Happy Birthday to President Barack Obama!

Happy Birthday to a great President Barack Obama.  He was born 50 years ago today.  And to the birthers-Fuck you, Obama was born in Hawaii you racist pigs so get over it.

Oh and here is his Birth Certificate:

On the debt-limit front, by this point it was all long since over but the retching

Thomas Friedman, Private Eye
by Tom Tomorrow

[Don't forget to click to enlarge.]

by Ken

I admit was surprised that "the deal" was struck yesterday, which was merely August 1, a full day ahead of the August 2 "deadline." Those who don't understand much about negotiations, at least of the political kind, seem to imagine that putting a deadline on the matter facilitates negotiations and compromise, whereas in reality it almost always assures that no serious negotiating happens until the deadline is a whisper away. Otherwise neither party can go back to its "people" without being accused of having made all manner of unnecessary concessions. How could they possibly have been necessary if there was still XXX length-of-time left?

And you'll notice that over on the Loonified Right, they're hoppin' mad, despite having gotten everything they could possibly have hoped to. But of course there's no reason or sense over there. Their fallback position is always an unbroken: "We're mad as hell, and we're mad as hell."

In the wake of the mournful day there's been no lack of highly sensible writing on the subject, and I had this plan of lifting extracts from half a dozen or so pieces that I read with appreciation. But somehow it all seems beside the point, since sense never had anything to do with it. Over there in the Party of Hello No, they seem almost proud of the fact that not only do they not understand any aspect of either the debt or debt-ceiling problem, they don't know anyone who does, having already thrown anyone who showed signs of having a lick of sense over the edge of the flat earth.

In this vein, it seems to me rather beside the point to upbraid members of Congress for their vote, whichever way they voted. Yes, it might have been interesting if one or both houses had refused to go along with the deal, just as a sign of resistance. But does anyone believe there was any chance of achieving a less onerous deal? There were no votes to be had among the Hell No-ers, and without at least some of them no deal would have been possible -- not to mention the panic all those Fraidy-Scared Pols in the Middle are feeling having to face an electorate that thinks all the pols have been acting like "spoiled children," as CNN's pollsters are reporting. Well, of course the poll-makers undoubtedly designed the poll to prove that point, but still, that tells us something, doesn't it?

About the only vote I can imagine having any force of reason would have been to vote "present," since there was no "good" vote, only a choice of bad ones. As Jonathan Cohn wrote in his fine tnr.com blogpost, "This Is Not Leadership," one of the pieces I planned to cannibalize:

Out of exasperation as much as curiosity, I e-mailed a Washington insider who happens to be among President Obama's most loyal supporters. How, I asked, could Obama agree to such a lopsided deal? This person answered with a different question: What would I have done instead? It took me a few minutes to realize that I didn't have an answer.

By the time we reached this stage, I don't have an answer either. Earlier on there might have been some possibilities, as our friend David Dayen outlined in his fine TAP post, "Turning Points: Five chances to avoid the debt-ceiling fight that Obama missed," but by this month it was all over but the shouting, or should I say retching?


Actual Audio: Obama On the Debt Deal
by scottbateman

I'm not sure what makes this a "comic," or really what it thinks it's doing, but it makes for pretty nauseating listening, and just now it seems like a helpful thing to have concrete reasons for feeling nauseous, seeing as how it's how most of us are feeling anyways.

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My thoughts on the debt agreement-Update

The debt ceiling agreement passed the House last night and will likely pass the Senate today and President Obama will sign it.

Personally I think this debt agreement is terrible. While the debt ceiling is raised, the cuts are too deep and there is no tax increase for the wealthy.

I realize compromise is not perfect but this is terrible. It's not compromise when one side gets much more than the other. That is called taking it in the ass.

The Republicans in both houses of Congress should be tried for treason. In my opinion the real reason they dragged this out is because they want the economy to tank so the voting public has a reason to elect a Republican for president in 2012. Wanting the president to fail is treason. As much as I despise George W. Bush I never wanted him to fail, but I knew he would, and he did. Much more than I imagined he would.

The Democrats need to fight harder and all liberal voters need to get their ass to the polls in 2012 and vote them cousin loving Teathuglicans out.

What debt ceiling agreement would be complete without the Big Mouth flapping her jaw?


Joe Biden is absolutely correct. The Teabaggers are terrorists.

Update-I would be remiss to not mention I was inspired by Gabby Giffords return to the House Floor, even if she is not my Congresswoman. Another poster on another blog mentioned she is the Real Undefeated. Yes my friend that is absolutely correct.

Breaking News-President Obama announces deal

From CNN
Washington (CNN) -- Two days before the deadline for a possible U.S. government default, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders reached agreement Sunday on a legislative package that would extend the federal debt ceiling while cutting spending and guaranteeing further deficit-reduction steps.

The proposed $3 trillion deal, which still requires congressional approval, brought some immediate relief to global markets closely watching the situation play out and a nation filled with anger and frustration over partisan political wrangling that threatened further economic harm to an already struggling recovery.

However, there was no guarantee the plan will win enough support to pass both chambers of Congress.

Democratic and Republican leaders in both the House and Senate were briefing their caucuses about the agreement on Sunday night or Monday.

Sen. John Hoeven, R-North Dakota, earlier told CNN that cuts to military spending were a final sticking point.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, told reporters that she needs to see "the final product" in writing before she can decide if she supports it.

Pelosi said she would meet with the House Democratic caucus on Monday to discuss the matter.

"I don't know all the particulars of what the final product is in writing and what the ramifications will be," Pelosi said, noting the measure will have an impact for a decade or more. Asked about the outcome, she warned: "We all may not be able to support it or none of us may be able to support it."

In the face of an August 2 deadline to get new authorization to borrow money or face a possible government default, congressional leaders and the White House were trying to complete the agreement that would extend the debt limit through 2012 -- a presidential election year.

Earlier, Reid's Republican counterpart in the Senate said the two parties were "very close" to reaching a deal that would bring $3 trillion in deficit reduction.

"We had a very good day yesterday," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, told CNN, adding that the two sides "made dramatic progress" in negotiations on a deal that would cut government spending and raise the federal debt ceiling.

Another Republican senator, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, later told reporters he expected a Monday vote on a compromise.

"It feels like they're going to finish the deal today and then we'll have the vote tomorrow," Isakson said, adding he supports the plan under discussion.

Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration agreed that progress has been made.

"If there's a word right here that would sum up the mood, it would be relief -- relief that we won't default," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said on CNN. "That's not a certainty, but default is far less of a possibility now than it was even a day ago."

If Congress fails to raise the current $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by Tuesday, Americans could face rising interest rates and a declining dollar, among other problems.

Some financial experts have warned of a downgrade of America's triple-A credit rating and a potential stock market plunge. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped for a sixth straight day on Friday.

Without an increase in the debt limit, the federal government will not be able to pay all its bills next month. President Barack Obama recently indicated he can't guarantee Social Security checks will be mailed out on time.

In Afghanistan on Sunday, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen was unable to assure U.S. troops they would get their paychecks following the August 2 deadline without a deal. Mullen said August 15 would be the first payday jeopardized if the United States defaults.

Last week, a Department of Defense official told CNN on condition of not being identified that "it's not a question of whether, but when" military pay gets withheld if no agreement is reached.

Vice President Joe Biden arrived at the White House on Sunday morning, though no additional formal talks involving the administration and congressional leaders have been announced. A Democratic source told CNN on condition of not being identified that Biden was engaged in behind-the-scenes negotiations with both congressional legislators and the administration.

Initial news of a possible deal came shortly after the Senate delayed consideration of a debt ceiling proposal by Reid late Saturday night, pushing back a key procedural vote by 12 hours. When that vote occurred on Sunday afternoon, Republicans blocked a Democratic effort to end debate on the Reid proposal and move to a vote, extending consideration of the plan while negotiations continue.

The vote was 50-49, short of the super-majority of 60 required to pass.

Reid plans to insert a negotiated final agreement into the proposal once a deal has been reached. When it became clear that Democrats would lose Sunday's vote, Reid voted against his own plan in a procedural move to preserve the ability to bring it up again.

