The Rev. Al Sharpton may have said back in the day that he won't criticize Obama (which ought to disqualify him from his newfound role at MSNBC as much as I love the man), but he was absolutely right about one thing the other night: the blind cowardice in the Democratic caucuses after passing the ACA made this debt ceiling defeat-- or one like it-- inevitable. However you feel about how the President dealt with the first threat of a government shutdown in this Congress, it came because Congressional Democrats were too scared for their seats to pass a budget. In so dodging, they not only forced a showdown over a continuing resolution, but they also lost the ability to use budget reconciliation for FY 2011, which would have made passing wprogressive deficit reduction measures a walk in the park. Raise top rates? Alright! Get rid of corporate tax loopholes? Sure! Stop subsidizing big oil and big corn? Why not? Carbon tax? OK! Plus, any method of economic stimulus that can pass the Byrd test can come along for the ride.
Instead, they went so far as to hand the decision as to whether to take the vote before the 2010 elections to extend only the middle class tax cuts to Senators facing re-election. And when they finally caved and voted to extend them all, nobody (including the President) thought to get a debt ceiling increase along with it. Even though the TPers were telegraphing their punches on pushing that envelope.
As a Spartan might have said, may they live forever.
What I find positively amazing is that while President Obama has taken quite a bit of flak for his capitulations, there is little mention that the untenable positions he's found himself in have been handed to him directly from blue dogs who didn't do their jobs as legislators and the People who voted in candidates eager to use the debt ceiling as a cudgel.
Unfortunately, Beltway media narratives cannot accommodate such truths. Indeed today, the same hacks who chided Austan Goolsbie for decrying the insanity of not raising the debt ceiling (saying that it was irresponsible to speak as if not raising it were something that could plausibly happen) are now saying that Obama didn't properly communicate the risk of default early on. One thing is for certain. The DC press will run ''dog bites man'' on page one before they admit that sometimes its the so-called moderates who fuck it up for everyone.
None of this is to say that Obama has been playing his hand especially well. He should have declared that if he didn't get guaranteed revenues, he'd take one of extraordinary measures afforded him by the powers of the executive branch to raise the debt ceiling himself. But it's not like the reasons his advisors gave him for eschewing those options were invalid. Any action the administration took unilaterally would have spooked the hands holding the levers of our economy. This is especially evident given the markets' response to the evidence of government dysfunction shown in the leadup to this shitty deal. Who knows? Maybe it would have been worse.
What's clear is that as the remnants of the Blue Dog caucus wither away, we're stuck with the consequences of their failures of conscience and intestinal fortitude. I wonder what Evan Bayh would say. Maybe it would be the same as another imposter in the guise of a public servant once said on an episode of the Simpsons:
"The politics of failure have failed. We need to make them work again."
Showing posts with label My (Future) Back Pages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label My (Future) Back Pages. Show all posts
7.18.2011
Fuck You, the Economist
The fact that world news from other countries tends to be better than what we get over here may sometimes lead one to expect that when a foreign publication comments on America, that they'd understand us better than we do them.
The Economist has seen fit to remind me that I ought to jettison that expectation just as soon as I can manage.
You can tell right away that the author(s)' concepts of political science are stuck in the UK. Despite clearly stating that the crisis is entirely a political one, they continue on to state that the House GOP was acting reasonably within its electoral mandate from 2010 in being the first American majority caucus in history to refuse to raise the debt ceiling.
What, pray tell, is this mandate? According to The Economist, it's "to hold the government of Barack Obama to account."
Yeah, we get it. They have Parliament where you live and you don't know how a proper democracy works. Here's a hint-- politicians are supposed to be elected to do the will of the People, not to play Thunderdome with other politicians. We don't have a paradigm where there's a coalition whose job is, officially, to oppose the majority. It has to do with the fact that our system of representative government was designed on purpose, not retro-fitted to a constitutional monarchy. And while we've made plenty of our own mistakes, a lot of what we got right are things that we recognized were horribly wrong with the British system, one of which being the fractious nature of the British Parliament.
