When they hear the word “austerity”. Deficit fluffers!
Category: Class War
The confidence fairy
Politicians are still chasing it, as Krugman points out:
Self-styled deficit hawks have been crying wolf over U.S. interest rates more or less continuously since the financial crisis began to ease, taking every uptick in rates as a sign that markets were turning on America. But the truth is that rates have fluctuated, not with debt fears, but with rising and falling hope for economic recovery. And with full recovery still seeming very distant, rates are lower now than they were two years ago.
But couldn’t America still end up like Greece? Yes, of course. If investors decide that we’re a banana republic whose politicians can’t or won’t come to grips with long-term problems, they will indeed stop buying our debt. But that’s not a prospect that hinges, one way or another, on whether we punish ourselves with short-run spending cuts.
Just ask the Irish, whose government — having taken on an unsustainable debt burden by trying to bail out runaway banks — tried to reassure markets by imposing savage austerity measures on ordinary citizens. The same people urging spending cuts on America cheered. “Ireland offers an admirable lesson in fiscal responsibility,” declared Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute, who said that the spending cuts had removed fears over Irish solvency and predicted rapid economic recovery.
That was in June 2009. Since then, the interest rate on Irish debt has doubled; Ireland’s unemployment rate now stands at 13.5 percent.
And then there’s the British experience. Like America, Britain is still perceived as solvent by financial markets, giving it room to pursue a strategy of jobs first, deficits later. But the government of Prime Minister David Cameron chose instead to move to immediate, unforced austerity, in the belief that private spending would more than make up for the government’s pullback. As I like to put it, the Cameron plan was based on belief that the confidence fairy would make everything all right.
But she hasn’t: British growth has stalled, and the government has marked up its deficit projections as a result.
Which brings me back to what passes for budget debate in Washington these days.
A serious fiscal plan for America would address the long-run drivers of spending, above all health care costs, and it would almost certainly include some kind of tax increase. But we’re not serious: any talk of using Medicare funds effectively is met with shrieks of “death panels,” and the official G.O.P. position — barely challenged by Democrats — appears to be that nobody should ever pay higher taxes. Instead, all the talk is about short-run spending cuts.
In short, we have a political climate in which self-styled deficit hawks want to punish the unemployed even as they oppose any action that would address our long-run budget problems. And here’s what we know from experience abroad: The confidence fairy won’t save us from the consequences of our folly.
Going after AARP
My, they really are hypocrites of the highest degree, aren’t they? After all the water they carried for the insurance industry for Medicare Part B, and during the health care debate, they’re going to try to pin AARP for making money on insurance? What happened to their much-loved free market? Guess it only works when the businesses support the Republicans!
I’m not always a fan of AARP (they walk too fine a line between consumer interests and their own financial interests, but they do provide affordable insurance to people who otherwise couldn’t get it), but the enemy of my enemy is my friend:
Newly empowered House Republicans are getting ready to renew their attacks against AARP over its support for the healthcare reform law, The Hill has learned.
The Ways and Means health and oversight subcommittees are hauling in the seniors lobby’s executives before the panel for an April 1 hearing on how the group stands to benefit from the law, among other topics. Republicans say AARP supported the law’s $200 billion in cuts to the Medicare Advantage program because it stands to gain financially as seniors replace their MA plans with Medicare supplemental insurance — or Medigap — policies endorsed by the association.
The hearing will cover not only Medigap but “AARP’s organizational structure, management, and financial growth over the last decade.”
An embarrassing hearing would not only hit AARP back for its support of the law, but fits in with the GOP’s mantra that the law was written behind closed doors to favor Democratic allies. And policy-wise, it could empower Republicans to tackle Medigap policies, which many conservatives want to reform because they believe they contribute to over-utilization of the medical system by reducing out-of-pocket contributions.
Imagine old people actually going to the doctor’s, taking care of their health and extending their lifespan. Shame on them!
Two Ways and Means Republicans — Reps. Wally Herger (Calif.), the No. 2 Republican on the panel, and Dave Reichert (Wash.) — led the charge against the seniors group during the healthcare reform debate, along with then-Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (Fla.).
“AARP unfortunately has become a mouthpiece for this president at the expense of what is best for America’s seniors,” Brown-Waite wrote in a letter to the association at the time.
The AARP’s support for healthcare reform “just doesn’t make sense” until “you dig a little deeper and see that [a lot] of their revenues come from these royalties,” Reichert told The Hill during the healthcare reform debate. “And if Medicare Advantage does go away, they may gain millions of dollars in additional royalties.”
Just breathtaking, the hypocrisy.
Taking back Wisconsin
Wisconsin Dems are pretty confident they’re going to take back control of the Senate, and I have to agree. Now that voters have seen what’s on Gov. Scott Walker’s agenda, I don’t think they’re going to want to hand him a rubber-stamp Republican senate:
Twenty days into a recall campaign spurred by the state’s rollicking budget fight, Wisconsin Democrats are now predicting that they will be able to take back control of the state Senate this summer.
Statewide, Democrats say they have over fifty percent of the number of petitions they need to recall eight Republican state senators, although they are not over the fifty percent threshold in every district.
“We’re well ahead of schedule,” said Graeme Zielinski, Wisconsin Democratic Party spokesman. “I think in mid-summer, you will have a Democratic Senate.” The party would not release detailed percentages of where the party stood in each targeted seat.
To recall a state senator, petitioners must collect signatures equal to one-quarter of votes from that senator’s district in the last gubernatorial race within a 60-day window. There are petitions out for all 16 state senators currently eligible to be recalled (anyone who has served for more than a year) — and that includes Republicans and Democrats. (Here’s a handy list, along with the number of signatures needed in every district). Once recall petitions are filed and deemed valid, a special election would be held in six weeks time.
