Political Ruminations

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman on the history of FEMA’s effectiveness based on which party holds the presidency:

“Consider, in particular, the history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Under President George H. W. Bush, FEMA became a dumping ground for unqualified political hacks. Faced with a major test in the form of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the agency failed completely.

Then Bill Clinton came in, put FEMA under professional management, and saw the agency’s reputation restored.

Given this experience, you might have expected George W. Bush to preserve Mr. Clinton’s gains. But no: he appointed his campaign manager, Joe Allbaugh, to head the agency, and Mr. Allbaugh immediately signaled his intention both to devolve disaster relief to the state and local level and to downgrade the whole effort, declaring, “Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.” After Mr. Allbaugh left for the private sector, he was replaced with Michael “heckuva job” Brown, and the rest is history.

Like Mr. Clinton, President Obama restored FEMA’s professionalism, effectiveness, and reputation. But would Mitt Romney destroy the agency again? Yes, he would. As everyone now knows — despite the Romney campaign’s efforts to Etch A Sketch the issue away — during the primary Mr. Romney used language almost identical to Mr. Allbaugh’s, declaring that disaster relief should be turned back to the states and to the private sector.”

14 Awesome Quotes About Paul Ryan by Economist Paul Krugman

Paul Ryan is not a policy wonk, an intellectual, or any of the other relatively admirable things he pretends to be. What he is, is a liar, and the opposite of the fiscal hawk or the policy wonk  he likes to portray himself as. Here are 14 quotes¹ from Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman which prove the point, all emphasis mine:

1. From “Galt/Gekko 2012”:

“What I do know is that anyone who believes in Ryan’s carefully cultivated image as a brave, honest policy wonk has been snookered.”

2. From “Galt/Gekko 2012”:

“[…] he [Paul Ryan] is, in fact, a big fraud, who doesn’t care at all about fiscal responsibility, and whose policy proposals are sloppy as well as dishonest.”

3. From “The Ryan Role”:

“Look, Ryan hasn’t “crunched the numbers”; he has just scribbled some stuff down, without checking at all to see if it makes sense. He asserts that he can cut taxes without net loss of revenue by closing unspecified loopholes; he asserts that he can cut discretionary spending to levels not seen since Calvin Coolidge, without saying how; he asserts that he can convert Medicare to a voucher system, with much lower spending than now projected, without even a hint of how this is supposed to work. This is just a fantasy, not a serious policy proposal.”

Paul Krugman on the GOP’s Disdain for Workers

In a lengthier than usual New York Times op-ed last week, Paul Krugman defined Mitt Romney’s 47% remarks not as a gaffe, but as a window into what has become a party of, by and for the very wealthy:

“[….] the Boca Moment wasn’t some trivial gaffe. It was a window into the true attitudes of what has become a party of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy, a party that considers the rest of us unworthy of even a pretense of respect.”

This has been apparent for quite some time, but never more so than now when Republicans have completely given up even the ghost of egalitarianism in favor of all out ‘Randian’ avarice and selfishness.

I’ve come to believe that this election is really a referendum on who we are as a country---Ayn Rand type capitalists or people who value a society that cares for all of it’s citizens, regardless of their assets or lack thereof.

Morning Quote: Rand Paul

During a discussion with economist Paul Krugman on ABC’s “This Week”, Tea Party Wingnut, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) made the erroneous claim that government has grown under President Obama:

“[….] the size of growth of government is enormous under President Obama.”

In fact, the size of government has decreased under President Obama, as you can see by this chart comparing government employment under George W. Bush and President Obama.

Adding…….as you probably know, the spike in 2010 was due to the census.

Paul Krugman Debunks Romney-Ryan Lies on Medicare and Vouchercare (Video & Transcript)

At the GOP’s convention last week, Paul Ryan told even more lies regarding his plans for Medicare; this one the most blatant and most likely to delude those who aren’t paying attention:

“ Medicare is a promise, and we will honor it. A Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare. ”

Watch as Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman and Rachel Maddow debunk the universe of Medicare lies from Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in five short minutes:

UPDATE: The transcript from the video clip follows:

About Niall Ferguson's Very Bad Newsweek Cover Article

Excellent and reputable sources which completely rebut and take down right wing historian/former McCain adviser Niall Ferguson’s very bad Newsweek cover piece about President Obama (Ferguson hates him):

1. A Full Fact-Check of Niall Ferguson's Very Bad Argument Against Obama (Matthew O'Brien - The Atlantic)
2. Unethical Commentary Newsweek Edition (Paul Krugman)
3. Newsweek Cover Story Hilariously Bad (Bob Cesca)
4. Niall Ferguson Has Been Wrong On Economics (Business Insider)
5. Fisking Ferguson I (Ferguson friend, Andrew Sullivan)

You’re welcome.