Nowadays, the phrase "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition" gets floated as a justification for the GOP's chauvinistic obstructionism by American pundits who are too piss-scared of being seen as a part of the Liberal Media to speak honestly about the Republican Party. It's bullshit. That's not how the system was built to work; there are far too many mechanisms built in that grind everything to a halt. Operating our government like it's a Parliamentary system has been nothing short of disastrous for the American People, and the Economist's failure to grasp that basic fact ought to disqualify any commentary it offers on American politics.
When we send politicians to Washington, it's to do the job that the prior incumbents aren't doing well enough. And in 2010, that was create jobs. Which the polls confirm. The electorate is concerned overwhelmingly with jobs and the economy.
You'll notice that "just fuck with Obama a lot" isn't on that list.
The Economist is claiming, essentially, that a populace whose top 6 priories were (in descending order) The Economy, Jobs, Terrorism, Social Security, Education, Medicare, issued a mandate to Republicans to betray five of them in the service of their sixth priority, deficit reduction, while leaving tax cuts--which only 42% rated as a top priority-- alone
It's pretty easy math, The Economist. Isn't math supposed to be a feature of your discipline?
The math gets easier when you consider that those medicare cuts were originally part of a budget plan that also slashed taxes, and only would have significantly reduced the deficit if you assume quite a lot of nonsense. The Ryan plan was quite clearly not about the budget. In order to support the thesis that government is bad, evidence to the contrary must disposed of. It's only natural to target the nation's most popular government program.
The thing is, all of this has been available to anyone with a cheapass computer and the ability to find a WiFi hotspot somewhere. Does part of getting an Economics degree necessitate having the part of your brain capable of parsing this shit get cut out? Did Paul Krugman just not show up that day?
Was it a burning need to break out the "pox on both your houses" that persuaded the Economist to chide Obama for not finding a way out of the deficit crisis in the same breath that it had proclaimed said crisis to be a politically manufactured one?
I didn't even have to get into the utter lack of precedent for the debt ceiling vote being tied to ten-year budget outlooks to demonstrate just how clueless these wankers are.
And yeah, plenty of American outlets have been this fucking idiotic or worse in their coverage of the debt ceiling talks too, and none of them have resulted in me taking to the blogs.. But if the Economist is going to look down over the rims of its glasses at America without actually understanding what's going on, they've opened themselves up to ridicule.
The Economist has seen fit to remind me that I ought to jettison that expectation just as soon as I can manage.
You can tell right away that the author(s)' concepts of political science are stuck in the UK. Despite clearly stating that the crisis is entirely a political one, they continue on to state that the House GOP was acting reasonably within its electoral mandate from 2010 in being the first American majority caucus in history to refuse to raise the debt ceiling.
What, pray tell, is this mandate? According to The Economist, it's "to hold the government of Barack Obama to account."
Yeah, we get it. They have Parliament where you live and you don't know how a proper democracy works. Here's a hint-- politicians are supposed to be elected to do the will of the People, not to play Thunderdome with other politicians. We don't have a paradigm where there's a coalition whose job is, officially, to oppose the majority. It has to do with the fact that our system of representative government was designed on purpose, not retro-fitted to a constitutional monarchy. And while we've made plenty of our own mistakes, a lot of what we got right are things that we recognized were horribly wrong with the British system, one of which being the fractious nature of the British Parliament.
Nowadays, the phrase "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition" gets floated as a justification for the GOP's chauvinistic obstructionism by American pundits who are too piss-scared of being seen as a part of the Liberal Media to speak honestly about the Republican Party. It's bullshit. That's not how the system was built to work; there are far too many mechanisms built in that grind everything to a halt. Operating our government like it's a Parliamentary system has been nothing short of disastrous for the American People, and the Economist's failure to grasp that basic fact ought to disqualify any commentary it offers on American politics.
When we send politicians to Washington, it's to do the job that the prior incumbents aren't doing well enough. And in 2010, that was create jobs. Which the polls confirm. The electorate is concerned overwhelmingly with jobs and the economy.
You'll notice that "just fuck with Obama a lot" isn't on that list.
