"The field of ethics went into crisis just as economics turned to mathematics,"

Gavin Kennedy responds..

From where do they get these muddled ideas? Economics as a subject did not exist in the 18th century, certainly not as Adam Smith wrote about what was called ‘police’ (ensuring subsistence for a society).

Political economy was a title coming into vogue when Smith wrote Wealth Of Nations, which lasted a century until the 1870s when mathematical analysis began to appear. That title too declined in the 20th century.

Smith wrote about ‘commercial society’ and market, but did not mention The Metaphor of an ‘invisible hand’ in his analysis of how markets functioned (Books I and II of Wealth Of Nations). He certainly never said ‘the advent of market economics as being guided by "an invisible hand" ’.

It is, however, true that The Metaphor is ‘often misconstrued as the early progenitor of the Milton Friedman-spawned, market-knows-all Chicago School’.

Indeed, the modern myth of The Metaphor was virtually invented by ‘Chicago’ in the environs of 59th street (see Oscar Lange, 1946 and Paul Samuelson, 1948) and has become universally misconstrued as ‘markets always produce socially beneficial outcomes’, despite the presence of monopolistic practices, protectionist policies, tariffs and non-tariff barriers, pollution, and other negative externalities.

Economics didn’t turn ‘to mathematics’; scholars calling themselves economists ‘turned to mathematics’. Economics did not become ‘a hard science’; its proponents confused ‘hard science’ with economic models that were bereft of the presence of human beings.

And ‘ethics’ did not become ‘a confusion’ – the basic ideas of ethics (partly summarized by Adam Smith in his Moral Sentiments) remain valid.

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Fox news: "we did PR for the tea party"

File under the utterly obvious. I was pondering what would have happened if the anti-war movement got as much profile as the tea parties did. The one problem (there was just one???)during the anti war effort was that what little media coverage we got was generally photos/film of the protests with most commentators on left(sic) and right talking more about the protests than the message. Granted the tea bagging meme was in a similar vien but no where near the level.

Via Media Matters report on the Fox News coverage of Tea Parties:

Examples of Fox News' and Fox Business' April 15 tea party coverage included:

Discussing how to show support for tea parties, Fox & Friends' Gretchen Carlson claimed: "You can hang [a teabag] from your mirror, too, like fuzzy dice."

Fox News host Megyn Kelly claimed that "you can join the tea party action from your home if you go to the FoxNation.com ... a virtual tax day tea party."

Fox Business anchor Cody Willard asked, "Guys, when are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating this country?"

Willard further stated that conservatives and liberals are "both fascists who are taking all of my money and building up corporate America with my welfare."

Fox News host John Gibson expressed "hope[]" that millions of people" would participate in the protests.

Fox Business anchor David Asman told viewers they "need[ed] to go" to the tea party merchandise website "no matter what side of the issue you're on."
Willard asked a protester: "Are you worried about me taking these dollars from you ... or destroying those dollars? I mean that's what the government does anyway."

On The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News contributor Dennis Miller claimed that "the average American taxpayer feels like they've just been shot in the head in a deck chair on a sinking boat."

Fox News host Sean Hannity asked contributor Newt Gingrich "one serious question": "Is this now a battle between capitalism and socialism?"

Hannity also asked: "Why don't we have more anger towards government, or is this the anger that finally is beginning to emerge?"

Discussing the protests on Hannity, RedState's Erick Erickson stated, "[I]f we don't do something, if we don't turn the corner, we're going to be enslaved to the government."

Also on Hannity, radio host Bill "Bubba" Bussey said it was "time for a revolution."
Hannity also featured a Thomas Paine imitator to plug the tea parties.

Granted i'm not as in a huff as others about the astro turf campaign... if people come out, and organize on their own (like Henry's) thats grassroots to me. But the point remains it was astro turf--just like Obama's astro turf election I guess?

But here is a question... did you hear anything about the anti-war tax day protests? Yeah. I thought so.

Right wing entertainment...

Conservatism as Entertainment

You hear a lot these days that Republicans are “in disarray.” But they’re not, really. It’s just that the way our political institutions work, a congressional minority party doesn’t generate a high-profile leader. Now you combine this leadership vacuum with the fact that the right has developed a very robust ideological media apparatus on talk radio and on Fox News and you have a problem. In effect, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are more prominent public figures than are John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, to say nothing of legislators who might actually be appealing figure. And since only a tiny minority of Republican members of congress are willing to suffer the dread “RINO” tag, the vast majority of elected officials seem to feel the need to kowtow to the whims of conservative movement media leaders.

