WaPo Editors Finally Realize The GOP Isn't Serious About The Debt
First Posted: 01- 3-11 12:37 PM | Updated: 01- 3-11 08:45 PM
For the better part of the past year, the editors of the Washington Post have been generically a-screech with worry over the deficits, and their insistence that the Obama administration needs to get serious about them. Well, today, the editors seem to have finally realized that the alternative is not much better, and that the GOP may actually not be all that serious about taming them either:
Are House Republicans serious about dealing with the deficit? You could listen to their rhetoric - or you could read the rules they are poised to adopt at the start of the new Congress. The former promises a new fiscal sobriety. The latter suggests that the new GOP majority is determined to continue the spree of unaffordable tax-cutting.
The ominous signs come in the wording of the new majority's version of its pay-as-you-go rules, which normally require that new programs or tax initiatives be covered with cuts to other programs or new revenue. In the GOP concept, pay-as-you-go applies only to spending programs. When it comes to tax cuts, it's all go, no pay. Taxes can be cut, and the national debt increased, without any offsetting savings.
The editors are referring to the new "cut-go" plan, which exempts tax cuts from the fiscal realities of the federal government's balance sheet. It seems to have caught them by surprise! Had they, say, availed themselves of their own paper's reporting, they might have caught a whiff of this coming from several million miles away. Let's check in with Washington Post reporter Lori Montgomery, circa September:
Even as they hammer Democrats for running up record budget deficits, Senate Republicans are rolling out a plan to permanently extend an array of expiring tax breaks that would deprive the Treasury of more than $4 trillion over the next decade, nearly doubling projected deficits over that period unless dramatic spending cuts are made.
For decades the Wall Street Journal editorial pages were famouse for this sort of thing, spouting off endlessly about an imaginary economic surreality of Laffer Curves, trickle down golden reigns of endless prosperity, self-regulating markets and tooth fairies, while its actual reporters did the best nothing-but-the-facts-ma'am business reporting money could buy, since they were writing for a business audience that had no desire whatsoever to be "spun" (aka deceived, taken for a ride, sold a bill of goods, etc.) when the result of dishonest reporting could well be financial disaster. The business model made perfect sense for the WSJ, whose readers presumably understood perfectly what was going on.
A Border Patrol agent shot and killed a 14-year-old Mexican boy on June 7. At RaceWire, Julianne Hing reports that "Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereca [was] on the Mexican side of the El Paso-Juarez border [and] was shot and killed by a Border Patrol officer, who was on the U.S. side." The incident has been condemned by the Mexican government and sparked investigations by the Customs and Border Protection agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The exact details are still being investigated. The Border Patrol claims that the teen was throwing rocks at agents, but eye-witnesses on the Mexican side of the border say otherwise.
The Chamber took to their blog and ambiguously wrote, "No. No we are not."
It's well documented by Sam Stein at The Huffington Post that bailout recipients have been asked to funnel money to groups that are running anti-worker ads like the ones announced yesterday by the Chamber.
So I wrote, "Let me pose a more specific question: Is the Chamber actively rejecting money from bailout recipients?"
Another one quickly answered, the U.S. Chamber continues to accept as members companies which receive both public and private funds. In addition we do not believe that the receipt of taxpayer money abrogates an individual or groups’ rights under the First Amendment.
My original answer to the original question still stands, beyond question.
Actually, it's not beyond question -- and Jonathan Martin at Politico agrees:
Adam Green over at OpenLeft pushes the Chamber of Commerce to say that they're still accepting dues from bailed-out companies.
The goal is to make the case that the Chamber is using taxpayer dollars to help fund their anti-EFCA campaign (of which they have launched new ads targeting moderate Democratic senators).
The Chamber's Brad Peck says they're not using bail-out money for the campaign.
I've asked how exactly they know that to be the case.
A bunch of folks have joined the Facebook group asking the same question, and have used the contact info posted in that group to email Chamber execs directly.
The Chamber of Commerce’s solution for fixing our economic crisis is to use funds from taxpayer bailed-out companies to fight smart economic policies that will restore balance to our economy and help rebuild the American Middle Class.
