32 posts tagged “robert scheer”
Job Losses and Recession; Auto Execs--From Tin
Ear to Tin Cup; Mumbai Terror
*Update on Thurs. 12.11: I've added Matt's latest column, "Memo to Obama" below
*Update on Wed. 12.10 -- Adding the article Bob Scheer talked about to links below (Toyota buys GM). PS: Tony's show yesterday was good!! Listen to it at link at the end of the post in red.
*UPDATE: Tuesday 12.9 at 2:30 Pacific 89.9 FM on air in SoCal/streaming live online, via podcast or on-demand: Tune in to hear Tony Blankley discuss "Whither Conservatism" on our show, The Politics of Culture -- with Al Regnery, publisher of American Spectator mag; Tony Perkins, Pres of the Family Research Council, and nay-sayer, David Frum, who's become a critic of the Sarah Palin wing of the party (former Right on LRC, his new blog launches Jan. 20 NewMajority.com). That's www.kcrw.com (click live tab) or online later at www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/pc.
530,000 jobs lost – in November
alone – as the Auto company execs trade their tin ears and corporate jets for
tin cups and a hybrid car ride to DC begging for a bailout…is it policy making or a morality play?
Bob’s worried about Paul Krugman’s prediction for a double-digit drop in the
economy. Arianna calls the economy a stalled plane that needs a jumpstart -- in
mid-air. Tony – without being too Pollyanna-ish – says it may be the worst month
for job losses but it’s ranked the 41st worst month as a percentage
of total jobs…he disagrees with Bob who says those trillion dollars have been
wasted on the financial industry, and he calls for MASSIVE spending on the part
of government (Bob calls that socialism!). The terror in Mumbai is treated
briefly followed by some rather rushed rants.
LINKS:
Matt mentioned this blog: http://bigpicture.typepad.com/
Bob talked about this column:
Paul Krugman, The New York Times
Conscience of a Liberal
Worries about next year
I’ve been ruminating over economic prospects for next year, and I’m getting scared.
Two points:
1. The economy is falling fast. We’ll see what tomorrow’s employment report says, but we could well be losing jobs at a rate of 450,000 or 500,000 a month.
2. Infrastructure spending will take time to get
going — a new Goldman Sachs report suggests that projects that are
“shovel-ready” are probably only a few tens of billions worth, and that a
larger effort would take much of a year to get going……(read the rest at link above)
Bob also mentioned a provocative piece on TruthDig.com about why Toyota should buy GM:
A Toyota Takeover Could Save GM
By Michael D. Intriligator
Posted on Dec 5, 2008
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081205_a_toyota_takeover_could_save_gm/
...I believe that considering only these two options for an imperiled GM —either bailout by the U.S. government or bankruptcy—omits an important alternative, which I see as the best option: a takeover of GM by Toyota Motor Corp....
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The Future of Capitalism: Which Way Now?
The Future of Capitalism: Which Way Now
Here’s that in-depth philosophical program you’ve been waiting for. Tony is truly over the top in his defense of capitalism; Bob brings up the nearly-verboten name of Karl Marx… Tony quotes Lord Byron…and the fireworks begin. Matt, while defending capitalism, says it’s time to rewrite the social contract, with certain guarantees of security in terms of health care and welfare, so the rest of the economy can do what it’s supposed to.. Bob defends the middle class; Arianna invokes Ayn Rand saying she would disapprove of the Wall Street orgy. Tony and Matt duke it out for awhile, too. It’s a heady show and a hell of a topic. This one’s worth hearing twice and quoting from. We really want to hear from you on this one.
Here's Tony's column:
As President-elect Obama's apparent choice for health and human services secretary and as White House health care czar, it is a fair guess that Tom Daschle's view on health care legislation may be decisive.
So it is worth reading his book "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis," in which the gracious former Senate leader lays out without equivocation both the policy he recommends and the tactics for how to pass it.
**** HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE *****
PLEASE see the "LINKS" post for all links mentioned on today's show.
