'If You Read One 'Serious' Newspaper Article This Weekend...' The Atlantic

If You Read One 'Serious' Newspaper Article This Weekend ...
By James Fallows - The Atlantic
August 2011

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... well, that's not bad for mid-August. But please let it be this one, by Jackie Calmes in today's New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/business/economy/voices-faulting-gop-economic-policies-growing-louder.html?_r=1 , about the economic and political consequences of the House GOP's anti-deficit push.

Read it all, but the short version is: Since winning control of the House, the Republican leadership has been brilliantly successful in convincing some of the public, enough of the news media, and at crucial points the Obama Administration that the main threat to America is future deficits. Thus the debt-ceiling collision; thus the agreed-on cutbacks; thus the frenzy through these past few months about deficit projections.

Meanwhile, what business people, ratings agencies, financiers, investors, central bankers, and even most Republican economists (with a predictable exception) consider the real emergencies for the country -- stagnant growth, very high unemployment, the prospect of worldwide recession yet again, which among other bad effects would drive deficits even higher -- will only get worse because of the new austerity drive. These officials are all trying to wave the GOP leaders off their commitment, but the politicians don't notice, don't care, or don't grasp the point.

<snip>

More: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/print/2011/08/if-you-read-one-serious-newspaper-article-this-weekend/243553/

Kackie Calmes piece: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/business/economy/voices-faulting-gop-economic-policies-growing-louder.html?_r=1

:shrug:

We hand them our queen, king, and a rook, and then we say, "Look what they made me do!"

Spending, most notably Medicare, in the future.

That problem is mostly Medicare and less so Social Security, but both are not going to work on the amount of payroll taxes we are currently paying.

If we go back to Clinton rates, revenues will take care of itself.

It can cause stagnant growth, high unemployment....

:kick:

“I think the U.S. has every chance of having a good year next year, but the politicians are doing their damnedest to prevent it from happening — the Republicans are — and the Democrats to my eternal bafflement have not stood their ground,” Ian C. Shepherdson, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics, a research firm, said in an interview.

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All over the world. This is true.

...is a descriptive phrase that comes to mind.

"A Democratic Congressional adviser, granted anonymity to discuss party deliberations, said: “We’re at a loss to figure out a way to articulate the argument in a way that doesn’t get us pegged as tax-and-spenders.”

1) Obama meets with key Dems weekly to settle on the meme-changing messages that will dispel the oh-do-easily dispelled Republican framing lies. Take 1 aspect of the article above each week. Right now a glaring, no-brainer is screaming to be free: "Reagan Republican Conservative senior advisors are AGAINST austerity at this time."

2)Each key Dem Senator, congressperson, health inspector, dog-catcher then works to insert these explanations.

2a) Here's how: "Thanks for your interest in the stray cat problem here in Dubuque. It may well get worse as budget cuts go into effect - budget cuts that, by the way did you know, ""Reagan Republican Conservative Senior Advisors are against enacting"".

Or: 2b) Returning veterans are at increasing risk everyday as we enact austerity cuts to the programs our soldiers need most - cuts that ""Reagan Republican Conservative Senior Advisors are against taking at this time"".

3) The prez has it made in the shade as far as this plan goes. The News Media (:rofl:), as gutted, captive and corrupted as they are, still must cover what the Prez does and says. He can step out and merely say: "Reagan Administration advisors are against these cuts at this time. Thank you." And it gets covered.

I mean the administration could conceivably start using charts, graphs, animations, guest speakers with WH stamp of approval, sympathetic comedians, whatever to put basic, no longer taught in the schools, beginning concepts of economics into the entertainment-addled brains of Americans.

Or... simply give us a President who steps out into that Rose Garden and says: Enough. This is crazy. here's why: ""Former Reagan advisors are against these cuts at this time. Here's why I agree. I think everyone listening to this today will instinctively understand that if we, here in Washington, enact policies that put more money into the hands of you, the millions of ordinary American families, that you are likely to spend it on those things that have gone wanting during this economic downturn. that spending causes demand for goods and services. New demand that is not there now. Businesses want to supply the goods and services that are being demanded. That is the genius of Capitalism. Individuals can decide right now today to go into business and provide the "supply" this "demand" generates. That's the Supply and Demand idea you have heard of.

etc. etc. touching on the trillions that sit idle in the coffers of business giving lie to the supply-side "Job-Creator" myth.

etc. etc. etc.

