Author: Matt Browner Hamlin

http://holdfastblog.com

Dick

In Morning Money this morning, Politico’s Ben White called out President Obama for being mean to big business yesterday in his news conference:

HEAD SHAKER: BIZ BASHING RHETORIC RETURNS – Fairly or not, corporate America continues to disdain the Obama administration following two huge regulatory bills (health care reform and Dodd-Frank) that will increase compliance costs and, in the case of banks, make doing business significantly more difficult. So it seemed odd to hear the President-who is regularly said to be mending fences with the corporate world-lapse back into business-bashing rhetoric at his press conference.

From the presser: “Keep in mind that the business community is always complaining about regulations. When unemployment is at 3 percent and they’re making record profits, they’re going to still complain about regulations because, frankly, they want to be able to do whatever they think is going to maximize their profits.”

It’s certainly fine to think these things and there is undoubtedly truth to them. And maybe it SHOULD be a lot harder for banks to do business. But at time when the President desperately needs companies to start hiring, going out in public and calling corporate executives a bunch of amoral whiners is not going to help and is only going to reinforce the already widely held belief that the President simply does not believe in or trust the profit motive. [Emphasis added]

Shortly after, Mark Halperin went on Morning Joe and explicitly called the President a dick, saying “I thought he was a dick yesterday.” It’s not clear if that’s because the President was mean to big business or mean to Republicans, but clearly Halperin didn’t like having his pals fee fees hurt.

Halperin has already been suspended indefinitely as an analyst by MSNBC, though I assume indefinitely will mean longer than one week but less than two months.

I tend to agree with BooMan and Atrios, as Halperin accurately revealed his viewpoint, which is normally hidden from view. Halperin’s world is ruled by Matt Drudge and he has a strongly Republican viewpoint, which is reflected by his lousy reporting.

They won’t be rewarded

What Atrios said:

One infuriating thing about this is the apparent belief by many politicians that voters will reward them for making the economy even worse.

I know that, generally speaking, the deficit is something that polls around 3rd to 5th highest in priorities about what voters care about. That’s not nothing. But considering jobs and the economy usually poll number 1, it’s hard to imagine any voters rewarding the politicians who craft deals behind closed doors which cut social services, don’t make the rich share in national sacrifice, don’t create jobs and generally hurt the economy. Whoever is seen as most responsible for austerity, for wrecking the economy and for failing to create jobs will be voted out of office, even if their opponent is a ham sandwich. Considering the Republican presidential primary is effectively a field of ham sandwiches, President Obama should be scared.

That’s not a compromise

Ben White of Politico’s Morning Money points out a piece by Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post where he calls for both Republicans and Democrats to suck it up and accept outcomes they don’t like around the debt ceiling and reducing the deficit. Robinson:

Democrats are right that this is a terrible moment for spending cuts. Republicans are right that this is an awful moment for tax increases. The only reasonable thing to do is kick the can down the road – but in a purposeful, intelligent way. … Republicans must swallow an increase in the debt ceiling, and Democrats must accept painful spending curbs that kick in when the economy is off its sickbed. It means conservatives have to be patient in bringing expenditures down and progressives have to be patient in returning tax rates – even for the wealthy – to what many of us consider appropriate levels.” [Emphasis added]

Eugene, that is not a compromise. There are two areas of debate here – the first is if we should raise the debt ceiling and if so, by how much. The second is what should the federal government do to reduce the budget deficit. The GOP has sought to tie these together and by all accounts has been completely successful. But as long as the sober outcome and outcome demanded by Wall Street happen to be raising the debt ceiling, it’s hard for me to think about this as truly paired in the way the GOP is trying to get this done.

In that light, Robinson’s proposal is not a compromise any Democrat should think about accepting. If Democrats have to concede that Republicans will not allow a tax hike on the rich to close the deficit gap, then the appropriate Republican compromise would be that they would not get to cut spending on social programs to close the deficit gap. Or to put it differently, we just raise the debt ceiling now and deal with the deficit afterwards! Republicans accepting raising the debt ceiling isn’t a compromise, it’s an economic necessity and it must be treated as such, otherwise the GOP will get what they want and be allowed to hold a gun to the US economy and say, “Cut Medicare or the economy gets it!”

I don’t know why the administration and congressional Democratic leadership aren’t out there making the case that there must be a clean debt ceiling vote, that they will fight for raising it, and then we can deal with the deficit. That would be a sober way to kick the can down the road. Instead we’re having a debate with a Polish hostage and it isn’t going well for the rest of us.

Kill the social safety net & let the unemployed sort it out

Back when the austerity (I mean, fiscal responsibility) debate was starting, it was pointed out that the United Kingdom went with a 2:1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases. The result has been disastrous for the UK economy and painful to working people there.

