Month: June 2011

Trust’Em? Part XXIV

by digby

Oh my my:

Republicans are convinced that burnishing the public’s view of their unpopular proposal to overhaul Medicare depends on assuring today’s seniors that they won’t be affected.

“The retirees are going to be taken care of; there’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it,” House Speaker John Boehner vowed in an interview with CBS last month. The plan’s architect, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, has said time and again that the changes wouldn’t affect anybody getting close to retirement. “We propose to not change the benefits for people above the age of 55,” Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, insisted last week.

There’s only one problem with the strategy: It’s not true.

The policies in the House GOP budget, if enacted, would begin affecting millions of seniors almost immediately by increasing their costs for prescription drugs and probably long-term care. Further, Medicare costs could rise over time if healthier seniors choose to abandon the traditional benefit program.

I don’t know if Ryan sketched out his “plan” on the back of an envelope during a plane flight from DC or if he’s just a liar. But either way, it doesn’t appear to be either “serious” or honest.

This is why seniors are mistrustful of people “reforming” their program. They paid into it their whole working lives, they desperately need it or they’ll die, and they know that they can’t trust politicians not to lie to them. You’d be skeptical too.

It’s not that they trust Democrats more than Republicans, but in this case they probably do. The GOP’s repeated assaults on the program over the years doesn’t lend their claims of trying to “save” it much credibility. When they propose to fundamentally change the program these seniors know exactly what that means.

.

Virtually Speaking with Down With Tyranny

by digby

I’ll be sitting in for Jay tonight on Virtually Speaking at 9PM edt/6PM pdt and my guest will be none other than Howie Klein. We’re going to chat about online activism and whatever else we feel like talking about. Howie has encyclopedic knowledge of the state of the electoral field and we’ll have some fun talking about Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin recalls and more. Listen in if you can.

.

What if they’re not just greedy?

by digby

Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution has a scary bedtime story for you:

I think he’s hit on something very important — what if they aren’t just greedy bastards? What if they’re really, really dumb?

Read the whole thing. But keep the light on.

.

Is he thinking about it?

by digby

I remember back in 1996 when the GOP thought they had a good chance to turn Clinton into a one termer, the field was very weak and when it looked like they really were going to go with the old Warrior Bob Dole, Newtie famously said, “am I going to have to get into this thing?”

When I read this, I had to wonder …

House Budget chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) will lay out his vision for America’s foreign policy in an address to the Alexander Hamilton Society tonight in Washington. Crediting Charles Krauthammer’s 2009 essay in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, “Decline Is a Choice,” Ryan will insist the United States maintain its leading role in the world by addressing the growing debt and entitlement spending crises.

Below are a few selected excerpts from the speech:

Our fiscal policy and our foreign policy are on a collision course; and if we fail to put our budget on a sustainable path, then we are choosing decline as a world power….

If we continue down our current path, then a debt-fueled economic crisis is not a probability. It is a mathematical certainty. Some hear these facts and conclude that the sun is setting on America… that our problems are bigger than we are… that our competitors will soon outrun us… and that the choice we face is over how, not whether, to manage our nation’s decline. It’s inevitable, they seem to say, so let’s just get on with it… Our fiscal problems are real, and the need to address them is urgent. But I’m here to tell you that decline is not a certainty for America. Rather, as Charles Krauthammer put it, “decline is a choice.”…

A world without U.S. leadership will be a more chaotic place, a place where we have less influence, and a place where our citizens face more dangers and fewer opportunities. Choosing decline would have consequences that I doubt many Americans would be comfortable with. So we must lead. …a central element of maintaining American leadership is the promotion of our moral principles – consistently and energetically – without being unrealistic about what is possible for us to achieve….

He’d be a fool to do it in this go-round, but if the people are calling … could he refuse? After all, yesterday he faced down the President in the White House and the Republicans gave him a standing ovation. He’s their leader.

.

In thrall to liars and lunatics

by digby

Eric Alterman on Idiot Republicanism:

Echoing an earlier column by Weisberg, [NY Times columnist Joe]Nocera writes that he is “disheartened” to ” read about the Democrats’ gleeful reaction to the [special election] victory in New York” that turned on Ryan’s budget. Does the new Times columnist expect Democrats to cry when they win? Perhaps, but that’s not his point. “Even if Ryan’s solution is wrongheaded,” he writes, “he’s right that Medicare is headed for trouble.” Now try that logic at home. How about: “Even though Osama bin Laden was wrong to want to destroy America, he was right that we allow too much sex on television.”

