I've missed a few days so here are a few must read op-Ed's to make up for it. I'll have more throughout the day.
First from the Nytime's this sunday Frank Rich discusses the lack of abilty in our culture. This lacking quality, he says, runs across the sepctrum from politics to entertainment to sports.-http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/opinion/11rich.html
No One Is to Blame for Anything
By FRANK RICH
“I was right 70 percent of the time, but I was wrong 30 percent of the time,” said Alan Greenspan as he testified last week on Capitol Hill. Greenspan — a k a the Oracle during his 18-year-plus tenure as Fed chairman — could not have more vividly illustrated how and why geniuses of his stature were out to lunch while Wall Street imploded. No doubt he applied his full brain power to that 70-30 calculation. But the big picture eludes him. If the captain of the Titanic followed the Greenspan model, he could claim he was on course at least 70 percent of the time too.
Greenspan was testifying to the commission trying to pry loose the still incomplete story of how the American economy was driven at full speed into its iceberg. He was eager to portray himself as an innocent bystander to forces beyond his control. In his rewriting of history, his clout in Washington was so slight that he was ineffectual at “influencing the Congress.” The “roots” of the crisis, he lectured, dated back to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In other words: Wherever the buck stops, you had better believe it’s not within several thousand miles of the Oracle. As he has previously said in defending his inability to spot the colossal bubble, “Everybody missed it — academia, the Federal Reserve, all regulators.”
That, of course, is not true. In last Sunday’s Times, one of those who predicted the bubble’s burst — Michael Burry, an investor chronicled in “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis — told in detail of how Greenspan and others in power “either willfully or ignorantly aided and abetted” the reckless boom and the ensuing bust. But Greenspan is nothing if not a representative leader of his time. We live in a culture where accountability and responsibility are forgotten values. When “mistakes are made” they are always made by someone else.
This syndrome is hardly limited to the financial sector. The Vatican hierarchy and its American apologists blame the press, anti-Catholic bigots and “petty gossip” for a decades-long failure to police the church’s widespread criminal culture of child molestation. Michael Steele, the G.O.P. chairman, has tried to duck criticism for his blunders by talking about his “slimmer margin” of error as a black man. New York’s dynamic Democratic duo of political scandal, David Paterson and Charles Rangel, have both attributed their woes to newspapers like The Times, not their own misbehavior.
Such is our current state of national fecklessness that the gold medal for prompt contrition by anyone on the public stage belongs, by default, to David Letterman. He wasted little time in telling a national audience point blank that he had done “something stupid,” hurt those he loved and had a “responsibility” to “try to fix it.” In the land of Rod Blagojevich and Tiger Woods, the candid late-night talk show star is king.
Woods’s apologetic Masters press conference last week came only after months of stalling, sponsor defections and well-publicized “rehab.” Along the way he briefly hired Ari Fleischer, the former Bush press secretary, to help manage his mess. Fleischer is not the only Bush spin artist to re-emerge as a hired damage-control hand in the post-Bush era. Dan Bartlett, a former presidential counselor, is a honcho at Public Strategies, the company recently enlisted by Goldman Sachs to help erase the indelible tattoo of “a great vampire squid” imprinted on its image by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone.
Former Bush propagandists will never lack for work in this climate. It’s remarkable how often apologists for Wall Street’s self-inflicted calamity mirror the apologists for Washington’s self-inflicted calamity of Iraq. In the case of that catastrophic war, its perpetrators and enablers almost always give the same alibi: “Everyone” was misled by the same “bad intelligence” about Saddam Hussein’s W.M.D. Hence, no one is to blame and no one could have prevented the rush to war.
That, of course, is no more true than Greenspan’s claim that “everyone” was ignorant of the potentially catastrophic dangers in the securitization of subprime mortgages. There were dissenters in the press, intelligence agencies and Congress who did doubt the W.M.D. evidence and asked tough questions akin to those asked by financial apostates like Michael Burry during the housing bubble. But these dissenting voices were either ignored, ridiculed or censored in the feverish rally to war just as voices like Burry’s were marginalized in the feverish rally of the Dow.
In the crash’s aftermath, those who created, sold and hyped mortgage-backed securities and exotic derivatives (“financial weapons of mass destruction,” as Warren Buffett called them) are just as eager to escape accountability as those who peddled Saddam’s nonexistent nukes. In an appearance at the 92nd Street Y in New York last month, the former Citigroup guru Robert Rubin floated the same talking points as Greenspan. He described Wall Street’s meltdown as “a crisis that virtually nobody saw coming,” citing regulators, auditors, analysts and commentators. It seems they were all the passive dupes of AAA ratings from Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s on toxic subprime assets, just as all those Iraq cheerleaders were innocently victimized by the bad C.I.A. intelligence on Saddam’s assets.
No top player in the Bush administration has taken responsibility for his or her role in selling faulty intelligence products without exerting proper due diligence. There have been few unequivocal mea culpas from those who failed in their oversight roles during the housing bubble either — whether Greenspan, the Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson or Timothy Geithner in his pre-Obama incarnation leading the New York Fed.
In his own testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission last week, Rubin took no responsibility for his record, as Clinton Treasury secretary, in opening the floodgates of deregulation that would fatten his wallet in his post-Washington migration to Citigroup. Nor did he own up to his role as a proselytizer for increased risk at that mammoth bank, where the bad bets would ultimately require a $45 billion taxpayers’ bailout. Rubin maintains that he had no significant operational responsibility as chairman of Citigroup’s executive committee — a role that paid him well over $100 million while there. But as Roger Lowenstein writes in his new book, “The End of Wall Street,” Rubin’s responsibilities did include writing a letter to shareholders in early 2007 for the Citigroup annual report. In sharp contrast to Jamie Dimon’s contemporaneous letter to shareholders at JPMorgan Chase — which darkly confronted potential “negative scenarios” from “recent industry excesses” — Rubin glossed over any gathering clouds.
Last week Rubin testified he “deeply” regretted what happened, but his invocation of collective guilt — “we all bear responsibility” — deflected any accounting for his own individual actions. Even Blagojevich did better than this in his new role as a contestant on the reality show “Celebrity Apprentice.” When Donald Trump “fired” him a week ago, the former Illinois governor at last said, “I take full responsibility.”
Surveying America’s moral landscape in his Inaugural Address, Barack Obama called for “a new era of responsibility.” And he has tried to live up to his own creed. “I’m here on television saying I screwed up and that’s part of the era of responsibility,” he said after Tom Daschle withdrew as a cabinet nominee. The president has also taken responsibility for screw-ups ranging from his administration’s tardy discovery of bonuses given to bailed-out bankers at A.I.G. to its failed surveillance of the Christmas Day bomber. Though the president is never shy about attributing a $1.3 trillion annual deficit to his predecessor, he is usually quick to hold himself accountable as well for the $787 billion in deficit spending added by his stimulus package.
Obama has been less forceful in stewarding a new era of responsibility when it comes to adjudicating unresolved misdeeds in the previous White House. “Turn the page” is his style, even if at times to a fault. Many of the Bush national security transgressions, including the manipulation of the case for war, are rapidly receding into history and America’s great memory hole.
The president will not have the luxury of mass amnesia when it comes to the recent economic past. The tax-free Iraq war, as cunningly conceived by the Bush White House, directly affected only those American families whose sons and daughters volunteered to fight it. But the Great Recession has affected nearly everyone. Most of its victims are genuinely innocent bystanders who lost their jobs and savings while financial elites cashed in on the crash.
Both as policy and politics, a serious reckoning for those who gamed the system is a win-win. Yet the fear that the Obama administration is protecting its friends persists. On the same morning that Rubin testified last week, Eamon Javers of Politico wrote about his continued influence on his many acolytes in the White House. That includes Geithner, whom Rubin talked with repeatedly in the weeks before the president released his financial regulatory reform proposal last June.
Americans still waiting on Main Street for the recovery that lifted Wall Street once invested their hopes in Obama. Getting the new era of responsibility only 70 percent right won’t do.
From the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, a column dealing with the controversry surrounding "Confederate History" month and the glaring omission of slvaery. This deals with Mississipi Govenor Haley Barbour's comments that said omission does't mean"diddly"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/12/AR2010041203297.html
Haley Barbour's 'diddly' sense of slavery's history
By Eugene RobinsonTuesday, April 13, 2010; A17
It was bad enough when Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell proclaimed "Confederate History Month" without mentioning slavery, but at least he came to his senses and apologized. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's contention that the whole controversy "doesn't amount to diddly" is much worse.
"I don't know what you would say about slavery," Barbour told CNN, "but anybody that thinks that you have to explain to people that slavery is a bad thing, I think that goes without saying."
And that's the problem -- Barbour thinks it "goes without saying." The governor of the state whose population includes the nation's highest percentage of African Americans believes it is appropriate to "honor" those who fought for the Confederacy. Clearly, he has no problem revisiting the distant past. Yet he sees no reason to mention the vile, unthinkable practices -- state-sanctioned kidnapping, torture and rape -- that those Confederate soldiers were fighting to protect.
It amounts to much more than "diddly" that so many Americans try hard to avoid coming to terms with the reality of slavery. It wasn't just "a bad thing." Littering is a bad thing. Slavery was this nation's Original Sin, and yet many people will not look at it except through a gauze of Spanish moss.
The Atlantic slave trade was one of the last millennium's greatest horrors. An estimated 17 million Africans, most of them teenagers, were snatched from their families, stuffed into the holds of ships and brought to the New World. As many as 7 million of them died en route, either on the high seas or at "seasoning" camps in the Caribbean where they were "broken" to the will of their masters.
If he has never done so, Barbour should hold in his hands some of the leg irons, manacles and other restraints that were used to subdue the Africans. He should visit some of the plantations where slave cabins still stand -- there are plenty in his state -- to get a sense of how the Africans lived. He should spend a long, hot day picking cotton. He should read the accounts of plantation life written by former slaves, and then he should explain why there is any reason to "honor" soldiers who fought to perpetuate a system that could never have functioned without constant, deliberate, unflinching cruelty.
The point, of course, is not that Haley Barbour, Bob McDonnell or any other white Southerners living today are responsible for crimes committed long before they were born. They shouldn't have to feel guilty for things they didn't do. But they -- and the rest of us, too -- should know the extent to which the history of this country was shaped by what was euphemistically called the "peculiar institution." Americans should know, for example, that Wall Street's rise as a financial center was largely fueled by the cotton trade, which could not have functioned without slavery -- and that when the Civil War began, the mayor of New York, Fernando Wood, tried to find a way for the city to remain neutral so that it could continue its lucrative business dealings with the South.
What "doesn't amount to diddly" is the revisionist notion -- which Confederate History Month celebrations perpetuate -- that the Civil War was about something other than slavery. The "lost cause" diehards insist that the treasonous rebellion was a fight over freedom or the Constitution or states' rights. But the "right" that was being fought over was the ability to own human beings, compel their labor, buy and sell them as if they were livestock, exploit them sexually and torture or kill them if they tried to escape.
McDonnell's apology, at least, recognized that slavery was nothing to be proud of. It should be noted, however, that Virginia's previous two governors -- both Democrats -- did not feel the need to proclaim Confederate History Month. McDonnell's original proclamation, before he amended it, seemed designed to appeal to a fringe group for whom the Civil War is still an open question.
This is a free country -- for black people, too, thanks to the defeat of the Confederacy -- and so if some white Southerners want to celebrate the "heritage" of slavery, they are welcome to do so. But while they're entitled to their own set of opinions, they're not entitled to their own set of facts. I'd say that Haley Barbour's studied ignorance was "a bad thing," but that would be a gross understatement.
