Racism Rears Its Ugly Head In The SCOTUS/The Sequester

The presently constituted Supreme Court has long been criticized for the very activism that was once directed at a more progressive Court, but never before has it given any cause to accuse it of overt racism.

To be sure Robert Bork was rejected for a position on the court in part because in a New Republic article he condemned “the public accommodation sections of the (then) proposed 1964 Civil Rights Act aimed at integrating restaurants, hotels and other businesses” because he “feared that government coercion of private behavior threatened freedom… (ignoring the fact that) restaurateurs were not legally permitted to reject service to well-behaved whites and that the new law intended simply to extend that principle to blacks.”

But this is the first time that a sitting judge has allowed his racist views to escape his lips. During argument on the Constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 Justice Scalia referred to Congress’ near-unanimous re-enactment of the act in 2006 as a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

Yes, the reader read that right. The right of US citizens to vote is, according to Scalia, a “racial entitlement” totally ignoring that the XIV Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privilege or immunities of citizens of the United States… nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” And in Section 5 of that article: “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

Or does Scalia’s doctrine of “Originalism” deny the validity of its amendments.

But what causes him such concern is that the Act of Congress might interfere with “state sovereignty”, which are words not to be found in the Constitution.

But enough said about a Supreme Court justice who claims to be a close adherent to the Constitution.

The Sequester

This is a calamity that has me scratching my head.

It was not so long ago that my friends on the Left were clamoring for the President to allow the country to go over the fiscal cliff unless Republicans caved, and agreed to the President’s proposal that the Bush tax cuts be extended for all except those making over $250,000.

Or in Paul Krugman’s words: “So what should he do? Just say no, and go over the cliff if necessary… This time, nothing very bad will happen to the economy if agreement isn’t reached until a few weeks or even a few months into 2013.” And “No deal is better than a bad deal.”

And the headline on an article in the Atlantic dated November 21, 2012 screamed: “The Fiscal Cliff Is Not as Scary as You Think (but a Bad Deal Should Terrify You).”

But what would have been defined as a bad deal? Well Krugman, and many others define this as:  “where they must agree to large cuts to public investment and social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security…”

So now we have what amounts to half the Fiscal Cliff. So if the Fiscal Cliff wasn’t so bad then surely the Sequester would be even less disastrous. What does Krugman say? He calls the Sequester “one of the worst policy ideas in our nation’s history.”

Now I happen to agree with Krugman on the Sequester. It is indeed one of the “worst policy ideas in our nation’s history”. It was designed to be! The theory having been that if this terrible idea was the alternative to a balanced approach, the balanced approach would win out. But this theory didn’t take into account the extent of the Republican commitment to protecting the rich and destroying everything that does not fully serve the interests of the rich.
So where does that leave us. Is preventing any changes to Social Security and Medicare really the most important thing on the planet? Certainly, the President should never agree to the Republican plan for these programs which amount to their abolition. But does it follow that all changes must be resisted as the many “liberal” organizations are urging? Or as the Campaign for America’s Future calls it; “the Grand Swindle.”

Whether we like it or not according to the Social Security Administration, in 1940 life expectancy for males (at age 65) was 12.7 years. In 1990 it was 15.3. As I said in my blog post entitled "The President’s re-election (More Discussion)," “I have nothing earlier or later, but if we go back to 1930 and forward to 2015 we can assume that it is double that, or 6 years. 

So an increase to 71 for males would be justified. Or we could consider changing it altogether, to kick in after 40 years of work. This would have the advantage that those who start work earlier, usually the under class, could draw earlier than those going to college, who earn more and are more advantaged. The figure for women as of 1940 are 14.7 and for 1990 19.6, so at the risk of being sexist, it might make sense to have an older eligibility age for women than for men.” but none of my readers thought this worthy of comment and one in fact asked where I got these ridiculous statistics.

But the Social Security Administration isn’t the only source for life expectancy figures. According to the broker Fidelity “In 1935, when the Social Security Administration was founded, the average life expectancy was about 62 years. Today's average life expectancy is over 78 years.”