According to McConnell and other congressional and administration officials interviewed Sunday, as well as various sources who spoke to CNN on condition of not being identified, the deal under discussion would be a two-step process intended to bring as much as $3 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years.

Some sources provided differing targets for the total, ranging from $2.4 trillion up to $3 trillion.

A first step would include about $1 trillion in spending cuts while raising the debt ceiling about the same amount. The proposal also would set up a special committee of Democratic and Republican legislators from both chambers of Congress to recommend additional deficit reduction steps -- including tax reform as well as reforms to popular entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

The committee's recommendations would be put to a vote by Congress, without any amendments, by the end of the year. If Congress fails to pass the package, a so-called "trigger" mechanism would enact automatic spending cuts. Either way -- with the package passed by Congress or the trigger of automatic cuts -- a second increase in the debt ceiling would occur, but with an accompanying congressional vote of disapproval.

In addition, the agreement would require both chambers of Congress to vote on a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Such an amendment would require two-thirds majorities in both chambers to pass, followed by ratification by 38 states -- a process likely to take years.

Schumer told CNN that a main sticking point still under discussion was the trigger mechanism of automatic spending cuts in case Congress fails to enact the special committee's recommendations.

According to sources, cuts in the trigger mechanism would be across-the-board, including Medicare and defense spending, to present an unpalatable alternative for both parties in the event Congress fails to pass the special committee's proposal.

"You want to make it hard for them just to walk away and wash their hands," Gene Sperling, the director of Obama's National Economic Council, told CNN. "You want them to say, if nothing happens, there will be a very tough degree of pain that will take place."

Preliminary reaction showed sensitivity to that pain. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, said the automatic spending cuts under a trigger mechanism should not affect Medicare benefits for senior citizens.

"The way we understand it's going to be worded is it does not affect beneficiaries. It would affect providers and insurance companies," Levin said. "That should be the case, because if it hits beneficiaries, you're going to lose lots of Democratic votes."

Meanwhile, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, an aide to former Republican President George W. Bush, warned that automatic spending cuts for the military under the trigger would put national security at risk.

"By exposing critical defense programs to disproportionate cuts as part of the 'trigger mechanism,' there is a clear risk that key defense programs will be hollowed out," Bolton said in a statement.

Overall, the agreement under discussion would increase the debt limit in two stages, both of which would occur automatically -- a key Democratic demand that would prevent a repeat of the current crisis before the next election.

McConnell, who appears to have become the lead Republican negotiator, said he is "very, very close to being able ... to recommend to my members that this is something that they ought to support."

The deal will not include tax increases, McConnell added, expressing a key demand of Republicans. Obama has pushed for a comprehensive approach that would include additional tax revenue as well as spending cuts and entitlement reforms to reduce budget deficits.

Reid, D-Nevada, said Saturday night that the delay in considering his proposal was additional time for negotiations at the White House.

His announcement capped a day of sharp partisan voting in the House and extended talks behind closed doors between congressional and administration officials. Concern continued to grow that Congress will fail to raise the nation's debt ceiling in time to avoid a potentially devastating national default this week.

Earlier Saturday, the Republican-controlled House rejected Reid's plan -- partisan payback for the Democratic-controlled Senate's rejection of Boehner's plan Friday night.

House members rejected Reid's plan in a 246-173 vote. Most Democrats supported the measure; every Republican voted against it.

For their part, Republicans continued to trumpet Boehner's proposal. The measure won House approval Friday, but only by a narrow margin after a one-day delay during which the speaker was forced to round up support from wary tea party conservatives.

Boehner's deal with conservatives -- which added a provision requiring congressional approval of a balanced budget amendment in order to raise the debt limit next year -- was sharply criticized by Democrats, who called it a political nonstarter.

Democratic leaders vehemently object not only to the balanced budget amendment, but also the GOP's insistence that a second debt ceiling vote be held before the next election. They argue that reaching bipartisan agreement on another debt ceiling hike during an election year could be nearly impossible, and that short-term extensions of the limit could further destabilize the economy.

Leaders of both parties now agree that any deal to raise the debt ceiling should include long-term spending reductions to help control spiraling deficits. But they have differed on both the timetable and requirements tied to certain cuts.

Boehner's plan proposed generating a total of $917 billion in savings while initially raising the debt ceiling by $900 billion. The speaker has pledged to match any debt ceiling hike with dollar-for-dollar spending cuts.

His plan would require a second vote by Congress to raise the debt ceiling by a combined $2.5 trillion -- enough to last through the end of 2012. It would create a special congressional committee to recommend additional savings of $1.6 trillion or more.

Any failure on the part of Congress to enact mandated spending reductions or abide by new spending caps would trigger automatic across-the-board budget cuts.

The plan also calls for congressional passage of a balanced budget amendment before the second vote to raise the debt ceiling.

Reid's plan, meanwhile, would reduce deficits over the next decade by $2.4 trillion and raise the debt ceiling by a similar amount. It includes $1 trillion in savings based on the planned U.S. withdrawals from military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Reid's plan also would establish a congressional committee made up of 12 House and Senate members to consider additional options for debt reduction. The committee's proposals would be guaranteed by a Senate vote with no amendments by the end of the year.

In addition, it incorporates a process based on a proposal by McConnell that would give Obama the authority to raise the debt ceiling in two steps while providing Congress the opportunity to vote its disapproval.

Among other things, Reid has stressed that his plan meets the key GOP demand for no additional taxes. Boehner, however, argued last week that Reid's plan fails to tackle popular entitlement programs such as Medicare, which are among the biggest drivers of the debt.

A recent CNN/ORC International Poll reveals a growing public exasperation and demand for compromise. Sixty-four percent of respondents to a July 18-20 survey preferred a deal with a mix of spending cuts and tax increases. Only 34% preferred a debt reduction plan based solely on spending reductions.

According to the poll, the public is sharply divided along partisan lines; Democrats and independents are open to a number of different approaches because they think a failure to raise the debt ceiling would cause a major crisis for the country. Republicans, however, draw the line at tax increases, and a narrow majority of them oppose raising the debt ceiling under any circumstances.

Bout fucking time! And to all you 535 members of Congress, vote yes!

You can't tell GOP wingnuts and Teabagging voters and cooking-show contestants and Ring Lardner's Jack Keefe apart without a scorecard

Oh no, Hell's Kitchen is back! At a certain point, congressional Republicans merge in the mind with the people who vote for them and the clueless legions of TV cooking-show contestants and Ring Lardner's Jack Keefe.

by Ken

Not long ago we were told that President Obama's latest "plan" for getting a deficit-ceiling increase included splitting the debt-ceiling and deficit-reduction issues so that "we" would do debt-ceiling increase now and later revamp the tax code -- and I remember thinking what? you're going to let those people tinker with the tax code???

By "those people," of course, I meant the primitive life forms that invaded the 112th Congress. And I had to remind myself that these low-life mental defectives, people you wouldn't trust to walk your dog or sweep out your barber-shop floor, actually have statutory authority to deal with taxes and every other damned thing that comes before Congress. This sounds like really bad science fiction.

I can't help recalling, though, that after all there were constitutionally franchised voters elected these people to public office. And I think back to the time when the Teabaggers were inventing themselves, or being invented, and numbers of my liberal colleagues took us elitists to task for railing at them. Like as if we didn't have the sense to understand that they have grievances. D'oh! Of course they have grievances. But they have walled themselves off from all receptiveness to reality, and it was already clear that once again in their time of troubles they were going to turn to absolutely the vilest people in the universe, who were manipulating them like puppets, only dumber.

Lately I can't seem to escape this thread in human nature: the passionate embrace of the cosmically imbecilic -- and often malignly manipulative. This summer I seem to be watching a crush of those TV cooking-competition shows (you know, Master Chef and Chopped and Chopped and Food Network Star (less egregious than many of the others, I have to say, but still), and now Hell's Kitchen again, and while I've written before about so many of the competitors' staggering lack of self-knowledge and lack of perceptiveness about their rivals, and there it all is again, only now it blends right in with "the busher," Jack Keefe, the "hero" of Ring Lardner's still-sublime "busher" stories.

