The Media And Their Columnists

After my last post entitled: "The Deficit – One Big Hoax or a Looming Catastrophe?" which I did not find easy to write and I imagine my readers did not find easy to read, because it was in many ways counter-intuitive and because it was heavy on statistics, I want to spend this post covering a subject that is much easier to grasp, and while not within the “conventioanal wisdom” may not be quite so counterintuitive.

I have over the past weeks and month railed at the media in general and their columnists in particular, in part because in my opinion they have been unfairly maligning our President, but to a larger extent, because they have been short on facts and long on rhetoric. I have particularly been chagrined when they use misleading or downright false facts to malign our President.

For example in my post entitled: "The Trojan Horse" I took Krugman to task for criticizing President Obama for not sufficiently attacking former President Bush, when:

1.) It would have made more sense to himself attack the former President and
2.) More important, the criticism had no basis in fact, since as one Right wing blog had pointed out, Obama had been doing just that.

Now I find myself even further outraged by a columns in the New York Times by Tom Friedman, entitled: “The Whole Truth and Nothing But”.

I just wish Mr. Friedman heeded his own advice. Mr. Freidman decries that, “democracies have… been telling lies.” Yes, the politicians have been telling a lot of lies, and as I wrote in a letter to my local newspaper some time ago:

After the attempted assassination of Congresswomen, Gabrielle Giffords, there was an outcry for greater civility. Our need is not for greater civility, but for truth telling. The endless outrageous lies spread by Fox and so many other outlets, by e-mail and on the web, must be exposed for what they are.

But I wish the lying were confined to Fox and the Right. Mr. Friedman after calling for avoiding lies promptly goes on to tell a whopper. He tells us:

But no American politician dares utter the word ‘sacrifice.’

I had an immediate reaction to this. Is Mr. Friedman lying, or has he been simply living on another planet? Whichever is the truth, such nonsense should never find itself in print in the pages of the prestigious New York Times.

I was sure I heard our President talk about “shared sacrifice” over and over again. Could my memory be playing tricks on me? So I went to Google and put in “Obama on shared sacrifice.” Guess What?

1,410,000 hits popped up. The first “Obama urges ‘shared sacrifice’ on debt,” and one after another along the same line.

Now I am not accusing Mr. Friedman with deliberately lying. I have read Mr. Freidman’s books “Beirut to Jerusalem” and the “World is Flat”. They are excellent books. But what other explanation can there be? Maybe he is just too busy to bother with the facts before meeting his deadline for his next column, which must be exactly one newspaper column long. If is a little shorter they can put in a filler, quoting in large letters something in the column. But God forbid it should be too long! That is pretty constraining if one really means to say something meaningful, instead of something that people can be impressed with if they don’t think about it too long.

I don’t know what Thomas Friedman’s salary at the New York Times is, but in addition to his column he hits the lecture circuit, he goes on TV shows, he writes books, so much so, that he earns $2 million annually.

I don’t think he makes that kind of a salary from the New York Times. So he throws something together, and who cares if it has one iota of truth in it, as long as it makes good copy.

But that is not the only nonsense this well credentialed man turns out. He advocates a Third Party. Now what a third party would do for, or that mater to, our political system, he doesn’t say. We have had third parties many times. They have always succeeded in doing the opposite of what they were intended to do. The Green Party, headed by Ralph Nader, was instrumental in electing George W. Bush. Ross W. Perot who was much more closely aligned with the Republican Party than to the Democratic Party, was instrumental in electing Bill Clinton.

The time may come, if we ever have a system where a majority is needed to win an election, that a third party might be a viable vehicle. But until then, they are a threat to the principles they profess to support.

But Friedman, instead of pointing out that we have a choice between a moderate, even a conservative party in many ways in the Democratic Party and a Radical Right wing party, intent on rule or ruin, rides his hobby horse. And not just now: In April 2006, in May 2006, in June 2006 and in March 2010.

Now in July 2011 Friedman has a new idea:

President Obama should dump the Democrats and run as an independent, which he is, at heart, anyway (and) If President Obama wants to run with John Boehner that would be fine

Spare me!!!

It seems to me that if Friedman has nothing intelligent to write about he should give up his column. But that wouldn’t work. How would he then get his speaking engagements and his book sales? What would happen to his $2 million-plus income?

And who would take his place? Frank Bruni, who for years was the Times Food critic, has now magically become an expert on the political scene and gives us this pearl of wisdom.

Instead of talking about how smart politicians are or aren’t, we should have an infinitely more useful, meaningful conversation about whether we share and respect their values and whether they have shown themselves to be effective. Someone who rates high on both counts is someone to rally unreservedly around. Right now, neither Perry nor Obama fits that double bill.

I am sure glad to hear that he equates Rick Perry with Obama.

Or John Nocera who told it like it is when he wrote: “For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests," couldn’t take the heat when some objected to his telling it the way it is and four days later wrote: “That anger reached its apex on Tuesday, when I wrote a column comparing the Tea Party Republicans to terrorists. The words I chose were intemperate and offensive to many, and I’ve been roundly criticized. I was a hypocrite, the critics said, for using such language when on other occasions I’ve called for a more civil politics. In the cool light of day, I agree with them. I apologize.”

Who are these pundits who write for the Times? We have had Democrats called “traitors for losing China,” “for being soft on Communism” and “for being soft on crime.” Obama has been called “Un-American”, his birth has been questioned, even though his birth certificate has been available on the web since day one, he has been called a socialist, a communist, and a fascist. Kerry had his heroism impugned, and Gore was called a liar and worse, even though nothing he said was even an exaggeration. See: "The Media II - Falsehoods about Gore." But Nocera apologizes for telling it like it is.