Hendrik Hertzberg nails the catholic church in this weeks New Yorker-
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/04/19/100419taco_talk_hertzberg
Indulgence
On October 31, 1517, a Roman Catholic priest and theologian, Dr. Martin Luther, put the finishing touches on a series of bullet points and, legend has it, nailed the result to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany—the equivalent, for the time and place, of uploading a particularly explosive blog post. Luther’s was a protest against the sale of chits that were claimed to entitle buyers or their designees to shorter stays in Purgatory. Such chits, known as indulgences, were being hawked as part of Pope Leo X’s fund-raising drive for the renovation of St. Peter’s Basilica. The “Ninety-five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” touched off a high-stakes flame war that rapidly devolved into the real thing, with actual wars, actual flames, and actual stakes. The theological clash that sundered Christendom didn’t just change the face of Western religion; it birthed the modern world.
Half a millennium later, the present agony of Catholicism is very far from being in the same league, even though the National Catholic Reporter has called it “the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in Church history.” The crisis is not about doctrine, at least not directly. It’s about administration; it’s about the structure of power within the Catholic Church; it’s about the Church’s insular, self-protective clerical culture. And, of course, like nearly every one of the controversies that preoccupy and bedevil the Church—abortion, stem-cell research, contraception, celibacy, marriage and divorce and affectional orientation—it’s about sex.
It’s also about indulgence—the institutional indulgence, fitful but systemic, of the sexual exploitation of children by priests. The pattern broke into public consciousness in the United States a quarter of a century ago, when a Louisiana priest pleaded guilty to thirty-three counts of crimes against children and was sentenced to prison. Since then, there have been thousands of such cases, civil and criminal, involving many thousands of children and leading to legal settlements that have amounted to more than two billion dollars and have driven several dioceses into bankruptcy. In 1992, Richard Sipe, a Catholic psychotherapist and researcher who served for eighteen years as a priest and Benedictine monk, told a conference of victims that “the current revelations of abuse are the tip of an iceberg, and if the problem is traced to its foundations the path will lead to the highest halls of the Vatican.”
America’s liberal system of tort law, along with the enterprising reporting of journalists at newspapers like the Boston Globe, brought the problem to light earlier here than elsewhere. But it can no longer be dismissed as an epiphenomenon of America’s sexual libertinism and religious indiscipline. In Ireland, for example, where Church-run orphanages and other institutions for children are supported by the state, a government commission reported last year that the Dublin Archdiocese’s preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities.
The past few years have seen a cascade of revelations from many countries, including, most recently, Germany, and in the past month the cascade has become a flood. Sipe’s prediction has come true. As Cardinal Archbishop of Munich, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and now as Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger appears to have been at best neglectful, at worst complicit, in minimizing and covering up specific cases of abuse that came under his supervision.
The response of the ecclesiastical powers that be, once outright denial became untenable, has all along been an unsatisfactory mixture of contrition and irritation. From Benedict on down, Church fathers have made statements of apology and shame. Awareness programs have been launched, studies have been conducted, bishops have been obliged to resign. The Pope met personally with victims of abuse during his visit to the United States, in 2008, and even his critics agree that he has taken the problem more seriously, both before and since his elevation to the throne of St. Peter, than did his predecessor, the soon-to-be-sainted John Paul II.
On the other hand, that’s not setting the bar very high. When serious discipline has been imposed, it has generally been in the wake of bad publicity, usually from outside the Church and always from outside the hierarchy. There has been a lot of bad publicity of late, and some of the reaction has been tinged with resentful paranoia. In an editorial, L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, accused “the media” of having the “rather obvious and ignoble intention of attacking Benedict XVI and his closest collaborators at all costs.” This was echoed, nearer home, by the Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, who, in his blog (yes, he has one), accused the Times of “being part of a well-oiled campaign against Pope Benedict.” Back in Rome, on Palm Sunday, the Pope himself spoke darkly of “the petty gossip of dominant opinion.”
The Catholic Church is an authoritarian institution, modelled on the political structures of the Roman Empire and medieval Europe. It is better at transmitting instructions downward than at facilitating accountability upward. It is monolithic. It claims the unique legitimacy of a line of succession going back to the apostolic circle of Jesus Christ. Its leaders are protected by a nimbus of mystery, pomp, holiness, and, in the case of the Pope, infallibility—to be sure, only in certain doctrinal matters, not administrative ones, but the aura is not so selective. The hierarchy of such an institution naturally resists admitting to moral turpitude and sees squalid scandal as a mortal threat. Equally important, the government of the Church is entirely male.
It is not “anti-Catholic” to hypothesize that these things may have something to do with the Church’s extraordinary difficulty in coming to terms with clerical sexual abuse. The iniquities now roiling the Catholic Church are more shocking than the ones that so outraged Martin Luther. But the broader society in which the Church is embedded has grown incomparably freer. To the extent that the Church manages to purge itself of its shame—its sins, its crimes—it will owe a debt of gratitude to the lawyers, the journalists, and, above all, the victims and families who have had the courage to persevere, against formidable resistance, in holding it to account. Without their efforts, the suffering of tens of thousands of children would still be a secret. Our largely democratic, secularist, liberal, pluralist modern world, against which the Church has so often set its face, turns out to be its best teacher—and the savior, you might say, of its most vulnerable, most trusting communicants. ♦Read more:
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Op-ed of the say 4/10
Today's op-ed comes from the NYTimes Bob Herbert. He looks at the rise of progressive thought.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/opinion/10herbert.html?hp
A Voice of Reason
By BOB HERBERT
The Republican Party is not simply the “just-say-no” party. It’s also a shameless advocate of the free lunch. Ronald Reagan famously told us he could jack up defense spending, cut taxes and balance the federal budget all at the same time.
George W. Bush put two big wars on a credit card. And now we have the perennially clownish Newt Gingrich, in an embarrassing rant against President Obama, assuring the deluded G.O.P. faithful that, yes, the party can indeed bring down the federal deficit while cutting taxes.
The Great Recession and the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been savage enough to reintroduce the G.O.P. to reality.
One of the reasons so many conservative Republican absurdities became actual U.S. policy was the intellectual veneer slapped upon them by right-wing think tanks and commentators. The grossest nonsense was made to seem plausible to a lot of people — people who wanted to believe in a free lunch. When Mr. Reagan told the country that “government is the problem,” the intellectual handmaidens of the corporate and financial elite were right there to explain in exhaustive detail why that was so.
The result, in addition to the terrible consequences of Iraq and Afghanistan and the damage to America’s standing in the world, was the tremendous (and tremendously debilitating) transfer of wealth from working people in the U.S. to the folks already in the upper echelons of wealth and income. The elite made out like bandits — often literally.
The liberal or progressive community was slow to counter the remarkable effectiveness of this intellectual offensive from the right. But during the 1990s and into the early-2000s, that began to change. And one of the progressive organizations that has done a really good job (but has never been particularly well known) is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary.
Demos, headquartered in New York City, grew out of a series of meetings of scholars, activists, journalists and elected officials who were concerned about the ever-increasing influence of the right on public policy. “The thinking was that there should be more moderate, liberal and left-of-center voices,” said Miles Rapoport, the group’s president. The group was formed in 2000, a year that would later see the disputed election that gave the presidency to Mr. Bush.
It didn’t take long for Demos to begin issuing loud warnings about the danger that ever-increasing debt was posing to American households, while pointedly disputing the argument that over-the-top credit card debt was primarily the result of excessive consumer spending.
Working people from the middle class down were in serious trouble, and Demos, along with many other voices (the bankruptcy expert and middle-class advocate Elizabeth Warren comes quickly to mind) was sounding the alarm long before the Great Recession hit like a Category 5 hurricane.
In a 2003 report called “Borrowing to Make Ends Meet,” Demos spotlighted the increasing gap between the incomes and the day-to-day living costs of many low- and middle-income families. That report was updated steadily in subsequent years, and in 2007 Demos was reporting: “Many households have tried to cope with this financial imbalance by relying on credit cards to cover basic expenses that earnings do not meet. Homeowners, ominously, have then relied on cashed-out home equity — $1.2 trillion over the last six years — largely to pay down those debts and to cover other costs of living.”
The Bush crowd during this period had taken us into Iraq and was fashioning its own fantasy of free-lunch economics.
In 2006, Tamara Draut, Demos’s vice president of policy and programs, wrote a book called “Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead.” Ms. Draut made the case that the hallmarks of adulthood — from getting an education to buying a home to finding a good job with decent benefits to raising children and beginning to save for retirement — had been eroded by the shortsighted public policies that have prevailed in recent decades.
What has been left are just the remnants of the American dream.
Ronald Reagan and the right-wing zealots who revere him have preached a gospel that, when carried to its logical conclusion, would all but abolish government. It’s a failed philosophy.
Demos has responded with admirable real-world scholarship, a highly respected fellows program to encourage new writers and thinkers and steadfast efforts to promote civic engagement. (It’s a big champion, among other things, of same-day voter registration.)
It’s not just comforting but essential to have sane countervailing voices like Demos to remind us that government action is necessary to plan for the common good, to set proper rules for economic activity and to be a bulwark against predatory practices in the private sector.
Demos is holding its 10th anniversary celebration on May 11, and Ms. Warren will be one of the honorees. If you think about it, raise a toast in the group’s honor.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/opinion/10herbert.html?hp
A Voice of Reason
By BOB HERBERT
The Republican Party is not simply the “just-say-no” party. It’s also a shameless advocate of the free lunch. Ronald Reagan famously told us he could jack up defense spending, cut taxes and balance the federal budget all at the same time.
George W. Bush put two big wars on a credit card. And now we have the perennially clownish Newt Gingrich, in an embarrassing rant against President Obama, assuring the deluded G.O.P. faithful that, yes, the party can indeed bring down the federal deficit while cutting taxes.
The Great Recession and the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been savage enough to reintroduce the G.O.P. to reality.
One of the reasons so many conservative Republican absurdities became actual U.S. policy was the intellectual veneer slapped upon them by right-wing think tanks and commentators. The grossest nonsense was made to seem plausible to a lot of people — people who wanted to believe in a free lunch. When Mr. Reagan told the country that “government is the problem,” the intellectual handmaidens of the corporate and financial elite were right there to explain in exhaustive detail why that was so.
The result, in addition to the terrible consequences of Iraq and Afghanistan and the damage to America’s standing in the world, was the tremendous (and tremendously debilitating) transfer of wealth from working people in the U.S. to the folks already in the upper echelons of wealth and income. The elite made out like bandits — often literally.
The liberal or progressive community was slow to counter the remarkable effectiveness of this intellectual offensive from the right. But during the 1990s and into the early-2000s, that began to change. And one of the progressive organizations that has done a really good job (but has never been particularly well known) is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary.
Demos, headquartered in New York City, grew out of a series of meetings of scholars, activists, journalists and elected officials who were concerned about the ever-increasing influence of the right on public policy. “The thinking was that there should be more moderate, liberal and left-of-center voices,” said Miles Rapoport, the group’s president. The group was formed in 2000, a year that would later see the disputed election that gave the presidency to Mr. Bush.
It didn’t take long for Demos to begin issuing loud warnings about the danger that ever-increasing debt was posing to American households, while pointedly disputing the argument that over-the-top credit card debt was primarily the result of excessive consumer spending.
Working people from the middle class down were in serious trouble, and Demos, along with many other voices (the bankruptcy expert and middle-class advocate Elizabeth Warren comes quickly to mind) was sounding the alarm long before the Great Recession hit like a Category 5 hurricane.