So, yes, the Republicans are in thrall to liars and lunatics serving as a smoke screen for a conservative class war against the poor and middle class, but the real problem is those damn Democrats who celebrate their victories, and defend their constituencies. Advantage, idiots…

And it’s catching.

Look over here, somebody tweeted a picture of somebody’s male member!

.

Nothing to see here …

by digby

Brad DeLong:

The scariest thing I have heard–well, not heard, but that was related to me–is that one of Obama’s most senior economic advisors is now saying that NEC meetings are really peaceful now that there are no professional economists in the room. That strikes me as a very bad sign for policy rationality: given the central projections as of now and given the downside risks to the forecast, NEC members should be running around with their hair on fire…

I don’t get the feeling that the political people are much concerned either.

Is it possible that the whole “no drama” thing is actually willful blindness? Or maybe apathy? Some kind of depersonalization? It’s one thing to be cool under pressure but “peaceful” certainly isn’t how I would describe a healthy reaction to current conditions.

.

Gambling with uncertainty

by digby

Boehner and other Republican leaders said the private session in the White House’s East Room yesterday largely focused on the impact of the government’s debt on the economy and jobs.

“If we’re going to get serious about creating jobs in America, we’ve got to reduce some of the uncertainty” within the business community, Boehner said outside the White House. “Some of that uncertainty is caused by the giant debt that is facing our country.”

Remember when Wall Street and the banks nearly brought the world economy to its knees because of a gambling addiction that led them to a pathological dependence on reckless short term thinking? Well, it looks like they spread it to their servants:

One thing seems clear: America’s government is making its economic road harder than it needs to be. Debt problems loom, but there is no immediate fiscal crisis and no need for drastic short-term cuts. When debt issues came up during my trip to China, officials had a consistent message: China is a patient investor. It wants America to take steps toward fiscal sustainability, but it’s happy to have this happen over a 5- to 10-year period. By cutting drastically now, America is undermining its economy for no good reason.

Treasury yields tell the tale; they continue to tumble. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell below 3% on today’s bad economic news. Treasury yields have fallen on reduced American economic prospects, but they’ve also moved down as part of a broad flight to safety. Trouble in Europe and a slowdown in Asia have made the safe haven of American government debt more attractive. Which makes the tussle over America’s debt ceiling look even more unnecessarily dangerous. The other consistent message from Chinese officials on debt matters was that any failure to make good on American obligations would be catastrophic. Even a very short disruption in payments, of a week or two, would be totally unacceptable.

Neither Chinese leaders or markets think a disruption is likely. Today’s downward move in Treasuries followed on the heels of the failure in Congress last night of a “clean” (that is, without tacked on spending cuts) increase in the debt ceiling. And Congress will almost certainly lift the debt limit. But the decline in Treasury yields indicates the nature of the fire with which legislators are playing. If Congress called into question the safety of the one safe asset for which markets have an almost unlimited appetite, all hell would break loose.

The thing is that they are going to raise the debt ceiling. Everyone knows that. But acting like lunatics with an economy that’s clearly sputtering is insane. There is “uncertainty” about the real economy at the moment and the last thing we need is a bunch of idiotic Randroids playing games. You just can’t predict how people around the world might interpret this.

Last night David Gergen parroted the conventional wisdom that says while the economy may be getting worse the president simply must agree to build in long term debt reduction with the entitlements right now. He didn’t say why.

So that’s that.

.

“Hey, I’m that Ryan guy”

by digby

Somebody’s getting a very, very big head …

Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, got a standing ovation from his colleagues during the meeting.

“Hey, I’m that Ryan guy,” Ryan said at the start of his remarks at the meeting, according to a Republican aide.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) told reporters after the meeting that Ryan told Obama “we’re not going to make progress on reforming Medicare unless we cut through the demagoguery on the issue.”

In reply, Obama “spelled out his differences and responded with the thought that if everyone would follow that, certainly he would,” Goodlatte added. “Paul’s point was that as president of the United States, he can take the lead in cutting through that and having a serious discussion.”

Later, speaking to reporters, Ryan was asked if he had told Obama that he hadn’t shown leadership on budget issues.

“That’s not exactly what I said,” he responded. “I said we’ve got to take on this debt and if we demagogue each other at the leadership level, then we’re never going to take on our debt.”

Ryan went on to say that Obama has “mischaracterized” his Medicare plan when talking publicly about it. So he said he explained to Obama how the plan works, in the hopes that “in the future he won’t mischaracterize it.”

