Monday Reads

Posted: January 3, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Afghanistan, Anti-War, Catfood Commission, Civil Liberties, Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Iraq, morning reads, Social Security, torture, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Wikileaks | Tags: , , , , | 52 Comments

Good Morning!!

I’m heading back to the Boston area this morning, so this will be brief. I’ll be on the road for two days, but I’ll try to check in when I stop for the night. So let’s see what’s happening out there.

Here’s a hysterically funny story: Former Bush/Cheney mouthpiece Judy Miller says Julian Assange is a “bad journalist.”

A former New York Times reporter assailed for her incorrect reports about Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction is criticizing Julian Assange for being a “bad journalist.”

Judith Miller took on the WikiLeaks founder during an appearance on Fox News Watch Saturday, arguing that Assange was a bad journalist “because he didn’t care at all about attempting to verify the information that he was putting out, or determine whether or not it hurt anyone.”

For many critics of the war in Iraq, that claim is likely to set off irony alarms. Miller has become famous for being the author of a 2002 New York Times article — now debunked — suggesting that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program.

Miller now writes for Newsmax.

The Air Force has a new surveillance toy, according to the Washington Post.

This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.

The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. It can send up to 65 different images to different users; by contrast, Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a “soda straw” area the size of a building or two.

With the new tool, analysts will no longer have to guess where to point the camera, said Maj. Gen. James O. Poss, the Air Force’s assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. “Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at, and we can see everything.”

Isn’t it interesting how the government can find the money for exotic military toys, but they need to cut back on the safety net for old and disabled people?

At Antiwar.com, Scott Horton interviewed Bryan Bender of the Boston Globe on

the very high percentage of retired high-ranking US military officers going to work for defense contractors; the Pentagon’s limited oversight on conflicts of interest that seems based on the assumption retired generals have an unshakable code of ethics; how private equity firms – specializing in defense industry investments – give compensation to rent-a-general firms for privileged information about Pentagon contracts; why Eisenhower should have gone with the military-industrial-Congressional complex version of his famous farewell address; and how retired Army Gen. Jack Keane – on behalf of AM General – helped overturn the Army’s decision to repair instead of replace Humvees.

Give it a listen.

Also at Antiwar.com, there’s an article by Kevin Carson on why Bradley Manning is a hero.

Manning, like many young soldiers, joined up in the naive belief that he was defending the freedom of his fellow Americans. When he got to Iraq, he found himself working under orders “to round up and hand over Iraqi civilians to America’s new Iraqi allies, who he could see were then torturing them with electrical drills and other implements.” The people he arrested, and handed over for torture, were guilty of such “crimes” as writing “scholarly critiques” of the U.S. occupation forces and its puppet government. When he expressed his moral reservations to his supervisor, Manning “was told to shut up and get back to herding up Iraqis.”

The people Manning saw tortured, by the way, were frequently the very same people who had been tortured by Saddam: Trade unionists, members of the Iraqi Freedom Congress, and other freedom-loving people who had no more use for Halliburton and Blackwater than they had for the Baath Party.

For exposing his government’s crimes against humanity, Manning has spent seven months in solitary confinement – a torture deliberately calculated to break the human mind.

[….]

He’s impaired the U.S. government’s ability to lie us into wars where thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of foreigners are murdered.

He’s impaired its ability to use such wars – under the guise of promoting “democracy” — to install puppet governments like the Coalition Provisional Authority, that will rubber stamp neoliberal “free trade” agreements (including harsh “intellectual property” provisions written by the proprietary content industries) and cut special deals with American crony capitalists.

[….]

Let’s get something straight. Bradley Manning may be a criminal by the standards of the American state. But by all human standards of morality, the government and its functionaries that Manning exposed to the light of day are criminals. And Manning is a hero of freedom for doing it.

At Corrente, there’s a great post by Letsgetitdone: Fairy Tales of the Coming State of the Union: The Government Is Running Out Of Money

In “All Together Now: There Is No Deficit/Debt Problem,” I warned against the message calling for deficit reduction that the President will probably deliver in his State of the Union Address next month. I argued that there was no deficit/debt problem and that it is essential to reject the President’s framing of the issue and move on cope with the real problems of the economy and American Society. That piece stands alone. But I also think it would be useful to examine each of the specific fairy tales the President is likely to tell in making his case justifying austerity measures which are certain to be counter-productive. This post focuses on one these fairy tales; the narrative that the Government is running out of money.

Check it out.

Finally, Crooks & Liars has the video of Lindsey Graham on Meet the Press threatening to shut down the government until he gets cuts in Social Security.

As Mike Malloy used to say, “have I told you lately how much I hate these people?”

So, what are you reading this morning?

The Latest Self-Serving Village Narrative: Screw the Baby Boomers.

Posted: January 1, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Baby Boomers, Barack Obama, Catfood Commission, Corporate Crime, Democratic Politics, Medicare, Social Security, The Bonus Class, The Great Recession, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Don’t tell me the White House isn’t behind this. Both the New York Times and ABC News are pushing this right now, but the Washington Post jumped on it first with this op-ed by Robert Samuelson on December 26: On Medicare and Social Security, be unfair to the boomers Samuelson, just turned 65 himself, and says he is “part of the problem.” Except he probably doesn’t need Social Security and Medicare, unlike most baby boomers, who never could afford a lifestyle like that of their parents or who lost their retirement investments in the crash of 2008. Samuelson writes:

There has been much brave talk recently, from Republicans and Democrats alike, about reducing budget deficits and controlling government spending. The trouble is that hardly anyone admits that accomplishing these goals must include making significant cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits for baby boomers.

