Month: September 2012

Yet another austerity success story: Italy

by digby

Or it will be if they just agree to throw more human sacrifices on the alter:

The economy is once again in steep recession, forecast by economists to contract by around 2.5 percent this year. The OECD says its growth potential is now a paltry 0.3 percent.

The government aims to cut the debt from 123.4 percent of GDP this year to 114.4 percent in 2015. It says it could fall to 100 percent of output in 2019 and 60 percent in 2025.

However, this depends on borrowing costs stabilizing at pre-crisis levels, tough austerity at least until 2015 and, at the same time, a return to stable and steady growth.

The combination of all three looks like wishful thinking. The economy is already shrinking far more than the government forecast, deficit reduction is off target and belt tightening will continue to weigh on falling domestic demand.

Societe Generale projects that under the Italian growth profile it expects — weaker than the government’s — debt will still be above 120 percent of GDP in 2020.

But never fear, austerity can never fail, it can only be failed:

When Monti replaced scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi last November, he rushed through 20 billion euros of deficit cuts to placate markets, including a tough pension reform that raised the retirement age.

Monti was forced to start with deficit cuts to try to meet Berlusconi’s pledge to balance the budget by 2013, a target that has now slipped. Yet Italy’s real problem was never the deficit, which was already among the lowest in the EU, it was growth...

Moreover, three quarters of Monti’s belt tightening was made up of tax hikes — the opposite approach to that recommended by the European Commission, which prefers spending cuts — crushing already weak domestic demand and deepening the recession.

Of course. And it’s not only the lack of adequate harsh and painful cuts that have caused this failure of austerity, it’s the fact that the regulation cuts are being implemented too slowly. Nobody has any certainty so it’s not working, dontcha know.

Apparently, the basic Keynesian concept that the government must boost demand, whether through tax cuts, increased government spending or (in cases like this) both, is still off the table. Italy is in a steep recession. And they are blaming it on the lack of spending cuts. Raising the retirement age and “reforming” the labor laws didn’t hurt quite enough, apparently.

There’s a lesson in this for America. I doubt anyone in Washington will take it.

*I should point out, obviously, that Italy had a different set of problems than the US, including high borrowing costs. But the fundamental lessons remain the same. If the problem is low demand and growth, cutting spending and raising taxes will make it worse. The insist on bleeding the hemorrhaging patient.

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The deserving rich

by digby

Yesterday I wrote about the connection between the vote suppression efforts and Romney’s disdain for half the country. Here it is in full effect:

“As Mitt Romney said, 47 percent of the people that are living off the public dole, living off their neighbors’ hard work, and we have a lot of people out there that are too lazy to get up and get out there and get the ID they need. If individuals are too lazy, the state can’t fix that,” Metcalfe told a radio host, referring to the GOP presidential candidate’s secretly recorded remarks, which have caused his campaign to backtrack this week.

I think one of the least discussed aspects of both the Voter ID project and Romney’s admission is this belief that all the people who aren’t rich and don’t have ID are lazy.  That’s an old trope, of course.  Particularly here in America:

But America’s poor and disenfranchised are hardly lazy if they are getting government benefits. As Ezra Klein points out in this piece:

Still, for my money, the worst of Romney’s comments were these: “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

When he said this, Romney didn’t just write off half the country behind closed doors. He also confirmed the worst suspicions about who he is: an entitled rich guy with no understanding of how people who aren’t rich actually live.

The thing about not having much money is you have to take much more responsibility for your life. You can’t pay people to watch your kids or clean your house or fix your meals. You can’t necessarily afford a car or a washing machine or a home in a good school district. That’s what money buys you: goods and services that make your life easier.

That’s what money has bought Romney, too. He’s a guy who sold his dad’s stock to pay for college, who built an elevator to ensure easier access to his multiple cars and who was able to support his wife’s decision to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s great! That’s the dream.

The problem is that he doesn’t seem to realize how difficult it is to focus on college when you’re also working full time, how much planning it takes to reliably commute to work without a car, or the agonizing choices faced by families in which both parents work and a child falls ill. The working poor haven’t abdicated responsibility for their lives. They’re drowning in it.

I’ve always found it so amusing that the right wingers believe, for instance, that illegal immigrants are all on welfare. Clearly, they have no idea how many hoops one has to go through to get on the rolls and neither have they ever considered the absurdity of the idea that people who live in daily fear of the authorities would walk willingly into a government building and submit themselves to close inspection by security and government bureaucrats. They are convinced that these people are in the US to take advantage of our allegedly generous welfare benefits — and to steal our jobs. But they are still lazy Mexicans who don’t know the meaning of a hard days work.