I will keep reading the New York Times. But I will do so with a grain of salt and I urge my readers to do the same.

With this I leave for Russia, but when I return I will tackle the thorny issues of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which require some badly needed truth telling.

The Deficit – One Big Hoax or a Looming Catastrophe?

I have spent five blog postings discussing the deficit as one big hoax. I did so not because I think that it is something that can be ignored, but rather because as used by the Republican Party, (and their ostensible tail that wags the dog, the Tea Party) it was being used not because of a real concern about the consequences of the deficit, which after all they created with malice aforethought, but rather as a weapon with which to try to destroy our safety net, and I spent those many words demonstrating this.

To summarize, they inherited a huge surplus from the Democratic Clinton Administration and turned it into a huge deficit, one even larger than it appeared because so many expenditures, such as the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan were taken off- budget, as was the drug enhancement in Medicare, which, by the way, President Obama has restored to the budget, making the deficit seem larger by comparison.

Their Vice-President, Dick Cheney, famously declared: "Reagan proved deficits don't matter."

And the famous Ryan budget, which provides for the abolition of Medicare ostensibly to reduce the deficit, in fact increases the deficit, something that our media has not, to my knowledge, even mentioned. I had to go the The Economist to get the shocking fact that the Ryan budget not only does not reduce the deficit, but in fact increases it by $6 trillion over the next decade.

It was for that reason, as well as an article in the financial advisory letter of Fidelity Monitor that I called the Deficit a Big Hoax.

But if the reader will return to my blog posting entitled "The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part I)" they will find near its end the statement: “But let me be clear! The deficit does matter! It needs to be reduced over time. But there is no urgency about doing this, and it can, and should be done with some targeted cuts, which I will identify hereafter, and with mostly revenue enhancements.”

Here I must refer to a comment, which I received from Edwin S. Bernstein Esq. of Boynton Beach, Florida, who wrote in response to my post referred to above,

“I think that the deficit matters…. We do need to balance our budget…”

If Bernstein had read my post to the end, he would have found my comment quoted above that deficits matter, but more important I take exception to his statement that “We do need to balance our budget…”

The fact is that the last time we had a truly balanced budget was in 1969 (Clinton’s surplus depended on counting the Social Security surplus in the budget, though the projection of surpluses in future years was real) and during this whole time it was never a problem. However, at some point the size of the deficit matters, though where that point lies is problematic.

The idea of a Balanced Budget amendment is sheer lunacy and would put our economic policy into a straight jacket. In supporting this, proponents often try to compare the US Government either to a corporation or to family budget. It should be fairly obvious that neither comparison is apt, since the responsibilities of the government are entirely different from either. But even if we were to accept the comparison it must be noted that neither a business, nor a family, ever manages without debt. Large businesses borrow to acquire assets they need, or to expand, and small businesses often have to borrow just to meet their next payroll. In addition both businesses and families strive to increase their income, while Republican dogma prescribes a deliberate lowering of income or revenues, The extent of borrowing can easily be seen if one looks at the corporate bond market, and few families could buy a car, not to speak of a house, without borrowing. The municipal bond market shows the need for borrowing by municipalities. Our infrastructure, whether of highways or railroads, or for that matter our electric grid could not have been built without borrowing. And can anyone imagine an emergency, such as a major war, requiring large outlays, leaving us with a Constitutional restraint requiring unimaginable tax increases or abject surrender and the proposed Constitutional Amendment would make the imposition of tax increases blockable by a small minority.

The problem we face is not the size of our present deficit but the size of our debt projected into the future, if we had done nothing, (and the much criticized deficit reduction agreement the President has signed off on, has reduce this looming catastrophe) and if we do nothing, we face a non-sustainable deficit, which I will discuss in greater depth hereafter.

But before I do this, (and this will once again have to be a multi-part presentation) I want to examine the oft-repeated charge that the Obama Administration, while it may have inherited a large deficit, made it much larger through irresponsible policies. Thus if we compare the last Bush budget in 2008 with Obama’s first budget in 2009, we find that the 2008 budget had a deficit 460 billion. In 2009 Obama’s budget showed a deficit of 1.41 trillion or an increase of $950 billion, a staggering increase, and one that Republicans, and even some news organization, have been pointing to with disapproval. But rarely if ever have we seen a breakdown of how this increase occurred. Once again the media doesn’t give us the facts. But they can be found through hard work.

-$320 billion were due to declines in tax receipts due to the effects of the recession
-$245 billion—resulted from outlays for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and net payments to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
-$200 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA)
-$185 billion due to increases in primary budget categories such as Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, Social Security, and Defense – including the war effort in Afghanistan and Iraq, which had previously been off budget.
-While the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (also known as the stimulus bill) was estimated to be $787 Billion at the time of passage, only some of it kicked in 2009, with some in 2010 and later, which is why only $200 billion of the $787 billion are shown above.

See the Congressional Budget Office Monthly Budget Review .pdf and here.

For those who may be interested in how the stimulus bill broke down $288 Billion was in the form of tax incentives, $155.1 billion for Health Care, $100 billion for education, $82.2 billion was for Aid to low income workers, unemployed and retirees, $105.3 billion was for Infrastructure Investment, $7.2 billion was for Government buildings and facilities, $10.5 billion was for Communications, information, and security technologies, $21.5 billion was for Energy Infrastructure, $27.2 billion was for Energy efficiency and renewable energy research and investment, $14.7 billion was for Housing, $7.6 billion for Scientific research and $10.6 billion was for miscellaneous items. See here and footnotes therein.