If we don’t, we will be condemned to some combination of inferior policies. We can raise taxes sharply over the next 15 or 20 years, roughly 50 percent from recent levels, to cover expanding old-age subsidies and existing government programs. Or we can accept permanently huge budget deficits. Even if that doesn’t trigger a financial crisis, it would probably stunt economic growth and living standards. So would dramatically higher taxes. There’s a final choice: deep cuts in other programs, from defense to roads to higher education.

Yet, neither political party seems interested in reducing benefits for baby boomers. Doing so, it’s argued, would be “unfair” to people who had planned retirements based on existing programs. Well, yes, it would be unfair. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a worse time for cuts. Unemployment is horrendous; eroding home values and retirement accounts have depleted the elderly’s wealth. Only 19 percent of present retirees are “very confident” of having enough money to live “comfortably,” down from 41 percent in 2007, reports the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Blah, blah, blah. But of course it isn’t “unfair” to reduce taxes on the richest Americans–people who most likely will invest their extra tax money in other countries, people who can easily afford to live in other countries once this one goes down the tubes. Those rich people who control most of the money in the U.S. economy–they aren’t selfish are they? No, of course not. It’s the baby boomers who are selfish, always out for “me, me, me,” and never considering anyone else. But wait…aren’t baby boomers also the sandwich generation–caring for their aging parents as well as their millennial generation children? I think my head is going to explode.

According to a new Marist poll, most Americans think baby boomers should keep working after 65; yet there is evidence that baby boomers are not as healthy as their parents’ generation. Of course that must be the boomers’ fault–just like everything else that has happened during our lifetimes. We’ve been blamed for juvenile delinquency, excess materialism, hippies, illegal drugs, self-absorption, and being horrible parents to the Millennials, who are supposedly highly narcissistic and lacking in empathy.

The fact that we’re supposedly less healthy than our parents couldn’t possibly have anything to do with environmental pollution or increasing income inequality in our society, now could it? No, of course not. It must be because we’re so selfish and self-absorbed. We brought it on ourselves by demanding to be born right after WWII. Oh wait…we didn’t ask to be born. Well, somehow it must be our fault.

Well, I’m not buying it. We paid for our retirement benefits all our lives and now the richest of the rich want to take that away from us too. Supposedly the baby boomer social security “problem” was taken care of by adjustments made in the 1980s under Reagan. It’s not our fault that George W. Bush and Barack Obama decided to steal our money. But this is the narrative we are going to hear from now on until the Villagers manage to destroy Social Security and Medicare.

Here’s The New York Times today: Boomers Hit New Self-Absorption Milestone: Age 65.

In keeping with a generation’s fascination with itself, the time has come to note the passing of another milestone: On New Year’s Day, the oldest members of the Baby Boom Generation will turn 65, the age once linked to retirement, early bird specials and gray Velcro shoes that go with everything.

Though other generations, from the Greatest to the Millennial, may mutter that it’s time to get over yourselves, this birthday actually matters. According to the Pew Research Center, for the next 19 years, about 10,000 people “will cross that threshold” every day — and many of them, whether through exercise or Botox, have no intention of ceding to others what they consider rightfully theirs: youth.

This means that the 79 million baby boomers, about 26 percent of this country’s population, will be redefining what it means to be older, and placing greater demands on the social safety net. They are living longer, working longer and, researchers say, nursing some disappointment about how their lives have turned out. The self-aware, or self-absorbed, feel less self-fulfilled, and thus are racked with self-pity.

I’ve got news for Dan Barry, the author of that article. It isn’t a “generation” that was “fascinated with itself.” It’s a lazy media that pretends that 79 million people are all alike. Give me a break. Even Barry admits that “[a]scribing personality traits to a bloc of 79 million people is a fool’s endeavor,” so why do so many media and government fools keep doing it. I’ll tell you why. They want to turn our Social Security funds over to Wall Street.

Here’s Diane Sawyer’s silly “report” on the baby boomer “problem.” Susie already wrote about it at Suburban Guerrilla:

You have to watch this video to see how insidiously the Villagers are spreading the narrative: Those Baby Boomers are sucking all the money out of the Treasury because they’re just so damned selfish! And only some of them served in Viet Nam! Watch as Diane Sawyer puts on her Very Serious Face and says the deficit is a big problem. Pay attention to the lies scattered throughout.

You can read the rest and watch the video of the oh so very serious Diane Sawyer at Susie’s place or at Crooks & Liars.

I saw this coming a long time ago, back when Obama started beating up on baby boomers and the ’60s during the 2008 primaries. I summarized Obama’s anti-baby boomer narrative in a post a couple of years ago. I’ll get the link for you in a bit. Here are just a few examples of Obama’s attacks on boomers.

From the New York Times: Shushing the Baby Boomers

THE time has come, Senator Barack Obama says, for the baby boomers to get over themselves.

