Pelosi and the Debt, Part 2

Speaking of Pelosi, Rush Limbaugh — who, as any conservative here will tell you, is definitely not a massive racist — says that the “white, racist leadership of the Democrat Party” should give Rep. Jim Clyburn a new position: “Driving Ms. Nancy.”
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Get it? Because he’s black. God, that’s so very funny and totally, totally not racist.
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http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/limbaugh-calls-dem-leaders-racist-says-clyburn-should-chauffeur-pelosi.php?ref=fpblg

“Closet case drug addict makes racist comment.”
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Stop the presses!

We expect tired and failed laissez-faire from Simpson, for he rubberstamped the entire Reagan/Bush Error.

Golly, if we cut taxes on the most wealthy prosperity will Trickle Down. And banks, health insurers and oil drillers will, uhm – police themselves! Cut government!

Bowles by contrast, is just soiling himself here.

- Balkingpoints / www

“See below for my analysis of the political safe ground for Democrats on this issue.”

I think the D’s have been to safe. I agree with her, even if she gets dinged by the Village.

I didn’t see an analysis of political safe ground for the Democrats below. I saw some significant mischaracterization of the proposal, and then some mischaracterization of the recent election. Then nothing about safe ground.

See below for my analysis of the political safe ground for Democrats on this issue.

Did that. Your analysis is almost worse than the chairmen’s recommendations, Calabresi, and sounds like you’ve been spending too much time doing Pucker shots with this guy.

And it just keeps getting better!

“For example, the salaries of two senior staffers, Marc Goldwein and Ed Lorenzen, are paid by private groups that have previously advocated cuts to entitlement programs. Lorenzen is paid by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, while Goldwein is paid by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is also partly funded by the Peterson group.

The outsourcing has come under sharp criticism from seniors’ organizations and liberal activists, who say the strategy is part of a broader conservative bias favoring painful entitlement cuts over other solutions.”

YOU MUST NOT MISS IT!!!

————– http://www.ftoto.com/ ———–

a leading worldwide wholesale company (or ucan say organization). We supply more than 100 thousand high-quality merchandise and famous brand name products all at wholesale prices.

————– http://www.ftoto.com/ ———–

LOL.

Germany has voted to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 in 1-month increments over the course of the next 2 decades (today’s 46-year-olds would be the first 67-year-old retirees in 2031).
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http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/regierungsbericht-weg-frei-fuer-die-rente-mit-67_aid_571204.html
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Why is a pragmatic idea such as this so toxic here in the US?

I’m not usually a David Sirota linker, but there’s some epic smackdown in this (& all manner of tasty language):

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-sirota/32374/thank-you-dick-cheney-for-giving-me-the-proper-words

And WTF, since this has already turned into an open thread. Here’s an H. L.M. quote for the ages:

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Massimo Calabresi:
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“An aide says…”
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With “analysis” like that, what makes you believe that you have the credibility to relay anonymously sourced information without bothering to include a single word regarding the reason for the non-quote paraphrase being taken off of the record?

http://www.nytco.com/company/business_units/integrity.html
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The New York Times Company: Guidelines on Integrity
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Anonymity and Its Devices.
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The use of unidentified sources is reserved for situations in which the newspaper could not otherwise print information it considers newsworthy and reliable. When possible, reporter and editor should discuss any promise of anonymity before it is made, or before the reporting begins on a story that may result in such a commitment. (Some beats, like criminal justice or national security, may carry standing authorization for the reporter to grant anonymity.)
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The stylebook discusses the forms of attribution for such cases: the general rule is to tell readers as much as we can about the placement and known motivation of the source. While we avoid automatic phrases about a source’s having “insisted on anonymity,” we should try to state tersely what kind of understanding was actually reached by reporter and source, especially when we can shed light on the source’s reasons.

Well, did this person tell you to go file an FOIA claim when you asked them for the Speaker’s position, Massimo Calabresi?
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Is your beat national security or criminal justice?
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TIME’s editorial policies on “anonymity and its devices” can’t be that wildly different from The Times’, right?
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So how about you tell us this “aide’s” name, so we can know whether or not you’re communicating something that was actually said?
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When you dash out “analysis” –such as in the previous piece– that contains gems like “even spendthrifts on the left had the political sense simply to lie low,” in which not even profligate, decadent, leftist Democrats cannot be named, you simply do not possess the credibility required to be trusted to pass on unsubstantiated claims, Massimo Calabresi.

Christ…”in which not even profligate, decadent, leftist Democrats can be named…”

See below for my analysis of the political safe ground for Democrats on this issue.
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Naw, I’m cool, bro.

I saw another HL Mencken quote today that I liked, though for the life of me I can’t remember what it was.
(I assume HLM means HL Mencken.)
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Ah, here it is:
“there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”
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Now if I can just remember where I first saw it.

You know, that’s a great question.
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The answer is that they don’t f*ck their workers as badly as we have allowed here in the United States during the past few decades, that’s why.

