News digest / Catching up on news (12.06.2014)

I've been way too busy and there's way too much catching up to do, so here's a selection of important stories from the past month. If you read them then you'll know some of what I do:

"Ebola control: the Cuban approach." By Shah Ebrahim, et al, December 6, 2014, The Lancet. URL: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62329-1/fulltext

"Judge Allows Glenn Beck Boston Marathon Defamation Lawsuit To Move Forward." By Kyle Mantyla, December 2, 2014, Right Wing Watch. URL:  http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/judge-allows-glenn-beck-boston-marathon-defamation-lawsuit-move-forward#sthash.Gu8a2LEd.dpuf

"Driessen: Corporate Tax Fate May Hinge on Modeling Omission." By Paul Caron, December 2, 2014, TaxProfBlog. URL: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/12/driessen.html

"Russia Warns Of Recession In 2015 Amid Sanctions And Low Oil Prices." By Nataliya Vasilyeva, December 2, 2014, AP. URL:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/02/russia-recession_n_6255810.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

"Study: Campaign Cash Brings Tax Benefits On Capitol Hill." By Peter Oberby, December 2, 2014, NPR. URL: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2014/12/02/368010428/study-campaign-cash-brings-tax-benefits-on-capitol-hill?sc=tw

"Whites greatly overestimate the share of crimes committed by black people." By Ana Swanson, December 1, 2014, Washington Post. URL:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/01/whites-greatly-overestimate-the-share-of-crimes-committed-by-black-people/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost

"Capital controls feared as Russian rouble collapses." By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, December 1, 2014, The Telegraph. URL:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11266746/Capital-controls-feared-as-Russian-rouble-collapses.html

"Real world contradicts right-wing tax theories." By David Cay Johnston, December 1, 2014, Al Jazeera. URL: http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/12/laffer-curve-taxcutshikeseconomics.html 

"Which past is prologue for Putin’s Russia?" By Hannah Thoburn, November 30, 2014, Reuters. URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/30/idUS318808040420141130

"Let's talk about 'black on black' crime." By Leonard Pitts Jr., November 30, 2014, Miami Herald. URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/11/30/248504/leonard-pitts-jr-lets-talk-about.html 

"In America, black children don’t get to be children." By Stacey Patton, November 26, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-america-black-children-dont-get-to-be-children/2014/11/26/a9e24756-74ee-11e4-a755-e32227229e7b_story.html

"Keynes Is Slowly Winning." By Paul Krugman, November 26, 2014, New York Times. URL: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/26/keynes-is-slowly-winning/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

"Why Interstellar Should Be Taken Seriously -- Very Seriously." By Paul Stefanski, November 26, 2014, Huffington Post. URL:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-stefanski/why-interstellar-should-b_b_6213002.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

"An Open Letter of Apology to the United States of America [about Benghazi]." By Brian Joyce, November 25, 2014, Huffington Post. URL:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-joyce/an-open-letter-of-apology_b_6219340.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

"Should Putin fear the man who ‘pulled the trigger of war’ in Ukraine?" By Lucian Kim, November 25, 2014, Reuters. URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS368525725520141125

"Why America may be set for success." By Fareed Zakaria, November 24, 2014, CNN. URL: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/11/24/why-america-may-be-set-for-success/

"Falling apart: America's neglected infrastructure." By Stefe Kroft, November 23, 2014, CBS News. URL: http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/falling-apart-americas-neglected-infrastructure/

"Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons potential for reassurances it would be defended." By Bennett Ramberg, November 22, 2014, Guelph Mercury. URL: http://www.guelphmercury.com/opinion-story/5151036-ukraine-gave-up-its-nuclear-weapons-potential-for-reassurances-it-would-be-defended/

"Special Report: Crimean savers ask: Where's our money?" By Steve Stecklow, Elizabeth Piper and Oleksandr Akymenko, November 20, 2014, Reuters. URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0J40FJ20141120

"Enough Is Enough: The President's Latest Wall Street Nominee." By Sen. Elizabeth Warren, November 20, 2014, Huffington Post. URL:http://huff.to/1uKQUYB

"Top Obama official: Ky. not ready on new bridge." By Deirdre Shesgreen, November 19, 2014, Cincinnati. URL: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2014/11/19/top-obama-official-ky-ready-new-bridge/19286625/

"Clarke and Dawe - Growth first. Then these other things can be dealt with, whatever they are." ClarkeAndDawe, November 19, 2014, YouTube. URL: http://youtu.be/OTfSZ0D39AI

"Sen. Bernie Sanders On How Democrats Lost White Voters." By Steve Inskeep, November 19, 2014, NPR. URL: http://n.pr/1wUqrVb

"Legal Panel At [Conservative] Federalist Society Begrudgingly Accepts Obama's Immigration Powers." By Sam Stein, November 19, 2014, Huffington Post. URL: http://huff.to/1qVW6DJ

"Stop calling me 'the Ebola nurse'." By Kaci Hickox, November 17, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/43bqe

"US voter turnout is an international embarrassment. Here's how to fix it." By Bernie Sanders, November 10, 2014, Guardian. URL:http://gu.com/p/436mm

"Про що мовчать розумні українці." By Stanislav Bilchenko, November 9, 2014, Ukraininska Pravda. URL: http://www.pravda.com.ua/columns/2014/07/9/7031378/?attempt=1

"Beyond The Unemployment Rate: Look At These 5 Labor Indicators." By Sonari Glinton, November 7, 2014, NPR. URL: http://n.pr/1vVVOyf

"Capitalism Is Making China Richer, But Not Democratic." By Frank Langfitt, November 7, 2014, NPR. URL: http://n.pr/1qtMeAD

"Fewer Babies Are Born Prematurely, But Many Still Suffer." By Nancy Shute, Novebmer 6, 2014, NPR. URL: http://n.pr/1tgMCT4

"Interstellar Travel? Nah! (Part 2)." By Dr. Sten Odenwald, November 5, 2014, Huffington Post. URL: http://huff.to/1qq537W

Being an 'indispensable nation' is killing America

This op-ed is worth re-posting in full.