...American taxpayers have had enough. The Chamber of Commerce must stop accepting taxpayer funds to lobby against taxpayer interests.
It's a pretty cut-and-dry case.
Taxpayer money went to companies so they could rebuild their fundamentals. By the Chamber's now-admission, bailout recipients are giving some of that money to the Chamber (aka, not using it to rebuild their fundamentals). Then, the Chamber uses that taxpayer money to fund ads against workers in political swing states.
We'll now see if the Chamber is as oblivious to the PR disaster that is about to hit them as the Wall Street execs who used bailout money to redecorate their offices and pay bonuses were.
Maybe smarter heads at the Chamber will prevail, and they'll take this issue off the table by publicly rejecting money from bailout recipients. We'll see...
This question was based on the fact that the Chamber just announced $1 million in new ads against the Employee Free Choice Act -- while bailout recipients like AIG and Bank of America are apparently being asked to funnel money to groups doing precisely this type of ad.
Is the Chamber of Commerce using bailout money to attack workers?
No. No we are not.
Let me pose a more specific question: Is the Chamber actively rejecting money from bailout recipients?
If yes, than Mr. Peck's answer holds true. If no, than Mr. Peck's answer seems quite questionable.
Oddly, the very month that Bank of America was asking Congress for a bailout, the Chamber of Congress put out this press release:
U.S. Chamber Announces 2008 Corporate Citizenship Awards Finalists...
Corporate Stewardship, Large Business Award, honoring overall values, strategies, and practices in companies with annual revenue greater than $5 billion—Bank of America, KPMG LLP, Pilot Travel Centers LLC, Siemens USA, and Verizon Communications
Really? Bank of America is the Chamber's model of corporate stewardship?
This puts the burden of proof squarely on the Chamber. Taxpayers deserve to know: As the Chamber runs millions in ads, it is activley rejecting money from bailout recipients?
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is launching a $1 million television advertising campaign that takes a new line of attack against the Employee Free Choice Act...The new Chamber ads will hit the airwaves in Nebraska, Virginia, Louisiana, North Dakota and Colorado -- states whose senators could be swing votes on the issue.
In January, The Huffington Post's Sam Stein broke this news:
Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority.
Participants on the October 17 call -- including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG -- were urged to persuade their clients to send "large contributions" to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.
There's a natural question for taxpayers to ask: Is the Chamber of Commerce using bailout money to attack workers?
There are two things you can do right now to take action:
The clouds didn't open. A choir didn't start singing. A ray of sunlight didn't come shining down.
But I'm pretty sure I said, "HALLELUJAH!" when Barack Obama uttered those four divine words tonight, "Sam Stein. Huffington Post."
David Sirota aptly called this a movement moment. It was also, to be clear, a historic moment--and a legitimizing moment--for an online progressive community that's been years in the making and tonight had its first chance to ask a President of the United States a question at a news conference.
Sam's question was co-equal in status to the traditional talking heads. But unlike so many other questions, his question represented a concern on the minds of millions of Americans that the DC chattering class largely resists talking about: Should Bush Administration officials be held accountable for violating the American rule of law? Sam--a consistently great reporter and an avid biker--asked his question with composure and professionalism:
This morning, at the Huffington Post (and cross posted at OpenLeft), I posted: "NBC Has An Erin Burnett Problem."
I made the case that on Sunday's Meet The Press Burnett repeated pro-Wall Street talking points over and over again and implied that the public's anger over recent corporate abuse was silly or a result of ignorance. I attributed her skewed analysis to the fact that she's "embedded" on Wall Street, dependent on Wall Street executives for access on a day-to-day basis and therefore overly-primed with their talking points.
Quick update. Jim Cramer and Erin Burnett talked about it on the air today. (Video here.) Burnett sent me a respectful, though disagreeing, email. I've extended an invitation to her to liveblog with me about Wall Street and journalistic issues -- we'll see if it happens. Thanks to all those who engaged in the comments this morning. Wanted to keep folks posted on the latest.
