Month: April 2013

Oh look, the dirty hippies were right again

by David Atkins

As Digby noted below, we seem to be at something of a media turning point on austerity. A bunch of people are waking up to the reality that progressives were right all along, that asset growth doesn’t make up for lack growth, and that we might just want to try stimulating the economy instead of strangling it. Even the New York Times editor’s blog is stumbling towards reality:

Consumer spending is usually a sign consumer confidence. But that’s not the case in today’s fraught economy.

Data out this week shows that consumer spending increased by 0.2 percent in March. That was slower than the 0.7 percent advance in February, but still more than economists had expected. Unfortunately, much of the higher spending in March was on utilities to heat homes in what turned out to be an unusually cold month. Spending actually fell on goods – which are better measures of underlying demand.

So rather than a sign of strength, spending figures for March show that money is tight, causing households to cut back on other spending in the face of higher spending on necessities. Against that backdrop, it should come as no surprise that consumer confidence fell in April to a nine-month low, as measured by the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer-sentiment index.

For an economy in which consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of all activity, that is not good news.

It is also cause to think twice about claims that consumer spending will be buoyed by the wealth effect from rising home values and rising stock prices. House prices have risen as the number of foreclosures and other distressed sales has declined. Prices are not likely to keep rising at the current pace, however, without more jobs and higher pay so that potential homeowners can afford to buy.

What’s also left unsaid is that higher home values may buoy established homeowners, but there are millions of people out there already priced out of homes whose values have risen far in excess of wages.

It’s all about consumer demand and wage growth. That’s what the economy needs. It also needs infrastructure improvement and climate change mitigation, both of which would make for great jobs programs. The solutions are out there. They always have been. It’s just that those offering the solutions have been marginalized by the Very Wrong, Very Serious People.

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The GOP’s ideological cul-de-sac is restricted

by digby

I needed a good laugh today, and I got one:

[A]s conservative criticism of the reform effort grows louder, many Republican operatives, donors, and consultants are bracing for an outcome that would be even worse, politically, than the demise of the bill: a fierce, national, right-wing backlash that drowns out the GOP’s friendlier voices, dominates Telemundo and Univision, and dashes any hopes the party had of making inroads to the Hispanic electorate by 2016.

“We are really balanced here on a little precipice, and if this, pardon the pun, goes south, we could be in very serious trouble,” said Republican media strategist Paul Wilson, citing the increasingly intense attacks on the immigration bill coming from the right. “If [the legislation] stalls or is killed off by conservatives, we could take the Hispanic community and turn them into the African-American community, where we get 4% on a good day… We could be a lost party for generations.”

Establishment Republicans don’t have to reach too far back in recent history to find precedent for this political nightmare scenario: It would look a lot like the last time Congress pursued comprehensive immigration legislation.

Ya think? I suppose it’s possible that the Republican base has changed dramatically on this issue since 2007, but I don’t think we’ve seen much evidence of it:

Now it must be noted that many of these same people say that immigrants who are in the country deserve some sort of “reform” but if you drill down to actual attitudes, you can see that they aren’t really very happy about them being here at all. And if you look at that last question you’ll see that one extremely significant faction of the GOP base is particularly hostile. It’s not surprising that GOP strategists are nervous, particularly when you have this as well:

And this:

The rift extends beyond messaging issues and inflammatory rhetoric. The RNC clearly views Latino voters as being of paramount strategic importance, and the committee report specifically endorses comprehensive immigration reform as a way to attract Latino votes and prevent further erosion of the party’s appeal beyond its “core constituencies.” That’s a position Limbaugh specifically rejects. “The Republicans have bought the idea that they’re never gonna win anything if they don’t relax the perceived position they have on immigration,” Limbaugh said in late January. He’s taken it upon himself to block immigration reform on his own, if necessary. And even though Limbaugh had kind words for Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) foray into immigration politics, he still stopped short of backing reform.