Never let it be said I'm a partisan hack: I support Borosage's indictment of President Obama's executive overreach in conducting military operations without Congressional approval for war. 

More damning to my mind has been President Obama's failure to articulate to the nation (and Congress) a national security-military doctrine/vision (call it what you will) that makes it clear when he thinks the United States should send its troops into battle, and when we shouldn't. Granted, this may be the most difficult job of any POTUS in an ever-changing world, and with inherited conflicts of past presidents.

Is it because Obama and his team doesn't have the strategic capacity to develop such a vision? Is it because Obaama is too arrogant to articulate it for us, we're just supposed to trust him not to do "stupid shit"? Or, most likely, is it because a timid Obama fears that no matter what he says, it will be parsed and pilloried by Republicans -- who also can't agree among themselves on a foreign policy -- looking to score partisan political points?

Borosage is right to point out that the opportunity cost of U.S. military adventures abroad is investment in piss-poor education and crumbling infrastructure at home. Maybe our government can buy guns and butter... but not forever, not at a sustainable cost. This is where the "fiscally responsible" yet "pro-military" Tea Parties and Republicans have fallen on their faces as an opposition, by refusing to specify just what they are willing to give up to achieve their stated top priority of fiscal balance.

Being the ‘indispensable nation’ is killing American democracy

By Robert L. Borosage

October 20, 2014 | Reuters

America — proudly dubbed the “indispensable nation” by its national-security managers — is now the entangled nation enmeshed in conflicts across the globe.

President Barack Obama, scorned by his Republican critics as an “isolationist” who wants to “withdraw from the world,” is waging the longest war in U.S. history in Afghanistan, boasts of toppling the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya, launches airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against Islamic State and picks targets for drones to attack in as many as eight countries, while dispatching planes to the Russian border in reaction to its machinations in Ukraine, and a fleet to the South China Sea as the conflict over control of islands and waters escalates between China and its neighbors.

The indispensable nation is permanently engaged across the globe. But endless war undermines the Constitution. Democracy requires openness; war justifies secrecy. Democracy forces attention be paid to the common welfare; war demands attention and resources be spent on distant conflicts. Democracy involves forging coalitions to get action in the Congress; war is waged on executive order. The Constitution restrains the executive in times of peace; constitutional strictures are trampled in times of war.

When the founders wrote the Constitution, they worried about the tendency of kings, or presidents, to make war for personal aggrandizement or national glory.  So they gave Congress the power to declare war, intent on “clogging, not facilitating” the rush to war.  For the Republic, peace would be the normal state of affairs. War was a disruption — entered into only with prior debate and consideration by  Congress, the elected body whose members best reflected the attitudes of their constituents.

The United States, in the words of conservative John Quincy Adams, would provide a shining example of liberty as long as “she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

But now the pursuit of monsters to destroy is unrelenting. Almost inevitably, it seems, the restraints of the Constitution are being trampled. With little debate, U.S. leaders have chosen permanent global intervention even at the cost of undermining the Republic.

For the cost of war can be measured in dollars not spent here at home.

An educated citizenry is the foundation of a robust democracy. Yet from the absence of free, full-day pre-K to affordable colleges to advanced training, the United States is skimping on investment in educating its citizens. A modern infrastructure is also essential to a competitive, high-wage economy. But while Washington spends $3 trillion on Iraq, there hasn’t been a serious discussion about bringing America’s aged infrastructure, including our roads, bridges and airports, up to standard — which would cost about the same. 

A bridge to somewhere... now a bridge to nowhere.

Instead of this funding, the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies spend more on their militaries than the rest of the world combined. Washington maintains more than 1,000 bases, called “military sites,” across the globe, plus 11 aircraft-carrier task forces that are essentially moveable bases. U.S. conventional and nuclear forces are unrivaled — yet Washington plans to spend another trillion dollars over the next 30 years modernizing nuclear weapons that the United States aims never to use. U.S. intelligence and covert forces are permanently engaged, often secretly creating the implicit commitments that will force the next intervention.

It is only America, as the president said in a speech announcing his intention to “degrade and ultimately defeat” Islamic State, which he refers to as ISIL, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, that “has the capacity and the will to mobilize the world against terrorism … against Russian aggression … to contain … Ebola and more.”

This president, more than his predecessors, understands the perils of being the “indispensable nation.” Elected in large part to get the United States out of the seemingly endless wars in the Middle East, he now finds himself forced into another open-ended commitment.

In his speech to the National Defense University in 2013, Obama argued, “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’ ” Obama warned specifically about this. “The choice we make about war,” the president said, “can impact —  in sometimes unintended ways — the openness and freedom on which our way of life depends.”

Yet even with this awareness, and no reelection race facing him, Obama could not escape the imperatives of America’s role as the indispensable nation. The commitments are too many,  the engagement too permanent, the capacity unrivalled — seemingly making all things possible.  As a result, this former professor of constitutional law has governed over the greatest assertion of executive authority — claiming the power to make war, to surveil, arrest, detain and even kill Americans without prior judicial review or due process.

Ike warned us about the growing "military-industrial complex" that sought to feed itself at the federal trough.