The CBO estimated that enacting the bill would increase federal budget deficits by $185 billion over the remaining months of fiscal year 2009, by $399 billion in 2010, and by $134 billion in 2011, or $787 billion over the 2009-2019 period. Ibid.

As for its effectiveness several independent macroeconomic firms, including Moody's and IHS Global Insight, estimated that the stimulus saved or created 1.6 to 1.8 million jobs and forecasted a total impact of 2.5 million jobs saved by the time the stimulus is completed. The Congressional Budget Office considered these estimates conservative. The CBO estimated according to its model 2.1 million jobs saved in the last quarter of 2009, boosting the economy by up to 3.5 percent and lowering the unemployment rate by up to 2.1 percent. Congressional Budget Office Monthly Budget Review .pdf and Ibid.

For the 2010 fiscal year the spending came to $3.456 trillion with tax receipts of $2.162 trillion, or a deficit of $1.294 trillion, which is a decrease in the deficit $116 billion.

(For those who may not be used to such astronomical figures, a trillion is 1,000 billion)

Given these figures it is hard to fault the Obama Administration for creating either the present fiscal shortfall or the projected one.

However, a review of the Congressional Budget Office projections gives us pause about the future. The CBO gives us a number of projections, the rosiest of which, makes a number of assumptions, not the least of which is that none of the Bush tax cuts would be extended beyond 2012, which is when they are currently set to expire. Since they will expire unless Congress extends them this could not be blocked by Republicans. However, the President pledged in his campaign that only those making less than 250,000 would be exposed to higher taxes. If this campaign promise were kept a large chunk of revenue would be lost. Furthermore, for the purpose of this projection they assume that the alternative minimum tax, which is impacting more and more middle class voters would not be adjusted, which is almost inconceivable, because if allowed to continues in its present form, it would make a mockery of the graduated income tax. Assuming these unlikely scenarios the CBO projects that government spending on everything other than the major mandatory health care programs, Social Security, and interest on federal debt (emphasis added) would decline to the lowest percentage of GDP since before World War II. See the highlighted portion of CBO’S 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook.

But not only are these projections based on some unlikely specific tax scenarios, they assume that the tax receipts would rise to 23% of GDP, a level that has not been seen in decades and much higher than the taxes under the Clinton Administration, and even than they do not include Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security spending. These are specifically excluded in the projections, which I believe is the correct approach. I believe that these programs should be taken out of the deficit projections, and should be treated as problems separate and distinct from the budget and the deficit.

In a way they already have been for the way the government budget is calculated masks the impact of these programs on the total budget or even on their own viability. An examination of the CBO’s paper entitled: "The Impact of Social Security and Medicare" shows the impact these programs have on the Federal budget. As the paper explains:

“Under the Congressional Budget Office's latest budget projections for the next 10 years, those trust funds are estimated to run sizable surpluses. However, those surpluses reflect more than an excess of dedicated revenues over spending. A substantial portion results from internal transfers between Treasury accounts--credits from the general fund of the Treasury to the trust funds. Thus, although the trust fund surpluses may accurately reflect the programs' spending authority, using them to gauge the programs' budgetary impact distorts their net effects..."

Similarly, from 2003 to 2026, instead of running a cumulative surplus totaling $6.5 trillion, as estimated by the Social Security and Medicare trustees, the programs would run a cumulative deficit totaling $6.6 trillion.

Therefore I will defer a discussion of these programs until my next post.

But before I close I feel it my duty to disclose the pessimistic projections by the CBO. Under what they consider the most likely scenario given the realities of the political process, the CBO projects that; “Debt as a share of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) would exceed its historical peak of 109 percent by 2023 and would approach 190 percent in 2035” See: CBO’s 2011 Long Term Budget Outlook .pdf a portion of which has been both highlighted and underlined in the document referred to.
Clearly the Bush Tax cuts must not be extended, and not just those for people earning over $250,000, and the cuts provided for in the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), are an essential component of getting our deficit under control, without undermining our Social Safety net.

Continuing Discussion About Barack Obama’s Effectiveness.

In my last post entitled: "Bulletin with Humor" I wrote: “I intend hereafter to discuss where we should cut expenditures, where additional revenue should be sought, and will also distinguish between what I believe is desirable but politically impossible and what might actually be achieved, if not now, at some future time. I will also try to address the economic theories that lie at heart of political philosophy and evaluate their merits and to what extent our political leaders have been adhering to such economic theory as their foundation."

I have now decided to put this off to my next post and to revert to the ongoing debate which we have been having about the merits of the President’s policies and the constant charge that he is ineffective and a poor leader, which comes from both sides if the political spectrum.

In my long debate with Leonard Levenson Esq. of Manhattan, NY, which can be found in my blog posting "The Trojan Horse – Comments II (continued)," I had the very unusual result of having my protagonist actually admit that I am right.

This was so satisfying that I cannot resist quoting it again:

You may have a point when you suggest that my anger at Obama is really disappointment at the lack of progress that I hoped for. Perhaps no Democrat could have made any substantial progress against the know nothing Republicans. I think I would have preferred a battle royale (even a losing one) than accepting a weakened Health care Bill, an inadequate deficit reduction bill and the many other compromises, which Obama probably was forced to make.