The irony here is that conservative talk radio played a hugely significant role in popularizing the brand of Republican politics the party leadership now views as toxic and untenable. It wouldn’t come as surprise, then, that resistance to Republican rebranding efforts would filter down from Limbaugh to the rest of the conservative movement that grew up listening to his show. One need only look at the recently concluded Conservative Political Action Conference to get a sense of how the activist base will receive the RNC’s proposed changes. The conservative media figures who attended the conference see a movement that’s humming along nicely and effectively mobilizing the faithful. The RNC sees something very different: a party that is busily “driving around in circles on an ideological cul-de-sac.”

I’m afraid they’re stuck because a very large number of people in their cul-de-sac really don’t like anyone but themselves.

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Revisiting Château d’If: what about the people we’ll never let free no matter what?

by digby

Benjamin Wittes is confused by President Obama’s comments this morning about Guantanamo and so should we all be. He quotes the president this morning on the plight of the people who are stuck at Guantanamo and then points out this inconvenient fact:

Obama himself has insisted that nearly 50 detainees cannot either be tried or transferred.

True, he would hold such people in a domestic facility, rather than at Guantanamo Bay. But so what? does the President not understand when he frets about “the notion that we’re going to continue to keep over 100 individuals in a no-man’s land in perpetuity” that if Congress let him do exactly as he wished, he would still be doing exactly that—except that the number might not reach 100 and the location would not be at Guantanamo? Does he not understand his own policy proposals—to maintain a residual group of detainees indefinitely—when he worries that “When we transfer detention authority in Afghanistan, the idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are. It is contrary to our interests and it needs to stop”? Does he not understand when he intones that we are wiser now than we were after 9/11 and no longer need a site like Guantanamo to hold non-criminal terrorist detainees that he is proposing to build a new one?

I hear lots of chatter defending the administration’s decision not to send people back to Yemen because Yemen is filled with terrorists yadda, yadda, yadda. I get that this is a conundrum, although I do believe that there is no rational basis for not, at least, bringing the Yemenis to the United States. (Yes, in that case it’s the congress being assholes, as usual.)

But the above is what I can’t get past: the idea that we will hold people indefinitely because we can’t convict them of a crime but we have determined they are dangerous. This turns the entire foundation of the constitution upside down.

I would love to hear the reason why “we” (meaning the government — in secret) cannot decide that other people who we just “know” are dangerous should be locked up forever with no due process. That rationale could be used every single day in every city and twown of this country if they wanted to.

This is the stated policy of the Obama administration on the merits, not some “practical” decision based upon alleged conditions in foreign countries which they would change if only they could. They have stated outright that there are people they have in custody they cannot charge, try or convict but who they nonetheless will lock up forever.

As long as that policy is defended, it’s kind of hard to listen to lugubrious hand-wringing about how holding people in perpetuity “needs to stop.”

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“Hardly a wild-eyed liberal”

by digby

… because if he were we could dismiss him as a typical stupid hippie to whom nobody should ever pay attention (particularly when sharp analysts like Newt Gingrich and George Will exist.) But now that people who the mainstream media can respect, like Tim Kaine, are saying it, now it’s respectable:

The two parties are miles apart on how to cut the deficit and national debt: Republicans want to slash spending even more. Democrats want to raise revenue.

And then there are the other Democrats — the ones who reject the entire premise of the current high-stakes fiscal fight. There’s no short-term deficit problem, they say, and there isn’t even an urgent debt crisis that requires immediate attention. This group could make it even harder for President Barack Obama to strike a grand bargain because they increasingly see no immediate need for either new spending cuts or significantly more revenue, both of which they say could further slow the economy.

These Democrats and their intellectual allies once occupied the political fringes, pushed aside by more moderate members who supported both immediate spending cuts and long-term entitlement reforms along with higher taxes.

But aided by a pile of recent data suggesting the deficit is already shrinking significantly and current spending cuts are slowing the economy, more Democrats such as Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen are coming around to the point of view that fiscal austerity, in all its forms, is more the problem than the solution.

This group got a huge boost this month with the very public demolition of a sacred text of the austerity movement, the 2010 paper by a pair of Harvard professors arguing that once debt exceeds 90 percent of a country’s gross domestic product, it crushes economic growth.

Turns out that’s not what the research really showed. The original findings were skewed by a spreadsheet error, among other mistakes, and it’s helping shift the manner in which even middle-of-the-road Democrats talk about debt and deficits.

