Month: July 2011

Mirror, mirror

by digby

Talk about making the point for them:

Mr. Breivik frequently cited another blog, Atlas Shrugs, and recommended the Gates of Vienna among Web sites. Pamela Geller, an outspoken critic of Islam who runs Atlas Shrugs, wrote on her blog Sunday that any assertion that she or other antijihad writers bore any responsibility for Mr. Breivik’s actions was “ridiculous.”

“If anyone incited him to violence, it was Islamic supremacists,” she wrote.

Gosh, that almost sounds like justification to me.

Interestingly, according to some right wing observers, his manifesto, which identifies with Geller and her fellow violent obsessives by name, he’s actually a a jihadist himself:

This Norwegian terrorist was not a Christian or a conservative. He acted contrary to the teachings of the Bible and conservatives from Burke to Madison. He was instead a jihadist, blinded by an ideology who resorted to violence rather than engaging in a public debate of ideas. He was a coward who planted bombs and killed innocent people. For him, violence was the only answer. He claimed to be fighting jihadists…but he actually became one. He didn’t kill one islamist terrorist with his actions–only innocent Norwegians. Change the location, and he acted like so many jihadists in the Middle East. He became one of them.

I don’t suppose it’s even possible for the crusading right wingers who inspired this fellow to take a look in the mirror and wonder if that might be something they ought to think about themselves.

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Jonestown D.C.
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

It is easy to get caught up in every rivulet of the default crisis as we approach the inevitable cascade of market panics followed by shock doctrine cuts to social services. It is easy to find fault with the Administration for its many flaws in handling the situation, and with Congressional Democrats as well.

But it’s also important to remember the big picture. The big picture is that America is being held hostage by a conservative movement that behaves much more as a bizarre religious cult, than a legitimate political entity. It is perhaps the most dangerous cult to have ever held sway over a major nation-state in modern times.

It is a cult founded on a number of dogmatic beliefs that have no basis in reality. These are people who believe that the inflection point of the Laffer Curve is somewhere in the low single digits, and that cutting taxes to insanely low levels will magically lead to revenue increases. These are people who believe that government itself is basically unnecessary but for a private property protection scheme, and that the unfettered market will provide all that society needs, and will dole out the appropriate price for all goods, wages and services with zero inflation through the magic of the market. These are people who believe it is impossible for humans to affect the climate, and that it is better for humans to attempt to magically adapt somehow to a much hotter world than to do anything to even curb the behaviors that might be making it hotter. These are people who believe that the proper way to punish corporate evildoers is to not punish them at all, because people will simply stop purchasing from corporations that poison their water and air and crash their economies–because the average consumer presumably has the secret market-given wisdom, and magic powers necessary to make financial choices to punish Koch Industries and Goldman Sachs if necessary. These are people who view Objectivism as a legitimate and serious philosophical discipline, and the fictional works of Ayn Rand as gospel to live by.

The fact that no country on earth has attempted to operate by these principles in the modern era is irrelevant. These people do not operate according to facts, but according to a deep and abiding faith in a wholly untested set of principles that can only be put into place upon the destruction of the current order.

As with any cult, the prospect of Armageddon is not troubling to them. Thus, the answer to exponentially rising healthcare costs is to do…nothing. The answer to rapidly increasing global temperatures is to do…nothing. The answer to a devastating default on the faith and credit of the United States is to do…nothing.

The possible outcomes of any and every imaginable crisis are only two: 1) give the cult everything it wants, when it wants it; or 2) do nothing and let the world burn. Which is fine, because once the flames have died down, the cult can at last build their Kingdom here as it is in Milton Friedman’s heaven. If healthcare costs explode, then the system collapses and the people who are left will only buy the healthcare they can afford at market prices. If global temperatures rise, then Social Darwinism will preserve the deserving. If the American economy collapses, then it can be rebuilt, minus the surplus population and those pesky Keynesian programs that kept it afloat and alive. 2nd Amendment remedies will deal with the lesser people who resist.

One can rage all day and night, and legitimately so, at the failures of the Left and Democrats over the last 30 years. It would take an encyclopedia to count them all.

But one also must remember that the American political system is facing perhaps the most dangerous enemy it has ever faced: an intransigent cult of individuals who simply do not care if everything goes down in flames around them, so long as the sacred tenets of the cult remain unchallenged.

