The new payroll tax proposal from Senate Democrats would disqualify millionaires from unemployment insurance. Doing so would save money and might win Republican support, but it could also slowly erode the commonly-held notion that unemployment compensation is an insurance paid for with payroll premiums, like Social Security retirement benefits. Instead, people might start to consider it a welfare benefit, something for poor people, which would make the program more politically vulnerable. We didn't think of that. FDR did.Read the rest of this post...
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Monday, December 05, 2011
The downside of cutting millionaires out of unemployment insurance
An interesting observation from HuffPost Hill:
Arianna: Can Gingrich beat Gingrich?
From Arianna Huffington:
As we saw with the Tea Party takeover of the GOP House, sometimes crazy wins. Read the rest of this post...
Now that Herman Cain has "suspended his campaign," the race is down to three people: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich. At this point, the question isn't so much whether Gingrich can beat Romney (he can), but whether Gingrich will beat Gingrich. This task is complicated by the fact that there isn't just one Gingrich. He's a very Walt Whitmanesque candidate -- he celebrates himself, he sings of himself, he is large, and he contains multitudes. And while both men are serial flip-floppers, the differentiating variable between them isn't consistency; it's conviction. Whereas Romney tries to reconcile his flip-flops with lawyerly logic, Newt has the ability to seemingly believe each of his contradictory positions with absolute conviction. And for better or worse -- usually worse -- the natural selection of our political process strongly favors that trait. ...God, imagine how fun the race will be if it's Gingrich vs. Obama. But, there's a danger here. Sometimes crazy nominees are good because it guarantees that the GOP loses. But sometimes, the crazy eeks out a victory anyway - especially if the economy starts tanking again and people start blaming Obama.
As we saw with the Tea Party takeover of the GOP House, sometimes crazy wins. Read the rest of this post...
Video: More from Freaky the Scary Snowman
If you haven't seen this before, please watch it. A guy dressed as a snowman suddenly moves and scares people passing by. It's simple, and brilliant.
Here's the earlier one I posted, which I think is possibly even better. Read the rest of this post...
Here's the earlier one I posted, which I think is possibly even better. Read the rest of this post...
Krugman: If a Republican actually does capture the WH, "he will have no idea what to do"
We can keep this simple. Paul Krugman writes (correctly enough) about how the Republican side of the 2012 presidential race is a cage match between the "totally cynical" (take a bow, Willard) and the "totally clueless" (that's you, rest-of-field).
Most of the column teases and defends that concept. Fair enough, and a good read.
But I'd like to look at his close, a world in which one of the clueless might win. The Professor (my emphasis):
If that happens at home, it hurts to the core, and the rest goes unsaid. America is turning into a very tough town indeed.
GP Read the rest of this post...
Most of the column teases and defends that concept. Fair enough, and a good read.
But I'd like to look at his close, a world in which one of the clueless might win. The Professor (my emphasis):
Of course, given the terrible economic picture and the tendency of voters to blame whoever holds the White House for bad times, even a deeply flawed G.O.P. nominee might very well win the presidency. But then what?If the guy next door gets fired for screwing up royally at work, you can comfortably say the obvious: "Deserved it. Folks, take note; don't screw up at work."
The Washington Post quotes an unnamed Republican adviser who compared what happened to Mr. Cain, when he suddenly found himself leading in the polls, to the proverbial tale of the dog who had better not catch that car he’s chasing. “Something great and awful happened, the dog caught the car. And of course, dogs don’t know how to drive cars. So he had no idea what to do with it.”
The same metaphor, it seems to me, might apply to the G.O.P. pursuit of the White House next year. If the dog actually catches the car — the actual job of running the U.S. government — it will have no idea what to do, because the realities of government in the 21st century bear no resemblance to the mythology all ambitious Republican politicians must pretend to believe. And what will happen then?
If that happens at home, it hurts to the core, and the rest goes unsaid. America is turning into a very tough town indeed.
GP Read the rest of this post...
Second elderly traveler claims she was strip searched by TSA
When there's one report, you might be skeptical, but when someone else steps forward to tell the same story, there may be a serious problem. According to the TSA, this practice is not part of their screening but maybe that's not completely accurate. If any more emerge, heads need to roll quickly at JFK. As it stands today, they need to address these serious charges immediately.