They truly believe that they work harder than anyone else, that their lives are more complicated, that they are the ones who are doing everything, while the poor have it easy. I used to hear it from the wives of Hollywood executives who literally spent their days getting pampered from head to toe by immigrants who worked 80 hours a week and made less than minimum wage. I could never tell if they really believed it or if they just had to say it out loud in order to live with themselves. I suspected the former. There was not the tiniest bit of self-awareness in their complaints.

This is the dark side of America’s Puritan work ethic. In order to justify their wealth the upper classes must pretend that those who are poorer have done it to themselves through their laziness and sloth. Otherwise, they wouldn’t “deserve” what they have and their whole value system would collapse.

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Dear Nick: Please Connect the Dots

by tristero

Nick Kristof writes:

Romney is a smart man and, his friends say, a pragmatist rather than an ideologue…

And then he writes:

 …the Republican Party has moved far, far to the right so that, on some issues, it veers into extremist territory. 

These two sentences do not add up.

Since it is true that the Republican Party has moved “far, far to the right” to the point of extremism, how did a pragmatist, rather than an ideologue, ever get nominated by the Republicans?

Answer: no pragmatist could ever be a modern Republican presidential candidate. Despite what Romney’s friends claim, he obviously is not a pragmatist (if he ever was one). Everything the man says and does indicates he buys into all the rightwing delusions, all the extremist positions, and believes every single piece of far-right ideology modern Republicans hold dear.

And that also means that Romney is not very smart. Again, what Romney says and does demonstrates that he is the stupidest person to be nominated for president since….the last Republican president.

Kristof still seems to believe in false equivalence, as if somehow the Democratic interpretation of Republican administration achievements equals the denial by Republicans of simple, reality-based facts – like the absence of WMDs in Iraq or Obama’s citizenship. And Kristof still hasn’t figured out that the extremists that make up the modern Republican party are counting on pundits making false equivalence argument in order to shove the discourse further and further to the right. That said…

I may be wrong, but I detect in his recent writing that Nick is just going through the motions,. His use of the”they are equally guilty of distortions and I’m the only one above it all ” trope seems tepid and forced these days, as if he thinks that it may be bullshit now, but nevertheless feels compelled to pretend that the US actually has two political parties with equally valid world views.

It’s time for Nick to connect the dots, and say so.

Meanwhile, back in the real world the Extinction is looming

by David Atkins

Yes, it’s true. The Mitt Romney campaign is hilarious, the Randroids are terrifying, the social conservatives are as neanderthal as ever. But while the 2012 election merry-go-round spins, the world as we know it is still dying:

As Arctic sea ice levels hit a new record low this month, scientists and activists gathered to discuss how to bridge the gap between scientific facts and the public’s limited understanding that we are, in their words, “really running out of time.”

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) released preliminary findings Wednesday suggesting that on Sept. 16, Arctic ice covered just 1.32 million square miles — the lowest extent ever recorded. This minimum is 49 percent below the 1979 average, when satellite records began.

“The loss of summer sea ice has led to unusual warming of the Arctic atmosphere, that in turn impacts weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, that can result in persistent extreme weather such as droughts, heat waves and flooding,” NSIDC scientist Dr. Julienne Stroeve told Greenpeace in a press release.

Wednesday morning, a group of climate scientists and activists met at a Greenpeace International panel in New York to strategize on potential responses to the changing Arctic climate.

“There’s a huge gap between what is understood by the scientific community and what is known by the public,” NASA scientist James Hansen said, adding that he believed, “unfortunately, that gap is not being closed.”

What the scientific community understands is that Arctic ice is melting at an accelerated rate — and that humans play a role in these changes.

We can argue about Social Security and drones and tax rates and marriage equality and all the rest of it. And we should.

But if we don’t do something about this, none of it will matter. It will all be just so much pointless trivia under the shadow of the looming global extinction.

The fact that we spend more than half our time in politics talking about anything else is a tribute to our shortsightedness and selfishness as a species.

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Catholic Randroids

by digby

Wow:

A series of recent developments are renewing questions about the Catholic bishops’ alignment with the Republican Party, with much of the attention focusing on comments by Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, who said he “certainly can’t vote for somebody who’s either pro-choice or pro-abortion.”

In a wide-ranging interview published last week (Sept. 14), Chaput also echoed the views of a number of prominent bishops when he praised Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan for trying to address the “immoral” practice of deficit spending through his libertarian-inflected budget proposals.

“Jesus tells us very clearly that if we don’t help the poor, we’re going to go to hell. Period. There’s just no doubt about it,” Chaput told National Catholic Reporter.

“But Jesus didn’t say the government has to take care of them, or that we have to pay taxes to take care of them. Those are prudential judgments. Anybody who would condemn someone because of their position on taxes is making a leap that I can’t make as a Catholic.”