It's been a treat reimmersing myself in Lardner's You Know Me Al, preparing for its return to in our late-night (9pm PT) comical-writing rotation last night. But it's a complicated sort of treat, because Lardner's understanding of people is so acute Jack Keefe, the big, hard-throwing young pitcher we saw ascend to and quickly fall out of the big leagues when we did Chapter I of You Know Me All, because Jack is, frankly, such a yutz.

To go with that very large natural talent of being able to throw a baseball really hard Jack has, well, nothing. Barely a clue about how to apply his natural gifts in terms of matching pitches to hitters, and as his manager and coaches keep trying to make him understand, a staggering cluelessness (read "indifference") about such hardly subtle phases of the game as holding runners on base and fielding his position. (It's uncanny how exactly Lardner's writing about pitching in 1914 translates to 2011.)

And on a larger scale, Jack takes no responsibility for his actions, and has as little sense of other people's strengths and weaknesses as he has of his own. And nothing is ever his fault. When he pitches, of all the games he loses -- and he loses a lot -- none are ever his fault. It's the fielders behind him, or the hitters' lack of production, or the umpires, or in extreme cases his not being his usual self (which of course happens to pitchers, but they have to go out and keep their team in the game anyway).

And his solution to every life problem, at least in his head, is to want to beat up on the person he's identified as the cause of his problems. It's an interesting question whether Jack is actually a bully or merely has the instincts of one, because there are, as best I can recall, no instances in the stories of his actually doing to anyone the horrible things he imagines -- and not because he really thinks better of it, or rises above it, but because . . . well, as with everything else in Jack's life, there's always an excuse.

One of the fascinations of trying to scope Jack out is that every bit of information we get about him comes from him. Even when he's reporting other people's actions or perceptions, he is after all the one doing the reporting, so it's all filtered through his murky lens.

At least in Lardner's telling Jack's stumbling unperceptiveness becomes entertaining. Unfortunately, there's nobody of comparable talent scripting those food "reality" shows -- and the terrifying spectacle of our social and political realities are all too real. It's fun to have them "written" by someone of a talent I consider Lardner-esque like Tom Tomorrow, but the fact that they're so terrifyingly real only makes it more horrifying.

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Sarah disrespects President Obama, again on Facebook

From Facebook

After listening to the President’s press conference today, let’s keep in mind the following:

This is the same president who proposed an absurdly irresponsible budget that would increase our debt by trillions of dollars, and whose party failed to even put forward a budget in over 800 days! This is the same president who is pushing our country to the brink because of his reckless spending on things like the nearly trillion dollar “stimulus” boondoggle. This is the same president who ignored his own debt commission’s recommendations and demonized the voices of fiscal sanity who proposed responsible plans to reform our entitlement programs and rein in our dangerous debt trajectory. This is the same president who wanted to push through an increase in the debt ceiling that didn’t include any cuts in government spending! This is the same president who wants to slam Americans with tax hikes to cover his reckless spending, but has threatened to veto a bill proposing a balanced budget amendment. This is the same president who hasn’t put forward a responsible plan himself, but has rejected reasonable proposals that would tackle our debt. This is the same president who still refuses to understand that the American electorate rejected his big government agenda last November. As I said in Madison, Wisconsin, at the Tax Day Tea Party rally, “We don’t want it. We can’t afford it. And we are unwilling to pay for it.”

Now the President is outraged because the GOP House leadership called his bluff and ended discussions with him because they deemed him an obstruction to any real solution to the debt crisis.

He has been deemed a lame duck president. And he is angry now because he is being treated as such.

His foreign policy strategy has been described as “leading from behind.” Well, that’s his domestic policy strategy as well. Why should he be surprised that he’s been left behind in the negotiations when he’s been leading from behind on this debt crisis?

Thank you, GOP House leaders. Please don’t get wobbly on us now.

2012 can’t come soon enough.

- Sarah Palin

Let me correct some things here, there has been a budget deficit since 2001, the year George Dumbya Bush took over, not 800 days. We had a budget surplus during most of the Clinton administration and Bush wiped it out in less than a year. Bush also raised the debt ceiling 7 times

Bush also promised to pay off the debt, which he never did. And he cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans.

Saint Ronald Reagan raised it 18 times.

Bill Clinton? Four times

The tax raises President Obama wants is for the people making over $250,000 a year. That is about 2% of the population.

If anyone here is a lame duck, it's John Boehner and Eric Cantor. Also the rest of the Republican lawmakers who say no to every proposal the President makes.

In case you didn't know it, the revolution has already happened, and we lost

House Speaker John Boehner said the White House "moved the goal posts" by demanding an additional $400 billion in revenue during talks over a deal to avoid default. He said he was confident the U.S. will not default but said the White House has "refused to get serious" about spending cuts.

"Dealing with the White House is like dealing with a bowl of Jell-O," Boehner said.

-- a 7:30pm ET Washington Post "Politics News Alert"

by Ken

Compared with thinking about the horror in Norway (about which there doesn't seem to be any news coming in), it's almost a relief to turn to the Theater of the Weird that is our Debt-Ceiling Crisis & Negotiations Inc.

I don't doubt that Sunny John has a point about negotiating with the Obamablob, but when did any right-wing bully ever have trouble getting him to meet them 80 or 90 percent of the way? Besides, when it comes to blobulousness, how can you not return the charge playground-style: "Takes one to know one."

I don't know how this Theater of the Weird tragicomedy is going to work out except that it's going to be really, really bad. In important ways the outcome is predetermined, except for filling in some of the blanks and some of the numbers. As a colleague has been pointing out, the war is over, and we've lost. The oligarchs are in charge, and not many decisions of federal consequence are going to be made which don't meet with their approval.

Call it a civil war, or a New American Revolution, or a putsch, it took place without most of us realizing it was happening, and the New Order was established by the time it was determined that the federal government's basic principle in addressing the economic meltdown was going to be the ensure that the financial elites were made whole.

So I had to chuckle when I saw a piece pumped out by the NYT's DealBook financial-news service, chronicling the woes of the interns to the oligarchs, which starts like so:

"Fewer Perks and More Work for Wall St.’s Summer Interns"
BY KEVIN ROOSE

Wall Street interns have gone from pampered to pummeled.

In better days, college-age interns at the nation’s largest investment banks, known as summer analysts, were treated like young royalty. But shrinking profits and a spate of recent bank layoffs have forced this year’s interns to shoulder full-time workloads.

“I worked 85 hours last week!” said one Goldman Sachs summer analyst, a college senior who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not allowed to speak to the media.

“The last two days, I’ve been here until 3 a.m.,” said a Deutsche Bank analyst, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his job. “My weekends are fun, but that’s about it.”

While hard work has been customary among young finance workers for years, after-hours benefits once made the long days more palatable. . . .

And at this point we're launched on tongue-hanging-out tales of erstwhile intern splendor. The point of the piece, I'm sure, is to spread the word that the banksters are tightening their belts in these troubled times.

Unexpected turbulence in the industry has hit this year’s interns, who say that fewer full-time employees has meant more work for them. UBS and Credit Suisse have both conducted layoffs this year, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are cutting back as well.

“Managing directors are telling interns, ‘We’re going to need you to step up,’ ” said one bank recruiter, who spoke only anonymously because she was not authorized to speak to the media.

By all means read the piece. It's entertaining. But I don't believe for a moment it tells us that the banksters are wobbling. What it tells me is that, now that they're consolidating their hegemony, one of the spoils of victory is being able to remake decisions about who has to be paid what. As we've been noting, there appears to be no limit to the greed of our financial lords, and I'm assuming they're simply making new calculations about what they have to pay those summer interns.

Maybe in the past they had to share some of their loot with the fiscal farmhands. For sure now they don't have to. As so many other bulwarks of the old-fashioned middle class have discovered to their chagrin, they're part of the team, they're just hired hands and hangers-on. As regards those poor downtrodden interns, reporter Roose seems to have found no shortage of whiners, but no deniers or decliners.

[D]emand at top-flight colleges for the internships, which had tailed off slightly during the financial crisis, has come roaring back.

“It’s the best way to land a permanent position, it’s prestigious, and there’s a steep learning curve, so you come away having been quickly trained and assigned meaningful work,” said Patricia Rose, director of career services at the University of Pennsylvania.