The American political system was crafted by thinkers and philosophers deeply steeped in the Enlightenment. The Founders assumed that the competing elements of self-interest and cooperation, hinged on a delicate balance of powers, would be enough for men and women of Reason to, through fits and starts, ultimately find the best solutions for the problems facing the country based on evidence and argument. The system is built, in essence, upon the presumption of Reason. Of give and take. Of compromise.

The system was not built to handle a takeover of the system by an unreasoning cult. Big money has had outsize influence on our political system before, and the American People have managed to beat it back time and time again. But never before have we been faced with the sort of unified, concerted, intentionally reinforced delusion that besets our halls of power today.

Yes, it is true that the conflict within what passes for the Left in this nation is in part a fight over the power of Big Money to co-opt the political vehicles that are supposed to carry our preferred policies forward.

But even more than that, the conflict is about how to handle the metastasizing cancer that the market fundamentalist cult is perpetrating on our body politic. Some on the Left believe in the inherent intelligence and reasonableness of the American voter, and assume that by keeping a level head and appearing to be the most sensible person in the room, the public will ultimately reject the cult and its trappings, even if we must give significant ground in the meantime. Others see politics as a game of tug-of-war in which only one side is doing any real pulling, and believe that an equally forceful counterweight is needed in order to keep the cult from pulling us all over a cliff. I consider myself squarely in the latter camp.

But whichever of those two sides one agrees with, it’s important to remember the big picture: our future is being held hostage by a cult that doesn’t care if the world burns down so long as they get what they want. Dealing with the implications of that needs to be the top priority of serious thinkers in our political system if we hope to preserve it.

Hanging in

by digby

Over in her nice new digs, Emptywheel has a nice think piece on the dangers of progressive despair and Depression depression and quotes this passage from the book Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression:

“Okay weasels,” Foxface announced, “now fill it back up.”

We set to work regarding the reloading the truck by hand, forming teams that passed debris.

“I hate this shit,” Jay said.

It was a contradiction I couldn’t understand. Jay felt enmity, but he was terrified of what he called “the outside.”

“But don’t you fell they are ripping you off?” I asked.

Jay scratched at the hard ground with a foot, scraping at the dust. When he looked back up, he said, “No-o-o.” He paused.” “No.”

I shut up.

I realized what I was seeing: this was a man who had given up, utterly.

[snip]

He had arrived here a destroyed man, beaten by life and the vagaries of the economy. Now he seemed brainwashed, like the cult members I’d written about for the newspaper. Like a cult, the foundation was exploiting his weakened state of mind in order to manipulate him. The work camp practiced classic sleep deprivation: it worked men hard and then roused them after just a few hours’ sleep to do it all over again, seven days a week. Jay said this was how it had been for the previous thirty days.

One must be defeated to be controlled.

And control is the point. When you have income inequality at the levels we have it in this country it is natural for the oligarchs and aristocrats to begin to get nervous. Even in America, the land of opportunity, the malefactors of great wealth have always worried that the polloi was going to use this “democracy” to wake up and grab a pitchfork. One of the ways to control that is social control.

There is, I’ve recently realized, an impulse among liberals to constantly reinvent the wheel and switch gears manically when things do not change rapidly enough. I suppose that’s a natural function of the personalities that veer toward rapid change rather than conservation. But it’s a political weakness, especially when it’s in reaction to authoritarianism and economic intimidation.

I’m older now, so perhaps my newfound “patience” can be seen as resignation rather than wisdom. But I have learned a couple of things over these years: don’t panic, don’t drop out and don’t despair. The reactionaries and revanchists aren’t all powerful and the will to progress is as fundamental to humanity as breathing. Bad things happen, to be sure. But liberal focus and persistence can be a powerful antidote. We need to hang in.

Be sure to read Marcy’s entire post.

From bad to worse to worst
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

As the default crisis negotiations enter what promises to be a rollercoaster week, Harry Reid and John Boehner are each bringing forward their own plans, neither of which much resembles Obama’s desired “Grand Bargain” of entitlement cuts and revenue increases. It thus appears the American people are now down to three options in this default crisis mess: bad, worse, and worst. And when the least mind-numbingly awful plan is the one put forward by Harry Reid, it’s clear the country is up a creek without a paddle:

The House speaker, John A. Boehner, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, were preparing separate backup plans to raise the nation’s debt ceiling on Sunday after they and the White House were unable to form a bipartisan plan that would end an increasingly grim standoff over the federal budget…

Mr. Reid, the Senate’s top Democrat, was trying on Sunday to cobble together a plan to raise the government’s debt limit by $2.4 trillion through the 2012 elections, with spending cuts of about $2.7 trillion that would not touch any of the entitlement programs that are dear to Democrats or raise taxes, which is anathema to Republicans.

