From a NYTimes article today by David Leonhardt:
"The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.
"You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama."
Read the entire Leonhardt piece here.
Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Jack Kemp's Ideas
In today's NYTimes, George Herbert evaluates 2 big ideas of Jack Kemp, a non-racist conservative Republican (according to Herbert) who died recently of cancer. Herbert really captures the legacy of voodoo economics but stops short of connecting why Southern poor whites would jump on board a policy that enabled a small percentage of wealthy Americans (guaranteed to be white) while hurting themselves, and that is their deeply embedded racism. Those Southern Republicans have always connected welfare to poor black women, never mind the number of whites who spend time on the roll, never mind the amount of money U.S. farmers get. Anytime I hear Republicans talking about big government, it's code for welfare government. They don't mean to rail against the social security check their grandma gets. They don't consider that socialism nor do they consider a good public school as evidence that sometimes we serve ourselves to share the costs of something that benefits us all. They certainly never mean to identify big government as one who shifts our money to wealthy corporate friends of politicians through government contracts or spends a ton on unnecessary wars or building up the military. No they're all for that waste. It's never REALLY about how much the government wastes on tax shelters for corporations, and the poor Republicans know it. It's a long-held belief that the only lazy people in this country are black, and government money enables them to be lazy. Have you ever seen statistics on how much the government spends on poverty programs? It's unbelievably small.
So I wish he had gone further.
I've almost copied Herbert's whole article here. So, here's the link in case you want to visit the original site.
George Herbert, May 5, 2009, New York Times:
Kemp’s good idea was that the Republicans should vastly expand their tent, get past their narrow-mindedness and begin actively seeking the support of blacks and other ethnic minorities.
The G.O.P. would have none of it. It was, after all, the party of the southern strategy, and there was precious little that was racially enlightened about its conservative wing. One of the writers who influenced Kemp’s thinking about politics, William F. Buckley, was at the opposite pole of Kemp’s progressive thinking about race. Buckley took a scurrilous stand in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that desegregated the nation’s public schools.
Whites, being superior, were well within their rights to discriminate against blacks, according to Buckley. “The White community is so entitled,” he wrote, “because, for the time being, it is the advanced race ...”
Kemp was whistling in a hurricane.
The bad idea, advanced by Kemp with fanatical energy and devotion, was supply-side economics — “voodoo economics,” as George H.W. Bush so famously and rightly derided it. Supply-siders saw tax cuts as the answer to every prayer. Cut taxes, they argued, and watch the economy take off like a rocket.
What they never spelled out for the electorate was that most of the tax cuts would go to the rich, that the rich would harvest most of the money from the increased economic activity, and that the radically reduced tax revenue would send government budget deficits streaking toward the moon.
Kemp professed not to be worried about the deficits. He seemed to have believed that somehow everything would work out. The ultramilitants to his right, people even further out in their orthodoxy than Kemp, were delighted by the deficits. They wanted to “starve the beast,” reduce the government’s revenues to the point where elected officials would have no choice but to cut programs and services that benefited people who were not rich. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid were primary targets.
“Our goal,” said Grover Norquist, “is to shrink government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
Norquist, a driving force behind the George W. Bush tax cuts, once called John McCain a “tax-increasing Bolshevik.” We are talking about weirdness of a very high order here, and that weirdness dominated the economic policies of the United States for years.
Working people were told they should sign onto this craziness because the economic benefits of supply-side tax policies would ultimately benefit everyone. As every scheme imaginable was developed to bolster the fortunes of the rich, ordinary people were left in the humiliating position of waiting for some of the goodies to trickle down to them.
We’ve seen how it all worked out.
The way to look at the endless theoretical and intellectual posturing of the right is to look at who actually does well when the so-called conservative policies are implemented, and who doesn’t. Inevitably it’s the rich who benefit.
Jack Kemp meant well, but the great irony that cloaked his entire career was that it was not possible to achieve the ends he sought using the means he pushed with such zeal. He wanted to help the middle class and the poor. He wanted the nation’s inner cities to thrive, and he wanted America’s prosperity to be broadly shared.
But he chose as his vehicle the party of the rich. The changes he advocated and helped shepherd into law went far beyond correcting excesses in the tax code. They radically transformed the economic system in ways that proved a boon to those who were already wealthy, were harmful to the very people he wanted to help and eventually left the overall economy in ruins.
So I wish he had gone further.
I've almost copied Herbert's whole article here. So, here's the link in case you want to visit the original site.
