Ellen Goodman has written a good common sense article on the mammography issue. Being one who is not particularly excited to be getting radiated more often than necessary, I found the information in the study welcome, but I understand that people have strong feelings the other way. I think that the most important thing is for women to have access to good doctors with whom they can weigh the risks involved with all tests like these. I trust that women understand their own bodies and are able to make these decisions for themselves when they are armed with all the information.
As deficit reduction fever grips the nation and, as expected, the White House looks to be responding with some sort of blue ribbon panel of poobahs based on the base closing commission concept, it’s important to recognize the politics for what they are, (which is the perspective I usually take when discussing the subject.) But there are, obviously important economic policy implications and Krugman pulls both the political and policy string in this short but instructive post and says that the causes of deficits are what matter. When they’re created because of irresponsibility or for cynical political purposes (“starve the beast” for example) then they undermine confidence and are dangerous in and of themselves. When they’re in response to an emergency, not so much — depending on if, in the end, America is still America:
Most though not all of our current budget deficit can be viewed as the result of a temporary emergency. Revenue has plunged in the face of the crisis, while there has been an increase in spending largely due to stimulus and bailouts. None of this can be seen as a case of irresponsible policy, nor as a permanent change in policy. It’s more like the financial equivalent of a war — which is why the WWII example is relevant.
So the debt question is what happens when things return to normal: will we be at a level of indebtedness that can’t be handled once the crisis is past?
And the answer is that it depends on the politics. If we have a reasonably responsible government a decade from now, and the bond market believes that we have such a government, the debt burden will be well within the range that can be managed with only modest sacrifice.
OK, that’s a big if. But it’s not a matter of dollars and cents; it’s about whether America is still America.
Some of us obviously believe that many of the bailouts represent “irresponsible” spending, but I think the point is that they were done in response to a real crisis, not one created with the express intent of using it as an excuse to cut hated social programs. Unfortunately, if the fiscal scolds and their compatriots in the White House have their way that may end up being the result anyway — in which case motives and causes won’t matter at all.
And when it comes to deficits, the stimulus and the bailouts and any other causes or reasons are completely irrelevant to Village thinking. They simply think that the people of this country are spoiled and need to suffer.
In case you were wondering what the spoiled, wealthy celebrity villagers believe Obama should do to pay for his agenda, here it is on CNN this morning:
Gloria Borger: Out of crisis comes opportunity. And they’re thinking, as long as we’re not paying so much attention to the deficit this year, next year, why not go for it all? Why not do what we want to do on healthcare and energy? Got it done with the understanding that two or three years down the road we’re going to have to start paying for this.
Blitzer: But if he wants to deal with the deficit, the national debt, he’s got to deal with those entitlements, social security, medicare, medicaid.
Borger: This is the opportunity. This is the opportunity, because everybody understands right now that he won’t have the money. So this is what you call a teachable moment here right now for Barack Obama. The American public can’t keep these entitlements at these levels.
That’s completely incoherent, of course. Universal health care is the very definition of an “entitlement” and will be vociferously opposed on the very grounds that Borger cites: “we don’t have the money.” (And if the “grand bargain” is that these programs have to be paid for on the backs of social security, I have a feeling it’s going to run into some resistance from a large political constituency as well. )
This is why talk of “entitlement reform” at a time of great economic peril is a dangerous thing. The Republicans and wealthy villagers get all excited again at the prospect that they might finally be able to destroy social security and this provides them with a great new excuse to push for it. And in doing that, they scare the hell out of people who are more dependent on those “entitlements” than ever. They make no sense and nobody should ever listen to them.
It’s not that deficits don’t matter, mind you. But they don’t matter more than anything else and they certainly don’t matter right now. And by putting “entitlements” on the menu it becomes nearly impossible for Obama to pass health care and makes cuts in social security and medicare the price that must be paid for the Republican sponsored financial meltdown. How convenient.
(I didn’t anticipate the cynical scare talk about Medicare, but I should have. It’s perfect.)
The deficit mongers among the cognoscenti really do think that most Americans just don’t understand the meaning of sacrifice. They are personally immune from such required lessons in suffering, of course, because they have plenty of money, thus proving they are responsible people who already make good decisions.
U.S. journalist Amy Goodman said she was stopped at a Canadian border crossing south of Vancouver on Wednesday and questioned for 90 minutes by authorities concerned she was coming to Canada to speak against the Olympics.
Goodman says Canadian Border Services Agency officials ultimately allowed her to enter Canada but returned her passport with a document demanding she leave the country within 48 hours.
