinence education works and the Texas education system works when Texas’ own statistics show that they don’t work at all.  Republicans get elected spewing untruths and he’s a prime case in point.   The state’s out of money and like my governor Bobby Jindal, the first place Republican governors look  is for cuts to education rather than look for new revenue sources. What is worse, they talk about improving  children’s future while doing draconian cuts to children’s schools.  How do they get away with it?

“In Austin, I’ve got half-a-dozen or more schools on a list to be closed — one of which I presented a federal blue-ribbon award to for excellence,” said Representative Lloyd Doggett. “And several hundred school personnel on the list for possible terminations.”

So the first choice is what to do. You may not be surprised to hear that Governor Perry has rejected new taxes. He’s also currently refusing $830 million in federal aid to education because the Democratic members of Congress from Texas — ticked off because Perry used $3.2 billion in stimulus dollars for schools to plug other holes in his budget — put in special language requiring that this time Texas actually use the money for the kids.

“If I have to cast very tough votes, criticized by every Republican as too much federal spending, at least it ought to go to the purpose we voted for it,” said Doggett.

Nobody wants to see underperforming, overcrowded schools being deprived of more resources anywhere. But when it happens in Texas, it’s a national crisis. The birth rate there is the highest in the country, and if it continues that way, Texas will be educating about a tenth of the future population. It ranks third in teen pregnancies — always the children most likely to be in need of extra help. And it is No. 1 in repeat teen pregnancies.

Which brings us to choice two. Besides reducing services to children, Texas is doing as little as possible to help women — especially young women — avoid unwanted pregnancy.

For one thing, it’s extremely tough for teenagers to get contraceptives in Texas. “If you are a kid, even in college, if it’s state-funded you have to have parental consent,” said Susan Tortolero, director of the Prevention Research Center at the University of Texas in Houston.

Plus, the Perry government is a huge fan of the deeply ineffective abstinence-only sex education. Texas gobbles up more federal funds than any other state for the purpose of teaching kids that the only way to avoid unwanted pregnancies is to avoid sex entirely. (Who knew that the health care reform bill included $250 million for abstinence-only sex ed? Thank you, Senator Orrin Hatch!) But the state refused to accept federal money for more expansive, “evidence-based” programs.

“Abstinence works,” said Governor Perry during a televised interview with Evan Smith of The Texas Tribune.

“But we have the third highest teen pregnancy rate among all states in the country,” Smith responded.

“It works,” insisted Perry.

“Can you give me a statistic suggesting it works?” asked Smith.

“I’m just going to tell you from my own personal life. Abstinence works,” said Perry, doggedly.

There is a high cost to a state to living in this kind of denial.  Teen moms and children of teen moms are generally not a productive group of citizens.  You pay to prevent this realistically or you pay for their and your mistake to do so throughout their entire lives.  But, this seems to be the way of the new brand of Republican governor.  These guys start running for president the minute they hit the mansion.  They do so by following a litmus test of Republican items–regardless of the consequences to their states–that will make them sound like purity experts when they hit Iowa and New Hampshire.  They will undoubtedly leave their state in ruins, but that won’t be the story by the time they’re on the lecture and talking heads circuit for higher offices.

The Governor of New Jersey is doing the same thing.  He can read off a litmus list for the republican inquisition while at the same time ensuring the people of the state he governs languish.  Again, he screams about the importance of the future of the children while simultaneously downsizing it.

In a clear shot at congressional Republicans over calls for curbing entitlement programs, he said, “Here’s the truth that nobody’s talking about. You’re going to have to raise the retirement age for Social Security. Woo hoo! I just said it, and I’m still standing here. I did not vaporize into the carpet.

“And I said we have to reform Medicare because it costs too much and it is going bankrupt us,” he continued, later comparing those programs to pensions and benefits for state workers that he’s been looking to reel back.

