He’s already given political culture one of the great euphemisms ever for having an affair. And now the Appalachian trail walker, Mark Sanford, has become a terrific example of one of the core ideas of political parties and democracy: It’s all about the primaries.
Sanford won back his old House seat in a special election on Tuesday. Smart liberal commentators noted that Republicans had little choice. Paul Krugman:
Suddenly normally calm economists are talking about 1931, the year everything fell apart. . . . And it’s happening again, both in Europe and in America. . . . None of this should be happening. As in 1931, Western nations have the resources they need to avoid catastrophe, and indeed to restore prosperity — and we have the added advantage of knowing much more than our great-grandparents did about how depressions happen and how to end them. But knowledge and resources do no good if those who possess them refuse to use them.
A prophet, says the Bible, is not without honor save in his own country. As the most prestigious economic dissenters of this era, Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman form a category of two: astonishingly prescient, widely read, and largely ignored by those in power.
Me, some years ago, sneering at a pompous ass who is sneering right back.
Whenever Paul Krugman goes on television, you can see his discomfort coming off him. Or at least that's what I see; since I've never met him in person, I don't know how much his television manner differs from his ordinary manner. But he always looks as though inside he's shaking his head, saying to himself, "This is such bullshit. I can't wait to get out of here." And it's hard to blame him. The other day, Krugman did a debate on Bloomberg TV with noted economic crank Congressman Ron Paul, and came away utterly disgusted...
In his latest column for The New York Times, Paul Krugman provides an estimate of what the economy lost due to cutbacks on the state and local level:
The federal government has been pursuing what amount to contractionary policies as the last vestiges of the Obama stimulus fade out, but the big cuts have come at the state and local level. These state and local cuts have led to a sharp fall in both government employment and government spending on goods and services, exerting a powerful drag on the economy as a whole. […]
As many of us have been hoping and praying, the Super Committee fell of its own weight, making room for a much better debate about where budget cutting fits into a recovery strategy (if at all), and how to raise taxes progressively in order to finance the investments and jobs that America needs.
President Barack Obama was unwise to make this devil’s bargain in the first place; he has since moved on to emphasizing jobs and recovery. The Super Committee crack-up should be the last gasp of the “bipartisan” folly about deficit reduction as key to recovery—which the president himself gave a big boost with his appointment of the late Bowles-Simpson Commission.
Cornel West offers the New York Times a non-explanation for his complaint that Obama “feels most comfortable with upper-middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart.”
It’s in no way an attempt to devalue white or Jewish brothers. It’s an objective fact. In his administration, he’s got a significant number of very smart white brothers and very smart Jewish brothers. You think that’s unimportant?
Though he wrote the column before today's abysmal jobs report, Paul Krugman's latest on President Obama and the budget fight probably reflects what a lot of liberals are feeling right now:
It's getting harder and harder to trust Mr. Obama’s motives in the budget fight, given the way his economic rhetoric has veered to the right. In fact, if all you did was listen to his speeches, you might conclude that he basically shares the G.O.P.'s diagnosis of what ails our economy and what should be done to fix it. And maybe that’s not a false impression; maybe it's the simple truth.
"Terrible" is a good word to describe the jobs numbers for May.
At 9.1 percent, the unemployment rate remains nearly unchanged from April. The number of long-term unemployed people increased by 361,000, to 6.2 million, and their share of the total unemployed increased to 45.1 percent from 43.4 percent. In total, the economy created 54,000 jobs, but given that we need 150,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with population growth, you can think of it as America losing 96,000 jobs last month.
When I was a graduate student, abandoned houses were a real problem in my community. These eyesores blighted the neighborhood. In many cases, the city needed to quickly condemn these properties to address public safety concerns. Aldermen loudly complained about the cumbersome administrative process which produced a long waiting list of abandoned properties.
In Wisconsin, Paul KrugmanseesNaomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" at work:
In recent weeks, Madison has been the scene of large demonstrations against the governor’s budget bill, which would deny collective-bargaining rights to public-sector workers. Gov. Scott Walker claims that he needs to pass his bill to deal with the state’s fiscal problems. But his attack on unions has nothing to do with the budget. In fact, those unions have already indicated their willingness to make substantial financial concessions — an offer the governor has rejected.
Brendan Nyhanasks whether we shouldn't have term limits for columnists, which is what most of us probably think about columnists we don't care for. Do people still read Richard Cohen and say, "That really gives me a new perspective on things"? Or maybe the question is, "Do people still read Richard Cohen?"
According to Pat Garofalo's research, it can! Ireland has long been a favored economic example for conservatives, who loved its ridiculously low tax rates -- so low that the country's role as a corporate tax shelter actually distorted measures of its economic growth. Now that Ireland has been caught up in the financial crisis, conservatives are changing their tune and saying Ireland's big government led to disaster. Here's CATO's Dan Mitchell, in 2002:
