The Centrist Copout

[wheelspinner]

Excellent article here from Paul Krugman. I particularly agree with the bit I bolded at the end.

The Centrist Cop-Out
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.

As I said, it’s not complicated. Yet many people in the news media apparently can’t bring themselves to acknowledge this simple reality. News reports portray the parties as equally intransigent; pundits fantasize about some kind of “centrist” uprising, as if the problem was too much partisanship on both sides.

Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?

The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault.

Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. As you may know, President Obama initially tried to strike a “Grand Bargain” with Republicans over taxes and spending. To do so, he not only chose not to make an issue of G.O.P. extortion, he offered extraordinary concessions on Democratic priorities: an increase in the age of Medicare eligibility, sharp spending cuts and only small revenue increases. As The Times’s Nate Silver pointed out, Mr. Obama effectively staked out a position that was not only far to the right of the average voter’s preferences, it was if anything a bit to the right of the average Republican voter’s preferences.

But Republicans rejected the deal. So what was the headline on an Associated Press analysis of that breakdown in negotiations? “Obama, Republicans Trapped by Inflexible Rhetoric.” A Democratic president who bends over backward to accommodate the other side — or, if you prefer, who leans so far to the right that he’s in danger of falling over — is treated as being just the same as his utterly intransigent opponents. Balance!

Which brings me to those “centrist” fantasies.

Many pundits view taking a position in the middle of the political spectrum as a virtue in itself. I don’t. Wisdom doesn’t necessarily reside in the middle of the road, and I want leaders who do the right thing, not the centrist thing.

But for those who insist that the center is always the place to be, I have an important piece of information: We already have a centrist president. Indeed, Bruce Bartlett, who served as a policy analyst in the Reagan administration, argues that Mr. Obama is in practice a moderate conservative.

Mr. Bartlett has a point. The president, as we’ve seen, was willing, even eager, to strike a budget deal that strongly favored conservative priorities. His health reform was very similar to the reform Mitt Romney installed in Massachusetts. Romneycare, in turn, closely followed the outlines of a plan originally proposed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. And returning tax rates on high-income Americans to their level during the Roaring Nineties is hardly a socialist proposal.

True, Republicans insist that Mr. Obama is a leftist seeking a government takeover of the economy, but they would, wouldn’t they? The facts, should anyone choose to report them, say otherwise.

So what’s with the buzz about a centrist uprising? As I see it, it’s coming from people who recognize the dysfunctional nature of modern American politics, but refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the one-sided role of Republican extremists in making our system dysfunctional. And it’s not hard to guess at their motivation. After all, pointing out the obvious truth gets you labeled as a shrill partisan, not just from the right, but from the ranks of self-proclaimed centrists.

But making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.




nyti.ms/qxbmjN

[Pax]

This country's jacked. Politicians can get away with actually admitting they lied and no one calls them on it. The media -- mainstream AND conservative -- ignores presidential candidates they simply don't like, even if polling shows them doing well. Various conservative narratives go virtually unchallenged.

[patchoulli]

Mainstream media IS conservative.
I agree with Krugman and have for a long time. Not only is the problem Republican extremism but I actually feel it has almost everything to do with the fact Obama is black. Why else would they say absolutely no to just about everything he offers? A few of them might not realize that his race is what rankles them but I think most of them do know that's what it's all about.
How can anyone say it's all about jobs, which the right did until the left started saying it, and yet cut from the payrolls thousands of teachers, firefighters, police and government workers?
How can Perry want to destroy social security (read privatize) and think that less money in pockets will help the economy?
This type of nonsensical arguments is what makes me think it's all about the color of the prez.

[Pax]

Conservative/liberal is relative.

Bush tried to privatize social security.

[patchoulli]

I think we're farther along in our craziness than we were when Bush ruled.
Just a minute ago read that Obama has now taken SS out of the equation for deficit reduction talks. Political move - he's no longer touching the third rail. Wonder if Perry will let go.

[Pax]

I've given up on our government.

[patchoulli]

Me too. Unfortunately not enough of us have given up so that we could get on with figuring out a solution. Many folks still believe the creeps in DC are working "for" us.