In taking the first steps toward a presidential candidacy last week, Mr. Obama, who was born in 1961 and considers himself a member of the post-boomer generation, said Americans hungered for “a different kind of politics,” one that moved beyond the tired ideological battles of the 1960s. [….]

Mr. Obama calculates that Americans of all ages are sick of the feuding boomers and ready to turn to the generation that came of age after Vietnam, after the campus culture wars between freaks and straights, and after young people had given up on what überboomer Hillary Rodham Clinton (who made her own announcement on the Web yesterday) called in a 1969 commencement address a search for “a more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living.”

The Times also quotes from Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope, in which Obama used the self-absorbed baby boomer narrative to attack the Clintons.

In his second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” Mr. Obama is critical of the style and the politics of the 60s, when the psyches of most of his potential rivals for the White House were formed. He writes that the politics of that era were highly personal, burrowing into every interaction between youth and authority and among peers. The battles moved to Washington in the 1990s and endure today, he says

“In the back and forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004,” he writes, “I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage.”

Of course Obama also talked about “the excesses of the ’60s and ’70s” in his interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal before the Nevada primary.

“I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what is different is the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. They felt like with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

Finally, Obama attacked baby boomers in his Inaugural Address.

His harshest language on domestic matters actually seemed directed — not for George W. Bush or specific Republican policies — but more for an entire generation, the baby boomers who have been running this country for the past 16 years (and, of course, that has to include Bill Clinton too). He seemed more interested in identifying the generation that he saw as responsible for the more systemic problems facing the country:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

Those words were reminiscent of the “turn the page” language he used effectively against Hillary Clinton in the primaries. This time, though, it was quite clear that he wasn’t singling out the Clintons, but was making a broader, more pointed claim against the excesses of an entire generation of leaders. And, on the financial front, Bill Clinton signed the law that overturned Glass-Steagall, while George W. Bush signed the law that quote-reformed-unquote bankruptcy laws. So, Obama may well be on strong footing there. He’s demontrating an unwillingness to hear excuses from either Democratic or Republican partisans.

Anyone who thinks all of this was or is accidental is delusional. Obama was told all along by his advisers and probably by his Wall Street donors that he would have to be the one to destroy Social Security and Medicare. These two programs are the only large source of taxpayer funds for the wealthy and corporations to steal from us. We’ve known that for a long time, but most Americans probably don’t–many still think Obama is a liberal.

Reportedly Obama will embrace the findings of his Catfood Commission in his upcoming State of the Union Address. It’s going to be a full-out media assault and we’d better figure out a way to combat it. It’s the old divide and conquer tactic that has always worked so well. Those of us in the bottom 90% of incomes had better get together and fight back or we’re dead.

A little Economics this and that …

Posted: December 27, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Catfood Commission, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd, WE TOLD THEM SO | Tags: , , , , | 44 Comments

I thought I’d post a little end of the year economics stuff  just in case you need a nap!!

A nifty chart to show we are SO f'd!!!

I’ve been writing for around a year about a possible bubble in commodity prices but a definite increases in base commodity prices coming shortly.  Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean it will involve an increase in over all inflation because these price increases are mostly in the already volatile areas of food and energy which are considered outside the ‘core’ inflation measures because they tend to bump and shuffle a lot.   This is from Paul Krugman in his column: “The Finite World”.

Oil is back above $90 a barrel. Copper and cotton have hit record highs. Wheat and corn prices are way up. Over all, world commodity prices have risen by a quarter in the past six months.

Is it speculation run amok? Is it the result of excessive money creation, a harbinger of runaway inflation just around the corner? No and no.

What the commodity markets are telling us is that we’re living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices. And America is, for the most part, just a bystander in this story.

Krugman goes on to explain how booms in the economies of developing nations is causing increased Demand for certain commodities.  This simply means the price will go up when the supply is limited for some reason or another.  Some times the supply is slow to increase because of production considerations or inventory considerations.  Other times the supply is limited just because there is a finite amount of it on the planet.  Some of this may also be due to the market taking in the impact of those just passed subsidies to corn-based ethanol which take farm land out of food/other crop production and funneling it to corn production,  This decreases the supply of wheat, soybeans, and cotton too.

And those supplies aren’t keeping pace. Conventional oil production has been flat for four years; in that sense, at least, peak oil has arrived. True, alternative sources, like oil from Canada’s tar sands, have continued to grow. But these alternative sources come at relatively high cost, both monetary and environmental.

Also, over the past year, extreme weather — especially severe heat and drought in some important agricultural regions — played an important role in driving up food prices. And, yes, there’s every reason to believe that climate change is making such weather episodes more common.

Krugman concludes with the important question of what does this mean for us?

So what are the implications of the recent rise in commodity prices? It is, as I said, a sign that we’re living in a finite world, one in which resource constraints are becoming increasingly binding. This won’t bring an end to economic growth, let alone a descent into Mad Max-style collapse. It will require that we gradually change the way we live, adapting our economy and our lifestyles to the reality of more expensive resources.

But that’s for the future. Right now, rising commodity prices are basically the result of global recovery. They have no bearing, one way or another, on U.S. monetary policy. For this is a global story; at a fundamental level, it’s not about us.