“Once again, lightning did not come through the windows and strike me dead. And we have to fix Medicaid because it’s not only bankrupting the federal government but it’s bankrupting every state government. There you go.”

Clearly looking to blunt criticism of his famously combative style, the former federal prosecutor said there is a method to the battles he picks, insisting, “I am not fighting for the sake of fighting. I fight for the things that matter.”

The speech was titled “It’s Time to do the Big Things,” and Christie suggested the items that Obama called for as “investments” in his State of the Union address were “not the big things” that need Washington’s focus.

“Ladies and gentlemen, that is the candy of American politics,” Christie declared, adding that it appeared to be a “political strategy” – or game of budgetary chicken – that both Republicans and Democrats are playing.

“My children’s future and your children’s future is more important than some political strategy,” he said. “What I was looking for that night was for my president to challenge me … and it was a disappointment that he didn’t.

It’s difficult not to scream when you hear these folks talk about our children’s futures while cutting education, telling children abstinence fairy tales, turning down money for infrastructure improvements —like the nitwit Republican Governor Rick Scott in Florida–that will likely create better environments for business and jobs, and refusing to look at their tainted tax systems that usually punish the poor and flagrantly ignore the assets and the incomes of the rich.  It is clear whose children they have in mind.  It is not yours or mine or the majority of the people who live in their states.

These guys seem intent on turning their states into third world countries.  Many people seem more intent on letting them do it as long it doesn’t cost them anything immediate. Our fellow citizens appear beguiled by fairy tale promises and bribes of low taxes.  They should not be surprised then by a future where they and their adult children live in rented shacks together with few available public services.  They better just hope they don’t get robbed, the shack doesn’t catch fire, and there are no grandchildren needing public education.  They’re voting to downsize these things into extinction.

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Thursday Reads

Posted: February 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Bahrain, Civil Rights, Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Israel, Lebanon, morning reads, Team Obama, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Politics | 34 Comments

Good Morning!!

A couple of days ago President Obama actually did something I could cheer about. He awarded the Medal of Freedom to former Boston Celtics great Bill Russell. Of course he also awarded them to George H.W. Bush and Warren Buffett, but I’ll try to overlook that for now.

Obama suggested that Boston should have a statue of Russell, and according to the Boston Herald:

The unveiling of a Bill Russell statue in Boston appears to be just a matter of time.

According to Celtics [team stats] co-owner Steve Pagliuca, the organization has already begun the process of getting the statue created and placed. And it didn’t hurt Tuesday when President Barack Obama, while awarding Russell the Medal of Freedom, mentioned that such a monument should be erected for future generations.

That would be okay, but I agree with what I heard NPR sports commentator Bill Littlefield recommend yesterday: every school library should have copies of Russell’s books and biographies of him written by others.

Russell played for the Celtics in the days when racism was rampant in Boston.

NBA greats Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain

As a highly visible public figure in the years when the country was emerging from a century of legally sanctioned discrimination, Russell threw his prestige behind the emergent Civil Rights Movement, participating with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the historic 1963 March on Washington. Russell’s years of living in Boston were not easy ones. At the height of the Celtics’ success there were many empty seats in the Boston Garden, while less successful teams in other cities played to full arenas. When Russell bought a fine home for his family in a historically white neighborhood, he received threats and insults. On one occasion, vandals broke into his home and splattered the walls with filth and graffiti. Unbowed, Russell focused his energies on his game, and enjoyed excellent relations with his teammates and other NBA players.

Once when a hotel in the South denied accommodations to black players, Russell protested by refusing to play in the game that night, drawing media attention to the injustice. He never let the disrespect he often received prevent him from giving his heart and soul to Celtics basketball, leading the team to 11 NBA championships. If only President Obama would take leadership lessons from Bill Russell!

For a long time Russell remained bitter about Boston, but in the past 20 years or so he has become a presence here again, a greatly admired and beloved part of Boston sports and social history. Never mind that the Medal of Freedom has been given to so many who don’t deserve it. This time it went to someone truly worthy.