Mitt Romney Embraces Paul Ryan's Radical Plan to Voucherize Medicare

Watch:

So, you heard Mitt Romney say: “for people 55 years of age and older, there’s no change.” You won’t like the translation.

Under the Romney-Ryan plan for Medicare, if you are younger than age 55, let’s say 54, and Romney-Ryan are elected to office, you will see a Medicare that is completely different from the one that your parents and grandparents enjoyed. It will be a voucherized plan, entailing fewer benefits and much higher costs to the beneficiaries.

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman on Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan, emphasis mine:

In the first decade, the big things are (i) conversion of Medicaid into a block grant program, with much lower funding than projected under current law and (ii) sharp cuts in top tax rates and corporate taxes.

Is this a deficit-reduction program? Not on the face of it: it’s basically a tradeoff of reduced aid to the poor for reduced taxes on the rich, with the net effect of the specific proposals being to increase, not reduce, the deficit.

Flashback Morning Quote: Paul Krugman 2011

Economist Paul Krugman on ABC’s “This Week” (November 20, 2011) in a discussion of the Republican presidential contenders:

“I have a structural hypothesis here. You have a Republican ideology, which Mitt Romney obviously doesn’t believe in. He just oozes insincerity, that’s just so obvious. But all of the others are fools and clowns. And there is a question here, my hypothesis is that maybe this is an ideology that only fools and clowns can actually believe in, and that’s the Republican problem.”

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman pokes Mitt Romney at the Netroots Nation conference:

“ If you don’t know multiple people who are suffering, then you must be living in a very rarefied environment. You must be maybe a member of the Romney clan, or something. ”

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman on Mitt Romney’s lies:

“Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are? If you’ve been following his campaign from the beginning, that’s a question you have probably asked many times.”

Chart of the Day

Not that long ago, if you had a decent job, you could be pretty sure that it offered healthcare coverage, and that it would not be completely unaffordable.

This is no longer the case, as Paul Krugman pointed out last week. A new study shows a remarkable decline in employment-based healthcare coverage, depicted in the chart below.

Krugman’s conclusion:

What this says is that the system that has provided workable insurance coverage to many (but not enough) Americans is coming apart at the seams. And this in turn means that if health reform goes down, we’re going to be looking at a wave of misery spreading across the land.

SCOTUS begins their debate on the Affordable Care Act tomorrow.

Krugman on Paul Ryan's 2013 Budget

Krugman on Paul Ryan and his 2013 budget:

“So I wonder: are they willing to concede, at long last, that he’s a clown?

His latest budget proposal has received some harsh critiques. It calls for huge tax cuts, supposedly offset by closing loopholes and ending tax expenditures — except that in a long report he fails to name a single tax expenditure that he would cut. It assumes drastic cuts in discretionary spending, basically eliminating everything except defense. And over the medium term, of course, it’s a plan to savage the poor while giving big tax breaks to the rich.

So actually two questions: are people finally willing to concede that Ryan is not now and has never been remotely serious? And — I know this is probably far too much to ask — are they going to do a bit of soul-searching over how they got snookered by this obvious charlatan? ”

Meanwhile, Republicans continue to applaud for the clown.

RELATED POSTS:

- Chart of the Day - Paul Ryan’s Latest Federal Budget
- Republicans Love the Banksters

Chart of the Day: GOP Deficit Hawk Fakery

Krugman’s chart illustrates what U.S. debt would look like under the plan of the Obama administration, as well as under the plans of the four remaining Republican presidential wannabes.

U.S. debt would be much higher under all of the Republican plans except Paul’s, and as Krugman pointed out, Paul’s plan includes “huge and probably impossible spending cuts”.

Deficit hawk fakery.........don’t catch it!

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

“I was deeply radicalized by the 2000 election. At first I couldn’t believe that then-candidate George W. Bush was saying so many clearly, provably false things; then I couldn’t believe that nobody in the news media was willing to point out the lies. (At the time, the Times actually told me that I couldn’t use the l-word either). That was when I formulated my “views differ on shape of planet” motto.