Yes.  The world economy is “not about us” any more.  So many other countries now have huge viable economies that we are no long the center of the Supply and Demand world like we were post World War 2.  This is definitely going to take some adjusting on our part and some ignoring of the rhetoric of the right on our country’s role in the world.  We can not continue to maintain the idea of American Exceptionalism in its current form given that we are really no longer exceptional in many, many ways.  That adaptive behavior does not diminish our historical role as the original provider of Democracy-based Constitutions and Civil Liberties or our military role in freeing many countries from monarchy and fascism in both world wars.

We can continue to pour our resources and the lives of our young into asserting ourselves as the global military police in attempt to maintain our delusion of being ‘special’, or we can put our resources into assuring ourselves and our children a comfortable niche in the world with a respected voice at a big table.  The Right Wing has to understand that we don’t own the table anymore.  If only our politicians would grow up enough to make the best choice for us instead of deluding us into thinking that we’ll ever see post World War 2 America again.

I want to couple this with something I got in a tweet from the AFL-CIO: ‘U.S. Workers Earned Less in 2009 Than in 2008’. This goes along with the fact that many things we could finance or buy twenty to thirty years ago will elude us today.

New data show America’s workers earned less in 2009 than in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Compensation was down by 3.2 percent in 2009 with declines in construction and manufacturing fueling the plunge.  St. Louis County, the hardest hit, saw a decline of 11.5 percent.

For those lucky enough to have a job, average pay increased by 1.2 percent. But overall income inequality is now at its worst since 1928. As the chart by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows here, between 1979 and 2005, households at the bottom fifth of the income scale have seen an average, inflation-adjusted income growth of just $200. The $200 figure does not represent an average annual increase in income, but rather an increase of $200 over the entire 26-year period. By contrast, a small number of households at the top 0.1% of the income scale saw average income growth of almost $6 million over that same period.

In addition, the “wealth gap,” which differs from the income gap because it measures total net worth, is now 225 times greater between the richest 1 percent and the median family net worth.

Lest we forget, corporations are sitting on $1.93 trillion as of Sept. 30—up from $1.8 trillion at the end of June–and not using some of that money pot to create jobs.

The bottom is falling out for the middle classes in this country.  Income inequality is as bad as it was in 1928 during the peak of the Robber Baron age.  There is no way we’ll have a shot at seeing ‘morning again in America’–even one concocted from a senile man’s political rhetoric–without a strong middle class.  This is one of the reasons that I highly recommend your holiday reading included Chris Hedges ‘Death of the Liberal Class’.   Here’s Sanctuary TV’s you tube on his explanation the “genesis of the book”.  Wonk mentioned some of his thesis in her excellent post yesterday.

The ‘lies of omission’ that we see in the Main Stream Media today makes this imperative that we have conversations outside of channels that are controlled by for-profit corporations.  Listen in to the video at around 2:45.

Most of the images that are disseminated around our culture are skillfully put together and are disseminated by for profit corporations so that we are made to …or we confuse … how we are made to feel with knowledge.  Which is precisely how ended up with Barrack Obama.

This is especially true with things economic.  I had a conversation with my Republican Dad yesterday which ended up with him accusing me of sounding just like the Democrats after the Great Depression.  (I will wear that badge proudly, thank you.)   I was trying to explain to him how Social Security isn’t going bankrupt, that the overages are invested in T-bonds and T-bills and that isn’t the same as massive borrowing from the fund by the federal government, and that if social security can’t rely on the interest and their capital invested in T-bonds or T-bills in the future, we  will undoubtedly have a much greater problem than having smaller social security checks. (My guess is that we would be in the middle of a government collapse similar to what happened to the USSR in the 1980s.)  Dad kept accusing me of living in the theoretical world of economics–me, an empirical economist–when I kept telling him it was just a matter of debits and credits which are anything but theoretical economics.

The deal is this if you read studies, and follow the debits and the credits.  The threat to social security isn’t coming from its cash flows.  It’s coming from the politicians in Washington, D.C. and it appears that it will shortly be led by the aforementioned Barrack Obama. Some of these people seem intent on collapsing our Republic and its democratic roots.  These Bircher-like attacks on the New Deal are real attacks on the ways the government–through New Deal Policies, Laws, and Agenciess- levels the economic playing field for small businesses and working class people.  This is the same way that Bircher-like attacks on Civil Rights attacks the ways the government levels the legal playing field for minorities and women.

Again, I’m drawn to the quote most attributed to the late great Senator Patrick Monihan.  People and politicians are entitled to their opinions but not the facts.  The problem is that fact manufacturing–or labeling political diatribes by media monsters like Glenn Beck–appears to be rampant in the very outlet that provides the life blood of our democracy.

This maldescriptions of unemployment, the role and purpose and very political independence of the Fed are more features of this misinformation campaign.  I’m going to further reference Paul Krugman and his economist yogini–yup, there’s at least two of us out there–wife Robin Wells here.  They co-authored an excellent essay on “Where do We Go from Here” in The New York Review of Books.  This part comes after their joint call to the Democratic congress critterz–left standing from the midterms elections–to fight.