Ruth Sherman, an 88-year-old frequent flier with JetBlue, has flown from New York to Florida many times, but never has she been taken aside and asked to pull her pants down and show her colostomy bag, as she asserts occurred at Kennedy Airport recently.Read the rest of this post...
It makes Sherman the second elderly woman in recent days to claim that TSA agents forced her to expose herself during a pre-flight security screening. Lenore Zimmerman, a Long Beach, N.Y., resident, says she was required by TSA security screeners to take off her pants as part of a search on Nov. 29. That search likewise took place at the JetBlue terminal at Kennedy.
Sherman, who was returning home Nov. 28 after celebrating Thanksgiving with family in New York, said her initial X-ray screening apparently showed a bulge from her colostomy bag on the side of her body. Screeners then pulled her aside and gave her a pat-down with their hands, including touching her on her legs and her torso near her breasts and around her arms, she said.
Radioactive water continues to leak at Fukushima plant
How many more "surprises" are we going to discover at Fukushima? NY Times:
The new radioactive water leak called into question the progress that the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, appeared to have made in bringing its reactors under control. The company, known as Tepco, has said that it hopes to bring the plant to a stable state known as a cold shutdown by the end of the year.Read the rest of this post...
The trouble on Sunday came in two stages, a Tepco statement said. In the morning, utility workers found that radioactive water was flooding a catchment next to a purification device; the device was then switched off, and the leak appeared to stop. But the company said it later discovered that leaked water was escaping through a crack in the catchment’s concrete wall and was reaching an external gutter.
In all, as much as 220 tons of water may now have leaked from the facility, according to a report in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that cited Tepco officials.
Frank: Dems will cave on automatic defense cuts following Super Committee "failure"
Sam Stein at HuffPo:
The Republicans never intended for the defense cuts to be real. And, if Barney is to be believed, Democrats knew in their hearts that they never intended it either. The only "real" cuts that anyone intended as payback for the Super Committee's "failure" were cuts to domestic spending (and phasing out of the Bush tax cuts). But †he reason defense spending was made a part of the failsafe was in order to give the Republicans an incentive to negotiate. Now we find out that neither party intended to give the GOP such an incentive. Read the rest of this post...
Retiring Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) spilled a few beans on Sunday morning when he said a majority of Democrats would sign off on a deal to lessen the military cuts that will result from the super committee's failure.So the Super Committee was a lie. Well, half a lie.
The Republicans never intended for the defense cuts to be real. And, if Barney is to be believed, Democrats knew in their hearts that they never intended it either. The only "real" cuts that anyone intended as payback for the Super Committee's "failure" were cuts to domestic spending (and phasing out of the Bush tax cuts). But †he reason defense spending was made a part of the failsafe was in order to give the Republicans an incentive to negotiate. Now we find out that neither party intended to give the GOP such an incentive. Read the rest of this post...
The latest on the Euro deathwatch
Today's NY Times has an article on the latest efforts by the European Union to keep the Euro intact. It has some useful steps in it, but perpetuates a myth that will eventually result in a recurrence of the current crisis. It is quite amazing to me how immune to easily knowable facts these supposedly well informed national leaders can be.
On the good side, they are inching toward a recognition that they need a "lender of last resort" if they are to preserve their financial system from panics that can bring down banking systems like Italy's, which are solvent in the long run, but which can't withstand a run on their assets in the short run. No, they shy away from letting their actual central bank, the ECB, do the job, but they are essentially replicating this function in a huge bailout fund that would be administered separately. This is a step in the right direction but as any gambler knows, sooner or later you get a set of cards (or a series of throws of the dice, or spins of the wheel, or whatever) that result in a loss bigger than whatever fund you have. Only by being quite literally infinite can this function really be accomplished the way it ought to, and that can only happen when the lender of last resort is, as the Federal Reserve is, capable of creating money itself in whatever quantities are needed. Still, it is a step in the right direction. So, this initiative may work for the moment (or it may not), but eventually it will fail because global financial market have more money than whatever amount they are putting into their bailout fund.