Cute-kid pictures have been a staple of photojournalism ever since the invention of cameras, and if some cute-kid tableau had appeared on a Civil War battleground, Matthew Brady would have taken the god-awful picture.
But that isn't really what's happening with the wee Obamas on Huffington Post.
The kids are cute enough, but most of the photos are just random snapshots, and the image I hot-linked here is about average for the whole group. It's nothing.
It isn't even kitsch, like the typical cute-kid photo. The kittens are not playing with a ball of twine. The children are neutral.
Considering their extraordinary situation, the littlest Obamas are likely to have unusually vivid personalities, but there's nothing personal about most of the HuffPo photos.
The photos are nothing, but the featurette that brackets this nothing still maintains a quasi-existence for itself, analogously with the empty set postulated in the standard development of set theory.
"All that we are ever informed about the empty set is that it (1) is a set, (2) has no members, and (3) is unique amongst sets in having no members. However, there are very many things that 'have no members', in the set-theoretical sense-namely, all non-sets. It is perfectly clear why these things have no members, for they are not sets."
For example, a hat has no members, but it isn't the empty set, because it isn't any kind of set. A hat was never intended to be a set, according to the peculiar meaning of intension in linguistics and the philosophy of language.
But the empty set maintains its delicate grip on existence because of exactly the intension to include something that's the essence of set-hood, even though the empty set totally fails to include anything.
The empty set is accordingly nothing except the will to define a set, and analogously, the featurette on Huffington Post which totally fails to deliver the kitsch intended by a headline like "Sasha And Malia Obama's Cutest Inaugural Moments" is nothing except...
In 2008, one first-time progressive candidate in a key congressional district went through four campaign managers before losing.
Another spent $47,000 to retain a media firm that never produced a single TV ad. Another spent $40,000 on field consultants -- enough to pay 10 field staffers for two months, but which only bought a few hand-holding consultant calls. And others wasted thousands of dollars and weeks of staff time designing C-rate websites.
Every election cycle, inexperienced candidates who run on bold progressive ideas -- candidates who political insiders predict "can't win" -- come within a few points of victory. But too many lose winnable races due to the mistakes and inefficiencies of their campaigns.
Who is getting the backs of these progressive candidates? Who is helping them run competent, efficient campaigns so they can win? Right now, nobody.
...The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) will fill this void - providing needed infrastructure and strategic advice to progressive candidates so they can run first-class campaigns and win.
One thing I realized at MoveOn -- and that many folks across the blogosphere have written about in recent election cycles -- is that it makes no sense for the progressive community to raise tons of money for candidates who then spend it inefficiently, including on bloated consultant costs. We need to step up and help progressive candidates not just raise money, but run effective campaigns and win.
You can argue with your friends in a way you can't argue with your enemies. You shouldn't be scared to talk politics with buddies -- these are folks you know, who will listen to you and respect you even when you don't agree. You can be honest...and still be pals at the end. And if the tensions run too hot, you can always cool down again by sharing a drink.
We need to act the same with our "friends" in Congress...and in the Presidential race. There are those who tell you not to question your party's leadership, not to challenge allies in Congress for fear you'll alienate them, or not to push on those you just helped elected...or may want to help elect.
That's absurd. You help elect candidates precisely so they will trust you, listen to you respectfully, and give you the benefit of the doubt even when you disagree. The Bush Dogs project is OpenLeft's way of doing that. And Drinking Liberally has submitted a question to the Huffington Post Presidential Mashup in the same spirit.
It's a challenge to the supposedly "anti-war" candidates...because if we don't challenge them now, when will we? Moreover, it asks them to challenge members of their own party to act up in Congress to end the war...because if the presumptive leaders of the party don't push them, who will?
Disagreements, challenges, even confrontations don't destroy alliances or friendships -- our bonds are stronger than that. Our friendships should create a strong framework for these arguments.
As with so many things, it would be easier if we were all sharing a beer at the time.
P.S. This has nothing to do with the above topic, but it's too wonderful not to mention. Our Idaho Falls chapter of Drinking Liberally has started making the following stickers to put on men's restroom doors:
The ingenuity of our members astounds even us sometimes.
STATE BLOGS