President Obama could endorse such a plan, even though it would fall far short of the ambitious goal of deficit reduction and entitlement changes that he says are necessary to shore up the nation’s finances…

The contours of Mr. Boehner’s backup plan were not entirely clear, but it seemed likely to take the form of a two-step process, with about $1 trillion in cuts, an amount the Republicans said was sufficient to clear the way for a debt limit increase through year’s end. That would be followed by future cuts guided by a new legislative commission that would consider a broader range of trims, program overhauls and revenue increases.

The first thing to understand about these negotiations is that there is a clear dividing line between what Congressional Democrats want, and what the White House wants. The White House, for reasons that seem inscrutable and can be endlessly debated, really wants to put Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block.

Is that because it’s what Wall St. and campaign contributors want? That theory has some resonance given the Democratic Party’s capture by Wall St. over the past twenty years. But the theory falls apart when one considers the White House’s firm stance on insisting on revenue increases and subsidy eliminations on those same wealthy contributors, including hedge fund managers. To the White House’s credit, they have firmly insisted that at least token revenues be part of the deal.

Perhaps more plausibly, one might surmise that the White House really and truly believes that putting at least Medicare on the chopping block is necessary for the nation’s long-term budgetary health, within the limitation that significant actions to address revenues and income inequality will not be on the table in the near future. That theory requires belief in a blindingly stupid political myopia, and nearly automaton-like appreciation for political technocracy on the part of the President and his advisers, but it would be in keeping with the Administration’s approach to the healthcare problem: bend the cost curve where possible, within the presumed political realities imposed by Republicans. And yet that theory, too, is belied by the fact that regardless what one might think about the fiscal challenges faced by Medicare, there is absolutely no reason to consider changes to Social Security as part of any deficit-related deal, as it is a self-sustaining program that won’t run out of funds until 2037 at the current rate. So from a technocratic standpoint, why touch it at all? To say nothing of the fact that, from a technocratic standpoint, it would be far easier and more useful for deficit reduction to simply use gridlock to allow the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire on schedule.

And if, as some suggest, the President is making a political calculation to “appear to be the adult in the room” in order to appeal to a slice of independent voters seen as critical for the 2012 election, why not do that without touching the third rail of Social Security? There are many ways to play Mr. Purple without going there. The question of what exactly is going through the heads of President Obama and his advisers may be the greatest mystery in all politics right now.

Congressional Dems who need to answer to their constituencies every two or six years have a little more political sense, and are standing fairly strong for now against both Obama and the GOP. Talk to many of them in private as I have recently, and one imagines having similar conversations at Netroots Nation: these folks are furious with the Administration, the GOP, and with the situation they’re being put in, but there’s not much they can do about it at the moment. So they’re trying to get the best deal they can under the circumstances. Which brings us to the Reid proposal.

On the Senate side, Dave Dayen once again has a tremendous rundown (better than anywhere in the traditional media) of some the deals of the Reid proposal. The heart of it is this:

Given the numbers used here, I would guess that the outline of the cuts would be similar to what Nancy Pelosi suggested in a meeting with bloggers on Friday. It hinges on an accounting gimmick that would “reduce” deficits based on drawing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because CBO essentially calculates the cost of war based on the previous year’s cost, by capping war spending at a lower number you “save” a good deal. As Pelosi described it, that could add up to $1 trillion to the total savings.

So you can get to $2.5 trillion pretty easily, then. Take the $1 trillion from the wars, add $1.2 trillion in agreed-to cuts from the discretionary budget, and add $200-$300 billion from foregone interest payments and you’re there.

This is obviously not a great deal, with its $1.2 trillion in cuts to the discretionary budget (we don’t know exactly where those cuts will fall). But compared to digging into entitlements, it’s better than some of the other ideas.