The bad side is given away by a quote from the article in the NYT: ".... European leaders will begin to change the fundamental structure of the union, creating a form of centralized oversight of national budgets, with sanctions for the profligate, to reassure investors". Now that might cure the problems of, e.g., Greece, which was indeed profligate, and in fact duplicitous in doctoring their official accounts, but Greece isn't really an existential threat to the Euro because it just isn't big enough, compared to the whole of Europe, to bring it down. (As an aside, I still think Greece will leave the Euro at some point - even a 50% reduction in their debt leaves them with an indefinite recession if they stay in the common currency)
What the leaders can't seem to recognize, as indeed most of the press reports on the problem fail to do as well, is the being profligate was not the root of the problem in Spain, and even Italy really doesn't count, even though one could at least make a case for profligacy there. No, Spain was actually running budget surpluses right up to the beginning of the crisis. If they were obeying all of the rules and curbs on "profligacy" it wouldn't have changed a thing. So what really was the problem with Spain?
It helps a lot if you compare the problem of Spain with the problem we have had with Florida. Just as Florida is our state to escape to for some sun and warmth, and which consequently suffered hugely from the real estate bubble and bust caused by overbuilding condos and vacation homes, so too was Spain the "Florida" of Europe. The Costa del Sol saw a massive real estate bubble fueled by banks willing to lend money to chilly Northern Europeans to build thousands of condos which are now sitting empty. Just like Florida, the bubble eventually burst, but there the stories diverge.
In the USA nobody even imagined cutting Florida off from the rest of us. Their banking system is the same as the banking system the rest of us have and we bailed it out without question. The fact that my little rural areas in the North had no real estate bubble to speak of made no difference - the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury, with the weight of the whole USA behind it, stepped in to prevent a melt down. Sure, Florida has issues, but the unemployed there automatically get unemployment payments and food stamps funded by the rest of us and their workers can fan out across the USA looking for new jobs.
Not so in Spain. Once the bubble burst they were on their own as far as the rest of the EU was concerned. No matter that they "behaved" as they were supposed to right up to the crisis. No matter that the real estate boom was fueled in no small part by some of those very same Germans who now resist doing anything to help them. Once the crisis hit they were required to fund their rescue operations on their own, and that includes not only saving their banks (which they can't do without help) but also the people themselves, who are unemployed at rates only seen in the US during the Great Depression. Right now, Spain has 22% unemployment, and if Europe goes into a recession there will be worse to come. Help for this from the rest of Europe is nowhere to be seen. In fact, the advice they are getting is quite the opposite More austerity! Fiscal discipline!
If THAT is what they really want then they are just debating over the size of the hammer they will use to beat the European economy into a depressionary heap. They need a stimulus, not austerity. Yes, I know those Germans think the "profligate" southern Europeans need to be punished for their transgressions. But Spain's only transgression is that they believed that following the EU guidelines would lead them to a happy outcome. They didn't. Will the rest of Europe figure this out before it all melts down? Read the rest of this post...
On the good side, they are inching toward a recognition that they need a "lender of last resort" if they are to preserve their financial system from panics that can bring down banking systems like Italy's, which are solvent in the long run, but which can't withstand a run on their assets in the short run. No, they shy away from letting their actual central bank, the ECB, do the job, but they are essentially replicating this function in a huge bailout fund that would be administered separately. This is a step in the right direction but as any gambler knows, sooner or later you get a set of cards (or a series of throws of the dice, or spins of the wheel, or whatever) that result in a loss bigger than whatever fund you have. Only by being quite literally infinite can this function really be accomplished the way it ought to, and that can only happen when the lender of last resort is, as the Federal Reserve is, capable of creating money itself in whatever quantities are needed. Still, it is a step in the right direction. So, this initiative may work for the moment (or it may not), but eventually it will fail because global financial market have more money than whatever amount they are putting into their bailout fund.