For their long hours, Wall Street interns are rewarded handsomely. Summer analysts are generally paid based on the prorated salary of a first-year analyst. At Goldman Sachs, for example, a first-year analyst’s salary of $70,000 translates to a summer intern’s pay of about $15,000 for 10 weeks of work, which includes a $2,000 housing stipend, according to one current intern. Interns at the Manhattan offices of BlackRock, the asset management firm, are paid a prorated salary that comes out to around $33 an hour, with time and a half for overtime exceeding 40 hours a week, according to a company spokeswoman.

But for most interns, the real prize is an end-of-summer job offer. Investment banks stock their full-time ranks with former interns, and the pressure to create loyalty during a 10-week summer is palpable. . . .

or interns who survive the summer, the payoff can be big. Top performers are often given offers in the fall for full-time positions that begin the following summer, freeing them from the stress of a senior-year job search.

And even for interns who don’t plan on returning full time next summer, like the overworked Deutsche Bank summer analyst, a Wall Street internship may be good preparation for the trials of working life.

“If I can get through this, I can get through anything,” the intern said.

On the chance that those internships may prove bonanzas, the would be financial wolves and sharks seem happy to take whatever terms are offered, so the oligarchs are adjusting the terms they're offering. "More for themselves" would be the operative economic principle.

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Can't stand to hear one more word about tensions over the debt-ceiling crisis? Well, how 'bout that Tweeting Pope?

Middle-Man and the Debt Ceiling Debacle

[Don't forget to click to enlarge.]

by Ken

Well, Tom, that's pretty much where I am on the Events of the Day. Sick to death, tired of it all, and . . . and . . .

Does anyone else think back in stray moments to Inauguration Day 2009, and remember what it felt like, after the grueling and terrifying years of the Bush regime, to feel hope? And then feel some combination of cheated, stupid, and desperate over the pass we've come to?

Hope? Is it possible to have any hope now except that What Happens Next may not be as hideous as it shows every sign of being? With the only thing standing between us and the ghastliest imaginable outcome being Middle-Man, who we now know is much more a part of the problem than any conceivable part of any solution.

Intending no disrespect to the truly inspiring work of the "It Gets Better" campaign aimed at communicating to besieged younger LGBT folk that their lives can yet take meaningful, satisfying shape, despite the evidence to the contrary in their daily lives, I find myself in daily "It Gets Worse" mode when it comes to the news of the day. A moment ago I took a peek at the NYT afternoon update and found these as the top items:

Cost-Cutters, Except When the Spending Is Back Home
By RON NIXON
House Republicans who rode a wave of voter discontent into office last year may be pushing for spending cuts, but they're also quietly funneling millions of federal dollars back home.

Bipartisan Plan for Budget Deal Buoys President
By JACKIE CALMES and JENNIFER STEINHAUER
A group of senators made a new push to win backing for an ambitious deficit-reduction proposal that includes new revenues and deep spending cuts.
THE CAUCUS: How the Gang of Six Revived the Grand Deal

I hope I don't have to tell you that I didn't read either story. I've read them, in one form or another, way too often. (And I certainly wasn't going to waste precious NYT "clicks" on them.)

So let me instead offer you two bits of actual reading, one apt to make you still angrier (yes though, it doesn't seem possible, let alone fair, it really is possible to feel angrier), the other likely to make you feel just a bit giddy.


APART FROM THIS PHONE-HACKING OUTRAGE,
EVERYTHING AT NEWS CORP IS A-OK, RIGHT?

I know we've covered this ground before, what with my misguided sense that while of course criminal behavior by a major "news" organization is important, that's kind of the least of what's wrong with News Corp, or maybe it's most important as an inevitable outgrowth of the company's deeply corrupt and corrupting propaganda mission ("Postscript on the problem with "news" coverage Murdoch-style: Joyce Purnick recalls the New York Post takeover").

AlterNet's Sarah Seltzer reports on an AP report by Raphael G. Satter, "With Brooks arrested, tabloid insiders open up":

Misogyny, Made-Up Facts and More: Working in a News Corp Newsroom

The AP has an explosive little story based on interviews with disgruntled former News Corp employees of British tabloids who are opening up to the press now that their former boss, Rebekah Brooks, has resigned and faces a criminal probe for the phone hacking scandals that have horrified and enthralled the world.

The scandal itself has certainly made the daily life of a News Corp employee at the News of the World and The Sun an object of curiosity. The ruthlessness and top-down authority of the newsrooms--as described by these former staffers--is remarkable, including the strange story of a reporter forced to wear a Harry Potter costume who was chastised for forgoing said mandatory outfit -- even on September 11th.

Misogyny and fact-fudging were also part of the routine, these former employees claim. . . .

Read it and weep. Or --


BUT THEN, ON THE LIGHTER SIDE, PAUL RUDNICK
GOES KIND OF NUTS OVER THE TWEETING POPE

In a "Shouts and Murmurs" piece in the July 25 New Yorker, "The Pope's Tweets," Paul gets crazy over an AP report of the 84-year-old Pope Cardinal Ratguts' giddy entry into the world of Twitter. My first thought for a post was just to copy all 21 of his imaginary tweets, but I decided that no, that would be wrong. So I decided to limit myself arbitrarily to the first five. When the dust settled, I found I'd reached a bipartisan compromise: nine.

Sometimes, when I'm all alone, I like to put on my cassock and spin around really fast and pretend I'm a tepee.

During a papal audience, I put folks at ease by asking, "Are you gay?" Then I say, "Kidding!" Then I go, "No, seriously, are you gay?"

It's hard to tell all the cardinals apart, so sometimes I put different dinosaur stickers on their backs.

This is so embarrassing, but whenever I see Orthodox Jews I always think they're waiters.

If people ask, "Why does God allow war and evil?," I ask, "Why do the high-school students on 'Glee' look forty?"

When I stand on my balcony and wave to the faithful and millions more via satellite, I think, Kate Middleton must hate me!

If someone questions papal infallibility, I reply, "I know one thing for sure: you shouldn't be wearing horizontal stripes."

When I ponder why I was elected Pope over so many others, I wonder if it's just a popularity contest. Then I think, Gosh, I hope so.

Proof of God's existence: St. Patrick's is right next to Saks.

Now are you going to tell me you don't want to read the rest?

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In Rupert Murdoch's world, you should always expect the unexpected (not to mention ulterior motives)

To most everyone's amazement, ownership has responded to the News of the World scandal at Britain's best-selling Sunday newspaper by shutting it down.

by Ken

I'm sure you've heard about the incredible story in the U.K., where it was discovered that a reporter for the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid News of the World hacked into the cell phone of a kidnapped girl and tampered with messages, and then it was learned that quite a lot more of such hacking may have gone on.

Well, trust that in MurdochWorld you can expect the unexpected. Word just in:

WRAPUP 3-Hack job! Murdoch axes paper to save deal

Thu Jul 7, 2011 4:40pm EDT

* After scandal, media mogul says News of the World to close

* Phone hacking allegations had alienated readers, lost advertisers

* Politicians across board critical, but have ties to media group

* Government denies delaying approval of BSkyB takeover bid (Adds details)

By Kate Holton and Georgina Prodhan

LONDON, July 7 (Reuters) - In an astonishing response to a scandal engulfing his media empire, Rupert Murdoch shut down the News of the World on Thursday, Britain's biggest selling Sunday newspaper.

As allegations multiplied that its journalists hacked the voicemails of thousands of people, from child murder victims to the families of Britain's war dead, the tabloid haemorrhaged advertising, alienated millions of readers and posed a growing threat to Murdoch's hopes of buying broadcaster BSkyB .

Yet no one, least of all the paper's 200 staff, was prepared for the drama of a single sentence that will surely go down as one of the most startling turns in the 80-year-old Australian-born press baron's long and controversial career.

"News International today announces that this Sunday, 10 July 2011, will be the last issue of the News of the World," read the preamble to a statement from Murdoch's son James, who chairs the British newspaper arm of News Corp .

Staff gasped and some sobbed as they were told of the planned closure of the 168-year-old title, the profits of whose final edition will go to charity.

"No one had any inkling at all that this was going to happen," said Jules Stenson, features editor of News of the World, outside the News International offices.