The problem is that the incentives facing a media figure are very different from the incentives facing a politician.

A politician needs, basically, a majority. And the decisive votes are bound to come from people who don’t like politics much or really care about it. For a media figure, however, a much smaller audience than “half the people” would still constitute enormous success. But you need to appeal, intensely, to the small minority of people who care enough about politics to bother watching, reading, or listening to political commentary.

One problem is that tv formating leads to sound byte politics.  Actually the internet leads to blog byte politics--where you send off links that nobody reads and get responses with links that you don't read...

When I debate online I make an effort to dig into the oppositions arguments and I know of a few others who do as well.  And yes, we all slip up and/or are on the fly.  But the entertainment factor in the conservative movement is just as true within "liberals" out in the world as well. 

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let the health care lies begin...

Astroturf campaign uses fake letters from senior citizens to push for Medicare Advantage.

The Eagle-Tribune reports that a lobbying group hired by America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group for insurance companies, is waging a pro-Medicare Advantage astroturf campaign. The Dewey Sqaure Group, a consulting group founded by Democratic operatives, sent letters to the editor purportedly written by seniors urging support of the costly private Medicare plans, which the Obama administration plans to eliminate. However, some of these seniors had never written any such letters; a few didn’t even know what Medicare Advantage was:

A letter supposedly from Ana Abascal of Lawrence said she “wanted to express how important my Medicare Advantage health plan is to me and other fixed-income seniors in my community.”

But when contacted by The Eagle-Tribune, Abascal was shocked and concerned to learn someone was using her name on a letter to the editor. She did not know what the Medicare Advantage plan was.

The Eagle-Tribune writes that the “tip off” to the fake campaign came when a man who turned out to be a Dewey intern called the paper to check if a letter from Gloria Gosselin had been published, falsely claiming to be Gosselin’s grandson. (HT: Romenesko)

 

 

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a great thing about the tea parties...

It exposes Fox News for what it is...

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Heritage on Health Care

Understanding the Uninsured Numbers

Moffit told the Des Moines Register: “The number of people who are persistently or chronically uninsured is relatively small.”

Moffit said many people lose insurance temporarily while they change jobs, but quickly regain it. That pattern has increased over time, as people began switching employers more frequently, he said.

The solution to this issue is to make the health insurance market more stable by changing tax laws to encourage Americans to buy their own insurance. Moffit explains in MedCity News:

Let’s tie health insurance to the person rather than the job … Rather than push for a nationalized health system or even a public health insurance plan that could crowd out the private insurance market, Americans should have the opportunity to own and control their health insurance.

Qua? Via the Famlies USA March Report

One in Three Uninsured: 2007-2008

• 86.7 million people under the age of 65 went without health insurance for some or all of the two-year period from 2007 to 2008.
• One out of three people (33.1 percent) under the age of 65 were uninsured for some or all of 2007-2008.

Number of Months Uninsured

• Of the 86.7 million uninsured individuals, three in five (60.2 percent) were uninsured for nine months or more. Nearly three-quarters (74.5 percent) were uninsured for six months or more.
• Among all people under the age of 65 who were uninsured in 2007-2008, one quarter (25.3 percent) were uninsured for the full 24 months during 2007-2008; 19.5 percent were uninsured for 13 to 23 months; 15.4 percent were uninsured for nine to 12 months; 14.3 percent were uninsured for six to eight months; and 20.1 percent were uninsured for three to five months. Only 5.4 percent were uninsured for two months or less.

Nine months or more is persistent enough...

Plus, here's a question.  Doesn't one want to

a) cover as many people as one can

yet at the same time

b) do it for as cheap as possible

Why would I want to spend more money buying insurance on the open market for individuals, when I can group together with others to get a cheaper deal, with better coverage, and more bells and whistles?

How does one own and control ones own health insurance?  If I buy from a private insurance company... someone is making cost cutting decisions that impact me.  I don't get a direct line to the CEO. 

What does it mean to control ones own health insurance, seriously... I'm wondering what that would look like, and can anyone show me a real life example of that?

I get it, Heritage supports spending lots of our nations wealth in the health care sector... but why do the rest of us care about proping up the health care industry?