[Pax]

I thought about joining the "American Dream" movement or whatever it's called but they seem to be about just finding ways to soak the rich. That's a problem certainly but all the problems of the nation aren't going to be solved by dinking with the top tax brackets. I'm willing to act but nothing's stepped up that I could get behind. And I'm too busy with vicissitudes of life to start a new movement of my own, entirely aside from lacking the particular knowledge or unique charisma to do so.

[wheelspinner]

Sept 15, 2011 13:54:16 GMT -5 Pax said:

I thought about joining the "American Dream" movement

What's that? New one on me.

[patchoulli]

The American Dream Movement was formed in hope of being a counter to the Tea Party. ADM hopes to become a force as powerful as the Tea Party. The spokesperson for ADM is Van Jones (of ACORN fame).
It isn't all about "soaking the rich". Members do insist that the super rich and corporations pay their fair share. The biggest push right now from ADM is jobs.
I co-hosted one of the first meetings on July 16. There were 25,000 people across the US who met in houses, church basements, etc. to vote on the "Contract for the American Dream". Here's what we came up with.

10 Critical Steps to Get Our Economy Back on Track

I. Invest in America's Infrastructure
Rebuild our crumbling bridges, dams, levees, ports, water and sewer lines, railways, roads, and public transit. We must invest in high-speed Internet and a modern, energy-saving electric grid. These investments will create good jobs and rebuild America. To help finance these projects, we need national and state infrastructure banks.

II. Create 21st Century Energy Jobs.
We should invest in American businesses that can power our country with innovative technologies like wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal systems, hybrid and electric cars, and next-generation batteries. And we should put Americans to work making our homes and buildings energy efficient. We can create good, green jobs in America, address the climate crisis, and build the clean energy economy.

III. Invest in Public Education
We should provide universal access to early childhood education, make school funding equitable, invest in high-quality teachers, and build safe, well-equipped school buildings for our students. A high-quality education system, from universal preschool to vocational training and affordable higher education, is critical for our future and can create badly needed jobs now.

IV. Offer Medicare for All
We should expand Medicare so it's available to all Americans, and reform it to provide even more cost-effective, quality care. The Affordable Care Act is a good start and we must implement it -- but it's not enough. We can save trillions of dollars by joining every other industrialized country -- paying much less for health care while getting the same or better results.

V. Make Work Pay
Americans have a right to fair minimum and living wages, to organize and collectively bargain, to enjoy equal opportunity, and to earn equal pay for equal work. Corporate assaults on these rights bring down wages and benefits for all of us. They must be outlawed.

VI. Secure Social Security
Keep Social Security sound, and strengthen the retirement, disability, and survivors' protections Americans earn through their hard work. Pay for it by removing the cap on the Social Security tax, so that upper-income people pay into Social Security on all they make, just like the rest of us.

VII. Return to Fairer Tax Rates
End, once and for all, the Bush-era tax giveaways for the rich, which the rest of us -- or our kids -- must pay eventually. Also, we must outlaw corporate tax havens and tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. Lastly, with millionaires and billionaires taking a growing share of our country's wealth, we should add new tax brackets for those making more than $1 million each year.

VIII. End the Wars and Invest at Home
Our troops have done everything that's been asked of them, and it's time to bring them home to good jobs here. We're sending $3 billion each week overseas that we should be investing to rebuild America.

IX. Tax Wall Street Speculation
A tiny fee of a twentieth of 1% on each Wall Street trade could raise tens of billions of dollars annually with little impact on actual investment. This would reduce speculation, "flash trading," and outrageous bankers' bonuses -- and we'd have a lot more money to spend on Main Street job creation.

X. Strengthen Democracy
We need clean, fair elections -- where no one's right to vote can be taken away, and where money doesn't buy you your own member of Congress. We must ban anonymous political influence, slam shut the lobbyists' revolving door in D.C., and publicly finance elections. Immigrants who want to join in our democracy deserve a clear path to citizenship. We must stop giving corporations the rights of people when it comes to our elections. And we must ensure our judiciary's respect for the Constitution. Together, we will reclaim our democracy to get our country back on track.

The one thing I wish the movement would do is to include poor people more than they have. I know the middle class is the one being squeezed hardest (I'm in there, I feel it) but strength is in numbers and the poor folks are being squeezed even harder. We need them with us and we should be fighting for them too.

[Pax]

I stand corrected. That sounds pretty good.

My judgement was based on going to their website where they had a way for people to give ideas for what they think the movement should be about. I went through about 40 of them. EVERY SINGLE ONE was about making the rich pay, one way or another. That's what turned me off.