In other news…

The White House is still leaking information to The New York Times in an effort to make it look like President Obama has been in full control during the ongoing crises in the Middle East.

President Obama ordered his advisers last August to produce a secret report on unrest in the Arab world, which concluded that without sweeping political changes, countries from Bahrain to Yemen were ripe for popular revolt, administration officials said Wednesday.

Mr. Obama’s order, known as a Presidential Study Directive, identified likely flashpoints, most notably Egypt, and solicited proposals for how the administration could push for political change in countries with autocratic rulers who are also valuable allies of the United States, these officials said.

The 18-page classified report, they said, grapples with a problem that has bedeviled the White House’s approach toward Egypt and other countries in recent days: how to balance American strategic interests and the desire to avert broader instability against the democratic demands of the protesters.

Administration officials did not say how the report related to intelligence analysis of the Middle East, which the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, acknowledged in testimony before Congress, needed to better identify “triggers” for uprisings in countries like Egypt.

Hmmm…I wonder why Obama looked so flatfooted and off-balance when the Egyptian protests began then? Why did he fail to make any definite stands? Why did he make so many vague and conflicting statements? Why is he now trying to blame all of this on the State Department? Do you suppose maybe he didn’t read the report?

Whatever. It’s too late. The rest of the world knows he’s incompetent even if a lot of Americans don’t.

The Obama administration offered to support a UN rebuke of Israel:

The U.S. informed Arab governments Tuesday that it will support a U.N. Security Council statement reaffirming that the 15-nation body “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity,” a move aimed at avoiding the prospect of having to veto a stronger Palestinian resolution calling the settlements illegal.

But the Palestinians rejected the American offer following a meeting late Wednesday of Arab representatives and said it is planning to press for a vote on its resolution on Friday, according to officials familar with the issue. The decision to reject the American offer raised the prospect that the Obama adminstration will cast its first ever veto in the U.N. Security Council.

Still, the U.S. offer signaled a renewed willingness to seek a way out of the current impasse, even if it requires breaking with Israel and joining others in the council in sending a strong message to its key ally to stop its construction of new settlements. The Palestinian delegation, along with Lebanon, the Security Council’s only Arab member state, have asked the council’s president this evening to schedule a meeting for Friday. But it remained unclear whether the Palestinian move today to reject the U.S. offer is simply a negotiating tactic aimed at extracting a better deal from Washington.

Gordonskene at C&L has a great post up about one of my favorite journalists of all time: Eric Severeid:

Before the days of spin, agendas and punditry, there was that somewhat extinct class of journalists known as “commentators” – and even though they were journalists first, their commentaries were secondary; separate and classified as such. They were usually imbued with a sense of professional objectivity we would find somewhat strange by todays standards with Entertainers masquerading as Journalists and Journalists masquerading as Entertainers.

One such commentator was Eric Sevareid. In the mold of Edward R. Murrow (in fact, often referred to as one of “Murrow’s Boys” during World War 2), Sevareid along with radio journalists Charles Collingwood, Robert Trout and many others from CBS and the other networks routinely offered commentaries on the days news, separate from their regular reporting.

Yes, those were the days…there may have been plenty of propaganda, but there was some actual journalism going on too.

You may have heard (despite the U.S. media blackout) that a warrant has been issued for the arrest of Pervez Musharraf, former President of Pakistan for the murder of Benazir Bhutto. Ron Brynaert at Bradblog has an analysis of the U.S. media reaction. A sample:

“A Pakistani court issued an arrest warrant for ousted military leader Pervez Musharraf on Saturday over allegations he played a role in the 2007 assassination of an ex-prime minister and rival,” the Associated Press reported over the weekend, although no major US newspaper seems to have followed up. “It was a major setback for the onetime U.S. ally, who was plotting a political comeback from outside the country.”

[….]