Economy, Stocks/Auto Bailout/Obama’s Cabinet Picks
As the economy tanks, the panelists
agree with a Paul Krugman column in today’s NYTimes (see links post, next one down), we don’t have 2 months to
wait. Tony wants Obama -- knowing there’s only one president at a time – to take
the lead and signal where he’s going with the economy since W can’t get traction
and the Congress is less than useless. He calls the three testifying auto
company execs nitwits for being so tone deaf …and calls Congress stupid for
saying they’re not going to protect 3 million jobs because these 3 nitwits flew
in on private jets. Obama must act now. Arianna says, get rid of the nitwits
and put a general plan for restructuring in action. They talk about Hillary
Clinton – Bob worries she might be a hawk – and Janet Napolitano – Tony says
she’s not qualified… There’s a lot of action on today’s show. Tony’s rant is a
madrigal – and it’s beautiful! (words in the Links post below this one). And please share your thoughts.
Next week's show is: The Future of Capitalism: Which Way Now? A think piece for the holiday.
I am putting all links mentioned in today's show here, and will post the blog about today's show separately.
Everyone’s talking about a new New Deal, for obvious reasons. In 2008, as in 1932, a long era of Republican political dominance came to an end in the face of an economic and financial crisis that, in voters’ minds, both discredited the G.O.P.’s free-market ideology and undermined its claims of competence. And for those on the progressive side of the political spectrum, these are hopeful times.
There is, however, another and more disturbing parallel between 2008 and 1932 — namely, the emergence of a power vacuum at the height of the crisis. (read the rest at link above)The Insider’s Crusade
Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.).
The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law).
This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs. (read the rest at link above)Yes, we allowed the french language to sneak into this week's show -- here's that word, so well pronounced by all:
Dirigisme (from the French) (in English also "dirigism" although per the OED both spellings are used) is an economic term designating an economy where the government exerts strong directive influence.
Tony's rant: (hey it's worth listening today just to hear this!)
- The silver Swan, who living had no Note,
- when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat.
- Leaning her breast upon the reedy shore,
- thus sang her first and last, and sang no more:
- "Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes!
- "More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise."
and the song was published in Gibbons' First Set of Madrigals and Motets of 5 parts (1612)
By David Cho
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 18, 2008; A01
First of two articles
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had a stern message for more than two dozen of the nation's most powerful hedge fund managers gathered in the third-floor conference room near his office.
Paulson told them it was time to begin regulating the opaque realm of hedge funds, reversing his long-held opposition. "You should not be thinking about how to fight it but how to make it work," he recounted telling them at the meeting last month.
They were stunned. One manager recalled muttering as he walked out: "What happened to the Hank Paulson we knew?"
With
his 30-month tenure nearing its end, Paulson is leaving behind a legacy
of federal interventionism that few would have expected from this
former head of the investment giant Goldman Sachs. (read the rest at link above)
Here's Tony's syndicated column this week
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Who's Going on the Presidential Honeymoon?
Tony Blankley's Email | Author Archive | Author Biography
I was thinking about what we traditionally call the postelection "honeymoon," of which President-elect Barack Obama is now in the second week. But what exactly is meant by the metaphor? As a starting point, I looked up the word in my well-worn Oxford English Dictionary: "The first month after marriage, when there is nothing but tenderness and pleasure (Samuel Johnson); originally having no reference to the period of a month, but comparing the mutual affection of newly-married persons to the changing moon which is no sooner full than it begins to wane; now, usually, the holiday spent together by a newly-married couple, before settling down at home."
First of all, who are the parties on the honeymoon? (read the rest at link above!)
And here's Bob Scheer's TruthDig piece:
Change We Can Bank On
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081118_change_we_can_bank_on/
Posted on Nov 18, 2008
By Robert Scheer
This is not change we can believe in. Not if Robert Rubin or his protégé, Lawrence Summers, get to call the shots on the economy in President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming administration. Both Clinton-era treasury secretaries deserve a great deal of the blame for the radical deregulation of the financial industry that has derailed the world economy. They both should, along with former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, perform rites of contrition and be kept at a safe distance from the leadership of our nation.
Yet Rubin and Summers are highly visible in the Obama transition team, with Summers widely touted as Obama’s pick for secretary of the treasury. (read the rest at link above)
Robert Scheer is the author of a new book, “The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.”
