Seriously, Not


That scratchy feeling on your forehead is David Brooks trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Brooks got all hot and bothered glimpsing Paul Ryan's Kill Medicare proposal:

But the forces of reform have not been entirely silenced. Over the past few weeks, a number of groups, including the ex-chairmen of the Council of Economic Advisers and 64 prominent budget experts, have issued letters arguing that the debt situation is so dire that doing nothing is not a survivable option. What they lacked was courageous political leadership — a powerful elected official willing to issue a proposal, willing to take a stand, willing to face the political perils.

The country lacked that leadership until today. Today, Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is scheduled to release the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes (which will) set the standard for seriousness.

Ryan's plan is a lot of things- almost all of them bad- but serious is not one of them. Paul Krugman, in phase 1 of what will be his evisceration of the scheme hatched by the Wisconsin extremist, notes that Ryan projects an unemployment rate below 3% (graph, below) by 2020. However

Except briefly during the Korean War, the United States has never achieved unemployment as low as Ryan and co. are claiming. The Fed believes that the lowest unemployment rate compatible with price stability is between 5 and 6 percent — that is, twice what Ryan is claiming he will achieve.








Serious, hardly. It promises to set the top rate for corporate and income taxes at 25%, 10 per cent below the rate (35%) of 2011, a level not seen since 1931, when it was raised from 25% to 63%, preceding our emergence from the Great Depression. It would be 14.60% higher than the 39.60% it stood at during most of the 1990s (chart, below; click to enlarge), when the U.S.A. had to struggle through an unprecedented period of economic growth.






























Ryan does promise to cut out some tax deductions and carve outs but, given the structure of his 2010 Roadmap for America's Destruction, it's highly unlikely that the burden will be borne by those most able to afford it.

"The Ryan budget," Brooks claims, "will put all future arguments in the proper context: The current welfare state is simply unsustainable and anybody who is serious, on left or right, has to have a new vision of the social contract." Apparently, "the current welfare state is simply unsustainable" because of the demands of elderly people needing medical care, available only through Medicare; reforming the welfare state of the corporate-industrial complex and of oil companies must remain off-the-table.

Brooks and the Truly Serious will fawn yet again over Paul Ryan, believing "there are still people in the GOP who make sense." Unfortunately, the Wisconsin's plan, as Kevin Drum notes, will

be the consensus view of the entire Beltway punditocracy. A plan dedicated almost entirely to slashing social spending in a country that's already the stingiest spender in the developed world, while simultaneously cutting taxes on the rich in a country with the lowest tax rates in the developed world — well, what could be more serious than that?

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The Republican Media: No 27


It might deserve barely a mention but.... a Gallup poll released March 25 indicates that Mike Huckabee is the first choice among registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to face off against President Barack Obama; another national poll released a few days later had both Huckabee and Mitt Romney, in a match-up with Obama, leading all GOP contenders, including America's Greatest Republican Ever, Chris Christie; and on March 2 the former Arkansas Governor won by a large margin a straw poll in South Carolina against the other GOP possibilities. Snicker not- South Carolina is one of the two most influential states in a Republican presidential nomination race.

So of more than passing interest should be Huckabee's recent statement at the Rediscover God In America” conference sponsored by United in Purpose, a Christian organization which describes itself as "actively Advancing the Traditional Values of America's Founding Fathers." (He was introduced by David Barton, a leader in the right-wing and allegedly Bible-based Christian Reconstructionist movement.) On Friday, Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch posted the clip (unedited video, below) of Huckabee's speech when it was streamed live on Thursday. By Saturday, Huckabee's intriguing remark had been scrubbed from the clip as it then appeared on the website of United in Purpose.

Good idea to take it off the site. It's never good to be caught maintaining

I almost wish that there would be like a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, forced, at gunpoint no less, to listen to every David Barton message and I think our country would be better for it.






No platitudes here about Jesus being all about brotherhood, peace, and tolerance; just a thought that a potential presidential candidate ought to be cognizant of the statements he makes and the company he keeps. And cynicism about the choice made by the traditional media to ignore a major appearance by a credible presidential possibility which provides considerable insight into the individual's view of religion and politics.

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A Little Cheese With That Whine, Please


Joe Scarborough is not a mindless, simplistic conservative. But he's trying.

Scarborough, penning an overwrought piece for Politico, slams liberals for various sins of foreign policy hypocrisy. He claims George W. Bush, past and present,

has been damned by the ministers of the far left as a war criminal, a fascist and a Nazi when labeling his policies as overly ideological and deeply flawed would have sufficed.