His Justice Department has used espionage laws against reporters and whistleblowers.  The secrecy shields massive waste, fraud and abuse, as the military-industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against consumes the bulk of the national budget, aside from payments on the national debt and the insurance programs of Social Security and Medicare.

When President George W. Bush was about to launch the war in Iraq, millions of Americans – as well as many people around the globe — marched in protest. The large demonstrations against war led the New York Times to dub world public opinion a second superpower. Bush sought authority from Congress and a dramatic congressional debate took place, with strong dissent against the war.

When Obama committed the United States to the fight against Islamic State, he claimed the authority to act without Congress, though adding he would “welcome” congressional support. Yet with the midterm elections then a few months away, both Republicans and Democrats in Congress chose to postpone the debate and the vote.

The bombing began on presidential order. Americans accepted their role as spectators, registering no significant objection to this presidential war-making.  The indispensable nation is not only spending lives and resources on endless wars abroad, it is shredding its Constitution at home.

Ironically, America’s democracy is still strong enough to render it less than competent as a global policeman. Our military is the finest in the world, but still finds it hard to win a war. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate that while presidents can commit the nation virtually anywhere, Americans sour on long, costly interventions on the other side of the world.

This leads to strategies like “no boots on the ground” — designed not to rouse public opposition but almost certain to fail. Polls show that Americans have no interest in policing the globe. If the Constitution no longer constrains the president from making war, the public still limits his ability to wage it.

News digest / Catching up on news (08.24.2014)

Here's a news roundup from the past few weeks. Sorry I haven't had time to re-post these with the thoughtful and incisive commentary that you've come to expect from me:

"How Isis came to be," By Ali Khadery, August 22, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4xx9z  -- FASCINATING, ESP. CONSIDERING THE U.S. HAS ARMED ISIS TWICE ALREADY

"Obama's legacy could be a revitalized NATO," By Anne Applebaum, August 22, 2014, Washington Post. URL:http://wapo.st/1p27Z8v -- A SCARIER RUSSIA DEMANDS A STRONGER NATO

"New Study Debunks Big Corporations' Tax Inversion Arguments," By Ben Hallman, August 19, 2014, Huffington Post. URL:http://huff.to/1vdX4Ow  -- THE FACTS DON'T SUPPORT INVERSION

"Left out in the cold by the ice bucket fad," By Michael Hiltzik, August 21, 2014, Los Angeles Times. URL:http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/08/21/237217/michael-hiltzik-left-out-in-the.html --  DONATE MONEY; CONSERVE WATER

"US still has time to stake out a position of strength in Ukraine," By John Bolton, August 21, 2014, Los Angeles Times. URL:  http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/08/21/237223/us-still-has-time-to-stake-out.html#storylink=cpy -- USUALLY I DISAGREE WITH 'YOSEMITE SAM' BOLTON, BUT HE'S BASICALLY CORRECT

"Shoddy US roads, bridges take a toll on the economy," By Don Lee, August 17, 2014, Los Angeles Times. URL:http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/08/17/236762/shoddy-us-roads-bridges-take-a.html  -- WHY LIBERALS AND DEMOCRATS CAN'T RUN AND WIN ON THIS SIMPLE FACT IS BEYOND MY UNDERSTANDING

"Among world leaders, the trend for acting like Vladimir Putin is catching on," By Adam Taylor, August 14, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://wapo.st/1mKGRLp  -- JUST TAKE YOUR SHIRT OFF IF YOU WANT TO BE LIKE PUTIN!

"The GOP’s war on voters continues in Virginia," By Editorial Board, August 14, 2014, Washington Post. URL:http://wapo.st/1sHGEjf -- PESKY VOTERS! WISH THEY'D JUST STAY AT HOME!

"The case for free tampons," By Jessica Valenti, August 14, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4vjeg -- IT GENERATED A LOT OF BUZZ ON THE INTERNETS

"City-Run Gas Station Makes Waves In Southeastern Kentucky," By Emil Moffatt, August 13, 2014, NPR. URL:http://www.npr.org/2014/08/13/340085122/city-run-gas-station-makes-waves-in-southeastern-kentucky?sc=17&f=1001&utm_source=iosnewsapp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=app  -- IN A TRULY FREE MARKET GOVERNMENT GETS A CHANCE TO COMPETE WITH PRIVATE GOODS AND SERVICES!

"Economic inequality, not just wages at the bottom, needs to be addressed," By Harold Meyerson, August 13, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://wapo.st/1kCqWmT  -- AMEN BROTHER

"WATCH this to understand the level of Russia’s sickness," August 9, 2014, YouTube. URL: http://youtu.be/EwwBFJkwZ_Q --EVER WONDERED WHAT FASCIST STATE THEATER LOOKS LIKE?  HERE YOU GO

"Teenagers in US prisons: it's time for the savagery and neglect to finally end," By Sadhbh Walshe, August 7, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4vh3h -- OUR COLLECTIVE SHAME

Unemployed don't need job training, they need jobs

Peter Van Buren's view is pretty controversial. Then again, anything that refutes accepted wisdom usually is controversial.

On Van Buren's side though is economics: supply and demand. Giving unemployed people job skills or even training in trades is like working only on the (labor) supply side, while ignoring whether those skills or trades are demanded by employers.

"So the $18 billion question is: If job training is not the answer, what is?" asks Van Buren.

The obvious answers, grounded in tested economics, will make self-styled "free-marketers" uncomfortable [emphasis mine]:

Jobs. Jobs that pay a living wage. The 2008 recession wiped out primarily high- and middle-wage jobs, with the strongestemployment growth in the recovery taking place in low-wage employment, to the point where the United States has the highest number of workers in low-wage jobs of all industrialized nations.