After the opening paragraph, the next four paragraphs of AP’s report are devoted to defenses of Musharraf, accusations against the present Pakistan government, and doubts that the warrant will amount to much. An independent United Nations report which blasted the Musharraf government’s security arrangements as “fatally insufficient” isn’t mentioned until near the end, and reports that the Musharraf government lied and manipulated evidence about the ultimate cause of Bhutto’s death are completely ignored.

“Musharraf, who has not been charged, described accusations that he had a hand in the attack on ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto as a smear campaign by a government led by her aggrieved husband,” the second paragraph states, even though the former coup leader is never directly quoted once in the article.

Al Jazeera has the latest on events in the Middle East:

Clashes rock Bahraini capital

The Bahrain capital of Manama was rocked by sporadic clashes, hours after riot police attacked a makeshift encampment of pro-reform protesters in the centre of the city, killing at least three and injuring dozens of others.

An Al Jazeera correspondent, who cannot be named for security reasons, said on Thursday morning that “clashes were no longer limited to one place…they are now spread out in different parts of the city”.

Another Al Jazeera online producer said that booms could be heard from different parts of the city, suggesting that “tear-gas is being used to disperse the protesters in several neighbourhoods”.

Latest reports, however, indicated that a tense calm had descended on the capital with troops patroling the streets.

There were also reports of dozens of armoured vehicles moving towards the Pearl Roundabout, the protest site that was raided by the riot police.

‘Day of rage’ kicks off in Libya: Protesters have reportedly taken to the streets in four cities despite a crackdown, heeding to calls for mass protests.

Protesters in Libya have defied a security crackdown and taken to the streets in four cities for a “day of rage,” inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, reports say.

Several hundred supporters of Muammar Gaddafi, the country’s longtime leader, have also reportedly gathered in the capital on Thursday to counter online calls for anti-government protests.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said that Libyan authorities had detained 14 activists, writers and protesters who had been preparing the anti-government protests.

Libya has been tightly controlled for over 40 years by Gaddafi, who is now Africa’s longest-serving leader.

According to reports on Twitter, the microblogging site, Libya’s regime had been sending text messages to people warning them that live bullets will be fired if they join today’s protests.

That’s all I’ve got for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

Musing about My Reaction to News of the Attack on Lara Logan

Posted: February 16, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Egypt, Foreign Affairs, just because, Violence against women, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , | 77 Comments

Woman protesting in Cairo

Yesterday in the early evening, as I was surfing the ‘net, I came across the announcement by CBS that their foreign correspondent Lara Logan had been brutally sexually assaulted and beaten in Cairo on the day Mubarak resigned.

Normally, I would have posted this at Sky Dancing right away, but at first I hesitated because the description of what happened, although vague, sounded so awful and I thought it would be insensitive to rush to the keyboard to spread the news.

Within a short period of time, it became clear to me that both mainstream news sources and blogs were all posting the story and discussing it. Still, I hesitated. I checked with the other frontpagers to see what they thought, perhaps subconsciously hoping one of them would write the post that I didn’t want to write. Meanwhile, I continued reading reactions to the story at other sites.

Finally I realized that I was really blocked about this story for some reason. I simply couldn’t find the words to write anything coherent about it. I felt a very deep sadness and a sense of foreboding that I didn’t quite understand.

I usually react strongly to stories about violence against women, but normally I don’t have a problem writing about them. Why was I having writer’s block over this one? Thankfully, Minkoff Minx wrote a very sensitive and compassionate post last night, and I stopped obsessing about my “problem” and went to sleep.

This morning as I was driving to work, I again started thinking about the feelings I had had last night; and I was able to begin to better understand my strong reaction. I had been so thrilled by what took place in Egypt–that the protesters had been able to force the ousting of Mubarak and that they had done in relatively peacefully. I had also been excited to see women taking an active role in the demonstrations. I now realized that learning about what had happened to Logan, had tainted my enthusiastic feelings about the Egyptian protests. I also began to wonder if anything would really change for Egyptian women even if there were real changes in their government.