Now, however, Mitt Romney seems determined to rehabilitate Bush’s reputation, by running a campaign so dishonest that it makes Bush look like a model of truth-telling.

I mean, is there anything at all in Romney’s stump speech that’s true? It’s all based on attacking Obama for apologizing for America, which he didn’t, on making deep cuts in defense, which he also didn’t, and on being a radical redistributionist who wants equality of outcomes, which he isn’t. When the issue turns to jobs, Romney makes false assertions both about Obama’s record and about his own. I can’t find a single true assertion anywhere.”

- Paul Krugman on Mitt Romney’s lies about President Obama, as well as Romney’s lies about his own record.

Adding.......this quote came from a piece (which I missed) posted by Krugman on January 13.

Paul Krugman on Lies and Liars

Paul Krugman on the lies and the lying liars:

“Back in 2000, George W. Bush made a discovery of enormous consequence: you could base a whole political campaign on claims that were flatly untrue, like the claim that your big tax cuts for the wealthy went to the middle class, or the claim that diverting Social Security funds into private accounts would strengthen the system’s finances, and reporting would never point this out. That’s when I formulated my doctrine that if Bush said the earth was flat, headlines would read Views Differ on Shape of Planet.

All indications are, however, that Campaign 2012 will make Campaign 2000 look like a model of truthfulness. And all indications are that the press won’t know what to do — or, worse, that they will know what to do, which is act as stenographers and refuse to tell readers and listeners when candidates lie. Because to do otherwise when the parties aren’t equally at fault — and they won’t be — would be “biased”.

This will be true even of those news organizations specifically charged with fact-checking. Yes, they’ll call out some lies — but they’ll also claim that some perfectly reasonable statements are lies, in order to keep their precious balance. This is already happening: as Igor Volsky points out, one of the finalists for Politifact’s Lie of the Year is a Democratic claim — that Republicans want to abolish Medicare — that happens to be entirely true.”

Read that last paragraph carefully. It is almost surreal that Politifact has fallen for the “biased” nonsense to the point where they can call the claim “Republicans want to abolish Medicare” a lie of the year. Or a lie at all.

In point of fact, the liars here are not only the Republicans, who absolutely want to end Medicare and continuously spin and lie about it, but now Politifact, who spreads the lie for them.

Think Progress has the background on the Politifact claim.

My head is spinning.

Adding......John Cole on the Politifact lie:

America turns off the lights, goes to bed, leaving their Mercedes in the driveway. While we sleep, the Republicans sneak into the car, drive it off, and sell it, but they keep the Mercedes hood ornament. They then split the proceeds between their rich buddies, and go out and find a Ford Pinto up on cinderblocks in a field, with the grass growing through the floorboard. They place that in the driveway, cleverly glue the Mercedes ornament onto the front of the Pinto, and sneak off into the night. The next morning, America and Democrats are screaming- “What the hell happened to my car.” Republicans say- “What are you talking about, there is your Mercedes right there, we just modernized it and fixed it up a bit for long-term financial stability,” and point at the Pinto.

Then, the rocket scientists at Politifact drive by to take a non-partisan look at things, see the Mercedes symbol on the front of the car, and tell us all we’re lying about the Republicans stealing our Mercedes.

Quote of the Day: Paul Krugman

“It was his time, the Republican base doesn’t want Romney and they keep looking for an alternative, and Newt — although somebody said ‘he’s a stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like,’ but he is more plausible than the other guys they’ve been pushing up.”

- Economist Paul Krugman on This Week with Christiane Amanpour, explains why Newt Gingrich is getting his day in the sun with Republicans. Watch the video:

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

“George Will believes that Elizabeth Warren wants to turn him into a collectivist slave.

Bwahahahaha.

First, however, we will turn him into a mindless automaton by forcing him to ride high-speed trains.”

~ Paul Krugman

Quote of the Day

Paul Krugman on who benefits from current U.S. tax policy, emphasis mine:

“Taken as a whole, the US tax system is probably somewhat progressive — but not as much as you might think, especially at the upper end, and very erratically. There are a lot of rich people basically free-riding on the system.”

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman on the inequity in U.S. tax policy over the past 30 years:

“....tax policy these past 30 years has been very much tilted toward benefiting the rich.”