There are many possible paths to better-paying jobs in the United States where consumer spending alone has the power to spark a “virtuous cycle.” That would mean more employment leading to more spending and more demand, followed by more hiring. One kickstarter is simply higher wages in the jobs we do have. For example, recent Department of Labor studies show that the 13 states that raised their minimum wages added jobs (at higher wages of course) at a faster pace than those that did not. On a larger, albeit more contentious scale, are options such as a WPA-like program, changes to tax and import laws to promote domestic manufacturing, infrastructure grants and the like. There’s the $18 billion being spent on job training that could be repurposed for a start.

No matter the path forward, the bottom line remains unchanged: Training does not create jobs. Jobs create the need for training. Anything else is just politics.

Nevertheless, I imagine that Democrats and Republicans wouldn't be willing to give up the promising-sounding idea of jobs training. Therefore my suggestion is for the government to pay for job training only when it is tied to a real job offer at a real company. I mean, first a company must say, "I promise, before the government spends a cent on training, to hire x  number of workers who have mastered a, b and c  skills."  That might work. Then the government would have to hold them to it. 

But I doubt that many companies would go for it; they'd want to retain right of refusal.

$18 billion in job training = lots of trained unemployed people

By Peter Van Buren

July 23, 2014 | Reuters

URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS92508355420140723

Heritage's Mike Lee: What's next for conservatives?

You know me, I'm all about equal time and the Fairness Doctrine, so I'm linking here in full a speech on October 29 by former Senator Mike Lee, the director of the Heritage Foundation.

Very quickly, Lee has taken Heritage from a right-wing think tank to an activist wing of the Tea Party; and many on the Right call Lee the leader of the Tea Party movement.  He very much positions himself as outside the "Republican establishment," whatever that is. 

(Everybody except John Boehner and Mitch McConnell? I guess "outside the establishment" is what you call yourself instead of "outside the Beltway" when you're actually located inside the Beltway, like Heritage is.)

Just a few interesting lines I'd like to point out that sound OK on the surface, until you get to the ideas part. Such as:

It’s hard to believe, but by the time we reach November 2016, we will be about as far – chronologically speaking – from Reagan’s election as Reagan’s election was from D-Day! Yet as the decades pass and a new generation of Americans faces a new generation of problems, the party establishment clings to its 1970s agenda like a security blanket.

The result is that to many Americans today, especially to the underprivileged and middle class, or those who have come of age or immigrated since Reagan left office the Republican Party may not seem to have much of a relevant reform message at all.

This is the reason the G.O.P. can seem so out of touch. And it is also the reason we find ourselves in such internal disarray.

And here's Lee's guidepost:

Where do we begin? A generation ago, conservatives forged an agenda to meet the great challenges facing Americans in the late 1970s: inflation, poor growth, Soviet aggression,along with a dispiriting pessimism about the future of the nation and their own families.

I submit that the great challenge of our generation is America’s growing crisis of stagnation and sclerosis – a crisis that comes down to a shortage of opportunities.

This opportunity crisis presents itself in three principal ways: immobility among the poor, trapped in poverty; insecurity in the middle class, where families just can’t seem to get ahead; and cronyist privilege at the top, where political and economic elites unfairly profit at everyone else’s expense.

OK, so far, so good. Sounds like good 'ole liberal rhetoric, I'm liking it.

Lee goes on to talk about breaking up corrupt cronyism of business and government elites, of backing the "little guy" again, and helping the middle class with one of its biggest expenses: health care.  (Lee supports "a comprehensive health reform plan proposed by Representatives Steve Scalise and Phil Roe" that I'm sure you all heard about when it was rolled out in September...?) 

Lee says there are, "[F]our leading challenges facing middle-class families today: the cost of raising children; the difficulties of work-life balance; the time Americans lose away from work and home, stuck in traffic; and the rising costs of and restricted access to quality higher education."  

OK, maybe those aren't America's top four problems, but they're definitely up there, so I'm liking the rhetoric.

He says the Republicans have proposed legislation to address these four challenges.  Now we get into the problems....

To address the cost of raising children -- about $300,000 per child, cites Lee -- he proposes (yep, you guessed it), a tax cut for the middle class.  Yet more right-wing social engineering through the tax system.  I'm against trying to do policy through the tax code.  That's what our tax code is so darn complicated.  Moreover, what's to say the right won't turn around and call these same middle-class families "moochers" and part of the "47 percent" that doesn't pay net income tax?  

Anyhow, Mike Lee says the middle class should keep more of its own money, "not give parents more of other people's money."  That's just dandy, but the median U.S. income is $25,000. Double that and a two-income family with two children would owe only about $500 in income tax anyway.  So what good would a $5,000 tax cut do them?

Mike Lee has the answer: a $2,500 per-child tax credit that can offset income and payroll taxes.  Now he's talking about taking the 47 percent of moochers and exempting them from the only taxes they do pay, Social Security and Medicare.  What about our yawning deficits? What about, "You should pay taxes if you want to participate in our democracy"? No answer. It's just more conservative voodoo economics: cut everybody's taxes, then cry about deficits. And then call the middle-class beneficiaries of this tax system a bunch of moochers.

Next, Lee proposes old-school liberal policies: mandatory flex-time for working parents; and more investment in infrastructure and mass transit, so that people don't spend so much time in traffic.  Fine!  Great!  Welcome to the Democratic Party.  

But there's always a "but."  Mike Lee proposes to to build new highways and mass transit... but by cutting taxes (you knew that had to be part of it!) and shifting responsibility for infrastructure projects to the states.  That's not a solution; that's passing the buck. That's magical thinking.

