Dean Baker: Fareed Zakaria is Unhappy That "The American Left" Chooses Arithmetic Over Peter Peterson

Fareed Zakaria is very unhappy that "The American Left," by whom he means the vast majority of people across the political spectrum who oppose cuts to Social Security and Medicare, insist on taking arithmetic seriously. They are refusing to join Peter Peterson and his wealthy friends in the Campaign to Fix the Debt in their crusade to cut these key social insurance programs.

Zakaria tells readers:

 "The American left has trained its sights on a new enemy: Pete Peterson. The banker and private-equity billionaire is, at first glance, an obvious target—rich and Republican. He stands accused of being the evil genius behind all the forces urging Washington to do something about the national debt. ...

Dean Baker: No Santa Claus and Bill Clinton Was Not an Economic Savior

The truth is often painful but nonetheless it is important that we live in the real world. Just as little kids have to come to grips with the fact that there is no Santa Claus, it is necessary for millions of liberals, including many who think of themselves as highly knowledgeable about economic matters, to realize
that President Clinton’s policies sent the economy seriously off course.

In Washington it is common to tout the budget surpluses of the Clinton years as some momentous achievement, as though the point of economic policy is to run budget surpluses. Of course the point of economic policy is to produce an economy that improves the lives of the people in a sustainable way.
Clinton badly flunked this test.

Fiscal Fail: Government Agencies Plan Few Significant Changes For January, Despite Cliff Hype

by Ryan Grim
Posted: 12/22/2012 10:19 pm EST | Updated: 12/23/2012 1:15 pm EST

WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 1, 2000, the world awoke to find that little had changed since the night before. After years of hype around what was then called Y2K -- the fear that computer systems across the globe would collapse, unable to handle the year shifting from '99 to '00 -- the date change turned out to be a momentous non-event.

Next week, the United States is in for much the same, after months of frantic hype about the economic disruption that awaits if Congress and the president fail to reach a deal and the federal government goes "over the fiscal cliff." (The difference between Y2K and the fiscal cliff being that computer programmers worked around the clock to ensure the former was a non-event.)

The so-called fiscal cliff is a combination of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1. But the agencies responsible for implementing those changes, including the IRS and the Pentagon, are well aware that congressional and White House negotiators will most likely come to some sort of deal within weeks or months -- and so they are planning to carry on as usual, according to a broad review of private and public government plans.

The Final Battle

By Chris Hedges


Over the past year I and other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg have pressed a lawsuit in the federal courts to nullify Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This egregious section, which permits the government to use the military to detain U.S. citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers, could have been easily fixed by Congress. The Senate and House had the opportunity this month to include in the 2013 version of the NDAA an unequivocal statement that all U.S. citizens would be exempt from 1021(b)(2), leaving the section to apply only to foreigners. But restoring due process for citizens was something the Republicans and the Democrats, along with the White House, refused to do. The fate of some of our most basic and important rights—ones enshrined in the Bill of Rights as well as the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution—will be decided in the next few months in the courts. If the courts fail us, a gulag state will be cemented into place.  

Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, pushed through the Senate an amendment to the 2013 version of the NDAA. The amendment, although deeply flawed, at least made a symbolic attempt to restore the right to due process and trial by jury. A House-Senate conference committee led by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., however, removed the amendment from the bill last week. 

Paul Krugman: When Prophecy Fails

Back in the 1950s three social psychologists joined a cult that was predicting the imminent end of the world. Their purpose was to observe the cultists’ response when the world did not, in fact, end on schedule. What they discovered, and described in their classic book, “When Prophecy Fails,” is that the irrefutable failure of a prophecy does not cause true believers — people who have committed themselves to a belief both emotionally and by their life choices — to reconsider. On the contrary, they become even more fervent, and proselytize even harder.

This insight seems highly relevant as 2012 draws to a close. After all, a lot of people came to believe that we were on the brink of catastrophe — and these views were given extraordinary reach by the mass media. As it turned out, of course, the predicted catastrophe failed to materialize. But we can be sure that the cultists won’t admit to having been wrong.

Oh, wait a second — did you think I was talking about the Mayan calendar thing?

Koch Brother’s Next Target: Hurricane Sandy Victims

Money can buy you many things in this world, but unfortunately for billionaire David Koch, it couldn’t buy him the gift he really wanted this holiday season: the ouster of President Obama. But since Koch is really, really rich, he can afford to spend massive amounts of cash to go after other political targets—like any member of Congress who supports the major aid package to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy. 

Last week, one of Koch’s conservative political organizations, Americans for Prosperity, sent a letter to congressional members threatening to unleash a torrent of political attack ads against them in the next election if they vote for the $60.4 billion federal storm aid package.

“It seems particularly cruel that the Koch political machine would use its vast network of paid activists and professional operatives to kill this bill,” The Nation’s Lee Fang writes. “For one thing, this is David Koch’s community. From his Upper East Side apartment, Koch lives only a subway ride away from the devastation in Red Hook.”

