The President’s re-election (More Discussion VI)

In my last post "The President’s re-election (MoreDiscussion V)" I set forth a very provocative presentation from Louise Mayo, PhD, Professor of History Emeritus, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I urge you to re-read it so that you can more easily follow my rebuttal, which follows.

I wrote:

I am also delighted about your comments on gun ownership. People sometimes think they are making me feel good by saying they agree with me, but if that is all I give to my audience, to affirm their own views, I am accomplishing very little. If I succeed in supplying facts, whether in support of predilections or in opposition, then I feel my hard work is productive. As you know, I always preach facts first, then opinions. If facts don't support the opinions then it is time to re-examine the opinions.

By the same token, I appreciate the facts you are supplying on the debt before, and during World War II and today. If you can supply the figures for the years following the war that would also be helpful. I believe the deficits were rapidly reduced. I would also appreciate your clarifying whether your figures are, in fact, for the debt, which would apply to all accumulated debt since the founding of the Republic, or the deficit, which is a figure that applies to a given period, usually the fiscal year.

My suggestion about the defense budget was not entirely sarcastic. It was a way of smoking out Paul Krugman's contention that deficits are the be all and the end all, that will solve our problems. I think that is simplistic, as is his contention that we can inflate our way out of the economic malaise. I also pointed out that with his logic increasing taxes on the rich is bad because that too decreases the deficit.

I am a Keynesian. I believe that in times of economic slow down, pump priming is essential and you are right that increasing the defense budget, while not the most efficient way of stimulating the economy, in fact, would do that, even though it runs counter to liberal orthodoxy. 

But not all increases in the deficit are beneficial. (Which is what Krugman appears to be saying.) Increasing taxes on the rich decreases the deficit, but Krugman would hardly argue that therefore this is undesirable. So it should be clear that larger deficits by whatever means, is not desirable.

In fact, if we correlate deficits, with economic performance over the years, we find that contrary to popular beliefs, most deficits were run up under Republican Administrations, (See table displayed in my blog "The President’s Re-election (More Discussion III)" while as Bill Clinton pointed out in his convention speech, "since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats, 24. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private sector jobs...So what’s the job score? Republicans, 24 million; Democrats, 42 (million)."

So clearly there is no correlation between deficits and private sector jobs. Pump priming is putting money in the hands of people who will spend it, thereby increasing demand, which will be met by the need to produce more, causing producers to increase production to meet the demand, which necessitates hiring, which creates more consumer demand, a circular cycle, which works well until demand outstrips supply, which causes inflation, at which point either demand must be restricted or means must be found to increase supply. Deficits are irrelevant in this, except in so far as sufficient revenue cannot be found to meet the need for expenditures, and then on a temporary basis, deficit spending can be justified. 

What made WWII successful in ending the depression was not deficit spending, but the creation of untold jobs in the defense industries and the huge expansion in our industrial capacity. Long range the GI bill, which increased educational opportunity, also laid the groundwork for economic revival for the future, and the wise investment in the Marshall Plan gave us markets for our goods. The deficits were a necessary evil in that endeavor, not the foundation.

The only time deficit spending is desirable is for investments that can be shown to produce a greater return than the cost of the investment in the long run. This is particularly true in the case of infrastructure spending, and investments in education. Private industry could never function without borrowing, but such borrowing is never for salaries, it is for investment in plant, which is depreciable.

                       

At the end of your presentation you make the standard argument, "Borrowing rates will never be as low again as they are now" first advanced by one my subscribers, Robert Malchman, and later advocated by Krugman. But that is a great fallacy recognized by our President. The credit we have is not at a fixed interest rate. No one can predict when it will go up, or how fast. It will at some point. No one know when or how much. When it does, we can't just pay it off all at once. We suddenly have huge expenses in debt service.

                       

I have said this time and time again. 

That is why an increase in revenue is so important. We need to spend on creating jobs, and at least as important if not more so, we need to spend on infra-structure, enlarging our ports, repairing our highways and bridges, our electric grid, our access to the web, and above all in our educational system. 

We achieved greatness because we were one of the first countries in the world that made high school free. We now must make college free. Not all colleges. Private colleges should remain private. But State and Municipal colleges must be free. The federal government must make grants to enable this. The huge debts incurred by people striving to make it into the middle class and instead being destroyed by it must stop. Those that have already incurred these horrendous debts must be allowed to declare bankruptcy and get a new start.