But that was never enough for the carnival barkers on cable news or the blogosphere. For the American left, Bush had to be condemned as an immoral beast who killed women and children to get his bloody hands on Iraqi oil.

Having made the charge, Scarborough neglected to identify those "carnival barkers on cable news or the blogosphere," perhaps they've been precious few on CNN or Fox News and Joe wouldn't want to imperil his cushy position by fingering anyone on his own network. And it's standard fare for the right, faced with the extremists on their side, to cry "you guys did it too." Specificity would be so inconvenient, given that the "carnival barking" was sufficiently muted that it did not rise to the level of impeachment over sexual shenanigans in the Oval Office.

Yes, President Harding also faced vicious criticism; that, too, was in the past and mild compared to the hysterical outcry against the Obama Administration.

Pointing to the three wars- two of them started by President Bush- in which Barack Obama's U.S.A. is involved, Scarborough asks: why not Syria? Yemen? Ivory Coast? Sudan? But then, why would Scarborough choose a three-egg omelette for breakfast- how about four? five? six? seven? When Scarborough eats cookies for dessert, why not cake, pie, and ice cream at the same sitting; they're all good! Perhaps cookies are not the best option and maybe Libya isn't the best choice. But Scarborough fails to tell us why, or even if.

Scarborough asks, rhetorically,

While one can make the moral argument that countries can be attacked strictly on humanitarian grounds, that argument is laughable when it comes to Libya.

How can the left call for the ouster of Muammar Qadhafi for the sin of killing hundreds of Libyans when it opposed the war waged against Saddam Hussein?

The tolerance of the left (and other Americans) for the Libyan war derives in part from the same reasoning applied by presidential nominee John McCain toward occupation of Iraq. It would be "fine with me," he explained, as long as they were not being killed; President Obama early ruled out American combat troops in Libya. Further, President Obama, unlike President Bush, has acted specifically to enforce a United Nations resolution and in concert with other nations which took the initiative.

Scarborough has been one of those conservatives, such as Rush Limbaugh, who refuse to oppose definitively the Libyan action but rather have chosen to criticize the supporters. He would have made a greater contribution to the debate, moreover,if he had chosen instead to confront, as Michael Kinsley has, failure to invoke the War Powers Act. Having chosen to do neither that nor specify whether he believes the war ultimately will prove to be in the national interest, Scarborough's piece is mostly a temper tantrum by just another conservative Republican upset that he is not getting his way, every time.

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Bad All Around


There must be an explanation somewhere. Somewhere.

But what could be the explanation for the apparently imbecilic balanced budget amendment (text here) 47 Republican Stepfords have introduced in the U.S. Senate.

If one is to believe economist Bruce Bartlett and political scientist Jonathan Bernstein, it is probably due to ignorance. Section 1 reads

Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year, unless two-thirds of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific excess of outlays over receipts by a roll call vote.

But in criticizing the ever-pandering presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty for refusing to specify spending cuts and merely endorsing a balanced budget amendment, Bartlett notes that

for such an amendment to be operational and not just a meaningless expression of intent then there has to be a point in the budgetary process where the federal courts can enjoin spending or force tax increases. This is obviously a very bad idea in principle, but it’s also impractical. For example, as a legal matter we would have no way of knowing that the budget was in fact unbalanced until the fiscal year had ended, but even a federal court can’t make people give back federal funds that have already been paid out for interest on the debt, Social Security and Medicare benefits, wages and salaries, payments for goods and services etc. Thus a balanced budget amendment of the sort Pawlenty proposes is effectively unenforceable.

Not only can it not be enforced, but it probably cannot be implemented. Bernstein finds

there’s nothing here (or in the rest of the resolution) to force Congress to actually take any actions. Congress doesn’t pass a law every year specifying total receipts and total outlays; at best, it passes a non-binding budget resolution, but everyone who follows budget politics knows that the numbers in the budget resolution have no fixed relationship to what Congress eventually does that year (which, in turn, has only minimal effects on actual government revenues and expenditures, most of which are not affected by what Congress does).

In other words, there is simply nothing in this amendment to force Congress to do anything about deficits.

If the amendment was law, Congress could simply continue to pass annual appropriations bills, and....well, there is no "and." What it amounts to in practical terms, as far as I can see, is a statement of principle; we might as well put in the Constitution that global warning is a hoax and evolution a communist plot, for all the good any of it would do.