I’m sure the president was very grateful for the correction from “that Ryan guy.”

I can’t help but note that the president is at least a little bit responsible for creating this monster — he’s the one who publicly characterized Ryan as a “serious guy.” (I assume he didn’t know that he was a juvenile Randroid at the time.) Now the monster is making demands. Of the president.

The other two members of the GOP mean Girls club had something to say as well:

“The president talked about a need for us to continue to — quote-unquote — invest. And to a lot of us that’s code for more government spending –something we can’t afford right now,” said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House majority leader.

Asked about the purpose of the meeting, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said: “It was an opportunity for our members to communicate directly with the president about our ideas about how to get the economy going again — how to create jobs and solve the debt problem facing our country.

“I told the president one more time: This is the moment. This is the window of opportunity where we can deal with this on our terms. We can work together and solve this problem. We know what the problems are. Let’s not kick the can down the road one more time.”

Yeah, whatever. They continue to conflate “creating jobs” with “fixing the deficit”, (but so far it doesn’t seem to be working.) Still, if there’s one thing they can do it’s stay on message until people get so sick of it they accept it just to shut them up.

Some Republicans were enthusiastic:

“What I heard from this president is he wanted to sit down and find real cuts now,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said after the meeting. “He said there needed to be entitlement reform. And we will work with him to those ends.”

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this is just cynical GOP spin or that the president was just placating them with empty promises because with this economy, serious cutting is the last thing we should do.

.

Whatcha Gonna Cut?

by digby

Here’s a good segment by Jake Tapper on last night’s ABC News nicely framing the consequiences of all these budget cuts:

One wonders how much more powerful the story would be if someone mentioned that this could be avoided with lower unemployment, ending useless wars and raising taxes on multimillionaires back to the level they were when Bill Clinton was president. But baby steps are good.

.

Heartless

by digby

From the Sins of the Fathers file, here’s Sarah Palin being the hideous heartless horror she’s so proud of being:

PALIN: The immigrants of the past, they had to literally and figuratively stand in line and follow rules to become U.S. citizens. I’d like to see that continue. And unfortunately, the DREAM Act kind of usurps that-the system that is a legal system to make sure that immigrants who want to be here legally, working hard, producing and supplying revenue and resources for their families, that they’re able to do that right and legally. Unfortunately, the DREAM Act doesn’t accomplish that.

You know what the rules were?

Today, over 100 million Americans – one third of the population – can trace their ancestry to the immigrants who first arrived in America at Ellis Island before dispersing to points all over the country.

Generally, those immigrants who were approved spent from two to five hours at Ellis Island. Arrivals were asked 29 questions including name, occupation, and the amount of money carried. Those with visible health problems or diseases were sent home or held in the island’s hospital facilities for long periods of time.

Had she and the family taken to standard tour they would have known that. They would also know that the DREAM Act refers to human beings who had no choice in the fact and were brought here as babies and children and grew up just like her precious little ones as Americans. They had no more choice in the matter than her children did.

What kind of a person can’t at least summon up some compassion for these kids? Honestly, this one really separates the human beings from the asses.

Update: maybe Piper could read this to her mother

The American Immigration Council is pleased to announce the winner of its 14th Annual “Celebrate America” Creative Writing Contest. Maya Young Wong of Altadena, California, won for her poem entitled “My Grandfather Ben.” Maya’s entry was chosen out of more than 6,500 entries from fifth graders across America. As the grand prize winner, Maya will attend the American Immigration Council’s annual benefit in San Diego, California where she will read her winning entry.

Maya’s poem describes the life of her grandfather coming from his Guangzhou village in China to America, his “Gold Mountain.” In less than 500 words Maya, a student at Castelar Elementary School in Los Angeles, was able to tell the saga of her grandfather’s journey to the United States, working in a laundry business, becoming a soldier and getting married.

From China sailed my Grandfather Ben.
He came to America when he was four plus ten.
His Guangzhou village was small and poor
And he helped his mother with farming chores.
Every morning he gathered bits of firewood
And drew water from the well as much as he could.
From morning to night he slaved like an ox.
But it was never enough to fill the rice box.
So his parents said, “You’d better leave home
And go to America where you can roam”.
Until you find a great place of your own.
America, Gold Mountain, is the place to go
Big and wide, and high and low.

To read the poem in its entirety click here or visit www.communityeducationcenter.org