It seemed a bold gamble, sacrificing a historic title that is suffering from the long-term decline of print newspapers to stave off a threat to plans to expand in television: "Talk about a nuclear option," said a "gobsmacked" Steven Barnett, professor of communications at Westminster University. . . .

MEANWHILE BACK HOME, AT THE PRESIDENT'S
TWITTER "TOWN HALL," EVERYONE LOOKS BAD

This is one of those stories where everyone comes out looking pretty squalid. It starts with the president for engineering the silly stunt of his Twitter "town hall," and it comes back to him for apparently not having anything useful to say in response to the question, however it came to be asked.

But mostly it shines a light on the swamp critters manning the barricades for American business and those of the Republican Party leadership. Really now, is there anyone who cares less about the fate of small business than the plutocrats who now pull the strings of the thugs and dingbats of the Right? Does anyone believe that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor gives the tiniest damn beyond what he can extract for political gain? Or, for that matter, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Do small businessman not understand how much contempt Chamber CEO and President Tom Donohue has for them?

Al Kamen posted this item this afternoon washingtonpost.com's "44" blog:

Did Obama Twitter townhall lure small business owners?

By Al Kamen

Did Republicans succeed in steering the first presidential Twitter townhall to questions that would put President Obama on the spot?

There are reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Hill Republicans tried, apparently with little success, to do just that.

But at one point, Twitter co-founder and moderator Jack Dorsey said this:

“Speaking of startups, there’s a ton of questions about small businesses and how they affect job creation. This one comes from Neal: ‘Small biz create jobs. What incentives are you willing to support to improve small business growth?’

Obama finessed the question. But “tons of questions?” Do the hard-working small-business owners, the drivers of the economy, folks such as the boutique trial lawyers , the personal-injury lawyers, the doctors, the accountants, the dentists and the bodega owners, really afford to waste time in midday tweeting questions to Obama?

Then we recalled an e-mail we got at the beginning of the townhall from Brian Patrick, communications director for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), citing a Wall Street Journal blast at Obama’s efforts for small businesses and with a subject line: “#AskObama: What about small business?”

We e-mailed but the modest Patrick said he couldn’t claim credit for Neal’s question.

Still. . .

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A Justice Dept. brief takes an unprecedented government stand against sexual-orientation discrimination

"Some sentences in the brief," writes Metro Weekly's Chris Geidner, "will become staples of every filing in every lawsuit attempting to advance sexual orientation nondiscrimination."

by Ken

No, the name of Karen Golinski didn't pop out at me either. But her name is attached to the lawsuit seeking equal health benefits at work for her wife, in the process arguing that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional, the lawsuit for which the House of Representatives' Republican majority bought its first piece of work from legal hired hand Paul Clement in its mission to defend the constitutionality of DOMA in the wake of the Obama administration's decision not to.

On June 3 Clement filed a brief with motions to dismiss (curiously, I can't find any citations for the brief itself, or its filing), and on Friday the Justice Department filed an opposing brief that Metro Weekly's Chris Geidner describes in an analysis today as "a must-read legal filing that became a historic document almost immediately upon submission." In his report Friday on the filing of the brief, in which Chris characterized the new DoJ brief as "arguing strongly that [DOMA] is unconstitutional in terms unparalleled in previous administration statements."

DOJ acknowledged the U.S. government's "significant and regrettable role" in discrimination in America against gays and lesbians.

The summary of the DOJ argument that Golinski's case should not be dismissed begins simply: "Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, 1 U.S.C. Section 7 ('DOMA'), unconstitutionally discriminates."

In his analysis today, Chris writes that the brief --

is the single most persuasive legal argument ever advanced by the United States government in support of equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Moreover, although the case did not include transgender issues, the government's previously described position that the same legal standard should apply to gender identity classifications could prove helpful for court cases looking at gender identity-based discrimination.

Some sentences in the brief will become staples of every filing in every lawsuit attempting to advance sexual orientation nondiscrimination, most notably when the Justice Department acknowledged, "The federal government has played a significant and regrettable role in the history of discrimination against gay and lesbian individuals." The Justice Department goes on to spend two pages detailing the specifics of that discrimination, including efforts by the State Department, FBI and U.S. Postal Service to seek out or track those who were thought to be gay.

This admission is an essential part of lawyers' arguments before courts when they are arguing why ''heightened scrutiny'' should be applied under the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause to laws that classify people based on sexual orientation. To have an admission from the Department of Justice that the government did so is significant because lawyers can now go into court and say, "Not only do we think this, but so does the federal government – and they admit that they have been part of the problem."

The brief also goes extensively into state and local discrimination, "citing more than 20 different instances of state or local discriminatory practices – from laws and judicial opinions making adoption and teaching more difficult or impossible for gay and lesbian people, to police raids of gay bars, including notations of raids over the past years in Atlanta and Fort Worth, Texas." The brief even includes as an example of state discrimination the Tennessee law prohibiting localities within the state from passing laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. And the brief goes beyond establishing a history of discrimination -- one test used by courts to determine the applicability of "heightened scrutiny" under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendement -- "to address the others as well," Chris writes, offering the example of "political powerlessness" in the form of "the strong backlash in the 1970, 1980s, and 1990s" against new LGBT legal protections.

As Chris notes, the brief's unadorned declaration that "The federal government has played a significant and regrettable role in the history of discrimination against gay and lesbian individuals," backed up by "two pages detailing the specifics of that discrimination, including efforts by the State Department, FBI and U.S. Postal Service to seek out or track those who were thought to be gay," which enables lawyers to "go into court and say, 'Not only do we think this, but so does the federal government –- and they admit that they have been part of the problem.'"

In the analysis today, Paul also notes that the brief was clearly being worked on at DoJ --

as Obama himself was taking some pretty hard hits –- and repeated questions –- about his commitment to equality due in large part to his ''evolving'' status and unwillingness to publicly embrace marriage equality. By not trotting out the brief in the midst of that criticism and waiting until after the White House LGBT Pride Month Reception to file, however, the administration made a strong statement that this brief was just that –- a legal filing removed from and independent of the political debate.

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4th of July holiday or no, Congress and the administration begin the process of selling out ordinary Americans

Say hello to the "chained-CPI" scam!

from StrengthenSocialSecurity.com

Obama chided Congress for an unusual on again-off again schedule that has ensured the House and Senate have staggered their work in Washington, making cross-chamber negotiations difficult. The Senate has met this week, while House members have been visiting their home districts. The reverse had been planned for next week.

“They’re in one week, they’re out one week,” Obama said. “And then they’re saying, ‘Obama has got to step in.’

“You need to be here,” he said. “I’ve been here.”

-- from "Senate cancels July 4 holiday recess
to work on debt deal," in yesterday's Washington Post

by Ken

Isn't it funny how it works out? In the end, the bigger trouble-makers, the House, wind up getting their 4th of July holiday! About all they lose is the opportunity to have the coming week's headlines to themselves as those insensible and indecent thugs resume their resume their rampaging and marauding against sense and decency.

Sometimes you wish these people would all go on permanent holiday. But even that fits into the Rethuglican strategy throughout the Obama administration: We don't need nuttin'. If'n we just don't let them damn socialists do nuttin', the country'll go to hell, and we'll take over. The strategy has already re-won them the House, and with the rise of the Teabagger insurrection many Rethugs have gotten greedier about their agenda of mayhem. But it's still true that they don't need much of anything, especially alongside the pleasure and profit of obstruction.

Alas, we need a budget, and alas again, we need to raise he debt ceiling, and the Rethugs are going to get as much out of it as they can. And alas a third time, the party they're ultimately negotiating with is history's worst negotiator, Barack Obama, whose basic negotiating strategy appears to be: Let's give them what they want, and then split the difference on the rest. Of course there's an alternate theory: that what the president gives away is stuff he didn't want to begin with, that what he's been getting is "compromise with cover" that gives him what he wanted to begin with.