Boehner’s “deal” hasn’t even come into form yet, but would likely entail even more cuts, no tax increases, and a reprise of this same fight once again prior to the 2012 election, which is a non-starter for Democrats.

The fact that $1.2 trillion in discretionary spending cuts, with not even a hint of an attempt to provide further economic stimulus or address income inequality, is the best deal currently on the table is truly depressing. But that is what comes of 30 or more years of an increasingly extreme Republican party, and a Democratic Party that has actively declared that “the era of big government is over” while doing little to prepare ground for a rhetorical counterattack beyond the shifting sands of its own moderation and “reasonable” position.

Depends on what the meaning of “win” is

by digby

Ezra Klein:

We don’t yet know what the final deal to raise the debt ceiling will be. But now that Harry Reid is developing a proposal with $2.5 trillion in cuts and nothing in revenues, it’s a safe bet that it won’t include any tax increases. Which means that whether Republicans realize it or not, they’ve won. The question now is whether they can stop.

Apparently it depends on what the definition of “win” is:

@EWErickson: John Boehner just got played for a fool. Headlines are Reid is offering bigger cuts than Boehner & no tax increases.

It’s not really about policy, you see. It’s about who is perceived to be crying uncle. And in GOP world, no matter how much a Democrat offers up in tax and spending cuts, unless they are capitulating to aRepublican plan to slash spending and cut government without any compromise, it’s just not a win.

This is an interesting insight into what they want, actually. And if it weren’t for this, the President (and now the Democrats) could probably have mitigated this a bit by fighting like hell for a clean debt ceiling and then giving in at the end instead of constantly “offering” what they thought the Republicans wanted only to have them up the ante:

“Obama’s political advisers have long believed that securing such an agreement would provide an enormous boost to his 2012 campaign, according to people familiar with White House thinking. In particular, they want to preserve and improve the president’s standing among political independents, who abandoned Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections and who say reining in the nation’s debt is a high priority. In many ways, it has been a remarkable transformation for a Democratic president who had made the centerpiece of his first year in office a massive spending bill to boost the economy and the expansion of health insurance. The risk for Obama now is that his pursuit of a far-reaching package could deeply disappoint his Democratic allies who believe he may be giving away too much.”

His need to take credit for the greatest spending cuts in history has pushed the Republicans to ever more excessive demands in order to make him cry Uncle — which is really all they care about. Perhaps if he were just a little bit less accommodating they would have been more inclined to take yes for an answer.

but sadly, when both sides want to be seen as the greatest spending cutters in history it becomes a race to the bottom and that’s what happened here.

“It’s a political and policy gamble — the idea that people would welcome a large deal when it required middle-class Americans to sacrifice, even down the road, at a time when they have fewer resources,” said Neera Tanden, chief operating officer at the Center for American Progress and former domestic policy adviser in the Obama administration.

Administration officials said the shift fits with Obama’s vision of what his presidency should look like.

“The president ran for the office to bring both parties together to solve big problems. That’s what he is trying to do here, even if it comes with political pain,” Dan Pfeiffer, White House communications director, said in an e-mail.

I suppose “political pain” is one way to describe it.

Elizabeth Drew writes essentially the same story in the NY Review of Books. It has been obvious to close observers for a long time.

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Conservative Christian Knight

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Job creators
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Free at last. Thank God Almighty, free at last:

From New York City to Niagara Falls, N.Y., hundreds of gay and lesbian couples across the state began marrying on Sunday — the first taking their vows just after midnight — in the culmination of a long battle in the Legislature and a new milestone for gay rights advocates seeking to legalize same-sex marriage across the nation.

In other news, I have decided to break off my engagement to my fiancee to fulfill a sudden, uncontrollable urge to marry my birds. Both of them. I look forward to a life of henpecking, but that’s the price of an open mind. And it’s all New York’s fault.

On a more serious note, though, there is another interesting angle to the marriage equality story, and it’s an economic one:

There are also a variety of same-sex wedding celebrations, some with commercial or promotional overtones, on the agenda over the next days and months.

On Monday night, three gay couples will wed onstage at the St. James Theater after the evening’s performance of the Broadway musical “Hair.” On Saturday, two dozen couples will marry in two pop-up chapels that are to be installed in Central Park. And the Fire Island Pines resort is promoting three same-sex wedding packages, one featuring a private ferry ride “complete with your own crew of drag queens.”