FBI Investigated Occupy Movement as 'Domestic Terrorists, Criminals'

'Coordination between the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and corporate America'

- Craig Brown, staff writer 

 

The FBI organized a nationwide law enforcement investigation and monitoring of the Occupy Wall Street movement beginning in August of 2011.

Just released heavily-redacted documents revealing the FBI's actions were obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) via a Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA). In some documents, the FBI refers to the Occupy Wall Street protests as a "criminal activity" and "domestic terrorism."

Pensions: A Promise is a Promise... Unless it's Inconvenient

Sunday, 23 December 2012 12:22  
By Mike Alberti, Remapping Debate | News Analysis

In 2008, when George Glover decided to retire from his job as a program coordinator for the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training after 33 years, he did so with the expectation of receiving a 3 percent cost-of-living increase in his state pension every year. A statistician by training, Glover had planned methodically for his retirement, making spreadsheets, doing the math. Between Social Security, his state pension, and the adjustments for the cost of living, he figured he would be able to pay all his bills and have a little left over.

“I’m what you might call meticulous,” he said. “I never make a decision without running the numbers first.”

Then, in 2011, the Rhode Island legislature, claiming that the state’s retirement system had become unsustainable, passed a sweeping law — euphemistically dubbed the Rhode Island Retirement Security Act — that made drastic modifications to the pension scheme.

On the News With Thom Hartmann: Republicans in Three States Have Introduced New Voter Suppression ID Laws, and More

Saturday, 22 December 2012 09:15  
By Thom Hartmann, The Thom Hartmann Program

TRANSCRIPT:

Thom Hartmann here – on the news...at the end of the world...
You need to know this. The Republican Party self-destructed in front of the entire nation last night – as Speaker of the House John Boehner failed to get his members in line to vote on a plan to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff." It was a bad idea to begin with – a plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire for millionaires – but let those same millionaires keep generous tax loopholes, while getting rid of many of the tax breaks used by the middle class. It was another huge giveaway to the rich, but the Republicans Party flew over the cuckoo's nest and couldn't even stomach passing a very, very modest tax increase on billionaires like the Koch brothers. In a statement late Tuesday night, Speaker Boehner said he didn't have enough votes within his own party to pass the measure. He then urged President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to come up with a plan while he sends his Republican House members Christmas vacation. Financial markets are not reacting well to the news. Yesterday's events in the House made the President's hand even stronger in negotiations. A plan to avoid the "fiscal cliff" will not pass out of the House without Democratic support – and everybody knows it now. So it's time to take cuts to Social Security Insurance benefits off the table, and come up with a deal that's more in line with what the nation wants, which is for the rich to pay their fair share in taxes and no cuts to social insurance programs. If a few sensible Republicans in the House don't join Democrats and take this sort of deal, then off the cliff we go, and President Obama's hand will get even stronger.

NRA links violent media to mass shootings, but researchers are skeptical

By Dan Zak,
Blood. Gore. Intense violence.

These are three “content descriptors” shared by four video games cited by the head of the National Rifle Association as evidence that the American media as a whole — not individual ownership of assault weapons — encourages a culture of violence that occasionally manifests as mass shootings like the one in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14.

“There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people — through vicious, violent video games with names like ‘Bulletstorm,’ ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ ‘Mortal Kombat’ and ‘Splatterhouse,’ ” NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said Friday in Washington at a morning news conference, the first public statement by the association since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
 

Why the US media ignored Murdoch's brazen bid to hijack the presidency

Did the Washington Post and others underplay the story through fear of the News Corp chairman, or simply tin-eared judgment?

Carl Bernstein
The Guardian, Thursday 20 December 2012 11.41 EST

So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch's ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America's democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press.
 
In the American instance, Murdoch's goal seems to have been nothing less than using his media empire – notably Fox News – to stealthily recruit, bankroll and support the presidential candidacy of General David Petraeus in the 2012 election.

Thus in the spring of 2011 – less than 10 weeks before Murdoch's centrality to the hacking and politician-buying scandal enveloping his British newspapers was definitively revealed – Fox News' inventor and president, Roger Ailes, dispatched an emissary to Afghanistan to urge Petraeus to turn down President Obama's expected offer to become CIA director and, instead, run for the Republican nomination for president, with promises of being bankrolled by Murdoch. Ailes himself would resign as president of Fox News and run the campaign, according to the conversation between Petraeus and the emissary, K T McFarland, a Fox News on-air defense "analyst" and former spear carrier for national security principals in three Republican administrations.
 

The Case For Going Over The Cliff Remains Strong

By Matthew Yglesias | Posted Friday, Dec. 21, 2012, at 11:18 AM ET

I wrote earlier today that I think the failure of Plan B makes a deal more likely than it would have been had the bill passed. But I do want to emphasize that there continues to be an excellent chance that a deal won't be made until January, and a strong case that the otucome will be better on the merits if we wait until January.