It is unfortunate that the Left is fixated on entitlements. They are important, but they are not the be all and the end all. To demand no changes is absurd. Social Security is an easy fix. Yes, a large part of it can be fixed by lifting the cap on the payroll cap. But if this is not politically feasible, then we must be willing to do that which is. Lifting the retirement age has drawbacks, but if that is the only politically viable way to extend the life of the program we need to do it. To do nothing is to doom the program. I prefer that to changing the COLA. Political reality cannot be ignored.

As for Medicare and Medicaid, Increasing the eligibility age will not help. It will take healthier people out of it and undermine it. Its best hope is Obama Care's ability to change the culture of health care, through the much-hated "Independent Payment Advisory Board.” Here the problem is not inherent in the government program, but in the way our Health Care system works. Unless we make the health care system more efficient, no amount of tinkering with the insurance system will make much difference. 

But we must recognize, that taking care of our future is more important than our entitlements, as important as they are. More revenue is fundamental to our future and a reversal of the redistribution of our wealth upward, is fundamental to our nation’s future. Tax Reform, most important, by taxing capital gains and dividends, as ordinary income is crucial. The permanent inherited aristocracy must be abolished, or at least reduced by ever-higher estate taxes, and preferably inheritance taxes, which are much fairer than estate taxes. 

We must, however, always be able to distinguish between aspirational goals and politically feasible ones. When aspirational ones must be postponed, we must accept compromises that are less than ideal, but that are better than an unacceptable status quo.

Finally, our present deficit is manageable, but the projected deficit, unless its trajectory is changed, is disastrous. Just because Republicans try to use it to gut, desperately needed expenditures, is no reason to deny what should be obvious. The issue should not be whether the projected deficits are acceptable - they are not - but that we must, and I mean must - deal with them with targeted cuts in spending, and there are many places where we can cut spending - reducing the prison population would be a good start, legalizing marijuana, etc. and increasing revenue, not only through the income and the estate tax, but by taxing carbon emissions and taxing discharges into our streams, where this cannot be avoided, taxing unhealthy foods, etc.

But whatever else we do - we must stop the trajectory in our deficit spending.

                       

In the meantime at the risk of causing this discussion to go on ad infinitum I still invite:

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The President’s re-election (More Discussion V)

In my last post "The President’s re-election (More Discussion IV)" I continued the debate with Roger Streit of West Orange, NJ. Even before this I had considered discontinuing the publication of these debates, but an enthusiastic interjection from Michael A. Cerrato, J.D. Esq. of Westville, NJ who exclaimed “Wow, this is a great exchange” encouraged me to keep sharing the debate with my readers.

When I posted "The President’s re-election (More Discussion IV)" I had thought that this would conclude the debate, But now I received another very provocative presentation from Louise Mayo, Ph.D, Professor of History Emeritus, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who wrote:

I have been following your complex discussions with interest. I found your comments about gun ownership very helpful and learned some things I did not know about gun ownership. 

I did want to comment on the debt discussion and its significance. First, in answer to your query, the debt was 40% of GDP at the height of the Great Depression. It rose to 120% by the end of World War II. (It's about 102% today - up from 98% in 2010). Clearly the economy improved as the debt rose as a result of government money injected into the economy. Your, I assume, sarcastic suggestion that we could quadruple our Defense budget would actually work. That is, any money creating jobs and income would be effective when the economy is weak. Presumably, however, there are better long-term ways to accomplish the same ends -- infrastructure building and repairs, education, research etc. The experience of FDR in his second term when he cut back too soon and threw a recovering economy back into a severe recession and the British experience today show that attempts to lower debt and balance the budget on the backs of a weak economy are counter-productive. Borrowing rates will never be as low again as they are now. Interest on debt as a share of GDP has been declining and is now 1.5%. Due to low interest rates, only 2% of the principal goes to service the debt, down from 7% in the 1980s. We should be investing in those long-term improvements I mentioned earlier. We could cut back on real waste, try to identify ways in which we can save money in the health care system, close some tax loop holes and then, think about more serious savings to kick in once the unemployment rate falls below, perhaps, six percent.

My response thereto was rather lengthy and therefore rather than burdening the reader with too long a post, I am saving my rebuttal for my next post, which will be entitled "The President’s re-election (More Discussion VI)."