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman characterizes modern conservatism:

“Modern conservatism is actually a deeply radical movement, one that is hostile to the kind of society we’ve had for the past three generations — that is, a society that, acting through the government, tries to mitigate some of the ‘common hazards of life’ through such programs as Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid. Are voters ready to embrace such a radical rejection of the kind of America we’ve all grown up in? I guess we’ll find out next year.”

Translation: Modern Republicans are radicals, bent on destroying the fabric of our society.

Via Bob Cesca

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman, from his column “Republicans Against Science”:

“ The odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect. ”

Terrifying indeed.

Quote of the Day

Paul Krugman on Rick Perry’s threat to Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, in a piece titled “Ignorance, Paranoia, and Implied Violence”:

“Actually, what Perry said is even worse than most writing on it has suggested. Yes, he’s showing ignorance of the basics of monetary policy; yes, he appears to have implicitly threatened violence against my former department head. (Incidentally, threats of that kind are a long-standing feature of modern GOP rhetoric; as early as 1993, Republican Senators would joke about what might happen to Bill Clinton if he visited their states, and the Broders of the world pretended not to notice).

But somehow everyone I’ve read seems to miss the bit about Bernanke playing politics — implying that anything he does would be in the interests of helping Obama get reelected.

That’s a hell of an accusation to make — especially when you bear in mind that Bernanke was a Bush appointee. But this is apparently how people like Perry think.

After this, I suspect that Perry is a shoo-in for the nomination.”

Quote of the Day

Paul Krugman wonders if democracy can survive in the U.S.:

“What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t.”

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

I don’t always agree with Krugman, but when it comes to the Republicans, he is generally right on. In this instance, Krugman is  shining a light on those who claim to have been unaware of the fact that the GOP has lost any semblance of  sanity until now, emphasis mine:

“There aren’t many positive aspects to the looming possibility of a U.S. debt default. But there has been, I have to admit, an element of comic relief — of the black-humor variety — in the spectacle of so many people who have been in denial suddenly waking up and smelling the crazy.

A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being. “Has the G.O.P. gone insane?” they ask.

Why, yes, it has. But this isn’t something that just happened, it’s the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades. Anyone surprised by the extremism and irresponsibility now on display either hasn’t been paying attention, or has been deliberately turning a blind eye.

And may I say to those suddenly agonizing over the mental health of one of our two major parties: People like you bear some responsibility for that party’s current state.”

Debunking Right-Wing Memes

According to Rep. Paul Ryan and other Republicans such as Speaker Boehner, and House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, non-defense discretionary spending has increased by 80% under the Obama administration.

Except it hasn’t.

Politifact, emphasis mine:

An assortment of Republicans -- including speaker Speaker Boehner of Ohio and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia -- have used Ryan’s numbers to exaggerate spending increases since Obama took office Jan. 20, 2009.[……]

The White House budget office shows non-defense discretionary spending rose 26 percent from 2008 to 2010. The CBO, which Hurt and other Republicans cite as their source, puts the increase at 23.7 percent.
We rate his [Ryan, Hurt, et al] statement False.

Paul Krugman, emphasis mine:

It’s completely false. As anyone who knows how to read federal statistics should have known, the real number — including the stimulus — is 26 percent. And it’s now in the process of falling off.

The discretionary spending falsehood is a key part of the claim that Obama has presided over a vast expansion of government; as I’ve tried to explain, the only real area of rapid growth has been in safety net programs that spend more when there is high unemployment.

As a point of reference, Krugman’s initial post on this meme in May.

The Republican Party is absolutely unswerving in its slavish devotion to dissemination of lies and bigger lies in order to propagate a fascist agenda.

And they hate the black guy.

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman spells out the difference between the Ryan Medicare Plan and the Affordable Care Act:

“….the ACA [Affordable Care Act] is specifically designed to ensure that insurance is affordable, whereas Ryancare just hands out vouchers and washes its hands. Specifically, the ACA subsidy system (pdf) sets a maximum percentage of income that families are expected to pay for insurance, on a sliding scale that rises with income. To the extent that the actual cost of a minimum acceptable policy exceeds that percentage of income, subsidies make up the difference.

Ryancare, by contrast, provides a fixed sum — end of story. And because this fixed sum would not grow with rising health care costs, it’s almost guaranteed to fall far short of the actual cost of insurance.

This is also why Ryancare is NOT premium support; it’s a voucher system. No matter how much they say it isn’t, that’s exactly what it is.”

 

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman debunks the right-wing meme which claims that Medicare is unsustainable in its current form:

“Yes, Medicare is sustainable in its current form.”