Toxic Assets; Auto Bailout? Clinton
@ State? Prop 8
Sorry, Arianna had a medical appointment -- it's man-on-man only today. And it got mighty heated today in the
battle over the economy. No one really has the answer. But a couple of questions
include: Where has the money given out so far gone? Where does it come from? Who
should really be getting it? All three end up agreeing we cannot afford to let
the auto industry sink; but their reasoning in getting there differs. And the
men weigh in on the rumor about Hillary Clinton as possible Secretary of
State…plus a brief note about the hullabaloo over Prop. 8 anti-gay marriage
constitutional amendment that just passed in the State of
California.
Links mentioned in today's show:
Depression Economics Returns
The economic news, in case you haven’t noticed, keeps getting worse. Bad as it is, however, I don’t expect another Great Depression. In fact, we probably won’t see the unemployment rate match its post-Depression peak of 10.7 percent, reached in 1982 (although I wish I was sure about that).
We are already, however, well into the realm of what I call depression economics. By that I mean a state of affairs like that of the 1930s in which the usual tools of economic policy — above all, the Federal Reserve’s ability to pump up the economy by cutting interest rates — have lost all traction. When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly. (read rest at link above)Panic in Detroit by Jonathan Cohn
This is not your father's Oldsmobile we're rescuing.
Post Date Friday, November 14, 2008
General Motors has come to Washington, begging for a $25 billion bailout to keep it and its ailing Detroit counterparts going next year. But nobody seems too thrilled about the prospect. Liberals dwell on the companies' gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles. Conservatives obsess over all the well-paid union members with gold-plated benefits. And people of all ideological backgrounds remember how they used to buy domestic cars, years ago, but stopped because the cars were so damn lousy. "The downfall of the American auto industry is indeed a tragedy," the Washington Post editorial board sermonized recently, "but the automakers and the United Auto Workers have only themselves to blame for much of it." And, if they have only themselves to blame, the argument goes, why do they deserve taxpayer help? Let them fail and file for bankruptcy. In the long run, the economy will be stronger and the workers better off. It'd be worth?the short-term pain, which might not even be so severe.
In normal times, with another company, that might be correct. But these are not normal times...(read rest at link above)The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter (Paperback - May 8, 2007)
And here's a link to Amity Shlaes, a conservative with expertise on The Great Depression -- she sat in twice on the right. http://www.amityshlaes.com/ Her Book, The Forgotten Man is about FDR.
Toxic Assets; Auto Bailout? Clinton
@ State? Prop 8
Sorry, Arianna had a medical appointment -- it's man-on-man only today. And it got mighty heated today in the
battle over the economy. No one really has the answer. But a couple of questions
include: Where has the money given out so far gone? Where does it come from? Who
should really be getting it? All three end up agreeing we cannot afford to let
the auto industry sink; but their reasoning in getting there differs. And the
men weigh in on the rumor about Hillary Clinton as possible Secretary of
State…plus a brief note about the hullabaloo over Prop. 8 anti-gay marriage
constitutional amendment that just passed in the State of
California.
Links mentioned in today's show:
Depression Economics Returns
The economic news, in case you haven’t noticed, keeps getting worse. Bad as it is, however, I don’t expect another Great Depression. In fact, we probably won’t see the unemployment rate match its post-Depression peak of 10.7 percent, reached in 1982 (although I wish I was sure about that).
We are already, however, well into the realm of what I call depression economics. By that I mean a state of affairs like that of the 1930s in which the usual tools of economic policy — above all, the Federal Reserve’s ability to pump up the economy by cutting interest rates — have lost all traction. When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly. (read rest at link above)Panic in Detroit by Jonathan Cohn
This is not your father's Oldsmobile we're rescuing.
Post Date Friday, November 14, 2008
General Motors has come to Washington, begging for a $25 billion bailout to keep it and its ailing Detroit counterparts going next year. But nobody seems too thrilled about the prospect. Liberals dwell on the companies' gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles. Conservatives obsess over all the well-paid union members with gold-plated benefits. And people of all ideological backgrounds remember how they used to buy domestic cars, years ago, but stopped because the cars were so damn lousy. "The downfall of the American auto industry is indeed a tragedy," the Washington Post editorial board sermonized recently, "but the automakers and the United Auto Workers have only themselves to blame for much of it." And, if they have only themselves to blame, the argument goes, why do they deserve taxpayer help? Let them fail and file for bankruptcy. In the long run, the economy will be stronger and the workers better off. It'd be worth?the short-term pain, which might not even be so severe.