In the meantime at the risk of causing this discussion to go on ad infinitum I still invite:

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The President’s re-election (More Discussion IV)

In a number of recent posts I set forth a long, and I believe very useful, discussion between Roger Streit of West Orange, NJ and me.

I urge the reader to review that discussion as previously set forth in my posts "The President’s re-election (Discussion)" where I set forth at its beginning exchanges with various people, but near its end my discussion with Roger commences. This discussion continued at length in my post "The President’s re-election (More Discussion)"

However, I then published my exchange with Albert Nekimken, of Vienna Virginia, who had commented on the exchange with Roger in my posts entitled "The President’s re-election (More Discussion II)" and "The President’s Re-election (More Discussion III)."

In the following three posts I digressed from this stimulating discussion. I now want to share the rest of it with my readers.

On November 28, 2012 where after having watched a Paul Krugman / Joseph Stiglitz discussion on C-Span, which Roger recommended to me, I wrote to Roger:

I want to comment on the Krugman/Stiglitz discussion. Krugman used WW II as an example of running up a large deficit that stimulated the economy. He didn't say, and I don't know, (nor do I want to research it) how large the deficit was as a percent of GDP going into the war, nor how large it was at its end. But by his logic we could deal with our present economic problems by quadrupling the budget of the defense department even without a tax increase. I know he wouldn't favor that, but if what he says is true, that is one thing Republicans would go for. So it seems that this would be an easy political solution.

This was never responded to directly, but on December 2nd Roger called my attention to a post by Timothy Egan in the New York Times that can be accessed here, and quoting from that column called my attention to this statement in the column:

Liberalism, in the broadest sense, is about expanding human rights and opportunity, while embracing science and reason.

My response was lengthy! (Brevity isn’t my strong suit.)

I have no problem with that definition. It is too bad that the general public doesn't see it that way. Too discuss why would require a dissertation by itself, so maybe another time.

As for the column as a whole, I think he is too easy on the Republican Party. Since as early as 1876, Republicans gave up their only saving grace as the party of Lincoln. 

"Reconstruction was brought about in the disputed 1876 Presidential election. The Democratic candidate, Tilden, won the popular vote, but neither candidate initially had a majority of electoral votes due to disputes over returns in Florida, Louisiana and S. Carolina--the only states in which federal troops were still stationed in 1876. Although they were not numerous enough to stop white intimidation of black voters, the troops were considered an affront by white Democrats. In back room negotiations, Democrats conceded the disputed election returns to Hayes in return for his agreement to withdraw the remaining 3,000 federal troops, thereby putting a formal end to Reconstruction and assuring Democratic control, based on a platform of white supremacy and black disenfranchisement, throughout the South.” See here. While they had some "liberal" or "progressive moments" after that, they were more aberrations, than real party policy, e.g. Teddy Roosevelt was not popular in the Republican Party. They hated his progressive agenda when he was governor of New York and so to get rid of him, they kicked him upstairs to V-P, figuring he could die on the vine there. This backfired when President McKinley was assassinated and Teddy Roosevelt ascended to the Presidency. 

Along the way there were some real progressive Republicans, such as Morse of Oregon, La Follette of Wisconsin, Hiram Johnson in California, Charles Evans Hughes of New York, and later Jack Javits of New York, and Chase of New Jersey, but they were always a minority.

Nixon supported some progressive things such as the Environmental Protection Agency and even proposed a national health insurance plan, but he was always a political opportunist and was the architect of the Republican Southern Strategy. The Republican Party is and always has been the Party of the rich, and its alliances with racists, theocrats, and misogynists, is opportunistic. But they can't shed them and survive.

After this digression, Roger returned to the main theme, by citing Krugman’s blog and added:

Anyway, my own answer is still what it has been all along: the time for austerity is when the economy is close enough to full employment that the Fed is starting to raise rates to head off an undesirably high rate of inflation; at this point, given the case for somewhat higher inflation, I’d say that we shouldn’t even think about this until unemployment is well below 7 and falling fast. At that point you can, in effect, make a deal — fiscal austerity in return for not hiking rates — that leaves the economy harmless.

And went on to quote from one Paul Mathis:

Since the focus of policy over the past three years has been almost entirely on the federal debt and the implicit danger that its size represents, there has been relentless fear mongering by conservatives about an unspecified danger somewhere in the future that will cause our economy to collapse. Therefore, austerity right now is essential to prevent this calamity regardless of the consequences for economic growth and employment. 