“Trying to just land on the debt too quickly would really harm the economy; I’m convinced of that,” Kaine, hardly a wild-eyed liberal, said in an interview. “Jobs and growth should be No. 1. Economic growth is the best anti-deficit strategy.”

No kidding.

Look, I’m happy that some of the Democrats are finally beginning to see the obvious. It’s been a long haul. Unfortunately, we’ve already slashed the hell out of government for the past four years because nobody wanted to be seen as a hippie. But better late than never. What this does is give the Democrats in congress the ability to beat back the Grand Bargain and, if we’re lucky, maybe be just a little bit bolder on the sequester. Or bold enough to at least, cut some deals with Republicans instead of just agreeing to reinstate the funding for items that Republicans value. (You know — we’ll reinstate the FAA if you agree to reinstate cancer treatments or something like that …)

Anyway, this return to the “reality based community” is long overdue. And very welcome.

Update: Oh hey, it seems to be “hippies were right” day at Politico (Not that anyone will admit it, mind you.)

Democrats have used a clear and potent attack against Republicans in recent elections: Don’t vote for them because they’ll cut your Social Security and Medicare.

But using that playbook next year, as Democrats had planned, just got a lot more complicated.

President Barack Obama blurred the lines this month when he embraced entitlement cuts of his own as part of his budget plan. And Democrats now fear their leader’s tack to the center could blunt one of their sharpest weapons in the battle for the House of Representatives next year.

The concern is that Republicans will have a ready retort — your own president proposed entitlement cuts — and force Democrats on the defensive. The issue is critical to senior voters, who turn out in disproportionately large numbers in midterm elections.

“I think it does make it more difficult for Democrats in the next election,” said Democratic Rep. Rick Nolan, who occupies a swing district in Minnesota. “I would think that Republicans will say this cycle that if you want your Medicare and Social Security cut, that’s what Obama wants to do. … And I imagine that’s what Republicans will campaign on.”

The president’s shift came after an election year in which Democrats made the GOP’s embrace of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s controversial plan to overhaul Medicare a centerpiece of their campaigns. The offensive, Democrats say, helped them net eight House seats — a respectable figure but short of the 25 they needed to seize the lower chamber.
[…]
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Bill Burton, a strategist for the Democratic public affairs firm Global Strategy Group and a former deputy White House press secretary for Obama, said in an email “there is no doubt that Karl Rove and his allies will spend millions of dollars lying about what the President’s budget means in terms of the economic health of our country. What we don’t know is just how much Democratic donors are going to stand up to those lies.”

While Obama would love for his party to win the House — he has said he would do everything in his power to help Democrats take the speaker’s gavel from John Boehner — his budget highlighted tensions with congressional Democrats. The president has said he wants to reach a grand bargain with Republicans to tame the nation’s $16 trillion debt. And getting there, Obama signaled with his budget, requires taking a whack at entitlements.

“The White House is more concerned about his legacy,” said Paul Maslin, a longtime Democratic pollster. “It’s the classic dilemma of the second-term incumbent.”
[…]
In the days since Obama released his budget, many of the Democrats who have been quickest to distance themselves from his blueprint are those from senior-heavy districts. California Rep. Raul Ruiz, a freshman Democrat who represents a Palm Springs-area district where seniors compose about half of all registered voters, said “putting the burden of the national deficit on the backs of our seniors is wrong.”

Democrats are even concerned that Republicans could reverse the dynamic and portray Democrats as the bad guys on entitlements.

In an interview with CNN after Obama unveiled his budget earlier this month, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden of Oregon called the plan “a shocking attack on seniors.”

“I’ll tell you when you’re going after seniors the way he’s already done on Obamacare, taken $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare and now coming back at seniors again, I think you’re crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine certainly and around the country,” he said.

Walden’s remarks drew criticism from some in the GOP, which has come out in favor of chained CPI as a way of reducing the deficit. But the NRCC chairman’s point was made: Republicans had been given a free opportunity to hit back on entitlements, long a Democratic trump card.

Brock McCleary, a GOP pollster and former NRCC deputy political director, said Republicans couldn’t expect to gain an advantage on who’s most likely to defend programs but could try to fight the issue to a draw.