George Herbert, May 5, 2009, New York Times:
Kemp’s good idea was that the Republicans should vastly expand their tent, get past their narrow-mindedness and begin actively seeking the support of blacks and other ethnic minorities.
The G.O.P. would have none of it. It was, after all, the party of the southern strategy, and there was precious little that was racially enlightened about its conservative wing. One of the writers who influenced Kemp’s thinking about politics, William F. Buckley, was at the opposite pole of Kemp’s progressive thinking about race. Buckley took a scurrilous stand in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that desegregated the nation’s public schools.
Whites, being superior, were well within their rights to discriminate against blacks, according to Buckley. “The White community is so entitled,” he wrote, “because, for the time being, it is the advanced race ...”
Kemp was whistling in a hurricane.
The bad idea, advanced by Kemp with fanatical energy and devotion, was supply-side economics — “voodoo economics,” as George H.W. Bush so famously and rightly derided it. Supply-siders saw tax cuts as the answer to every prayer. Cut taxes, they argued, and watch the economy take off like a rocket.
What they never spelled out for the electorate was that most of the tax cuts would go to the rich, that the rich would harvest most of the money from the increased economic activity, and that the radically reduced tax revenue would send government budget deficits streaking toward the moon.
Kemp professed not to be worried about the deficits. He seemed to have believed that somehow everything would work out. The ultramilitants to his right, people even further out in their orthodoxy than Kemp, were delighted by the deficits. They wanted to “starve the beast,” reduce the government’s revenues to the point where elected officials would have no choice but to cut programs and services that benefited people who were not rich. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid were primary targets.
“Our goal,” said Grover Norquist, “is to shrink government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
Norquist, a driving force behind the George W. Bush tax cuts, once called John McCain a “tax-increasing Bolshevik.” We are talking about weirdness of a very high order here, and that weirdness dominated the economic policies of the United States for years.
Working people were told they should sign onto this craziness because the economic benefits of supply-side tax policies would ultimately benefit everyone. As every scheme imaginable was developed to bolster the fortunes of the rich, ordinary people were left in the humiliating position of waiting for some of the goodies to trickle down to them.
We’ve seen how it all worked out.
The way to look at the endless theoretical and intellectual posturing of the right is to look at who actually does well when the so-called conservative policies are implemented, and who doesn’t. Inevitably it’s the rich who benefit.
Jack Kemp meant well, but the great irony that cloaked his entire career was that it was not possible to achieve the ends he sought using the means he pushed with such zeal. He wanted to help the middle class and the poor. He wanted the nation’s inner cities to thrive, and he wanted America’s prosperity to be broadly shared.
But he chose as his vehicle the party of the rich. The changes he advocated and helped shepherd into law went far beyond correcting excesses in the tax code. They radically transformed the economic system in ways that proved a boon to those who were already wealthy, were harmful to the very people he wanted to help and eventually left the overall economy in ruins.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Financial Crisis
Excerpts from the NY Times today:
Bob Herbert's "When Madmen Reign" blames conservative Republican philosophy for the collapse of banks, and, while I tend to agree, I think blame rests more strongly on the greedy, criminal, but-now-billionaire CEOs. How else can we stop them except let their companies fail?
Here's Herbert: "The tone-deaf remarks [of McCain's Phil Gramm "we're in a 'mental recession'" and "America is a nation of whiners"] in the midst of severe economic hard times undermined Senator McCain’s convoluted efforts to reinvent himself as some kind of populist. But they were wholly in keeping with the economic worldview of conservative Republicans.
"The inescapable disconnect between rhetoric and reality is often stark. Senator McCain has been ranting recently about the excessive pay and “bloated golden parachutes” of failed corporate executives. And yet one of his closest advisers on economic matters is Carly Fiorina, who was forced out as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. Her golden parachute was an estimated $42 million.
"Voters have to shoulder a great deal of the blame for the economic mess the country is in. Too many were willing, for whatever reasons, to support politicians who spat in the eye of economic common sense. Now the voodoo that permeated conservative economic policies for so many years has come back to haunt us big-time."
And from David Brooks n "Revolt of the Nihilist":
"Now [Republicans] have once again confused talk radio with reality. If this economy slides, they will go down in history as the Smoot-Hawleys of the 21st century. With this vote, they’ve taken responsibility for this economy, and they will be held accountable. The short-term blows will fall on John McCain, the long-term stress on the existence of the G.O.P. as we know it.