One key issue is that, as John Boehner said today, many of his members were reluctant to vote for Plan B because of "a perception" that it would be a vote to increase taxes. That's nuts. The full expiration of the Bush tax cuts is the law of the land. The debate between the White House and the GOP is over how much to cut taxes. But a variety of factors, including the Obama administration's messaging and the Congressional Budget Office's counterproductive insistence on publication of an "Alternative Fiscal Scenario" baseline have clouded this issue. Come January, however, perception changes.
 

Scandal Alert: Congress Is Quietly Abandoning the 5th Amendment

Conor Friedersdorf

Dec 20 2012, 6:00 AM ET

Meet the prominent legislators who think it's okay to throw Americans in jail forever without charges or trial. 

What everyone must understand is that American politics doesn't work the way you'd think it would. Most people presume that government officials would never willfully withhold penicillin from men with syphilis just to see what would happen if the disease went untreated. It seems unlikely that officers would coerce enlisted men into exposing themselves to debilitating nerve gas. Few expected that President Obama would preside over the persecution of an NSA whistle-blower, or presume the guilt of all military-aged males killed by U.S. drone strikes. But it all happened.

Really thinking about all that may make it easier to believe what I'm about to tell you.

It may seem like imprisoning an American citizen without charges or trial transgresses against the United States Constitution and basic norms of Western justice dating back to the Magna Carta.
 

Front Group for Military-Industrial Complex Pushes Hard to Slash Social Programs and Avoid Pentagon Cuts

By Steven Rosenfeld

December 20, 2012  |  As the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations drag on in Washington with the media covering Repubican House Speaker John Boehner’slatest [3] temper tantrums, a bipartisancoalition [4] of former government officials with deep ties to the defense industry and Wall Street are ratcheting up the pressure to cut retirement programs while sparing military contractors.

“Fix the Debt – a corporate-backed lobbying group advocating debt reduction with a $60 million budget – has failed to embrace defense spending cuts as a viable deficit reduction option, despite the fact that defense spending makes up over half of discretionary spending,” begins anew report [5] by the Public Accountablity Initiative, a non-profit watchdog group, which focuses on the financial interests of who is behind cutting retirement security programs and other needed safety nets.

“The group’s 'core principles' focus on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid reforms and 'pro-growth' tax reform, and fail to even mention defense spending,” PAI’sreport [6] continues. “Fix the Debt’s eagerness to point the finger at social safety net spending while virtually ignoring defense spending makes more sense in light of its corporate backing. A review of the group’s corporate ties shows that many Fix the Debt leaders have lucrative connections to companies with billions of dollars in defense contracts.”

Paul Krugman: Playing Taxes Hold 'Em

A few years back, there was a boom in poker television — shows in which you got to watch the betting and bluffing of expert card players. Since then, however, viewers seem to have lost interest. But I have a suggestion: Instead of featuring poker experts, why not have a show featuring poker incompetents — people who fold when they have a strong hand or don’t know how to quit while they’re ahead?

On second thought, that show already exists. It’s called budget negotiations, and it’s now in its second episode.
 

The Latest War on Single Moms

By Irin Carmon

December 20, 2012  |  The United States offers the worst support structure for single parents among all comparable countries — and if anything like House Speaker John Boehner’s Plan B carries the day, it’s about to get worse.

Republicans used to love [3] the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit, because they incentivized paid labor and used the tax code instead of cash assistance or programs to help low-income parents, most visibly single mothers. But that was before the cry against the 47 percent, a substantial portion of whom didn’t pay taxes because of such credits.

In the Washington Post, Jamelle Bouie points [4] to an analysis [5] by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showing that the two tax credits for low-income families will be slashed under Plan B: “A mother with two children who works full time at the minimum wage of $7.25 and earns $14,500 a year would lose $1,560 of her Child Tax Credit, which would plummet from $1,725 to $165.”

US Manufacturing Wages Not Too High

By Dave Johnson | December 20, 2012


US manufacturing wages are competitive, but wages are not the only reason companies might not be coming back.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report this week, International Comparisons of Hourly Compensation Costs in Manufacturing, 2011, that debunks the myth that manufacturing worker wages are not competitive with those of other major manufacturing countries. 

The Unequal State of America: The economics paper that rattled Washington

By Deborah Nelson

WASHINGTON, D.C. | Tue Dec 18, 2012 7:12am EST


(Reuters) - The work of government economists is often so dry that the public never hears of it. And then there's the work of Thomas Hungerford.

An employee of the Congressional Research Service, Hungerford in 2011 published a paper that found that after-tax income inequality rose 11.2 percent between 1996 and 2006. Rising capital gains and dividends among the wealthy were the main driver of the widening gap, he concluded, accounting for 72 percent of the increase. Tax cuts, he found, accounted for the rest. The cuts had an especially big impact because income from capital gains surpassed salaries for the top 1 percent of earners over that period.