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Month: September 2011

Poor America

Published by digby on September 13, 2011

Poor America

by digby

There are a ton of charts floating around today about the new census data. All of them show sharp gains in income inequality, stagnating incomes for everyone but the wealthy, a country very badly battered by an epic recession.

But this is the one that made my stomach churn:

Today’s Census report shows that in 2010, the share of all Americans and the share of children living in poverty, the number and share of people living in “deep poverty,” and the number without health insurance all reached their highest level in many years — in some cases, in several decades — while median household income fell significantly after adjusting for inflation. The data also show that many of these grim figures and the level of hardship would have been much worse if not for key federal programs such as unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, and Medicaid. Without unemployment insurance, for instance, 3.2 million more Americans would have fallen into poverty, Census said…

Specifically, today’s report shows that:

In 2010, the share of Americans living in poverty reached 15.1 percent while the share of children in poverty hit 22 percent — both the highest levels in 17 years — while the number of people living in poverty hit 46.2 million, the highest level on record with data back to 1959.

Both the number and percentage of people living in “deep poverty” — with incomes below half of the poverty line — hit record highs, with these data going back to 1975. Some 20.5 million Americans had cash incomes below half of the poverty line (below $11,157 for a family of four, and below $5,672 for a non-elderly person living alone) last year.

Median household income fell 2.3 percent, or $1,154, in 2010, after adjusting for inflation, and those at the bottom of the income scale have lost far more ground than those at the top. Since median income hit its peak in 1999, income (adjusted for inflation) has fallen 12.1 percent for those at the 10th income percentile but only 1.5 percent for those at the 90th percentile. The income gap between those at the 10th and 90th percentile was the highest on record. These data go back to 1967.

The number of Americans without health insurance climbed by 900,000 to 49.9 million, another record, with data back to 1999. The percentage of Americans without insurance remained statistically unchanged at 16.3 percent. Nearly one of every six Americans was uninsured.

These grim figures come in the midst of an emerging debate about the appropriate role of government not only in spurring economic growth but also in addressing hardship. Federal policymakers will have to decide soon whether to extend certain federal initiatives that were designed both to promote growth and to ease poverty and hardship during the economic downturn, such as extended unemployment insurance benefits. Of particular note, Congress could make deep cuts in basic low-income assistance as part of its efforts to reduce long-term deficits, such as through a plan that the new Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is supposed to craft by Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile, in an alternate universe:

For the billionaire who has everything, sometimes a superyacht just isn’t enough — that’s why the world’s wealthiest are buying “gigayachts.”
These boats are the ultimate status symbol — a sign of eminence, power and a seemingly limitless supply of cash. And when it comes to showing off wealth and status it seems the rule is “the bigger the better.”

“There’s definitely a ‘mine is bigger than yours’ syndrome in this industry and there is a desire to have the best. That’s the great thing about these yachts,” said Jonathan Beckett, CEO of Burgess Yachts, one of the world’s leading yacht brokers.

“When you get up to ‘gigayacht’ status, it is all about the best and these people are used to having exceptional possessions around them all the time,” Beckett continued.

Although the term “gigayacht” is not new, it is becomingly increasingly prevalent as owners seek bigger and better yachts.
[…]
The yacht to beat is currently Roman Abramovich’s “Eclipse.” The largest private yacht in the world at 163 meters long, “Eclipse” is believed to feature around 24 guest cabins, two swimming pools and a mini-submarine, and was rumored to have cost between $540 million and $1.1 billion.

Although not all gigayachts come with that pricetag, Ashton says the standard measure is around €1 million ($1.36 million) per meter of length.
“That works to a certain extent, but you also have to take into consideration which yard it is made in and the bespoke details involved,” he said.

While that pricing means gigayachts are strictly for the super rich, you get a lot of bang for your bucks, Beckett explained: “There is nothing standard when it comes to this area of our market. But if you are purchasing a superyacht you would want a vessel that was transglobal and you’d want a reasonable speed.

