Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Libya offers truce to UN as revolt enters 4th month

by Imed Lamloum, AFP

1 hr 21 mins ago

(h/t vastleft @ Corrente)

The L-Word

Liberals have been failing to live up to their ideals for centuries, but we mustn’t give up on liberalism.

By Peter Clarke, Slate

Posted Saturday, May 14, 2011, at 7:54 AM ET

George Washington himself, that unillusioned soldier and great patriot, extolled “the benefits of a wise and liberal Government” and advocated “a liberal system of policy”. There was not only political principle but political expediency in proclaiming oneself motivated by liberal ideas in that era. The fact that the American Revolution was made in terms of this political prospectus helps explain its ultimate success. There were simply too many Britons who felt that the colonists actually had the better of the argument-they were the better liberals. For British Whigs, too, looked back reverently on canons of government that extolled liberty in thought, speech, religion, government and trade alike. It was part of the heritage of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Indeed, for some more incendiary spirits on both sides of the Atlantic, the Good Old Cause of republican virtue was at stake.

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Coalition is, of course, a current problem for Liberals. It could be said that every successful political party is itself a coalition, the broader-based the better. This was what gave the Liberal party such traction in British politics in the Gladstonian era; and what sustained the New Liberals of the succeeding generation, with comparable electoral triumphs in the era of Herbert Henry Asquith and Lloyd George, was again the party’s ability to adapt itself to new social forces. The tacit electoral alliance with the early Labour party was not actually called a coalition, though in some ways it served as such. The point was that, in all but a few constituencies, Liberals and Labour did not oppose each other; and in the House of Commons a Liberal government was sustained by what contemporaries called a Progressive Alliance, including both Liberals and Labour. This is an instructive formula: almost the opposite of the current arrangements, which simultaneously implicate Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats in a basically Tory government while permitting their partners in Westminster to undermine them in the country. The current failure of this strategy could not have been clearer when, in a referendum held less than a week before the two parties marked a year in coalition on May 11, British voters overwhelmingly rejected the more [proportional voting system that Lib-Dems had hoped would be one of their chief rewards.

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What has Losurdo got against liberalism? He resolutely exposes the internal contradictions of a doctrine that ostensibly upheld freedom, autonomy and self-government, yet failed in practice to universalise its own ethic. The presence of Calhoun in his canon alerts us early on to one important dimension. For Calhoun, steeped in the political culture of the antebellum American south, simultaneously coupled his liberal defence of individual and states rights with an explicit defence of slavery, which excluded blacks from the exercise of these great principles. Was this just the same old one-eyed hypocrisy that we expect of politicians?

There is, in fact, more to the book than this. It shows how slavery was legitimised within the liberal canon all the way back to Locke. And it gets worse. Once slavery could no longer be defended, the same liberals who now made a big deal out of its abolition promptly turned to excluding and repressing former slaves in slightly more subtle ways, such as indentured labour. And not just across the colour line, but also countenancing the oppression of workers closer to home when they, too, got uppity. It was the liberal economists, from Smith onwards, so Losurdo assures us, who shackled the working class by demonising early trade unions and who then turned their hard faces on some of the consequences of their inviolable free market, whether in the form of pauperism in Britain or famine across the Irish sea.

Did these great liberal thinkers really have no answers to the social problems of their day? Well, Locke thought compulsory churchgoing for the poor might be one remedy. So the best defence of the liberals against the charge of racism might be their willingness to inflict on their own kith and kin most of the indignities normally visited on slaves. But “master-race democracy”, excluding blacks or Arabs alike, remains a significant indictment. Chapter by chapter, one liberal after another is knocked off his plinth. “Compared with the liberal tradition,” Losurdo writes, “Nietzsche proved more lucid and consistent.”

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Conservatives will enjoy reading this book as a demolition job. They will turn to it in hopes of finding an intellectual arsenal with which to bombard their opponents. They will take advantage of a moment when the historic political affiliation of many liberals in the Anglosphere has become a love that dare not speak its name. But liberals, too, should read this book as part of the task of reconstruction. This task, of course, cannot be accomplished simply in intellectual terms but the message that liberalism needs to be inclusive in its claims and its constituency alike is one with a current significance that is truly international.