Liberals have been no help in negating this fear mongering because they have agreed, without evidence, that the federal debt is "unsustainable" and must be reduced. In fact, liberals have proudly pointed to the reductions in federal spending that have already occurred, e.g., the wage freeze for federal employees that has gone on for more than 2 years already. 

Those who have said that the federal debt is no problem because interest rates are at historic lows and that any debt, if necessary, can always be repaid with newly "printed" money are derided for "enslaving" us to the Chinese who "own" us and control our future. 

So the bottom line, as usual in American politics, is racism in the form of xenophobia against the Chinese. Against that derangement, we all contend in vain.”

To which my reply was:

While the Chinese have been a whipping boy, it is not fair to blame Republicans entirely for this. To a very large extent, the attack on the Chinese was started by the Labor Unions, who stupidly wanted to stop globalization. They started the campaign against globalization under the Clinton Administration when they vigorously opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico, a treaty that has benefited both the US and Mexico. In fact Obama kind of bought into this when he kept talking about jobs shipped overseas. Jobs shipped overseas are an inevitable consequence of globalization, which can no more be stopped, than could the industrial revolution, which the unions also vigorously opposed, resorting to breaking machinery, which is where the term "sabotage" comes from.

Don't get me wrong, I am for unions, but they are often their own worse enemy.

As for the Chinese, it is wholly a stupid argument, no matter who employs it. "China, it turns out, holds less than eight percent of the money our government has borrowed over the years...But politicians like to find an external enemy to rally the troops against, and China is an easy target." 

To which Roger asserted:

…you have bought into the fear of economic calamity because of “unsustainable” deficits.  Krugman says there has never been a collapse of a country with its own currency.

To which I cited:

Argentina.

Roger went on to say:

We can print money when necessary and we can raise taxes and slow spending when the economy is overheating.

And I forcefully pointed out:

Like so many, you simply ignore arguments and facts that don't fit your predilections. In my last e-mail I pointed out the inflation under Nixon and Carter that was caused by the huge deficits during the Johnson Administration's policy of bread and war.

I also asked why; if deficits are the solution, why not simply create a huge deficit by not raising taxes and exploding the Pentagon budget. No response!

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

Guns

In my last post "Guns, The Cliff, The Right, & The Left" I pointed out that the NRA is not what the media made them out to be.

As I said in that post:

Who in Hell is the NRA? They have been represented by the media as the representative of gun owners, of hunters, of sportsmen. Are they? According to their own website they have four million members. The adult population of the United States is 250 million adults over the age of 18.  

In response thereto one of my subscribers wrote:

…it seems to me the gun problem in this country has become insurmountable. You know the first thing that happened after the school shooting was a huge surge in gun purchases, because of the fear of gun restriction legislation. How do you deal with this type of mentality? How do you deal with all the illegal weapons out there? I'm very pessimistic about our ability as a nation to deal with this problem.  

I don’t share that pessimism because the facts, and in my view, we must always start with the facts, do not support this pessimism. The writer explains her pessimism by pointing out that: 

…the first thing that happened after the school shooting was a huge surge in gun purchases…

Yes, that is what the media reported, but the media, as usual, does not tell the whole story. CNN, in a report which didn’t get the coverage it deserved, reported that it is a matter of:

Fewer U.S. gun owners own more guns.

It wasn’t a surge of most people, or even a great many people, who bought guns. It was a small number of gun nuts buying more guns. That is not at all discouraging.

The article went on to say:

… the number of U.S. households with guns has declined, but current gun owners are gathering more guns.

…both the number of households owning guns and the number of people owning guns were decreasing.

…20% of the gun owners with the most firearms possessed about 65% of the nation's guns.

The number of households owning guns has declined from almost 50% in 1973 to just over 32% in 2010,

…The false perception that there are more gun owners has helped bolster a political narrative, emboldened the National Rifle Association and left politicians worried about losing support…

There is a myth pushed by the gun industry, the NRA and the trade associations for gun makers that gun ownership is up," he said. "[That] there are more gun owners, when the opposite is true, gun ownership is declining."

Thus, as I have always preached FACTS FIRST!!

According to Mayors Against Guns:

87 percent of NRA members agree that support for Second Amendment rights goes hand-in-hand with keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.