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How to Destroy the Government in Three Easy Steps

How to Destroy the Government in Three Easy Steps

In eight short years, conservatives have effectively bankrupted many state governments and left the fed in shambles. And now citizens have to “make tough decisions” and share the suffering equally across the land (unless of course, you’re part of that lucky 1% who co-opted the functions of government to serve their own ends… they’ll be cozy with their offshore bank accounts, golden parachutes, and permanent tax holidays).

Are you a teacher who educates our future citizens? Too bad. You’ve got to tighten your belt and let that job go. Manual laborer? Sorry but that job can earn more money for our shareholders if its done in Micronesia. Need a college degree? Prepare for indentured servitude because you’ll be working to pay us off for most of your adult life. Health care? Ha! That’s just a ponzi scheme dreamed up by a bunch of socialists.

Ever wonder how conservatives did all this?

Well here’s your very own how-to manual for getting Big Government out of the way so you and your buddies can horde all the wealth to yourselves and build your empire.

Step 1: Blame the Individuals

Every battle has to have two sides, so you’ll need to divide the people against each other. This means that you’ll need to declare that “there’s no such thing as society” and focus the entire debate on the faults of individuals.

Enron screwed people over? That’s just a few bad apples. The business news a lap dog for corporate excess? That’s just Jim Cramer doing his thing. The economy in shambles? That’s just George W leaving his legacy.

And of course the housing crisis is the fault of greedy buyers. Industry can’t do right for us because of that welfare queen. And government can’t serve the people because of that corrupt politician and his special interest crony.

Get the people talking about individuals and it’ll be easy to blind them to the public infrastructure they depend on. You don’t want anyone to make a peep when we gut the schools, defund public works, and empty out the treasury. Those problems will just be fodder to throw at the sorry Democrat we’ll blame when the fit hits the shan.

Step 2: Cut Taxes

Now that you’ve gotten everyone bickering about each other (and ignoring us), you can get to work dismantling the government. All you have to do is cut taxes. Yes, it’s that simple. One move and you get all the benefits of (1) weakening every social program; (2) making government services inadequate; (3) setting the stage for calling out “waste” and inefficiencies (more of that blame game!); (4) keeping your richest friends from ever having to pay for the infrastructure they exploit to make all that money; (5) getting nonprofits and opposition leaders in the government (progressives… eck!!) to spend all their precious resources fighting to keep things in the budget; and (6) outsourcing government operations to your buddies in the corporate world so they can profit from them.

This one move is strategic. It does all the work for you.

And when life starts looking dire, you get opportunities you never dreamed possible in a democracy.

Step 3: Exploit Disaster

If you’ve managed to accomplish steps 1 and 2, people will be in a panic. And we all know that panicky people make rash decisions. Now is your chance to push that unpopular agenda through the cracks - disaster capitalism at its best!

Remember how we tricked the populace into an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq to secure oil revenues? That wouldn’t have happened if people weren’t scared out of their wits by the fright of terrorism. Think people would have gone for No Child Left Behind and allowed tests to replace learning in the classroom? We had to fabricate a crisis (which took years of hard work to create) to push that one through. And you know that there’s no way we could take away so many civil liberties with the Patriot Act if the debate was drawn out for weeks under public scrutiny.

So there you have it. Three easy steps to destroy the government.

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What Would a "Bipartisan" Obama Look Like?

 (Hint: A Lot Like the One We're Seeing)

More essentially, however, bipartisanship, as Obama intended the term, should not necessarily be confused for "compromise". Rather, it implied behaving in good-faith -- hearing out opinions from different sides of the aisle and identifying the best ideas regardless of their partisan origin. Bipartisanship, to Obama, was a process rather than an outcome. He could plausibly have been acting in a bipartisan manner, even if he hadn't gotten many Republicans to go along with his agenda.

As Mark Schmitt wrote in his excellent article on the Obama's "theory of change" in December 2007:

What I find most interesting about Obama's approach to bipartisanship is how seriously he takes conservatism. As Michael Tomasky describes it in his review of The Audacity of Hope, "The chapters boil down to a pattern: here's what the right believes about subject X, and here's what the left believes; and while I basically side with the left, I think the right has a point or two that we should consider, and the left can sometimes get a little carried away." What I find fascinating about his language about unity and cross-partisanship is that it is not premised on finding Republicans who agree with him, but on taking in good faith the language and positions of actual conservatism -- people who don't agree with him. That's very different from the longed-for consensus of the Washington Post editorial page.