"I’ve spoken with several House Republicans over the past few days and most admirably believe in free-market principles. What’s sad is that they still think it’s 1984. They still think the biggest threat comes from socialism and Walter Mondale liberalism. They seem not to have noticed how global capital flows have transformed our political economy."
Ron Paul sounds most knowledgeable about the financial crisis. He's against running an empire, and he's against the war. He believes our financial institutions should fail and their assets should be liquified. It's worth a hearing.
Wall Street protest with information on CEO bonuses:
Bob Herbert's "When Madmen Reign" blames conservative Republican philosophy for the collapse of banks, and, while I tend to agree, I think blame rests more strongly on the greedy, criminal, but-now-billionaire CEOs. How else can we stop them except let their companies fail?
Here's Herbert: "The tone-deaf remarks [of McCain's Phil Gramm "we're in a 'mental recession'" and "America is a nation of whiners"] in the midst of severe economic hard times undermined Senator McCain’s convoluted efforts to reinvent himself as some kind of populist. But they were wholly in keeping with the economic worldview of conservative Republicans.
"The inescapable disconnect between rhetoric and reality is often stark. Senator McCain has been ranting recently about the excessive pay and “bloated golden parachutes” of failed corporate executives. And yet one of his closest advisers on economic matters is Carly Fiorina, who was forced out as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. Her golden parachute was an estimated $42 million.
"Voters have to shoulder a great deal of the blame for the economic mess the country is in. Too many were willing, for whatever reasons, to support politicians who spat in the eye of economic common sense. Now the voodoo that permeated conservative economic policies for so many years has come back to haunt us big-time."
And from David Brooks n "Revolt of the Nihilist":
"Now [Republicans] have once again confused talk radio with reality. If this economy slides, they will go down in history as the Smoot-Hawleys of the 21st century. With this vote, they’ve taken responsibility for this economy, and they will be held accountable. The short-term blows will fall on John McCain, the long-term stress on the existence of the G.O.P. as we know it.
"I’ve spoken with several House Republicans over the past few days and most admirably believe in free-market principles. What’s sad is that they still think it’s 1984. They still think the biggest threat comes from socialism and Walter Mondale liberalism. They seem not to have noticed how global capital flows have transformed our political economy."
Ron Paul sounds most knowledgeable about the financial crisis. He's against running an empire, and he's against the war. He believes our financial institutions should fail and their assets should be liquified. It's worth a hearing.
Wall Street protest with information on CEO bonuses:
Monday, January 14, 2008
Good Ideas for Education
I love when I read something that smacks of intelligent, creative problem-solving! In this case, it was Nancy Kalish's article in the NyTimes "The Early Bird Gets the Bad Grade" about how making teenagers rise at the crack of dawn to get to classes that begin before 8 am hurts them in more ways than one. Kalish points out that teen melatonin levels don't kick in until about 11 pm. So, allowing school to start a little later, allowing kids to stay at school longer (including periods for working on homework) and allowing them to leave the books at school when they return to their families at night is an idea that would have so many benefits it makes me writhe and froth in support. My own memory of that pain and grogginess I used to feel on school mornings or how the activity in my house (especially the t.v.) did not lend itself to quiet study is, certainly, the reason this idea strikes me so forcefully.
The next day, as I was sleepily dog-walking during pre-dawn hours, two school buses filled with dark silhouettes passed, and my heart hurt for those kids. I felt a pang of guilt as I considered how little I had ever done for the inmates in those draconian schools who cannot know how much or how little their psychological, domestic or social conditions are considered (nor do I) when rules and hours are enacted. They can hardly be blamed because they trust us, the adults, to keep their best interest in mind, but I suspect public officials and school administrators hardly have the gumption or the individual power to change such things.
The next day, as I was sleepily dog-walking during pre-dawn hours, two school buses filled with dark silhouettes passed, and my heart hurt for those kids. I felt a pang of guilt as I considered how little I had ever done for the inmates in those draconian schools who cannot know how much or how little their psychological, domestic or social conditions are considered (nor do I) when rules and hours are enacted. They can hardly be blamed because they trust us, the adults, to keep their best interest in mind, but I suspect public officials and school administrators hardly have the gumption or the individual power to change such things.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Weapons of War
Two days ago, I raged against assault weapons in this blog (see Dec 7 entry) and I wasn't nice about it. I ranted about how no one was facing the obvious problem, how the media coverage hadn't brought up the fact that the kid at the Omaha mall could steal this kind of military-style weapon from a relative. Today, the NY Times printed an article that satisfies me. And, it's much nicer than my blustery outcry. Two votes for the use of civilized tones. But which one is more effective? I wonder if it depends on the reader?
