On the Contrary

Here is the conventional wisdom: President Obama’s budget puts forward a middle road to removing the sequester cuts, gaining some revenue, and compromising with conservatives on some entitlement cuts. It is put out there to show that he his ready to meet them halfway, make some tough choices, and is a balanced approach to solving our economic problems. It’s bullshit. It fails on so many levels which I will now demonstrate, but the most important failure is the failure of leadership. But lets start with the tactical failures first and then move on to the strategic failure.

Tactical Failures:

1. Assumption: Given the nature of the Republican opposition, we will put something out there they said they wanted to reduce the impacts of the sequester and although giving up difficult cuts to entitlements show that we are serious and can reach a “grand bargain”. Reality: It is going nowhere as the Republicans have rejected it outright and want to pick and choose what they want as though it were an al la carte menu and not give an inch on meaningful revenues. So we are stuck with the sequester.
2. Assumption: All the above is true, but this was not really about policy, but politics, to show the American people who is the problem and to turn the tide of public preception. Reality: Sadly all that will matter is that Democrats or the President put entitlements on the table. That means they are now and forever fair game. Meanwhile, the sequester will slowly have its effect on the economy and the Democrats will be blamed for a poor economy and not trust worthy with entitlements.

So what we get is a lose-lose in the short term tactical game. The President is again playing the Republican’s game and he will lose. On the strategic front, his budget failed to change the conversation. Strategic concerns are about winning the war, putting conservative economics to rest once and for all, and getting the economy going with an economic policy that works.

Continue reading ‘The Debt, Implementing Austerity, and the Failure of Leadership’ »

The argument on Wednesday on DOMA was again kind of sad if you expect our government to protect the rights of minorities. I think it finally devolved into a kind of sophomoric argument about state’s rights instead of equal protection under the law. The states define marriage and the proponent of DOMA wanted to say that the Federal government could not define rights that the state has to provide, i.e., they would be dictating what rights some married couples had.

It seemed to me that the proponents of DOMA argued that the federal government, in their infinite wisdom, decided that whether states recognized marriage or not, the federal government would not. See it treats everyone equally. Well as Justice Ginsburg pointed out it does not and treats those in states that recognize gay marriage as less than those with heterosexual marriages. In fact it does just the opposite, it puts into law discrimination across the board:

“MR. CLEMENT: With respect, Justice Kennedy, that’s not right. No State loses any benefits by recognizing same-sex marriage. Things stay the same. What they don’t do is they don’t sort of open up an additional class of beneficiaries under their State law for — that get additional Federal benefits. But things stay the same. And that’s why in this sense -­

JUSTICE GINSBURG: They’re not — they’re not a question of additional benefits. I mean, they touch every aspect of life. Your partner is sick. Social Security. I mean, it’s pervasive. It’s not as though, well, there’s this little Federal sphere and it’s only a tax question. It’s — it’s — as Justice Kennedy said, 1100 statutes, and it affects every area of life. And so he was really diminishing what the State has said is marriage. You’re saying, no, State said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage.

But the Justices did not want to open the equal protection question because they would then have to consider whether banning gay marriage was in effect discrimination. It is of course, but the Justices were still trying to convince themselves that this is some kind of fad instead of a basic question of equal rights. That was summed up in this highly disturbing exchange from Justice Roberts about the support of gay rights:

“CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: I suppose the sea change has a lot to do with the political force and effectiveness of people representing, supporting your side of the case?

MS. KAPLAN: I disagree with that, Mr. Chief Justice, I think the sea change has to do, just as discussed was Bowers and Lawrence, was an understanding that there is no difference — there was fundamental difference that could justify this kind of categorical discrimination between gay couples and straight couples.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: You don’t doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same sex-marriage laws in different States is politically powerful, do you?

MS. KAPLAN: With respect to that category, that categorization of the term for purposes of heightened scrutiny, I would, Your Honor. I don’t -­

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Really?

MS. KAPLAN: Yes.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: As far as I can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case.

MS. KAPLAN: The fact of the matter is, Mr. Chief Justice, is that no other group in recent history has been subjected to popular referenda to take away rights that have already been given or exclude those rights, the way gay people have. And only two of those referenda have ever lost. One was in Arizona; it then passed a couple years later. One was in Minnesota where they already have a statute on the books that prohibits marriages between gay people.