In a 2003 report called “Borrowing to Make Ends Meet,” Demos spotlighted the increasing gap between the incomes and the day-to-day living costs of many low- and middle-income families. That report was updated steadily in subsequent years, and in 2007 Demos was reporting: “Many households have tried to cope with this financial imbalance by relying on credit cards to cover basic expenses that earnings do not meet. Homeowners, ominously, have then relied on cashed-out home equity — $1.2 trillion over the last six years — largely to pay down those debts and to cover other costs of living.”
The Bush crowd during this period had taken us into Iraq and was fashioning its own fantasy of free-lunch economics.
In 2006, Tamara Draut, Demos’s vice president of policy and programs, wrote a book called “Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead.” Ms. Draut made the case that the hallmarks of adulthood — from getting an education to buying a home to finding a good job with decent benefits to raising children and beginning to save for retirement — had been eroded by the shortsighted public policies that have prevailed in recent decades.
What has been left are just the remnants of the American dream.
Ronald Reagan and the right-wing zealots who revere him have preached a gospel that, when carried to its logical conclusion, would all but abolish government. It’s a failed philosophy.
Demos has responded with admirable real-world scholarship, a highly respected fellows program to encourage new writers and thinkers and steadfast efforts to promote civic engagement. (It’s a big champion, among other things, of same-day voter registration.)
It’s not just comforting but essential to have sane countervailing voices like Demos to remind us that government action is necessary to plan for the common good, to set proper rules for economic activity and to be a bulwark against predatory practices in the private sector.
Demos is holding its 10th anniversary celebration on May 11, and Ms. Warren will be one of the honorees. If you think about it, raise a toast in the group’s honor.
Friday, April 9, 2010
op-ed of the day 4/9
Today's op-ed of the day comes from NY Times columnist, Paul Krugman, in a column titled "Learning From Greece" in which he discusses what lessons can be drawn from Greece's current fiscal disaster. -http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/opinion/09krugman.html?hp
Learning From Greece
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The debt crisis in Greece is approaching the point of no return. As prospects for a rescue plan seem to be fading, largely thanks to German obduracy, nervous investors have driven interest rates on Greek government bonds sky-high, sharply raising the country’s borrowing costs. This will push Greece even deeper into debt, further undermining confidence. At this point it’s hard to see how the nation can escape from this death spiral into default.
It’s a terrible story, and clearly an object lesson for the rest of us. But an object lesson in what, exactly?
Yes, Greece is paying the price for past fiscal irresponsibility. Yet that’s by no means the whole story. The Greek tragedy also illustrates the extreme danger posed by a deflationary monetary policy. And that’s a lesson one hopes American policy makers will take to heart.
The key thing to understand about Greece’s predicament is that it’s not just a matter of excessive debt. Greece’s public debt, at 113 percent of G.D.P., is indeed high, but other countries have dealt with similar levels of debt without crisis. For example, in 1946, the United States, having just emerged from World War II, had federal debt equal to 122 percent of G.D.P. Yet investors were relaxed, and rightly so: Over the next decade the ratio of U.S. debt to G.D.P. was cut nearly in half, easing any concerns people might have had about our ability to pay what we owed. And debt as a percentage of G.D.P. continued to fall in the decades that followed, hitting a low of 33 percent in 1981.
So how did the U.S. government manage to pay off its wartime debt? Actually, it didn’t. At the end of 1946, the federal government owed $271 billion; by the end of 1956 that figure had risen slightly, to $274 billion. The ratio of debt to G.D.P. fell not because debt went down, but because G.D.P. went up, roughly doubling in dollar terms over the course of a decade. The rise in G.D.P. in dollar terms was almost equally the result of economic growth and inflation, with both real G.D.P. and the overall level of prices rising about 40 percent from 1946 to 1956.
Unfortunately, Greece can’t expect a similar performance. Why? Because of the euro.
Until recently, being a member of the euro zone seemed like a good thing for Greece, bringing with it cheap loans and large inflows of capital. But those capital inflows also led to inflation — and when the music stopped, Greece found itself with costs and prices way out of line with Europe’s big economies. Over time, Greek prices will have to come back down. And that means that unlike postwar America, which inflated away part of its debt, Greece will see its debt burden worsened by deflation.
That’s not all. Deflation is a painful process, which invariably takes a toll on growth and employment. So Greece won’t grow its way out of debt. On the contrary, it will have to deal with its debt in the face of an economy that’s stagnant at best.
So the only way Greece could tame its debt problem would be with savage spending cuts and tax increases, measures that would themselves worsen the unemployment rate. No wonder, then, that bond markets are losing confidence, and pushing the situation to the brink.
What can be done? The hope was that other European countries would strike a deal, guaranteeing Greek debt in return for a commitment to harsh fiscal austerity. That might have worked. But without German support, such a deal won’t happen.
Greece could alleviate some of its problems by leaving the euro, and devaluing. But it’s hard to see how Greece could do that without triggering a catastrophic run on its banking system. Indeed, worried depositors have already begun pulling cash out of Greek banks. There are no good answers here — actually, no nonterrible answers.
But what are the lessons for America? Of course, we should be fiscally responsible. What that means, however, is taking on the big long-term issues, above all health costs — not grandstanding and penny-pinching over short-term spending to help a distressed economy.
Equally important, however, we need to steer clear of deflation, or even excessively low inflation. Unlike Greece, we’re not stuck with someone else’s currency. But as Japan has demonstrated, even countries with their own currencies can get stuck in a deflationary trap.
What worries me most about the U.S. situation right now is the rising clamor from inflation hawks, who want the Fed to raise rates (and the federal government to pull back from stimulus) even though employment has barely started to recover. If they get their way, they’ll perpetuate mass unemployment. But that’s not all. America’s public debt will be manageable if we eventually return to vigorous growth and moderate inflation. But if the tight-money people prevail, that won’t happen — and all bets will be off.
Learning From Greece
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The debt crisis in Greece is approaching the point of no return. As prospects for a rescue plan seem to be fading, largely thanks to German obduracy, nervous investors have driven interest rates on Greek government bonds sky-high, sharply raising the country’s borrowing costs. This will push Greece even deeper into debt, further undermining confidence. At this point it’s hard to see how the nation can escape from this death spiral into default.
It’s a terrible story, and clearly an object lesson for the rest of us. But an object lesson in what, exactly?
Yes, Greece is paying the price for past fiscal irresponsibility. Yet that’s by no means the whole story. The Greek tragedy also illustrates the extreme danger posed by a deflationary monetary policy. And that’s a lesson one hopes American policy makers will take to heart.
The key thing to understand about Greece’s predicament is that it’s not just a matter of excessive debt. Greece’s public debt, at 113 percent of G.D.P., is indeed high, but other countries have dealt with similar levels of debt without crisis. For example, in 1946, the United States, having just emerged from World War II, had federal debt equal to 122 percent of G.D.P. Yet investors were relaxed, and rightly so: Over the next decade the ratio of U.S. debt to G.D.P. was cut nearly in half, easing any concerns people might have had about our ability to pay what we owed. And debt as a percentage of G.D.P. continued to fall in the decades that followed, hitting a low of 33 percent in 1981.
So how did the U.S. government manage to pay off its wartime debt? Actually, it didn’t. At the end of 1946, the federal government owed $271 billion; by the end of 1956 that figure had risen slightly, to $274 billion. The ratio of debt to G.D.P. fell not because debt went down, but because G.D.P. went up, roughly doubling in dollar terms over the course of a decade. The rise in G.D.P. in dollar terms was almost equally the result of economic growth and inflation, with both real G.D.P. and the overall level of prices rising about 40 percent from 1946 to 1956.
Unfortunately, Greece can’t expect a similar performance. Why? Because of the euro.
Until recently, being a member of the euro zone seemed like a good thing for Greece, bringing with it cheap loans and large inflows of capital. But those capital inflows also led to inflation — and when the music stopped, Greece found itself with costs and prices way out of line with Europe’s big economies. Over time, Greek prices will have to come back down. And that means that unlike postwar America, which inflated away part of its debt, Greece will see its debt burden worsened by deflation.
That’s not all. Deflation is a painful process, which invariably takes a toll on growth and employment. So Greece won’t grow its way out of debt. On the contrary, it will have to deal with its debt in the face of an economy that’s stagnant at best.
So the only way Greece could tame its debt problem would be with savage spending cuts and tax increases, measures that would themselves worsen the unemployment rate. No wonder, then, that bond markets are losing confidence, and pushing the situation to the brink.
What can be done? The hope was that other European countries would strike a deal, guaranteeing Greek debt in return for a commitment to harsh fiscal austerity. That might have worked. But without German support, such a deal won’t happen.
Greece could alleviate some of its problems by leaving the euro, and devaluing. But it’s hard to see how Greece could do that without triggering a catastrophic run on its banking system. Indeed, worried depositors have already begun pulling cash out of Greek banks. There are no good answers here — actually, no nonterrible answers.
But what are the lessons for America? Of course, we should be fiscally responsible. What that means, however, is taking on the big long-term issues, above all health costs — not grandstanding and penny-pinching over short-term spending to help a distressed economy.
Equally important, however, we need to steer clear of deflation, or even excessively low inflation. Unlike Greece, we’re not stuck with someone else’s currency. But as Japan has demonstrated, even countries with their own currencies can get stuck in a deflationary trap.
What worries me most about the U.S. situation right now is the rising clamor from inflation hawks, who want the Fed to raise rates (and the federal government to pull back from stimulus) even though employment has barely started to recover. If they get their way, they’ll perpetuate mass unemployment. But that’s not all. America’s public debt will be manageable if we eventually return to vigorous growth and moderate inflation. But if the tight-money people prevail, that won’t happen — and all bets will be off.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Op-ed of the day 4/8
Today's op-ed of the day comes from the Wapo's E.J Dionne in which he writes about the West Virginia mining tragedy-http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/07/AR2010040703686.html
An old, sad story at a West Virginia mine
By E.J. Dionne Jr.Thursday, April 8, 2010; A21
There is a dispiriting and, yes, heartbreaking sameness about how we respond to mining disasters.
The catastrophe at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, W.Va., has taken at least 25 lives. An entire community stands in solidarity with the families of the victims and hopes that some miners still trapped may yet be rescued.
We celebrate the stoic sturdiness of mine workers who pursue their craft with pride, bravery and full knowledge of the risks it entails.
Then we get to the questions about what might have been done to avert the disaster. What was the role of the company that ran the mine? What are the responsibilities of lawmakers and government regulators who devise and enforce rules to protect those who, as an old union song put it, dig the coal so the world can run?
We went through exactly this cycle after the Sago Mine catastrophe that took 12 lives in January 2006. Later that year, Congress passed the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act. The MINER Act is "the most significant mine safety legislation in 30 years," according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration's Web site.
The law strengthened the agency's staff, increased penalties for violations and, as The Post reported, "led to a higher number of citations and penalties -- and more challenges by companies."
That last phrase is important. Companies just don't like regulation, and Don L. Blankenship, the chief executive of Massey Energy, has a history of challenging regulators in every way he can.
Massey's Upper Big Branch Mine has been cited for safety violations 1,342 times since 2005. Eighty-six of those citations -- 12 of them coming just last month -- involved failing to follow a mine ventilation plan to control methane and coal dust.
Not surprisingly, Blankenship views this as the cost of doing business. "Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process," he said in a radio interview with West Virginia Metro News. "There are violations at every coal mine in America, and UBB [Upper Big Branch] was a mine that had violations."
Congress will no doubt hold hearings, and we will learn just how "normal" Massey's operation of Upper Big Branch was. According to the New York Times, the company appealed at least 37 of the 50 citations it received for serious safety violations in the past year.