“You’d probably want at least two helicopter platforms, so you can land your own helicopter and visitors can also land theirs, cinemas, hospitals, spas, large entertainments areas and hairdressing salons.

The good news, I guess, is that they require a lot of servants, the American career of the future.

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Offense vs defense

Published by digby on September 13, 2011
Offense vs defense

by digby

I think I just had an insight but I don’t know what it means exactly. In reading over the tweets and posts from last night’s GOP debate I realized that one distinctive difference between the two parties is how their base reacts to criticism.

For instance, I see many people reacting to the right’s dishonest attacks on Obama by saying “that’s not true, he didn’t really do that. Here are the facts, I’ll prove it to you.” Progressives are very concerned that the right isn’t out there misinforming the rest of the public and go to great lengths to “set the record straight.” By contrast, during the Bush years, when liberals criticized the president, the other side would say “Yeah. So what? He did the right thing.” They’d stage a symbolic hissy fit every once in a while to prove their moral/patriotic bonafides, usually over a perceived slight from a hippie somewhere, but they really didn’t care if the left “understood” what they were doing or if they approved. In fact, they consciously try to offend them.
I’ll give you an example. Obama is being criticized as a tax hiker when he is, in fact, a tax cutter. I wrote a long thing about it yesterday, teeing off of Eleanor Clift’s long essay on the same subject. Both of us, I suspect for different reasons, felt it necessary to correct the impression that Obama is a tax hiker. I don’t think the right would do that. Assuming that they believed, as liberals ostensibly do, that taxation is necessary and that it isn’t a crime to ask people to pay for the government services they receive, they’d say “So what? There should be even more of that and he did the right thing.” They wouldn’t care that he didn’t really raise taxes. They seek to validate their own instincts and/or principles above all.
The best real life example is torture. When we accused the Bush administration of torture, and the Bush administration denied it saying “America doesn’t torture”, the right flat out said “we think torture of all kinds is a-ok, and anyone who disagrees with us is unAmerican. Thank God Bush protected us by torturing people.” They just don’t care if the left approves of what they do, and they’d rather have them upset over something that didn’t happen than set the record straight and validate the left’s beliefs in any way.
Judging from the reaction to last night’s cheering for the death of the uninsured, that holds up very well today. They truly believe that people who are “irresponsible” should die (assuming, of course, that decent people like themselves could never be considered “irresponsible.”) And they are happy to own anything that upsets liberals.
I realize that this is a very broad observation and there are dozens of examples disproving what I just wrote. But I think it’s generally descriptive of the two parties. And the implications of it are fairly clear. Conservatives are always offensive and progressives are always defensive. I guess both strategies are capable of winning, but the former is a lot more energizing and fun.
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Put Their Tithes to Work by David Atkins

Published by digby on September 13, 2011

Put Their Tithes to Work
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Lost in the hubbub over the hooting and laughing of the Tea Partiers’ “Let Him Die” audience reaction during last night’s debate was the utter insanity of Ron Paul’s actual answer to the question:

No. I practiced medicine before we had Medicaid, in the early 1960s, when I got out of medical school. I practiced at Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio, and the churches took care of them. We never turned anybody away from the hospitals,” said Paul to additional applause. “And we’ve given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves and assume responsibility for ourselves. Our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it. This whole idea, that’s the reason the cost is so high. The cost is so high because they dump it on the government, it becomes a bureaucracy.”

Republicans are very serious thinkers when it comes to economic issues. First, they advocate bartering chickens for healthcare. Then they advocate that churches cover the medical expenses for long-term coma patients.

But then again, why not? Ron Paul reportedly attends a conservative Baptist church in his Galveston district, so presumably his church is taking care of its parishioners’ medical bills as he so ably recommends.

