Rebranding April 3, 2013 JON STEWART ON THE REMAKE OF THE G.O.P. Pretty devastating. How we should all long for the return of a Republican Party not so easily mocked. I might still vote Democrat most of the time; but the choice would be a lot harder. A MOST SENSIBLE GLOBAL WARMING PERSPECTIVE This overview from the Economist strikes me as level-headed in the extreme. “…some scientists are arguing that man-made climate change is not quite so bad a threat as it appeared to be a few years ago.” But (paraphrasing here) this is only good news if we actually use the few extra years it may buy us. If those scientists are right and it in fact does. “If the world has a bit more breathing space to deal with global warming, that will be good. But breathing space helps only if you actually do something with it.” Especially when the fossil fuel interests are trying so hard to be sure we don’t. Which brings us to . . . HOW MUCH CAN WE RELY ON BIG OIL TO BE STRAIGHT WITH US? Go to the videotape?
An Uplifting Video April 2, 2013 But first . . . DONATION SPAM John Kasley: “Not much you can do about it, I suppose but you should know that those of us who gave our little pittances are drowning in emails from needy Democrats. It’s no more attractive having your address shared when it’s done by an organization whose motives I generally support. I live in Florida and some nice man in Oregon named Merkley seeks access to my billfold. Alas! Were he alone the supplicant, things might be different, but Tom Udall, Tim Leahy, Bill Nelson, Sandra Fluke, Organizing for Action, Nancy Pelosi, Equality Florida, Lois Frankel, Kelly Ward, Kari Thurman, Joaquin Castro, Jeremy Funk, Jon Isaacs, Jean Shaheen, Elizabeth Warren, Democrats 2014, Democrat Headquarters, Brandon English, Evan Wolfson, Andrew Weinstein, and Mindy Myers have all pleaded for money. Did I mention Farley Griner? This list only goes back about 5 days. Giving to them all could leave me with insufficient funds to help Mr. Chioma from Paraguay, who is working with Mr. Atami from Benin, who apparently has a fortune waiting for me.” ☞ Oh, don’t I know it. Going forward, you might give recipients of your largesse a separate email address you rarely look at . . . or even give a fake, like “donot@email.com,” for people and organizations you want to help but not hear from. Otherwise, you’re right: I don’t know what to tell you – except, I guess, that as sacrifices go, having to “safe unsubscribe” a couple of times a day (or “delete, delete, delete” 20 times a day), is, perhaps literally, “the least we can do” for our country. And yet it drives me a little nuts, too. MARRIAGE IS EASY: NO ONE HAS TO WRITE A CHECK Matt Miller wonders whether Senator Rob Portman — who came out for marriage-equality because he has a gay son — would be more inclined to help the needy if he had a needy son. He concludes his latest column: . . . Barney Frank quipped to the New York Times this week that “my sexual attraction to men is [now] more politically acceptable than my attraction to government.” That’s wry and profound. Maybe America’s accelerated “evolution” on gay marriage proves that the ultimate taboo in our society is redistribution. As Martin Luther King Jr. learned near the end, securing legal equality turned out to be the easy part. Nobody had to write a check. Equal opportunity and economic justice are entirely different matters, requiring a nation to take even bigger leaps of empathy and imagination. And now . . . QUALITY AUTO PAINT AND BODY Stephen Willey: “Another ho-hum . . . tattoo-ed body shop guy from Red Necksville, VA, stands up for gay stranger because, ‘it’s the right thing to do.'” The first half — the three minutes before they come out on stage with Ellen — are really pretty wonderful. (The second half is fine, but a little forced.) Tomorrow: Jon Stewart on the remake of the GOP
“The One About The Trillion-Dollar Coin” April 1, 2013March 30, 2013 Chris Hayes debuts tonight at 8pm on MSNBC to precede Rachel each night (Ed Schultz moves to weekend afternoons) and — as we were warned in his exemplary weekend farewell — he will be running “best of” segments until his excellent weekend-morning replacement, Steve Kornacki, from the Cycle (are you getting all this?) gears up two Saturdays from now. “Best of” segments? Really? Like what, I wondered — the one where he and his panelists spend the whole time walking around a multi-level parking lot looking for their car? No, that’s Seinfeld, and actually the only Seinfeld I can’t watch. I love all the others; hate the parking lot. I grow claustrophobic and agitated just thinking about it. It gives me the jeebies. Loath the lot. No, there were a bunch of “best of” segments Saturday, one of which was perfect for a re-run because you really have to watch it twice to get your head around it. It’s “the one about the trillion-dollar coin.” Wherein, the Treasury Secretary would mint a platinum coin (although it could be made of anything — gold would do fine; stainless steel, symbolizing infrastructure, might be nice) and deposit it at the Fed, so we wouldn’t need to raise the debt ceiling. We could spend that cash, as needed, instead. And, yes, it might be a good idea to mint five of them, just in case. (In fairness, we should probably put Ronald Reagan’s face on the obverse, as he halted the long decline in our ratio of National Debt to GDP (from 121% in 1946 down to 30% when he took office) and, by cutting taxes for the wealthy and ramping up military expenditures, headed it back up (to about 100% by the time it was handed to President Obama with the economy on the verge of collapse.) (And unusual though a two-headed coin would be — as unusual as two back to back parentheticals — I see President Clinton on the reverse, as, between the Bushes, he reversed course and got the Debt ratio shrinking again.) The two things you learn from the segment are, first, that virtually everyone agrees this would be legal. The Treasury Secretary could actually do it. But it’s the second thing is much more interesting, and takes some thinking through: it would not be inflationary and might very well not roil the financial markets. Only to the extent Congress spent that $1 trillion would it add dollars to the economy . . . and only to the extent the economy were “capacity constrained” would adding those dollars to the economy drive up wages or prices. If the real economy were humming at full employment, appropriating a whole lot of money to rebuild our bridges and schools (say) would drive wages up, as bridge contractors tried to entice construction workers away from the work they were already doing building new homes or skyscrapers — and so on. But in an economy with 23 million un- or underemployed, and so much work that needs doing to keep us competitive, healthy, and secure, we would be insane — let me rephrase, we ARE insane — not to spend that money. Here are the four segments — first Chris’s overview, then the panel discussion. Special shout out to University of Missouri Professor Stephanie Kelton starting at 3:40 of the next to last: “Mint the Coin, a viable option?” INFRASTRUCTURE Fred Campbell: “Please explain how putting billions into infrastructure would shrink our deficit, as you said Friday? Not that I disagree on the concept, it’s just that I think that’s a non-supported claim.” If we put billions into infrastructure, it will shrink the deficit over the long run two ways: first, by sending the economy back into high gear, putting people back to work to pay taxes rather than receive unemployment (etc.). Second, it will make our economy more productive — as, say, building the Interstate Highway System did. A more productive economy has the capacity to generate more tax revenue (and requires a smaller social safety budget) than a weak one. In the very short-term, putting billions into infrastructure might add to the deficit (or might not: once private industry sees it’s happening, hiring and investments might be made in anticipation thereof) . . . but only because of the ridiculous way the government does its accounting: money spent to build a bridge that will last 100 years is accounted for no differently from money spent on ammunition that blows up on first use — necessary though it may be. Or money spent to keep troops deployed in Germany. Or money spent by Congress to defend DOMA before the Supreme Court when the Justice Department refused to.