In my reading last night I had learned that Katie Couric had also felt in danger among the crowds in Tahrir Square. She had been pushed hard by an Egyptian man whom she described as being extremely angry, his eyes full of rage.

Even more disturbing, I read that Egyptian women are regularly accosted and groped by men when they go out in public. In fact, 86% of women in Egypt say they have been sexually harrassed. From Sarah Topol, at Slate:

Egypt has a sexual harassment problem. In a 2008 study, 86 percent of women said they had been harassed on Egypt’s streets—any woman walking through a crowd of men in Egypt braces to get groped. But in the square, crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder, men apologized if they so much as bumped into you. After wandering around the protests for days, it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t been groped, a constant annoyance when I’m faced with large crowds in Cairo. When I pointed this out to other women in the square, we all took a moment to reflect. “I hadn’t even thought of that,” one woman in Tahrir told me. “But it’s because we’re all so focused on one goal, we’re a family here.”

Here is another piece about sexual harrassment of women in Egypt (h/t Dakinikat). In the article, Mary Rogers, a CNN producer and camerawoman who has lived in Egypt since 1994, wrote about her own personal experiences of being sexually harrassed. Be warned, it’s pretty disturbing.

Again at Slate, Rachel Larrimore asked whether the attack on Lara Logan was a “bad omen” for Egyptian women. She wondered if in the end women would really be empowered by the “revolution.” Or would they be sent back home with a “thank you” and a pat on the head?

As I continued thinking about all this, I recalled how as a young girl I had tried reading science fiction novels. I liked them a lot, but I was disappointed that male science fiction writers wrote about women in the future performing pretty much the same roles and working in the same jobs that women in the 1960s. I wondered why these supposedly imaginative writers were unable to imagine that future women might actually do exciting, stimulating jobs instead of continuing to be teachers, nurses and clerical workers eons into the future.

And yes, I know there are female science fiction writers now who imagine women of the future in adventurous situations–and perhaps there are even male writers now who can imagine such things. It doesn’t matter. For me the damage was done. I had learned something very depressing about the culture I lived in. Women were bit players–there only to provide foils for men, or to support or comfort men.

That is how I feel now about the Egyptian protests. Women were included for a time, perhaps because they were needed, perhaps because everyone was feeling excited, happy, and inclusive. For a time, even the groping of women stopped. But then, on that day when Mubarak resigned it began again. And a very famous American woman was horribly attacked by men who screamed “Jew! Jew!” as they violated and beat her.

And the day before, Logan had told Esquire.com that Egyptian soldiers hassling her and her crew had accused them of “being Israeli spies.” Logan is not Jewish.

After the attack, Logan returned to the U.S. where she spent the past several days in the hospital. It has been reported that according to network sources she was at first unable to speak and that her injuries were “serious.”

I want to be very clear. This isn’t just about the Middle East or Muslims. This could easily have happened here. Women are brutally raped every day in the U.S. Many more women are sexually harrassed at work or on the street.

Most women have experienced this–I know I have. I’ve been groped by strangers in public places. It is a terribly traumatic, degrading, and humiliating experience that can stay with you forever. I still occasionally flash back to times when this happened to me, and feel the remnants of helpless rage followed by sadness and even depression that follow such experiences. The trauma of actually being raped is, of course, far worse, and can change a woman’s life forever.

I’ll wrap this up for now. I just thought I’d share my thoughts on this, in hopes that others might relate to them.

Finally, I want to note some positive reactions following this heartbreaking event.

Nir Rosen, the “journalist” who sent out horribly offensive tweets attacking both Logan and Anderson Cooper was forced to resign from his fellowship at NYU today. He gave an interview to Fishbowl DC in which he tried to explain the unexplainable.

Egyptian activists have condemned the attack on Logan.