[patchoulli]

Actually, when you get right down to it, the above points mostly ARE about "making the rich pay". The "rich" (oopsie - the "job creators"!) are the ones who control the purse strings and who are balking at helping the economy by paying a little more in taxes.
But we didn't sit around at the meeting and cook up ways to go get the "job creators".

[firefly]

The "rich" being the "job creators"

The "intelligent" being the "job creators"

The "creative" being the "job creators"

All from the cult of Ayn Rand.


Frequently heard:

"No poor man ever offered ME a job!"

Perhaps not, but many a poor man has done a job for you that you could not have done, by yourself, or with the help of others as arrogant and condemnative as yourself.


"The poor are lazy and deserve to be in their station in life.:

And that's why we employ them to clean our houses, cook our food, and care for our children, because we are too lazy to clean our houses, cook our food and care for our children. Would a dollar bill be able to nurse us when we are sick? Would a dividend take away your garbage from the curb?

"Who is John Galt?"

A genius may invent the formula of the most versatile, enduring, and trustworthy steel for railroad tracks. But it will take hundreds of thousands of man hours labor to dig the ore, process the ore, mold the steel, transport the steel, lay the roadbed, attach the steel, connect the cars, drive the engine, to deliver the next load of steel to the new markets.

The Randian concept that only the "creator" deserves the treasures and respect forgets that one man, no matter how great a mind, or how awesome his strength, can NOT a skyscraper build, nay, not even a functional one story movie theater. Not alone.
ff

[Pax]

Another: "The rich deserve their incomes because they take bigger risks."

Response: What's more risky? Sitting in an air conditioned office, or working half a mile underground in a coal mine? How do the incomes compare?

[patchoulli]

"EVERY SINGLE ONE was about making the rich pay, one way or another. That's what turned me off."
"Response: What's more risky? Sitting in an air conditioned office, or working half a mile underground in a coal mine? How do the incomes compare?"
These seem like totally different responses, Pax, but maybe I'm reading the second wrong.
Whachootalkin'bout?

[Pax]

It'll make more sense when you realize that comment went with reply #12, not #10.

[wheelspinner]

I think that manifesto looks good, but it has to come with a preparedness to pay for all that. My observation of the USA over the last 10 years that Americans are viscerally opposed to paying taxes for anything other than "supporting the troops", which is code for imposing American power on the rest of the world. It's not an attractive, or even sensible, attitude, and I doubt that it will ever be possible to turn the USA into anything other than an entrepreneurial society where those who can't keep up eat the dust of the successful, or starve. The USA will never be Scandinavia.

[patchoulli]

At the meeting I co-hosted there were 9 in attendance. (Sadly, there were 25 who signed up to attend). All 9 agreed we would not be adverse to having our taxes raised if there was a guarantee the monies would be used for the items listed in the contract. All 9 agreed we should bring home the troops and close most US bases in other countries.
Eight of us called ourselves progressives/Democrats and one is a libertarian.
Not all Americans are against paying taxes but it would be nice if the rich and corporations paid their fair share and the money was used for things other than war.

[wheelspinner]

I'm sure there are heaps of Americans who would indicate a willingness to pay more taxes, provided ..... (fill in wish list here)

The problem is getting consensus on what the provisos should be.

And then the fear campaigns would start.

I think we all know just how effective our mass media are these days at getting people to change their minds with vacuous fear campaigns, and influencing them to vote against their own interests. A disturbingly large portion of Americans think Obama is a socialist closet Muslim who wasn't born in the USA. That's not based on fact.

Here we have an Opposition leader whose political discourse consists solely of donning a hard hat and reflective vest every day and visiting some shop or factory and mindlessly repeating memes like "toxic tax" and "stop the boats". The media give him all the air time he could dream of and do not subject him to any critical analysis at all. Because of this free ride, he has the Government on the ropes, with approval less than 30%. think about that. The government that saw us throught the GFC better than any other advanced economy is considered an inferior economic manager to a bloke who runs around screaming sound bites all day.

Paul Keating summed up Abbott brilliantly: "his policy is give me the job or I'll wreck the place". We will vote in the wrecker, because by and large we are a stupid people who don't know when we are well off and can't tell that the political circus in front of us is not being run for our benefit.