First, it would mean fighting on economic issues. While it is extremely unlikely that Democrats can undertake any further fiscal stimulus, they can put Republicans on the spot, resisting calls for austerity and making the case, repeatedly, that the GOP is standing in the way of necessary action. The fight over renewal of unemployment benefits should be only the start. Democrats can also denounce Republican attacks on the Federal Reserve and defend the Fed’s independence. They can resist attempts to turn back health care reform, on both humanitarian and long-term budgeting grounds, as health care reform is the critical factor in reining in the long-term budget deficit.

Health Care Reform Inc. could be one more rung on the ladder for the middle class on the ladder back to upwards mobility.  Instead of repealing the now unpopular bill, we should be working actively to get the right things into its corporate enabling shell.  That would be–at minimum–a Public Option.  We have to get them to fight on Economic issues.  Also, we desperately need to deal with Fannie and Freddie.  These organizations used to be the way to home ownership for working class Americans.  I stand proudly as an example in that regard.  My little kathouse in the bayou in the middle of a solid urban hood shines as a beacon of what those things were supposed to do before they started manufacturing loans to the derivatives market.

And there are steps that the White House could take without congressional approval. Democrats could pressure the administration to fix the inexcusable mess at the HAMP (mortgage modification) program—a program whose Kafkaesque complexity has in many cases made matters so bad for home owners that it has triggered the foreclosures it was supposed to avoid.  In addition, mortgage relief would benefit the wider economy. Furthermore, the scope of mortgage relief could be made much wider if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were used to guarantee mortgage refinancing. Other proposals go even further: for example, that Fannie and Freddie engineer reductions in mortgage principals. All of this could be done, conceivably, by executive order.

What we are seeing is a brick by brick removal in the walls that support the social net built during the New Deal that helped America become the thing it was during the 1950, 1960s and 1970s.  Yes, we helped many countries get rid of Nazis and Fascist and this did make us some what exceptional at the time, but ushering in the very policies and attitudes of fascism does not make us the least bit exceptional now.  It weakens the very people that make for a vibrant Democracy.    Also, given that the Wikileaks information has been the soul source recently of unmanufactured news and opinion passed off as fact, it also gives us a glance at why the rest of the planet has ceased to see the US as exceptional too.

To paraphrase the words of Common Dreams and Margaret Flowers: We Must Resist.  Okay, so this essay was a little Political Economy and not just economics.  You awake?

update:

I get to update this post with a link to one of the more influential ‘liberal’ economist who is also writing on the changes in the Political Economy at Project Syndicate. Here’s something  from Jeffrey D. Sachs writing on ‘America’s Political Class Struggle’.  You may recall that both Krugman and Sachs were called to the Obama woodshed a few weeks ago and told to get on board with the McConnell-Obama  tax cuts.

America is on a collision course with itself. This month’s deal between President Barack Obama and the Republicans in Congress to extend the tax cuts initiated a decade ago by President George W. Bush is being hailed as the start of a new bipartisan consensus. I believe, instead, that it is a false truce in what will become a pitched battle for the soul of American politics.

As in many countries, conflicts over public morality and national strategy come down to questions of money. In the United States, this is truer than ever. The US is running an annual budget deficit of around $1 trillion, which may widen further as a result of the new tax agreement. This level of annual borrowing is far too high for comfort. It must be cut, but how?

The problem is America’s corrupted politics and loss of civic morality. One political party, the Republicans, stands for little except tax cuts, which they place above any other goal. The Democrats have a bit wider set of interests, including support for health care, education, training, and infrastructure. But, like the Republicans, the Democrats, too, are keen to shower tax cuts on their major campaign contributors, predominantly rich Americans.

The result is a dangerous paradox. The US budget deficit is enormous and unsustainable. The poor are squeezed by cuts in social programs and a weak job market. One in eight Americans depends on Food Stamps to eat. Yet, despite these circumstances, one political party wants to gut tax revenues altogether, and the other is easily dragged along, against its better instincts, out of concern for keeping its rich contributors happy.

This tax-cutting frenzy comes, incredibly, after three decades of elite fiscal rule in the US that has favored the rich and powerful. Since Ronald Reagan became President in 1981, America’s budget system has been geared to supporting the accumulation of vast wealth at the top of the income distribution. Amazingly, the richest 1% of American households now has a higher net worth than the bottom 90%. The annual income of the richest 12,000 households is greater than that of the poorest 24 million households.

Please go read the rest of the article.  I think this shows further evidence that Obama didn’t placate liberal economists.

Monday Reads

Posted: December 27, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Catfood Commission, Civil Liberties, Diplomacy Nightmares, Foreign Affairs, Regulation, U.S. Politics, Wikileaks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 68 Comments

Good Morning!!

I’m still stuck in central Indiana and there seems to be a blizzard bearing down on the Northeast. They’re predicting 18 inches in northwest greater Boston where I live. I’m hoping I’ll manage to get back there soon, if weather permits.

I had to call the guy who has been helping me with the snow the last couple of winters and ask him to shovel my house out so I don’t come home to piles of solid ice in my driveway and on my front walk. I hope everyone who is getting hit by the blizzard will be okay!

While I was checking up on the Boston weather forecast, I came across this interesting story in The Boston Globe.

If you were around in the late ’50s and early ’60s, you may recall a famous song by the Kingston Trio about the Boston subway system, then called the MTA.

