"News of the World" - The Jam
Okay not their greatest song -- Bruce Foxton was no Paul Weller -- but I couldn't resist.
- I know Krugman is a bit of a Johnny-One-Note, but it seems to me that he hits the one note that needs to be hit -- over and over again. I know right now that any kind of major jobs problem is not politically viable. The idiots in the GOP will never go for it. But it seems to me that there is a moral and political imperative to at least present an alternative to the politics of austerity -- which, as this New York Times article points out, is going to leave the country further devastated.
- Part of the political imperative is to send a message to young people that someone actually gives a damn about their daunting economic prospects. As I noted in discussing an unpaid internship the other day with a friend, "unpaid is the new paid." President Obama had a huge leg up with the youth vote in 2008, the kind of phenomenon that can help shape political loyalties for a lifetime. Now, as we have discussed here previously, I fear that no case is being made to this demographic about why they should be voting Democratic for their futures. It would be nice if the President would take a shot at this.
- It does appear that the President is sincerely committed to the deficit cutting line, including changes to the Social Security COLA formula. As both Atrios and Greg Sargent point out, he seemed today to buy into a whole lot of right wing premises regarding the economy and the deficity. I remain baffled by both the politics and the policy of this. Who is the constituency who is going to embrace this move, other than the Pete Peterson types and the clowns on the Washington Post Op-Ed page. As for policy, it is addressing a problem that really doesn't need to be addressed in a setting in which putting this sort of thing on the table strikes me as unwise.
- Fortunately for Obama, there is no deal good enough for the Republicans to accept. I am really beginning to believe that they may well allow the U.S. to default on its debts. It's unbelievable at some level -- an act of perverse destructiveness, but it is clear that Boehner is not in control of the asylum. (The linked article, by the way, seems to have a lot of the rhetorical characteristics of classic Village speak, implying that it is tragic that Boehner cannot bring about these entitlement cuts, which would then free him up to do other great things. Oy.)
- Again, years from now, when people contemplate what the state of the U.S. economy was in mid-2011, it is going to seem astonishing that the debates we were having were over budget cuts and the need to preserve incredibly low level of taxation on the wealthiest Americans.
- When in doubt though, the right wingers can always fall back on racism to rally the faithful.
What say you?
