US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

Reagan's boy David Stockman, among others, scoffs at Ryan's budget.

On this score, Doug Holtz-Eakin -- a former McCain and George W. Bush economic adviser -- told Huffington Post Ryan's plan is "implausibly optimistic."

The libertarian economist Tyler Cowen wrote up a point-by-point critique of the plan. His principle objections are that the plan doesn't do anything to control health care costs, and cutting Medicaid is neither good policy, nor urgent. Indeed, he notes, "Medicaid should be one of the last parts of the health care budget to cut." Emphasis in the original.

However, Cowen also argues that, by proposing $6 trillion in spending cuts, the main impact of the GOP plan will be to shift the center of the fiscal debate in Washington dramatically to the right. This is already happening.

The question will probably come down to whether lawmakers and the Obama administration have the stomach for a public fight over how to cut popular entitlement programs with unemployment high, and old voters on guard against any major benefits changes.

"It's kind of a pitiful commentary on our state of fiscal malgovernance when you consider the two leaders that we have that are trying to face down this issue," Stockman said. "One of them is so ready to compromise that he folds faster than a lawnchair (that's Obama). And the other is ready to sob at the drop of a hat."

I've only had a couple "corporate" jobs (ie. working for a large corporation - not white collar jobs LOL), but the training in all of them included something about how unions are bad and if you try to unionize you will be fired. I'm pretty sure all the big-box retailers have similar training and policies re: unions.

Yeah my first job was for Walmart and on day one orientation was full of that. Telling you that if anyone mentions unions or anything to let your supervisor know. I'm sure its protected under the first amendment rights of the corporation.

That Ikea story is remarkable.

If I were working poor in America, I wouldn't be waiting for American elites to take care of me. They need to organize themselves: neither the Dems nor the GOP have any collective interest in the conditions of those workers.

Law Professors and legal scholars including Laurence Tribe condemn treatment of accused Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning by Obama Admin. and criticize Obama

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/10/bradley-manning-legal-scholars-letter

well, gabbnebism still reigns supreme among Barry's advisors.

we'll be through this shit again wr2 the debt ceiling in a few months -- what/who will Barry throw overboard then?!?

debt ceiling fight promises to be extra-infuriating because obama could totally play chicken with boehner and win

the paul/bachmann crew have their apocalyptic goldbug fantasies, but the rentier lords who fund the GOP have absolutely zero interest in seeing the USG go into default

clicked eisbaer's link, title in tab was "president obama adopts centrist approach", genuinely assumed onion

I think the center as defined by the MSM is now somewhere beyond Jupiter

My *library* uses the Jackson Lewis law firm as well, which is fucked up.

at the risk of sounding pompous: the one thing i vowed never to do w/ my law degree is to use it to bust labor unions. not only b/c i find it morally repugnant, but b/c i could never look certain of my family members straight in the eyes again.

Obama's staff never informed House Dems of his plans for the Wed. speech. Not only doesn't the WH care about the liberal base, they don't even care about the Dems on Capitol Hill:

When the White House announced on the Sunday talk shows that President Obama would be giving a major speech on the deficit—responding to Rep. Paul Ryan's drastic 2012 budget proposal—it came as news to more than just the viewership of Meet the Press. House Democrats were taken aback by the announcement that Obama would be making a big move to address the deficit this week, according to a House Democratic aide.

Many Congressional Democrats found out about Obama's surprise speech by watching the Sunday shows, as top Obama aide David Plouffe made the rounds to note that the president would lay out a plan for long-term deficit reduction this week. "Plouffe's announcement yesterday morning did leave us scrambling, that's something we're working on right now," the House aide said on Monday.

House Democrats had already been preparing to release their own 2012 budget, under the leadership of Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the budget committee. The House Dems' budget plan had been in the works for weeks, as Van Hollen had been meeting with every major caucus in his party to craft an alternative to the Republicans' plan

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/04/obama-deficit-speech-surprise-house-democrats#

Will Rogers' famous unorganized party

President Adopts a Measured Course to Recapture the Middle

ahh, election season must be coming up *makes drinky-drinky motion*

dailykos has a number of posts on the ludicrous supreme court vote in Wisconsin last week

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/07/964645/-Kathy-Nickolaus-in-Waukesha-forgot-to-saveReally

and this post from the much-quoted 'democrat' who oversaw and confirmed that the vote numbers that Nickolaus had forgotten to save in Microsoft Access on her personal computer:

The reason I offer this explanation is that, with the enormous amount of attention this has received over the weekend, many people are offering my statements at the press conference that “the numbers jibed” as validation they are correct and I can vouch for their accuracy. As I told Kathy when I was called into the room , I am 80 years old and I dont understand anything about computers. I don’t know where the numbers Kathy was showing me ultimately came from, but they seemed to add up.

http://www.orchidforchange.com/parties/waukeshadems.com/ht/display/ArticleDetails/i/1343504

/and this post from the much-quoted 'democrat' who oversaw and confirmed that the vote numbers that Nickolaus had forgotten to save in Microsoft Access on her personal computer added up

In WI, a recount at state-expense is triggered if an election is within .5% if the candidate requests it, and we have a fully verifiable paper trail to audit election results. That means in this election with approximately 740k for Kloppenburg and 739k for Prosser, the vote gets recounted at state-expense if the election is within ~7400 votes.

http://www.recallscottwalker.com/2011/04/why-prosser-needed-exactly-7500-votes/

Not usually a conspiracy theorist, but that magic 7500 number is such a suspicious coincidence that I wouldn't discount shenanigans.

such an infuriating experience to watch Voice Of America TV here in Peru, I saw some hideous woman from "Concerned Women For America" parrot every bit of right wing nonsense that's been mentioned in this thread so far. Then the Democratic "opposition" completely failed to call her on any of her ridiculous lies (such as, I kid you not, "education spending is at an all time high").