I am familiar with the argument that blue collar worker’s have a shorter life expectancy than the more affluent, but that is precisely why I think changes along the lines outlined above should be considered. But I would go further. The payroll tax is 6.2 percent on income under $113,700 and an additional 6.2 percent on the employer. That is a bearable tax on middle and upper-income earners, but it is a devastating tax for those making little, and those earning the minimum wage, which at present is nationally $7.25 an hour, or just over $15,000 a year. Many don’t even make the minimum wage. Isn’t it time that we removed this onerous tax from these people, and all those making under $30,000 or even $50,000 and made it, like the income tax, a graduated tax.

Of course the money would have to be made up by such devices, among others, as raising the eligibility age, removing the cap for the tax, increasing the tax on the affluent, taxing those who have other income, e.g. above $100,000, so that they would in effect get no benefits and possibly increasing the benefits for those having no, or little, other income.
These are not reforms that would bring joy to the Right, and therefor are not tenable at this time, but it isn’t time for a conversation, instead of the cry “no changes."

And may not some of the damage done by the sequester be even worse then being flexible on entitlements? For example, according to the White House, the effect of the sequester, just in the Washington area, would mean, “About 2,000 poor children would lose access to early education. In the area of public health, less funding would mean 31,400 fewer HIV tests and thousands of children may not get necessary vaccines in Georgia."
Is there less concern about these effects then about entitlements because these sequester effects would have less impact on the Middle Class? Are the concerns so heavily weighted about entitlements, the concerns of a predominately White Middle class, who are more concerned with their entitlements, than with the effects on the most vulnerable.

It is time to ask that question!!!

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.

The Fiscal Cliff

In my last post entitled "We Interrupt this Debate for Some Timely Comments.” I commended to the reader an article entitled “President Obama: The Democrats' Ronald Reagan” but introduced my subject with: “As the impending fiscal cliff moves ever closer, some timely observations appear to be in order and they will follow soon.” and that will be the main subject of this commentary.

In the meantime, however, the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut cannot be ignored or as Ernst Hauser of the Bronx and Manhattan, NY said:

Yesterday’s events have interrupted the interruption - since the Supreme Court has chosen to break the SECOND AMENDMENT into 2 pieces, separating the "well regulated militia" and the "right to bear arms" the time has come to REPEAL it and replace it with a clearer worded one, that neither the CJ nor Scalia could twist. In the meantime Congress could repass the Brady bill, without an expiration date or time.

So much has been said on this subject that I have not much to add, except to observe that the tragedy in Newport, Connecticut is dwarfed by the carnage that goes on every day throughout the US without much publicity. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence reports that more than 30,000 people are killed by guns in this nation each year. Yet this daily tragedy, neither commands the attention of the media, nor the attention of the nation.

Is this because multiple deaths occurring at the same time and place make for better headlines than smaller numbers occurring simultaneously, but in different places?

Or is it because such a large percentage of the victims of gun violence are black?

The first possibility is bad. The second is outrageous. 

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of the Department of Justice reports: “Young African-American males have the most elevated homicide victimization rate of any race or gender group. Homicides involving firearms have been the leading cause of death for African-American males ages 15 to 19 since 1969.”

Whatever the reason, the lack of attention to this ongoing carnage by the media is a disgrace.

Now to the Fiscal Cliff!

I find myself disturbed here not only by the distortions on the Right, but by the blasé attitude toward the Cliff on the part of the Left. Thus I have started to get e-mails from an organization styling itself as AmericasDemocrats.org, which refers to that looming calamity as “the so-called fiscal cliff -- and why going over it might not be so bad.” Some suggest that it would take a long time for its effects to be felt. And the rest of the Left blogosphere, while not going quite this far, proclaims the slogan: “No Deal is better than a Bad deal.” While I have no difficulty agreeing with this in principle, I find that these self-styled “Liberals” define a “Bad Deal” as anything that makes the slightest change in the Entitlement programs.

Yes, it might be necessary for the President to allow the country to go over the Cliff rather than to give in to the constant blackmail by those who have decided that they can get their way by taking the Nation hostage, but the failure on the part of the Left to recognize the seriousness of this step, or to downplay it, is deeply disturbing, to say the least.

Let us understand what it means!