“It’s incredibly sad that this has happened, and it’s something that the spirit of Tahrir and the spirit of revolution was resolutely against,” Ahdaf Soueif, an author who spent a great deal of time in Tahrir Square, told the Guardian. “Women in the square were rejoicing that they felt freedom on the streets of Cairo for the first time, and [this is] definitely something that we want to stamp out alongside corruption and all the other social ills that have befallen Egypt during Mubarak’s regime.”

Mahmoud Salem, a well known Egyptian blogger, was one of many of the January 25 activists to express outrage. “Lara Logan, what happened to you was reprehensible, & I hope u don’t judge the egyptian people or Tahrir because of it,” he tweeted under his moniker Sandmonkey.

Finally, Logan is now home with her family and talking to friends about what happened to her–a healthy sign. And she is determined to go back to her job after a few weeks. Clearly she is a very strong woman with a good support system. I hope that her husband will stand by her and that she will be able to heal from this and go back to doing the work she loves.

Thank you Sir May I have Another?

Posted: February 16, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Team Obama, the blogosphere, The Bonus Class, The Great Recession, The Media SUCKS, the villagers | Tags: , , | 20 Comments

Oh, the economic hardships of giving up those charitable deductions!

White House minions Ken Baer and David Plouffe tried the hard sell on a few liberal and progressive bloggers in a teleconference on Monday Night according to Susie Madrak at C&L. Yes, it was yet another access blogger telethon where the White House tries to sell  the progressive blogs with all the readership on the way to “Tote dat barge! Lift dat bale!”  for the reelection effort and this stinker of a White House Budget.  After all, the Republican we have in the White House now will be marginally less evil than the Republican we could get in the White House then if every one doesn’t just bend over and ask for more.

Although the minions said the budget asked for “shared sacrifice’, Plouffe had a difficult time coming up with concrete examples on how the very rich in the country would be doing their share of the sacrificing.  The only examples they could provide were less deductions for mortgages and no deductions for charitable giving.   I’m sure all the folks relying on charitable giving aren’t thinking the sacrifice part of the deal goes to their rich donors.  Do they really think honest liberals will agree with this let alone try to sell it to others?

A conference call with Congressional Budget Office spokesman Ken Baer and White House adviser David Plouffe tonight was probably aimed at growing indignation in the blogosphere over the proposed Obama budget, which features your proverbial draconian cuts to just about every social program — except Social Security and Medicare.

It’s good that the administration is engaging in these calls because we get to hear more details about their budget instead of the usual MSM drone, but I’m not sure that bloggers are happy with the overall conversation since once we got into the details of arguing different cuts, it looked as though we were buying into the White House frame that the cuts were urgently needed in the first place, and many of us don’t believe that’s true.

The audio of the call is in our media player–above. What do you think?

Baer’s opening remarks focused on “shared sacrifice.”

My question: “When you’re talking about shared sacrifice, clearly, the working and middle class is getting a disproportionate slam everywhere they turn with this budget, and you’re talking about a few, what sound like token items to the rest of us out here, and I wonder how you rationalize that during this severe economic recession.”

Baer said people got that impression from the stories that were released early, without looking at the big-budget picture. (Click here.)

David Dayen at FDL was also on the call.  His post draws similar conclusions. There’s an insane explanation of why the White House version of draconian cuts is better because of  the timing of undesirable cuts.  It seems straight out of newspeak world.  It appears that the White House is still very confused about basic economics and multipliers.  They appear to believe that March is an unsafe time for cuts but by October, recessionary budget cuts will be hunky dory.

Didn’t the mess they made of the first opportunity to get a stimulus right teach them anything? Do they really think they can finesse every economic variable to acquiesce to a hope and dream speech at a particular point in time?  After all, they’ve done such a bang up job with the labor market already that we still have record rates of long term unemployed and full on market exits.  How do you get a president re-elected when the lowest unrealistic unemployment rate you can offer up is around 7.5%?  Even the Gipper was getting  nervous about a re-election attempt with rates that high.  Reagan’s administration switched to massive recapitalization of the military ala Keynesian stimulus to buy a re-election boost.