Blankenship is also a poster child for why we need campaign finance laws and why recent moves by the U.S. Supreme Court to weaken them are so dangerous. Blankenship spent $3 million to help elect a justice to the West Virginia Supreme Court who then twice provided the key vote that set aside a $50 million jury verdict against Massey Energy.
Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that judges must disqualify themselves in cases involving litigants from whom they received large campaign contributions. But the margin on that case was only 5 to 4. Chief Justice John Roberts, one of the dissenters, argued that the majority's decision "will inevitably lead to an increase in allegations that judges are biased, however groundless those charges may be." No, don't question those judges, even when their campaigns get 3 million bucks.
That particular case concerned fraud, not mine regulation. But there's a pattern here to which we should pay heed, and it involves power. Too often, regulations are discussed in the abstract as a "burden" on companies that expend substantial sums to resist them.
Only after disasters such as this one do we remember that regulations exist for a reason, that their enforcement can, literally, be a matter of life and death. We will eventually learn what went wrong at Upper Big Branch and whether the safety violations were part of the problem. But then what will we do?
In the 30th-anniversary edition of his classic book "Everything in Its Path," sociologist Kai Erikson reflects on the meaning of an earlier West Virginia mining disaster that he wrote about so powerfully, the 1972 flood in Logan County's Buffalo Creek.
Pondering his research in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Erikson concludes that we live in "a world in which the most vulnerable of people end up taking the brunt of disasters resulting both from natural processes and from human activities." Perhaps the world will always be this way. But can't we bend it toward justice, at least a little bit?
An old, sad story at a West Virginia mine
By E.J. Dionne Jr.Thursday, April 8, 2010; A21
There is a dispiriting and, yes, heartbreaking sameness about how we respond to mining disasters.
The catastrophe at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, W.Va., has taken at least 25 lives. An entire community stands in solidarity with the families of the victims and hopes that some miners still trapped may yet be rescued.
We celebrate the stoic sturdiness of mine workers who pursue their craft with pride, bravery and full knowledge of the risks it entails.
Then we get to the questions about what might have been done to avert the disaster. What was the role of the company that ran the mine? What are the responsibilities of lawmakers and government regulators who devise and enforce rules to protect those who, as an old union song put it, dig the coal so the world can run?
We went through exactly this cycle after the Sago Mine catastrophe that took 12 lives in January 2006. Later that year, Congress passed the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act. The MINER Act is "the most significant mine safety legislation in 30 years," according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration's Web site.
The law strengthened the agency's staff, increased penalties for violations and, as The Post reported, "led to a higher number of citations and penalties -- and more challenges by companies."
That last phrase is important. Companies just don't like regulation, and Don L. Blankenship, the chief executive of Massey Energy, has a history of challenging regulators in every way he can.
Massey's Upper Big Branch Mine has been cited for safety violations 1,342 times since 2005. Eighty-six of those citations -- 12 of them coming just last month -- involved failing to follow a mine ventilation plan to control methane and coal dust.
Not surprisingly, Blankenship views this as the cost of doing business. "Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process," he said in a radio interview with West Virginia Metro News. "There are violations at every coal mine in America, and UBB [Upper Big Branch] was a mine that had violations."
Congress will no doubt hold hearings, and we will learn just how "normal" Massey's operation of Upper Big Branch was. According to the New York Times, the company appealed at least 37 of the 50 citations it received for serious safety violations in the past year.
Blankenship is also a poster child for why we need campaign finance laws and why recent moves by the U.S. Supreme Court to weaken them are so dangerous. Blankenship spent $3 million to help elect a justice to the West Virginia Supreme Court who then twice provided the key vote that set aside a $50 million jury verdict against Massey Energy.
Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that judges must disqualify themselves in cases involving litigants from whom they received large campaign contributions. But the margin on that case was only 5 to 4. Chief Justice John Roberts, one of the dissenters, argued that the majority's decision "will inevitably lead to an increase in allegations that judges are biased, however groundless those charges may be." No, don't question those judges, even when their campaigns get 3 million bucks.
That particular case concerned fraud, not mine regulation. But there's a pattern here to which we should pay heed, and it involves power. Too often, regulations are discussed in the abstract as a "burden" on companies that expend substantial sums to resist them.
Only after disasters such as this one do we remember that regulations exist for a reason, that their enforcement can, literally, be a matter of life and death. We will eventually learn what went wrong at Upper Big Branch and whether the safety violations were part of the problem. But then what will we do?
In the 30th-anniversary edition of his classic book "Everything in Its Path," sociologist Kai Erikson reflects on the meaning of an earlier West Virginia mining disaster that he wrote about so powerfully, the 1972 flood in Logan County's Buffalo Creek.
Pondering his research in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Erikson concludes that we live in "a world in which the most vulnerable of people end up taking the brunt of disasters resulting both from natural processes and from human activities." Perhaps the world will always be this way. But can't we bend it toward justice, at least a little bit?
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
mavericky follow up
Thanks to Talkingpointsmemo.com I have a follow up clip to John McCain's latest, and lamest, flip-flop-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmLVtU6fTPs&playnext_from=TL&videos=zcqYmbRL6gE&feature=sub
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmLVtU6fTPs&playnext_from=TL&videos=zcqYmbRL6gE&feature=sub
great folow up from the onion
http://www.theonion.com/articles/supreme-court-allows-corporations-to-run-for-polit,7071/
Great Follow up on the Supreme Court Ruling from the onion-
WASHINGTON—In a landmark decision that overturned decades of legal precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Tuesday to remove all restrictions that had previously barred corporations from holding public office. "This is an unfair, ill-advised, and tragic mistake," Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said before boarding a flight to Arizona in response to primary poll numbers that show him trailing the Phoenix-based company PetSmart by a double-digit margin. "Despite the deep discounts and exciting promotions that they may be able to offer, these huge, soulless entities are not capable of truly serving the American people's—or their pet's—needs." Corporate attack ads have already begun to hit the airwaves in New York, where a new Pepsi commercial set to a catchy modern remix of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" blasts incumbent governor David Paterson as "unrefreshing" and urges New Yorkers to "taste the choice of a new generation this Nov. 2."
Great Follow up on the Supreme Court Ruling from the onion-
Supreme Court Allows Corporations To Run For Political Office
WASHINGTON—In a landmark decision that overturned decades of legal precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Tuesday to remove all restrictions that had previously barred corporations from holding public office. "This is an unfair, ill-advised, and tragic mistake," Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said before boarding a flight to Arizona in response to primary poll numbers that show him trailing the Phoenix-based company PetSmart by a double-digit margin. "Despite the deep discounts and exciting promotions that they may be able to offer, these huge, soulless entities are not capable of truly serving the American people's—or their pet's—needs." Corporate attack ads have already begun to hit the airwaves in New York, where a new Pepsi commercial set to a catchy modern remix of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" blasts incumbent governor David Paterson as "unrefreshing" and urges New Yorkers to "taste the choice of a new generation this Nov. 2."
What the Founding Fathers Really Thought about corporations
http://blogs.hbr.org/fox/2010/04/what-the-founding-fathers-real.html
An interesting take on on the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court(the ruling allows for corporations to give unlimited amounts to political campaigns). The piece from the Harvard Business Review looks at how the founding fathers viewed corporations.
An interesting take on on the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court(the ruling allows for corporations to give unlimited amounts to political campaigns). The piece from the Harvard Business Review looks at how the founding fathers viewed corporations.
Op-ed of the day 4/7
A piece from the Financial Times written by Martin Wolf. It deals with the possible currency manipulation China is taking part in.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dbc9fa4c-41af-11df-865a-00144feabdc0.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dbc9fa4c-41af-11df-865a-00144feabdc0.html
Evaluating the renminbi manipulation
By Martin Wolf
Published: April 6 2010 22:21 | Last updated: April 6 2010 22:21
The incumbent superpower has blinked in its confrontation with the rising one: the US Treasury has decided to postpone a report due by April 15 on whether China is an exchange-rate manipulator. Since a programme of multilateral and bilateral consultations is under way, it was right to give these discussions a chance before taking any action.
Is China a currency manipulator? Yes. China has intervened on a gigantic scale to keep its exchange rate down. Between January 2000 and the end of last year, China’s foreign currency reserves rose by $2,240bn; after July 2008, when the renminbi’s gradual appreciation against the dollar – begun three years earlier – halted, reserves rose by $600bn (see chart); and reserves are now close to 50 per cent of gross domestic product. Finally, a massive effort has been aimed at curbing the inflationary effects of intervention.
Thus, China has controlled the appreciation of both nominal and real exchange rates. This surely is currency manipulation. It is also protectionist, being equivalent to a uniform tariff and export subsidy. Premier Wen Jiabao has protested against “depreciating one’s own currency, and attempting to pressure others to appreciate, for the purpose of increasing exports. In my view, that is protectionism”. The Chinese pot is calling the US kettle black.
Yet some economists deny this, offering four counter-arguments: first, while the intervention is huge, the distortion is small; second, the impact on the global balance of payments is modest; third, global “imbalances” do not matter; and, finally, the problem, albeit real, is being resolved. Let us consider each of these points in turn.
On the first, estimates of the extent of undervaluation vary hugely: some even argue the renminbi is overvalued. This is partly the result of contrasting methodologies – fundamental equilibrium exchange rates against purchasing power parity – and partly of different assumptions about the right starting point. If, for example, Chinese people were free to export their savings, the capital outflow might be even bigger than today’s intervention. But if the world were free to buy Chinese assets, the capital inflow would explode, too. Who would not want a bit of the world’s most dynamic economy?
Plausibly, the undervaluation is considerable, possibly as much as the “25 per cent on a trade-weighted basis and ... 40 per cent against the dollar” suggested by Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The JPMorgan estimate of a trade- weighted real exchange rate is only 10 per cent above its average level since the beginning of 1994, even though China has been the world’s fastest-growing economy over this period. It has also depreciated by 8 per cent since October 2008. This is surely peculiar.
On the second point, Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley has argued that differences in savings behaviour determine current account balances and the Chinese surplus cannot determine the US overall deficit.
I find neither argument persuasive. If the Chinese currency influences the dollar exchange rates of China’s competitors, as it surely does, it will definitely affect multilateral balances. Furthermore, one of the points I made in my (recently updated) book, Fixing Global Finance, is that real exchange rates also determine savings rates, not just the other way round. This is because governments care about GDP. The undervalued Chinese real exchange rate generated a contribution of net exports of 5.6 per cent of GDP between 2006 and 2008. The Chinese authorities had no reason to try to lower the surplus of savings at that time: it went into net exports. But when net exports plunged in 2009, knocking 3.9 points off GDP, the Chinese authorities acted to lower the savings surplus, by expanding domestic credit and promoting investment (see charts).
Mr Roach also points to today’s negligible net US savings. But this, too, is the result of a fiscal offset to a surge in private sector savings surpluses. Why was this needed? The answer is that, with a huge structural current account deficit, a rise in private savings in the US would otherwise have created a depression. In sum, savings surpluses are a policy variable, not a given.
On the third point, yes, imbalances do matter. This was partly because of the form they took. As Anton Brender and Florence Pisani argue in a brilliant study for the Centre for European Policy Studies, the salient characteristic of the capital outflow from emerging economies was that it came in the form of reserves – an overall increase of close to $6,000bn in the noughties.* This led to huge increases in demand for liquid and safe assets. Our cunning financial sector fabricated such assets wholesale, from those “subprime” ingredients, with results we now see.