“The president has very clearly shown the way for how Republicans can keep voters in the lurch about which party is going to protect entitlements,” he said.

Indeed. But Democrats in congress have not taken any votes on this and if they’re lucky they won’t have to. I’m fairly sure that won’t stop the wingnut millionaires for tarring them with this absurd proposal anyway, but at least they won’t have to defend it.

If House members want to be very sure to end up on the right side of this one in 2014, they should all sign the Grayson-Takano letter. (And so should you …)

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Don’t f*ck with a mad Bostonian

by digby

While I do strongly disagree with the notion that Alex Jones should not be allowed to spout his bilge — it is a free country, after all — I will fight to the death for this man’s right to insult him:

(WARNING: many colorful curse words in this clip)

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Humane torture?

by digby

Guantanamo update:

“Medical reinforcements” of nearly 40 Navy nurses, corpsmen and specialists have arrived at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to help carry out the force-feedings of inmates there who are on a hunger strike.

As of Tuesday morning, 100 of the 166 prisoners at Guantánamo were officially deemed by the military to be participating, with 21 “approved” to be fed the nutritional supplement Ensure through tubes inserted through their noses. In a statement released earlier, a military spokesman said the deployment of additional medical personnel had been planned several weeks ago as more detainees joined the strike.

“We will not allow a detainee to starve themselves to death, and we will continue to treat each person humanely,” said Lt. Col. Samuel House, the prison spokesman.

Except it is a contradiction in terms to say that it is humane to force feed someone who is refusing to eat voluntarily.

And medical ethicists agree:

The military’s response to the hunger strike has revived complaints by medical ethics groups that contend that doctors — and nurses under their direction — should not force-feed prisoners who are mentally competent to decide not to eat.

Last week, the president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Jeremy A. Lazarus, wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel saying that any doctor who participated in forcing a prisoner to eat against his will was violating “core ethical values of the medical profession.”

“Every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions,” Dr. Lazarus wrote.

He also noted that the A.M.A. endorses the World Medical Association’s Tokyo Declaration, a 1975 statement forbidding doctors to use their medical knowledge to facilitate torture. It says that if a prisoner makes “an unimpaired and rational judgment” to refuse nourishment, “he or she shall not be fed artificially.”

Thankfully, the government didn’t make the fatuous argument they used to make during the Bush administration — that like the terrorists they are, prisoners are waging asymmetrical warfare by committing suicide while in custody. So, at least they aren’t insulting our intelligence as they torture the prisoners. Don’t say it isn’t progress.

President Obama says it’s only going to get worse. But to his credit, unlike congress, he appears to regret it.

“The notion that we’re going to continue to keep over 100 individuals in a no-man’s land in perpetuity — even at a time when we’ve wound down the war in Iraq, we’re winding down the war in Afghanistan, we’re having success defeating al Qaeda, we’ve kept the pressure up on all these transnational terrorist networks, when we’ve transferred detention authority in Afghanistan — the idea that we would still maintain, forever, a group of individuals who have not been tried, that’s contrary to who we are, it’s contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop,” Obama said.

“Now, it’s a hard case to make, because for a lot of Americans, the notion is out of sight, out of mind, and it’s easy to demagogue the issue,” Obama said.

The presidency is largely a ceremonial office, as we know, and the Commander in Chief responsibilities are obviously mostly just for show, but he could possibly ask very nicely if the Pentagon wouldn’t mind awfully not treating the prisoners to raids with rubber bullets in the dead of night or strapping them to chairs and putting rubber tubes down their throats  — since most of them are innocent and haven’t even been charged with a crime and all. Obviously, the military has no obligation to comply, but if that doesn’t work perhaps we could get Prince William to make a plea. He might have a little more clout.

Previous post about force feeding torture, here.

Privileged fliers

by David Atkins

Jon Stewart, doing what he does best:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Cut Punters – Sequester La-di-da
www.thedailyshow.com

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Cut Punters – The Sequestration Myth
www.thedailyshow.com

Conservatives will say that this is just governmnent officials taking care of their own. It isn’t. It’s Congress taking care of the wealthy, and no one else. As usual.