In June of 1959, packaged sandwiches and envelopes of nickels began pouring into the Park Square headquarters of Boston’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, postmarked from as far off as California and Hawaii. All were addressed to Charlie — “the man who never returned.’’

The Kingston Trio’s “At Large’’ album was headed to number one, and listeners couldn’t get enough of the opening track, “M.T.A.,’’ about a fellow trapped on the subway because he lacked a nickel for the exit fare. The hit would go on to become a campfire staple and slice of Americana, widely embraced, frequently parodied, and adapted for styles from country to punk.

It turns out that the song the Kingston Trio recorded was

…actually a sanitized version of the original, a campaign song for a 1949 Boston mayoral candidate who opposed the subway fare hike. But by 1959, the candidate had been blacklisted and run out of town, and the song’s most political lyrics were simply edited out

because another folk group, The Weavers (which included Pete Seeger) had been blacklisted because Seeger and another member of the group, Lee Hayes were called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and both refused to name names.

Now the Boston transit authority (now called the MBTA) is displaying the uncensored lyrics of the song along with the backstory at selected subway stations. “Charlie on the MTA” was Walter O’Brien’s campaign song–a protest about a fare increase in subway fares.

The MTA had been formed just two years earlier from the ashes of the Boston Elevated Railway Co., a private company whose shareholders had received a guaranteed dividend for years even as the transit company relied on public subsidies. When lawmakers eventually bought them out to abolish the company, shareholders made out handsomely. Then the taxpayers footing the bill got slapped with the fare hike.

Does that remind you of anything in the present?

“The Progressive Party saw that as a bailout of private interest and inappropriate use of taxpayer money, and [then the fare increase] was one wrong piled upon another,’’ said Jim Vrabel, an activist and historian determined to reclaim the song’s origins. “It’s been kind of trivialized and made kind of a cute song, and people don’t realize the serious political background of it.’’

I hope you’ll take the time to read the entire article. It provides quite a bit of information on what it was like for artists, politicians, teachers, lawyers–really just about anyone left-leaning, during the McCarthy era.

Below is a video of the song will the original lyrics.

If only we had a Walter O’Brien today! He couldn’t afford to pay for advertising so he hired trucks to drive around playing the song in the streets of Boston. Can you imagine the great songs that could be written about the bankster fraud and bailouts and all the people who are paying by losing their homes and livelihoods?

I found another fascinating piece of history via Memeorandum. From the BBC News: “Coded American Civil War message in bottle deciphered.”

In the encrypted message, a commander tells Gen John Pemberton that no reinforcements are available to help him defend Vicksburg, Mississippi.

“You can expect no help from this side of the river,” says the message, which was deciphered by codebreakers.

The text is dated 4 July 1863 – the day Vicksburg fell to Union forces.

The small bottle was given to the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, by a former Confederate soldier in 1896.

Also via Memeorandum, “death panels” are back, according to The New York Times: Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir

When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

I don’t have a problem with that as long as it doesn’t lead to denying care to elderly people who want it. Of course knowing that this administration is going to be embracing the Catfood Commission Report, I’m a little leery of what else they might be planning for us old folks. Ice floes anyone?

In other news, via Raw Story, Janet Napolitano has no sympathy for people who feel violated by thugs pawing their breasts, buttocks, and genitals: Napolitano: Pat-downs are here to stay

Airline passengers should get used to invasive full body scans and enhanced pat-downs, the Homeland Security secretary suggested Sunday.

CNN’s Candy Crowley asked Janet Napolitano if she expected changes to the controversial Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening procedures in the near future.

“Not for the foreseeable future,” Napolitano replied.

“You know we’re always looking to improve systems and so forth, but the new technology, the pat-downs — just objectively safer for our traveling public,” she said.

Okay, Janet, how about you have a “pat down” performed by a TSA thug on national TV? Then you can make an announcement about how great it was. The youtube would go viral, millions of people would see your sales pitch on the internet, and perhaps a few would be convinced. Oh, and is the government going to bail out the airline industry when millions of people stop flying?

I guess that doesn’t worry Napolitano though. She plans to start “stepping up security” at malls, and train stations.

“What we have to do is say, well, what other ways are they thinking to commit an act, because our job is not only to react, but to be thinking always ahead, what could be happening,” Napolitano said.

“And so we have enhanced measures going on at surface transportation, not because we have a specific or credible threat there, but because we know, looking at Madrid and London, that’s been another source of targets for terrorists.”

Soon you may have to go through a naked scanner and/or “enhanced patdown” (aka groping session) in order to get into a mall. Oh joy! Thank goodness I do most of my shopping on line…

A few new Wikileaks tidbits…

The New York Times has a story on how the DEA has become a global organization.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables.

[….]

Because of the ubiquity of the drug scourge, today’s D.E.A. has access to foreign governments, including those, like Nicaragua’s and Venezuela’s, that have strained diplomatic relations with the United States. Many are eager to take advantage of the agency’s drug detection and wiretapping technologies.

In some countries, the collaboration appears to work well, with the drug agency providing intelligence that has helped bring down traffickers, and even entire cartels. But the victories can come at a high price, according to the cables, which describe scores of D.E.A. informants and a handful of agents who have been killed in Mexico and Afghanistan.

In Venezuela, the local intelligence service turned the tables on the D.E.A., infiltrating its operations, sabotaging equipment and hiring a computer hacker to intercept American Embassy e-mails, the cables report.