74 percent of NRA members and 87 percent of non-NRA gun owners support requiring criminal background checks of anyone purchasing a gun.

79 percent of NRA members and 80 percent of non-NRA gun owners support requiring gun retailers to perform background checks on all employees – a measure recently endorsed by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for the firearms industry.

86 percent of Americans and 81 percent of gun owners support requiring all gun buyers to pass a background check, no matter where they buy a gun or who they buy it from.

And according to the Pew Research Center for People and the Press:

...about two-thirds (65%) think that allowing citizens to own assault weapons makes the country more dangerous. Just 21% say that permitting these types of weapons makes the country safer.

Whether to ban semi-automatic guns – 44% favor such a ban, while 49% are opposed.

Ok, more are opposed to banning assault weapons than are in favor. But that is by a small margin, which from the first statistic, that 65% think that allowing citizens to own assault weapons makes the country more dangerous, and that just 21% say that permitting these types of weapons makes the country safer, suggests that many, if not most, of these people may be persuadable.

At least as interesting are the statistics on views by demographics. Again according to Pew Research Center for People and the Press, Whites believe that allowing citizens to own assault weapons makes (the) country more dangerous, comes in at 26% to 61%, but among Blacks it is the reverse, at 83% to 10% and women it is 73% to 15%. Finally, while Hispanics have not been polled adequately the Daily Kos reported, 56% to 32% in favor of an assault weapons ban.

That is a lot of figures to ponder, but facts are very important.

If an assault weapons ban were to pass would it solve the problem? NO! Would a ban on large clips solve it? No! There are just too many guns out there! To really make a dent a repurchase program would be necessary. But to solve big problems we need to take one step at a time. It takes time, but start we must.

Allow me to just make some comments on the Second Amendment, which because of the political pressure (and money creates pressure, and the gun lobby has lots of money), has been grossly misrepresented. The amendment reads:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

Now let us ask ourselves, and original intent advocates, if consistent, ought to be the first to ask this question, why was this amendment put into the Bill of Rights. In fact why do we have Bill of Rights?

The answer should be obvious. The framers had just finished replacing the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution, which greatly increased the powers of the Federal government. State Rights advocates were worried that the Constitution gave too much power to the federal government. They were particularly worried that the new government might eventually abolish slavery. And so they wanted to make sure that states had access to militias, which might resist the powerful Federal government. But it was never intended to be a restriction on the States.

This is in fact what happened in 1860. Had the states not had militias there could not have been a Civil War. Thus to interpret this as applying to the states is absurd on its face.

So how did the Supreme Court find it applied to individuals and to the States? Well they did that in 2008 for the first time in American history by the usual five to four vote. Never before was this interpretation given.

And what did they base it on? Amendment XIV passed at the end of the Civil War to protect the newly freed slaves.

The amendment reads:

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

So an amendment intended to protect the newly freed slaves, ends up, in our topsy-turvy world, exposing them to the worst of gun violence.

Since the Civil War was fought to put an end to the idea of secession, and to armed revolt against the Federal government, it is ironic that Lincoln never thought of the importance of repealing the Second Amendment. But that is the irony of history.

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court did hold that reasonable regulations are not unconstitutional, either at the State or Federal level.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

Guns, The Cliff, The Right, & The Left

It’s madness all around!!

In my last post "The Fiscal Cliff" I quoted The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence as reporting that more than 30,000 people are killed by guns in this nation each year. This is mostly in our cities and in our poor African-American communities, but it has not, and continues not to raise the conscience of the media or the Nation. But 20 children and six adults killed in a suburb in Connecticut get two weeks of coverage and a Nation outraged. Something is wrong with our values.

Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive Vice President, speaks and says that the answer to gun violence is more guns, every cable news channel covers his speech. The following Sunday all the Sunday morning news programs have a representative of the NRA on their show. Why? Why?

Who in Hell is the NRA? They have been represented by the media as the representative of gun owners, of hunters, of sportsmen. Are they? According to their own website they have four million members. The adult population of the United States is 250 million adults over the age of 18.  

Four million is a tiny percentage. The NRA speaks only for the gun manufacturing industry. The media has allowed the myth that they speak for anyone else. Annual membership in the NRA costs only $25.-  so they clearly don't get their money from their members. They get it from gun manufacturers. The NRA speaks only for the gun manufacturing industry. The media has allowed the myth that they speak for anyone else.