I only wish that more people had such an open mind.

At this point I want to conclude this debate by sharing with my readers an exchange, which I had with Robert Malchmna Esq. of Brooklyn, NY. He called to my attention a New York Times Magazine article entitled "What Would Hillary Clinton Have Done?" I assumed that the article was sent to me with approval and wrote back:

Thanks! Yes I do find it interesting. It parallels to a large extent what I have been saying, and say even more emphatically in my next post.

But then Malchman called to my attention a comment that he had posted on the Times web site that clearly indicated that he agreed neither with me nor with the Times article; He wrote:

I think in broad policy areas, the writer is correct that there was little to distinguish Obama and Clinton during the primaries. The reason I voted for Clinton (and I agonized over it) is that I was afraid that Obama's first years in office would be like Bill Clinton's and Jimmy Carter's -- that is, a struggle to understand how to move the levers of power and to get a legislative agenda through Congress. Clinton, both from her time as First Lady and by then eight years as Senator, knew how to work those levers.

I believe my fears have proved correct. Obama certainly has some substantial accomplishments, but where's the strong public option for health care? Where's the closing of the budget gap by taxing families making over $250,000? Indeed, where's the surtax on incomes over $1 million? Obama failed to strike while the iron was hot, with a House majority and 60 votes in the Senate before Ted Kennedy's death. That health care didn't pass until late in his second year is a disgrace. That the Bush tax cuts were left to the lame-duck session and extended for the wealthy is a disgrace. That the debt-ceiling issue wasn't resolved at the same time as the Bush tax cuts is a disgrace. Obama seems woefully naive about Republicans and their single-minded goal to defeat him, regardless of the damage they do to this country. I don't think Clinton is so naive; she appreciates the machinations and goals of the vast, right-wing conspiracy. No one can know for sure, of course, but I think the country would have been better with President Hillary Clinton.

I frankly was taken aback and disappointed and responded with:

-------------------------

Dear Robert,

I was rather surprised and disappointed by your Comment 21 as posted to the Times site.

I keep preaching facts first, then opinions based on those facts. You assume that "Clinton, both from her time as First Lady and by then eight years as Senator, knew how to work those levers. But there is no evidence to support this. There are no facts to support this. It is pure speculation. Her accomplishments as Senator are hardly existent.

If we go by her and her husband’s accomplishments, they are meager indeed. As fist lady she spectacularly failed to get any traction in her own party for her health care bill and as I said in my post "The Trojan Horse - Comments":

Clinton did a terrific job in raising taxes early in his term, which together with an agreement with Fed Chairman Greenspan, to lower interest rates, brought on the eight most prosperous years in a very long time and wiped out the deficit. But he was lucky to get it passed. It passed by a tie vote in the Senate with the VP breaking the tie, which by the way shows that bringing prosperity is not a sure fire way to win a mid-term election.

Nevertheless, Clinton after losing the midterms, swung Right, employed that hired gun, Dick Morris, became famous for triangulation, and presided over, among many other things, the repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act, which probably was largely responsible for the bank crisis, presided over the abolition of Welfare, signed into law the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and couldn't stop the enactment of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). (And this wasn't just in the first term, it extended into the second.)

Yet the base never savaged him. Somebody tell me why these Presidents are treated so differently?

Well, maybe because Obama unrealistically promised both to be a post-partisan and a transformational President, which are contradictory and impossible to achieve. But it should have been obvious that these are aspirational goals, not achievable ones.

You say: "Obama failed to strike while the iron was hot, with a House majority and 60 votes in the Senate before Ted Kennedy's death." without getting the facts as to how long this window was. If you count when Franken was sworn in and when Kennedy died we have a window of less than two month from July 8, 2009, when Franken was sworn in and August 26th when Kennedy died. Not too much of a window to get anything done in a Senate where the rules, at best, require slow movement. But even that is deceptive because the 60 votes were never really there because Kennedy was hospitalized on January 21, 2009, long before he died, and after that made only rare appearances on the Senate floor. Furthermore there were Democratic defections, most notably Lieberman, who threatened to himself lead a filibuster against the public option, and some other Dems as well.

Compare Obama's achievement against any other Democratic President (set forth in my blog posts "The Trojan Horse - Comments" and "The Trojan Horse – Comments II") since Roosevelt with the exception of Johnson, and he comes out well ahead in accomplishments, despite the fact that he has faced far more partisan and reckless opposition.

The Bush tax cuts extension was a calculated decision that getting the treaty with Russia, unemployment insurance, and some other stimulative measures was a careful balancing act. The economy was first and we could not leave a major security risk, and the tax cut extension was for only two years, not as you imply for an indefinite period.

On the debt ceiling issue, 20/20 vision is wonderful. Did anybody, and I mean anybody, worry about a debt ceiling that had routinely been passed every time it came up, at that point. Oh, but Obama is tasked with seeing things that nobody else saw. And who says he could have gotten it. If he had raised it and not gotten it, he would have been savaged for having been the one who gave the Tea party the idea. Besides a two year extension would have been almost unprecedented.

It is very easy to list things undone. But what counts is what was done. Compare all the Democratic Presidents since Roosevelt with the exception of Johnson, including Kennedy, for their accomplishments.

FACTS FIRST, THEN OPINIONS!!!!!

Regards,

Emil

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I was disappointed not to have received a concession from Malchman similar to what I got from Levenson.