Imbalances also matter because they will have a big impact on the recovery. As Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of Canada, pointed out in a recent speech, should imbalances persist, two outcomes are conceivable: either countries with big external deficits continue with their huge fiscal deficits, until “global interest rates begin to rise, crowding out private investment and ultimately lowering potential growth”; or the deficit countries start to reduce the fiscal deficits sharply, without any offsetting changes in surplus countries, in which case there is “deficient demand globally”.
On the fourth point, Jim O’Neill, chief economist of Goldman Sachs, argues that the Chinese surplus is ceasing to be a significant factor. It is true that it has halved, as a share of GDP, since 2007. The question is whether this shift is structural or the result of exceptional and temporary measures. The World Bank still expects China’s current account to stabilise at high levels, with net exports about to make a positive contribution to growth. The world’s fastest-growing economy would be exporting unemployment. Mr O’Neill is ahead of himself.
I conclude that the renminbi is undervalued, that this is dangerous for the durability of global recovery and that China’s actions have not, so far, provided a durable solution. I conclude, too, that rebalancing is a necessary condition for sustainable recovery, changes in competitiveness are a necessary condition for rebalancing, real renminbi appreciation is necessary for changes in competitiveness, and a rise in the currency is necessary for real appreciation, given the Chinese desire to curb inflation.
The US was right to give talking a chance. But talk must lead to action.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
weekly standard sets a new low, even for them
http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamas-basketball-skills
The link above could be the most pathetic attempt of criticism directed at President Obama. William Kristol's magazine, The Weekly Standard, has always been a bastion of right wing talking points and paranoia but this is really, really, over the top. Jeffrey H. Anderson proceeds to critique/ bash Obama's basketball game. Wow. My head is still from this gem-
"Can the president dribble with his right hand at all (and I'm not speaking figuratively)?
The link above could be the most pathetic attempt of criticism directed at President Obama. William Kristol's magazine, The Weekly Standard, has always been a bastion of right wing talking points and paranoia but this is really, really, over the top. Jeffrey H. Anderson proceeds to critique/ bash Obama's basketball game. Wow. My head is still from this gem-
"Can the president dribble with his right hand at all (and I'm not speaking figuratively)?
Blowhard Giuliani is taken down by Ariana Huffington
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789//vp/36191027#36191027
Above: Clip shows Huffingtonpost founder, Ariana Huffington, taking down one of the biggest blowhards in a party filled with them, Rudy Giuliani.
The argument is rooted in Rudy's endorsement of Republican, and Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio, candidate for the United States Senate seat currently held by George LeMieux. Historically, Rudy has been the kiss of death; but Rubio is pretty far ahead for in his party's nomination but there is plenty of time for Rudy to hurt him. I sure hope he does. In case he wants, and your interested it, I am endorsing the Democrat, Gregory Meeks.
Above: Clip shows Huffingtonpost founder, Ariana Huffington, taking down one of the biggest blowhards in a party filled with them, Rudy Giuliani.
The argument is rooted in Rudy's endorsement of Republican, and Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio, candidate for the United States Senate seat currently held by George LeMieux. Historically, Rudy has been the kiss of death; but Rubio is pretty far ahead for in his party's nomination but there is plenty of time for Rudy to hurt him. I sure hope he does. In case he wants, and your interested it, I am endorsing the Democrat, Gregory Meeks.
op-ed of the day 4/6
James Surowiecki writes in this weeks New Yorker about California's fiscal situation in relation to Greece.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/04/12/100412ta_talk_surowiecki
Debtor States
Another year, another crisis. If we spent last year worried that big banks were going to fail, the fear of the moment is that entire governments may go under. The anxieties about “sovereign debt” have been most acute in Europe, where the infelicitously named PIIGS countries—Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain—have huge debt burdens, and where Greece in particular is in dire need of assistance. (It owes four hundred billion dollars, against an annual G.D.P. of around three hundred and forty billion and shrinking.) And now people are wondering if American state governments are headed for their own Greek tragedy. Last week, the Times suggested that the states could be plunged into a debt crisis, and the Wall Street Journal asked, “Who Will Default First: Greece or California?”
It’s not an outlandish question. Besides great climates and lovely beaches, California and Greece share a fondness for dysfunctional politics and feckless budgeting. While American states are typically required to balance their budgets annually, that hasn’t stopped them from amassing a pile of long-term debt by issuing municipal bonds. And, like Greece and other E.U. countries, states have used accounting legerdemain to under-report the amount they owe, even while accumulating huge, unfunded pension obligations. Just as a default by Greece (whose bonds are held by many big European banks) would have nasty ripple effects across the European economy, a state-government default would have all sorts of unpleasant consequences, as state bonds have traditionally been considered a thoroughly safe investment.
For all this, though, the comparison has been overblown. Our states’ debt burden, while sizable, is far more manageable than that of the PIIGS, which owe three times as much relative to G.D.P. as American state and local governments. And though states will certainly have to cut their budgets again this year, the cuts will be smaller (and therefore more politically palatable) than those of, say, Ireland, which is cutting government spending by almost nine per cent. Most important, the states have a fundamental advantage over euro-zone nations: they’re part of a country, not an ill-defined union, so they can count on help from the federal government.
Much of the assistance that the states get from Washington is close to automatic: in normal times, the government sends almost half a trillion dollars in aid (for everything from Medicaid to highways and education) directly to the states. And it can generally be counted on to step up its efforts in a crisis; last year’s stimulus sent more than a hundred and fifty billion dollars to state and local governments. There’s a long-standing tradition of this: one of the federal government’s first acts was to assume the debts that states had run up during the American Revolution. This meant that frugal states had to help pay the debts of profligate ones. But the assumption was that closing gaps between the states by some measure of redistribution was in the national interest. The theory is that we hang together in times of trouble lest we all end up hanging separately.
In the E.U., things are very different. For all the lip service paid to “Europe” as an entity, local interests consistently trump continental ones, as evidenced by the fact that it took Europe months to agree to help if Greece finds itself unable to finance its debts. Despite the large economic imbalances between the E.U.’s members, there are few tools for correcting them. The E.U. does have structural subsidies for weaker economies, but they’re quite small, and there is no obvious mechanism for channelling aid to countries that get in trouble. (Indeed, the E.U. constitution explicitly includes a “no bailout” clause.) Worse still, the single currency means that struggling countries like Greece and Portugal can’t devalue to boost exports and create jobs. Their only option is to slash budgets to the bone.
Countries like Greece and Ireland need to learn to live within their means, of course. But in the middle of a severe recession steep spending cuts and tax increases can be disastrous. The refusal of European countries (especially Germany) to bail out profligate neighbors, although perfectly understandable, has increased the chances that Europe as a whole will suffer a double-dip recession. In the U.S., by contrast, federal aid to the states softened the impact of the recession, allowing the economy to start growing again; while states still had to cut thirty-one billion in spending, the stimulus aid saved hundreds of thousands of jobs.
All this aid comes at a price, of course: it increases moral hazard, and it increases the national deficit. But the federal government is able to borrow money at exceptionally cheap rates, and, at a time like this, when the economy is still trying to find its feet, forcing states to cancel building projects and furlough teachers and policemen makes little economic sense. (Indeed, there’s a strong case to be made that more of the original stimulus package should have gone to state aid.) The European model would do more harm than good, as American history shows: in the early eighteen-forties, after the bursting of a credit bubble, many states found themselves in a debt crisis. The federal government refused to bail them out, and eight states defaulted—a move that cut off their access to credit and helped sink the economy deeper into depression. The U.S. did then what Europe is doing now, putting the interests of fiscally stronger states above the interests of the community as a whole. We seem to have learned our lesson. If Europe wants to be more than just Germany and a bunch of other countries, it should do the same. ♦
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2010/04/12/100412ta_talk_surowiecki
Debtor States
Another year, another crisis. If we spent last year worried that big banks were going to fail, the fear of the moment is that entire governments may go under. The anxieties about “sovereign debt” have been most acute in Europe, where the infelicitously named PIIGS countries—Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain—have huge debt burdens, and where Greece in particular is in dire need of assistance. (It owes four hundred billion dollars, against an annual G.D.P. of around three hundred and forty billion and shrinking.) And now people are wondering if American state governments are headed for their own Greek tragedy. Last week, the Times suggested that the states could be plunged into a debt crisis, and the Wall Street Journal asked, “Who Will Default First: Greece or California?”
It’s not an outlandish question. Besides great climates and lovely beaches, California and Greece share a fondness for dysfunctional politics and feckless budgeting. While American states are typically required to balance their budgets annually, that hasn’t stopped them from amassing a pile of long-term debt by issuing municipal bonds. And, like Greece and other E.U. countries, states have used accounting legerdemain to under-report the amount they owe, even while accumulating huge, unfunded pension obligations. Just as a default by Greece (whose bonds are held by many big European banks) would have nasty ripple effects across the European economy, a state-government default would have all sorts of unpleasant consequences, as state bonds have traditionally been considered a thoroughly safe investment.
For all this, though, the comparison has been overblown. Our states’ debt burden, while sizable, is far more manageable than that of the PIIGS, which owe three times as much relative to G.D.P. as American state and local governments. And though states will certainly have to cut their budgets again this year, the cuts will be smaller (and therefore more politically palatable) than those of, say, Ireland, which is cutting government spending by almost nine per cent. Most important, the states have a fundamental advantage over euro-zone nations: they’re part of a country, not an ill-defined union, so they can count on help from the federal government.
Much of the assistance that the states get from Washington is close to automatic: in normal times, the government sends almost half a trillion dollars in aid (for everything from Medicaid to highways and education) directly to the states. And it can generally be counted on to step up its efforts in a crisis; last year’s stimulus sent more than a hundred and fifty billion dollars to state and local governments. There’s a long-standing tradition of this: one of the federal government’s first acts was to assume the debts that states had run up during the American Revolution. This meant that frugal states had to help pay the debts of profligate ones. But the assumption was that closing gaps between the states by some measure of redistribution was in the national interest. The theory is that we hang together in times of trouble lest we all end up hanging separately.
In the E.U., things are very different. For all the lip service paid to “Europe” as an entity, local interests consistently trump continental ones, as evidenced by the fact that it took Europe months to agree to help if Greece finds itself unable to finance its debts. Despite the large economic imbalances between the E.U.’s members, there are few tools for correcting them. The E.U. does have structural subsidies for weaker economies, but they’re quite small, and there is no obvious mechanism for channelling aid to countries that get in trouble. (Indeed, the E.U. constitution explicitly includes a “no bailout” clause.) Worse still, the single currency means that struggling countries like Greece and Portugal can’t devalue to boost exports and create jobs. Their only option is to slash budgets to the bone.
Countries like Greece and Ireland need to learn to live within their means, of course. But in the middle of a severe recession steep spending cuts and tax increases can be disastrous. The refusal of European countries (especially Germany) to bail out profligate neighbors, although perfectly understandable, has increased the chances that Europe as a whole will suffer a double-dip recession. In the U.S., by contrast, federal aid to the states softened the impact of the recession, allowing the economy to start growing again; while states still had to cut thirty-one billion in spending, the stimulus aid saved hundreds of thousands of jobs.