Since Rep. Paul won’t disclose exactly which church he attends, I suggest that Hullabaloo readers send their medical bills to their local conservative Baptist church, or better yet to random Baptist churches in the Galveston district, along with Ron Paul’s quote. Here are a few, pulled from the conservative Southern Baptists of Texas website:

Central Baptist Church, Galveston
5302 AVE R | GALVESTONTX | 77551

Island Baptist Church, Galveston
11279 STEWART ROAD | GALVESTONTX | 77554

Calvary Baptist Church, Texas City
517 18TH AVENUE N | TEXAS CITYTX | 77590

It would probably be the best use they’ve ever made of their tithe money. Ask them to do their patriotic and charitable duty, and tell them Ron Paul sent you.

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Earned benefits

Published by digby on September 13, 2011
Earned Benefits

by digby

Ed Kilgore and Jamelle Bouie make a very interesting observation about the flap over Perry’s Social Security remarks:

It’s important to understand that many seniors simply do not look at Social Security and Medicare as “government redistribution programs” no different than Medicaid or Obamacare, but as earned benefits–as an “entitlement” in a very literal sense. Jamelle Bouie of The American Prospect traveled to a Tea Party event in South Carolina recently and picked up on this sentiment:

During a campaign event in Myrtle Beach on Labor Day, the Texas governor said that “Anyone who wants to keep the status quo on entitlements isn’t being honest,” and at Wednesday’s GOP debate in California, Perry called the retirement program a “monstrous lie” and a “Ponzi scheme.”To the older, white Tea Party voters Perry needs to win the Republican nomination, this simply isn’t true. “We paid into Social Security,” said Steven Anderson, a member of the Low Country 9/12 project and a retiree. His wife, Judie, chimed in, “It’s not an entitlement, it’s ours.” The same went for Art LeBruce, a retired Army medic and long-time member of the group, “That’s my money that I put into Social Security–I deserve it.”

This is the same sentiment, which many progressives interpret as blatant hypocrisy or selfishness, that led so many conservative seniors to adamantly oppose ObamaCare while demanding no cuts in Medicare–or even because they believed extending health coverage to the uninsured would directly lead to Medicare cuts.The fact that Social Security, and to an even greater extent Medicare, in fact do represent a redistribution of money from taxpayers to most if not all beneficiaries has not shaken the iron conviction of many seniors that the programs are fundamentally different from “welfare” in any form.So ideologues like Perry who have identified Social Security and Medicare as just part of the vast march to socialism during the twentieth century are in danger of an attack that may conventionally look like it’s coming from “the left” but may actually threaten them most among staunch conservatives who think federal austerity measures should strictly come out of the hide of “those people” who haven’t “earned” their benefits–you know, younger people, poorer people, darker people.

This is one reason why people who want to protect the safety net have resisted the idea of means testing. It changes the nature of the program in a fundamental way and starts the eventual disintegration of the compact that holds it all together. But I think Bouie and Kilgore’s insight is specifically important because the far right is quite ideological in almost every way. If they have rationalized their support for it, that’s something Democratic politicians should understand. If they give the Republicans a chance to play protector of their “earned program” they will be very, very foolish. There is no voting constituency for that in any party.

Kilgore sees a dark possibility, however, if the Republicans decide to turn this into a wedge issue among themselves. He sees a dynamic where Perry is blamed for protecting immigrants over the good Real Americans who have earned their benefits and creating an us vs. them dynamic. But that just seems like a slightly more explicit appeal than they’ve been making for 40 years — it’s always about taking the hard earned money of decent Americans and giving it to the “wrong” ones. I think I might enjoy seeing the GOP tear each other apart over this one for once.
I believe that political rewards will go to the politician of either party who figures out how to reassure the American people of one simple fact — that their earned benefits are secure and enough. It’s not actually hard to do it, but they need to jettison all the demagoguery and austerity nonsense and stop believing they need make human sacrifices to their market gods. It can be done. Indeed, Democrats used to win office handily with that message.

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Ritual Defamation Part XXIV: liberals join the hissy

Published by digby on September 12, 2011
Ritual defamation Part XXIV: liberals join the hissy

by digby

I hear a lot of chatter about how the left needs to forget about electoral politics, stop talking and start organizing, go local and all the other stuff I’ve been hearing off and on for as long as I can remember. And there’s an element of truth in all of it.