But the Pundits keep up their attacks on Obama. I have came across another two lately, both in Newsweek, which under the aegis of Tina Brown tries to recover its audience by becoming ever more sensationalist. They are “The Untransformational President" by Michael Tomasky, where the author says; “He signed a debt deal in which the Republicans took him to the cleaners” but like all the others neglects to tell us what the deal is or why he considers it to be a bad deal. Facts – Where are the facts? I have demonstrated, heretofore that it was in fact an advantageous deal. and "Oval Office Appeaser" by William Broyle, who compares our President to Chamberlain. (Talk about over the top) Apparently these people, like the Tea Party, consider any compromise to be appeasement, no matter how advantageous it is.

Are these friends? Or as Lenny Levenson referred to them “putative friends?”

Now we have had a hurricane that descended on our East coast. Will Obama be tasked for not having stopped it, or at least be charged, no matter what he does, with having a Brownie moment, so that it can be claimed that Obama is the new Bush. Does anybody really believe that?

I am reminded of an incidence when my daughter was about three years old and a thunder and lightening storm descending upon us. She was frightened and she said to me: “ Daddy, Make it Stop!” I explained that I did not have that power, and she exclaimed, “Well, You could at least try!”

We are not children and the President is not our Daddy!!! He is not God, nor a dictator, nor does he have a magic wand!!!

It is time to stop bellyaching and concentrate our fire on those whose vision for our country is anathema to me, and I hope to most of you. It is time to close ranks unless anyone out there truly thinks that the candidates of the Republican party dominated by the Tea Party, will do anything other than make our short range situation worse, and destroy all the things that we have built, in a truly bi-partisan way, from Theodore Roosevelt (R), to Wilson (D), To FDR (D), to Johnson (D) to Nixon (R) and even Clinton who wiped out our deficit and put us on the path to wiping out our National Debt, now Barack Obama (D) and even Eisenhower (R) who so meticulously built our Highway System, now under attack as just another socialist boondoggle that needs to be privatized.

Bulletin with Humor

My last post was "The Trojan Horse – Comments II (continued)," and I intend hereafter to discuss where we should cut expenditures, where additional revenue should be sought, and will also distinguish between what I believe is desirable but politically impossible and what might actually be achieved, if not now, at some future time. I will also try to address the economic theories that lie at heart of political philosophy and evaluate their merits and to what extent our political leaders have been adhering to such economic theory as their foundation.

At this point allow me to depart from my usual serious discussion and interject these humorous but revealing items, which I hope you will circulate to your friends, and ask them to circulate them to their friends.

Stephen Colbert came up with this funny, but revealing video on the Iowa straw poll and Michele Bachmann’s part in it.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

And courtesy of our subscriber and author, Steven Baird M.D., of Solona, California, this ditty to be sung to the tune of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." If any of you can actually perform it, or know someone who can, it would be perfect for You Tube.

Republicans give us some strange explanations
For the recession now gripping all nations.
But do you recall the strangest one of them all?

Poor folks have too much money
And the rich don't have enough.
Though you think that sounds funny,
That's the reason times are tough.
Don't tax the rich; look elsewhere,
And I'm sure that you'll admit
It's giveaways like welfare
That produced the deficit.

If you feed a horse some hay
You'll soon realize
As he canters on his way,
He'll drop something for the flies.

So give the rich tax rebates
For we know that trickle-down
Puts something on poor folks' plates,
Even though it may be brown.

The Trojan Horse – Comments II (continued)

In my last post "The Trojan Horse – Comments II" I responded to only half of Leonard Levenson’s comment. My earlier response can be found by clicking on the title shown in brown above. Leonard Levenson’s full comment can be found here.

I will here continue with my response showing his arguments in quotations and my responses in the body.

Before negotiations got a full head of steam he made a public announcement that the 14th Amendment argument was not a winning argument. You say the public would not have supported such a move. The public is interested in results...not the niceties of the literal adherence to arcane provisions in the constitution. A strong argument by him to Boehner that he was prepared to use the 14th Amendment would have gotten him enormous public support and put the fear of god in the Republicans. Compared to the outrages to the constitution by Bush such as the institution of torture as official Government policy and Bush's bill signing declarations, Obama's threatened use of the 14th amendment have had the seriousness of spitting on the sidewalk in a Draconian Penal Code.

It would have been downright stupid for the President to announce in advance that he would rely on the 14th amendment, if the debt ceiling were not raised. That would have let Republicans completely off the hook. Negotiations would have come to a halt. Michelle Bachman would have announced her vindication, proving that she was right all along that failure to raise the debt ceiling would not resulted in default, and the President would have been on the defensive charged with abusing his office by ignoring the will of Congress in order to “continue his spending spree”. Thus a situation where the public was increasingly hostile to Republicans in general and the Tea Party in particular, would have been completely turned around.

Yes, the 14th amendment could have been used with the public's support, if the negotiations had broken down, default had occurred, the stock market had crashed, the economy was in shambles, and the President was acting in an emergency under the 14th amendment. But this was to be avoided at almost all costs, because by that time the economy would have been so damaged as to almost irreparable, something to be avoided at almost all costs.

Obama is a good man but naive in his belief that he could work with the Republicans. If he could make that realization today there might be hope for his Administration. But I fear that he has yet to learn how to play hardball, a skill that the Republicans excel at. Right now we need a nasty, hard-biting, backroom, dirty, skilled politician... not a Constitutional Law Professor. We need a Johnson, a Roosevelt, or a left wing Bush. Instead we have a Woodrow Wilson who couldn't sell ice in the Sahara.