More at The Independent: Panama row reveals US drug agency’s power

The El Paso Times: WikiLeaks tells why drug king is still free

and the BBC News: Wikileaks: Governments ‘sought US wiretapping help’

At The New Republic, Norm Scheiber explains Why Wikileaks will be the death of big business and big government.

That’s about it for me. What are you reading this morning?

Friday Reads

Posted: December 24, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Catfood Commission, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, morning reads, Reproductive Rights, U.S. Economy | Tags: , , , , , | 58 Comments

Get Ready for a LONG weekend!!

Good Morning!!

I’m going to start off with some economics news for a change.  This one is from The Economist. It’s a thread that lists the answers to a question asked of a group of economists: What do you expect to be the most significant economic  developments in 2011?

I liked Mark Thoma’s contribution so here’s a bite.

I EXPECT one of the most significant developments of 2011 to be one I’d rather not see: deficit reduction.

Recovery from recessions brought about by financial panics is notoriously slow, and I don’t expect this recovery to be an exception to that general rule, though I’d be happy to be wrong about this.

Thus, rather than cutting the deficit, we need to take steps to increase the speed of the recovery or, at the very least, avoid doing things that will slow it down.

If Congress had credibility, there would be no need to worry about the trade-off between helping the economy escape the recession and reducing the deficit. Congress could do what is needed to help the economy now, and promise—credibly with specific plans—to reduce the deficit once the economy has recovered. That would give us the best of both worlds.

But, unfortunately, that’s not the Congress we have, credibility is not its strong suit, and legislators seem determined to demonstrate their intent with actions now rather than a commitment to take this up when the economy is stronger. This will place additional drag on an already slow recovery, and perhaps even send the economy back into recession.

So let’s hope we can at least realise the promise of gridlock and maintain the status quo until the economy is on better footing.

Yup, but that’s not what I expect given there’s hints that the State of the Union address will contain a presidential embrace of the cat food commission report and social security reductions.  Let’s hope that’s just a bad rumor.

There’s an interesting analysis about Mitch McConnell up on Politico that I’m not sure about.  It seems to imply that his ability to keep his Senate cronies in line may be fading. Will the NO Coalition fall apart?  The analysis provides some examples  from the lame duck session and then hints to one or two newcomers that could be  thorns in McConnell’s side.  One is Rand Paul who rides in on a tea party nag with some really wacky libertarian saddle baggage.

But the two lame-duck votes suggest that the GOP’s six-seat pick-up in November may, paradoxically, complicate matters for the man who had come to embody Republican resistance in the age of the Obama. And while nobody in the White House thinks McConnell has lost his grip, they see an opportunity to increase their leverage as McConnell finds himself squeezed between an incoming class of emboldened conservatives with a tea party tinge – and the eight to twelve Republicans who showed their independence on “don’t ask, don’t tell” and START.

After two years of nonstop Democratic infighting, the White House is clearly enjoying the possibility of a GOP family feud — and are closely watching how the old-school McConnell meshes with new-breed Republicans like Utah’s Mike Lee, a strict constitutionalist who won’t vote for anything James Madison would have rejected, and tea party idol Rand Paul, a fellow Kentuckian whose election McConnell initially opposed.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Wednesday suggested that McConnell “miscalculated” in the lame-duck by failing to “put aside partisan political interests” on START.

I admit to finding the Republican outrage on Ronald Reagan’s START Treaty a bit staged.  Plus, the entire nightmare of having a group of Senators grandstand against dying 9-11 responders was unbelievable.  Shep Smith of Fox even protested deep into the Republican belly so there had to be some indigestion there. Guess we’ll see when the Senate newbies hit town.

Another issue floating around the senate dream machine is finding some way to deal with  filibuster reform.  WaPo’s The Plum Line added this bit to the conversation.

There’s ongoing news for filibuster reform.  Harry Reid is in active discussions with his caucus about moving forward with reform in the new year, and is currently devising a plan to do just that, a senior Senate Democratic leadership aide tells me.

At a caucus meeting this week attended only by Senators and no staff, Reid and fellow Dems devoted a significant chunk of time to a discussion about specific ideas on how to proceed, the aide says.

Word of Reid’s machinations comes after the National Journal reported yesterday that all the returning Democratic Senators have indicated support for efforts at reform, and are urging Reid to press forward at the start of the new year.

Though Reid has said in the past that he’s generally supportive of reform, it has been unclear whether he would support active measures to make it happen. But the senior Dem leadership aide says Reid is already working on specific steps forward.

Evidently there is a staff shuffle coming up at the White House shortly. This isn’t a surprise since there have been some recent departures–Summers, Rahm, Romer–and already announced departures like Axelrod.

A reshaping of the economic team, beginning by naming a new director of the National Economic Council, is among the most urgent priorities of the new year. Gene Sperling, a counselor to the Treasury secretary who held the position in the Clinton administration, is among the final contenders to succeed Lawrence H. Summers in the job, along with Roger C. Altman, a Wall Street investment banker who also served in the Clinton administration.

When Republicans assume control of the House on Jan. 5, ending four years of a full Democratic majority in Congress, the president’s approach to policy and politics is poised to change on several fronts.