WTF do these people think we’re smoking over here in our pajama wearing hippy dreamland? The only thing I can figure is that this delay buys enough time to get through an election cycle so that the first wave hits but not the tsunami of recessionary anti-stimulus as the impact multiplies through out the economy.  This way, Obamas gets to still happy talk  some of the people all of the time about how things are getting better without looking like a complete liar.  He also fights off conservative angst about deficit improvement before the next recession takes hold and makes everything much, much worse.

My question was this: Where does the Administration think demand will come from to reverse a three-year demand shortfall if you cut budgets in the immediate term at a time when 14 million people are unemployed, if state budgets show the same contraction, if trade remains in imbalance and if corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in cash? In other words, do you think economy can generate its own demand right now? I added this for Plouffe to give it a political angle: The budget predicts 8.2% unemployment at the end of 2012. No President has ever run for re-election with unemployment over 7.8% since 1948. Do you think it’s worth cutting budgets over the next two years and reducing aggregate demand at a time when 14 million Americans are unemployed, if the political benefit appears to be facing re-election with the highest unemployment in recorded history?

So here was the answer. Plouffe said that the employment estimates, they hope are conservative. (Actually, one criticism of the budget I heard yesterday was that the projections were pretty aggressive and above what CBO projects for the next few years.) He said that there is a lot of positive trajectory in terms of job growth, though not nearly enough, he stressed. He said that the President has said repeatedly that we cannot jeopardize the recovery with the budget, and that it does not have negative effects on the economy in terms of hiring and growth.

I don’t know how he can say that. Simple math indicates that taking $90 billion out of the economy, which this does in the first fiscal year starting in October, would have negative effects. The positive trajectory on job growth, reflected by two consecutive months of reductions in the topline unemployment rate by 0.4%, have not carried with it actual hiring growth, and could be attributed to noise in the data and rejiggering of population statistics. So when you’re talking about actual job growth, not many economists see it yet. And sucking money out of the economy when states are contracting and businesses aren’t spending will necessarily reduce that hiring.

This is when Ken Baer stepped in. And his answer was baffling. He said that the President’s budget covered Fiscal Year 2012, which was “a bit away,” and that the budget was constructed so that the cuts wouldn’t go into effect until a little later. Republican cuts from the current budget year will start March 5 if they get their way, and there’s a risk there.

I haven’t seen a complete list of invitees, but my guess is that there wasn’t an economist among them.  Yup, it’s a tough life when you join the league of uncommon bloggers.

Citizens United and Clarence Thomas Go Way Back

Posted: February 15, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Action Memo, right wing hate grouups, SCOTUS, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Clarence and Virginia Thomas

Thanks to the way-back machine, researchers at the watchdog organization “Protect Our Elections” dug up this 1991 article from Time Magazine.

Washington-area television viewers were startled last week to see three familiar senatorial faces pop up on their screens above the words WHO WILL JUDGE THE JUDGE? The follow-up question — “How many of these liberal Democrats could themselves pass ethical scrutiny?” — was hardly necessary, since the faces were those of Edward Kennedy, Joseph Biden and Alan Cranston, all scarred veterans of highly publicized scandals, from Chappaquiddick to plagiarized speeches to the Keating Five.

The ad, produced by two independent right-wing groups, was intended to bolster Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas’ confirmation chances by pointing the finger at three liberal Democrats who seemed likely to oppose him. Not coincidentally, the ad was produced by the same people who launched the 1988 Willie Horton spot….

President George H.W. Bush, his chief of staff John Sununu, and Clarence Thomas himself denounced the ads and demanded they be pulled. But the sponsors of the ads kept right on running them.

Can you guess who paid $100,000 for those ads in support of Thomas’ nomination to SCOTUS?

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