I've already wondered here, "Is the president, that master negotiator, once again prepared to give away the store?." Welcome to "chained-CPI," a scheme reportedly being considered by White House and congressional negotiators which would change the formula for calculating the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in a way that goes way beyond the mere technical adjustment it sounds like. A press release from Strengthen Social Security argues:

The Congressional Budget Office estimates adoption of the so-called "Chained-CPI," which would be used to determine Social Security's annual COLA, would cut benefits by $112 billion over 10 years. The Social Security Administration Chief Actuary estimates the effects of this change would be that beneficiaries who retire at age 65 and receive average benefits would get $560 less a year at age 75 than they would under current law and get $1,000 less a year at age 85 -- a 3.7 percent cut and a 6.5 percent cut, respectively. [See analysis here.] The proposal will cut $1.6 trillion over Social Security’s 75 year valuation period – mainly from the oldest of the old, primarily women and disproportionately poor.

Two reports were released that analyzed the harmful effects from the proposed Social Security COLA cut. One found that the cuts would be especially painful to women who have longer life expectancies, rely more on Social Security income and are already more economically vulnerable, and to lower-income beneficiaries. About one-third of beneficiaries depend on Social Security for more than 90 percent of their income. Another found that Social Security's current COLA formula already is too low because it does not take account of the higher health care costs that seniors and people with disabilities face.

"The Social Security COLA cut is a betrayal by politicians in Washington of today's 55 million Social Security beneficiaries. Indeed, it is a betrayal of the 165 million workers and their families who are earning those benefits every work day," said Nancy Altman, co-chair of the Strengthen Social Security Campaign. "These cuts would occur soon and they would affect everyone. Social Security does not add a penny to the deficit. Those who pledged that Social Security would not be cut as part of a deficit deal are breaking their promise if they support this proposal. So are those who have pledged that they will not cut the benefits of current beneficiaries. They will vote for this at their electoral peril."

"Proponents of cutting the Social Security COLA claim that it’s simply a technocratic improvement. This is not true -- there is no economic evidence that the current COLA provides a windfall to beneficiaries," said Josh Bivens, economist at the Economic Policy Institute and the author of A Protection, Not a Windfall: Proposed change to Social Security COLA would further erode retirees' financial security. "In fact, it likely understates the actual growth in costs of living for beneficiaries because it underweights health spending -- a high-inflation component of consumer expenditures."

"This proposal is a stealth attack that will especially hurt the economic security of older women," said Joan Entmacher, Vice President, Family Economic Security, National Women’s Law Center, and the co-author of Cutting the Social Security COLA by Changing the Way Inflation Is Calculated Would Especially Hurt Women. "The cuts may not sound like a lot to some Members of Congress, but for an 80-year old woman who depends on her Social Security check to get by, they mean the loss of a week’s worth of food each month. And the cuts just get deeper as women get older."

And thanks to the genius Dems' allowing the Rethugs to wrap themselves in the mantle of "fiscal responsibility," this sounds like just a sample of what's to come. Buckle up, buckaroos.

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The next time you think President Barack Obama hasn't done shit for this country

Please read this.  You will not be disappointed.  Thanks!

Is it time for Tiny Tim Geithner to cash in on all he's done to make the banksters happy (and richer)?

Know anyone who could be a bigger friend to the
banksters? That could be our next Treasury secretary.

"I feel the time has come for me to start cashing in for all I've done to help the big boys in the financial sector live long and prosper."

-- what Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner might have said in
response to reports yesterday that he's preparing to step down

by Ken

The reports, circulated by not exactly fly-by-night sources like Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, indicated that the Tinyman "is considering stepping down soon after policy makers agree to raise the government's borrowing limit, a person familiar with the matter said." As Robert Kuttner notes in an American Prospect online piece, "So Long, So Long, and Thanks from All the Banks": "That might be a long time from now given that the Republicans could agree to temporary extensions to maximize their leverage."

Naturally, the Tinyman promptly denied the rumors, telling Bill Clinton ("while sharing the stage at a Clinton Global Initiative event"): "I live for this work. I’m going to be doing it for the foreseeable future." Are you starting to feel a bit teary? (If not, you may in a moment, but not for the same reason.) As Kuttner also points out, "His status as a lame duck would undermine his authority on a variety of fronts, from the debt-ceiling negotiations to implementation of Dodd-Frank." But if our Tim has given any thought to his bargaining position, wouldn't that be a first for anyone in the Obama administration?

I read Kuttner's American Prospect while vaguely gathering my thoughts on the subject, and discovered it was no longer necessary to gather my thoughts. Here are his:

Well, good luck and good riddance to Geithner. The problem, given Obama’s own extreme caution and the Republican ability to block anyone who’d be a tough regulator of Wall Street, is that his successor is likely to be even worse.

Geithner’s main role in the great financial crisis was to shore up the large Wall Street banks without demanding any serious systemic reform in return. The window of opportunity in the spring of 2009 came and went with several zombie banks being propped up with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and trillions of dollars in advances from the Fed, but no progress toward the too-big-to-fail problem, much less any major change in the bankers’ business model that caused the collapse.

Geithner’s main function in crafting what became the Dodd-Frank Act and the lobbying around its key provisions was to argue for weaker rather than stronger ones. Backbenchers in Congress like Senators Merkley, Levin, Kaufman, Reed of Rhode Island, and Franken were instead the advocates of strong reforms. Geithner explicitly opposed many efforts by progressive senators to toughen the bill, as when he opposed a ban on “naked” credit-default swaps (the Dorgan Amendment) or setting explicit limits on the market share of large banks or returning to the strict separations between speculation and investment of the Glass-Steagall Act. Obama, to Geithner’s great discomfort, invoked that reform as the “Volcker Rule,” but then Geithner successfully fought to undermine a serious version of it.

One of Geithner’s first administrative acts in making a decision to implement Dodd-Frank was to water down a key provision on derivatives so that any derivative involving foreign currency (a huge part of the derivatives market and Wall Street profits) was exempt from Dodd-Frank’s sunshine and anti-manipulation provisions. The Wall Street Journal piece on Geithner’s likely departure quotes Jim Vogel, a strategist at FTN Financial Capital Markets, as saying, “Since 2009, the capital markets have gotten very comfortable with Secretary Geithner’s steady approach to both the debt markets and financial policy.”

Well, yes, why wouldn’t they be very comfy? Wall Street has returned to pre-collapse profitability without any fundamental change in its business model. Overly complex financial products and proprietary trading, too-big-to-fail banks, and immense Wall Street influence over policy continue to undermine the recovery and pose the risk of a second collapse.

You can see the lingering influence of an unreformed system in the Greek mess. The European authorities are putting Greece through the austerity ringer, in part to protect banks that are major holders of Greek bonds. But the same banks are also holders of credit-default swaps. Hedge funds use swaps to bet on a Greek default, putting the banks at double risk. So a restructuring of Greek debt, of the sort used in the case of much larger Latin American countries in the 1990s, becomes prohibitively expensive.

Geithner’s legacy will be this: He took a historical moment that offered a rare and overdue chance for systemic financial reform and used it instead to paper over the cracks in a dangerous system.

Now, as to why you might be moved to tears, Kuttner has already said it: "The problem, given Obama’s own extreme caution and the Republican ability to block anyone who’d be a tough regulator of Wall Street, is that his successor is likely to be even worse." This morning a colleague was gathering "insider" speculations, and came up with:

* Ben White, Politico "Morning Money": argues first "Why [JPMorgan CEO Jamie] Dimon May Replace Geithner," then "Why Dimon Won't Replace Geithner," then turns to assorted other possibilities: OMB Director Jack Lew, Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, current WH COS Bill Daley {"though Daley has the Wall Street problem" --d'oh!), former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman ("considered a strong candidate though he too is very much enmeshed in the investment banking culture"), and outgoing FDIC Chair Sheila Bair ("would have more credibility with progressive groups" -- well, scratch her from the list).

* Ben White again, with Carrie Budoff Brown, yesterday evening at Politico: Bowles, Altman, Dimon, Daley, and Bair again, plus now New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and GE CEO Jeff Immelt -- in case you thought it couldn't get worse.

* Mark Landler, NYT: Bowles, Altman, Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen, National Economic Council director Gene Sperling.

* Kuttner is intrigued by the idea of Bair, "Geithner's nemesis," and argues that "Obama could send a salutary signal" by appointing her.

The odds of that happening, of course, are infinitesimal. He will probably name someone even closer to Wall Street, if that's possible.