Goodman, 52, known for her views opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, told CBC News on Thursday that Canadian border agents asked her repeatedly what subjects she would cover at scheduled speaking engagements in Vancouver and Victoria.
‘You’re saying you’re not talking about the Olympics?’—Canadian border agent
Goodman said she told them she planned to speak about the debate over U.S. health care reform and the wars in Asia.
After much questioning, Goodman said the officials finally asked if she would be speaking about the 2010 Olympics.
“He made it clear by saying, ‘What about the Olympics?'” said Goodman. “And I said, ‘You mean when President Obama went to Copenhagen to push for the Olympics in Chicago?'”
“He said, ‘No. I am talking about the Olympics here in 2010.’ I said, ‘Oh I hadn’t thought of that,'” said Goodman.
“He said, ‘You’re saying you’re not talking about the Olympics?'”
“He was clearly incredulous that I wasn’t going to be talking about the Olympics. He didn’t believe me,” Goodman said.
With the Dubai debt crisis on everyone’s mind (and nobody knowing if it’s going to have serious repercussions) I can’t be the only one thinking about the infamous Dubai ports deal which the Bush administration was nearly desperately pushing just four years ago. You’ll recall that it was see as some sort of necessary diplomatic initiative and that canceling it would result in a terrible rift with our allies. And he had tons of support:
Why did all these right wingers back the idea that this was an absolutely necessary agreement during a period of extreme anti-Arab paranoia? An email alerted me to this, from Matt Yglesias a while back:
Donna Wiesner Keese, from the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative anti-feminist group, objected [to the notion that “an active and capable state sector is a necessary precondition for economic growth.”]
Madrick’s statement, quoted by the reviewer, that “there really is no example of small government among rich nations,” is unsupported nonsense. Think Dubai, free and rich.
I mean no disrespect to the 240,000 citizens of Dubai (its other 1.2 million residents are imported workers, hundreds of thousands of whom live in “collective labor accommodations”), but is this the best Mrs. Keene can do? Not even a “nation” but a province of the United Arab Emirates, specializing in real-estate and financial-services bubbledom?
Yeah, I think it is their fantasy of a perfect nation. I recall being startled that one of the Real Housewives of Orange County (guilty pleasure) went on a romantic vacation with her wealthy uber-Republican husband to Dubai, wondering what in the world could possibly be romantic about the place. It is, after all, more ersatz than Vegas, with even less charm — it’s basically a shopping mall with extremely high-end fixtures. But obviously, they loved the place because they thought it was “free and rich,” just like them. Of course it was only “free” in the sense that people think buying things with their credit cards is “free” and “rich” in the sense that Bernie Madoff was rich.
As Yglesias explains:
… I understand perfectly well why she describes it as “free” — it’s a straightforward consequence of the right-wing’s sick obsession with reducing the level of taxes rich people need to pay as the prime virtue of politics. For from being free, Dubai is ruled by a dictator, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, dignified with royal title in virtue of the fact that he inherited his political power from relatives rather than seizing it of his own accord. The State Department certainly doesn’t seem to think that his subjects, or those of the other UAE component emirates, are all that free.
Dubai is wingnut paradise.
And I look forward to seeing how they blame liberals for its downfall.
It was a a fetching feast for the out-of-town guests. Canned turkey with potatoes and carrots; duck and sweet potato dinners, and bagged pheasant meals were included in the spread laid out for about 50 dogs from puppy mills and shelters at DoGone Fun, 1717 S. State, on Thanksgiving Day. The dogs were on a layover in a trip from Missouri to New York in search of new homes. Twenty of the dogs were rescued from puppy mills and considered unsaleable by their owners. The rest of the group was from a shelter in Joplin, Mo. Their journey is part of a campaign by Best Friends Animal Society, based in Utah, to eliminate puppy mills that breed dogs under inhumane conditions. The dogs, all small breeds and mixes, arrived in Chicago by truck. This morning , they’ll fly first-class to New York, where there is greater demand for dogs their size. Pet Airways is providing the flight. Wheeling-based Evanger’s Dog & Cat Food Co. donated the chow for their Thanksgiving feast. Other groups, including the Progressive Animal Welfare Society, contributed chewy pigskin chips, dog snacks and toys.
They’re publicizing this story because they want to remind people that if they’re planning on getting a pup for Christmas they should adopt from shelters or approved breeders instead of buying them from puppy mills, which are cruel and horrible. These little guys hit the lottery, but most aren’t so lucky.