All this aid comes at a price, of course: it increases moral hazard, and it increases the national deficit. But the federal government is able to borrow money at exceptionally cheap rates, and, at a time like this, when the economy is still trying to find its feet, forcing states to cancel building projects and furlough teachers and policemen makes little economic sense. (Indeed, there’s a strong case to be made that more of the original stimulus package should have gone to state aid.) The European model would do more harm than good, as American history shows: in the early eighteen-forties, after the bursting of a credit bubble, many states found themselves in a debt crisis. The federal government refused to bail them out, and eight states defaulted—a move that cut off their access to credit and helped sink the economy deeper into depression. The U.S. did then what Europe is doing now, putting the interests of fiscally stronger states above the interests of the community as a whole. We seem to have learned our lesson. If Europe wants to be more than just Germany and a bunch of other countries, it should do the same. ♦
Monday, April 5, 2010
great speech- my favorite of all time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9JTYnMpRyg
From time to time I will post great speeches from political life,mostly. Here is what may be my favorite speech of all time; Ted Kennedy delivering the eulogy of his brother, Bobby. The word that have always meant the most to me are -
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
I know I haven't and probably couldn't always maintain this perspective. But i feel, in just a few lines, he sums up why one should never give up.Just because the problems of the world are to big doesn't mean we lay down. If one does give up, parts of our being are just waiting to die. And I think Bobby Kennedy embodied this as much as anyone ever had. Goodnight.
From time to time I will post great speeches from political life,mostly. Here is what may be my favorite speech of all time; Ted Kennedy delivering the eulogy of his brother, Bobby. The word that have always meant the most to me are -
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
I know I haven't and probably couldn't always maintain this perspective. But i feel, in just a few lines, he sums up why one should never give up.Just because the problems of the world are to big doesn't mean we lay down. If one does give up, parts of our being are just waiting to die. And I think Bobby Kennedy embodied this as much as anyone ever had. Goodnight.
it's so mavericky
"I never considered myself a maverick," "I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities."- John McCain
WOW. I'm still taking this in; but did anyone who payed and attention to the 2008 campaign, or any of the press coverage on him from the 2000 GOP primary on, not think John McCain wanted to be known as a maverick? Regardless if the reality is/was that all he did was buck his party once or twice(first Bush tax cuts, torture). Granted that is, as Sarah Palin would say, "Mavericky" when you look at the sheepish ability republicans have for towing the line.
Hat tip to Josh Marshall and talking points memo-
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/mccain-i-never-considered-myself-a-maverick.php?ref=fpblg
WOW. I'm still taking this in; but did anyone who payed and attention to the 2008 campaign, or any of the press coverage on him from the 2000 GOP primary on, not think John McCain wanted to be known as a maverick? Regardless if the reality is/was that all he did was buck his party once or twice(first Bush tax cuts, torture). Granted that is, as Sarah Palin would say, "Mavericky" when you look at the sheepish ability republicans have for towing the line.
Hat tip to Josh Marshall and talking points memo-
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/mccain-i-never-considered-myself-a-maverick.php?ref=fpblg
global warming
Elizabeth Kolbert does a great job of poiningt out one of, if not the biggest, holes against those who feel global warming is a "scam";why hasn't anyone has ever offered a plausible account of why thousands of scientists in dozens of countries would bother to engineer a climate hoax?
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/04/12/100412taco_talk_kolbert
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/04/12/100412taco_talk_kolbert
op-ed of the day 4/5
Paul Krugman discusses financial reform- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/opinion/05krugman.html?hp
April 5, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist
Making Financial Reform Fool-Resistant
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The White House is confident that a financial regulatory reform bill will soon pass the Senate. I’m not so sure, given the opposition of Republican leaders to any real reform. But in any case, how good is the legislation on the table, the bill put together by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut?
Not good enough. It’s a good-faith effort to do what needs to be done, but it would create a system highly dependent on the wisdom and good intentions of government officials. And as the history of the last decade demonstrates, trusting in the quality of officials can be dangerous to the economy’s health.
Now, it’s impossible to devise a truly foolproof regulatory regime — anyone who believes otherwise is underestimating the power of foolishness. But you can try to create a system that’s relatively fool-resistant. Unfortunately, the Dodd bill doesn’t do that.
As I argued in my last column, while the problem of “too big to fail” has gotten most of the attention — and while big banks deserve all the opprobrium they’re getting — the core problem with our financial system isn’t the size of the largest financial institutions. It is, instead, the fact that the current system doesn’t limit risky behavior by “shadow banks,” institutions — like Lehman Brothers — that carry out banking functions, that are perfectly capable of creating a banking crisis, but, because they issue debt rather than taking deposits, face minimal oversight.
The Dodd bill tries to fill this gaping hole in the system by letting federal regulators impose “strict rules for capital, leverage, liquidity, risk management and other requirements as companies grow in size and complexity.” It also gives regulators the power to seize troubled financial firms — and it requires that large, complex firms submit “funeral plans” that make it relatively easy to shut them down.
That’s all good. In effect, it gives shadow banking something like the regulatory regime we already have for conventional banking.
But what will actually be in those “strict rules” for capital, liquidity, and so on? The bill doesn’t say. Instead, everything is left at the discretion of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a sort of interagency task force including the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury secretary, the comptroller of the currency and the heads of five other federal agencies.
Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute, whose blog has become essential reading for anyone interested in financial reform, has pointed out what’s wrong with this: just consider who would have been on that council in 2005, which was probably the peak year for irresponsible lending.
Well, in 2005 the chairman of the Fed was Alan Greenspan, who dismissed warnings about the housing bubble — and who asserted in October 2005 that “increasingly complex financial instruments have contributed to the development of a far more flexible, efficient, and hence resilient financial system.”
Meanwhile, the secretary of the Treasury was John Snow, who ... actually, I don’t think anyone remembers anything about Mr. Snow, other than the fact that Karl Rove treated him like an errand boy.
The comptroller of the currency was John Dugan, who still holds the office. He was recently the subject of a profilein The Times, which noted his habit of blocking efforts by states to crack down on abusive consumer lending, on the grounds that he, not the states, has authority over national banks — except that he himself almost never acts to protect consumers.
Oh, and on the subject of consumer protection: the Dodd bill creates a more or less independent agency to protect consumers against abusive lending, albeit one housed at the Fed. That’s a good thing. But it gives the oversight council the ability to override the agency’s recommendations.
The point is that the Dodd bill would give an administration determined to rein in runaway finance the tools it needs to do the job. But it wouldn’t do much to stiffen the spine of a less determined administration. On the contrary, it would make it easy for future regulators to look the other way as another bubble inflated.
So what the legislation needs are explicit rules, rules that would force action even by regulators who don’t especially want to do their jobs. There should, for example, be a preset maximum level of allowable leverage — the financial reform that has already passed the House sets this at 15 to 1, and the Senate should follow suit. There should be hard rules determining when regulators have to seize a troubled financial firm. There should be no-exception rules requiring that complex financial derivatives be traded transparently. And so on.
I know that getting such things into the bill would be hard politically: as financial reform legislation moves to the floor of the Senate, there will be pressure to make it weaker, not stronger, in the hope of attracting Republican votes. But I would urge Senate leaders and the Obama administration not to settle for a weak bill, just so that they can claim to have passed financial reform. We need reform with a fighting chance of actually working.
April 5, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist
Making Financial Reform Fool-Resistant
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The White House is confident that a financial regulatory reform bill will soon pass the Senate. I’m not so sure, given the opposition of Republican leaders to any real reform. But in any case, how good is the legislation on the table, the bill put together by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut?
Not good enough. It’s a good-faith effort to do what needs to be done, but it would create a system highly dependent on the wisdom and good intentions of government officials. And as the history of the last decade demonstrates, trusting in the quality of officials can be dangerous to the economy’s health.
Now, it’s impossible to devise a truly foolproof regulatory regime — anyone who believes otherwise is underestimating the power of foolishness. But you can try to create a system that’s relatively fool-resistant. Unfortunately, the Dodd bill doesn’t do that.
As I argued in my last column, while the problem of “too big to fail” has gotten most of the attention — and while big banks deserve all the opprobrium they’re getting — the core problem with our financial system isn’t the size of the largest financial institutions. It is, instead, the fact that the current system doesn’t limit risky behavior by “shadow banks,” institutions — like Lehman Brothers — that carry out banking functions, that are perfectly capable of creating a banking crisis, but, because they issue debt rather than taking deposits, face minimal oversight.
The Dodd bill tries to fill this gaping hole in the system by letting federal regulators impose “strict rules for capital, leverage, liquidity, risk management and other requirements as companies grow in size and complexity.” It also gives regulators the power to seize troubled financial firms — and it requires that large, complex firms submit “funeral plans” that make it relatively easy to shut them down.
That’s all good. In effect, it gives shadow banking something like the regulatory regime we already have for conventional banking.
But what will actually be in those “strict rules” for capital, liquidity, and so on? The bill doesn’t say. Instead, everything is left at the discretion of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a sort of interagency task force including the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury secretary, the comptroller of the currency and the heads of five other federal agencies.
Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute, whose blog has become essential reading for anyone interested in financial reform, has pointed out what’s wrong with this: just consider who would have been on that council in 2005, which was probably the peak year for irresponsible lending.
Well, in 2005 the chairman of the Fed was Alan Greenspan, who dismissed warnings about the housing bubble — and who asserted in October 2005 that “increasingly complex financial instruments have contributed to the development of a far more flexible, efficient, and hence resilient financial system.”
Meanwhile, the secretary of the Treasury was John Snow, who ... actually, I don’t think anyone remembers anything about Mr. Snow, other than the fact that Karl Rove treated him like an errand boy.
The comptroller of the currency was John Dugan, who still holds the office. He was recently the subject of a profilein The Times, which noted his habit of blocking efforts by states to crack down on abusive consumer lending, on the grounds that he, not the states, has authority over national banks — except that he himself almost never acts to protect consumers.
Oh, and on the subject of consumer protection: the Dodd bill creates a more or less independent agency to protect consumers against abusive lending, albeit one housed at the Fed. That’s a good thing. But it gives the oversight council the ability to override the agency’s recommendations.
The point is that the Dodd bill would give an administration determined to rein in runaway finance the tools it needs to do the job. But it wouldn’t do much to stiffen the spine of a less determined administration. On the contrary, it would make it easy for future regulators to look the other way as another bubble inflated.
So what the legislation needs are explicit rules, rules that would force action even by regulators who don’t especially want to do their jobs. There should, for example, be a preset maximum level of allowable leverage — the financial reform that has already passed the House sets this at 15 to 1, and the Senate should follow suit. There should be hard rules determining when regulators have to seize a troubled financial firm. There should be no-exception rules requiring that complex financial derivatives be traded transparently. And so on.
I know that getting such things into the bill would be hard politically: as financial reform legislation moves to the floor of the Senate, there will be pressure to make it weaker, not stronger, in the hope of attracting Republican votes. But I would urge Senate leaders and the Obama administration not to settle for a weak bill, just so that they can claim to have passed financial reform. We need reform with a fighting chance of actually working.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Sunday Must Reads and Op-eds
Sunday Must Reads 4/3
-From the front page of the NYTimes; an article showcasing a corporation, Talx, that makes its bones trying to fight unemployment claims on behalf of employers. This will quickly remind anyone who saw “Up In the Air” of the sickening nature and lack of loyalty to anything besides money that corporations possess as a defining characteristic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/us/04talx.html?hp
-Drug cartel evolves into paramilitary machine that U.S. and Mexican officials suspect is behind thousands of assassinations in border region
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/03/AR2010040303141.html?hpid=topnews
-A look at this years Yankee v Red Sox schedule.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/sports/baseball/04sandomir.html?ref=sports
Must Read Op-Ed’s 4/3
- Frank Rich looks at president Obama as a rosarch test and the affect winning has had.
“What a difference winning makes — especially in America. Whatever did (or didn’t) get into Obama’s Wheaties, this much is certain: No one is talking about the clout of Scott Brown or Rahm Emanuel any more.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04rich.html?hp
- Maureen Down Continues to hit the Vatican.