Bartlett explains

The gross domestic product is not a concept defined in law and is revised constantly; from time to time, the Bureau of Economic Analysis revises the GDP data all the way back to 1929. And of course, the 18 percent figure is totally arbitrary; the proposal effectively assumes that most federal outlays consist of funds that are appropriated annually, rather than of mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicare and interest on the debt. Even if Congress was willing to cut mandatory spending, it is practically impossible to do so quickly unless it is willing to reduce the monthly checks going to current retirees and other actions difficult to contemplate.

Section 2 of the proposal reads

Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed 18 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States for the calendar year ending before the beginning of such fiscal year, unless two-thirds of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific amount in excess of such 18 percent by roll call vote.

Invoking gross domestic product as a baseline is faulty, Bartlett argues in a separate blog posting, because

The gross domestic product is not a concept defined in law and is revised constantly; from time to time, the Bureau of Economic Analysis revises the GDP data all the way back to 1929. And of course, the 18 percent figure is totally arbitrary; the proposal effectively assumes that all federal outlays consist of funds that are appropriated annually, rather than consisting primarily of mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicare and interest on the debt. Even if Congress was willing to cut mandatory spending, it is practically impossible to do so quickly unless it is willing to reduce the monthly checks going to current retirees and other actions difficult to contemplate.

An amendment which cannot be enforced or implemented and whose numbers don't add up without "actions difficult to contemplate" evidently is worthless but relatively harmlesss.

But no. The measure reflects ignorance and pandering to the ultra-far right of the far right of the party but also a sprinkling of nefariousness. Bartlett notes rests on the assumption that federal outlays "consist primarily of mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicare and interest on the debt." While the GOP will not push to pay back a portion of the debt, it may not be so "difficult to contemplate" that it will move to "reduce the monthly checks"- or worse. On March 29, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told NPR

I mean, just from the very notion that it said that 50 percent of beneficiaries under the Social Security program use those moneys as their sole source of income. So we've got to protect today's seniors. But for the rest of us? For - you know, listen. We're going to have to come to grips with the fact that these programs cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be.

The Majority Leader, second in command to a Speaker who may face a primary challenge from a tea party candidate, now is on record as supporting the abolition ("cannot exist") of Social Security and Medicare- assuming he wants "America to be what we want America to be."

The proponents of this constitutional amendment may be silly, reckless, and out to destroy the nation's elderly. Impressively ambitious.

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There must be an explanation somewhere. Somewhere.

But what could be the explanation for the apparently imbecilic balanced budget amendment (text here) 47 Stepford Wives Republicans have introduced in the U.S. Senate.

If one is to believe economist Bruce Bartlett and political scientist Jonathan Bernstein, it is probably due to ignorance. Section 1 reads

Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year, unless two-thirds of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific excess of outlays over receipts by a roll call vote.

But in criticizing the ever-pandering presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty for refusing to specify spending cuts and merely endorsing a balanced budget amendment, Bartlett notes that

for such an amendment to be operational and not just a meaningless expression of intent then there has to be a point in the budgetary process where the federal courts can enjoin spending or force tax increases. This is obviously a very bad idea in principle, but it’s also impractical. For example, as a legal matter we would have no way of knowing that the budget was in fact unbalanced until the fiscal year had ended, but even a federal court can’t make people give back federal funds that have already been paid out for interest on the debt, Social Security and Medicare benefits, wages and salaries, payments for goods and services etc. Thus a balanced budget amendment of the sort Pawlenty proposes is effectively unenforceable.

Not only can it not be enforced, but it probably cannot be implemented. Bernstein adds

there’s nothing here (or in the rest of the resolution) to force Congress to actually take any actions. Congress doesn’t pass a law every year specifying total receipts and total outlays; at best, it passes a non-binding budget resolution, but everyone who follows budget politics knows that the numbers in the budget resolution have no fixed relationship to what Congress eventually does that year (which, in turn, has only minimal effects on actual government revenues and expenditures, most of which are not affected by what Congress does).

In other words, there is simply nothing in this amendment to force Congress to do anything about deficits.

If the amendment was law, Congress could simply continue to pass annual appropriations bills, and....well, there is no "and." What it amounts to in practical terms, as far as I can see, is a statement of principle; we might as well put in the Constitution that global warning is a hoax and evolution a communist plot, for all the good any of it would do.

Using

The gross domestic product is not a concept defined in law and is revised constantly; from time to time, the Bureau of Economic Analysis revises the GDP data all the way back to 1929. And of course, the 18 percent figure is totally arbitrary; the proposal effectively assumes that all federal outlays consist of funds that are appropriated annually, rather than consisting primarily of mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicare and interest on the debt. Even if Congress was willing to cut mandatory spending, it is practically impossible to do so quickly unless it is willing to reduce the monthly checks going to current retirees and other actions difficult to contemplate.