Rah, Rah, --- but the fact is that Obama is a brilliant negotiator, who understands that there is a time for partisan rhetoric and a time to be low key. Yes, I too was disappointed with his inaugural address as Drew Weston complained in the New York Times. But Weston was nit picking almost three years after the fact when it had become fashionable to criticize the President. The President must be judged by results in a political climate unequaled in memory, and as I have pointed out the results would have been impressive even in a less hostile climate. That is what counts.

It should also be noted that in our system of government obstruction is much easier than positive accomplishments.

Lastly, perhaps you can explain why we still do not have relations with Cuba...a largely executive function;

I think Levinson knows why! For the same reason that the hero of the base, (I will be damned if I know why.) John F. Kennedy set this policy in motion. And every President since (I count eight) has continued this policy. Why does Levenson task this President for not doing what nine other Presidents have not done? That shows an unreasoned search for things to criticize.

why we still have troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea, Japan, and Europe plus Military advisory personnel in virtually every right wing country on Earth. When do we learn that supporting Corrupt Governments fighting populist insurgent uprisings can never be successful? How many Vietnams do we have to go through in one lifetime? Do we really need an active military strength of 1.6 million and 200,000 in Europe, 70,000 in S. Korea and Japan, 475 in Honduras and 988 on Diego Garcia? Who are we afraid of? Distribution of our troops is a presidential function as is the size of our army.

That is a lot of lumping. South Korea, Japan, and Europe are Corrupt Governments fighting populist insurgent uprisings? “The size of our army” is a Presidential function? Not since the last time I read the US Constitution! Section. 8. “ The Congress shall have the Power… Clause 12: To raise and support Armies…”

Even in Afghanistan the Taliban can hardly be called a “populist insurgent uprisings.” And as for the rest, our troops have been spread to many countries since the WW II. Just like that – this President is supposed to magically make everything all right with the world. That is a fairy tale world. That is a world of magic wands that should be waved. It just is not the real world. And why didn’t Levenson raise this Banner when all the other Presidents were in office, counting how many since the end of Vietnam? Lets get real!

Would I rather have a Republican in the White House than Obama? Perhaps, if Abe Lincoln were reincarnated! But that doesn't mean we should stop pushing Obama to see reality.

I think it’s the other way around. Obama is very much in touch with reality. It is his critics, as I have demonstrated at length, who are out of touch with reality.

Nor should he believe that the Left has no place to go. We will always vote for him but we may not work for him with the old passion and enthusiasm so important in a campaign nor contribute our money.

It is all the same. Anything less than the most vigorous support of our President would risk turning the country over, not just to Republicans as we used to know them, but to the most extreme, radical and irresponsible bunch that have ever, (or at least since the Great Depression) threatened the welfare of our people. That threat alone should bring more vigor than ever before, This bunch makes G.W. Bush look like a responsible statesman. I contend that we have a President we should be enthusiastic about and one who has under the most difficult circumstances, compiled a record that other Democratic Presidents would have envied, but the threat of Tea party dominance should be enough to sound the bugle.

Since publishing my first installment of The Trojan Horse – Comments II I heard from Levenson again. He wrote:

Thank you for sharing your views with me with regard to Obama. You cannot be serious when you say that my views "represent a closing of one's eyes to facts which contradict preconceived ideas....” I had no greater political desire than to have Obama succeed. I contributed more money and work to his campaign than any other presidential campaign I worked on....including the Nixon McCarthy debacle. My views evolved after 2 1/2 years and evolved very reluctantly.

I will not respond to all of your comments other than to say that my vote (1 time) for Reagan is not a very powerful argument against the validity of my criticism of Obama. Additionally, I do not deny that Obama has been responsible for many worthwhile accomplishments such as the Health Care bill. But even the Health Care Bill must be looked at realistically. For example, most of its important provisions do not take effect until 2014 which make it vulnerable to repeal before its virtues can be shown to the public.

Let me conclude by suggesting that all those that criticize Obama are not his enemies but are merely trying to push from the Left so that he realizes that there is a constituency there that requires his attention.

To which my response was:

First, I probably owe you an apology for referring to your vote for Reagan. That was a cheap shot.

When you say that I can't be serious when I say that your views, (and more importantly the views of the pundits and the many who share your views) "represent a closing of one's eyes to facts which contradict preconceived ideas...." I refer to preconceived ideas of what Obama could be expected to accomplish and how. What I refer to as expecting that he had a magic wand. This is not at all at variance with your having been very enthusiastic about Obama and having worked your tail off for him. It fits right in with it.

What I am saying is that having worked so hard you had totally unrealistic expectations of what he could do, and when those expectations were dashed you became angry. Again I am speaking less about you individually, but rather the many for whom you speak.

On the Health Care law there is no chance of it being repealed even if Obama were to lose since any attempt at repeal would be subject to a filibuster. I can't answer why many of its effects were delayed until 2014 without spending more time than I am prepared to do, but I am sure that its authors felt that it was vital that other aspects had to be in place before others could go into effect. There has to be a modicum of trust that the people who made these decisions knew what they were doing. The greatest danger to the bill is the US Supreme Court, but that is something that no one can avoid.

The base, and you are part of that base, basically wanted Obama to take on the Right and not compromise. Maybe that would have been satisfying, but nothing would have been accomplished, and I mean nothing. Not the stimulus, not health care and very few of the many accomplishments I list.

You say: "I do not deny that Obama has been responsible for many worthwhile accomplishments" but that is exactly what you did in your last presentation to which I was responding.