“The exorcist also said that the abuse scandal showed that Satan uses priests to try to destroy the church, “and so we should not be surprised if priests too ... fall into temptation. They also live in the world and can fall like men of the world.”Actually, falling into temptation is eating cupcakes after you’ve given them up for Lent. Rape and molestation of children is far beyond what most of us think of as succumbing to worldly temptation.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04dowd.html?hp
-From the front page of the NYTimes; an article showcasing a corporation, Talx, that makes its bones trying to fight unemployment claims on behalf of employers. This will quickly remind anyone who saw “Up In the Air” of the sickening nature and lack of loyalty to anything besides money that corporations possess as a defining characteristic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/us/04talx.html?hp
-Drug cartel evolves into paramilitary machine that U.S. and Mexican officials suspect is behind thousands of assassinations in border region
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/03/AR2010040303141.html?hpid=topnews
-A look at this years Yankee v Red Sox schedule.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/sports/baseball/04sandomir.html?ref=sports
Must Read Op-Ed’s 4/3
- Frank Rich looks at president Obama as a rosarch test and the affect winning has had.
“What a difference winning makes — especially in America. Whatever did (or didn’t) get into Obama’s Wheaties, this much is certain: No one is talking about the clout of Scott Brown or Rahm Emanuel any more.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04rich.html?hp
- Maureen Down Continues to hit the Vatican.
“The exorcist also said that the abuse scandal showed that Satan uses priests to try to destroy the church, “and so we should not be surprised if priests too ... fall into temptation. They also live in the world and can fall like men of the world.”Actually, falling into temptation is eating cupcakes after you’ve given them up for Lent. Rape and molestation of children is far beyond what most of us think of as succumbing to worldly temptation.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04dowd.html?hp
Saturday, April 3, 2010
op-ed of the day 4/3
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/opinion/03herbert.html?ref=opinion
Bob Herbert looks back at MLK 40 years later.
We Still Don’t Hear Him
By BOB HERBERT
The great man was moving with what seemed like great reluctance. He knew as he climbed from the car in Upper Manhattan that he was stepping into the maelstrom, that there were powerful people who would not react kindly to what he had to say.
“I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight,” said the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “because my conscience leaves me no other choice.”
This was on the evening of April 4, 1967, almost exactly 43 years ago. Dr. King told the more than 3,000 people who had crowded into Riverside Church that silence in the face of the horror that was taking place in Vietnam amounted to a “betrayal.”
He spoke of both the carnage in the war zone and the toll the war was taking here in the United States. The speech comes to mind now for two reasons: A Tavis Smiley documentary currently airing on PBS revisits the controversy set off by Dr. King’s indictment of “the madness of Vietnam.” And recent news reports show ever-increasing evidence that we have ensnared ourselves in a mad and tragic venture in Afghanistan.
Dr. King spoke of how, in Vietnam, the United States increased its commitment of troops “in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support.”
It’s strange, indeed, to read those words more than four decades later as we are increasing our commitment of troops in Afghanistan to fight in support of Hamid Karzai, who remains in power after an election that the world knows was riddled with fraud and whose government is one of the most corrupt and inept on the planet.
If Mr. Karzai is at all grateful for this support, he has a very peculiar way of showing it. He has ignored pleas from President Obama and others to take meaningful steps to rein in the rampant corruption. His brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the kingpin in southern Afghanistan, is believed by top American officials to be engaged in all manner of nefarious activities, including money-laundering and involvement in the flourishing opium trade.
Hamid Karzai himself pulled off a calculated insult to the U.S. by inviting Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidential palace in Kabul, where Ahmadinejad promptly delivered a fiery anti-American speech. As Dexter Filkins and Mark Landler reported in The Times this week: “Even as Mr. Obama pours tens of thousands of additional American troops into the country to help defend Mr. Karzai’s government, Mr. Karzai now often voices the view that his interests and the United States’ no longer coincide.”
Is this what American service members are dying for in Afghanistan? Can you imagine giving up your life, or your child’s life, for that crowd?
In his speech, Dr. King spoke about the damage the Vietnam War was doing to America’s war on poverty, and the way it was undermining other important domestic initiatives. What he wanted from the U.S. was not warfare overseas but a renewed commitment to economic and social justice at home. As he put it: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
The speech set loose a hurricane of criticism. Even the N.A.A.C.P. complained that Dr. King should stick to what it perceived as his area of expertise, civil rights. The New York Times headlined its editorial on the speech, “Dr. King’s Error.”
Mr. Smiley, in his documentary, noted that “the already strained relationship between President Johnson and Dr. King became fractured beyond repair.” And donations to Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference “began to dry up.”
So it took great courage for Dr. King to speak out as he did.
His bold stand seems all the more striking in today’s atmosphere, in which moral courage among the very prominent — the kind of courage that carries real risk — seems mostly to have disappeared.
More than 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq and more than 1,000 in Afghanistan, where the Obama administration has chosen to escalate rather than to begin a careful withdrawal. Those two wars, as the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and his colleague Linda Bilmes have told us, will ultimately cost us more than $3 trillion.
And yet the voices in search of peace, in search of an end to the “madness,” in search of the nation-building so desperately needed here in the United States, are feeble indeed.
Dr. King would be assassinated exactly one year (almost to the hour) after his great speech at Riverside Church. It’s the same terrible fate that awaits some of the American forces, most of them very young, that we continue to send into the quagmire in Afghanistan.
Bob Herbert looks back at MLK 40 years later.
We Still Don’t Hear Him
By BOB HERBERT
The great man was moving with what seemed like great reluctance. He knew as he climbed from the car in Upper Manhattan that he was stepping into the maelstrom, that there were powerful people who would not react kindly to what he had to say.
“I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight,” said the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “because my conscience leaves me no other choice.”
This was on the evening of April 4, 1967, almost exactly 43 years ago. Dr. King told the more than 3,000 people who had crowded into Riverside Church that silence in the face of the horror that was taking place in Vietnam amounted to a “betrayal.”
He spoke of both the carnage in the war zone and the toll the war was taking here in the United States. The speech comes to mind now for two reasons: A Tavis Smiley documentary currently airing on PBS revisits the controversy set off by Dr. King’s indictment of “the madness of Vietnam.” And recent news reports show ever-increasing evidence that we have ensnared ourselves in a mad and tragic venture in Afghanistan.
Dr. King spoke of how, in Vietnam, the United States increased its commitment of troops “in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support.”
It’s strange, indeed, to read those words more than four decades later as we are increasing our commitment of troops in Afghanistan to fight in support of Hamid Karzai, who remains in power after an election that the world knows was riddled with fraud and whose government is one of the most corrupt and inept on the planet.
If Mr. Karzai is at all grateful for this support, he has a very peculiar way of showing it. He has ignored pleas from President Obama and others to take meaningful steps to rein in the rampant corruption. His brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the kingpin in southern Afghanistan, is believed by top American officials to be engaged in all manner of nefarious activities, including money-laundering and involvement in the flourishing opium trade.
Hamid Karzai himself pulled off a calculated insult to the U.S. by inviting Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidential palace in Kabul, where Ahmadinejad promptly delivered a fiery anti-American speech. As Dexter Filkins and Mark Landler reported in The Times this week: “Even as Mr. Obama pours tens of thousands of additional American troops into the country to help defend Mr. Karzai’s government, Mr. Karzai now often voices the view that his interests and the United States’ no longer coincide.”
Is this what American service members are dying for in Afghanistan? Can you imagine giving up your life, or your child’s life, for that crowd?
In his speech, Dr. King spoke about the damage the Vietnam War was doing to America’s war on poverty, and the way it was undermining other important domestic initiatives. What he wanted from the U.S. was not warfare overseas but a renewed commitment to economic and social justice at home. As he put it: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
The speech set loose a hurricane of criticism. Even the N.A.A.C.P. complained that Dr. King should stick to what it perceived as his area of expertise, civil rights. The New York Times headlined its editorial on the speech, “Dr. King’s Error.”
Mr. Smiley, in his documentary, noted that “the already strained relationship between President Johnson and Dr. King became fractured beyond repair.” And donations to Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference “began to dry up.”
So it took great courage for Dr. King to speak out as he did.
His bold stand seems all the more striking in today’s atmosphere, in which moral courage among the very prominent — the kind of courage that carries real risk — seems mostly to have disappeared.
More than 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq and more than 1,000 in Afghanistan, where the Obama administration has chosen to escalate rather than to begin a careful withdrawal. Those two wars, as the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and his colleague Linda Bilmes have told us, will ultimately cost us more than $3 trillion.
And yet the voices in search of peace, in search of an end to the “madness,” in search of the nation-building so desperately needed here in the United States, are feeble indeed.
Dr. King would be assassinated exactly one year (almost to the hour) after his great speech at Riverside Church. It’s the same terrible fate that awaits some of the American forces, most of them very young, that we continue to send into the quagmire in Afghanistan.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Political term of the day 4/2
muckey-mucks (muck -a-mucks): High officials,; big shots; term of derision for leaders by party workers. The expression is still often heard as high muck-a-muck because of it's probably derivation from Chinook jargon, hiu(plenty) muckamuck(food); hence, one who has plenty to eat, or a man of power, a big wheel.
162,000 Jobs Added in March; Rate Remains 9.7%
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/economy/03jobs.html?hp
I know the unemployment rate remained at 9.7% but with the addition of 162,000 jobs, 48,000 temporary census workers, this is more than a greenshoot. It opens the door for both a political and economic opportunity. If private employers who are on the brink of hiring take this jobs report as a green light for hiring the worst of the "Great Recession" could be over and we could be looking at a sustainable recovery.
In terms of a political opportunity this presents a chance for President Obama and the Democrats to cite tangible evidence as to why voters should rehire them on November 2. I think this could be especially powerful when running against a Republican party that has NO new ideas. I'm assuming it's fair to say tax cuts for the wealthy aren't a new idea? Actually, I should retract that statement because I guess it is a relatively new idea, since he's only been on the national stage since 2004, to oppose every single thing Barack Obama proposes.
You we're for a debt reduction committee? Not anymore. You chanted "Drill,Baby, Drill" at the convention in 08? Not anymore. You signed a health care bill into law, that contained a universal mandate(Mitt Romney)?Not anymore! So if the jobs numbers keep getting better will the GOP find a way to be against a growing economy? In my younger and more vulnerable years I would've said yes, but not anymore.
I know the unemployment rate remained at 9.7% but with the addition of 162,000 jobs, 48,000 temporary census workers, this is more than a greenshoot. It opens the door for both a political and economic opportunity. If private employers who are on the brink of hiring take this jobs report as a green light for hiring the worst of the "Great Recession" could be over and we could be looking at a sustainable recovery.
In terms of a political opportunity this presents a chance for President Obama and the Democrats to cite tangible evidence as to why voters should rehire them on November 2. I think this could be especially powerful when running against a Republican party that has NO new ideas. I'm assuming it's fair to say tax cuts for the wealthy aren't a new idea? Actually, I should retract that statement because I guess it is a relatively new idea, since he's only been on the national stage since 2004, to oppose every single thing Barack Obama proposes.
You we're for a debt reduction committee? Not anymore. You chanted "Drill,Baby, Drill" at the convention in 08? Not anymore. You signed a health care bill into law, that contained a universal mandate(Mitt Romney)?Not anymore! So if the jobs numbers keep getting better will the GOP find a way to be against a growing economy? In my younger and more vulnerable years I would've said yes, but not anymore.
op-ed of the day 4/2
Today's op-ed of the day comes from David Corn. In this column he writes about the GOP's recent struggles with distracting issues and not being able to take advantage of the political strides they've made against the Democrats.