Villager projection watch

by digby

Uhm … ok

Chuck Todd weighed in on President Obama’s remarks from the 2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner during Sunday’s “Meet The Press,” and seemed to take part of the president’s speech to heart.

“He wasn’t very complimentary of the press,” Todd said of Obama’s comments at the end of his speech. “There’s always this part at the end … and it’s usually the part where the presidents say, ‘You know I think that the press has a job to do and I understand what they have to do.’ He didn’t say that,” Todd said.

He continued, “I thought his potshots — joke-wise and then serious stuff — about the Internet and the rise … of social media. He hates it, okay? He hates this part of the media, and he really thinks that this sort of buzzification — this isn’t just about BuzzFeed or Politico … but he thinks that this sort of coverage of political media has hurt political discourse. He hates it. And I just think he was trying to make that clear last night.”

Ok, Chuck. If thatt makes you feel better.

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Proud to be a Goth

by digby

The cast of “Lean Forward — the musical”, also known as the daytime MSNBC line-up, cannot stop humblebragging about the White house Correspondence Dinner.  It was, evidently, the highlight of their lives and I’m actually a little bit worried about the depression that’s soon to follow now that their Big Night is over for a whole year.

Luckily for those of us who missed it, CNN ran it on a loop yesterday so I finally ended up watching it in pieces.  I confess I didn’t notice the Village celebrities much. But I’m sure they were very very glamorous.  The president was quite funny though.  I think he has a post-presidency career ahead of him as a comedian if he wants it.  The material was good and he delivered it well. (I especially enjoyed the Michelle Bachman book burning joke.)

I also enjoyed Conan’s high school cafeteria joke:

“Fox is the jocks. MSNBC is the nerds. The bloggers are the goths. . . NPR is the table for kids with peanut allergies. Al Jazeera is the weird foreign exchange student nobody talks to. . . And print media, I didn’t forget you. You’re the poor kid who died sophomore year in a car crash. . . but cheer up, we dedicated the yearbook to you!”

Funny in that queasy sort of “too close to home” kind of way. But it’s right-on in one sense — you never leave high school. Ever.

All the videos are here, including the Kevin Spacey “House of Cards” bit that was more revealing than the people featured in it probably realize.

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The Market Gods don’t take post-dated checks


by digby

Krugman responded to Ezra’s assertion the other day that Rienhardt-Rogoff had obscured the important fact that basically everyone agrees that we should have short term stimulus and medium/long term deficit reduction instead of short term deficit reduction and medium/long term deficit reduction by making the practical, political argument:

Look, we are not going to have a deal that trades short-term stimulus for medium-term deficit reduction. Na ga ha pen. And for a good reason, too: our political parties have fundamentally different visions of what kind of country we should have, and neither is feeling politically weak enough to agree to lock in any of the other side’s vision.This means that any decisions about short-term spending have to be taken along with an asterisk: “*to be offset by longer-run adjustments to be determined later.”

That’s the real world in which macroeconomic analysis plays a role. The question is whether you support austerity now or not — saying that you would oppose austerity if politicians simultaneously did something they aren’t going to do is, de facto, support for austerity. The reality is that as an economist, you’re either trying to calm deficit hysteria or you’re helping to ratchet it up.

He’s right, of course. But it seems to me that there’s another reason to be skeptical of prospectively slashing the hell out of future spending on something like Social Security: we don’t really have a clue what this economy’s going to look like in 2020 or 2030. If the Keynesian approach means that we should stimulate during bad times and cut back during good times, then it makes no sense to me to assume that in 2030 everything’s going to be great and the economy can easily take the cuts we are planning for it today. How can we know?

That doesn’t change the political calculation Krugman makes. It reinforces it. Sure, the politicians don’t want to lock in medium or long term budget priorities because they disagree about what kind of country we want to have. That’s a legitimate political difference than can only be solved by political means. But it’s a good thing because if they did, there is a good chance that they’ll have made the wrong decision from a macro-economic standpoint, right?

I recall that during the early 1990s, the whole country was consumed with deficit fever. It even spawned a little political movement around a guy named Ross Perot who got 20% of the vote in 1992, more than any other third party candidate in history. All the projections showed we were sinking under a mountain of debt and he made it into a righteous cause.