Finally, Lee proposes opening up the accreditation system for higher education and vocational training. This is a pretty complicated subject and I won't go into it now, except to say that accreditation for alternative forms of education like apprenticeships and e-learning matters because only accredited institutions are eligible to participate in federal student loan programs. In other words, Lee wants to allow more educational-training providers to benefit from federally subsidized student loans. This could be good or bad -- bad if it ends up as a federal subsidy for businesses to provide training to their employees, which would not really be the intention.

Lee concludes in very un-Tea Party-like fashion [emphasis mine]:

Especially in the wake of recent controversies, many conservatives are more frustrated with the establishment than ever before. And we have every reason to be. But however  justified, frustration is not a platform. Anger is not an agenda. And outrage, as a habit, is not even conservative. Outrage, resentment, and intolerance are gargoyles of the Left. For us, optimism is not just a message – it’s a principle. American conservatism, at its core, is about gratitude, and cooperation, and trust, and above all hope. It is also about inclusion. [Ha! -- That made me LOL. -- J]  Successful political movements are about identifying converts, not heretics.

But anger sure can pack a town hall meeting!  A message of exclusion -- of welfare-mooching minorities, gate-crashing illegals, and culture-subverting gays and intellectuals -- sure turns 'em out at the polls!  Indeed, Lee's message here is not hopeful -- it's hypocritical and delusional. Anger and fear are the real drivers of today's Republican Party, not optimism.

Interestingly, in a recent highly quoted interview about politics, English comedian Russell Brand quoted the same phrase: that the Left's problem is that it is always looking for heretics -- those who are not pure enough -- while the Right is looking for allies. That may be true of Britain, but the opposite is true in the U.S. right now. The Tea Party is on a perpetual RINO hunt; whereas Democrats are too embarrassed to even call themselves "liberal" anymore; they're grateful to let any politician put a [D] behind his name, even he's a Republican by 1991 standards.

Reich: Giving up our public goods

Reich is right, even liberals are too shy anymore to mention public goods and the general welfare:  

Not even Democrats still use the phrase "the public good." Public goods are now, at best, "public investments." Public institutions have morphed into "public-private partnerships" or, for Republicans, simply "vouchers."

Outside of defense, domestic discretionary spending is down sharply as a percent of the economy. Add in declines in state and local spending, and total public spending on education, infrastructure and basic research has dropped dramatically over the past five years as a portion of GDP.

America has, though, created a whopping entitlement for the biggest Wall Street banks and their top executives -- who, unlike most of the rest of us, are no longer allowed to fail. They can also borrow from the Fed at almost no cost, then lend out the money at 3 percent to 6 percent.

All told, Wall Street's entitlement is the biggest offered by the federal government, even though it doesn't show up in the budget. And it's not even a public good. It's just private gain.

We're losing public goods available to all, supported by the tax payments of all and especially the better-off. In its place we have private goods available to the very rich, supported by the rest of us.

There's a class war going on alright, and the super rich and the TBTF banks are winning it.

Private Gain to a Few Trumps Public Good for the Many

By Robert Reich

August 24, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1f5iuUo

Ryan family fortune from gov't railroad, highway projects

Looks like Payl Ryan is in good company with those Tea Party masterminds, the evil Koch Bros., whose family fortune came from contracts with Stalin to build up the USSR's oil infrastructure.

(Now let's see whether the lib'rul media runs with this story on Ryan's hypocrisy, or just buries it....).

Ryan Family Fortune Built on Public Works Projects That Romney Campaign Mocks

Paul Ryan is a living, breathing GOP example of how public infrastructure and private entrepreneurship work hand-in-hand.

August 15, 2012 | Salon

URL:  http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/ryan-family-fortune-built-public-works-projects-romney-campaign-mocks

Goodman: EU, US crises are avoidable, fixable

Euro Crisis Inspires Fresh Worries Of Threats To Global Economy

By Peter S. Goodman

April 18, 2012 | Huffington Post

Europe's economy is like a patient stuck in a hospital run by quack doctors who see sickness as a form of moral failing, and leeches as the preferable cure. The only hope now is that Europe either manages a miraculous recovery or develops a case of something so inarguably lethal that real doctors come running with effective medicine.

Will Europe and its beleaguered currency, the euro, get out of this crisis in one piece? That question is commanding renewed attention as financial markets demand higher rates of interest on loans to the debt-saturated nations at the center of concern, Spain and Italy, thus elevating the prospect that their governments might eventually default. Maybe the euro will endure, and maybe it won't. In any event, Europe seems irretrievably bound for years of retrenchment, diminished living standards and social strife.

"We're going into a long period of stagnation in Europe, with terrible problems that will emerge as a result," declared the former Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, speaking Tuesday at Brown University during a conference on the future of the euro, a proceeding that felt much like an autopsy on a body that never should have been born.

"The crisis found us unprepared," said former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. "How to get out of this? It will be extremely difficult."

Continued anxiety about the fate of the euro is bad news not just for Europe, but for the globe as a whole -- and not least for the United States, whose tenuous recovery from the Great Recession is feeling increasingly vulnerable. Europe constitutes the world's largest marketplace. When its people and companies are hunkered down, unable to spend and invest, the consequences ripple everywhere, including to the American factory floor, where a slowing of production is amplifying broader economic worries.

But here's the most frustrating part of Europe's unrelenting crisis and the drag it is imposing on multiple shores:  It is both self-inflicted and fixable.