U.S. vs. global mfg. worker wages.
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Publication: Manufacturing & Technology News
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Date: Monday, August 30 2010
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It’s a lot less expensive to hire a manufacturing worker in the United States than it is in Western Europe. But American manufacturing workers make a lot more than those in Mexico, India and China.
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The total compensation cost for all employees in the U.S. manufacturing sector rose to $32.26 per hour in 2008, up by 2.4 percent over 2007, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics International Labor Comparison program (a program the Obama administration wants to terminate).
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By comparison, the total compensation cost for manufacturing employees in Norway was $57.18 per hour in 2008; in Germany it was $48.22 per hour ; and in Denmark it was $44.68 per hour. Mexico was far less: $4.04 per hour. In China it’s even lower: $1.36 per hour, or 4.2 percent of what the average American manufacturing worker makes, and in India it was only $0.91 per hour (in 2005).
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Total compensation costs for manufacturing workers in 32 foreign countries (excluding India and China) increased by 7.2 percent on a U.S.-dollar basis in 2008. Most of the increase in foreign manufacturing workers’ compensation costs can be attributed to the appreciation of foreign currencies.
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Hourly compensation costs include basic wages, overtime pay for holiday and night work, cost of living adjustments, bonuses, vacation pay, commuting expenses, cash value of payments, in-kind severance pay, retirement and disability pensions, health insurance, income guarantee insurance, sick leave, life and accident insurance, occupational injury and illness compensation, unemployment insurance, social insurance and taxes on payrolls or employment.

The Germans also didn’t pass a massive tax cut in 2003 that added $2.2 trillion to their deficits, and so consequently their ruling party isn’t capitulating to the threats of their minority party, and making plans to affirmatively pass legislation to extend that dramatic lack of revenue, and then turning to people’s public pensions to make that up that loss.
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Given the lack of wages, benefits and small-s social security here (as opposed to Germany’s entirely adequate system), and given that the entitlement responsible for the most drastic deficit increase is actually Medicare (again, as opposed to Germany’s entirely adequate health care system), it’s not at all a practical idea in the United States to raid the big-s Social Security fund, in order to pay for, amongst other wealth-wastes, the Bush tax cuts.
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That’s why so many reasonable people find the program of deliberate reduction of people’s standard of living incomprehensible in policy terms, and not merely moral terms.

Mr. Calabresi, please allow me to explain.

The proposal was moronic and immoral. Nancy Pelosi being — in part — an intelligent human, took one look at it and rejected it as a non-starter.

Unfortunately, Washington D.C. is largely composed of stupid and immoral people who failed to recognize that the proposal was preposterous. Some of them are in Ms. Pelosi’s party. Some of them are in the White House. They told her not to freak out and to publicly reserve judgment. Being — in part — a politician, she listened to them and that is what she is now doing.

Massimo in case you and Nancy didn’t get the memo, Pelosi is irrelevant, except for fund raising for the opposition candidates.

It is useful to remember that Pelosi just lost 61 seats in the House and the Speaker’s gavel primarily because of her stewardship of the economy.

By the way, I have quite low standards for beltway pundits. So it is not often that I’m genuinely struck by the raw stupidity of a pundit’s analysis. Congratulations to Mr. Calabresi for achieving that feat.

The Democrats just lost 61 seats in the House for three reasons:

1. Republicans and Blue Dogs hurled the U.S. economy off of a cliff through a combination of reckless deregulation of Wall Street, reckless tax cuts, and a reckless invasion of Iraq.

2. President Obama, Blue Dogs, and Republicans conspired to prevent a recovery by refusing to support Keynesian economic principles that 99% of economists have accepted as gospel for over 70 years.

3. Rank-and-file Democrats, who were repulsed by the failure of the White House and the Democratic Senate to oppose the GOP and pass liberal legislation stayed home in droves.

Of all the major politicians and advisors in D.C. over the past 10-15 years, you would be hard pressed to pick one who was less to blame for either causing the economic quagmire or losing the House than Nancy Pelosi.

Disgusting.

If 99% of economists accept Keynesian econ principles, why have Keynesian economics been out of favor since the 1970s, since Jimmy Carter the First.???
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You assertions are nothing but ridiculous partisan rantings.
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They are so far detached from reality that they should be on the Daily Kos. Obama IS a Keynesian. This economy is now Obama’s and Nancy Pelosi’s. They passed lots of legislation that nobody bothered to read. The more people learn about what they passed the more they hate it.
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So, you represent the 6% of the population that supports Nancy Pelosi. Good luck with that.

Because we already did that.

16.1 – liberal,

You assertions are nothing but ridiculous partisan rantings.

If the Democrats thought the base was demoralized before go ahead and support these ideas. Not only will your base disappear they will likely resemble the students who are starting to give their answer to the corporate wh@res in the streets of Britain.

Not to brag but I suggested to you in the comments yesterday that all Pelosi’s statement meant was that she was confident that an acceptable conclusion to all of this would be reached eventually and not that it was any example of “backtracking.”

My contribution to yesterday’s discussions was by no means the most substantive of the lot though. How about you address the errors of fact and analysis that others pointed out for you in a friendly way?

It is NOT laissez-faire. What we have at this point is a government-big business “partnership.” The money center banks are no longer private enterprises; they have a permanent connection to the discount window, and cannot be allowed to fail. Obama’s health care “compromises” were not with Congress. They were with the health care industries. The military industrial complex is not a private operation. It’s an entitlement system for senior management in defense contractors. Telecom–cable, cell phone, internet access are all controlled by government defended monopolies that do what monopolies always do, overcharge and underdeliver.
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Our biggest problem is not laissez faire. It’s the absence of any effective competition in a large fraction of our industries. This is, of course, the role of the government–to intervene when competition is eliminated.
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Adam Smith:
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“A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures. The monopolists, by keeping the market constantly understocked, by never fully supplying the effectual demand, sell their commodities much above the natural price, and raise their emoluments, whether they consist in wages or profit, greatly above their natural rate.”
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Thank God for partisan rantings (common sense). There still may be hope.

Are you reffering to the vast “gimme” society that’s finally recieving a much needed reality check?

How would you know apr?