So I don’t think — and until 1990 gay people were not allowed to enter this country. So I that the political power of gay people today could possibly be seen within that framework, and certainly is analogous — I think gay people are far weaker than they were at the time of Fronterio.

He sees or wants to represent this as a political power play to grant a group special (equal actually) rights and it is in reality the recognition by more and more Americans of the human condition we all share and the basic discrimination some face. He is trying to say they are not a protected class. How sad.

So I think it is clear that the court will punt on both Prop 8 and DOMA. They simply don’t get it or have the foresight to understand they are standing on the precipice of history. Prop 8 will be overturned by either the standing issue or a ruling that limits its effects to California. DOMA will similarly be overturned, probably on the standing issue or struck down on the state’s rights argument so that they do not have to rule on equal protection. But if they do that, it will come back as an equal protection case when some states allow federal benefits through legal marriage and others don’t.

If it overturned on the standing, I believe that throws the responsibility back to the President to follow the lower courts ruling that it is not constitutional and not enforce it. Does he have the political courage which he should have used before now?

But this whole state’s right argument gives me pause. I think it has become apparent that state’s rights generally has been used to take away civil rights, not protect them. I think of slavery, voting rights, school segregation, women’s rights as examples where the federal government has had to step in to ensure American’s rights are protected. Only in the case of assisted suicide have I seen states get out in front on that civil rights issue. It is a grand cop out and puts the Supreme Court in the same category as the rest of our government right now, thinking small, taking little steps, and missing the opportunities to get on with our destiny.

Ah, Sunday morning.  Coffee, a nice English muffin with orange marmalade on it, the paper, and my computer.  Let the nonsense begin.  I see where Michele was coronated queen of the nutcakes.  Given who is making these decisions, I would think that placing last might actually qualify you for the Presidency.  Apparently Tim Pawlenty is dropping out.  I can’t figure out why Newt continues since his chances are nil given his erratic behavior, but maybe it is face time for speaking fees and another book.  Perry is in and let reality shine its light on his nonsense.  You know I have to go with Paul Krugman on this one.  He said in his blog this morning:

“OK, politics isn’t being devised for our entertainment — although given the dismal situation, finding the humor often seems the only way to get through the week.”

There are days when the news is so dismal, like the latest Obama cave, that I count the minutes until John Stewart comes on to provide perspective to the insanity we are witnessing that the main stream press and media seem to totally miss.  It is usually the Daily Show or maybe Rachael Maddow lor Lawrence O’Donnell who actually provides the video of the latest statement and then the promises made earlier.  If they weren’t so ridiculous, they might be tragic.  Sadly all we can do is laugh at how stupid they must think we are.

I would wonder what is on the Sunday Morning talk shows, but it will be the same old people, with the same old tired ideas, probably discussing the Republican candidates for President, and pretending they are making sense instead of pointing out the lunacy of their positions.  Maybe later when I have built up my strength.  Thank you DVR.  Then when I get to total nonsense, I can just fast forward through it.  Too bad we can’t fast forward through the times we are now in.

Probably the most scary thing this morning unless you were anywhere near the stage at the Indiana State Fair, is that the “geniuses” on Obama political team are debating whether he should get more aggressive about the economy (White House Debates Fight on Economy):

“Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Plouffe, and his chief of staff, William M. Daley, want him to maintain a pragmatic strategy of appealing to independent voters by advocating ideas that can pass Congress, even if they may not have much economic impact. These include free trade agreements and improved patent protections for inventors.”

This has worked out so well for the country hasn’t it boys?  Instead of worrying about how to really move the country in a new direction that might actually make things better, let’s appeal to the mindless middle and get re-elected, maybe.

“But others, including Gene Sperling, Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser, say public anger over the debt ceiling debate has weakened Republicans and created an opening for bigger ideas like tax incentives for businesses that hire more workers, according to Congressional Democrats who share that view. Democrats are also pushing the White House to help homeowners facing foreclosure.  Even if the ideas cannot pass Congress, they say, the president would gain a campaign issue by pushing for them.”

Note that even in the counter argument they are thinking small.  Let’s see, be a man and a real leader, or following the people who you chose to make the hard decisions, do the easy thing that will fix nothing.  What is so depressing is that this is even a debate.  Should I fight for what might actually help the country, or should I do what I can get through Congress (nothing you nitwit, as the election approaches) so I can look good to independents and get reelected, but the country continues to drift toward the edge of the waterfall?  And we call this leadership?