The White House is hiring more lawyers to handle oversight investigations from the new Congress, even as the president sets up a re-election headquarters in Chicago and considers ways to streamline operations inside the West Wing.

“You’re not going to see wholesale changes, but there will be significant changes. I think that’s desirable,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser who is leaving the White House next month. “This is a bubble. It’s been an intense couple of years, and there’s an advantage to bringing in folks who have a fresh set of senses — smell, touch and feel — about what’s going on out there.”

Investment bankers, old Clinton people … doesn’t sound like much of a change to me.

I had linked down thread the other day to a hospital in Arizona that has been punished for saving a woman’s life by giving her an abortion.  The Bishop in question also excommunicated the Nun in charge.  Nicholas Kristoff wrote an impassioned op-ed at the time.

Sister Margaret was a senior administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. A 27-year-old mother of four arrived late last year, in her third month of pregnancy. According to local news reports and accounts from the hospital and some of its staff members, the mother suffered from a serious complication called pulmonary hypertension. That created a high probability that the strain of continuing pregnancy would kill her.

“In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother’s life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy,” the hospital said in a statement. “This decision was made after consultation with the patient, her family, her physicians, and in consultation with the Ethics Committee.”

Sister Margaret was a member of that committee. She declined to discuss the episode with me, but the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, ruled that Sister Margaret was “automatically excommunicated” because she assented to an abortion.

“The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s,” the bishop’s communication office elaborated in a statement.

The abortion procedure occurred awhile ago but the incident has led to a recent ACLU request to the Federal Government for help. The Hospital was just stripped of its Catholic status.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday asked federal health officials to ensure that Catholic hospitals provide emergency reproductive care to pregnant women, saying the refusal by religiously affiliated hospitals to provide abortion and other services was becoming an increasing problem.

In a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the ACLU cited the case of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, which was stripped of its Catholic status Tuesday because doctors performed an abortion on a woman who had developed a life-threatening complication.

“We continue to applaud St. Joseph’s for doing what is right by standing up for women’s health and complying with federal law,” five ACLU attorneys wrote in a letter to Donald Berwick, the CMS administrator, and his deputy, Marilyn Tavenner.

“But this confrontation never should have happened in the first place, because no hospital – religious or otherwise – should be prohibited from saving women’s lives and from following federal law.”

I can only tell you that my last pregnancy was very high risk and there was no chance I was going to go to term.  There was also no chance I would be able to delivery vaginally.  I actually had a friend who had lost a baby under the same circumstances not too long before that.  They could not rush her from North Platte to Omaha fast enough to save her pregnancy.  I developed complication after complication at the onset.  I can tell you that my insurance company at the time–Mutual of Omaha–basically wanted to force me to a Catholic hospital.  I sent my husband to the people in charge of those decisions to flash his AVP ID and tell them to let me go to the Methodist one with its neonic and neonate on board and delivery rooms up the hall from the entrance to Children’s Hospital.  Fortunately, we got the job done, we got the exception from Mutual of Omaha, and I carried youngest daughter far enough to term so that she was born very alive and healthy.  I continued to have health problems; including the discovery of inoperable cancer throughout my reproductive organs.

Under no circumstances would I ever recommend to any woman with a functional uterus that they consider themselves safe at some religious hospitals unless the Federal Government steps in and enforces the law.  St Joseph’s has basically disassociated from the church and continues its history of excellent care, but I wonder how many small town hospitals could afford to do the same.  This situation bears watching and we may have to make some calls and write some letters as it develops.

Stay tuned.

As we enter the final week of 2010, I just want to say how much I appreciate the community of intelligent and insightful people that frequent Sky Dancing every day.  Two months ago, I would’ve never envisioned this place being any thing more than my file cabinet.  Today, we are a thriving community with a  wonderful group of up and down page writers and sages. It has been a very rough year for me and having a place like this to relax with kindred spirits means so much to me.  I look forward to reading what every one says every day.  We’re growing leaps and bounds and are part of a bigger conversation as well.  We’re trying to tackle and discuss tough issues in a place where strong opinions are  cherished and met with civil discussion.  I think you’ll be excited by some of the topics that are on deck and will be published soon. Grayslady will have her first official post up shortly. She’s been here behind the scenes for a bit but we get to read her on the front page and not just at her own wonderful blog. She and Sima have partnered on a topic that is  an extremely important issue and  I can’t want to get my eyes  the results!  I know it’s important and fortunately they’re experts who can explain the why to me!  Of course, Bostonboomer and Wonk are busy with things and Zaladonis and mablue2 are here to delight us with their special blends of humor and opinions.   (I frankly think Zaladonis has a book in him.) Oh, and did you know that we owe the morning news format to mablue2?  Minx is busily working on something big too. She just told me about a file she downloaded to study and it’s huge!   You’ll want to make a visit to check it out!

It’s always been about the community to me.  Thank you for that greatest gifts any one could ever ask for!!!   That would be your friendship, your time, and your tales!  You’re my father and mother Christmases!!  Whatever you celebrate–if you celebrate–this season, please have a good and safe one!!!

As we say around my household, FELIZ NAUGHTY DOGS!!!  Merry Cat Mess!!!!!  (It’s a long story and I’ve approached mablue2’s word count wall.)

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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