In normal times, with another company, that might be correct. But these are not normal times...(read rest at link above)The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter (Paperback - May 8, 2007)
And here's a link to Amity Shlaes, a conservative with expertise on The Great Depression -- she sat in twice on the right. http://www.amityshlaes.com/ Her Book, The Forgotten Man is about FDR.
JOIN US @KCRW.COM--LIVE LRC BROADCAST, AUDIO/VIDEO WEBCAST AND PODCAST ON SUNDAY, NOV. 9 at 6pm PACIFIC TIME (*we may start some of the behind-the-scenes stuff on our videocast at 5:45 pm PT*) FROM THE BROAD STAGE IN SANTA MONICA!
Obama's Lead; Which Way GOP; Greenspan’s Goof?
A heckuva show today, Tony’s a trifle testy over unfair allegations he says are being made against Republicans, the McCain campaign and Sarah Palin. And what about that wardrobe budget? Tony predicts the next conservative revolution will be populist, not intellectual. Plus: is “socialism” code for racism? Is “family values”? Who’s really using the race card and how? And a big discussion about capitalism, the (so-called?) free market, concentration of capital, corporate fascism and Euro-Socialism. And did Greenspan undermine the theory of capitalism by admitting his surprise about how little oversight was being exercised at top financial institutions? (Sorry to say, Arianna was unavailable today.)
LINKS
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2008/10/23/updated-report/
UPDATED REPORT: McCain’s Tax Plan Would Have Saved The McCains $730,000
An updated analysis of the Obama and McCain tax plans by the Center for American Progress Action Fund finds that John and Cindy McCain would have saved $730,000 over 2006 and 2007 under McCain’s tax plan. Under Obama’s proposed plan, the McCains would have saved $62,000 over the same two years. Read the full analysis here.
***************************************************************************************************EJ Dionne
Civil War on the Right 10.24.08
WASHINGTON — Conservatives are at each other’s throats, and here’s what’s revealing about how divided they are: The critics of John McCain and the critics of Sarah Palin represent entirely different camps.
Skeptical social conservatives are precisely the people McCain was trying to mollify by picking Palin as his running mate. These include the faithful of the religious right who remember McCain as their enemy in 2000, and parts of the gun crowd who always saw McCain as soft on their issues.
That McCain felt a need to
make such an outlandishly risky choice speaks to how insecure his hold was on
the core Republican vote. A candidate is supposed to rally the base during the
primaries and reach out to the middle at election time. McCain got it backward,
and it’s hurting him.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/opinions/?nid=top_opinions
*******************************************************************************************************************
NYTimes Magazine Preview,
The Making (and Remaking) of McCain
By ROBERT DRAPER
Published: October 22, 2008
On the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 24, John McCain convened a meeting in his suite at the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Among the handful of campaign officials in attendance were McCain’s chief campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, and his other two top advisers: Rick Davis, the campaign manager; and Mark Salter, McCain’s longtime speechwriter. The senator’s ears were already throbbing with bad news from economic advisers and from House Republican leaders who had told him that only a small handful in their ranks were willing to support the $700 billion bailout of the banking industry proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The meeting was to focus on how McCain should respond to the crisis — but also, as one participant later told me, “to try to see this as a big-picture, leadership thing.”
************************************************************************
October 24, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Contrarian that I am, I'm voting
for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus
that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of
wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in
the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/security_first_why_im_voting_f.html
*******************************************************************
October 22, 2008
The Birth of the Me-Too Conservative By Tony Blankley
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/the_birth_of_the_metoo_conserv.html
With the rise to enduring power of President
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in 1933, a new type of Republican emerged in
reaction to FDR's attractive and overawing power: the me-too Republican. Until
the election of President Reagan five decades later, these me-too Republicans
supported, rather than opposed, Democratic Party policies but claimed they
would administer them better. Of course, this led to a half-century of
Democratic dominance of American government and politics.
A Joe-the-Plumber
Free Zone! Not a word about him in today’s show!
Whole lotta linkin' (not Abe!) goin' on, see below to connect to sites Matt mentions. Arianna’s
on the road today; it’s an all-male revue. The final debate’s over.