The reason the conservative power structure has been so dangerous, and is especially dangerous in opposition, is that it can operate almost entirely on bad faith. It thrives on protest, complaint, fear: higher taxes, you won't be able to choose your doctor, liberals coddle terrorists, etc. One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict. It's how you deal with people with intractable demands -- put ‘em on a committee. Then define the committee's mission your way.

Perhaps I'm making assumptions about the degree to which Obama is conscious that his pitch is a tactic of change. But his speeches show all the passion of Edwards or Clinton, his history is as a community organizer and aggressive reformer (I first heard his name 10 years ago because he was on the board of the Joyce Foundation in Chicago, which was the leading supporter of real campaign finance reform at the time, and he has shown extraordinary political skill in drawing Senator Clinton into a clumsy overreaction. If we understand Obama's approach as a means, and not the limit of what he understands about American politics, it has great promise as a theory of change, probably greater promise than either "work for it" or "demand it," although we'll need a large dose of hard work and an engaged social movement as well.

Note that, in Schmitt's explication of Obama's "bipartisanship", we are operating somewhat in the conditional tense. We start by assuming that one's opponents are acting in good faith, extending an olive branch to them and therefore pressing the reset button on the ongoing game of tit-for-tat. If the opponent demonstrates that they are not acting in good faith, however, all bets are off and we are back in the partisan game.

Have the Republicans in Congress been behaving in good faith? It is easy to argue that they have not been:

Exhibit A: The Stimulus Package. The stimulus package proposed by the Obama administration contained less public spending, and more tax cuts, than most liberal economists were calling for. And yet, it received zero Republican votes in the House. Nor did any House Republicans vote for the conference report after the bill had passed the Senate, even though it represented tangible movement toward the Republican position.

Exhibit B: TARP. Sixteen Republican Senators -- Bennett, Bond, Burr, Chambliss, Collins, Coburn, Ensign, Graham, Grassley, Hutchison, Isakson, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Specter and Thune -- voted to withhold the second half of the $700 billion in TARP funds, even though they had voted to authorize the TARP program in October when George W. Bush was still in office. Although one can certainly have changed one's position on TARP based on the facts and circumstances on the ground, it is unlikely that almost half of the remaining Republican delegation would have changed their position within 60 days based on the sanctity of the ideas alone.

Exhibit C: The Budget. One fairly inscrutable characteristic of good faith negotiation is that one is willing to offer an intellectually coherent alternative. This is not something which can be said of the Republican budget, where the numbers, such as they are, don't really add up.

Exhibit D: Nomination Holds. Republican efforts to delay the appointment of two key members of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, as well as his Labor Secretary, are hard to justify from any position other than partisan gamesmanship.

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Reagan and the tea party

Tea Parties Forever:

Republicans have become embarrassing to watch. And it doesn’t feel right to make fun of crazy people. Better, perhaps, to focus on the real policy debates, which are all among Democrats. But here’s the thing: the G.O.P. looked as crazy 10 or 15 years ago as it does now. That didn’t stop Republicans from taking control of both Congress and the White House. And they could return to power if the Democrats stumble. So it behooves us to look closely at the state of what is, after all, one of our nation’s two great political parties.

One way to get a good sense of the current state of the G.O.P., and also to see how little has really changed, is to look at the “tea parties”... antitaxation demonstrations that are supposed to evoke the memory of the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution — have been the subject of considerable mockery, and rightly so. But everything that critics mock about these parties has long been standard practice within the Republican Party. Thus, President Obama is being called a “socialist” who seeks to destroy capitalism. Why? Because he wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans back to, um, about 10 percentage points less than it was for most of the Reagan administration. Bizarre.

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Tea Parties...

Krugman:

So the “tea parties” are to a large extent being run by Freedom Works, which is basically Dick Armey with a lot of Koch-Scaife-Bradley-Olin support.

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Tea Party... Reconstruction Party?

Left on Lanier:

[Atlanta Tea Party]…scheduled for April 15th (tax day) at the Capitol building. Hannity will be doing his show live as he protests the “wasteful spending” of the Obama administration.

What if Obama supporters threw a “Reconstruction” party? A protest of a different sort, this would point out Georgia’s failing transportation system, the lack of adequate health care and poor trauma care, and the upcoming hike on property taxes through the death of the Homeowners Relief grant.

