I think you should read Krugman’s column from yesterday. Here’s how it ends:
“It’s hard to see how this situation is resolved without a major crisis of some kind. Mr. Simpson may or may not get the blood bath he craves this April, but there will be blood sooner or later. And we can only hope that the nation that emerges from that blood bath is still one we recognize.”
“The inadequacy of the policies we have to reduce unemployment to less-than-catastrophic levels has been obvious for a long time; and everyone who might have been in a position to do something played it safe, until it was too late to do anything.”
“My point was that the wealthiest plutocrats now actually control a greater share of the pie in the United States than in historically unstable countries like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana. But readers protested that this was glib and unfair, and after reviewing the evidence I regretfully confess that they have a point.
“That’s right: I may have wronged the banana republics.”
One percent of Americans control about 24% of our income. One percent of Americans own 34% of our private net worth. The top 10 percent control more than 70% of our private net worth.
Amid recent controversy over airport pat-downs, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality is calling for the Transportation Security Administration to institute some “common-sense, healthy ‘discrimination'” by banning “self-acknowledged homosexuals” from doing security screenings, “so as to avoid [passengers] being put in sexually compromising situations.” It goes without saying that AFTAH is motivated by hate and homophobia, and the group’s press release is dripping with bigotry: “The reality is, most traveling men would not want Barney Frank to pat them down at the airport security checkpoint. Neither would it be fair to assign Ellen DeGeneres to pat down female travelers.” (Way to call out the two homosexuals you know!)
“A 53%-majority of Republicans say there is no solid evidence the earth is warming. Among Tea Party Republicans, fully 70% say there is no evidence.”
Daily Number: Pew Research Center
14% of Democrats see no solid evidence.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953 quoted by Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com
Representative-elect Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican and anesthesiologist, beat his incumbent Democratic opponent by campaigning against the terror of universal socialized medicine. Despite the fact that his opponent voted against healthcare reform, Harris insisted that once elected he would vote to repeal healthcare reform. Now he is elected! And he was shocked to learn that his free, taxpayer-funded, government-run healthcare won’t kick in until 28 days after he’s sworn in. This made him upset!
Read more from the War Room at Salon.com
Just for the record, Federal employee health insurance isn’t “free.” I for example, pay about $175 a month just for myself. And that doesn’t include any dental or vision insurance. I pay 100% for those coverages, which are relatively new. Not complaining mind you, just clarifying.
The deficit commission, charged with coming up with a bold plan to bring the nation’s finances into order, really does propose:
Increasing the amount of time spent on instant messenger, to reduce travel costs;
“Reduce copying use by putting the default option on copiers to double-sided”;
Merging the Commerce Department with the Small Business Administration;
Charging a fee to Smithsonian visitors.
Etc.
Above from Felix Salmon, Reuters
“I would be a happier camper if Obama (and Biden) resigned tonight.”
Because then it would be President Pelosi. Click the link to see what prompted DeLong’s line.
“It is pure fantasy — a blueprint for reducing health care costs, rejiggering Social Security, completely revamping the tax code, shrinking government, cutting defense spending and guaranteeing that each and every American gets a pony.”
“Still, I guess this is what it takes to get compromise, if by compromise you mean something the center-right and the hard right can agree on.”
Paul Krugman referring to the deficit commission.
“I don’t know if my favorite part is adding co-pays [for veterans at the V.A.] or cutting the schools for soldiers’ kids.”
A comment made to Brad DeLong regarding the Obama National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform draft recommendations.
So the Catfood Commission is going to recommend lowering the tax rates. Surprise, surprise.
The lowest rate would be reduced by one-fifth to 8%.
The highest rate would be reduced by more than one-third to 23%. (It was 91% under Eisenhower.)
I had lunch yesterday with 1,000 children.
I decided to join The Sweeties for Thursday’s lunch. Four attend the same elementary school, so this is easier in some ways than it sounds. I drove over to the school just before 11, went through security (they take your ID and give you a badge with your photo on it), and walked across the hall to the cafeteria.
Kiley, second grade, doesn’t really have lunch at school; she has brunch. She and her class poured in at 11. Alex, her kindergarten-aged brother came next, at 11:25. Then cousins Mack, fourth grade, at 11:55, and Aidan, first grade, at 12:30. After Mack a cafeteria lady asked me how many grandchildren I had in the school. “Four,” I said, “but five next year” (if the district lines don’t change).
This particular public school in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., has over 1,000 students, grades kindergarten through fifth. The cafeteria seats 320 and it was close to capacity on each shift, so I got to see (AND HEAR!) most of the 1,000 as they ate (more or less) their lunches from home or the lasagna, corn dog nuggets, or vegetarian chik’n nuggets sold by the school for $2.10, including two sides and a milk. (I didn’t see anyone with the chicken fajita salad.) I understand more clearly now why most restaurants stun me with their noise. The people that manage those places and work there experienced public school cafeterias as kids and think their workplaces are relatively quiet.
A thousand children, ages 5 to 11; American youth in 2010. And they were amazing and beautiful in every shade known, unquestionably with parents or grandparents from all parts of the world — and in many instances with parents from two parts of the world. And, romantic patriot that I am, I couldn’t help but think, e pluribus unum (out of many, one). It was America, as she has always been, richly diverse— our greatest strength.
And it made me quit worrying about the Tea Party.