But if there is one thing that “the left” could do right this minute that would change the frustrating political dynamic it’s to get ostensible allies to stop doing this:

Today, the conservative blogosphere is going crazy condemning Krugman’s article—and I don’t blame them one bit. Indeed, the only thing I do not understand is why more progressives are not joining in that condemnation, as Krugman’s piece only serves to set back the principles and causes of liberals and progressives everywhere. By forgetting what is important about yesterday’s commemorations, Krugman has played right into the hands of those who would use such a reaction to tar the true intent of liberal commentators and, by extention, every other progressive in the country.Paul Krugman very much owes the families of 9/11 victims and the first responders who survived an apology. I hope he’ll take the opportunity to offer that apology and acknowledge his error, as failing to do so makes all who oppose the right-wing agenda look bad.

No wonder president Obama doesn’t want to stick his neck out. With liberal church ladies ready to call for the smelling salts at the drop of a hat, he’d be a fool to do it.
No, there is no obligation to call out Paul Krugman because the right wing blogosphere is acting, as usual, like a bunch of hypocritical phonies and staging a grand hissy fit to destroy one of the only strong national voices for the left over something they don’t really give a damn about. This is, after all, the same group that refused to pay for health care for first responders so you’ll have to forgive me for failing to be properly respectful of their very delicate sensibilities over this issue.
Sensibilities, by the way, that are so delicate that after they read Krugman’s column they apparently spent the entire day in a darkened room with a cool towel over their heads and missed this story:

Geller’s trip to the Ground Zero World Trade Center Memorial, where she preached against Islam and protested the building of Cordoba House, aka the Ground Zero Mosque, conveniently coincided with the New York City première of her “documentary,” The Ground Zero Mosque: The Second Wave of the 911 Attacks. Geller describes her (other?) group, American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), which, along with her Stop Islamization of America group, also exists to curtail the First Amendment freedoms of Muslim-​Americans, as — get this! — a “human rights organization!”

To boot, Market Watch, an arm of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, actually last week printed a press release from Geller that falsely claims, “while White House guidelines forbid official 9/​11 ceremonies from mentioning who attacked the U.S. on that day or why, the 9/​11 Freedom Rally features more honest speakers,” and also falsely stated:

While clergy, 9/​11 first responders, and 9/​11 family members are barred and/​or not invited to the official ceremonies, all are welcome at the 9/​11 Freedom Rally.

Those groups were not “barred” from attending.

If these right wing bloggers are so sensitive about politics on 9/11 maybe they could clean up their own house first.

This controversy is utter nonsense. Even this breathless report admits that Krugman didn’t say anything that was actually wrong, only that politics are “inappropriate” on 9/11 — a rule that I don’t recall signing on for and neither did the rest of the country. I have no trouble with Geller or Krugman or anyone else expressing political thoughts on 9/11. Indeed, considering how repressive Islamic fundamentalism is, it may be the greatest tribute we can pay to the dead. 9/11 was a horrible day, but it wasn’t an act of God. It was the ultimate violent political act — terrorism. The last thing we need is to memorialize it as a sacred day above politics.

I wrote a piece a while ago called “The art of the hissy fit” about this manipulative right wing pearl clutching and I’ll re-run it here because it’s clear that some people on our side are completely clueless about how this works:

I first noticed the right’s successful use of sanctimony and faux outrage back in the 90’s when well-known conservative players like Gingrich and Livingston pretended to be offended at the president’s extramarital affair and were repeatedly and tiresomely “upset” about fund-raising practices they all practiced themselves. The idea of these powerful and corrupt adulterers being personally upset by White House coffees and naughty sexual behavior was laughable.