As for Bair, she has told friends that she is likely to teach or go to a think tank, write a book, and speak out. She has no plans to cash in by going to K Street or Wall Street, where she could pull in a salary of $5 million to $10 million.

Let's see where Tim Geithner goes.

Now are you crying?

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Is the president, that master negotiator, once again prepared to give away the store?

by Ken

I pointed out awhile ago that smart people I know online predicted that the Teabaggers and their allies would meet their doom if they seriously threatened to muck up the debt limit increase, because the really serious people, the ones who own us, are sitting on so much paper whose value will plunge if the world perceives a serious risk of a U.S. default on payments. This, my smart acquaintances insisted, would rouse the Serious People to blow the whistle on the rambunctious kiddies -- no mucking around with real stuff like the grownups' personal wealth.

I speculated that the Serious People who poured so much money into creating the Teabagger menace may now be discovering that they have little power to stuff the toothpaste back into the tube. It may be too that the Serious People can afford to exercise some patience in the admittedly nervous-making game the House Republicans have chosen to play on the debt-limit issue in exchange for what they can extract in negotiations between Congress and the White House.

FDL's David Dayen has been keeping tabs on information dribbling out of the negotiations, and now that the president has officially stepped in, what he's hearing is pretty scary. (Naturally there are lots of links in the post onsite.)

More on the Medicare-for-Revenues Swap Floated in Debt Limit Deal

By: David Dayen Tuesday June 28, 2011 10:54 am

Last week I noted that Max Baucus gave away the endgame in the debt limit talks – aside from the $1.5 trillion or so in spending cuts already agreed to, further cuts to Medicare would have to be teamed with co-equal increases in revenue. This would destroy the competitive advantage for 2012 by giving Republicans a get out of jail free card for their Medicare-ending budget. Instead, Republicans would excoriate their opponents for this new round of cuts to Medicare, something that won them the election in 2010 and which they continue to try in ads this year. It almost doesn’t matter what the substance of these cuts are; they will be spun by Republicans as “Medicare cuts that hurt seniors,” even though they would be voting for them as part of a deal. Indeed, the $500 billion in cuts through ending Medicare Advantage overpayments and other payment reforms, which were in the Affordable Care Act, are also in the Paul Ryan budget that almost every Republican voted for, but that hasn’t stopped the parade of accusations.

We got a little more information on the Medicare-for-revenue trade today from David Rogers.

For their part, Obama and Reid appear prepared to reach much higher, putting substantial Medicare savings on the table if Republicans would accept added revenues. With the House GOP leadership in New York, all of Monday’s White House maneuvering was Senate-centric. But Obama’s hope is that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), with whom he met privately last week, will be intrigued by a bolder package that might also help neutralize the Medicare issue now hurting the GOP among elderly voters.

The Bush-era income tax rates would not be targeted. Instead, the focus would be more on corporate tax subsidies or capping deductions that most benefit the wealthy. Obama identified close to $760 billion in new 10-year tax revenues as part of his new budget “framework” in April, and the idea would be to pick from this menu and test the willingness of Republicans to consider this approach.

House Republicans have not outright rejected this approach. Much depends on the specific tax provisions that would be affected. But the GOP leadership already knows that it can’t expect to bring all its conservatives to the table, and if the package offered substantial Medicare reforms to help stabilize the program’s finances, it could be seen as a victory for the party.

It would be a victory for everyone but senior citizens, and would represent the last straw in the minds of many with the Democratic Party. You would almost have to be an asceticist to deliberately tank your own competitive advantage in this way. Apparently currying favor among the serious people means more than winning elections.

The greatest hope for the holding together of the safety net are Congressional Republicans, who don’t want this deal despite the political benefit, because they are dead-set against raising any revenues (I discussed what revenues are under consideration earlier) . That could lead to a much narrower deal that relies on triggers and enforcement mechanisms to arrive at the level of deficit reduction arbitrarily set as the marker.

Again, gridlock is the great friend of the average American. It’s also the great hazard, with the debt limit looming in a little over a month.

…from Bloomberg:

Making changes to Medicare, such as asking the wealthy to pay a higher price for their premiums, is one idea that has been raised. Democrats have long opposed such a change, arguing it would undermine popular support for the government-run health care program for the elderly.

Still, there are signs they may be softening, with prominent Democrats like Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who holds the party’s No. 2 position in the chamber, saying the issue needs to be on the table.

I don’t know what world they think they can make something like that work in politically.

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I voted for Obama and all I got was . . .

by Noah

. . . and all I got was this T-shirt. (If I cough up a mere $30, that is.)

Like many of you, I get a lot of mass e-mails asking me for money. Many of them come from politically progressive groups that can and do make good use of the money. Environmental groups? OK. Moveon.org? No problem. ActBlue? You bet.

Today’s e-mail, however, came from Juliana Smoot of the White House. It included an offer of a T-shirt in return for a contribution of $30 or more to President Obama’s 2012 campaign. Not that it’s a bad T-shirt or anything, but I expect more.

Forget the T-shirt! How about a president that doesn’t roll over for the Repugs and Wall Street, and tells his party not to roll over too? How about a president leading a Democratic Party that realizes they are dealing with absolute fascists that could make Mussolini rise from the dead with pride. Instead we have a party of Neville Chamberlain weenies. They are either naïve or in cahoots. I’m convinced, of course, that it’s the latter and no amount of money that I can afford to give the status quo politicians of the burgeoning New World Order is going to offset the bribery setup that is standard operating procedure in D.C.

I also get almost daily appeals from Blue Dog Dem stealth-Republican groups such as the DSCC and the DCCC who feel that I should contribute money for the reelection of fetid balls of slime with names like Ben Nelson, Heath Shuler, and Mary Landrieu just so they can have Democratic majorities that end up rubber-stamping the dark desires of Republicans anyway. Anyone remember Senator Schumer kissing John Roberts’s butt at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. All that did was fast-track Citizens United. Thanks, Chuckie!

Apparently, the bribes from K Street and Wall Street just aren’t enough. Last I looked, no banksters or hedge-fund scum have been hauled into court. Can’t imagine why! Can’t jeopardize the status quo now, can we? Gotta keep those good middle-class jobs moving out of the country while Congress vacuums up all that nice green cash from the K Street Bribery Battalions! Nudge nudge wink wink. Ain’t NAFTA grand? Screw the people! But ask them for their money first.

You know, I happen to think that I and millions of other middle-class voters might have more to give these people if they would first do something about the massive wealth distribution upward that Washington has been engineering for decades; more specifically, our wealth. While the wealth of the top 1% has gone through the roof and productivity has climbed impressively, middle-class wages have stagnated for 30 years. And we all know that a dollar isn’t what it was back then! It’s obviously social engineering Washington can believe in. When it comes to Washington, money can buy a lot of belief. All you have to do is be amoral and fool enough voters into thinking that you are a respectable humanoid of good character.

Instead of a T-shirt, I, like so many people, think repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy should be a good start. Stopping the war on the middle class in its tracks would work for me! Oh, and stopping some other wars might be good too. We seem to be spending more on building roads and schools in Afghanistan than we do here.

Afghanistan is reportedly costing us $2 billion a week -- $2 billion a week for schools where young girls aren’t welcome and roads that only serve to get Afghanistan’s drugs to world markets at a faster, more profitable pace. That $2 billion could go a long way here, including paying for some teachers at some new schools! Just tonight (as I write this), President Obama announced that he’s bringing home 10,000 troops. It was the least he could do, and he did it.

If people like Juliana Smoot could tell me that House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer had changed his mind and now says that Medicare should be off the table instead of on it, that would work for me too. If she could tell me that her boss had decided to tell Alan Simpson to shove his Cat Food anti-Social Security Commission up his sagging fat white-haired 90-year-old ass, that would also work for me. If all of these things were done, we middle-class suckers and pawns might even actually have enough money to spread around, even to politicians.

So, Washington, why ask me for money when you are not doing enough things that will help me save money or earn money? A dollar doesn’t even get me a quart of milk or half a dozen eggs anymore. Are there suddenly less cows and chickens? Now I have to think long and hard about buying some eggs to hurl at your limos!