The argument over same-sex marriage isn’t just an emotional, civil rights and religious argument. It’s an economic argument, too. Marriage means increased economic benefits for same-sex couples. It means money spent on weddings. Money spent on honeymoons. Money spent on anniversaries. Money spent on divorces.

Marriage is a tool of job creation. Conservatives want to prevent gay couples from becoming job creators in this capacity. Job creators who build demand for services that serve real people in the real economy, usually delivered by small business, the real driver of economic growth.

But as we all know, there is only one kind of “job creator” a conservative cares about, and it’s the kind that doesn’t actually create jobs.

creative commons image courtesy Ben Gillman

I never said it but if I did I didn’t mean it

by digby

Funny Twitter conversation with White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer:

Rory Cooper RT@CollegePolitico:From what @pfeiffer44 tells me the President will sign any debt deal that congress sends him http://t.co/sHBUdXm

Dan Pfeiffer: no, I said I believed a short term can’t pass congress not shld it

Rory Cooper: Q: “Do you see a scenario where the house & senate pass a deal but the President doesn’t sign it?” @pfeiffer44 A: “No”

Dan Pfeiffer: right, bc i dont see the congress passing a short term bc Dems oppose it and boehner needs dems #nicetry

Rory Cooper: Fair enough, but you are saying that the WH doesn’t see a bill coming from Congress that you will oppose.

Twitter is often a confusing medium so I forgive anyone for being misunderstood. But it does seem clear that the president is willing to sign any bill that gets presented to him. He’s just assuming that the Democrats will not sign of on anything that he doesn’t approve. And I would assume that’s correct.

However, it might be useful for the president to be able to distance himself from the bill at this point, and Boehner seems to need to pretend that it’s coming from congress not the White House, so this language could be intentional. (Or not — it could just be twitter nonsense.)

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Depraved Indifference

by digby

Bill Daley to David Gregory:

“People like you and me that have done well in life need to sacrifice a little more.”

Gosh that would be really generous of them to agree to “sacrifice” a little more. I wonder what that “sacrifice” would feel like to them? From what I hear many of them would become so depressed they couldn’t rouse themselves to get out of bed and go to work because it just wouldn’t be worth it to them. And then all of us will suffer because these are the job creators who generously allow us to make them money as long as they don’t have to pay taxes.

I don’t know what that kind of “sacrifice” feels like and I never will. But people who are scheduled to have their Social Security and Medicare benefits cut are required to share in that sacrifice so I have an inkling — everyone has skin in the game and all that.

Here’s a little factoid to think about:

The average monthly Social Security benefit for a retired worker was about $1,177 at the beginning of 2011.

The median yearly income for Americans in retirement is about $30,000 per year.

I have a sneaking suspicion that these millionaires have no idea what this allegedly “equal” sacrifice means to those people. Here’s a little example from the Rude One:

The old lady at the pharmacy counter obviously wore an adult diaper. That tell-tale sharp urine scent half-masked by sweet-smelling chemicals emanated from her, and the Rude Pundit stood right behind her yesterday, waiting to pick up the pills that prevent him from going on a five-state killing spree. She was getting three prescriptions. The total was $6.00. This puzzled the old lady. She had never paid anything before, and even this seemingly small amount was obviously causing her consternation. The cashier checked with the pharmacist, who said that there had been a minor change to her plan, and now she had to pay a little for the scrips, a buck-fifty, three bucks. She apologized and put aside the couple of other things she was going to purchase to pay for the medicine.

The Rude Pundit didn’t know if the change had been to Medicare or to a supplemental plan, but, either way, she was being asked to contribute more than she had before, which she did.

And clearly, she didn’t have it to spare because she had to put back her other items I had an encounter like this recently myself. This “tip” money to wealthy people is the difference between medicine and orange juice to people who have to live on $1100.00 a month.

In a country in which the above exists, it is depraved to cut social insurance and health care programs for people who are old and sick and cannot work. The idea that those people should be asked to “share” in the alleged sacrifice of millionaires who leave more money in the seats of their corporate jets than these people have left over at the end of the month is outrageous..

When that level of wealth inequality exists but the government insists that little old ladies be forced to “pay more” so they’ll be ” more responsible” (and call it shared sacrifice!) something has gone fundamentally wrong. Fix that, we fix the country.

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Wankstock Too