It is time to unmask this charade!!!

As for the Cliff, the Right claims they are worried about the deficit, but reducing it by increasing tax revenues from the income tax, or the estate tax, or the capital gains tax, or on dividends is opposed fanatically. Do they really care about the deficit? Or is that just a ruse for their true desire to, in the words of their hero, Grover Glenn Norquist, “just want to shrink it (government) down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

The Left e.g. Paul Krugman, insist that the best think for the economy is an increased deficit, at least in the short run. But they are adamant that taxes on the rich must be raised, which lowers the deficit and going over the cliff would have decreased the deficit by a hell of a lot.

They tell us that the most important thing that our government can do is increase jobs, but they seem to almost relish the idea of going over the cliff, which would cost untold jobs. They described any deal as a bad deal that reduces entitlement benefits by one iota, but this deal gave not one inch on entitlements, and they call it a bad deal.

I must admit that I find myself disappointed by the deal in that it did not raise enough revenue. But for me that makes sense, since I believe that debt does matter. But if you argue that it doesn’t, why is this important? But as I read the reports I come away with the feeling that the early estimates of how much revenue was raised are just that, early estimates. I have a feeling that these early estimates do not take into account the reductions in exemptions or other aspects. The “deal” may yet show much more revenue estimates than are now being recognized.

In the words of our self-described Socialist Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders:

This agreement preserves incentives for the development of clean energy by encouraging companies that are creating jobs in America and helping reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. That is a win-win for our economy and our environment. In Vermont and across the country, hundreds of wind manufacturing plants already are producing wind turbines, and the industry is providing jobs for 75,000 American workers. The fact that we have doubled wind generation since 2008 is an American success story. Extending the Production Tax Credit means we can continue the tremendous growth in wind and other safe, clean, renewable sources energy that must be developed if we are to reverse global warming. 

This agreement also is a major victory for Social Security recipients and for disabled veterans. Despite an eleventh-hour bid by Senate Republicans, the final bill does not include their proposed change in how cost-of-living adjustments are calculated. As the founder of the Defending Social Security Caucus and the incoming chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, I am proud that organizations representing seniors and veterans worked together to block the switch to a so-called chained CPI as a way to cut future benefits for more than 55 million Americans.

But regardless of anything else, the President is our quarterback and unlike others, I refuse to indulge in the “Monday morning quarterback” syndrome.

What is obvious is that the President is first and foremost concerned with the economy and jobs. He is not willing to let the economy tank and the progress we have made in creating jobs to be stymied. The deal caused a huge jump in the markets throughout the world, and as for jobs, quoting Reuters: “(t)he ADP National Employment Report showed the private sector added 215,000 jobs in December, comfortably above economists' expectation of a 133,000 gain.” That is something to be celebrated.

I have great difficulty understanding my friends on the Left.

When Bill Clinton “triangulated” and signed into law a devastating revision in our “Aid to Families with Dependant Children," put into place the outrageous “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in our military, signed DOMA into law, acquiesced in the repeal of Glass-Steagal, and allowed an outrageous new bankruptcy law that denied bankruptcy to people with excessive credit card debt, (See here for my comments on May 5th, 2009) and famously said “The era of big government is over” the Left for the most part was quiet. Now that we have a President who fights for our values, it is never good enough, and we act like “Monday morning quarterbacks” at every turn.

I know! I heard it over and over again! “We are only trying to get him to do the right thing.” But what is “the right thing” in an age of intransient sabotage, of hostage taking of our economy, or in the words of the former Treasury Secretary in the Republican Administration of G.W. Bush, PaulO’Neill, “Those Who Won’t Raise Debt Ceiling Are Terrorists”.

When terrorists take hostages and demand a ransom, those who care about the hostage must always ask themselves, “Do we let them kill the hostage?” or do we pay ransom. How much? Do we pay a little to keep the hostage alive, or do we pay a lot to have the hostage released. These are always agonizing questions. The quarterback must call the plays. The second guessers and the “Monday Morning Quarterbacks” must stand down.

E.J. Dionne, writing in the Wahington Post said:

To be deemed a serious analyst at the moment seems to require a lot of hand-wringing and sneering over how awful Congress looked the past few days as it rushed a “fiscal cliff” deal into law.  

So permit me to burn my membership card in the League of Commentators and Pundits.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.