Blue America decided to lead off our endorsements for 2010 with a vote from people who have been donating to our PAC and our candidates for the past four years. We offered five progressive stalwarts, all of whom have proven themselves as members of Congress:
Donna Edwards (D-MD) Alan Grayson (D-FL) Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) Barbara Lee (D-CA) Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)
We were gratified to see that all five wound up with tons of votes; each deserves the support. For example, each of them signed Jim McGovern’s letter to President Obama last week asking that he not get swept up in the Military-Industrial Complex’s efforts to escalate the catastrophic and unwinnable war in Afghanistan. And I doubt if it will surprise anyone to find out that each is a co-sponsor of H.R. 1826, John Larson’s Fair Elections Now Act.
So who got the most votes and is about to get a $2,000 contribution from the Blue America PAC and become the first endorsed candidate for 2010? Well, it was probably inevitable at this point in the cycle, but… look for yourself (please) and if you’re in the mood, please chip in a donation to a tough re-election campaign coming up in less than a year.
In an age of ideological divisions, Broder is widely known as a fair arbiter on Capitol Hill, a journalist who’s as interested in the process as he is in the policy and politics. He favors pragmatists over fierce ideologues and speaks up for decorum in Washington politics.
Read on for Foser’s world weary rebuttal of this nonsense.
I’m sure David Broder and his pals really believe they aren’t serving any ideology. They think they are simply reflecting mainstream America. Everyone knows that “the left” doesn’t respect the homespun values that these wealthy aristocrats like to pretend they have and because they insist that the government’s best tools like cutting taxes for millionaires and fighting inscrutable wars are not useful policies, they must be resisted at all times. They look at the Town halls and Beck and Palin and Limbaugh and don’t see radicals. They see middle aged white men and women who look just like them. Obviously then, the radicals must be the other guys.
Most importantly, they see the insistence on passing an agenda without the approval of the rump Republicans as unforgiveably uppity and obnoxiously ill-mannered. Even a conservative like Harry Reid cannot be allowed to insult The Dean for relying on bad information provided by rightwing zealots in his own newsroom. Why the whole village would would simply collapse if that caught on.
I think it’s time to revisit a seminal moment in Village history:
I happened to tune into Glenn Beck the other day and he was blathering on nonsensically about Rockefeller Center and how the two small buildings next to 30 Rock were a testament to the bedrock American values of life, liberty and property. (The owners of the buildings had refused to sell when they were building Rockefeller Center.) Anyway, he was scribbling furiously on his little blackboard and running back and forth between some old pictures of the area and what not, making little sense as usual. But what I gathered was that this is some kind of paean to capitalism along with a convoluted critique of the Kelo takings decision, which has taken on iconic significance on the right.
Well, it stirred my memory that I’d forgotten to post this post on the Village Voice blog by Julia:
The outcome of New York’s embattled eminent domain development projects is called into question by the economic development project which made them possible.
The Pfizer research facility at the center of the Kelo v. New London Supreme Court decision is closing, taking over 1,400 jobs with it. The 5-4 Kelo decision allowed New London, CT to use eminent domain to condemn private property for the “public purpose” of commercial development near a new Pfizer research facility. The city, which gave Pfizer a property tax break of 80% for the first ten years, spent $80 million preparing the seized property to build the condominiums and hotels they promised to draw Pfizer into town. Development was supposed to bring 3,000 jobs to the area.
What New London didn’t do, and should have, was get a contractual obligation for the company to stay put in return for the money, because they clearly don’t feel any non-contractual obligation.
Pfizer spokesman Liz Power says the company had no stake in the outcome of the Kelo case. Their operations are being consolidated at a Pfizer facility in Groton (ironically, Suzanne Kelo, the plaintiff in the eminent domain case, moved to Groton after she was thrown out of her home). The New London facility will be empty before the tax break sunsets. New London heard about it when the rest of us did.
The irony.
Here in New York, the Bloomberg administration is fighting to seize properties in downtown Brooklyn and Willet’s Point, Queens for economic development. In the case of the Atlantic Yards proposal in Brooklyn, the city is offering seized land and $700 million in subsidies to developer Bruce Ratner to build apartments and a basketball arena.
Ratner already doesn’t feel any particular obligation to the taxpayers providing his windfall (or the current residents being offered below-market value for their condemned properties). Last week, he told business paper Crains NY, not generally a hotbed of anti-development sentiment, that he didn’t feel a need to share building plans with the public: “Why should people get to see plans? This isn’t a public project.”