But they did it, oh how they did it, and it often succeeded in changing the dialogue and tittilating the media into a frenzy of breathless tabloid coverage.In fact, they became so good at the tactic that they now rely on it as their first choice to control the political dialogue when it becomes uncomfortable and put the Democrats on the defensive whenever they are winning the day. Perhaps the best example during the Bush years would be the completely cynical and over-the-top reaction to Senator Paul Wellstone’s memorial rally in 2002 in the last couple of weeks leading up to the election.With the exception of the bizarre Jesse Ventura, those in attendance, including the Republicans, were non-plussed by the nature of the event at the time. It was not, as the chatterers insisted, a funeral, but rather more like an Irish wake for Wellstone supporters — a celebration of Wellstone’s life, which included, naturally, politics. (He died campaigning, after all.) But Vin Weber, one of the Republican party’s most sophisticated operatives, immediately saw the opportunity for a faux outrage fest that was more successful than even he could have ever dreamed.By the time they were through, the Democrats were prostrating themselves at the feet of anyone who would listen, begging for forgiveness for something they didn’t do, just to stop the shrieking. The Republicans could barely keep the smirks off their faces as they sternly lectured the Democrats on how to properly honor the dead — the same Republicans who had relentlessly tortured poor Vince Foster’s family for years.It’s an excellent technique and one they continue to employ with great success, most recently with the entirely fake Move-On and Pete Stark “controversies.” (The Democrats try their own versions but rarely achieve the kind of full blown hissy fit the Republicans can conjure with a mere blast fax to Drudge and their talk radio minions.)But it’s about more than simple political distraction or savvy public relations. It’s actually a very well developed form of social control called Ritual Defamation (or Ritual Humiliation) as this well trafficked internet article defines it:

Defamation is the destruction or attempted destruction of the reputation, status, character or standing in the community of a person or group of persons by unfair, wrongful, or malicious speech or publication. For the purposes of this essay, the central element is defamation in retaliation for the real or imagined attitudes, opinions or beliefs of the victim, with the intention of silencing or neutralizing his or her influence, and/or making an example of them so as to discourage similar independence and “insensitivity” or non-observance of taboos. It is different in nature and degree from simple criticism or disagreement in that it is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by an organization or representative of a special interest group, and in that it consists of several characteristic elements.

The article goes on to lay out several defining characteristics of ritual defamation such as “the method of attack in a ritual defamation is to assail the character of the victim, and never to offer more than a perfunctory challenge to the particular attitudes, opinions or beliefs expressed or implied. Character assassination is its primary tool.” Perhaps its most intriguing insight is this:

The power of ritual defamation lies entirely in its capacity to intimidate and terrorize. It embraces some elements of primitive superstitious belief, as in a “curse” or “hex.” It plays into the subconscious fear most people have of being abandoned or rejected by the tribe or by society and being cut off from social and psychological support systems.

In a political context this translates to a fear by liberal politicians that they will be rejected by the American people — and a subconscious dulling of passion and inspiration in the mistaken belief that they can spare themselves further humiliation if only they control their rhetoric. The social order these fearsome conservative rituals pretend to “protect,” however, are not those of the nation at large, but rather the conservative political establishment which is perhaps best exemplified by this famous article about how Washington perceived the Lewinsky scandal. The “scandal” is moved into the national conversation through the political media which has its own uses for such entertaining spectacles and expends a great deal of energy promoting these shaming exercises for commercial purposes.The political cost to progressives and liberals for their inability to properly deal with this tactic is greater than they realize. Just as Newt Gingrich was not truly offended by Bill Clinton’s behavior (which mirrored his own) neither were conservative congressmen and Rush Limbaugh truly upset by the Move On ad — and everyone knew it, which was the point. It is a potent demonstration of pure power to force others to insincerely condemn or apologize for something, particularly when the person who is forcing it is also insincerely outraged. For a political party that suffers from a reputation for weakness, it is extremely damaging to be so publicly cowed over and over again. It separates them from their most ardent supporters and makes them appear guilty and unprincipled to the public at large.Ritual defamation and humiliation are designed to make the group feel contempt for the victim and over time it’s extremely hard to resist feeling it when the victims fail to stand up for themselves.There is the possibility that the Republicans will overplay this particular gambit. Their exposure over the past few years for incompetence, immorality and corruption, both personal and institutional, makes them extremely imperfect messengers for sanctimony, faux or otherwise. But they are still effectively wielding the flag, (or at least the Democratic congress is allowing them to) and until liberals and progressives find a way to thwart this successful tactic, it will continue. At this point the conservatives have little else.What do you suppose today’s enforcers of proper decorum would say to this?