Talk about living in a bubble.  This is an absolute no-brainer and they are debating it.  I think Dylan Ratigan is right.  They are all bought and paid for, and they are so removed from the reality of what many Americans are facing, that both the left and the right are no longer making any kind of sense.  Note that in the above debate, the politicos are making the decisions about the economy, while the economic adviser is being ignored.  Who needs economists when we are discussing the economy?

By the way, I have a book recommendation for people who still like to use their brain cells, a declining minority.  It is called Zombie Economics, How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us by John Quiggin.  It goes through how the last 30 years or so of economic tranquility spawned certain economic beliefs, which the 2007 blow-up disproved and how they are still controlling our policy.  My favorite was:

“The zombie ideas that brought the global and financial system to the brink of meltdown, and have already caused thousands of firms to fail and cost millions of workers their jobs, still walk among us.  They underlie the thinking of those who are responding to the crisis, and to a large extent, of the commentators and analysts who assess their responses.”

As he pointed out, many of the economists today who hold on to these ideas made their academic bones writing about these now failed ideas.  So they cling to them because they have so much invested in them.  But my absolute favorite was this little wisdom (See BP Oil Spill, Challenger disaster, Katrina disaster, Enron, Financial meltdown of 2007, et al):

“History teaches us that we rarely learn from history.”

Ah, just another quiet Sunday morning.

Dean Baker in his posts today on his blog Beat the Press, I think, identified the next scary sidetrack we are about to take on our economic problems, the attack on entitlements and especially Medicare and Social Security.  Really Serious People (the ones who have lead us so far astray so far) feel that the only responsible deficit debate would be to put our entitlements on the table. Chop, chop, chop.

When you get right down to it, can we really be a civilized nation without these entitlements.  Is health care for the elderly such a stretch?  The rest of the world manages it with better benefits.  My point is that these two things ensure that our nation has a safety net for our elderly and do we really want to live without them?  If you think you can get affordable care for the majority of our elderly through the private sector, you have smoked one too many tokes.

Full disclosure:  Next year I will be eligible for both although I, like so many of our Congress members, have the public option medical system and don’t need Medicare. I do need Social Security (which by the way is quite solvent throughout my life time and beyond) since my federal retirement was reduced based upon the SS I would eventually earn.  Thank you Ronald Reagan when he dealt with the deficit and recession on the backs of federal workers.

And that is really my point here.  The discussion is going to grow to hysterical proportions, because of the projected costs in the future and the impact on our deficit, and of course the answer is to cut benefits to reduce costs.  The old Puritan/Conservative ethic kicks in to say we simply can’t afford it, so we will cut.  You know, the responsible thing to do. See a False Analogy.   Letting our elderly die early without proper health care or push them into poverty is the responsible thing to do?  Sounds like Death Panels to me.  But if you are a conservative, well they deserved it and we can’t be rewarding a lack of discipline, until of course, they themselves are faced with it.  Then it is different.

But can anybody stop this hysteria and think outside the box?  First, we can afford it, we just choose not to.  In Dylan Ratigan’s rant about extraction, what he was talking about in simple terms is that the money we could be investing in this and so many other things that would be making our nation a stronger and a better place for our children is being extracted for excessive profits for the benefit of a very small percent of our population.  While their wealth and favored status grows, the rest of nation decays.

But there is another way to look at this, which I know is a stretch for many Americans:  Quite honestly could we not learn from some of the other countries in the world on how they provide these entitlements, and especially the bogeyman Medicare, at half the cost we do, and by the numbers, have better outcomes?  One party has stymied any attempt to look at actually reforming the way health care is paid for.   So this totally inefficient system is putting pressure on our deficit and our answer is to cut what we will pay for instead of looking at reforming the system itself.

I have to tell you, the focus on the entitlements and the new purity test to say if you are serious about the deficit you have to put them on the chopping block is another red herring.  The real problem is extraction, to use Dylan Ratigan’s term.  Our present medical insurance systems extracts extremely high profits at the expense of delivering needed medical care.  If we want to really solve our problems, we need to decide what it is that a civilized nation provides for its citizens and then reform the extraction system so we can afford it.  Right now we have a political party and a half (all Republicans and about half the Democrats) who do nothing but defend the present system.  It is why we are slowly sinking in the sunset.

By the way, if I can figure this out, where the hell is our really smart President and his rhetorical gifts to lead this nation?  Hiding behind the curtain waiting for a popular surge he can get behind.