I quote from pages one and two of a 10 page paper released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the highly respected non-partisan arm of Congress, entitled: “Economic Effects of Reducing the Fiscal Restraint That Is Scheduled to Occur in 2013.” 

“Under current law, the federal budget deficit will fall dramatically between 2012 and 2013 owing to scheduled increases in taxes and, to a lesser extent, scheduled reductions in spending—a development that some observers have referred to as a ‘fiscal cliff.’ … The resulting weakening of the economy will lower taxable incomes and raise unemployment…” (Emphasis added) 

“If measured for calendar years 2012 and 2013, the amount of fiscal restraint is even larger. Most of the policy changes that reduce the deficit are scheduled to take effect at the beginning of calendar year 2013, so budget figures for fiscal year 2013—which begins in October 2012—reflect only about three-quarters of the effects of those policies on an annual basis. 

“CBO expects—with the economy projected to contract at an annual rate of 1.3 percent in the first half of the year and expand at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in the second half. Given the pattern of past recessions as identified by the National Bureau of Economic Research, such a contraction in output in the first half of 2013 would probably be judged to be a recession.“ (Emphasis added)

Furthermore, Christine Lagarde has urged US leaders to reach a deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff,” warning that the uncertainty was damaging the global economy. The head of the International Monetary Fund told the BBC's Katty Kay that the US had a duty "to try to remove uncertainty and doubt as quickly as possible.” 

Even as early as December 12, 2012 Reuters reported that Dupont was already curtailing spending due to the imminence of the fiscal cliff. 

Furthermore, failure to reach agreement and falling over the cliff means that unemployment insurance checks stop being paid as of Dec. 29 resulting in “about 2.1 million Americans loos(ing) their extended jobless benefits … (and) An additional 930,000 people will run out of unemployment insurance in early 2013. 

Anyone reading this analysis can see the consequences are real and they are serious. Going over the cliff cannot be approached lightly, and from a political standpoint, if it must be endured, it must be clear to the American people that there was no real choice.

This is the President’s dilemma. He cannot stonewall, as the Left would have him do! He cannot cave to their laments, “No changes to Social Security, to Medicare, to Medicaid.” He must be, and he must appear to be, reasonable. It must be crystal clear that if this calamity were to happen that it was Republican intransigence that was to blame.

The Left keeps screaming: “We need more jobs” and it ignores that falling off the cliff will increase unemployment and increase the hardship of the unemployed.

Furthermore these strident voices ignore that more is at stake than entitlements.

Eduardo Porter writing in the New York Times of December 19, 2012, points out that “loath to raise taxes on the middle class yet unwilling to cut deeply into the budgets for Social Security or Medicare, the president and his advisers proposed cutting the discretionary part of the budget devoted to everything except defense and other security agencies to 1.7 percent of economic output by 2022, down from 3.1 percent last year” but there is not a word about such cuts from the Left. For the Left it appears that nothing matters other than entitlements.

But there is much at stake here!! Possibly more than even entitlements. To quote from the article: “It pays subsidies for higher education and housing assistance for the poor. It finances the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. It pays for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and training programs for unemployed workers.” But even Porter leaves out much of what is in that part of the budget. How about National Parks? How about the budget for the SEC and our other regulatory agencies? How about the budget of the IRS, where for every cut in its enforcement budget, we lose a multiple in tax revenues. I could go on and on. What about spending on infrastructure? See here. But I don’t hear any concern from the Left.

I know that we live in an age of slogans, and the pretense of simple solutions, in an age of short columns and short attention spans, but unless we focus on what is truly at stake and how difficult the choices are, we undermine the very things we value. Entitlements are very important, but they are not the be all and the end all.

And then comes the final straw from this new messenger from the Left. This AmericasDemocrats.org gives the impression that it is connected to the Democratic Party. Not only is this not true, but it gives us this bit of revisionist history. It tells us:

Did you know that Democratic “bosses” made FDR accept Harry Truman as vice president?

Did you know that Truman was “very anti-Semitic and racist”?

Did you know that Japan did not surrender primarily because of the atom bomb?