[A] nightmare for Gene Cranick, a rurual homeowner in Obion County, Tennessee. Cranick hadn’t forked over $75 for the subscription fire protection service offered to the county’s rural residents, so when firefighters came out to the scene, they just stood there, with their equipment on the trucks, while Cranick’s house burned to the ground. According to the local NBC TV affiliate, Cranick “said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning.”
The fire chief could have made an exception on the spot, but refused to do so. Pressed by the local NBC news team for an explanation, Mayor David Crocker said, “if homeowners don’t pay, they’re out of luck.”
This particular report is from AlterNet, which is all agitated about this example of Ayn Rand government.
But I don’t know. I figure Cranick gambled and lost. Pay and get protection. Don’t pay and take your chances.
Should the firefighters have said, “Oh, sure, Cranick, we’ll bail you out”?
I say no. I say Cranick practiced Ayn Rand government, not the fire department.
Then, if you haven’t already done so, go read Matt Taibbi’s Tea & Crackers.
And then, go read Jane Mayer on the billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.
And then, lest we leave out the court, go read Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick on how the Roberts Court disguises its conservatism.
It’s over liberals and progressives. We’ve lost our country.
Go ahead. Do your assigned reading. I’ll wait.
I saw this the other day in an essay on Socialism, masturbation, and Christine O’Donnell by William Saletan. What do you think?
I don’t think the absence of government is sufficient to define freedom. I think social control over individuals can be exercised not just by the state but by other agents of what’s described broadly, in definitions of socialism, as the “public,” the “community,” or the “collective.” In the context of another moral issue, abortion, I wrote a whole book about this disagreement. Short version:
Liberals tend to think that freedom belongs to the individual, whereas conservatives tend to think that freedom belongs to private or local institutions such as families, communities, and businesses. The debate over prayer in school, for example, pits individual freedom against community freedom. Child abuse laws pit the rights of children against the sovereignty of families. Consumer product safety laws pit the asserted rights of consumers against the freedom of businesses. In such disputes, liberals are more inclined than conservatives to distinguish the interests of the individual from the interests of private institutions and to enlist the government to protect the former from the latter.
I think his distinction is apt, though I wouldn’t draw it strictly as between liberals and conservatives in all cases.
“Hence, when you look through the GOP proposals to cut spending, they are uniformly, laughably puny. A typical idea is to permit the government to hire only one new worker for every two who leave. Leaving aside the arbitrariness of the idea, its own proponents claim that it will save a whopping $35 billion—over 10 years. They are whacking weeds at the edge of a large field where they let sacred cows get fatter.”
“Half of all households make less than $50,000 a year–the Hendersons make nine times that. 90% of households make less than $100,000 a year–the Henderson’s make 4.5 times that. The Henderson’s are solidly in the top 1% of American households, in the select 1% group that receives more than $350,000 a year.
“By any standard, they are really rich.
“But they don’t feel rich. . . .”
From a rambling but very interesting post by Brad DeLong on why the rich feel hard-pressed.
The amounts are gross income — that is, before taxes.
James Fallows writes about bigotry. Good stuff.
An excerpt:
These two truths combine with pernicious effect when it comes to mainstream American views of what “Muslims” are like. I put the term in quotes because it’s preposterously over-broad. It is just as possible to say what typifies “Muslims” as it is to say what typifies all Indians, or all Chinese, or all of the world’s Christians. Each of these is a grouping of roughly a billion people, and each has some similarities but far more dramatic internal differences. (James Earl Ray, Desmond Tutu: both Christians. Discuss.) Most Americans know that about “Christians,” and may have some growing awareness when it comes to “Chinese” or “Indians.” But a lot of Americans lack the individual awareness of the variety within Islam — and think that the violent, hateful, dangerous parts define “the Muslims” as a whole.
They don’t. A homely analogy: I grew up in a town with a very large Latino population. So whenever I hear some statement about “the Mexicans,” I listen about possible group traits but I also know my friends Chris, Hank, Yolanda, etc in their individuality. I also grew up with many gay friends –but wasn’t aware until years later that I had done so. It was only from college age onward that I had lots of friends who were out as gays, which inevitably affected my view of “the gays” and made me wince in recalling the standard thoughtlessly cruel high school jokes about “the fags.” One reason opposition to same-sex marriage is sure to disappear is that straight Americans born after about 1980 have always been aware of having gay friends and can barely fathom the “threat” posed by their right to marry.
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The National Mall — October 30, 2010
I’ll be there. You?
Can’t we all just acknowledge that, of course, Lance Armstrong used banned drugs or procedures. That is, he cheated like all the rest. And then he lied about it like all the rest. Does anyone think he didn’t?
I hate witch hunts more than I hate witches.
This short excerpt is from an article by Paul Krugman published in The New York Times Magazine seven years ago today. Krugman argued we are not over-taxed as a nation, the wealthy received the preponderance of the Bush tax-cuts, and a huge fiscal crisis is looming.
[T]he coming crisis will allow conservatives to move the nation a long way back toward the kind of limited government we had before Franklin Roosevelt. Lack of revenue, [Grover Norquist] says, will make it possible for conservative politicians — in the name of fiscal necessity — to dismantle immensely popular government programs that would otherwise have been untouchable.
In [tax critic Grover] Norquist’s vision, America a couple of decades from now will be a place in which elderly people make up a disproportionate share of the poor, as they did before Social Security. It will also be a country in which even middle-class elderly Americans are, in many cases, unable to afford expensive medical procedures or prescription drugs and in which poor Americans generally go without even basic health care. And it may well be a place in which only those who can afford expensive private schools can give their children a decent education.
Seven. Years. Ago. Think he was wrong?