Tell me, if you can, why are his Left wing critics so anxious to besmirch him that they are even resorting to outright lies about the compromise on the budget, which I think was a very favorable one if one looks at the details.

And I received a very satisfactory reply:

No apology is necessary for your reminding me of my Reagan vote. In fact, I found it funny. Of all the ad hominem attacks you could have used against me, the worst was "he voted for Reagan.” Words like "corrupt,” "stupid,” "racist" or "bigot" would not have hurt as much as saying that I voted for a Republican.

You may have a point when you suggest that my anger at Obama is really disappointment at the lack of progress that I hoped for. Perhaps no Democrat could have made any substantial progress against the know nothing Republicans. I think I would have preferred a battle royale (even a losing one) than accepting a weakened Health care Bill, an inadequate deficit reduction bill and the many other compromises, which Obama probably was forced to make.

Before I close I need to take cognizance of one other attack. It came from Herb Reiner of Clifton, NJ, but more important it was repeated in the New Yorker in an article by John Cassidy where he wrote: “In retrospect, the White House erred last December in not demanding a raise in the debt ceiling as the price of extending the Bush tax cuts.“ Well, in retrospect, like hindsight is always 20/20. So why pile on another criticism. But let us examine it. What good would it have done? These things always go to the deadline. Asking sooner would either have produced an extension too short or no extension until default was imminent. But what makes it even more ridiculous is that the Administration in fact did ask for an increase, not in December, but in January (Close enough). See here for Tim Geithner's letter to Harry Reid.

Why don’t these pundits at least check their facts before spilling ink on paper and ranting about things they don’t begin to understand? It does not serve the cause they pretend to serve and it does not even serve them when people finally begin to understand how much nonsense they have subjected them to.

The Trojan Horse – Comments II

I have received another comment to my post: "The Trojan Horse - Comments." It came from Leonard Levenson Esq. of Manhattan, whose relatively long dissertation can be found in full here

I am reproducing his arguments in quotations with my responses below.

Levenson’s response is exactly what I have been railing against. It represents a closing of one’s eyes to facts that contradict one’s preconceived notions, which are planted by our “wonderful media and their pundits,” who have even less interest in facts or even logic.

I set forth in my earlier posts, a huge number of major accomplishments by the President and his Administration, some of which Levenson may been have been aware of, and many of which he may have forgotten or never knew. But instead of saying thank you for reminding me, I get “they are minor.”

I was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Obama but like eroding drops of water on granite, his record is eroding my enthusiasm for him. I do not doubt the sincerity of his social views but he has been ineffective in implementing the important changes that concern me.

I have been trying to understand the irrational hatred of our President by those who should be hailing his great accomplishments. I can only come up with one theory that makes any sense. I conclude that in the great enthusiasm that the candidacy of Barack Obama engendered, caused a delinking from reality. As I wrote in my sardonic post of November 2009 entitled Obama Walks on Water," the public has discovered that Obama does not “Walk on Water” and has “no magic wand.” Apparently neither the punditry, nor the “liberal public” has even now been able to come to terms with the fact that the President has no magic wand. They are angry because they feel that he has refused to wave it.

You mention many of his accomplishments but they were largely minor.

Minor? Only someone determined to belittle the President could call the enumerated accomplishments minor.

Universal Health Insurance, which Presidents of both parties have been trying to enact since Truman, and which Clinton spectacularly failed to accomplish is minor? If the Supreme Court Strikes it down, will it show that Obama isn’t strong enough?

Getting rid of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," was a minor accomplishment? It sure was important when it was not yet accomplished!

The stimulus package, which together with the rescue of Chrysler and GM, which probably saved a million jobs, and the bank rescue package, without question, saved this country from a ’29 depression. That is minor? Yes, it should have been bigger, and it should have had fewer tax cuts and more spending in it. But does anybody really think that such a package could have attracted the votes of the two Senators from Maine, without whose votes nothing would have passed.

Schip legislation giving health coverage to millions of children is minor? Tell that to the parents of those children!

What kind of economy would we have if our unemployed did not have unemployment insurance extended again and again? How much worse would it be both for them and the economy?

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act wasn’t important? Tell that to the millions of women who now have the ability to fight back against pay discrimination.

Or the new fuel standards, which is the first time in decades that they have been raised and which will be a major factor in reducing our dependence on foreign oil, in reducing the cost of gas for hard working Americans, and last but least, play an important part in slowing global warming.

Eliminated expensive co pays for birth control, which will for the first time make pre-natal services available for poor women. Minor? Tell that to Planned Parenthood, who hailed it as a major achievement. Tell it to the millions of women who will for the first time have access to such services.

I could go on and on. But, only someone anxious to belittle our President, and join the Tea party in doing so, could call these achievements minor.

But I really can’t blame Levenson, or others who have begun to speak like him, for the so-called liberal punditry, rules the day, though I hope they will rue it one day. But the punditry is so anxious to besmirch Obama that they even have begun to lie like Republicans, and to stay on message in the best style of Karl Rove.

You mention a 9.3% unemployment rate but neglect to mention those who have stopped looking for work and those who are limited to marginal part time work. When these are counted the unemployment rate increases to 17%.

Yes, that is true, but it is still valid for comparison purposes, for the ’29 depression with an unemployment rate of 37% or 38% also didn’t take into account these other casualties, nor did Reagan’s (who Levenson voted for) unemployment rate of 10.3% take these others into account. But whatever the figures are, unless you buy the Romney argument that Obama inherited a bad economy and made it longer and worse, these figures should be used against the Republicans, not against our President. Or does Levenson disagree? (See: Discussion of stimulus package above.)