The mantra at Tuesday's conference, held by the Watson Institute for International Studies, was that Europe's problems are not financial in nature, but essentially political.  If the members of the eurozone could simply agree to arm their impotent central bank with the authority to sell bonds backed by the full faith and credit of member countries, the crisis would ease.  The central bank could backstop the weakest countries in the eurozone and soothe financial markets now fretting over potential sovereign default scenarios. Borrowing costs would come back down, making it easier for the most indebted eurozone member nations to pay their bills.

This, unfortunately, is much like saying that America's economic problems can be easily fixed (which happens to be correct), so long as you ignore the political reality.   If Americans could merely agree to lift our tax rates back to the level of the Reagan years, invest the resulting revenues in productive pursuits like education and infrastructure, and then squeeze some savings out of a health care system designed primarily to succor oligopolistic insurance companies, our debt problems would disappear.  All true -- and all as politically achievable as forcing Americans to embrace a strict vegan diet.

In Europe's case, the impediments to a proper economic solution stem from the peculiar structure of the eurozone, a currency union without an accompanying political union. Seventeen individual states all share the same money, but still chart their own budgetary courses. In the first decade of the euro, which began trading in 1999, financial markets acted as if the shared currency rendered equivalent the risks of lending to Germany and Greece.  The currency masked the fundamental differences that distinguished the fiscal soundness of individual member states, giving less-disciplined governments access to too much credit.

"It was an accident waiting to happen," said Prodi.

Now that the accident is here, with Mediterranean states confronting untenable debts, a lack of political concurrence is preventing the obvious solution: a real central bank that can print euros by issuing bonds backed by all members.

Germany refuses to entertain this idea, disgusted by the prospect of putting its credit on the line for the sake of aiding weaker eurozone member states. This stance is built on a peculiarly German terror of possible inflation -- an outcome that would be wonderful compared to the current alternatives -- and a moralistic desire to punish the profligate. In the conversation that rules Berlin, hard-working, thrifty Germans cannot be expected to finance endless revelry for free-spending Spaniards, Greeks, Portuguese and Italians.

This central notion is responsible for the austerity that Germany has imposed on member states as a condition of the myriad eurozone bailouts that have so far prevented collapse. But this is where we get back to the leeches: Austerity also ensures that Europe cannot grow robustly, enhancing the debt burdens of weaker states.

"Europe is prescribing a medicine that makes the disease worse," Gusenbauer said.

This is now so apparent that even the International Monetary Fund -- traditionally a stalwart advocate of austerity in the face of budget crises, from Indonesia to Argentina -- now warns that Europe has gone too far.

Moreover, austerity imposed as moral curative misses the origins of the crisis.  Most of the debtor governments ensnared in the euro mess were not living beyond their means before the crisis.  They are now facing impossible debt burdens because they bailed out private banks that lent recklessly. The German refusal to allow euro bonds and the prevailing wave of fiscal austerity is sticking ordinary Europeans with the costs of addressing the sins of wayward banks.

Greece has come to encapsulate the whole euro story in the conventional narrative, but this is bogus. Greece is the only case in which profligacy explains the mess.  The Greeks wasted their money on unbridled government spending, corruption and tax avoidance. The rest of the eurozone landed in peril only after the red ink of private banks washed up on public balance sheets. Indeed, Ireland had much smaller debts than Germany as a percentage of its overall economy before the government rescued the banking system.  So did Spain.

In the United States, a similarly phony morality play is at work as elites wander around sagely discussing the need for the populace to commence living within its means.  American leaders cite fiscal distress as they dismantle many of the institutions that serve regular people, from community colleges to the social safety net.  But we did not get into hock by bingeing on classrooms and food stamps.  We got here via extravagant tax cuts for the wealthiest people and disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, in the logic of the moment, the people who rely upon unemployment checks are going to have to pay to square the books.

In the United States, austerity is nothing more than the product of political dysfunction, an inability among people in Washington to acknowledge simple arithmetic: We need to raise taxes to pay for basic government services.

In Europe, austerity may be the sacrifice required to enable Germans to make peace with transferring some of their prodigious wealth to less-affluent neighbors.

If this is the price established by the political marketplace, it may be better than the status quo -- a long slide toward sovereign default big enough to bring down the euro and usher in another global financial crisis. Yet it is also madness, as if the patient neglected by the hospital is best served by chopping off a finger or two to ensure that the doctors finally see his case as requiring emergency intervention.

Stiglitz: Jobs attainable, require political will

From my favorite bearded liberal Nobel economist.

How to put America back to work

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

September 7, 2011 | Politico

The country is — or should be — focused on jobs. Some 25 million Americans who want a full-time job can't get one. The youth unemployment rate is as much as twice that of the already unacceptable national average.

America has always thought of itself as a land of opportunity — but where is the opportunity for our youngsters who face such bleak prospects? Historically, those who lose their jobs quickly got another, but an increasingly large fraction of the unemployed — now more than 40 percent — have been out of work for more than six months.

President Barack Obama will deliver an address Thursday outlining his vision of what can be done. Others should be doing the same.

Around the country there is growing pessimism. The rhetoric will be fine. But is there anything that anyone can really do — given the country's looming debt and deficit?

The answer from economics is: There is plenty we can do to create jobs and promote growth.

There are policies that can do this and, over the intermediate to long term, lower the ratio of debt to gross domestic product. There are even things that, if less effective in creating jobs, could also protect the deficit in the short run.

But whether politics allows us to do what we can — and should — do is another matter.

The pessimism is understandable. Monetary policy, one of the main instruments for managing the macro-economy, has proved ineffective — and will likely continue to be. It's a delusion to think it can get us out of the mess it helped create. We need to admit it to ourselves.

Meanwhile, the large deficits and national debt apparently preclude the use of fiscal policy. Or so it is claimed. And there is no consensus on which fiscal policy might work.

