Tag: Politics

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Dean Baker: Fun With Paul Ryan and the Washington Post

The Washington Post really really hates Social Security. They hate Medicare almost as much. Therefore they are willing to give its critics space to say almost anything against the program (the real cause of September 11th) no matter how much they have to twist reality to make their case.

Today, Republican Representative Paul Ryan stepped up to the plate. The Post felt the need to give him an oped column after Paul Krugman cruelly subjected Mr. Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future” to a serious analysis last week. This violated the long accepted practice in elite Washington circles of not holding proponents of Social Security and Medicare cuts/privatization accountable for the things they say. It is therefore understandable the Post would quickly give a coveted oped slot to Mr. Ryan to make amends for such a grevious breach of protocol.

The rest of us may not have the power to invent the facts that would be needed to push our policies, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun.

snip

Ryan concludes by telling readers that his proposal is “my sincere attempt to break the political paralysis on entitlement reform, to show that this challenge can be met – mathematically and politically – and to challenge those who disagree with my proposal to offer their own.”

In the forgiving spirit of Friday the 13th, I will not count the reference to sincerity as an inaccuracy. The 20 inaccuracies and 4 references to raiding Medicare can speak for themselves. Of course to the seniors who would be unable to afford decent health care if Mr. Ryan’s plan became law, his sincerity won’t make any difference.

But, I am happy to offer my own test of Mr. Ryan’s sincerity. How about giving Medicare beneficiaries the option to buy into the more efficient health care systems in Europe, Japan, and Canada. The beneficiaries and the taxpayers will split the savings. This leaves the current system intact for those who like it, while offering seniors who opt to go elsewhere for their health care the opportunity to pocket tens of thousands of dollars while saving taxpayers money as well. What’s wrong with giving people a choice, Mr. Ryan?

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Paul Krugman: Social Security Madness

Has the Washington Post gone mad asks Dean Baker, reading the Post’s latest editorial on Social Security. The answer is no: it has been mad all along.

Dean points out, correctly, that the Post’s argument here is: “In the future, Social Security might have to cut benefits. To prevent these possible future benefit cuts, we must cut future benefits.”

But this isn’t new – the same argument was rolled out in 2005.

Dean Baker: Has the Washington Post Gone Mad?

Confused readers may wonder based on its lead editorial complaining that supporters of Social Security: “pursue a maddening  strategy of minimizing the existence of any problem and accusing those who seek solutions of trying to destroy Social Security.”

The piece begins by telling readers that: “THIS YEAR, for the first time since 1983, Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it receives from payroll taxes — $41 billion. This development is not an emergency, but it is a warning sign (emphasis in original).” It certainly is a warning sign. The falloff in Social Security tax revenue is a warning that the economy is seriously depressed due to the collapse of the housing bubble. Double digit unemployment leads to all sorts of problems, including the strains that it places on pension funds like Social Security.

In a sane newspaper the next sentence would be pointing out the urgent need to get back to full employment. Instead the Post tells readers:

“Too soon, this year’s anomaly will become the norm. By 2037, all the Social Security reserves will have been drained and the income flowing into the program will only be enough to pay 75 percent of scheduled benefits. If that sounds tolerable, consider that two-thirds of seniors rely on Social Security as their main source of income. The average annual benefit is $14,000. Those who care most about avoiding such painful cuts ought to be working on ways to bolster the program’s finances — and soon, when the necessary changes will be less drastic than if action is postponed.”

Well, if we on the Left had expected a contrite Robert Gibbs today, I hope everyone wasn’t too disappointed because today MR. Gibbs stood by his criticism of us and said he expects us to get out and vote in the Fall.

Speaking publicly for the first time since he disparaged the “professional left,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he stands by his comments, has no plans to resign and that he fully expects progressive voters to go to the polls in 2010.

“I don’t plan on leaving and there is no truth to the rumor that I’ve added an inflatable exit to my office,” the press secretary said during Wednesday’s briefing, referencing the recent incident in which a Jet Blue flight attendant bolted his plane in frustration.

Taking the podium after a day off to tend to a sore throat, Gibbs said he has not reached out to any Democrats to discuss his remarks, in which he chastised liberals for wanting to “eliminate the Pentagon” and pursue Canadian-style health care reform. Nor, he added, has he talked to the president about the matter.

Does he stand by the comments? “Yes,” he replied.

Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald appeared on the Dylan Ratigan Show to discuss Gibbs’ dissing of the “professional left”

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Jonathan Cohn’s premise here is that Liberals are unhappy with Obama because he  failed to move a more progressive agenda but the truth is Obama was not a Liberal to start. The major criticism from Liberals comes from the fact that Obama has adopted the most horrendous policies of the Bush administration as his own and expanded them, something the Obama loyalists would be screaming about if the President were McCain.

Jonathan Cohn: What Do Liberals Want From Obama?

Not surprisingly, conservatives are unhappy with President Obama. Somewhat surprisingly, liberals are too–or, at least, a lot of liberal commentators.

On July 4, Robert Kuttner spoke for many of them when he wrote, on the Huffington Post, that “we voted our hopes that events could compel Obama to govern as a progressive. We are still waiting.” Bob was primarily upset about Obama’s failure to push through a new stimulus package. But he also criticized Obama over health care (for not getting passionate about it until the last minute) and the Gulf oil disaster (for not taking a harder line on British Petroleum).

Bob is my old boss and mentor, not to mention a good friend. I share his frustrations over the policies that have (and haven’t) come out of Washington lately. But to suggest that Obama hasn’t governed as a progressive seems pretty wrong to me.