Section 2 reads

Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed 18 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States for the calendar year ending before the beginning of such fiscal year, unless two-thirds of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific amount in excess of such 18 percent by roll call vote.

Invoking gross domestic product as a baseline is faulty, Bartlett argues, because

The gross domestic product is not a concept defined in law and is revised constantly; from time to time, the Bureau of Economic Analysis revises the GDP data all the way back to 1929. And of course, the 18 percent figure is totally arbitrary; the proposal effectively assumes that all federal outlays consist of funds that are appropriated annually, rather than consisting primarily of mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicare and interest on the debt. Even if Congress was willing to cut mandatory spending, it is practically impossible to do so quickly unless it is willing to reduce the monthly checks going to current retirees and other actions difficult to contemplate.

Proposing an amendment which cannot be enforced or implemented and whose numbers don't add up without "actions difficult to contemplate," the proposal evidently is worthless but relatively harmless, perhaps.

But no. The measure reflects ignorance and pandering to the ultra-far right of the far right of the party but also a sprinkling of nefariousness.

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The Republican Media- No. 26


I would call him "corporate stooge" but we need to be objective here.

Soon after taking his Senate seat after he was elected last November, Republican Pat Toomey argued that we need not fear a default on the national debt. All we would need to do, as reflected in the Full Faith and Credit Act he proposed as an amendment to the FAA spending bill, is to pay bondholders (such as financial institutions and the Communist Chinese government) first.

Maybe that's why a writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer (never viewed as conservative), referred on Friday to the former investment banker and business owner as having "emerged as the deficit hawk's deficit hawk."

Toomey's latest brainstorm is a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It would, Thomas Fitzgerald writes, prohibit the federal government from spending

more than the revenue it gets in any fiscal year, and total federal spending would be capped at 18 percent of the gross domestic product, the measure of all the U.S. economy's output.

(Utah Republican Senator) Hatch said that 18 percent was about the average rate of federal spending to GDP over the last 50 years; the rate now is approaching 25 percent.

While at first glance this is merely irresponsible, it is also a little phony. Fitzgerald notes "under Toomey's bill, Congress could run a deficit if two-thirds of the members of each house approved, but it would have to renew that vote every fiscal year."

Ah, an escape hatch (pun intended)- a balanced budget that doesn't mandate a balanced budget. But it gets worse, Fitzgerald mentioning

A simple majority could vote to override the balanced-budget requirement during a declared war. In the case of an undeclared "military conflict," three-fifths of Congress could suspend the limit, but could run a deficit only to finance the conflict.

The proposal also would require a supermajority vote - two-thirds of each house - to impose a new tax or raise the rate of an existing tax. Three-fifths of Congress would have to approve increasing the debt ceiling.

Three-fifths of Congress could suspend the limit in the case of an undeclared military conflict. For those who just landed from planet Neptune, the U.S.A. currently is involved in three (3) military conflicts. A deficit could not be run to fund women's health, cleanup of toxic waste sites, mass transit to reduce our dependence on carbon fuels, or veterans..... or anything except war. Moreover, because three-fifths of Congress would have to approve a tax increase, services would have to evaporate, given that raising taxes would require about a three-fourths majority of Democrats in each chamber. Republicans could, of course, be part of a three-fifths majority but, they would have to apologize to Grover Norquist and Rush Limbaugh, overcome their allergy to anything requiring a sacrifice by millionaires, and beat back a primary challenge. Not going to happen.

It would, however, please defense contractors and as a former head of the Club for Greed Growth, Pat Toomey never met a CEO who would not send a tingle up his leg.

And in part for this, Senator Toomey is bequeathed the monikor of "the deficit hawk's deficit hawk." This for a guy who is willing to run up spending for any military adventure and is so allergic to paying for government spending that, as Joe Sestak charged and PolitiFact largely confirmed last year, is opposed to any and all corporate taxation.

We've seen it all before: pander to your corporate base, declare yourself a deficit hawk, push tax cuts for millionaires and corporations, and be rewarded by a characterization as a "deficit hawk." Good political branding if you can buy it, and with the corporate media it comes free.

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Obsessed With Debt


We have heard enough- far more than enough- of "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it really make a sound? It is trite, tiresome, and silly. Or maybe not so silly. In his opinion piece on the national debt which appeared in The Wall Street Journal on March 30, Senator Marco Rubio obscenely remarked

We're therefore at a defining moment in American history. In a few weeks, we will once again reach our legal limit for borrowing, the so-called debt ceiling. The president and others want to raise this limit. They say it is the mature, responsible thing to do.