Krugman: Republicans ARE trying to end Medicare

Paul Krugman debunks the Republican spin on the Paul Ryan plan for Medicare, emphasis mine:

Greg Sargent reports that they’re demanding that a TV station stop running ads saying that the GOP wants to end Medicare; the claim is that this is a lie, because the new program the GOP wants to impose in place of Medicare is still Medicare.

As Greg says, this is important — because if they can get away with this, it will amount to a serious infringement of free speech, preventing people from running truthful ads.

Because the fact is that Republicans are trying to end Medicare. The program we now call Medicare is one in which the government acts as your insurer, paying your major medical bills; coverage is guaranteed to all seniors. The program Republicans want gives you vouchers and tells you to go buy your own insurance, if you can. That’s not at all the same thing.

Oh, they’re also trying to stop anyone from calling it a voucher plan — but that’s what it is.

Paul Krugman Blasts Elites Who Blame Self-Serving Public

Krugman reflects on the worldwide economic apocalypse of the past three years, and asks what went wrong:

The past three years have been a disaster for most Western economies. The United States has mass long-term unemployment for the first time since the 1930s. Meanwhile, Europe’s single currency is coming apart at the seams. How did it all go so wrong?

According to elites, it’s the “self-serving public’s” fault because we wanted something for nothing.

Well, what I’ve been hearing with growing frequency from members of the policy elite — self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing — is the claim that it’s mostly the public’s fault. The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness.

Yeah, right. The public is “self-serving”. Elites have wings and halos.

Krugman tells the truth:

Paul Krugman: Intellectual Barbarians Have Overrun the Republican Party

Krugman is so right. Emphasis mine:

I’ve been writing for a couple of years about the academic descent into a Dark Age of macroeconomics, in which much of the profession has forgotten things they used to know. But that has been a gradual process. The GOP descent into the intellectual abyss, by contrast, has been stunningly swift.

Some of this is just partisanship: wanna bet that, say, John Taylor would be a lot more sympathetic to expansionary policies if his party held the White House? But the truth — which I suspect that people like Greg aren’t willing to face, yet — is that the intellectual barbarians have completely overrun a party that even a few years ago was still capable of making sense.

Krugman on GOP Attacks on Academics

Recently, the GOP has availed itself of FOIA laws to demand emails from academics they suspect of being involved in the Wisconsin and Michigan protests. While they are probably legally entitled to do so, why would they choose to go after academics, none of whom had any visible role in the protests?

Paul Krugman weighs in, emphasis mine:

Recently William Cronon, a historian who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, decided to weigh in on his state's political turmoil. He started a blog, ''Scholar as Citizen,'' devoting his first post to the role of the shadowy American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC] in pushing hard-line conservative legislation at the state level. Then he published an opinion piece in The Times, suggesting that Wisconsin's Republican governor has turned his back on the state's long tradition of ''neighborliness, decency and mutual respect.''

So what was the G.O.P.'s response? A demand for copies of all e-mails sent to or from Mr. Cronon's university mail account containing any of a wide range of terms, including the word ''Republican'' and the names of a number of Republican politicians.

If this action strikes you as no big deal, you're missing the point. The hard right -- which these days is more or less synonymous with the Republican Party -- has a modus operandi when it comes to scholars expressing views it dislikes: never mind the substance, go for the smear. And that demand for copies of e-mails is obviously motivated by no more than a hope that it will provide something, anything, that can be used to subject Mr. Cronon to the usual treatment.

The Cronon affair, then, is one more indicator of just how reflexively vindictive, how un-American, one of our two great political parties has become.

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman on the Republican effort to destroy our social safety net, beginning with Medicare:

It’s going to be just like the Social Security fight [2005], only worse: once again, Very Serious People will pretend not to notice that the Republican plan is a giant game of bait-and-switch, dismantling a key piece of the social safety net in favor of a privatized system, claiming that this is necessary to save money, but never acknowledging that privatization in itself actually costs money.

Polishing my pitchfork.