Are we doomed to an extended period of Japanese-style malaise — until the excess leverage and real capacity works its way out? The answer, I have suggested, is a resounding "no." More accurately: This outcome is not inevitable.

First, we must dispose two myths. One is that reducing the deficit will restore the economy. You don't create jobs and growth by firing workers and cutting spending. The reason that firms with access to capital are not investing and hiring is that there is insufficient demand for their products. Weakening demand — what austerity means — only discourages investment and hiring.

As Paul Krugman emphasizes, there is no "confidence fairy" that magically inspires investors once they see the deficit go down. We've tried that experiment — over and over. Using the austerity formula, then-President Herbert Hoover converted the stock market crash into the Great Depression. I saw firsthand how the International Monetary Fund's imposed austerity on East Asian countries converted downturns into recessions and recessions into depressions.

I don't understand why, with such strong evidence, any country would impose this on itself. Even the IMF now recognizes you need fiscal support.

The second myth is that the stimulus didn't work. The purported evidence for this belief is simple: Unemployment peaked at 10 percent — and is still more than 9 percent. (More accurate measures put the number far higher.) The administration had announced, however, that with the stimulus, it would reach only 8 percent.

The administration did make one big error, which I pointed out in my book "Freefall" — it vastly underestimated the severity of the crisis it inherited.

Without the stimulus, however, unemployment would have peaked at more than 12 percent. There is no doubt that the stimulus could have been better designed. But it did bring unemployment down significantly from what it otherwise would have been. The stimulus worked. It was just not big enough, and it didn't last long enough: The administration underestimated the crisis's durability as well as its depth.

Thinking about the deficit, we need to reflect back 10 years, when the country had such a large surplus at 2 percent of GDP that the Federal Reserve Bank chairman worried we would soon pay off the entire national debt — making the conduct of monetary policy difficult. Knowing how we went from that situation to this helps us think through how to solve the deficit problem.

There have been four major changes: First, tax cuts beyond the country's ability to afford. Second, two costly wars and soaring military expenditures — contributing roughly $2.5 trillion to our debt. Third, Medicare Part D — and the provision restricting government, the largest drug buyer, from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars over 10 years. Fourth, the recession.

Reversing these four policies would quickly put the country on the road of fiscal responsibility. The single most important thing, however, is putting America back to work: Higher incomes mean higher tax revenues.

But how do we get America back to work now? The best way is to use this opportunity — with remarkably low long-term interest rates — to make long-term investments that America so badly needs in infrastructure, technology and education.

We should focus on investments that both yield high returns and are labor intensive. These complement private investments — they increase private returns and so simultaneously encourage the private sector.

Helping states pay for education would also quickly save thousands of jobs. It makes no sense for a rich country, which recognizes education's importance, to be laying off teachers — especially when global competition is so fierce. Countries with a better educated labor force will do better. Moreover, education and job training are essential if we are to restructure our economy for the 21st century.

The advantage of having underinvested in the public sector for so long is that we have many high-return opportunities. The increased output in the short run and increased growth in the long run can generate more than enough tax revenues to pay the low interest on the debt. The result is that our debt will decrease, our GDP will increase and the debt to GDP ratio will improve.

No analyst would ever look at just a firm's debt — he would examine both sides of the balance sheet, assets and liabilities. What I am urging is that we do the same for the U.S. government — and get over deficit fetishism.

If we can't, there is another, not as powerful but still very effective, way of creating jobs. Economists have long seen that simultaneously increasing expenditures and taxes in a balanced way increases GDP. The amount that GDP is increased for every dollar of increased taxes and spending is called the "balanced-budget multiplier."

With well-designed tax increases — focused on upper-income Americans, corporations that aren't investing in America or closing tax loopholes — and smart expenditure programs that are focused on investments, the multiplier is between 2 and 3.

This means asking the upper 1 percent of our country, who now garner some 25 percent of all U.S. income, to pay a little more in taxes — or just pay their fair share. Investing this could have a significant effect on output and employment. And because the economy would grow more in the future, again, the debt to GDP ratio would come down.

There are some taxes that could actually improve the efficiency of the economy and the quality of life, with an even bigger effect on national output, if we correctly measure output. I chaired an International Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, which identified large flaws in our current system of measurement.

There is a basic principle in economics: It is better to tax bad things that generate negative externalities than good things. The implication is that we should tax pollution or destabilizing financial transactions. There are also other ways of raising revenues — better auctions of our country's natural resources, for example.

If, for some reason, such revenue enhancements are ruled out — and there is no good economic reason why they should be — there is still room to maneuver. The government can change the design of tax and expenditure programs — even within the current budget envelope.

Increasing taxes at the top, for example, and lowering taxes at the bottom will lead to more consumption spending. Increasing taxes on corporations that don't invest in America and lowering them on those that do would encourage more investment. The multiplier — the amount GDP increases per dollar spent — for spending on foreign wars, for example, is far lower than education, so shifting money here stimulates the economy.

There are things we can do beyond the budget. The government should have some influence over the banks, particularly given the enormous debt they owe us for their rescue. Carrots and sticks can encourage more lending to small- and medium-sized businesses and to restructure more mortgages. It is inexcusable that we have done so little to help homeowners, and as long as the foreclosures continue apace, the real estate market will continue to be weak.

The banks' anti-competitive credit card practices also essentially impose a tax on every transaction — but it is a tax with revenues that go to fill the banks' coffers, not for any public purpose — including lowering the national debt. Stronger enforcement of antitrust laws against the banks would also be a boon to many small businesses.