Can McCain make a comeback? Tony sees
a glimmer of hope in the polls. Bob defends the underdog, but calls
some of his followers scary. Tony takes extreme exception to this
characterization and says McCain’s “been running far too clean a
campaign” compared to Obama, whom he says “has ruthlessly been playing
the race card.” Matt says he’s heard that Colin Powell will announce
for Obama this weekend. Enough politics: how ‘bout that economy? Tony
says it's easy to buy equities if you've got 80 billion dollars (like
Buffett, see below). Bob tells us why he bought Google, and “did the
right thing” while making a 50% profit. Bob also stresses the need to
help the homeowner not the bandit bankers; Matt says we need both
mortgage relief and an economic stimulus, and is writing a piece about
his conversion away from fiscal conservatism, “Why I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Trillion Dollar Debt…” I’ll share it once it’s
published.
PS: I am planning a tiny little contest -- the person who most closely picks both the final vote percentage and the number of electoral votes for each candidate -- deadline Nov. 3 -- could win -- hang on now -- one of TWO Left, Right & Center sun visors! Yep, it's a collector's item, only about 100 were made, and I just found the last two that I was hoarding in my closet! I'll work out the details and tell you how to enter, stay tuned to this space.
One final note: LRC is live ONSTAGE in Santa Monica, ON AIR in SoCal and ONLINE worldwide @ KCRW.com (video and audio webcasts) on Sunday, Nov. 9th starting at 5:45 pm Pacific Time (for the behind-the-scenes stuff), 6 pm live broadcast/webcast. We'll make the show available as a special podcast or you can watch it on demand later.
Working for the Working- Class Vote by Matt Bai
NY Times Sunday Magazine preview
For a guy who just four years ago was running his first statewide campaign, Barack Obama has made startlingly few missteps as a presidential candidate. But the moment Obama would most like to take back now, if he could, was the one last April when, speaking to a small gathering of Bay Area contributors, he said that small-town voters in Pennsylvania and other states had grown “bitter” over lost jobs, which caused them to “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.” That comment, subsequently posted by a blogger for the Huffington Post, undercut one of the central premises of Obama’s campaign, an argument he first floated in his famous 2004 convention address — that he could somehow erode the tired distinctions between red states and blue ones and appeal to disaffected white men who had written off national Democrats as hopelessly elitist. Instead, in the weeks that followed, white working-class primary voters, not only in industrial states like Pennsylvania but also in rural states like Kentucky and West Virginia, rejected his candidacy by wide margins, and he staggered, wounded, toward the nomination.
“That was my biggest boneheaded move,” Obama told me recently. (more at the link above)
Buy American. I Am. Warren Buffett, NYTimes Op-Ed 10.18.08
THE financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad. Its problems, moreover, have been leaking into the general economy, and the leaks are now turning into a gusher. In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary.
So ... I’ve been buying American stocks. (more at the link above)
The Bing Blog
http://stanleybing.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/
Thursday, October 16, 2008 at 12:18 pm
I walked home last night from the office. All along the route, I passed the places I used to stop in for a drink. It’s been a month now since I had a nice, frosty martini, so cold that the ice chips float to the top and the sides of the glass bead up with condensation… or a brawny glass of Johnny Walker Black, sinuous and golden in a big bottomed glass… or even a festive balloon or two of rich, big-shouldered, blood-red Zin, oaky and spicy and redolent of cinnamon and chocolate…
I walked by these places but did not go in. I figure the time to start drinking again is when I don’t feel the inexorable pull to the cozy dimness that lies beyond their inviting portals. In other words, when I don’t need a drink is precisely the moment when I’ll feel okay having one.
THE BIG PICTURE economic blog
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/
Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke
Before the National Economists Club, Washington, D.C.
November 21, 2002
Deflation: Making Sure "It" Doesn't Happen Here
Since World War II, inflation--the apparently inexorable rise in the prices of goods and services--has been the bane of central bankers. Economists of various stripes have argued that inflation is the inevitable result of (pick your favorite) the abandonment of metallic monetary standards, a lack of fiscal discipline, shocks to the price of oil and other commodities, struggles over the distribution of income, excessive money creation, self-confirming inflation expectations, an "inflation bias" in the policies of central banks, and still others. Despite widespread "inflation pessimism," however, during the 1980s and 1990s most industrial-country central banks were able to cage, if not entirely tame, the inflation dragon. Although a number of factors converged to make this happy outcome possible, an essential element was the heightened understanding by central bankers and, equally as important, by political leaders and the public at large of the very high costs of allowing the economy to stray too far from price stability.
