Where's the "fierce urgency of now?"

"Yes, we can!"

As President Obama begins his Campaign 2012 for re-election against a GOP field that ranges from the terminally disingenuous to the dangerously demagogic, we have a "must-read" commentary from Ezra Klein (the WaPo's Wonkbook), reflecting on some undeniable weaknesses of the administration's approach to dealing with its opposition - most notably a failure to take a compelling counter-argument directly and dramatically to the American people:

I don’t blame Obama for being unable to change Washington. I don’t blame him for being unable to pass cap-and-trade. But I blame him for ceasing to try. And for sometimes letting what can be done distract from what needs to be done...

Back when Obama won the South Carolina primary, he warned of a “status quo that extends beyond any particular party and right now that status quo is fighting back with everything it’s got.” If anything, he was understating his case. But he was right to try to inspire voters to cast away their skepticism, to say that “where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words — yes, we can.”

Lately, the administration’s creed can be summed up more modestly: “Hopefully, the Senate won’t let them.”

The contrast with the 2008 campaign — which correctly saw some virtue in ambition, even if what it promised was unrealistic — is stark.

Read Klein's entire piece, "What happened to the 'fierce urgency of now?'", HERE.

GOP budget czar Paul Ryan proposes killing Medicare - and replacing it with "Obamacare" for seniors

Forbes' columnist & health care consultant Rick Ungar has the story:

Ryan, 3/23/10: "Obamacare is a fiscal Frankenstein, it’s a train wreck."

Despite the Republican propensity to compare the Affordable Care Act to something akin to the antichrist, word is that GOP budget leader, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), will propose a dramatic change in the Medicare program that will closely mirror the key features of Obamacare – only for seniors.

The proposal would do away with (for everyone presently under 55 years of age) the current single payer government system for senior medical care and replace it with a program whereby seniors would choose private health insurance coverage from a menu of approved private health insurers. The government would subsidize the program by giving seniors a voucher to be used in purchasing coverage, the amount of such payment to be defined according to need.

The columnist then asks, "Does this sound familiar?"  Well, yes.  It's a government subsidized exchange system following the model of what the GOP derisively dubbed "Obamacare" - the Affordable Care Act of 2010 that reformed our health insurance system for those under 65. But there's a poison pill in this "Ryancare" bill. A Congressional Budget Office study last November determined that seniors would likely either face higher premiums or less extensive coverage under Ryan's scheme to kill Medicare. 

Forbes' Ungar explains:

Unfortunately, while Ryan has emulated a number of features from the ACA, he’s forgotten to make the adjustments the law makes to actually ensure that health care is more accessible to beneficiaries rather than more profitable to health insurance companies.

Making private insurance work for the younger demographics is far easier than trying to make it work for the elderly due to the most basic tenant of health insurance – the insurance pool must be balanced by having 80 healthy people in the pool to pay for every 20 who are ill.

Given that most Americans 65 and older are a walking pre-existing medical condition, it is difficult to imagine how functioning insurance pools can be constructed from a universe filed with these people.

Shutdown! - the "Tea Party GOP" plays a dangerous game in a fragile economy

The Financial Times' Clive Crook weighs in on the GOP holding the country and the economy hostage to their destructive agenda:

Rep. Paul Ryan: "It sounds worse than it probably is."

Republicans in Congress are playing an outrageous game of brinkmanship over the budget for the current fiscal year.

Some Tea Party supporters happily contemplate a shutdown of government at the end of this week....

(W)ith the US labour market at a turning point, whatever Congress can do to undermine confidence and add to uncertainty, it is doing. Just as the private sector shows signs of reviving, Capitol Hill is threatening to drag it back down.

'Tis the season - A tax chart

Be sure to keep this one in mind over the next ten days...

    Center for Budget and Policy Priorities

This is from the New York Times "Economix."  There is no indication what external events such as periodic upswings in profits or specific tax policies affected the "bumps" within the overall decades-long decline in corporate taxes as % of GDP, but as a general trend the article's author, Nancy Folbre, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, notes:

In 2008, the Government Accountability Office reported that 83 of the 100 largest publicly traded corporations in the United States had subsidiaries in jurisdictions listed as tax havens; it cautiously emphasized that this did not prove that their decisions to locate there were motivated by tax minimization.

The British journalist Nicholas Shaxson takes a bolder and more aggressive swipe at the issue in a new book, “Treasure Islands,” arguing that the globalization of tax evasion is undermining fiscal and economic stability in developed and developing nations alike...

The most vivid character in Robert Louis Stevenson’s beloved adventure story “Treasure Island” was the one-legged sailor Long John Silver. He never described himself and his colleagues as pirates. No, they were “gentlemen of fortune.”