In short, we are not out of ammunition. Our predicament is not a matter of economics. Theory and experience show that our arsenal is still strong. Of course, the deficit and debt do limit what we can do. But even within these confines, we can create jobs and expand the economy — and simultaneously bring down the debt to GDP ratio.

It is simply a matter of politics: whether we choose to take the steps we need to take to restore our economy to prosperity.

Separating economic myth from reality

This analysis is worth reading in detail, but let me summarize:

1) Taxes have been going down and down, not up and up, historically speaking.

2) The stimulus did work -- as far as it was funded.

3) The stimulus was too small -- but not as small as we think, considering Obama's payroll tax cut (which was not part of the stimulus, so ProPublica is muddling things here.)

4) I'll quote this one verbatim since yous guys needs to understand it:

The stimulus was all projects.

Nope. The Recovery Act as passed was estimated to cost about $787 billion. More than a third of that was tax cuts, and another third was entitlements, such as unemployment benefits and Medicaid assistance. Of the $275 billion in spending by federal agencies, less than $200 billion was dedicated to projects.

The projected cost of the Recovery Act is now $830 billion, largely because of the qualification of more people qualifying for entitlements and the popularity of some tax credits.

5) The stimulus will have a lasting legacy.

6) The stimulus, being a combination of tax cuts, direct aid to states' budgets, and projects, has not been rife with waste, fraud, and abuse as alleged.

7) Infrastructure spending is important, but not all-important. (Duh.)

Economic Myths: We Separate Fact From Fiction

By Michael Grabell

August 18, 2011 | ProPublica

URL: http://www.propublica.org/article/economic-myths-we-separate-fact-from-fiction

Bigwigs say rebuild U.S. transport infrastructure

Building America's Future, an organization chaired by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gov. Ed Rendel, is calling for $2 trillion in gov't investments in transportation infrastructure to maintain U.S. competitiveness, attractiveness for investment, and economic growth.

BAF wants policymakers to invest $200 billion a year in infrastructure for the next 10 years, which could create almost 5 million jobs. (And we can take all the good jobs we can get after Dubya's Great Recession wiped out more than 7 million jobs!)

They propose to pay for it partially by raising gasoline taxes. "Largely run on gasoline, our transportation system is environmentally, politically, and economically unsustainable," states the report.

Indeed, cash-strapped American spend more money on transportation than they do on food. For no good reason.

Here, here! Long live the Era of Big Government!

Falling Apart and Falling Behind

Transportation Infrastructure Report 2011

By Building America's Future

August 8, 2011

URL: http://www.bafuture.org/report

Krugman: America's reverse development

America certainly looks like a declining empire that's crumbling at home as we maintain garrisons in hundreds of bases abroad.

Zero-deficit state governments are shedding workers, reducing hours, closing offices, and cutting vital services. Government is shrinking, not growing.

Meanwhile, corporate profits have soared 41 percent since the end of 2008. Indeed, corporate profits are now 5.7 percent higher than when the recession began, compared with 5.9 percent fewer jobs. And year-on-year wage and salary increases for non-government employees are expected to stay around the record low of 1.4 percent in 2009. Meanwhile, according to Fortune, in 2009, the Fortune 500 increased their earnings 335 percent to $391 billion, a "$301 billion jump that's the second largest in the list's 56-year history." Likewise for the S&P 500 companies that have reported second-quarter results, more than 10 pecent had higher profits on lower sales, nearly twice the number in a typical quarter before the recession, reported NY Times/Reuters. Profit margins bottomed out at 5.9 percent in 2009 and are expected to hit 8.9 percent by 2011.

How did they do it? By cutting jobs and capacity, increasing hours, and replacing people with machines. In 2009 average unit labor costs actually fell by 4.6 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Yep, many U.S. businesses are doing just fine -- without workers. Non-financial companies in the S&P 500 have a record $837 billion in cash. As USA Today noted, "That's enough to pay 2.4 million people $70,000-a-year salaries for five years. For context, 2.2 million to 2.8 million jobs were saved or created by the $862 billion stimulus that President Obama signed into law in February 2009."


America Goes Dark
By Paul Krugman
August 8, 2010 | New York Times

The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

And a nation that once prized education — that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children — is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.

We're told that we have no choice, that basic government functions — essential services that have been provided for generations — are no longer affordable. And it's true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn't be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases.

And the federal government, which can sell inflation-protected long-term bonds at an interest rate of only 1.04 percent, isn't cash-strapped at all. It could and should be offering aid to local governments, to protect the future of our infrastructure and our children.

But Washington is providing only a trickle of help, and even that grudgingly. We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and "centrist" Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade.

In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation's foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they're choosing the latter.

It's a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.

In the short run, those state and local cutbacks are a major drag on the economy, perpetuating devastatingly high unemployment.

It's crucial to keep state and local government in mind when you hear people ranting about runaway government spending under President Obama. Yes, the federal government is spending more, although not as much as you might think. But state and local governments are cutting back. And if you add them together, it turns out that the only big spending increases have been in safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, which have soared in cost thanks to the severity of the slump.

That is, for all the talk of a failed stimulus, if you look at government spending as a whole you see hardly any stimulus at all. And with federal spending now trailing off, while big state and local cutbacks continue, we're going into reverse.

But isn't keeping taxes for the affluent low also a form of stimulus? Not so you'd notice. When we save a schoolteacher's job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there's a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.

And what about the economy's future? Everything we know about economic growth says that a well-educated population and high-quality infrastructure are crucial. Emerging nations are making huge efforts to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America we're going backward.

How did we get to this point? It's the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can't do anything right.

The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud — to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we're seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.

So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we've taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.