You mention the Kagan and Sotomayor nominations, but hundreds of District Court and Appellate courts seats remain unfilled. Admittedly, the Republicans are obstructing votes on many Obama nominations but a Clinton, with a majority in the Senate would have pushed them through.

The fact is, he didn’t push them through. From American Progress: “At the beginning of 1998… Senate conservatives were systematically blocking President Bill Clinton's judicial nominees, William Rehnquist, warn(ed) ‘vacancies cannot remain at such high levels indefinitely without eroding the quality of justice.’"

You forget to mention his EPA failure to enforce regulation to prevent oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico.

It wasn’t his failure, and it wasn’t his U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (Not EPA). It was Bush’s. It takes time to change direction of an agency, particularly where the Senate refuses to approve your appointments, leaving the old people in place. In addition it is far from clear that the permit should not have been granted, given the facts that were known (or unknown) at the time the permit was issued.

You also neglect to mention his Justice Departments Civil rights failures.

It is impossible to answer all of these slanders without turning this into a book. Therefore allow me to only address just one, which I will highlight in italics.

For example, it is his Justice department under Eric Holder that has supported positions not much different from those of the Bush administration on Civil rights. He has consistently taken positions before the Supreme Court to limit the rights of individuals who were wrongfully imprisoned under Bush era terrorist statutes. He has pushed for limiting or eliminating their right to sue the US Government for the torture of imprisoned "terrorists' even after a clear showing that they were not terrorists. He has severely limited the Guantanamo prisoners effective right to counsel, the right to apply for Writs of Habeas Corpus in Federal courts, has refused (by folding to right wing pressure) to allow these prisoners to be housed in the US where they have easier access to lawyers and he has supported the continued use of Military Commissions rather than civilian courts.

In December 2010, over his objections, the Congress passed a bill forbidding the military to spend its money to transfer detainees from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States, even for trials. It wasn’t Obama; it was a cowardly Congress. But if one wants to slander someone, one always finds a way.

With regard to the economy, he gave up, almost without a fight, any thought of raising taxes in his negotiations with Boehner.

Nothing could be more at variance with the facts. What was his leverage for getting Republicans, not Boehner, to agree to tax increases? Threatening them with defaulting? What? I said not Boehner because Boehner did in fact agree to 1 trillion in tax increases, to balance 3 trillion in cuts, and then couldn’t sell it to his caucus. But what threat was Obama supposed to use? Go to hell, don’t raise the debt ceiling? Well, that might have produced default, but not increased taxes. Did Levenson really think about it, with such glib talk?

The reality (but who cares about that) (And I am also getting tired of defending baseless complaints) is that we will give you more cuts, if you give us additional revenue. But why should Obama have been against cuts. There are many that he, Levenson, and I should have favored. So the next approach is what kind of cuts can we agree on, and one understands that without revenue enhancement it will not be 4 billion, which it really should be. I said that the deficit crisis was a hoax to try to use it to gut entitlements; but the deficit it is nevertheless real and a danger in the long run. So we negotiate for cuts that don’t go into effect during the next two years, we make half of them in the military, and we take entitlements, which really do need addressing, off the table.

What the President got was a fantastic deal, which is why all the Tea Party and all the Presidential candidates have declared against it. Nobody on the Left has given any valid reason to oppose it.

The attempt by the Left, to demagogue this issue by lying, and in the style of Karl Rove “Staying on Message” is disgusting and should be rejected by all who are true liberals. See my post entitled: "The Trojan Horse" where I expose the lies, and write:

…Campaign for America’s Future…

A new undemocratic "Super Committee" is charged with finding $1.5 trillion in savings – from cuts in Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements and/or in increased revenues. If a majority agrees, the proposals will be “fast tracked” to passage in Congress—without our elected representatives able to amend their plans.

But these are boldfaced lies. As CNN Money reports in a piece titled “Debt Ceiling: What the deal will do":

The cuts will be “evenly divided between defense and non-defense spending.

Exempt from this round of cuts, however, will be programs that aid low-income Americans… These include Social Security, Medicaid, veterans' benefits and pensions, food stamps and Supplemental Security Income.

While Medicare would not be exempt, the framework would restrict cuts to no more than 2% of the program's cost. And the cuts that occur would not affect Medicare benefits nor would they increase seniors' costs, …

Half the cuts have to come from defense. What is wrong with that?

Or Progressive Change Campaign Committee:

Congress voted for a deal that will cut trillions from important programs like Head Start, asks nothing of the rich, and makes likely future cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

But what about facts? Writes the Wall Street Journal:

The deal included enough money for Head Start, the preschool program for low-income children, to keep enrollment from dropping, and for Pell Grants to maintain the current $5,500 annual maximum award to low-income college students. Republicans had wanted to cut Head Start and proposed freezing the Pell program, which would have cut the maximum grant size.

Why do I have to repeat myself? Is it because that which doesn’t fit the narrative is to be ignored and the lies just repeated?

What is the Left up to? What is their agenda? And I call them the Left advisedly, because they do not deserve the appellation of “liberal” which term I claim for the President and myself.

But since this post is getting entirely too long, I ask both my readers and Leonard Levenson for their patience. I will revert to this in my next posting, where I will address the remaining arguments, and discuss other lies and slanders that have crept into the scribblings of the punditocracy.