Here’s a little trip down memory lane for you:

THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Deficit Politics; White House Prods Congress on Deficit
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: July 24, 1992

In a midyear recalculation apparently motivated by election-year as much as economic considerations, the White House asserted today that President Bush’s economic program could eliminate the Federal deficit by 1998 if Congress were to pass it.

The revision comes only six months after President Bush sent Congress a budget projecting the deficit’s being reduced to $200 billion a year in five years’ time. In Mr. Bush’s tenure, the deficit has doubled, to about $350 billion a year, from $155 billion in 1988; in the month that he took office, the Administration forecast that the deficit would be just $32 billion this fiscal year.

The new projection is based on Congress’s approving a cap on Medicare and other entitlement programs and passing Mr. Bush’s economic proposals. The White House said the cap on entitlements would bring 1998 spending down by $169 billion, while the economic package, including a long-sought cut in the capital gains tax, could spur growth enough to reduce the deficit by another $104 billion in 1998.

The budget document said the cap would limit spending increases on mandatory programs to the inflation rate and population growth plus 2 percent in the first year. In the second year it would be inflation, population growth plus 1 percent, and in subsequent years it would limit spending increases to inflation and population growth. .. 

The Administration predicted that the unemployment rate would fall from its current 7.8 percent to 6.9 percent in the fourth quarter. The forecast is more optimistic than that of many economists, but Michael J. Boskin, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said the projection was made before June’s sharp jump in unemployment. Mr. Boskin said that if he were making the calculation today, he would estimate a jobless figure of 7.1 percent at year’s end.

“We’ve been in a slow recovery for some time,” said Mr. Boskin. “We do expect that to pick up some. And the probability that it will pick up some and the pace that it will pick up some would be enhanced substantially by passage of the President’s short-term stimulus program.”

The White House also revised its 1992 deficit projection, to $333.5 billion, down $66.2 billion from the January estimate of $399.7 billion.

Does any of that sound remotely familiar?

Anyway, here’s what happened to that deficit that was going to choke off every possibility of a decent life for our children:

And keep in mind that the article I cited above was after the tough 1990 budget deal that pretty much everyone agrees sunk Bush Sr with the right wing. And Clinton’s 1993 tax hike and various budget cuts over the decade surely helped cut the deficit that Perot so successfully demagogued. But really, wasn’t it the tremendous economic growth of the period that turned that around so smartly?

Now it’s true that nobody can predict such a boom and it’s foolish to count on one to dig you out of a hole. As it turned out, the 90s were a great time to cut deficits because the economy went into a major boom. Huzzah. But by the same token, you never know when you might be in the middle of a downturn when your very clever formula to slash spending forward hits at exactly the wrong moment.  Planning for the future is important. But planning to cut in the future doesn’t make much sense.

I’m going to guess that the whole idea of making cuts to future spending sounds like it still rests on the specious notion that the Market Gods require human sacrifice — it’s just that now we think maybe they’ll take a post-dated check.

Not that reality has ever stopped the deficit scolds from clutching their pearls and breathlessly proclaiming the end of the world:

August 28, 1996

CHICAGO – Sen. Bob Kerrey smells an odor coming from the Republican and Democratic stands on entitlements.

“It’s one of the cruelest things we do, when we say, Republicans or Democrats, `Oh, we can wait and reform Social Security later,’ ” the Nebraska Democrat said.

Mr. Kerrey says that without reform, entitlements will claim 100 percent of the Treasury in 2012.

“This is not caused by liberals, not caused by conservatives, but by a simple demographic fact,” Mr. Kerrey warned at a meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council.

“We [will have] converted the federal government into an ATM machine.”

Take a look at that deficit chart from the 90s again and check out where we were in 1996.

*As for long term health care costs, which everyone agrees are going up Obamacare was ostensibly instituted to start to address that problem. Maybe we could let that have a chance to work before we fret ourselves into full blown hysterics about the potential deficit in 2035?  We don’t need to lock in the human sacrifice right now — as the sequester is proving, we’re perfectly capable of throwing people out in the street if we really want to.  Maybe we could wait a decade or so to see if it’s really going to be necessary?

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