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/02/only-thing-gopers-have-to-fear-is-the-gop-itself/
If I had a gift certificate to a bondage-themed strip-tease club for every time I've heard Democrats complain that the mascot of their party ought to be a circular firing squad, I'd be able to entertain thousands of GOP operatives. But now it seems that it's the Republicans who are engaging in an orgy of cannibalism -- just when they're poised to mount one of the greatest political comebacks in years. Let your mind drift back to the historic days of November 2008. After Barack Obama won the White House and his Democratic Party achieved super-majority control of Congress, it seemed that the Republican Party was in for a long, cold stretch of winter. There was talk of an era of decline for the Grand Old Party. The D's would dominate for years. Political scientists and pundits pondered permanent realignment. That was then. Now, a short 16 months later, the sun appears to be shining on Republicans. A Gallup poll released on April Fools' Day -- but no laughing matter for Democrats -- noted that 47 percent of registered voters prefer the Republican House candidate in their district to the Democratic contender; only 44 percent went for the Dem. Four weeks ago -- when Gallup began asking this question -- the numbers were reversed. The most simple explanation for the shift is popular upset with the health care reform legislation. Obama's historic win has not yet cast a glow upon House Democrats. Perhaps more important for the political prospects of Republicans, it looks as if unemployment will remain rather high between now and the November elections. Consequently, the incumbent party can expect a good whacking from voters in November, with Republican bystanders reaping the benefits of such punishment. A CNN poll notes that Americans say that Republicans in Congress would better deal with the economy than Democrats, 48 to 45 percent. That's quite a worrisome snapshot for Democrats.
So what could possibly darken the skies for Republicans? Their own actions. After all, the party is a mess. GOP chief Michael Steele is a flytrap for controversy, the latest being the party's $2,000 expenditure at a bondage strip club in West Hollywood for entertainment purposes. This has caused much embarrassment for Steele and the Gang at party HQ. Fundamentalist groups have protested the party's lack of allegiance to family values. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an influential social conservative outfit, has called on his followers to stop donating to the party. Former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, a darling of the religious right, and Penny Nance, the head of Conservative Women for America, have raised questions about Steele's leadership of the party. ("Look, if you can't run a party you certainly can't run a country," Perkins said on Thursday afternoon.) At the same time -- if not necessarily for the same reason -- Sarah Palin has asked the Republican National Committee to strike her name from an upcoming fundraiser in New Orleans. And the Republican Party has had problems with its own budget, outspending its revenues and possibly hobbling itself as the congressional elections approach. This has got GOP fat cats grumbling. With Steele ever-under fire, Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, a former GOP party chieftain, have been raising millions of bucks for a new 527 political action committee called American Crossroads, which will collect tens of millions of dollars to assist Republican House and Senate candidates this fall. This effort is something of a no-confidence vote in Steele and his underlings.On policy matters, the party has been caught up in internal debates concerning how to best position itself on health care and Wall Street reform. GOP 2012 presidential contenders are starting to snipe at each other. (Just ask any GOP operative working for a candidate other than Mitt Romney about Romney's record on health care reform when he was Massachusetts governor.) And Tea Partiers are challenging mainstream GOPers. See the nasty Senate primary races in Arizona and Florida. Now should be a brilliant springtime of GOP contentment. After all, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, recently said that House Dems face "an uphill climb this November. The question is, the steepness of the hill." Yet GOP disorder could get in the way of a Republican rout of the Democrats. Organization does count in politics. Parties need to maximize their resources. They need to coordinate messages. If a party is efficient -- or at least, competent -- it can best take advantage of favorable prevailing conditions. True, sometimes a wave is so big, other considerations (and screw-ups) don't matter. But GOP haplessness appears to might be offering the Dems a fighting chance in 2010. In January, when Steel was in the news for saying he didn't expect his party to win back the House, I noted that the sooner the GOP dumped Steele, the better off it would be:
The chief of the GOP has two challenges: to pull in big bucks and to maintain the peace within his party. Steele appears to have been too busy goofing on cable TV to do either. As I've noted previously, this election year offers Republicans a grand opportunity, particularly because unemployment is expected to remain high for months, if not years, to come. But a party burdened with a leader who alienates donors will not be best positioned to exploit that advantage. It's hard to imagine Steele getting his act together and functioning as an effective party chairman in the tough slog ahead. Though there might be a cost if Republicans send him packing now, the cost will be greater if Steele is forced out later rather than sooner.It may be getting too late to de-Steele the party, for the subsequent recriminations would certainly distract from the mission at hand: winning the 2010 elections. Just imagine how much more damage a totally off-the-reservation Steele could do outside the tent. (If Steele is removed as party head, it would be a gigantic boon for cable TV -- the political news equivalent of the O.J. chase.) So the Republicans may be stuck with Steele and his dramas, as well as all the other inside-the-party bickering. But, as my father used to say often, it's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart. Merely being the non-incumbent party might be enough for the GOP to win big in 2010, and, ultimately, none of the side-show silliness may influence what happens when voters vote. Despite all the Republican miscues and blunders, GOPers might want to book the Voyeur strip club for a victory party on Nov.2.
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/02/only-thing-gopers-have-to-fear-is-the-gop-itself/
If I had a gift certificate to a bondage-themed strip-tease club for every time I've heard Democrats complain that the mascot of their party ought to be a circular firing squad, I'd be able to entertain thousands of GOP operatives. But now it seems that it's the Republicans who are engaging in an orgy of cannibalism -- just when they're poised to mount one of the greatest political comebacks in years. Let your mind drift back to the historic days of November 2008. After Barack Obama won the White House and his Democratic Party achieved super-majority control of Congress, it seemed that the Republican Party was in for a long, cold stretch of winter. There was talk of an era of decline for the Grand Old Party. The D's would dominate for years. Political scientists and pundits pondered permanent realignment. That was then. Now, a short 16 months later, the sun appears to be shining on Republicans. A Gallup poll released on April Fools' Day -- but no laughing matter for Democrats -- noted that 47 percent of registered voters prefer the Republican House candidate in their district to the Democratic contender; only 44 percent went for the Dem. Four weeks ago -- when Gallup began asking this question -- the numbers were reversed. The most simple explanation for the shift is popular upset with the health care reform legislation. Obama's historic win has not yet cast a glow upon House Democrats. Perhaps more important for the political prospects of Republicans, it looks as if unemployment will remain rather high between now and the November elections. Consequently, the incumbent party can expect a good whacking from voters in November, with Republican bystanders reaping the benefits of such punishment. A CNN poll notes that Americans say that Republicans in Congress would better deal with the economy than Democrats, 48 to 45 percent. That's quite a worrisome snapshot for Democrats.
So what could possibly darken the skies for Republicans? Their own actions. After all, the party is a mess. GOP chief Michael Steele is a flytrap for controversy, the latest being the party's $2,000 expenditure at a bondage strip club in West Hollywood for entertainment purposes. This has caused much embarrassment for Steele and the Gang at party HQ. Fundamentalist groups have protested the party's lack of allegiance to family values. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an influential social conservative outfit, has called on his followers to stop donating to the party. Former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, a darling of the religious right, and Penny Nance, the head of Conservative Women for America, have raised questions about Steele's leadership of the party. ("Look, if you can't run a party you certainly can't run a country," Perkins said on Thursday afternoon.) At the same time -- if not necessarily for the same reason -- Sarah Palin has asked the Republican National Committee to strike her name from an upcoming fundraiser in New Orleans. And the Republican Party has had problems with its own budget, outspending its revenues and possibly hobbling itself as the congressional elections approach. This has got GOP fat cats grumbling. With Steele ever-under fire, Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, a former GOP party chieftain, have been raising millions of bucks for a new 527 political action committee called American Crossroads, which will collect tens of millions of dollars to assist Republican House and Senate candidates this fall. This effort is something of a no-confidence vote in Steele and his underlings.On policy matters, the party has been caught up in internal debates concerning how to best position itself on health care and Wall Street reform. GOP 2012 presidential contenders are starting to snipe at each other. (Just ask any GOP operative working for a candidate other than Mitt Romney about Romney's record on health care reform when he was Massachusetts governor.) And Tea Partiers are challenging mainstream GOPers. See the nasty Senate primary races in Arizona and Florida. Now should be a brilliant springtime of GOP contentment. After all, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, recently said that House Dems face "an uphill climb this November. The question is, the steepness of the hill." Yet GOP disorder could get in the way of a Republican rout of the Democrats. Organization does count in politics. Parties need to maximize their resources. They need to coordinate messages. If a party is efficient -- or at least, competent -- it can best take advantage of favorable prevailing conditions. True, sometimes a wave is so big, other considerations (and screw-ups) don't matter. But GOP haplessness appears to might be offering the Dems a fighting chance in 2010. In January, when Steel was in the news for saying he didn't expect his party to win back the House, I noted that the sooner the GOP dumped Steele, the better off it would be:
The chief of the GOP has two challenges: to pull in big bucks and to maintain the peace within his party. Steele appears to have been too busy goofing on cable TV to do either. As I've noted previously, this election year offers Republicans a grand opportunity, particularly because unemployment is expected to remain high for months, if not years, to come. But a party burdened with a leader who alienates donors will not be best positioned to exploit that advantage. It's hard to imagine Steele getting his act together and functioning as an effective party chairman in the tough slog ahead. Though there might be a cost if Republicans send him packing now, the cost will be greater if Steele is forced out later rather than sooner.It may be getting too late to de-Steele the party, for the subsequent recriminations would certainly distract from the mission at hand: winning the 2010 elections. Just imagine how much more damage a totally off-the-reservation Steele could do outside the tent. (If Steele is removed as party head, it would be a gigantic boon for cable TV -- the political news equivalent of the O.J. chase.) So the Republicans may be stuck with Steele and his dramas, as well as all the other inside-the-party bickering. But, as my father used to say often, it's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart. Merely being the non-incumbent party might be enough for the GOP to win big in 2010, and, ultimately, none of the side-show silliness may influence what happens when voters vote. Despite all the Republican miscues and blunders, GOPers might want to book the Voyeur strip club for a victory party on Nov.2.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Political term of the day- 4/1
Party Elders: The "Grand Old Men"- and now women- of a party, venerated for their age, presumed sagacity,length of party service, and present or past political power.
Party elders is probably derived from church elder, and the Council of Elders who "appealed" to Napoleon to lead France after excesses of its revolution.
Party elders is probably derived from church elder, and the Council of Elders who "appealed" to Napoleon to lead France after excesses of its revolution.
drill, Barack,drill revisited
Yesterday I think i may have oversimplified my view that Obama's decision to open up some offshore drilling was politically brilliant. I still hold that belief but I am concerned that he is going to be left alone in the center.
The left is mad because this is an issue they(myself included) stand against. While on the right side of the aisle, Barack Obama is an issue they stand against. I truly believe that anything short of switching parties is not good enough for the GOP.
I know i may seem a little leery of a strong opinion or declaration for a political blogger but in the wake of health care I'm going to be slow to question Barack Obama, and his team, on how to maneuver. I'm sure I'll have more on this soon.
The left is mad because this is an issue they(myself included) stand against. While on the right side of the aisle, Barack Obama is an issue they stand against. I truly believe that anything short of switching parties is not good enough for the GOP.
I know i may seem a little leery of a strong opinion or declaration for a political blogger but in the wake of health care I'm going to be slow to question Barack Obama, and his team, on how to maneuver. I'm sure I'll have more on this soon.
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