Republicans control the Senate by a 19-14 margin, meaning Democrats need to flip three seats to take over.
Of the Republicans targeted, two — Mary Lazich and Glenn Grothman — are in solidly Republican districts and are likely safe. State Sen. Dan Kapanke seems to be the most vulnerable; his district went 61 percent for President Obama in 2008. The other recall districts went for Obama but by smaller margins. Of those, Randy Hopper and Luther Olsen are viewed by Democratic strategists as particularly good targets.
Hopper, for one, is fighting back aggressively. He’s hired Jeff Harvey, a veteran Republican strategist who has previously worked for Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) and Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.). “We have volunteer centers opening up and we have a lot of volunteer efforts throughout the district and we’re making phone calls, going door to door,” said Harvey. “What we’re hearing on the ground is that people are extremely supportive.”
You remember the aptly named “Randy” Hopper. This is the family values guy whose midlife crisis consisted of dumping his wife and moving in with his much-younger lobbyist girlfriend — and then she suddenly and coincidentally got a well-paying state job.
Yeah, I’m sure the people of Wisconsin will flock to his aid.
Bank shut down by UAW
You would think at some point that the banksters would notice that we all have a pretty good idea that they conned the Congress and brought down the country’s economy — while they sat back and collected the cash. And you’d think that they’d understand that business as usual isn’t acceptable anymore. If the corporate boy wonders had thought to pull back the reins on their greed, or pushed to get the government to help all the people they forced out of work, they wouldn’t have to be quite so nervous right now:
At the end of the UAW’s three-day bargaining convention in Detroit, union president Bob King led more than 100 members into the Bank of America branch in downtown Detroit today and temporarily shut down its operations for about 30 minutes.
Afterwards, the group joined hundreds more UAW members at the corner of Griswold and Congress streets in downtown Detroit and continued the protest.
King criticized the bank for not paying taxes in 2009, overpaying its executives and opposing legislation such as credit card reform and the Foreclosure Prevention Act.
“Anything that would help the middle class, Bank of America opposed,” King said. “When workers are struggling to pay child care and feed their families, Bank of America in 2010 made about $17.5 billion from credit card and ATM fees.”
Bank of America spokeswoman Diane Wagner said Bank of America paid more than $40 billion in taxes from 2000 to 2009. However, she was unable to say how much the bank paid in taxes in 2009. Generally, companies don’t pay taxes unless they earn a profit.
Wagner also said Bank of America repaid the $45 billion it received in federal stimulus dollars as well as an additional $2.5 billion in dividends. And, in 2009, Bank of America’s outgoing CEO received no pay under an agreement with the government.
[…] King said the protest against Bank of America and corporate tax breaks is connected to the battle for collective bargaining rights and the need to broaden the union’s organizing efforts.
“Banks get bailed out, people get sold out,” King chanted as the crowd joined in.
Where are the angry mobs?
In The Nation, Frances Fox Piven, one of Glenn Beck’s favorite targets, raises an important question: How do we mobilize the jobless to political action?
As 2011 begins, nearly 15 million people are officially unemployed in the United States and another 11.5 million have either settled for part-time work or simply given up the search for a job. To regain the 5 percent unemployment level of December 2007, about 300,000 jobs would have to be created each month for several years. There are no signs that this is likely to happen soon. And joblessness now hits people harder because it follows in the wake of decades of stagnating worker earnings, high consumer indebtedness, eviscerated retirement funds and rollbacks of the social safety net.
So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs? After all, the injustice is apparent. Working people are losing their homes and their pensions while robber-baron CEOs report renewed profits and windfall bonuses. Shouldn’t the unemployed be on the march? Why aren’t they demanding enhanced safety net protections and big initiatives to generate jobs?
It is not that there are no policy solutions. Left academics may be pondering the end of the American empire and even the end of neoliberal capitalism, and—who knows—in the long run they may be right. But surely there is time before the darkness settles to try to relieve the misery created by the Great Recession with massive investments in public-service programs, and also to use the authority and resources of government to spur big new initiatives in infrastructure and green energy that might, in fact, ward off the darkness.
Continue reading “Where are the angry mobs?”
Once upon a time
Lifelong Republicans leaving their party
Thom Hartmann:
Scrooge McDucks
You get what you pay for
And when Ronald Reagan broke the air traffic controllers union, he also eviscerated the worker protections that prevent things like this from happening:
WASHINGTON – Air traffic safety is under increased scrutiny by federal authorities following an incident in which two passenger jets landed without controller assistance at Reagan National Airport because no one could be reached in the airport tower.
An aviation official said that an air traffic supervisor — the lone controller on duty around midnight on Tuesday when the incident occurred — had fallen asleep. The official, who spoke on grounds of anonymity because an investigation is ensuing, said the incident has led the Federal Aviation Administration to launch a nationwide inquiry into airport tower staffing issues.
Peter Knudson, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday that the pilots of the two planes were in contact with controllers at a regional Federal Aviation Administration facility about 40 miles away in Warrenton, Va.
He said that after pilots were unable to raise the airport tower at Reagan by radio, they asked controllers in Warrenton to call the tower. Repeated calls from the regional facility to the tower went unanswered, Knudson added.
Responding to the incident, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement that he has directed FAA to put two air traffic controllers on the midnight shift at Reagan National.
“It is not acceptable to have just one controller in the tower managing air traffic in this critical air space,” LaHood said.
Reagan National is located in Northern Virginia just across the Potomac River from Washington. LaHood also said he has directed FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt to study tower staffing at other airports around the country.
Good thing this happened in D.C., where Very Important People care about their planes landing safely. Maybe even the rest of us will benefit from this cost-cutting clusterfuck.