Keep it local, specific to Georgia. Make it a celebration of Obama’s adminstration, as we cherish his help in providing much needed funds to alleviate our poor state representation. Point out that Rep. Broun and Rep. Deal refuse to ask for federal funds in their district. Illustrate the bone-headed decision to provide $1 billion dollars in tax cuts to Georgia corporations while we can’t even balance our own budget without federal help.

Rarely does it benefit a Georgia Democrat to tie themselves to the national party, but in this case, it would also be an indictment of the piss-poor GOP leadership that has driven our state into the ground on just about every measurable indicator. SAT scores? Among the lowest in the nation. Life expectancy? Median income? Take your pick, Georgia is near the bottom in everything meaningful to a middle class existence.

 A Reconstruction Party.

I'm still struck by the tea party meme...  that was about taxation without representation.  Aside from D.C. nobdy in the states can argue they have no representation.  They could argue for better represenation and I'd even show up (instant run-off voting!!!).  They could argue money in politics is drowning out the voice of human beings.  I'd show up for that too!  But tea party?

I couldn't believe I actually agreed with Ben Stein this morning:

These tea parties strike me as off-base, in some respects, though they evoke a certain principle that rings true, or at least possibly true.

First, I don’t quite get the taxation uproar. As far as I know, no new taxes of any size have been enacted. The only new tax I can spot immediately in front of us is the “cap and trade” levy on carbon emissions, which would be a tax on energy consumers. And even that, based on a questionable idea, doesn’t seem imminent.

When the recession ends, though, we will be facing very large budget deficits, even under the best projections. Unless the Federal Reserve is just going to print money — usually a dangerous road to inflation — how will we pay for government, except through taxes? And who has the money to pay, except the rich? So unless I am missing something, don’t we have to tax the rich, defined in some sensible way?

That’s just arithmetic. I wish that lowering spending were an option, but it’s not. Politicians talk about cutting spending and going through the budget, line by line, looking for waste. It never happens — except that sometimes, the military budget is cut, which is the last thing we should cut in a world as dangerous as ours. And right now, over all, the military budget isn’t being cut, although some programs are being reduced while others are expanding.

So, I don’t quite get the tea parties, although I do applaud citizen activism.

I'll be covering the Tea Party here in Henry.  Hopefully get some good photos, ideas, and a better understanding of the positions being articulated.  I enjoyed going with Deana and two of our friends who were Huckabee supporters down to Macon during the election, hopefullly this will be productive and useful for me as well. One thing i've learned is that actually observing and listening, helps a person better understand not just the surface issues, but what lies unobserved below the surface.  We can't have productive governance without better understanding.  So i'm giving them a post to make their point.  I might try to snag an interview or two. 

 

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Republicans on Stimulus

If Government Never Created a Job ...

... then why are anti-stimulus Republicans suddenly clamoring about the stimulative effect of military spending?

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Baracknophobia...

Baracknophobia: Hannity, Bachmann, And Beck Terrified Of Obama (VIDEO)

"the mid-term election are coming up in 20 months... pace your rage!"

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Wasn't it about taxation without representation?

This is a hoot.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I'm going to be taking photo's for the blog, might try to get an interview or two, at the event in Henry County.

Though it seems weird to connect Liberty and Obedience so directly...

Didn't communist always say that we had to adhere to the doctrine no matter how painful and in spite of all consequences?

Conservatives keep saying things in ways that remind me of Communists I always used to debate. I'm still working on a more coherent explanation of that...

tax-cuts vs. fiscal responsibility

Lincoln’s $250 billion estate tax plan would cut taxes for only 60 ’small businesses.’

Last week, 10 Democrats in the Senate joined all 41 Republicans in voting for a $250 billion proposal to cut estate taxes, designed by Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ). More than 99 percent of this cost would go to the inheritors of estates worth over $7 million. Touting the tax cut in a press release, Lincoln claimed that it was “aimed at farms and small businesses.” However, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, Lincoln’s $250 billion proposal would save just 60 small businesses or farms from the estate tax:

An always charged issue is how the estate tax affects small farms and family-owned businesses. We estimate that under the Obama proposal, 100 family farms and businesses would owe tax…The Lincoln-Kyl proposal would cut the number to 40.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, “almost all such estates are able to pay the tax bill without having to sell business assets.”

Another example of tax-cutting to hurt our long term deficit...

For those of us concerned about the Ocean of Debt these kinds of tax-cuts are not good policy.