The first is not true. No one could make Roosevelt do anything he did not want to do and he demonstrated this four years before when he wanted Henry Wallace on his ticket, by being prepared to threaten not to run if Wallace was not his running mate.

As for the second, it was Truman who signed an executive order integrating the military at a time when most still thought of African-Americans as inferior, and it was Truman who against the strong opposition of his Secretary of State, George Marshall, recognized the State of Israel.

The website sets forth a view of the Cold War that can only be described as being out of playbook of the then communist party, blaming the cold war on Truman and American Imperialism. For more on Wallace, see here and particularly the sections on “The 1948 Presidential election” and “Later career”.

Next time I will return to the discussions with my readers, which I left off on December 4, 2012 with The President’s Re-election (More Discussion III)

The President’s re-election (Discussion)

I posted my last commentary "The President’s re-election" on November 18.

As coincidence would have it, I received an inquiry from one of my subscribers that relates to it even before I posted my commentary, so allow me to share that exchange with you.

The inquiry came from Barbara Valentino Crowley Baptiste Moreus, of Port St. Lucie, Florida, who asked:

How does one rebut Senator Marco Rubio’s comment that: there isn't much point in raising taxes on the wealthy because they have the money to hire people who would help them get out of paying taxes. The billionaires and millionaires that are going to be impacted by higher rates, they can afford to hire the best lawyers, lobbyists and accountants in America to figure out how NOT TO PAY those higher taxes. Obama's approach will fail and therefore the problem of the huge annual deficit still remains. The President doesn't seem to understand that he is not going to get the "Bang for the Buck" by taxing the wealthy.

To which I responded:

“This is true as long as we have a tax system that has a million loopholes that clever lawyers can exploit. We really do need to close the many loopholes that are now in the tax system, e.g. look at my post "Romney is worse than I thought!" and look at the loopholes that Romney exploited. These need to be closed. Republicans are right that this kind of tax reform probably would raise more revenue than raising tax rates. But are they really prepared to eliminate them. I don't think so. The biggest loophole is that taxes on capital gains are taxed much lower than ordinary income. This needs to be changed. There is absolutely no reason why income from working should be taxed higher than income derived from investment. If we believe in the work ethic then we shouldn't punish people who work and reward those who get passive income by investing. But Republicans are adamant against this change.

But look at the many other loopholes that Romney exploited. When he gave assets to charity, he got a deduction for the value of the assets at the time of the contribution, rather than the price he paid for them, thus avoiding even the smaller capital gains tax. That is wrong. He should have to pay the capital gains tax when he gives to charity, as though he had sold the asset.

Inheritance tax. Aside from being too low under the Bush tax rates they allow a decedent to escape capital gains taxes altogether, since the law now says that assets of a deceased are exempt even from the very low capital gains taxes.

I can go on and on. Yes, Republicans are right that there is more money there than in increased tax rates, but they are phony when they suggest that they really favor tax reform. They will not support any of these reforms.

Extending the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy on the basis that at some time in the future we will have real tax reform is offering a bird in the bush. (No pun intended.) They will never let it happen. But if they have specific ideas along this line, I would like to hear them, and so would the President.

However Rubio is right about how much simply extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy will bring. 

To make a real dent in the deficit we would have to extend The Bush tax cuts for all, as Allan Greenspan has been advocating. If none of the Bush tax cuts were extended the deficit would be reduced by approximately $3 trillion over a decade, but extending them, in accordance with Obama's plan, only for those making more than $250,000 per couple, $200,000 for singles, would increase revenue by only 3/4 of a trillion over ten years, not nearly enough. But politically Obama can't be for extending all because he has made a pledge not to do so, and at this point in the recovery, it is not desirable. After we have recovered it would make sense. See here.

The amount that Obama is seeking in additional revenues is 1.6 trillion. See here. The 3/4 trillion achieved by the proposed elimination of the cuts is less than half of what we need in additional revenues. So not extending the Bush cuts for the wealthy gets us less than halfway there. Additional revenue beyond that must be found. The article, which I referenced in US News, is not realistic as to other sources.

This addresses the point made by Rubio.

The other points generally made are that taxing the rich will hurt job creation because it hits small businesses. This is not true. Small businesses and the wealthy are not the same. Please read the article which you can find here.