The Economist is claiming, essentially, that a populace whose top 6 priories were (in descending order) The Economy, Jobs, Terrorism, Social Security, Education, Medicare, issued a mandate to Republicans to betray five of them in the service of their sixth priority, deficit reduction, while leaving tax cuts--which only 42% rated as a top priority-- alone
It's pretty easy math, The Economist. Isn't math supposed to be a feature of your discipline?
The math gets easier when you consider that those medicare cuts were originally part of a budget plan that also slashed taxes, and only would have significantly reduced the deficit if you assume quite a lot of nonsense. The Ryan plan was quite clearly not about the budget. In order to support the thesis that government is bad, evidence to the contrary must disposed of. It's only natural to target the nation's most popular government program.
The thing is, all of this has been available to anyone with a cheapass computer and the ability to find a WiFi hotspot somewhere. Does part of getting an Economics degree necessitate having the part of your brain capable of parsing this shit get cut out? Did Paul Krugman just not show up that day?
Was it a burning need to break out the "pox on both your houses" that persuaded the Economist to chide Obama for not finding a way out of the deficit crisis in the same breath that it had proclaimed said crisis to be a politically manufactured one?
I didn't even have to get into the utter lack of precedent for the debt ceiling vote being tied to ten-year budget outlooks to demonstrate just how clueless these wankers are.
And yeah, plenty of American outlets have been this fucking idiotic or worse in their coverage of the debt ceiling talks too, and none of them have resulted in me taking to the blogs.. But if the Economist is going to look down over the rims of its glasses at America without actually understanding what's going on, they've opened themselves up to ridicule.
7.06.2011
Will You Idiots Please Stop Crying?
I was on break, stealing wifi from the hotel across the street from the store where I work when the 30-minute warning for the Casey Anthony verdict was issued. I walked back in and told my coworkers that the news was coming, and that there was no way that Casey was going to jail.
Nobody believed me, which was hardly surprising, and part of the reason why I bothered to tell them. After the verdict came back I spent a good portion of the rest of my shift explaining the American criminal justice system to the two coworkers of mine who had an excuse, not originally being from this country.
Later I took one of them bowling for the first time, cultural ambassador am I. But I digress.
What made me absolutely certain of the not guilty verdict was the short deliberations-- establishing reasonable doubt doesn't take nearly as long as exhausting reasonable doubt. But the only reason I wasn't certain beforehand was because I'm not brimming with trust in my fellow Americans to pull their end of the rope where phrases such as "beyond all reasonable doubt" are concerned, let alone"air of reality"
If you watched the news coverage of the Casey Anthony trial, you were bombarded with how many fun things Casey did while her daughter was supposedly missing and what an incalculably cold, evil woman Casey must be. Also, we might kill this one, who's excited? If you watched the trial, you saw the prosecution lean heavily on the above while utterly failing to make its case. Their first boneheaded mistake was not charging involuntary manslaughter as a lesser included for a case where the actual event of the victim's death was never established. And it didn't get a whole hell of a lot better from there.
It was kind of surreal watching the esteemed members of the legal commentariat assembled on MSNBC's live team do Orwellian backflips to explain how the short closing argument by the prosecution had to be some trap so that it fit their Official Casey Anthony Narrative, designed seemingly to entice their viewers into believing that this was a done deal and if they tuned in next week they'd get to see live footage of a young woman discovering that the possibilities for the rest of her life have been narrowed down to the long one or the short one. They were too busy speculating how Jose Baez would react if it were a movie to notice that he'd knocked his closing out of the park without the cheap theatrics they described. He simply explained in clear and uncertain terms that function of the jury wasn't there to solve a mystery. If after the prosecution rests there remains a mystery as to the facts of the case, then the function of the jury is to acquit, no matter what they think might have happened.
News is, for most proprietors of it, a revenue-driven enterprise. And you can't help but notice that the outrage that has resulted at least in part from the media's role in shaping expectations is a neat and tidy consolation prize for not being able to use any of the catchy slogans they'd come up with for the death penalty hearings. Here's what you won't hear from many of them: Even if the worst is true about Casey Anthony, it's unequivocally a good thing that she was found not guilty, as any standard of proof that would have lead to her conviction would put many, many innocent people behind bars. Everyone crowing about how justice wasn't served can fuck right the hell off. Justice was never on the damn menu.