Americans too often teach their children to despise those
who hold unpopular opinions. We teach them to regard as
traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do
not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we
are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign
to it and out of place – the delivery of our political
conscience into somebody else’s keeping. This is
patriotism on the Russian plan.
 — Mark Twain

The Powerless President by David Atkins

Published by digby on September 12, 2011

The Powerless President
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Since I started writing here, I have been subject to numerous complaints from various Obama Administration defenders that I have been too harsh on the President. That the President is doing absolutely everything possible for progressive causes, and that bloggers like me should be more supportive.

One such consistent detractor wrote a long screed filled with self-deceptive perambulation about why she is leaving the Left. The piece is a near perfect encapsulation of the self-regarding arguments of the Administration’s core defenders. It is tempting to take the whole thing apart bit by bit, but this one bit in particular struck my eye as needing a response, since I’ve encountered this argument countless times from various sources:

Not one single member of the left has proposed exactly how the hacks and poltroons named Baucus, Landrieu, Lieberman, Lincoln, and Nelson could have been persuaded or forced to support a public option.

This is another restatement of the “Powerless President” meme from many Adminsitration defenders. It is used not just in relation to healthcare, but every other major legislative debate as well. There is some truth to it, in that even a truly progressive President would find it almost impossible to move a corrupted Congress on most issues. But when it comes to the ACA and public option in particular, the argument is utterly laughable.

For starters, here are just a few of the things President Obama could have done:

1. Pressure Harry Reid to threaten Joe Lieberman’s committee chair position.

2. Pressure Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to threaten to zero out any and all pork for the state of Connecticut. Let it be known through Capitol Hill rumor that that was happening, and put the scare into other Senators as well.

3. Or, alternatively, don’t help the likes of Joe Lieberman get elected in the first place.

4. Promise to campaign hard for Blanche Lincoln if she voted for the public option.

5. When she refused, tell her that she’s toast anyway, and that her vote would earn her a plum appointment in the Administration.

6. If Lincoln still refused to vote for the public option, commit to campaigning vigorously on Bill Halter’s behalf in the primary.

7. Don’t offer Ben Nelson a Nebraska Compromise unless he voted for ACA with a public option. All or nothing. (And by the way, offering that sort of direct bribe proves that Presidential arm-twisting of Congress really is possible if you want it badly enough.) Or if you’re going to offer that deal, at least sweeten the pot in exchange for a public option vote. Don’t get tarred buying a vote for a bill that doesn’t even do what it needs to do; if you’re going to buy a vote, buy a real vote and make it worth it.

8. Don’t empower Max Baucus to be a kingmaker through useless months of compromise-wrangling with a GOP acting in bad faith. Maybe Baucus would have been a problem anyway, but there was no reason to give him such an important role during the crucial early phase of ACA deliberations. Keeping Baucus on a par with every other Senator would have reduced his sense of self-importance, and possibly led to a pro-public-option vote.

The list goes on and on here. LBJ and FDR were legendary for their arm-twisting tactics when it came to recalcitrant Congresses, and they are Democratic legends in Presidential history. The actions listed above are just an obvious basic beginning when it comes to such maneuvers.

But not one of them was even tried, to say nothing of more creative tactics.

Which leads to only one of two conclusions: either the President didn’t want a public option at all as many progressives convincingly argue based on a wide array of evidence, or the President valued Senate comity and gentlemanly process over the implementation of good policy.

It would be hard to know which option is worse. Either way, the President was anything but powerless.

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If a Democrat cuts taxes and nobody notices, did it really happen?