Finally the argument that taxing business at all will hurt job creation is also nonsense. There is a super abundance of cash in businesses, large and small, that is not being invested. Having more is not going to make a difference. There is only one reason businesses are not hiring, and that is that they have no need for additional employees because there is a lack of consumer demand. When consumer demand picks up, they will start hiring. It is well established that 70% of the economy comes from the consumer. That is why putting money into the hands of people who will spend it on consumer goods is by far the most effective way to move the economy. The stimulus worked, despite all the denials. Look at the figures. Before the stimulus, jobs were being lost at a rapid clip. Right after job losses declined rapidly, and then jobs started being created at an ever faster clip. It is true that the stimulus was too small and did not last long enough, but that is not Obama's fault. The size of the stimulus was the best that could be gotten out of Congress. 

Republicans are right that the best way to deal with the deficit is by growing the economy, but wrong about the way to grow the economy. The economy grows from the bottom up, not from the top down, i.e. consumers drive the economy, not supply side economics. Compare the economy under Bush I lower taxes, Clinton's higher taxes, and with Bush's II lower taxes.

Joel Wiener of Boca Ratan Florida, had this observation:

I found Krugman's earlier column (November 8th - Let's Not Make a Deal) on the Fiscal Cliff interesting, especially his conclusion:  

“Meanwhile, the president is in a far stronger position than in previous confrontations. I don’t place much stock in talk of ‘mandates,’ but Mr. Obama did win re-election with a populist campaign, so he can plausibly claim that Republicans are defying the will of the American people. And he just won his big election and is, therefore, far better placed than before to weather any political blowback from economic troubles — especially when it would be so obvious that these troubles were being deliberately inflicted by the G.O.P. in a last-ditch attempt to defend the privileges of the 1 percent." 

"Most of all, standing up to hostage taking is the right thing to do for the health of America’s political system. So stand your ground, Mr. President, and don’t give in to threats. No deal is better than a bad deal.”  

I just don't think the Obama has the nerve to see what happens. I recall that in the third debate, when asked about the Fiscal Cliff, he said: "It will not happen." That was before the election, however.

To which I replied:

In a sense this is like the confrontation with the Russians in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Don't act too tough; don't overplay your hand, but be tough and offer the other side some kind of concession.

The military wanted Kennedy to immediately order the invasion of Cuba. Kennedy said NO! That would definitely lead to war. But he ordered a blockade. He then contacted Kruschev and said take your missiles out of Cuba and we will take ours out of Turkey.

That’s what we need here. Tough and a signal that we are willing to face disaster (falling off the cliff if we have to) but not so tough as not to offer concessions and to make a deal unlikely.

                       

No deal may be better than a bad deal, but what is the definition of a bad deal. Is a bad deal any that makes painful concessions?

I trust Obama's judgment. This is where Krugman and I part. He does not.

And Rick Pereira of North Adams, Massachusetts chimed in with:

I totally agree with you that gerrymandering continues to be, if not the primary, then at least the fundamental, cause of our perceived political instability. It may well be part of why we have effectively only two parties. In my belief, it will take one or more states to take action against gerrymandering as a political message against it and to raise public awareness of it.  I have long complained of the lack of the words "accountability" and "transparency" in politics (national as well as state) and although I'm encouraged by Cuomo's efforts, I've been very disappointed in New York's lack of transparency in its election laws.  Furthermore: if there is any contingent of citizens concerned enough about this issue, one strategy may be to promote enlarging of political districts in the name of saving money, because technology is now easily able to handle larger districts. This should obviate gerrymandering on a zipcode-by-zipcode basis.

To which I responded:

We need to revise the Constitution as difficult as that may be. We are spending too much time on elections, so that as soon as one election is finished, fund raising begins for the next. I would suggest that both members of the House and the Senate should be elected every four years to coincide with Presidential elections and that state elections for Governor and state legislatures be held at the same time. One election every four years is more than enough and the Presidential election brings out more people voting, so the results are more democratic.

An override of United needs to go with it, saying specifically that the Congress shall have the power to regulate the manner of raising and spending money in elections and the extent to which the government shall finance it. Fewer members of Congress and larger districts are desirable. 