Caylee Anthony is dead. Nothing can change that. It may confound the chest-thumping law and order set for me to say this, but the purpose of our criminal justice system isn't to punish criminals. It's to remove dangerous people from the public and place a deterrent on criminal behavior. Punishment isn't an end unto itself; It's a method of deterrence. Nancy Grace can talk all she wants about how the devil is dancing. I'll take her word for it as a subject matter expert-- when Nancy Grace dances with the devil, she leads.
One person who you can trust to get it right when countless others get it wrong is Chris Hayes, who was music to my ears on The Last Word last night when he spoke about the greater implications of the verdict and the public and the media's reaction to it.
Not for nothing, but I'd absolutely watch that anti-Nancy Grace show.
Nobody believed me, which was hardly surprising, and part of the reason why I bothered to tell them. After the verdict came back I spent a good portion of the rest of my shift explaining the American criminal justice system to the two coworkers of mine who had an excuse, not originally being from this country.
Later I took one of them bowling for the first time, cultural ambassador am I. But I digress.
What made me absolutely certain of the not guilty verdict was the short deliberations-- establishing reasonable doubt doesn't take nearly as long as exhausting reasonable doubt. But the only reason I wasn't certain beforehand was because I'm not brimming with trust in my fellow Americans to pull their end of the rope where phrases such as "beyond all reasonable doubt" are concerned, let alone"air of reality"
If you watched the news coverage of the Casey Anthony trial, you were bombarded with how many fun things Casey did while her daughter was supposedly missing and what an incalculably cold, evil woman Casey must be. Also, we might kill this one, who's excited? If you watched the trial, you saw the prosecution lean heavily on the above while utterly failing to make its case. Their first boneheaded mistake was not charging involuntary manslaughter as a lesser included for a case where the actual event of the victim's death was never established. And it didn't get a whole hell of a lot better from there.
It was kind of surreal watching the esteemed members of the legal commentariat assembled on MSNBC's live team do Orwellian backflips to explain how the short closing argument by the prosecution had to be some trap so that it fit their Official Casey Anthony Narrative, designed seemingly to entice their viewers into believing that this was a done deal and if they tuned in next week they'd get to see live footage of a young woman discovering that the possibilities for the rest of her life have been narrowed down to the long one or the short one. They were too busy speculating how Jose Baez would react if it were a movie to notice that he'd knocked his closing out of the park without the cheap theatrics they described. He simply explained in clear and uncertain terms that function of the jury wasn't there to solve a mystery. If after the prosecution rests there remains a mystery as to the facts of the case, then the function of the jury is to acquit, no matter what they think might have happened.
News is, for most proprietors of it, a revenue-driven enterprise. And you can't help but notice that the outrage that has resulted at least in part from the media's role in shaping expectations is a neat and tidy consolation prize for not being able to use any of the catchy slogans they'd come up with for the death penalty hearings. Here's what you won't hear from many of them: Even if the worst is true about Casey Anthony, it's unequivocally a good thing that she was found not guilty, as any standard of proof that would have lead to her conviction would put many, many innocent people behind bars. Everyone crowing about how justice wasn't served can fuck right the hell off. Justice was never on the damn menu.
Caylee Anthony is dead. Nothing can change that. It may confound the chest-thumping law and order set for me to say this, but the purpose of our criminal justice system isn't to punish criminals. It's to remove dangerous people from the public and place a deterrent on criminal behavior. Punishment isn't an end unto itself; It's a method of deterrence. Nancy Grace can talk all she wants about how the devil is dancing. I'll take her word for it as a subject matter expert-- when Nancy Grace dances with the devil, she leads.
One person who you can trust to get it right when countless others get it wrong is Chris Hayes, who was music to my ears on The Last Word last night when he spoke about the greater implications of the verdict and the public and the media's reaction to it.
Not for nothing, but I'd absolutely watch that anti-Nancy Grace show.
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