The bad side is given away by a quote from the article in the NYT: ".... European leaders will begin to change the fundamental structure of the union, creating a form of centralized oversight of national budgets, with sanctions for the profligate, to reassure investors". Now that might cure the problems of, e.g., Greece, which was indeed profligate, and in fact duplicitous in doctoring their official accounts, but Greece isn't really an existential threat to the Euro because it just isn't big enough, compared to the whole of Europe, to bring it down. (As an aside, I still think Greece will leave the Euro at some point - even a 50% reduction in their debt leaves them with an indefinite recession if they stay in the common currency)
What the leaders can't seem to recognize, as indeed most of the press reports on the problem fail to do as well, is the being profligate was not the root of the problem in Spain, and even Italy really doesn't count, even though one could at least make a case for profligacy there. No, Spain was actually running budget surpluses right up to the beginning of the crisis. If they were obeying all of the rules and curbs on "profligacy" it wouldn't have changed a thing. So what really was the problem with Spain?
It helps a lot if you compare the problem of Spain with the problem we have had with Florida. Just as Florida is our state to escape to for some sun and warmth, and which consequently suffered hugely from the real estate bubble and bust caused by overbuilding condos and vacation homes, so too was Spain the "Florida" of Europe. The Costa del Sol saw a massive real estate bubble fueled by banks willing to lend money to chilly Northern Europeans to build thousands of condos which are now sitting empty. Just like Florida, the bubble eventually burst, but there the stories diverge.
In the USA nobody even imagined cutting Florida off from the rest of us. Their banking system is the same as the banking system the rest of us have and we bailed it out without question. The fact that my little rural areas in the North had no real estate bubble to speak of made no difference - the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury, with the weight of the whole USA behind it, stepped in to prevent a melt down. Sure, Florida has issues, but the unemployed there automatically get unemployment payments and food stamps funded by the rest of us and their workers can fan out across the USA looking for new jobs.
Not so in Spain. Once the bubble burst they were on their own as far as the rest of the EU was concerned. No matter that they "behaved" as they were supposed to right up to the crisis. No matter that the real estate boom was fueled in no small part by some of those very same Germans who now resist doing anything to help them. Once the crisis hit they were required to fund their rescue operations on their own, and that includes not only saving their banks (which they can't do without help) but also the people themselves, who are unemployed at rates only seen in the US during the Great Depression. Right now, Spain has 22% unemployment, and if Europe goes into a recession there will be worse to come. Help for this from the rest of Europe is nowhere to be seen. In fact, the advice they are getting is quite the opposite More austerity! Fiscal discipline!
If THAT is what they really want then they are just debating over the size of the hammer they will use to beat the European economy into a depressionary heap. They need a stimulus, not austerity. Yes, I know those Germans think the "profligate" southern Europeans need to be punished for their transgressions. But Spain's only transgression is that they believed that following the EU guidelines would lead them to a happy outcome. They didn't. Will the rest of Europe figure this out before it all melts down? Read the rest of this post...
Gingrich benefitting from Cain withdrawal
From the Hill's Ballot Box:
According to the survey of likely Republican primary voters and caucus-goers, which was taken after Cain announced his campaign’s suspension on Saturday, Gingrich took 37 percent of the support of those surveyed, followed by Mitt Romney at 23 percent.Read the rest of this post...
Amnesty Int'l calls on African nations to arrest George Bush for authorizing torture
You have to make these calls for the voices to be heard. And I do hope Bush II lives a long time, long enough to see his name in The Hague as his wheelchair moves him about his palatial cabin, Charles Foster Kane–like, muttering.
Think Progress:
About those obligations: Any signatory to the Geneva Conventions, specifically, the Convention Against Torture (CAT), is required to prosecute torture and to assist in torture prosecutions:
President Obama has clearly declined to investigate torture, which is why places like Spain have taken up the torch.
More please...
GP Read the rest of this post...
Think Progress:
President Bush “received a warm welcome” after he arrived in Tanzania today, his first stop on a philanthropic tour of Africa. But the human rights group Amnesty International is calling for his arrest.The Amnesty International statement includes this (my emphasis):
International law requires that there be no safe haven for those responsible for torture; Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia must seize this opportunity to fulfill their obligations and end the impunity George W. Bush has so far enjoyed[.] ...Talk about calling people out. They won't, of course, but at some point someone will.
Amnesty International recognizes the value of raising awareness about cervical and breast cancer in Africa, the stated aim of the visit, but this cannot lessen the damage to the fight against torture caused by allowing someone who has admitted to authorizing water-boarding to travel without facing the consequences prescribed by law[.]