Published by digby on September 12, 2011

If a Democrat cuts taxes and nobody notices, did it really happen?

by digby

Eleanor Clift gives kudos to the White House for its important achievements:

Obama has invested so much time demonizing the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich that he has obscured the true narrative of his presidency. Class-war rhetoric aside, Obama is one of the most prolific tax cutters in recent history, with a record that puts him squarely alongside that of George W. Bush.

Crunching the numbers at the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress, analyst Michael Linden found that if one compares the cost of tax cuts in just the first four years of Bush’s term (2001–04) to the first four years of Obama’s (2009–12), Obama’s tax cuts are bigger. The value of the Bush tax cuts were about $475 billion in those first four years, or about 1.1 percent of GDP. Obama’s total about $1 trillion, or 1.6 percent of GDP.

Obama has cut taxes to lower levels than Bush did, says Linden. This is because, of course, Obama thus far has extended all of the Bush tax cuts and then cut taxes on top of that. His original stimulus bill in 2009 had $290 billion in Making Work Pay tax cuts. His speech Thursday night before Congress advocated for another $175 billion in payroll tax cuts, which come on top of $110 billion from last December’s budget deal. Speeded-up expensing for business adds another $10 billion or so.

All in all, Obama is responsible for many billions in tax cuts, yet the popular perception is that he has raised taxes.

Imagine that. I wonder how it happened? Clift says that these tax cuts are temporary and all in service of fixing the economy, which makes them better than Republican tax cuts —- which also explains why Republicans hate them. I guess.

But the good news in all this is that the White House seems to have finally realized that they have gotten zero political benefit from all this tax and spending cutting and are now proposing to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to pay for their jobs plan. It’s hard to know if they will have the guts to sustain this argument after what is sure to be a full scale hissy fit from the Big Money Boyz, but it certainly is better than running around touting deficit cutting as the most important issue in world history.

This is essentially a campaign position, since Republicans would rather turn in their guns and gay marry Al Sharpton than raise taxes in an election year (or ever.) The question we all have to ask at this point is how to turn that campaign position into action to hold the White House to it if they manage to get re-elected.

They also seem to be downplaying the earlier insistence on Medicare and medicaid cuts, so perhaps they’ve had second thoughts about doing that. (Why they put it in the jobs speech is anyone’s guess.) Maybe the new polling numbers have shown them that Medicare is not something to be bandied about as part of any “deals” with lunatics. And it’s always possible that they sent out that trial balloon to see just how loud the horrible hippies would scream. It was pretty loud. Maybe it worked.

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Austerity consequences

Published by digby on September 12, 2011

Austerity consequences

by digby

It looks as though the English lucky duckies are getting even luckier:

George Osborne’s austerity programme will cut the living standards of Britain’s families by more than 10% over the next three years as those on the lowest incomes suffer most from the tax increases and spending cuts designed to reduce the budget deficit.

A study from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the UK’s leading experts on the public finances, concludes that the chancellor’s strategy will result in greater inequality and rising child poverty, throwing into reverse progress made in the final years of the last Labour government.

The bleak picture painted by the IFS will be used by opponents of the chancellor’s austerity measures to call for a plan B to generate faster economic growth. There is likely to be further pressure on Osborne on Monday as the head of his independent commission on banking, Sir John Vickers, outlines measures for banking reform.

The IFS analysis, included in a new international study into the impact of the “Great Recession” of 2008-09 on 21 wealthy countries, says the most severe downturn since the interwar years will “cast a very long shadow in the UK”, with the poorest 30% of households especially hard hit.

“Declines in living standards look set to continue until at least 2013-14. If realised, this would mean that average living standards had not grown in well over 10 years, making it one of the worst decades for changes in living standards since at least the second world war.”

According to the IFS, the squeeze on living standards will be the result of earnings failing to keep pace with prices, as well as the tax and benefit changes announced by the government to tackle the UK’s record peacetime budget deficit.