Here is the Times editorial:
"Barely touched on in the coverage of the two latest gun rampages is how the disturbed shooters could so easily obtain assault rifles — weapons designed for waging war. In separate random massacres, eight people were slain at an Omaha shopping mall last Wednesday and four were more shot dead Sunday at two Colorado churches. The Omaha killer took his stepfather’s rapid-fire rifle from a closet to pick off Christmas shoppers. In Colorado, the gunman, leaving behind an Internet screed referenced to the 1999 Columbine massacre, was equipped with two assault rifles, three handguns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
"How could this happen? That’s the great American cliché attached to these ever-mounting tragedies. We alBarely touched on in the coverage of the two latest gun rampages is how the disturbed shooters could so easily obtain assault rifles — weapons designed for waging war. In separate random massacres, eight people were slain at an Omaha shopping mall last Wednesday and four were more shot dead Sunday at two Colorado churches. The Omaha killer took his stepfather’s rapid-fire rifle from a closet to pick off Christmas shoppers. In Colorado, the gunman, leaving behind an Internet screed referenced to the 1999 Columbine massacre, was equipped with two assault rifles, three handguns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition.l know the answer. Guns are ubiquitous in this country, and the gun lobby is so powerful that this year’s toll of 30,000 gun deaths makes barely a political ripple.
"Until recently, the nation did have a law designed to protect the public from assault rifles and other high-tech infantry weapons. In 1994, enough politicians felt the public’s fear to respond with a 10-year ban on assault-weapons that was not perfect but dented the free-marketeering of Rambo mayhem. Most Americans rejected the gun lobby’s absurd claim that assault rifles are “sporting” weapons. But when it came up for renewal in 2004, President Bush and Congress caved to the gun lobby and allowed the law to lapse. This was despite Mr. Bush’s campaign vow to renew the ban. It was especially frightening to see the ban expire in the very midst of politicians’ endless post-9/11 invoking of homeland security.
"New presidential candidates are now wooing voters. Surely they can’t wait to address the latest slayings with a detailed plan of action at the very next televised debate. Surely moderators can hold off on immigration and finding out who believes more in the bible to bring up the latest rampages.
"Instead of asking how could this happen, the country needs to know who is going to stop it."
Here is the Times editorial:
"Barely touched on in the coverage of the two latest gun rampages is how the disturbed shooters could so easily obtain assault rifles — weapons designed for waging war. In separate random massacres, eight people were slain at an Omaha shopping mall last Wednesday and four were more shot dead Sunday at two Colorado churches. The Omaha killer took his stepfather’s rapid-fire rifle from a closet to pick off Christmas shoppers. In Colorado, the gunman, leaving behind an Internet screed referenced to the 1999 Columbine massacre, was equipped with two assault rifles, three handguns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
"How could this happen? That’s the great American cliché attached to these ever-mounting tragedies. We alBarely touched on in the coverage of the two latest gun rampages is how the disturbed shooters could so easily obtain assault rifles — weapons designed for waging war. In separate random massacres, eight people were slain at an Omaha shopping mall last Wednesday and four were more shot dead Sunday at two Colorado churches. The Omaha killer took his stepfather’s rapid-fire rifle from a closet to pick off Christmas shoppers. In Colorado, the gunman, leaving behind an Internet screed referenced to the 1999 Columbine massacre, was equipped with two assault rifles, three handguns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition.l know the answer. Guns are ubiquitous in this country, and the gun lobby is so powerful that this year’s toll of 30,000 gun deaths makes barely a political ripple.
"Until recently, the nation did have a law designed to protect the public from assault rifles and other high-tech infantry weapons. In 1994, enough politicians felt the public’s fear to respond with a 10-year ban on assault-weapons that was not perfect but dented the free-marketeering of Rambo mayhem. Most Americans rejected the gun lobby’s absurd claim that assault rifles are “sporting” weapons. But when it came up for renewal in 2004, President Bush and Congress caved to the gun lobby and allowed the law to lapse. This was despite Mr. Bush’s campaign vow to renew the ban. It was especially frightening to see the ban expire in the very midst of politicians’ endless post-9/11 invoking of homeland security.
"New presidential candidates are now wooing voters. Surely they can’t wait to address the latest slayings with a detailed plan of action at the very next televised debate. Surely moderators can hold off on immigration and finding out who believes more in the bible to bring up the latest rampages.
"Instead of asking how could this happen, the country needs to know who is going to stop it."
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