Do you really think that with this kind of rhetoric and then the non-apology walk back, that you are going to win the hearts and votes of the Left, the Independents and Moderate Republicans?

Come on, Bob. Do you even recognize the man in the Oval Office as being the same man from the campaign trail? Granted many of us knew damned well he wasn’t a progressive or even a so-called centrist for that matter. He was already reneging on his promises when the instead of filibustering the FISA renewal bill, he voted for it.

For someone who was so critical of Bush’s wars and the Presidential powers that Bush had assumed, he certainly has embraced them now and then some. Bush is probably wishing he could have gotten away with what Obama is doing that is being ignored by his proponents. Wow, targeted assassinations of American citizens, suspending habeus corpis on whim and prosecuting minors for war crimes. Cool. Now he wants unfettered access to private e-mail. Why not just repeal the 4th Amendment.

And how about that Cat Food Commission? Oops, sorry Obama’s supporters don’t like that term for the Deficit Commission that is proposing cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits. Brilliant. Bush never would have gotten away with that.

And wow, not just one woman on the Supreme Court but two. One who has a history of rulings in favor of corporations and the other with no bench experience but a supporter of the unitary executive that was greatly expanded under Bush and explicitly adopted and expanded by Obama.

Yes, Mr. Gibbs, we on the Left are not happy with the corporatist, neoliberal agenda that is coming from your boss. You don’t like the criticism than maybe you’d best listen to what we are saying instead of whining about it. The hallmark of a democratic society is criticism. We are still living in a democratic society so far. Or are we?

Well, thanks for listening to one really pissed off “Leftie”

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Robert Reich: The Jobs Emergency

Washington’s latest answer to the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression is $26 billion in aid to state and local governments. This still leaves the states and locales more than $62 billion in the hole this fiscal year. And because every state except Vermont has to balance its budget, the likely result is 600,000 to 700,000 more state and local jobs vanishing over the next 12 months (including private contractors and other businesses that depend on state and local governments) according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Say goodbye to even more of the teachers, firefighters, sanitary workers, and police officers we depend on.

In July alone, state and local employment dropped 48,000. Not counting temporary census workers, the federal government shed 11,000. So with private payrolls increasing a paltry 71,000, July’s overall increase in payrolls was just 12,000.

Robert Kuttner: Who Are You Going to Believe — Tim Geithner or Your Own Lying Eyes?

The jobs situation stinks, even as corporate profits keep rising. Another 131,000 jobs were lost to the economy in July, according to the Labor Department’s latest report released Friday. The measured unemployment rate stayed stuck at 9.5 percent.

The only reason it wasn’t worse was because more workers gave up looking for nonexistent jobs, leaving a smaller labor force to measure against the meager supply of work. Small comfort.

Meanwhile, another important government report, by the Social Security Trustees, showed only a trivial improvement in the gap between what Social Security owes the next generation of retirees and the tax receipts that it can expect.

There is, of course, a direct connection between rising unemployment, declining wages, and the condition of Social Security. That’s because Social Security is funded by payroll taxes.

If wages had continued to rise with the growth of the economy’s productivity, instead of profits and bonuses taking an ever larger share, Social Security would be enjoying an endless surplus.

Based on recent trends and a dismally pessimistic projection of our economic future, Social Security’s Trustees assume wage growth of just 1.2 percent a year. But that can be changed by better policies.

A recent Army report released showed the rate of suicides has been on a steady increase with this past June being the worst with 32 active and reserve soldiers taking their own lives either while still deployed or after their return home. This past Sunday on This Week , Christiane Amanpour interviewed Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the general in charge of the U.S. Army’s efforts to reduce the epidemic of suicide among U.S. soldiers.

Of course the true solution to suicide prevention for the troops is to bring them home, all of them.

Listen to her interview with Gen. Chiaelli about the report, its causes and the solutions for prevention. Transcript link is here

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Glenn Greenwald: Marriage and the role of the state

Ross Douthat uses his New York Times column today  to put what he undoubtedly considers to be the most intellectual and humane face on the case against marriage equality.  Without pointing to any concrete or empirical evidence, Douthat insists that lifelong heterosexual monogamy is objectively superior to all other forms of adult relationships:  such arrangements are the “ideal,”  he pronounces.  He argues that equal treatment of same-sex marriages by secular institutions will make it impossible, even as a matter of debate and teaching, to maintain the rightful place of heterosexual monogamy as superior:

   

The point of this ideal is not that other relationships have no value, or that only nuclear families can rear children successfully. Rather, it’s that lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support. . . . .

   If this newer order completely vanquishes the older marital ideal, then gay marriage will become not only acceptable but morally necessary. . . . But if we just accept this shift, we’re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate.  That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different:  similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.

   But based on Judge Walker’s logic — which suggests that any such distinction is bigoted and un-American — I don’t think a society that declares gay marriage to be a fundamental right will be capable of even entertaining this idea.

This argument is radically wrong, and its two principal errors nicely highlight why the case against marriage equality is so misguided.

Well, my first diary here, so please humor me, I will make errors!  This is a brief request to support a writer and historian who may be close to our own hearts in terms of real Progressive and Liberal politics. Some say he might be the next Howard Zinn.

The title of the book we’d be supporting is The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World of Power.

Paul has written many articles his most recent dealing with Wikileaks and whistle blowers: Revealing Moments: Obama, WikiLeaks, the “Good War” Myth, and Silly Liberal Faith in the Emperor  

“I Give UP

Voters Choice: “None of the Fucking Above”