I wonder if he agrees that the poor are people who can’t be convinced to “they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives” and “believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.” Why do I have a feeling he does?

Many church experts say Ryan’s views stand in contrast to traditional Catholic teaching on social justice, and Ryan’s policies have been the target of sharply critical statements from politically active nuns and the hierarchy’s own committee that deals with poverty and domestic issues.

But the dynamic within the USCCB appeared to shift even further to the right on Monday with the announcement that bishops had hired the head of Catholic Charities in Denver, Jonathan Reyes, as the new head of the bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development — in effect their chief lobbyist on domestic and international social justice issues.

The appointment was being closely watched because it is a critical post in trying to influence Congress on anti-poverty legislation.

The previous head of that office was John Carr, a widely respected social justice advocate who left the job last month after almost 25 years. Carr had come under increasingly sharp attack by the Catholic right for pushing church positions that did not always line up with conservative policies.

The Catholic hierarchy has been in partnership with the GOP for some time. But I haven’t seen them endorse Randian philosophy before. It looks like Paul Ryan has done his magic on them too. At what point do these priests cease to have influence over the decent people in the Catholic Church?

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Tim Noah makes an important point about the Republican vote suppression efforts, namely that it’s informed by the belief that there exists a large number of people (some say 47%!) who are so hooked on the government teat that they won’t vote for anyone who’ll make ’em get out and get a job. So they just have to stop them from voting:

If “there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what” because they are “dependent upon government” and “believe that they are victims” who “are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it,” and if the only sensible thing for Romney to do is “not to worry about those people” because “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives”—if all that is true, then ignoring them really isn’t going to be enough. Not if they constitute fully 47 percent of the electorate. You need to block their path to the polls. Nothing too overt here—just a little petty harassment. They aren’t the best-organized people to begin with, so all you have to do is shut down their ministers’ souls-to-polls bus operations on Sundays, require a driver’s license and maybe even proof of citizenship. That sort of thing.

That’s true. But let’s not kid ourselves about who they’re really talking about. After all, there’s a long history of suppressing the vote of certain people who have reason to vote against those who rail against such things as the right to vote and “welfare queens” and “anchor babies” and the like. It’s not that the Democratic Party wasn’t guilty of all that back in the day, but it’s been half a century now and things have changed. It’s pretty clear who’s on which side today.

The Republicans certainly need a bunch of white “lucky duckies” to vote for them. They aren’t talking about them. They’re talking about the other lucky duckies — the ones who don’t work hard and play by the rules and deserve every benefit they can get. You know, these people:

I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine — Doug Preisse, a top adviser to Governor Kasich and a Franklin County elections official.

The problem is that Romney’s such a clod that he can’t figure out how to cleverly make the distinction and ends up insulting half of his own base. Of course, it is true that for most of the wealthy creeps like Romney and his pals at the fundraiser (and their sadly deluded useful idiots), there is no distinction. They really do believe that anyone who isn’t rich is a parasite, regardless of color. Most GOP politicians are smart enough to walk that line. Mitt isn’t one of them.

“I’ve worked hard my entire life, nobody gave me a handout. But Romney just insulted me and treated me like I’m nothing.”

by David Atkins

Digby noted earlier that Romney’s derogatory statements about the “47%” may hurt him substantially by lowering his support among the demographics he most needs to win the election, especially seniors and lower-income whites. I think she’s right.

One always wants to be careful about making broader judgments based on personal anecdotes, but anecdotes can nonetheless help exemplify trends that may be occurring among the broader electorate. If the story I’m sharing today is any indication of a trend in the broader electorate, Romney is in some serious trouble.

As a County Democratic Party Chairman (in Ventura County, CA), I get a lot of phone calls throughout the day from voters and volunteers with various complaints and requests, usually about minor details. But one call from yesterday struck me in particular. A man who sounded like a caucasian in his 60s or 70s had called our field organizer but wanted to speak to me directly about picking up as much swag and material for President Obama as he could, from lawn signs to bumper stickers. Curiously, he wanted to let me know that he was not a Democrat and not particularly political. But, he said (and I paraphrase based on my best memory of the conversation):

“I just couldn’t believe he said that. I was shocked when I heard it. I can’t believe someone in either Party would say something like that about Americans. Let me tell you something. I’ve worked hard my entire life, never took a handout from anybody. But Romney just insulted me and treated me like I’m nothing. Like I’m less than nothing. I’m one of the 47% that he’s talking about. I’m retired on a modest income after a lifetime of working to support myself and my family. That guy has no idea what he’s talking about. But I just wanted to tell you personally that I’m not a big fan of either Party, but I want to buy as many different kinds of Obama stuff as you can give me, because that just isn’t right. I’m pretty upset.”