As CBPP noted regarding this "say one thing do another" ideological attack from some folks:

Many of the same Senators and House members who launched the sharpest verbal attacks this week on the President’s budget or the congressional budget plans — on the ground that the deficits and debt projected under those plans are much too high — then opposed a number of the tough choices the President’s budget makes to start reducing deficits. Those tough choices include allowing many of the generous tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 to expire for people at the top of the income scale, making the 2009 estates tax rules permanent rather than eliminating still more of that tax, and limiting itemized deductions for families making over $250,000 to help finance health care reform that is intended to reduce costs over the long term.

 

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Obama is a "socialist" (in as big and scary of a voice as I can muster...)

Really Existing Socialism

Since 1989 American conservatives have been saying that European countries like France, Germany, Sweden, Britain, and Spain are "socialist." They are pretty nice places: lots of parks, lots of museums, good public transportation, no worries about being unable to pay for health care, good food, wine that approaches that of California, et cetera.

As a result, when you ask the young about "socialism" they think of wetern Europe--quite a change from the days when really existing socialism was East Germany or the Soviet Union.

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Ocean of debt

Jason Pye is on the long term deficit crisis meme... I'll outsource to economist Brad Delong on this one...

We need to worry about the deficits in 2015, 2020, 2025, and beyond--not about the deficits in 2009, 2010, and 2011...

The key to dealing with the deficits in 2015, 2020, 2025, and beyond is--you guessed it--health care. That is the entire ballgame...

[These] long-run deficits...are not much, much worse than they were in 2003--they are somewhat better. Obama has cut the long-run deficit. Bush boosted it. It remains a big problem--but it's not a problem of Clinton's or Obama's or Pelosi's or Reed's creation, it's a problem created by Bush and his cheerleaders

CEPR's done the leg work regarding this with their IOUSA Budget Deficit Calculator which:

allows you to see what the projected U.S. budget deficit would be, as a percentage of GDP, if the United States had the same per person health care costs as various other countries which enjoy longer life expectancies than the United States.

Its time we join the rest of the industrialized world and have some form of Universal Health Care reform--those who oppose competition in the marketplace, which would hurt the profits of insurance companies and help lower the costs for consumers--are the ones creating this long term crisis.

As if ranking 37th in the world for health care isn't bad enough for people... our kids are paying to subsidize private profits...

To see more on our progress in regards to the budget itself you can check out Congressional Budgets Pass Early Tests on Deficits and Economy, but Questions Remain from CBPP

On the whole, the budget plans that the House and Senate approved yesterday pass the twin tests of: (1) beginning to address long-term deficits, or at least not making these deficits worse; and (2) not undermining the fiscal stimulus Congress recently passed. [i] The Senate’s adoption, however, of amendments that are intended both to facilitate a further large tax cut for the estates of the nation’s wealthiest individuals and to make it less likely that Congress will allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for people at the top of the income scale suggests that significant dangers lie ahead. The adoption of these measures raises questions about Senators’ professed concerns about deficits and debt and about whether Congress has the fortitude to begin making hard choices.

Ebert takes on another bad b-flick comedy...

Thoughts on Bill O'Reilly and Squeaky the Chicago Mouse By Roger Ebert

House Republican Budget

House Republican Budget Would Aid Wealthy Individuals and Corporations, Cut Public Services, Slow Economic Recovery

The House Republican budget, introduced April 1 by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), calls for a massive transfer of resources from the broad majority of Americans to the nation’s wealthiest individuals and corporations.[1]  It provides the richest households with a new round of very costly tax reductions by extending the Bush high-income tax cuts and adding another set of tax cuts that are particularly large at the top of the income scale (as well as a cut in corporate taxes).  To help pay for these tax cuts, the proposal eliminates Medicare and Medicaid in their current forms, imposes large reductions on other domestic programs, and apparently repeals the Making Work Pay tax credit.

In addition, by cutting spending starting in the fiscal year that begins in October — when the economy almost certainly will still be weak — the House Republican budget would likely prolong and deepen the recession, already the worst since the Great Depression

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Memo to GOP tax credits are spending...

Why Does the GOP Hate Spending But Love Tax Expenditures?

Republicans are perfectly happy to propose spending increases of their own, as long as they are masked as tax cuts.  The House GOP leadership is proposing a package of massive new housing subsidies, including a $5,000 credit for those who refinance their homes and a $15,000 credit for buyers. I hate to break the news, but these tax credits are spending

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