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

Krugman speaks out about the ‘both sides’ meme:

Some have asked if there aren’t conservative sites I read regularly. Well, no. I will read anything I’ve been informed about that’s either interesting or revealing; but I don’t know of any economics or politics sites on that side that regularly provide analysis or information I need to take seriously. I know we’re supposed to pretend that both sides always have a point; but the truth is that most of the time they don’t. The parties are not equally irresponsible; Rachel Maddow isn’t Glenn Beck; and a conservative blog, almost by definition, is a blog written by someone who chooses not to notice that asymmetry. And life is short…

Krugman Responds to Greenspan’s Criticism of Obama

Krugman’s response is to this piece by Alan Greenspan, in which Greenspan blames President Obama’s so-called “activism” for preventing economic recovery.

Here:

Greenspan is an ex-Maestro; his reputation is pushing up the daisies, it’s gone to meet its maker, it’s joined the choir invisible.

He’s no longer the Man Who Knows; he’s the man who presided over an economy careening to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression — and who saw no evil, heard no evil, refused to do anything about subprime, insisted that derivatives made the financial system more stable, denied not only that there was a national housing bubble but that such a bubble was even possible.

And here:

Greenspan is just making stuff up — out of his deep wisdom, which he still believes in despite his failures — to support a political agenda.

Another economist, Brad DeLong, with a more wonkish response.

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

Krugman on the media blackout of the protests occurring in Wisconsin, and on Saturday, in 65 other cities all over the country:

I don’t watch cable news, or actually any kind of TV news. But I gather that there’s a virtual blackout on the huge demonstrations in Wisconsin, except on Fox, which portrays them as thuggish and violent.

What that makes me think of is January-February 2003, when anyone watching cable news would have believed that only a few kooks were opposed to the imminent invasion of Iraq. It was quite spooky, realizing that hundreds of thousands of people could march through New York, and by tacit agreement be ignored by news networks whose headquarters were just a few blocks away.

And it’s even more spooky to see it happening all over again.

It seems surreal.

Quote of the Day

Paul Krugman on the motives of Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker:

For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.

Hear, hear.

More on the reasons for GOP intractability in Wisconsin in a Maddow piece.

Morning Quote: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman flashback to January 2010.Krugman is referring to Firebaggers, Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher (FDL), giving them a little sorely needed lecture about screaming “FIRE” all the time in reference to the Obama administration:

And here’s the thing: by claiming that there’s a huge scandal when nothing worse happened than insufficient care about disclosure, Greenwald and the people at FDL are actually reducing our ability to call foul on real corruption. After all, if everything is a scandal, nothing is a scandal. One of these days, perhaps soon, we’ll have a genuinely corrupt administration again — but when whistleblowers try to call attention to the misdeeds, you can be sure that there will be claims that “even liberals said that Obama did things just as bad or worse”.

Via Bob Cesca

Paul Krugman on the Budget Debate: It’s Fraudulent

A quote from Krugman on the budget debate, who has a great piece up, ‘Willie Sutton Wept’.

There are three things you need to know about the current budget debate. First, it’s essentially fraudulent. Second, most people posing as deficit hawks are faking it. Third, while President Obama hasn’t fully avoided the fraudulence, he’s less bad than his opponents — and he deserves much more credit for fiscal responsibility than he’s getting.

Republicans Want to Deprive Pregnant Women and Babies of Food

Krugman notes some of the spending cuts Republicans are proposing, emphasis mine:

WIC 1008 million
Food for Peace 544 million
NOAA 450 million
NASA 579 million
Energy efficiency and renewable energy 899
Science 1111 million
Nuclear nonproliferation 648 million
Federal buildings fund 1653 million
Homeland security administration 489 million
FEMA, various, around 1.2 billion
EPA clean water and drinking water about 1.8 billion
Community health centers 1.3 billion
Centers for disease control 900 million

WIC is nutritional aid for pregnant women and women with young children; let’s cut that, because the damage to the nation from malnourishment is a problem for future politicians.

Bob Cesca, emphasis mine:

The Republicans want to take food from the mouths of babies and pregnant women. Yeah, and they consider themselves "pro-life" and "anti-abortion" without laughing or acknowledgement of the self-contradiction and disgusting irony of their actions.

As I predicted in the beginning of January:

They will cut funding for education, the environment, social programs, and anything that does not directly benefit the wealthy.

So….does anyone really believe that Republicans don’t hate women?

Via Bob Cesca

On That Both Sides Meme…

Here we go again. The meme the Right Wing resorts to whenever they get caught out in something they know is wrong, the both sides meme, is all over the internet today. Republicans trying to lay the blame for the Arizona shootings on both sides of the political aisle in order to save their own political skin. Pure nonsense.

Krugman:

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.

HT Bob Cesca