Ben Domenech and other conservatives have been consoling themselves that most of Romney’s voters, even if they’re in the 47%, don’t actually see themselves that way (they work for their handouts, of course):

Here’s the thing: gaffes of this nature have to have real victims in order to be workable. What helps Romney in this situation is that no one thinks they’re in the 47%. Even if they are! No one who was thinking of voting for Romney yesterday is standing up today saying “he’s criticizing me!” here.

Maybe. But I’m not so sure. I think there may be a lot of people out there like the one who called me yesterday: conservative-leaning independents and working-class whites and seniors who hear Mitt Romney and do understand that he’s talking about them.

That’s ultimately the biggest problem with the 47% meme for Republicans. It’s just too big a number to work well as a dog whistle to stand in for minorities and various “others.” When the plutocrats and their enablers spout that statistic, it shows even white, older Americans that the plutocrats despise them, too, and have just been playing them for dupes and fools the entire time.

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Trust him, he cares

Trying to recover, Romney says he is poor Americans’ best bet

That’s from Reuters, not the Onion:

“The question in this campaign is not who cares about the poor and the middle class. I do, he does,” Romney said, jabbing the podium with his index finger and his voice rising with emotion.

“The question is who can help the poor and the middle class. I can, he can’t and he’s proven it in four years,” he said.

Yeah, if there’s one thing about Mitt, it’s that he cares. And his wife will vouch for it:

“Speaking from a perspective from a wife and a mother and from the things that I know that I care about, I want to know what motivates the guy, the person that I would be voting for, and I would say that what motivates Mitt is that he cares,” she said. “That this is a guy that is — doesn’t, obviously, need to do this for a job.

Obviously.

Mitt understands. After all, he’s been there. He learned all about being poor from his time toiling among the downtrodden in … France:

Mitt Romney attended Stanford University for one year after graduating from the elite Cranbrook School for boys. He then went to France for 2 1/2 years as a Mormon missionary, completing a ritual that generations of his family, including his two oldest sons, have followed.

Romney points to the experience now as an encounter with poverty. He lived in a hotel in LeHavre that had no toilets, and had $100 a month to live on. He knocked on doors seeking converts with little success.

“That’s a very humbling experience – no, humiliating – experience, people shutting doors in your face,” he said

No toilets even! Sacre bleu!

“Can you imagine what he’d say if he were shitfaced?”

by digby

Daily Show on Romney:

The Daily Show
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And on the poor rich, white male:

The Daily Show
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Moment of zen:

The Daily Show
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And the piece de resistance: Colbert delivering Mitt’s core message elegantly

The Colbert Report
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Innovations of the blogging ghetto

by digby

Felix Salmon wrote an interesting, wide-ranging piece today about journalism and blogging which offers a very good definition of what blogs bring to the table, I think:

[T]he biggest thing that’s missing in the journalistic establishment is people who are good at finding all that great material, and collating it, curating it, adding value to it, linking to it, presenting it to their readers. It’s a function which has historically been pushed into a blog ghetto, and which newspapers and old media generally have been pretty bad at. And of course old media doesn’t understand blogs in the first place, let alone have the confidence or the ability to incorporate such thinking into everything they do.

Think about it this way: reading is to writing as listening is to talking — and someone who talks without listening is both a boor and a bore. If you can’t read, I don’t want you in my newsroom. Because you aren’t taking part in the conversation which is all around you.

When journalists apply for jobs today, they’re usually given some kind of writing test. Certainly the people hiring them will look at their clips. Everybody cares about how good a writer you are. So long as you write well, it seems, that’s all that matters.

But if I were hiring, the first thing I’d look at would be the prospective employee’s Twitter feed. What are they linking to? What are they reading? If they’re linking to great stuff from a disparate range of sources, if they’re following smart people on Twitter, if they’re engaged in the conversation — that’s hugely valuable. More valuable, in fact, than being able to put together an artfully-constructed lede.

Independent blogging isn’t very important anymore, if it ever was. But what it invented — culling and synthesizing disparate pieces of information, engaging in the conversation, adding value and passing it on — is still a necessary function. Indeed, I think it grew out of the natural human desire for people to gather together and talk about the world at large (as opposed to their immediate personal lives)and a need for someone they trust to put the vast amount of information available on the internet in some context. We live in a social media world now and the way information is being exchanged is redefined on a daily basis. Whether old country bloggers like me are the ones to “curate” it or professional journalists do it isn’t as important as the fact that somebody who understands how to hold this conversation in a way that engages people does it.

Anyway, as they say in the blog trade, “read the whole thing.”

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