About those obligations: Any signatory to the Geneva Conventions, specifically, the Convention Against Torture (CAT), is required to prosecute torture and to assist in torture prosecutions:
The CAT requires states to make torture illegal and provide appropriate punishment for those who commit torture. It requires states to assert jurisdiction when torture is committed within their jurisdiction, either investigate and prosecute themselves, or upon proper request extradite suspects to face trial before another competent court. It also requires states to cooperate with any civil proceedings against accused torturers.There is also an obligation to investigate torture in another country if that other country declines to investigate itself (it's all through Scott Horton's writings, though I can't find a link for it at the moment). This is the obligation that Amnesty Int'l refers to.
President Obama has clearly declined to investigate torture, which is why places like Spain have taken up the torch.
More please...
GP Read the rest of this post...
Reid to announce new proposal to extend payroll tax holiday today
This story broke yesterday - we're waiting for the details of what Senator Reid is going to propose. On the Republican side it's still a mess. While Republicans keep voting against the extension of the payroll tax cut holiday, GOP House Speaker Boehner has already said the extension is necessary. A slew of economists, and even folks on Wall Street, agree that if we don't extend the tax holiday it could cut growth by up to 1.5 percentage points next quarter, which is a huge amount, especially with how weak the economy is at the moment, and the news that Europe may already be in another recession (which risks dragging us down with it, whether or not the euro crisis is resolved (which could also drag us into another recession or worse)).
The extension of the payroll tax holiday isn't going to save the day, as far as our economy is concerned. Not passing it, however, is expected to deal a major blow to the economy next quarter, but just as importantly, it's effectively a tax hike on every working American, courtesy of the Republican party. Read the rest of this post...
The extension of the payroll tax holiday isn't going to save the day, as far as our economy is concerned. Not passing it, however, is expected to deal a major blow to the economy next quarter, but just as importantly, it's effectively a tax hike on every working American, courtesy of the Republican party. Read the rest of this post...
Putin's party fails to secure 50% in elections
What a fall from grace for the very macho Putin. Somehow photos of him shooting animals or wrestling wild bears is no longer doing the trick. Speaking of tricks, by many accounts, the elections yesterday were allegedly full of dirty tricks that would make even Republicans blush. Putin's party may be in the lead, but failing to hit 50% even when cheating shows how the times are changing. The Guardian:
A YouTube user in east Moscow illustrated how the pens at booths in school #1114 were filled with invisible ink. In the Siberian city of Novokuznetsk, a user showed how ballot boxes had arrived at a polling site one-third filled with votes.Read the rest of this post...
A Moscow user filmed an election official at polling station #2501 filling out ballots as he sat at his desk. Several users filmed buses, nicknamed "carousels", which appeared to be carrying the same people to various stations so they could vote over and over again.
"Today we have witnessed the dirtiest, foulest elections of the last 20 years," one opposition leader, said Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy premier. "We can't even call them elections – it's the theft of votes from the Russian people."
Iceland arrests failed bank CEO and top trader; America arrests those who protest bank CEOs, traders
So it's actually possible to do things like this? And not keep sucking up to the 1% who ruined the economy? Go figure.
NOTE FROM JOHN: Of course, in the states the banks retaliate, by stopping lending, when you try to take on their corruption. Which, in my book, means you triple the number of indictments. Not a very good indicator of innocence, that taking of hostages. Read the rest of this post...
Iceland's special prosecutor has taken Larus Welding, the former head of the failed Glitnir Bank, into custody, Reuters reports.In America, we only go after the people who peacefully protest bankers and traders.
Glitnir Bank was the first of the top three Icelandic commercial banks to fail in 2008.
Former director of market trade Jóhannes Baldursson and former broker Ingi Rafn JúlÃusson were also taken into custody and between ten and twenty other former employees of Glitnir Bank were also investigated.
NOTE FROM JOHN: Of course, in the states the banks retaliate, by stopping lending, when you try to take on their corruption. Which, in my book, means you triple the number of indictments. Not a very good indicator of innocence, that taking of hostages. Read the rest of this post...
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