In fact, it's nothing more than putting off the tough decisions until after the next election. We cannot afford to continue waiting. This may be our last chance to force Washington to tackle the central economic issue of our time.

Leave aside the reality that the GOP effort to cut spending in the current budget little concerns the long-term debt, mostly targeting the deficit. And that a few months ago, the GOP, with its co-conspirator in the White House, did all it could to explode the deficit and the debt with a huge across-the-board tax cut. Rubio's right shoulder, presumably, aches as he strains to pat himself on the back for not "putting off the tough decisions until after the next election" as he votes for tax cuts for the wealthy benefactors which bankrolled his election. No, the obscenity lies in the assertion that the debt is "the central economic issue of our time."

This must have escaped the attention of Vice President Cheney, who once argued "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." To be fair, though, both Cheney and Rubio have failed to notice what is happening to the American middle class in part because of the policies the Florida Republican has embraced.

If Rubio had been paying attention, he would know:

a) As the graph below from The New York Times (CBO and Census Bureau statistics) indicates, from 1979 to 2005 income of the top .01% of earners increased 384% while it rose only 20% for the median quintile. It should be no surprise that tax rates for the latter group dropped 4.4% while they plummeted 11.4% for the highest income group.






b) For almost the same period (1979-2007), average after-tax incomes for the top 1 percent rose by 281 percent after adjusting for inflation — an increase in income of $973,100 per household — compared to increases of 25 percent ($11,200 per household) for the middle fifth of households and 16 percent ($2,400 per household) for the bottom fifth (chart and explanation, verbatim, for the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities);




As can be seen from the pie chart below (from a 2010 Economic Policy Institute analysis of CBO average federal tax rates and income), a full 38.7% of the income growth went to the top 1% while only 36.3% went to the bottom 90%.



Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez, with 55.6% to the top 1% and only 15.9% to the bottom 90%, in their 2009 analysis found the growth even more unbalanced:



c) Surprise! The result would be, as the pie chart (from G. William Domhoff, who credits for the information economist Edward N. Wolff of New York University in 2010)below indicates, that in 2007 the top 1% held 35% of the net worth, with 43% of the financial wealth, of the nation; for the bottom 80%, the figures were 15% and 7%, respectively. Since that time, the gap between the wealthy and other individuals has widened, with the top 5%, owning 62% of the wealth in 2007, owning 65% in 2009. As of 2010, Politifact confirms, the poorest 60% of U.S. households have a lower total net worth than the Forbes 400.





d) As the graph from Piketty and Saez (from IRS data) indicates, the share of the total of pre-tax income going to the top 1% in 2006 was 20%, the highest since it was 21%, in 1928. You may remember 1928- the year before the Great Depression.






Rubio, calling the debt the "central economic issue of our time," probably figures if the tree falls and no one is around to hear it, it hasn't really fallen. But consider that the current distribution of wealth is not only inequitable and unstable for a society, but that Americans would prefer it otherwise. As the chart from tax reporter David Cay Johnston (for which he credits (Norton & Ariel, 2010) shows, the top 10% holds 84% of all wealth in the U.S.A. Given an opportunity to choose among three (not labeled) charts- the U.S.A.'s actual wealth distribution, the estimated wealth distribution, and that in Sweden, Americans chose the latter. We believe the top 10% should possess 32%, a far cry from 84%, of wealth.




Fortunately, we have only Rubio and his Republicans to blame for this sorry state of affairs. Well, no. In January, President Obama appointed Jeffrey Immelt to his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Immelt knows about competing from his post as CEO of General Electric, which The New York Times recently noted has

reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.

Immelt has been handsomely rewarded, being granted earlier this month a $4 million bonus and $7.4 million in stock awards. And G.E, flush off paying no federal taxes and actually claiming a tax benefit, sees its chief executive officer filling a role which may prove beneficial to his company.

This would be the same President whom some Republicans have found advantageous to intimidate by calling a "socialist." No surprise that the GOP muted its criticism of Obama for having appointed Immelt, nor for placing him on a committee replacing the more progressive Economic Recovery Advisory Board and the inestimable Paul Volcker.

You may not have realized, unlike a President whose focus has turned from the economic slump to the deficit and a Florida Senator obsessed with the debt, that the nation's economy has completely rebounded. But while we limp toward what increasingly looks like a sluggish recovery, the gradual chasm between the very wealthy and the rest of Americans widens.

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