Then Congress needs to legislate how Districts are to be drawn, setting forth the criteria, e.g. contiguous, no more population variation than 5%, geometrically concise such as a square, etc. and that these criteria are to be fed into a computer by the US Census Bureau. That may not be perfect, but I can't think of a better way. The type of voting machine to be used and how many voting machines per registered voter also needs to be mandated.

As for state elections, the above will improve these, but under our federal system, anything beyond this will have to be a state matter, though I would like to see a mandate that judges must be appointed by the governor and not be elected.

And finally I had an extensive exchange with Roger Streit of West Orange, NJ who opined:

I do agree with Paul Krugman’s argument as set forth in his November 11 column  “Contrary to the way it’s often portrayed, the looming prospect of spending cuts and tax increases isn’t a fiscal crisis. It is, instead, a political crisis brought on by the G.O.P.’s attempt to take the economy hostage.” 

Why do you “take it from this that Krugman would be perfectly happy for taxes not to go up, even on the very rich, as the President wants, because … he doesn’t specifically say so”? 

From previous columns, it is very clear that he is in favor of raising taxes on the rich. He doesn’t have to make that point in every column. He was debunking the right’s supposed concerns of reducing the deficit. He identified the hypocrisy and also pointed out that they have been consistently wrong in their prescriptions and predictions. 

In short, you have to read Krugman on a consistent basis in order to appreciate his columns. I suggest that you read his blog as well as his columns before you criticize him. IMO, he has been right much more often than not. See also here.

To which I replied:

It is both a fiscal crisis and a political crisis. As I pointed out in numerous posts, the deficit is a phony issue when Republicans raise it, because they are totally insincere. Ryan's budget doesn't even attempt to close the budget gap. All it does is to destroy the safety net and all kinds of other governmental functions and cuts taxes on the higher incomes.

                       

But that doesn't mean that the looming deficit, which is a Bush creation, having inherited Clinton's balanced budgets and surpluses as far as the eye could see, isn't real. The Supreme Court's denial of the election to Gore was one of the greatest tragedies in American history.

                       

It is real. Not immediately. But down the road, but we can't wait till it is an immediate problem. That is too late. We need to put a long-range plan in place now. The President has been trying to do that for quite a long time with his proposals of tax increases and cuts, but the G.O.P. has been adamant for no revenue increases. That has changed. Now it is only how much and how. But cuts must be and will be part of the equation.

                       

Yes, Krugman wants taxes to go up, but he undermines the need for this when he argues that the deficit is irrelevant. If it is irrelevant, then we can just meet the nations needs without tax increases and let the deficit keep going up.

                       

Krugman is simply sloppy in writing his column and columns. Look back on my blog where I have time and again criticized him for undermining our President. He has no sense of political realities, and he is too often more of a polemicist than a thoughtful economist. I hope he does a better job in teaching his economics classes.

And then added:

Roger, let me add that I agree with much of what Krugman says. Erskine Bowles would be a terrible choice for Treasury Secretary, but I am not aware that he is being considered. When he says, "the deficit-scold movement was never really about the deficit. Instead, it was about using deficit fears to shred the social safety net," I agree with him, and I have been saying that all along. But when he says they "don’t even deserve a seat at the table." that is downright silly. The President can't deal with the "fiscal cliff without dealing with 'deficit scolds' in Congress!! To say they shouldn't have a seat at the table is ludicrous. Just because he rightly advocates for  ‘Keynesian economics’ as I do, doesn't give him a license to say silly things.

To which Roger replied:

I agree with you that you have to negotiate with the crazies, but you don’t have to give their arguments any credence. President Obama has given much too much weight on deficit reduction and has not focused enough on reducing unemployment. As Krugman has pointed out, the U.S. can borrow money for free and we have massive unemployment. Why not focus on putting these people to work?

And my rejoinder was:

That is an old but dangerous argument. Our debt has to constantly be refinanced. Three years from now interest rates may suddenly go up sharply, and will if the debt is large and growing. Then we are suddenly faced with a major crisis. We cannot just focus on now. We must also look to the future.

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