In Greece, austerity kindles deep discontent

By Anthony Faiola, The Washington Post

May 13

The protests are an emblem of social discontent spreading across Europe in response to a new age of austerity. At a time when the United States is just beginning to consider deep spending cuts, countries such as Greece are coping with a fallout that has extended well beyond ordinary civil disobedience.

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The anarchist movement in Europe has a long, storied past, embracing an anti-establishment universe influenced by a broad range of thinkers from French politician and philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to Karl Marx to Oscar Wilde. Defined narrowly, the movement includes groups of urban guerillas, radical youths and militant unionists. More broadly, it encompasses everything from punk rock to WikiLeaks.

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The rolling back of social safety nets in Europe began more than a year ago, as countries from Britain to France to Greece moved to cut social benefits and slash public payrolls, to address mounting public debt. At least in the short term, the cuts have held back economic growth and job creation, exacerbating the social pain.

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In Britain, for instance, 10 activists formed the UK Uncut group in a North London pub late last year, spawning a national wave of civil disobedience against spending cuts, bankers’ bonuses and tax evasion by the rich. During a March protest, they used Twitter and text messages to organize a “flash mob” that saw hundreds occupy and vandalize London’s famous Fortnum & Mason’s food store. In recent months, other actions have forced at least 100 bank branches across Britain to temporarily close.

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“There is a sense of general injustice, that the government bailed out capitalism and the citizens are footing the bill while the capitalist system is running like nothing ever happened,” said Bart Cammaerts, an expert in anarchist movements at the London School of Economics. “And yet, things have happened. There are more taxes, less services, and anger is emerging from that tension.”

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“They are taking everything away from us,” Ganiaris said. “What will happen when I finish law school? Will I only find a job making copies in a shop? Will I then need to work until I’m 70 before I retire? Will I only get a few hundred euros as pension? What future have I got now?”

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As in many countries in Europe, fascist and far-right parties are strengthening, engaging in an increasing number of attacks against immigrants.

There are other signs of course and if you happen to be Belarussian I apologize for characterizing your country this unfavorably.

It could happen to anybody.

Belarus Presidential Runner-Up Sentenced to Prison

By JAMES MARSON, The Wall Street Journal

MAY 14, 2011, 6:59 P.M. ET

The runner-up in President Alexander Lukashenko’s disputed re-election in Belarus was sentenced Saturday to five years in prison, a decision expected to deepen the authoritarian leader’s rift with Western governments.

Andrei Sannikov had been arrested following an anti-government demonstration after the polls closed on Dec. 19. Baton-wielding police broke up the largely peaceful gathering in central Minsk and detained about 700 people as the president was being declared the landslide winner over nine rivals.

Mr. Lukashenko was credited with 80% of the vote, to Mr. Sannikov’s 2.4%. International election observers said the vote count was seriously flawed.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Libya buries 11 imams killed in NATO strike

AFP

23 mins ago

(h/t lambert)

Unfortunately, they’re also Democratic budget ideas.

Seniors, Guns and Money

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: May 12, 2011

(T)he truth is that older Americans really should fear Republican budget ideas – and not just because of that plan to dismantle Medicare. Given the realities of the federal budget, a party insisting that tax increases of any kind are off the table – as John Boehner, the speaker of the House, says they are – is, necessarily, a party demanding savage cuts in programs that serve older Americans.

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The great bulk of federal spending that isn’t either defense-related or interest on the debt goes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The first two programs specifically serve seniors. And while Medicaid is often thought of as a poverty program, these days it’s largely about providing nursing care, with about two-thirds of its spending now going to the elderly and/or disabled. By my rough count, in 2007, seniors accounted, one way or another, for about half of federal spending.