This country is doomed.

"education spending is at an all time high"

Hmmm. Well, if you only count spending in terms of unconstant dollars, unadjusted for inflation, and leave out any consideration of per capita spending to account for a growing population, and if you lump in college tuitions, technical schools, commercial driving programs, along with Headstart, preschools and K-12, then she might be able to make this claim stick.

Of course, a lot of that "education spending" is out of pocket private spending, not government spending, but I doubt the far right is that picky about their facts.

From the Department of Shared Sacrifice:

ATM manufacturer Diebold Inc. will receive at least $56 million in state assistance to keep its headquarters in Northeast Ohio

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2011/04/diebold_to_build_100_million_w.html

^Aren't those the same fucktards that made the electronic voting machines that didn't register the correct votes and left no paper trail?

So the Washington Post says Obama is going to endorse some combination of the majority plan from his bipartisan deficit commission(Right-wing Simpson plus corporate blue-dog Dem Bowles) and the Gang of 6 (right-wingers plus moderate and blu-dog Dems) Senate group. Alas, the plan that suggested cutting defense spending and raising taxes is not being considered. I wish there was a way for the House or Senate Progressive Dem caucus to push other ideas and to get some attention from the White House and the media on this.

Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the pathetically disappointing

yes, how dare you expect a Democratic administration to be not-Republican.

i dont really understand at allllllll why obama is getting involved in dumbshit fights over the deficit, not even on a political gamesmanship level

Because the deficit is the only thing that matters! Obama's pollsters told him that (talking about jobs is so passe)

did anyone else learn in Econ 101 in their freshman year that "deficits don't matter," or was I just gettin NYU ivory-tower leftism?

Aren't those the same fucktards that made the electronic voting machines that didn't register the correct votes and left no paper trail?

yes. i think they spun that business off after it all went to hell.

i dont really understand at allllllll why obama is getting involved in dumbshit fights over the deficit, not even on a political gamesmanship level

I guess the underlying logic is:

a. a large majority of people in this country(/world) don't understand the difference between their own household's thrift and government thrift and probably will not understand it by nov 2012
b. that being the case it might be better to look like we're also 'very concerned' about the deficit so that the GOP doesn't get all the retardedly positive press on the issue

(b) is the reason any Dems do anything

this is long forgetten I guess:

O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due." A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.

Actually what he meant is that deficits under Republican administrations don't matter, but if a Dem is in the White House it's the biggest issue in the world.

forgotten

yeah watching O'Neill being interviewed on Frontline was especially enraging. the incontestable fact here is that the cuts did not work as promised. with a tech bubble bust and a dicey military situation brewing in the Middle East, O’Neill argued strongly against the initial cuts. he was promptly let go; the cuts are still in place. what was the economic benefit? Where Are The jobs?

fuck, even some Republicans (e.g. Reagan’s budget chief David Stockman and former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan) have urged lawmakers to let them expire and allow income tax rates to go back up to their levels during the Clinton administration.

Years ago at the apex of the Bush administration's power I had a chat with a customer at the book store: an extraordinarily well read regular whose dad was a economist with a book praised by Gore Vidal. When I complained about the deficit, he said only Washington insiders care. The deficit is unimportant. He was the first one to tell me that capitalist economies must spend more money during a recession to start getting moving again and instill confidence on Wall Street.

and now that wall street's able to finance campaigns again, fuck the rest of us? america!

the deficit is not necessarily unimportant (heya look at japan. we don't want to be that...) it just has to be put in the context of GDP/growth, cause hey, that's how we pay for shit.

the GOP doesn't care or not care about it. they want what they've always wanted (tax cuts for rich people, less government spending on poor people) and if they can use it as an vehicle to get that, hey, sounds good. it's a social issue for them more than an economic issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5kpXhq5nHM&feature=related

Something to lighten the mood

i dont really understand at allllllll why obama is getting involved in dumbshit fights over the deficit, not even on a political gamesmanship level

― ban drake (the rapper) (max), Tuesday, 12 April 2011 14:18 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

misread this as "dubstep fights"

i always wonder if the GOP's left hand knows what the right hand is doing.

as in, they have never had as much success as they'd like rolling back LBJ's work, let alone FDR's (Reagan's 'legacy' notwithstanding). but they've had really great success pushing down taxes over and over again. so it almost looks like a three step process: a) ruin the revenue base by demonizing taxes, b) watch the deficit balloon, c) eventually use deficit anger and default fears to cut what you'd never be able to dismantle outright. (i suppose in the interim d) people whose incomes are primarily interest can get reliable returns on the gov't issued debt)

but that credits them with a generational-length plan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yVLWTsNf_8

tbh if Obama's entire speech isn't a re-enactment of this ^^^ I will be sad

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/12/cnn-poll-trump-tied-for-first-in-gop-horserace/#more-154007
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/12/trump-now-considering-independent-run/

um

excellent!

yeah this can only be a good thing

sadly trump wont even mount a real run as an independent since it would require him to file a financial disclosure

trump/bachmann 2012

please

please

Hey, everyone knows that managing a budget is exactly like running a household budget. That's just common sense.

man, Trump

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Ocean_Resort_Baja_Mexico

Trump has no chance of becoming the nominee; it's his celebrity talking, and the attraction of Obama's citizenship to the extreme right