To be fair, saving the auto industry and the 3 million related industry jobs along with it was damn good. Some minor improvements in the health care system may help, but no, it’s not enough, and I don’t buy that it’s the best you could do. Some of the improvements won’t even kick in until 2014, and that’s gonna be up in the air for awhile anyway.

What’s going on is that Washington is trying to get away with doing just enough to keep the wolf (us) from the door. That’s the system that's in place. Buying voters off with the offer of a T-shirt is very symbolic. It’s symbolic of the paltry amount of respect Washington has for those who live outside the Beltway. Sure, I’ll never have enough money to stay out of jail if I foul up an ocean with crude oil while 11 employees lose their lives like Tony Hayward did, but that’s not what we’re asking for.

Our so-called representatives get tens and ten- times-tens of thousands of dollars stuffed into their pockets every day, and the White House offers me a T-shirt. That’s rich. Pun intended. Hell, the T-shirt doesn’t even have a pocket. No pocket for me! Look. I know that Obama is better than any Republican and a Democratic Congress is marginally better than a Republican one, but that’s like saying Americans have a choice of two parties and it's a choice that one can equate with being given a choice of "what kind of cancer would you like?"

The Republicans will kill you and the whole damn country and smile about it as long as they get enough cash out of the deal. They are a disease. The Democrats, on the other hand, might keep you alive but it looks like the most they want to do is just enough to keep you in the state of misery you’re in. Put a kinder, gentler way: The Dems will give you a T-shirt for a cold day. The Repugs will rip the one you have off your back on the coldest day of the year while they give money that should go to your family to the top 1% instead, and they'll get the Dems to go along with it.

Some freedom of choice that is. Keep the T-shirt, Juliana, you can use it to wipe the eggs off the White House windows. Blue America isn't offering any fancy t-shirts in exchange for contributions... just actual real life progressives who will stand up to the right, like Eric Griego, Norman Solomon, and Nick Ruiz. Please take a look... and give them a hand.

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"Having no agenda when voters face real problems is a bad omen for incumbents" (Matt Stoller)

"People who run government should, at some level, want to govern. They should want to use the power of a democratic channel to solve the nation's problems. In the past 10 years, seeking to govern boldly has been frowned upon -- seen as naive or impossible.

"The result has been political and financial chaos, marked by periods of placid inactivity. It looks like our political leaders could well be seeking this, even as the public needs solutions."

-- Matt Stoller, in "At least Weiner was
a distraction," in Politico

by Ken

In this interesting Politico op-ed (I guess Politico is happy to have progressive content as long as it's pounding on Democrats), Matt Stoller takes off from the point that Weinergate is regretted as having been a "distraction."

"It's worth asking." he says, "how was Weiner a distraction? What is the Democratic agenda he was pulling voters away from?" And he concludes, "The simple fact is: There's no governing agenda being debated. So Weiner wasn't a distraction -- more like an in-flight soft-core movie in between election jockeying by a bored political class."

Of course Weinergate wasn't a distraction from dealing with our problems. It was a distraction from having to address all the problems that aren't being addressed by Beltway bigwigs except the marauding House Republicans, who aren't actually trying to address those problems either but have made them a handy cover for their blitzkrieg to transform the country into the extreme-right-wing hellhole of their wet dreams. But Matt probably wouldn't accept that as an excuse. "People who run government should, at some level, want to govern," he writes. "They should want to use the power of a democratic channel to solve the nation's problems."

He's not encouraged by what he's hearing from a leading candidate to replace departing chief White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, Rebecca Blank, "a 'pragmatic progressive' economist, which apparently means someone who feels bad about the damage caused by the problems they aren't trying to fix."

"Could this economy take off again?" Blank said recently in the National Journal. "The answer is absolutely yes. If you look at corporate profits, if you look at consumer balance sheets [improving] … gas prices are falling. I guess I understand the reason to say, 'Let's see if this economy can do it on its own.'"

On its own? Really? Tell this to the more than 9 percent currently unemployed.

The Right, of course, has been anything but shy about its "solutions," and it doesn't seem to matter that they aren't solutions. At least they're saying something, and thanks to inept Democratic ineptitude, they've succeeded in wrapping themselves in the mantle of "fiscal prudence," slashing horrendously wasteful government spending.

You'd think that even on the crassest level of political expediency, the administration would feel the need to have something to say to the public. Matt points out that before Weinergate the Dems were getting a certain amount of mileage beating up on Paul Ryan's assault on Social Security, which managed to be not only lousy policy but dreadful politics. But that's not exactly the same thing as having a political agenda.

As Howie has reported here extensively, in the days when Master Rahm Emanuel was running the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, candidates who hoped to receive DCCC support were somewhere between encouraged and coerced to take no positions on any issues that might be judged in any way controversial, the thinking (for want of a better word) being that that could only cost support and votes. As far as I know, that "philosophy" has been retained in all essentials by the Master's DCCC successors.

It's a dreadful strategy, destructive not just of soul but of political future. It depends, obviously, on the other guys beating themselves, and on a really primitive level, there's some logic to it, when you consider who and what the other guys are. But eventually the public sort of figures out when it's being filmflammed, or at least stonewalled. Now, it turns out, the Master's philosophy is being applied, not just to campaigning, but to governing.

Here's Matt again:

In 2006, 2008 and 2010, incumbents had no answers for voters who wanted their problems solved. I remember watching [Bill] Clinton give a speech in late 2010, stumping for candidates before the Democratic immolation. Say what you will about the absurdity of his alleged fury toward Weiner, the man can give a stump speech.

Yet, after a half-hour, I still couldn't figure out just what Clinton's reason was for supporting the Democrats. There was something about student loans, and how it was the responsible thing to vote for bailouts. The rest was fuzzy.

Just what would congressional Democrats deliver in 2010 if reelected? They couldn't answer that question for voters. It looked like Democrats in 2009 and 2010 delivered foreclosures and unemployment -- so it's not surprising the public chose another path.

The subtext of 2010 was that Democrats had nothing to run on -- no popular accomplishments, and no agenda for 2011. The GOP faced a similar problem in 2006 and 2008 -- and they also met the voters' wrath. Having no agenda when voters face real problems is a bad omen for incumbents.


There's an obvious problem in that there isn't a whole lot of policy agreement among the political ranks disarrayed against the Right. Still --

[I]t's now 18 months since significant job destruction from the Great Recession ended. What has the Obama administration done?

According to the Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds, the first quarter of 2011 saw the destruction of roughly $270 billion more in homeowner equity. That's wealth gone from consumers -- money that can't and won't be spent. The health care bill's main provisions don't kick in until after 2012, and Dodd-Frank's rule-making is still barely off the ground.

Though the 2012 presidential election cycle is likely to have different contours than the midterms, the administration faces the same questions. What are they considering doing about jobs? What have they delivered?

If Blank is any indication, the plan is hope.

Matt suggests "at least three basic ways the administration could shift this dynamic":

One, the solution most cited now, is to use the government's control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to spark a refinancing boom, adding dramatically to consumer purchasing power. These entities could change the net present value test to allow more loan modifications, write-down debt or simply refinance loans with high loan-to-value ratios.

If the administration pushed bank regulators to account for the value of mortgages and home equity lines of credit now on their books, the write-downs would make good commercial sense as well as helping the economy.

The second solution would be to use government power to create jobs. For one example, the administration could dub the Chinese government a currency manipulator and spark domestic manufacturing by shifting our terms of trade.

It's not as if the government is powerless. Though creativity, boldness and wisdom might be required to find the appropriate tools, I'm sure that those who have found the legal authority to attack Libya without congressional authorization could tackle our domestic problems.

Third, the Obama administration could take legislation to create jobs -- an infrastructure bank, or a Works Progress Administration -- and use a barnstorming tour to pressure Congress to go along.

It's not uncommon for presidents to use the bully pulpit to soften congressional opposition -- Ronald Reagan did it regularly. President Barack Obama hasn't done this, but there's no reason his administration couldn't.

By now it's not exactly news that Barack Obama isn't the FDR type -- someone with a palpable sense of crisis, determined to think creatively and throw whatever he could at the crisis -- the country needed at this point in time. And we know by now that when he thinks and speaks, his primary constituency is always the moneyed elites. But again, even on that crassest political level, doesn't he need to have something to say to the rest of the American people?

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