Bob Herbert, in his column (Tone-Deaf in DC) on Saturday said it best: 

“What voters want is leadership that will help them through an economic nightmare and fix a country that has been pitched into a state of sharp decline. They long for leaders with a clear and compelling vision of a better America and a road map for getting there. That leadership has long been AWOL. The hope in the tumultuous elections of 2008 was that it would come from Mr. Obama and the Democrats, but that hope, after just two years, is on life support.”

That was never more on display than on Wednesday when the President, seemingly lacking any leadership or commitment to anything, talked about meeting with the Republicans to see what they could agree on.  He expressed his total lack of commitment to progressive ideals when he said he would accept good ideas from any source.  Sounds good, but the underlying assumption here is that he hasn’t a clue what to do next.  That’s leadership?  Republican ideas are an oxymoron and he knows it but apparently doesn’t have the spine to say it.

Here is what we know:  Cutting taxes will simply grow the deficit so any compromise on this is just plain stupid.  It also will not help the economy and the government would be better served if it is going to increase the deficit, giving aid to the states to rehire teachers.  Reducing regulations is what brought us the banking meltdown fiasco.  Certainly some regulations are over burdensome, but this idea of smaller, ineffective government is how we got into this mess.  Continuing Republican policies and not investing in our country through government programs is just to continue the slide we have been on where the rich get richer, and poor get poorer, and the country falls behind the rest of the industrialized world.  So exactly what, Mr. President, is there to compromise with?  The people gave you a message to implement failed policies so things can just get worse?

We know the way forward (So What’s the Plan?).  We know what works and what doesn’t work.  So where is the leadership to get us there?  Certainly it is not being exhibited by President Obama, who seems to think his job is just to follow the polls and do whatever the latest election dictates.  Rolling over to the Republicans is not only going to hurt our country, but it will ensure a one-term ride for the President.  In the words of Shirley Angle, Mr. President, “Man Up!”  She got that right about both Harry and Obama.  The people are not asking you to work with the other side, since they aren’t going to work with you.  That whole pile of bullshit about wanting our elected leaders to work together fails to understand that the only way that is going to happen is if all the Democrats become Republicans.  And then things will just get worse. They are saying, lead us out of this morass. Show us the way!

I think if the President caves on the tax cuts, it is a sign that he has no leadership skills and more basically, he doesn’t really believe in anything.  It is caving in to failure.  He was a great actor during his election convincing us he would fight for us.  The message he got in this election was that if you won’t fight for us, we won’t fight for you.  Will he finally see that he has to draw a line in the sand and fight for Progressive values? I doubt it.  If he did that, not only would he restore his leadership image, but it is also the only way we are going to get our country out of this morass.  But his history tells me he just doesn’t have the right stuff.

After two years of standing for nothing, compromising away critical values, failing to act on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, failing to hold anyone accountable for the abuses in the Bush Administration (Note in Bush’s latest book he admits committing war crimes), failing to hold bankers accountable for the obvious corruption in the banking system, and doing nothing about the mortgage defaults, not to mention continuing a pointless war in Afghanistan, we expect him to find a spine? What he is is an accommodater with the Washington status quo.   He appears to be intimidated by the existing power structures.  Between him and Harry Reid, who refused to offer up bills because he was afraid they would lose or it would inconvenience some of their more conservative members instead of defining who is fighting for the common man, we see what Bob called “a party that lacks a spine”.  It is a road to failure and with President Obama’s latest performance last Wednesday, he seems to be accelerating down it.  With Harry Reid’s return to leadership in the Senate, we are pouring on the coal.

A great leader would have looked at the last two years and the results of this election, and instead of being humbled, would have been emboldened.  He would have come out fighting.  He would have, as Bob Herbert said, laid out “a clear and compelling vision of a better America and a road map for getting there”. He would have told the nation that he was in charge, the Democrats still hold the Senate,  and if the Republicans were not willing to work with him on his vision, they would not be allowed to destroy America on his watch.  Then he and the Democratic members of Congress would starting pushing that agenda and let the Republicans define themselves by opposing it.  Instead he whimpered off.  There is still hope, but we haven’t even seen stirrings of it yet.  Come on President Obama, don’t let ignorance and stupidity win.  Don’t pander to failure.  Man up and stand for the values you campaigned on, or was that just a trick and you are a blank slate?  Kind of like Robert Redford in the movie the Candidate when he asked after winning the election, “What do we do now?”