“Welfare cuts and tax rises will act to reduce household incomes, and those with the lowest incomes are clearly set to lose the most from these reforms as a percentage of income (with the important exception of those with the very highest incomes). This is likely to increase poverty, other things being equal, offsetting some of the falls in poverty over the past decade.”

The IFS work divides households up into 10 groups (“deciles”) in order to assess the impact of tax changes and benefit reductions. “Taking all family types together, within the bottom nine income decile groups, those with the lowest incomes are set to lose the most from these reforms as a percentage of income … Given that the annual welfare budget is being cut by £18bn, this is perhaps not a surprise.”

The IFS said the poorest families also lose more as a result of the squeeze on public spending. “Losses as a percentage of net income (plus the value of benefits in kind) are between 5% and 6% at the bottom of the distribution, which is similar to the magnitude of the losses for those on the lowest incomes from tax and benefit reforms.”

Osborne has said that the pain caused by deficit reduction will be shared, but the IFS study found that the richest 10% of households will see income cut by just over 4% on average between 2011 and 2014 by tax and benefit changes.

Right it’s “shared sacrifice” for a millionaire to lose 4% of his income and the poorest lose 4% of theirs. Well, actually the poor will lose double that, but what’s the problem? if you’re that poor, what difference does a few buck make, eh? It’s when you’re so wealthy that 4% of your income is more than six figures that it really hurts.

The IFS analysis is included in The Great Recession and the Distribution of Income, published on Monday by the London School of Economics. Professor Stephen Jenkins of the LSE said: “We were surprised at how little household incomes changed in the years immediately after the Great Recession began. This has been the worst macroeconomic downturn in most OECD countries since the Great Depression of the 1930s when there were substantial increases in poverty rates and other significant changes to the income distribution.”

Jenkins added that the outlook now was “more worrying”, and that big differences in income distribution would emerge across countries. “We’re moving from the Great Recession era with relatively broad consensus about what to do to a new era of sharp distributional conflicts between, for example, rich and poor, old and young.”

Warning that pain had been delayed but not avoided, the IFS said families with children would be hit harder by Osborne’s tax and benefit changes than other family types on average, with the poorest 10th of households suffering income losses of more than 8% over the next three years. “Recent IFS modelling predicted that child poverty will rise in each of the three years between 2010-11 and 2013-14, and that it will be about two percentage points higher in 2013-14 as a result of the tax and benefit reforms planned by the current government.”

I’m sure we’ll have a similar result. Unfortunately, we can’t raise taxes on the wealthy, so our lucky duckies are going to shoulder an even bigger part of the burden. But then that’s the way it should be. Here in America we don’t have a nasty class system like they have in Britain.

The best political team on television?

Published by digby on September 12, 2011
The best political team on television?

by digby

I can hardly believe what I’m seeing: Breitbart’s creature Dana Loasch is on CNN with Ali Velshi and John King, doing economic “analysis” and critiquing the President’s jobs plan as if she is some sort of expert. Velshi is doing a good job of exploding the myth that “the government doesn’t have a revenue problem it has a spending problem” and he blames the Tea Party for it. He points out that the best way to fix the deficit is to grow the economy and even challenges the whole “household budget” thing. Huzzah! Then John King says it isn’t the Tea Party’s fault and blames the American people because they elected a leftwing president and a rightwing congress.

Loesch, in her guise as a normal person, replies that there really isn’t a disagreement about this at all and that the “grassroots” (is “Tea Party” out of vogue these days?) believes that instead of redistributing wealth they should “expand the tax base” and if you look at the past six decades, “it’s proven.” She cleverly avoids saying what she means by that: that poor people don’t pay enough taxes.
Now she’s complaining that Obama didn’t fulfill his promises, which she evidently wants people to think she supported, and says “the grassroots” want him to cut taxes, end regulations and pass the Keystone Pipeline project.
Why is she on my TV?
Update: I have my answer. Doh. The CNN-Tea party debate is tonight. And that’s shocking and disgusting in itself.
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