On to Week 2!

upon its generational collapse in the 2007-20**? financial panic. The Orthodoxy was proven hollow and false by historical events and total insolvency of its central institutions - the big NY banks - but Democrats failed to renounce and repudiate it.

The fetish for cutting DOMESTIC government spending is a keystone of Reaganism's program for free market fundamentalism, aka: predatory capitalism (or just plain old capitalism in its natural state). Republicans made a stink about deficits --while driving them higher-- in order to characterize the US government as an out-of-control experiment in NeoMarxist income redistribution. The line of argument held that deficit spending chased private enterprise out of the marketplace for capital, stifling innovation and growth. What Republicans really hoped to do was to attack the kinds of things, and more particularly, the kinds of people that government spent money on. The fatal problem with their argument is that in fact, interest rates are very low, and credit has flowed as never before. Deficits did not drive interest rates higher and chase private sector out of the capital markets by siphoning off all the available credit, or pricing private enterprise out of borrowing. It just never happened.

The Republican deficit fetish works synergistically with their tax cutting compulsion. What better way to drive up deficits and help make your argument that the Federal Govt. is a profligate lawless band of crooks than to DEFUND it and thus take away its ability to pay for its obligations? On the one hand this supports GOP "philosophy" that a govt that helps people is a liberal pipedream and in reality a criminal enterprise in which "bureaucrats" enrich themselves by stealing money from "hardworking folks" and giving it to "lazy undeserving minorities". But on the other hand - well, there really is no other hand. Cutting taxes directly creates the predator capitalist state by making the rich richer, and by subtracting government services which help the poor bear their crushing poverty, and the middleclass their virtual poverty. So it's all good. Deficit hawkery and taxcut nuttery in tandem destroy the government's basic ability to function and to maintain its books, and make a hash of its previous, solemnly assumed obligations to provide a social safety net.

Behind the religious litanies and scholastic discourse of Free Market Fundamentalism lies a very non-theoretical and un-academic project of reestablishing the Dictatorship of Capital. For all their yarnspinning about Heaven and the Mind of God, religions always serve a very Earthly purpose and flesh and blood Masters. Free Market Fundamentalism is no different in this regard. It has always been about perfecting the power of the richest 1% over the non-rich 99 %. To entice the 99% it had to make a lot of promises about the Heaven on Earth that would flower forth if only we would cut taxes, and if we signed every free trade agreement in sight, and if only we deregulated banks to speculate on obscure derivative financial "instruments" and "vehicles", and if only we would spend more government money on armaments than on "liberal pipedreams" like universal health care or unemployment insurance or good nutrition and good schools for poor families. It had rosy visions of a very non-liberal nature that it said would benefit all, if only we gave capitalism a chance.

We gave Capitalism that chance, and it created the Predator capitalist society, and went to war to control the world's oil, and then with breathtaking speed it crashed and burned. It took less than 15 years from the repeal of New Deal banking regulations for the financial industry to destroy itself -and the economy- in a multi-trillion dollar mushroom cloud of theft and fraud.

Barack Obama and the Democrats were elected to salvage the nation from the wreck of Reaganite deregulation and capitalist supremacy. But they didn't mark the occasion of Market Fundamentalism's intellectual collapse and say "The Age of Reaganite Small Government Is OVER." Not only didn't they succeed in salvaging the country, they spent their efforts -and OUR political capital- on trying to restore the Old Reaganite Order. They failed to repudiate it in theory and practice, so guess what? The Republicans are back, who should be buried under a thousand feet of rubble, and they are REACTIVATING the orthodoxy of Reaganism and Market Fundamentalism - a religion in which they are the chief priests and keepers of the temple - and they know they will have Obama and the Democrats' help in doing that - or at least their silent submission.

Hang on America: Rock bottom approaches.