We Are One!

In memoriam, Martin Luther King. Stand up!

Via Digby.

E.J. Dionne takes on anti-government radical Paul Ryan's "Budget Roadmap"... and challenges the President

A "must-read" column from The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, focusing on the GOP budget being hatched by Paul Ryan of Wisconsin:

Americans are about to learn how much is at stake in our larger budget fight, how radical the new conservatives in Washington are, and the extent to which some politicians would transfer even more resources from the have-nots and have-a-littles to the have-a-lots.

"I won't return to the failed theories..."

And you wonder: Will President Obama welcome the responsibility of engaging the country in this big argument, or will he shrink from it? Will his political advisers remain robotically obsessed with poll results about the 2012 election, or will they embrace Obama’s historic obligation — and opportunity — to win the most important struggle over the role of government since the New Deal.

Ryan: "Who is John Galt?"

This week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will announce the House Republicans’ budget plan, which is expected to include cuts in many programs for the neediest Americans.

["Titanic" ed. interjects:  Ryan - a House denizen who has supported every tax-cut measure that drove up deficits during his tenure, except those targeted to middle and lower income folks in the President's stimulus package - is perhaps most notable to date for having his staffers read the hysterically anti-government Ayn Rand pot-boiler, "Atlas Shrugged." This bizarre indulgence in ideological zealotry by an elected official could only be matched on the liberal side by, say, a revelation that Bernie Sanders was passing  out "The Communist Manifesto" to his Senate aides. The extremist Rand and her followers preached that progressive taxation, for instance, is "immoral."]

Dept. of Aghast at Executive Bonuses

 Appropriately, from the Wall Street Journal:

"Heckuva job..."

Transocean Ltd. had its "best year in safety performance" despite the explosion of its Deepwater Horizon rig (leased by British Petroleum) that left 11 dead and oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the world's largest offshore-rig company said in a securities filing Friday.

Accordingly, Transocean's executives received two-thirds of their target safety bonus. Safety accounts for 25% of the equation that determines the yearly cash bonuses, along with financial factors including new rig contracts...

In a filing on executive pay, Transocean said, "Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record." Based on the total rate of incidents and their severity, "we recorded the best year in safety performance in our company's history."

 No further comment.  Article here.

Jobs, jobs jobs...

Here - "Hidden Bad Signs in a Good Job Report" - the Wall Street Journal digs a bit deeper into the latest relatively optimistic jobs stats:

1/08-3/11 jobs growth - Steve Benen, Political Animal

(An) overarching issue is the number of people who remain unemployed. Though the rate is dropping, there are still 13.5 million people who would like to work, but can’t get a job and that doesn’t include those who dropped out of the labor force. The broader U-6 unemployment rate that includes people marginally attached to the labor force continued to decline but still remains at 15.7%. So much slack in the job market means that employers don’t feel as much pressure to increase wages.

Finally, there are still some lagging sectors. Amid the broader jobs increases, construction continued to shed jobs, a reminder that the housing market continues to struggle. Meanwhile, local governments facing budget crunches are shedding jobs, 15,000 last month, and more cuts are on the table across the country.

Sing it again, Woody: "Some men rob you with a six-gun..."

  "Some rob you with mortgage securitization... 

"I've yet to see an outlaw drive a family from their home..."

a computer database... 

and a fountain pen!" 

 Too Big to Jail? 

The robo-signing crime wave -
    "60 Minutes" is on it!
Watch HERE.   Via Atrios.

Part 5 of "Common Sense" Guide to the Great Deficit Debate at "Winning Progressive"

Winning Progressive has another segment of the "Common Sense" Deficit Primer up at their site this morning - HERE. Today's focus is on the "deficit hype" as cover for the right-wing strategy to shift political power to the economic elite.

Again, thanks to WP for spreading the word!

Unionism, perceptions and gender

Natasha Vargas-Cooper has an insightful take in today's New York Times on an underlying gender issue in the ongoing protests of public employees and their supporters in the Midwest - one that is embedded in the current weakened position of the union movement.

"What did you do in the war, Mommy?"

WHEN a couple dozen brawny, uniformed and helmeted firefighters, led by a bagpipe player, marched through a crowd of pro-union protesters in Madison, Wis., last month, I knew, almost to a certainty, that Gov. Scott Walker had picked a fight with the wrong crew.

As the firemen assembled on the Statehouse steps, the swelling, boisterous crowd, which had raucously encircled and occupied the Capitol for days, pushing back against Governor Walker’s plan to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights, all of a sudden slipped into silent reverence.