With inflation rates now quite low in the United States,
however, some have expressed concern that we may soon face a new
problem--the danger of deflation, or falling prices. That this concern
is not purely hypothetical is brought home to us whenever we read
newspaper reports about Japan, where what seems to be a relatively
moderate deflation--a
decline in consumer prices of about 1 percent per year--has been
associated with years of painfully slow growth, rising joblessness, and
apparently intractable financial problems in the banking and corporate
sectors. While it is difficult to sort out cause from effect, the
consensus view is that deflation has been an important negative factor
in the Japanese slump.
So, is deflation a threat to the economic health of the United States?
Not to leave you in suspense, I believe that the chance of significant
deflation in the United
States in the foreseeable future is
extremely small, for two principal reasons. (read complete speech at link above)
UPDATE ADDED ON 10.21:
UPDATE TO MY ORIGINAL POST:
First: Keep it civil. This is intended for political discussion not personal attacks. We welcome intelligent dialogue from all sides of the spectrum but not ad hominem abuse or any other kinds of vitriolic nastiness between people who post here.
Second: For those commenting on Matt Miller--he is the show's moderator because of his skills in moving the conversation along, but unlike other analytical/opinion programs, he occupies a known position in the dialogue. He is the centrist and as such, expresses his opinions. He is participant, not just the moderator. If your comments involve his opinions, they're there because they are part of the show -- he is the "Center" in "Left, Right & Center." And to the gentleman who mis-identified the think tank he is connected to, it is the liberal-oriented Center for American Progress not the neocon-oriented Project for a New American Century.
9.13.08 PPS: I want to call everyone's attention to an article that I think you might want to read and comment on:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/08/11/080811crat_atlarge_lemann
A Critic at Large
Conflict of Interests
Does the wrangling of interest groups corrupt politics—or constitute it?
by Nicholas Lemann
Economy; Palin on ABC; Obama Gets Tough? McCain v. Taxes
This week Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were essentially nationalized. And Lehman Brothers has gone belly up with talk of the taxpayers bearing the cost. Today Bob, Matt and Tony take on the question of whether deregulation created this scenario wherein which the federal government is bailing out America’s housing market…and of course, there’s plenty of disagreement to go around. Then: Sarah Palin gets her primetime spotlight – did she shine? Did Charlie Gibson cave and give her a pass or was he sneering down his nose at her? How’d she really do? Lastly, Tony repeats a phrase that will surely infuriate many: Obama’s campaign has been likened to a dead frog whose legs keep kicking… ouch. More when you listen to today’s show. I'll be on vacation, Blogger Andi will post for the next two weeks but I will be following the conversation so PLEASE share your comments!!!!
Hey all: Producer Sarah is going to be on vacation 9.19 and 9.26. Andi Albers will be posting in my stead. PLEASE keep talking to each other -- I'll check in from time to time and see how the conversation is going.
And Joe Klein blogs about Matt Miller, here's the link and here's a short excerpt of the text:
==============================================================================
September 12, 2008 8:27
The McCain Tax Increases--Continued
Posted by Joe Klein | Comments (25) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email This
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Director of the Congressional Budget Office and current chief McCain economic advisor, is an honest man--which means he's something of a liability on the Straight Talk Express. A few months ago, he admitted to my colleague, Michael Scherer, that Barack Obama's economic plan would reduce taxes for most people. And now, in a forthcoming book by Fortune columnist Matt Miller, he makes it clear that the next President is going to have to raise taxes.
"If you do nothing on the spending side, you're going to have to raise taxes whether you're a Republican, a Democrat or a Martian," he tells Miller...and then he immediately makes it clear that the "spending side" part of the argument is nothing more than a political fig-leaf.
"It's arithmetic." Federal revenue today is 18.8 percent of GDP and federal spending is 20 percent. Holtz-Eakin observes that "the pressure are there" to lift spending [on entitlement programs, mostly] and taxes to 23 or 24 percent of GDP by around 2020, and to as much as 27 percent if health costs remain out of control.
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