I feel the USA is the same way. People will be manipulated into voting for things like tax cuts for people who don't need them, dismantling social services that they will need some day and paying for wars they have no business in because a bunch of clowns put on an entertaining show for them.

[patchoulli]

"People will be manipulated into voting for things like tax cuts for people who don't need them, dismantling social services that they will need some day and paying for wars they have no business in because a bunch of clowns put on an entertaining show for them."
That's pretty much the way it's been for a while now. For sure ever since 911. And now we actually have a guy running for president who wants his state to secede from the US. I'm not sure what that will mean if he's prez!
The dumbing of the American citizen has been a wild success. We've been fed crap all our lives through the big money interests who control the media. There are only a few left who seem to be able to see past the shiny objects and form their own opinions. They have no sway over the political process because there aren't enough of them. Sad.

[Pax]

Read the polls... Americans believe in raising taxes and cutting spending, but only if it's on the other guy.

[patchoulli]

The polls say Americans want to make sure the rich and corporations pay their fair share. You sound like you have a problem with the rich paying more tax. What is the problem with that?

[wheelspinner]

Sept 19, 2011 2:54:05 GMT -5 patchoulli said:

The polls say Americans want to make sure the rich and corporations pay their fair share. You sound like you have a problem with the rich paying more tax. What is the problem with that?

They say there is only one poll that counts - on Election Day.

In 2010, a vast swathe of Americans swept into government a bunch of pople whose main aim is to nobble government. They fell for all the socialism boogeyman talk and elected people who clearly do not support the things they themselves say they want in opinion polls. The end result is that the government of the USA is dysfunctional, and is dragging down not just your country, but the rest of us as well.

There is every sign that the same thing will happen in 2012.

[patchoulli]

Well they voted them in and now they hate them. Go figure.
Here's a recent poll.

www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/CBSNYTPoll_Congress_091611.pdf

I don't know what is going to happen in 2012. It's scary to think of any of the presidential candidates on the right winning and almost as scary to think of Obama being it again.
Not much choice anymore.

I agree with you on too many Americans failing to see past the smoke and mirrors. We have become mentally flabby and we have no honest leaders. Not a good combination.

[Pax]

The polls say Americans want taxes raised, but not on themselves. They want spending cut, but not on anything that will cause them to lose services they personally use, or to pay more.

I never said we shouldn't tax the rich. What I DO say is that taxing the rich isn't enough. We ALL must sacrifice, and we're ALL in denial about that, and we have "leaders" of both parties desperate to feed that denial because they believe that if they do otherwise they will lose their jobs, and they're almost certainly right.

[Pax]

ps., when you say, "I agree with you on too many Americans failing to see past the smoke and mirrors," you make the people into passive victims. I say they're complicit.

[patchoulli]

How are they complicit?

[Pax]

As I said, "The polls say Americans want taxes raised, but not on themselves. They want spending cut, but not on anything that will cause them to lose services they personally use, or to pay more."

[patchoulli]

I want rich folks to pay at least the same tax rate I do, preferably more. I want capital gains to be taxed at a rate comparable to my income taxes. I want corporations to pay taxes. I would be willing to pay more taxes if someone will guarantee it won't be used for war and if it would pay for Medicare for all.
The polls you mention sound almost as if they're from two different factions. Who are these Americans? What polls are you referring to?

[Pax]

You can pay taxes but you don't get to specify what they'll be used for. If you want to make sure they don't get used for wars, vote for people who won't use them for wars. Otherwise it's part of democracy, compromise, and most especially, the privilege of living in a pluralistic society that we have to accept that sometimes the spending priorities of people we don't agree with get satisfied.

As for polls -- In a poll they will ask, "should we cut spending," and the majority answer is yes. Then in the SAME poll they ask questions like, "should we cut the mortgage interest deduction," "should we cut federal education grants," "should we cut medicare," "should we cut social security," "should we cut the earned income tax credit," and majorities in every case is NOT to cut any of those things.

Bottom line: Stuff that looks great in concept looks lousy when it comes to the details. People are prepared to cut spending when it's mentioned in the abstract, sure. They're just not prepared (yet) for what that really MEANS to them and their families, and in their denial will vote for anyone who will tell them that, no, they won't have to feel the bite after all. There are other forces involved sure, but are we REALLY that surprised that our leaders behave the way they do, given this?