(pic via proud Dad, Marc Cooper)

While the plan exempts policemen and firemen, the first responders rallied under the oldest first principle of militant unionism: An Injury to One is an Injury to All. And the presence of these mostly white, husky, mustachioed firemen — many with soot still speckling their uniforms — had highlighted a major issue that generally goes undetected by the news media when covering labor conflicts 

In short, it’s what my old union called “the Husband Issue.”

Allow me to explain.

The real story of the original Tea Party - a revolt against tax breaks for a mega-corporation

Very illuminating bit of true "Boston Tea Party" history from Thom Hartmann -



Via Crooks & Liars.

This is insane

"Slackers!"

Four - count 'em, FOUR! - Tea Party-GOP state senators have been able, via filibuster, to deny 34,000 unemployed residents of Missouri $105 million in extended unemployment benefits, after the federally-funded extension passed the GOP-led state House 123-14 two months ago and had the support of Republican Senate leaders and Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon.  More HERE.  Words fail...

Via Dan O at Beautiful Horizons.

Update: And, unfortunately, the context for that bit of political pathology is THIS news from Economix @ NYTs:  "Average length of unemployment rises again..."

"There is no US federal debt crisis"

"Dangerous subversives!" or just...uh...Republicans?

Harvard professor of political economy emeritus, former aide to Pres. Johnson and consultant to the US Treasury Francis Bator states it flat out in the Financial Times: "There is no federal debt crisis (as distinct from a governance crisis and a tax-phobia crisis.)" Well worth checking out  (HERE) for some realistic perspective in contrast to the hysterics, half-truths and anti-government demagogy that are routinely injected into the  politics of deficits, taxes, spending and debt.  Key excerpts below:

In 2010, CEO Pay Went Up 27% While Worker Pay Went Up 2%

I've got nothing to say.  More at "Think Progress."

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

Nobel-Prize winner and former chief economist for the World Bank, Joe Stiglitz takes on the dramatic  increase in disparities of income and wealth in the US @ Vanity Fair:

Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.

It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened... In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent (of income) and 33 percent (of wealth.) One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided.

Graph - Lane Kenworthy

While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow...

The good news - Jobs numbers were up in March

Ezra Klein takes a second look...

I have no idea if Tim Pawlenty is really this foolish!

"I have respect for Michelle Bachmann."

Ryan Avent @ The Economist catches former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty - one of those GOP candidates deemed "serious" by pundits - issuing a pronouncement based on "thoroughly discredited fringe beliefs."  What Avent dubs his "strange ideas" indicates TeePaw apparently doesn't have any more of a clue about economic policy than that other noisesome GOP 2012 hopeful & Tea Party icon Michelle Bachmann, whose whacky screeds suggest she's the insistent voice of Loony Toons Town in our public discourse.

The Economist's Avent:

TIM PAWLENTY, former Minnesota governor and potential Republican presidential candidate, has thoughts on money:

The former Minnesota governor said the administration has devalued the dollar by injecting "fiat money" into the economy. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) predicted Tuesday that the U.S. will face a double-dip recession that could last all the way until the 2012 elections. The likely presidential candidate said the government, under President Obama, has devalued the dollar by injecting "fiat money" into the economy in an attempt to boost it — a plan he said will be damaging in the long-run.

This is unfortunate. Let's review the reasons why:

The Titanic's April Fools link

"I'm pretty sure there will be duck-hunting in Heaven."

Except it's not...

It's former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee - HERE - doing his 24/7 FOX Star fool thing.

 Update: Steve Benen has a lot more on this bit of fake "history" Hucksterism.

No fool...

"Darkness on the edge of town..."

Springsteen writes a letter to his hometown newspaper, which is something more of us should be doing:

Thank you for your March 27 front-page story by Michael Symons, "As poverty rises, cuts target aid." The article is one of the few that highlights the contradictions between a policy of large tax cuts, on the one hand, and cuts in services to those in the most dire conditions, on the other. 

Also, you've shone some light on anti-poverty workers and analysts such as Adele LaTourette, Meara Nigro, Cecilia Zalkind and Raymond Castro, among others, all of whom have something important to add to the discussion: real information and actual facts about what is happening below the poverty line. These are voices that in our current climate are having a hard time being heard, not just in New Jersey, but nationally. 

Finally, your article shows that the cuts are eating away at the lower edges of the middle class, not just those already classified as in poverty, and are likely to continue to get worse over the next few years. I'm always glad to see my hometown newspaper covering these issues.

Bruce Springsteen

COLTS NECK

(Click here to see the article: As poverty rises, NJ cuts target aid.)      Via WitnessLA.