When President Obama kicked off his push, he proposed a 3:1 cuts to revenue plan:

Balance Between Spending Cuts and Tax Reform: The President’s framework would seek a balanced approach to bringing down our deficit, with three dollars of spending cuts and interest savings for every one dollar from tax reform that contributes to deficit reduction. This is consistent with the bipartisan Fiscal Commission’s approach.

Amazingly with the GOP walking away from talks, we now find out that a devastating 5:1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases was not good enough for them. Ezra Klein reports:

A bit more information has trickled out over the last few days detailing the exact state of the budget negotiations when they collapsed. Both sides, as they often said, were shooting for about $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. They’d already agreed on around $1 trillion in spending cuts and were making good progress on the rest of it. But Democrats insisted that $400 billion — so, 17 percent — of the package be tax increases. And that’s when Republicans walked.

This is bat shit insane. I hope someone on the Democratic side is pointing it out…

Gore

Al Gore has an impressively argued 7,000 word essay in Rolling Stone this week about climate change. He touches on other issues as well, namely the systemic problem we have in America of confronting lies and distinguishing them from fact. He writes:

In the same way, because the banks had their way with Congress when it came to gambling on unregulated derivatives and recklessly endangering credit markets with subprime mortgages, we still have almost double-digit unemployment, historic deficits, Greece and possibly other European countries teetering on the edge of default, and the threat of a double-dip recession. Even the potential default of the United States of America is now being treated by many politicians and too many in the media as yet another phony wrestling match, a political game. Are the potential economic consequences of a U.S. default “real”? Of course they are! Have we gone completely nuts?

We haven’t gone nuts — but the “conversation of democracy” has become so deeply dysfunctional that our ability to make intelligent collective decisions has been seriously impaired. Throughout American history, we relied on the vibrancy of our public square — and the quality of our democratic discourse — to make better decisions than most nations in the history of the world. But we are now routinely making really bad decisions that completely ignore the best available evidence of what is true and what is false. When the distinction between truth and falsehood is systematically attacked without shame or consequence — when a great nation makes crucially important decisions on the basis of completely false information that is no longer adequately filtered through the fact-checking function of a healthy and honest public discussion — the public interest is severely damaged.

Gore also refuses to pull punches on President Obama’s performance on climate change:

But in spite of these and other achievements, President Obama has thus far failed to use the bully pulpit to make the case for bold action on climate change. After successfully passing his green stimulus package, he did nothing to defend it when Congress decimated its funding. After the House passed cap and trade, he did little to make passage in the Senate a priority. Senate advocates — including one Republican — felt abandoned when the president made concessions to oil and coal companies without asking for anything in return. He has also called for a massive expansion of oil drilling in the United States, apparently in an effort to defuse criticism from those who argue speciously that “drill, baby, drill” is the answer to our growing dependence on foreign oil.
…
Yet without presidential leadership that focuses intensely on making the public aware of the reality we face, nothing will change. The real power of any president, as Richard Neustadt wrote, is “the power to persuade.” Yet President Obama has never presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis. He has simply not made the case for action. He has not defended the science against the ongoing, withering and dishonest attacks. Nor has he provided a presidential venue for the scientific community — including our own National Academy — to bring the reality of the science before the public.

I think that like labor law reform, immigration reform, gay rights and restoring the Constitution, the president is just content to not put political capital behind getting liberal things done, especially after the drawn out healthcare debacle. Obviously this is not a course of action that I support.

Los Indignados in Segovia

Last night I visited the town of Segovia, about an hour and a half outside of Madrid. The town square sits in the shadow of a stunningly preserved 2,000 year old Roman aquaduct (the Romans built Big Things). As in Madrid, a collection of young people – Los Indignados – were camped out in the town square, protesting for accountability in the government, job creation for the young and unemployed, and an end to selling their future to banksters and multi-national corporations. Here are two of the big signs I saw, with translations:

Translation:

Thank you for waking us up. We want you to fall.

Los Indignados Segovia
Translation:

Manifesto Segovia:
We are outraged (indignant) citizens without face, without political identity, that are showing as a spontaneous peaceful and necessary movement. This reaction begins as an answer to this country’s social situation within the global crisis.

We demand:

    – A reform of electoral law that allows equality in the weight of the votes because current law doesn’t represent real democracy.
    – A realization of fundamental rights of work, home, education and health.
    – Separation of powers: executive, legislative and judicial
    – To make it easier for citizens to participate in politics and transparency in public administration

Translations in this post have been slightly updated for more natural English

What Duncan Said

What Duncan Black said:

If the European Central Bank is worried that some of its banksters might miss a happy hour or two if Greece defaults, they can print up a bunch of free money for their bankster pals and call it a day. Instead they’re trying to inflict mass suffering on the people of Greece, with the enthusiastic cooperation of Greek leaders.

Awful people run the world.

“Tough choices” really just is a synonym for elites are going to steal your money and make you suffer.