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Between an aging population and rising health costs, then, preserving anything like the programs for seniors we now have will require a significant increase in spending on these programs as a percentage of G.D.P. And unless we offset that rise with drastic cuts in defense spending – which Republicans, needless to say, oppose – this means a substantial rise in overall spending, which we can afford only if taxes rise.

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Which brings me back to those Republican freshmen. Last year, older voters, who split their vote almost evenly between the parties in 2008, swung overwhelmingly to the G.O.P., as Republicans posed successfully as defenders of Medicare. Now Democrats are pointing out that the G.O.P., far from defending Medicare, is actually trying to dismantle the program. So you can see why those Republican freshmen are nervous.

Investors Say Tax Hike Needed to Cut Deficit

By Mike Dorning and David J. Lynch, Bloomberg News

May 13, 2011 12:00 AM ET

Global investors, by an almost 2-to-1 majority, believe the U.S. government won’t be able to substantially cut its budget deficit without raising taxes, rejecting a core stand of congressional Republicans.

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Some suggest that tax increases are necessary because policy makers are unwilling to touch Social Security and health- entitlement programs such as Medicare, which together make up more than 40 percent of the federal budget.

“With entitlements sacrosanct by virtue of the electoral base (seniors and the poor), the only real option is higher marginal and progressive taxation,” Alfredo Viegas, director of emerging markets fixed-income strategy for Knight Libertas in Greenwich, Connecticut, says in an e-mail.

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For all the concern about the deficit in Washington, bond market yields in the U.S. are lower now than when the government was running a budget surplus a decade ago. The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was 3.22 percent at 5 p.m., New York time, yesterday, below the average of 7 percent since 1980 and the average of 5.48 percent in the 1998 through 2001 period, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader.

Twenty-two percent of poll respondents say there is a “big risk” that the deficit in the next two years will trigger a market crisis resulting in dramatically higher interest rates. That figure is up from January’s 18 percent, yet lower than November’s 24 percent.

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The “U.S. is spending too much on energy and defense,” says Ivaylo Penev, a portfolio manager with Elana Fund Management in Sofia, Bulgaria, and a poll participant.

Frankly I think he’s funnier than Jon and more on point too.  Friday he took his case to the Federal Election Commission.  On Wednesday he talked about it on his show.

Stephen Colbert at the FEC? Really.

By KENNETH P. VOGEL, Politico

5/13/11 9:54 PM EDT

Technically, the request(s) asks the commission whether the airtime and other costs associated with any shows on which he promotes his hypothetical PAC would be considered a contribution from Comedy Central’s parent company, Viacom, or whether they would be exempted from campaign finance rules and disclosure requirements.

That so-called media exemption allows newspapers, blogs, radio show hosts and others considered media to urge votes for or against candidates.

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So, as Colbert explained Wednesday “I did the right thing and I exploited a loophole,” adding “there is critical legal distinction between a PAC and a super PAC. One has the word ‘super’ in its name. So I took Colbert PAC and I made it Colbert super PAC.”

Yet, Viacom’s lawyers balked at that solution as well, Colbert said, declaring in overstated exasperation “I hate my parent company! They never let me do anything. Everyone else’s parents companies let them do it. Karl Rove is a paid employee of Fox News and he gets to talk about his Super PAC, American Crossroads all the time.”

Potter explained to Colbert that Viacom is likely skittish that if their airtime or administrative costs are “counted as a contribution, they would have to show it on the FEC reports. There might be a complaint or an investigation about whether they showed enough and they would have to turn over their internal bookkeeping and potentially reveal Viacom secrets.”

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“Why wouldn’t they (the FEC, take me seriously)?” he responded. “I’m making an actual request. I want to find out whether I actually have to list Viacom and the fact that I have a show as a gift in-kind. And if I don’t, I can’t wait to use the resources of my show.”

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If nothing else, it could help the cause of campaign finance advocates by highlighting the ability of corporations to spend unlimited amounts to support or oppose candidates, and – as Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen describes it – expose “the clear conflict of interest that Fox media has as they allow political figures to promote their PACs on a supposedly neutral media outlet.”