Right wingers hate Kelo and they hate the government but they love Masters of the Universe and they love property rights and they just don’t know quite what to think about all this without their brains getting all muddled. Beck hates Kelo because he hates the idea of the government taking someone else’s property. But he also loves guys like Rockefeller, who he extolled on the show as a great American visionary who built a monument to American capitalism. And if Rockefeller could have done what Ratner is doing today, he would have.
A giveaway moment came during Sean Hannity’s April 15 evening “Tea Party” broadcast from Atlanta, when he brought in a live feed from the Rick and Bubba Tea Tantrum in Alabama:
Hannity: And I’m going to tell you one other thing: When did we ever get to a point in America where, we’re nearly at the point where fifty percent of Americans don’t pay anything in taxes! Nothing!
[Crowd boos]
Rick: The numbers out are just astounding that, that, how much that the very top taxpayers actually pay. I feel like these taxpayers are disenfranchised. I want them to have a share of the burden just like they have a share of the vote.
That’s right — it’s the wealthy top percentage of the country that needs a tax break. After all, they are the one Obama’s targeting, right? So at least they’re being upfront about just who “the taxpayers” are whose interests they’re out marching to defend.
You could find similar sentiments on the right only the month before, in mid-March, when it was revealed that executives at the insurance giant AIG – which had just been the recipient of a massive government bailout – continued to pay themselves multimillion-dollar bonuses with bailout money. This spurred a loud round of protest, mostly from liberals and labor groups angry about the abuse of taxpayer dollars.
But Rush Limbaugh defended the bonuses, telling his radio audience: “A lynch mob is expanding: the peasants with their pitchforks surrounding the corporate headquarters of AIG, demanding heads. Death threats are pouring in. All of this being ginned up by the Obama administration.” Glenn Beck had a similar rant on his Fox show: “What I really, really don’t like here is the idea that we are willing to give in to mob rule. And that’s what this is: The mob in Washington getting everybody all – I mean, the only thing they haven’t said is, ‘Bring out the monster!’ It’s mob rule! They are attempting to void legally binding contracts.”
This kind of obeisance to the captains of industry and their utrammeled right to make profits at the expense of everyone else is a phenomenon known as Producerism, which is a hallmark of right-wing populism.
I’m quite sure Beck doesn’t understand all that. He thinks he’s a champion of the little guy and he believes that he’s standing up for them when he rails against government takings and talks about the right to life, liberty and property. But when push comes to shove, his philosophy actually requires him to defend Bruce Ratner’s contractual “rights” to have the government intercede on his behalf. How convenient.
Meanwhile, as Julia rightly concludes:
[G]iven the outcome of the New London experiment in protecting corporations from the free hand of the market, perhaps the city should think twice about fighting to subsidize someone who feels comfortable telling us to go fuck ourselves before he gets his hands on our money.
I would think so. But then this very special producer might take his unique talents elsewhere and then where would they be?
As the conservative Catholic bishops in America begin to lobby strongly on social policy and assert their authority over politicians I can’t help but wonder if maybe they should keep a slightly lower profile right now considering this:
The Roman Catholic Church and the police in Ireland systematically colluded in covering up decades of child sex abuse by priests in Dublin, according to a scathing report released Thursday.
The cover-ups spanned the tenures of four Dublin archbishops and continued through to the mid-1990s and beyond, even after the church was beginning to admit to its failings and had professed that it was confronting abuse by its priests.
But rather than helping the victims, the church was concerned only with “the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church, and the preservation of its assets,” said the 700-page report, prepared by a group appointed by the Irish government and called the Commission of Investigation Into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.
In a statement, the current archbishop, Diarmuid Martin, acknowledged the “revolting story” of abuses that the report detailed, saying, “No words of apology will ever be sufficient.” He added, “The report highlights devastating failings of the past.”
The report is the latest in a series of damning revelations about the church. In May, a report chronicled the sexual, emotional and physical abuse of orphans and foster children over 60 years in a network of church-run residential schools meant to care for the vulnerable and the disadvantaged.
Although that report portrayed a church that seemed institutionally broken, with guilt spread among many, the new one attaches particular blame to those at the top.
Obviously those like Bishop Tobin (the one who is denying Representative Patrick Kennedy communion) and those whose staff lobbied the House on the health care reform bill were not among those who participated in such vile acts. But as upper echelon clergy they should perhaps be a little bit more humble right now. In light of these revelations the Church simply doesn’t have the moral authority to intervene in the secular life of the whole country.
Perhaps the Church should just concentrate on doing good works for a while and not concern itself with others’ moral failings until it gets itself institutionally straight.
