Taibbi stumbles close to the truth

In a blog post on Rolling Stone called "Obama Doesn't Want a Progressive Deficit Deal," (go read the whole thing; it's short, I'll wait) Matt Taibbi is both right and wrong in his summary:

I simply don't believe the Democrats would really be worse off with voters if they committed themselves to putting people back to work, policing Wall Street, throwing their weight behind a real public option in health care, making hedge fund managers pay the same tax rates as ordinary people, ending the pointless wars abroad, etc. That they won't do these things because they're afraid of public criticism, and "responding to pressure," is an increasingly transparent lie. This "Please, Br'er Fox, don't throw me into dat dere briar patch" deal isn't going to work for much longer. Just about everybody knows now that they want to go into that briar patch.

I don't think the Democrats would be worse off with most voters either. Some voters will be demagogued no matter what Obama and Congressional Democrats do or don't do. And then there's racism, of course. But the Democrats haven't retreated from bread and butter issues like job creation because they're afraid of "public criticism." They may well be, of course, but they're even more afraid of losing their lifeblood: campaign contributions from Wall Street and the rest of corporate America. That is why Obama and the Democrats enact policies that are pro-rich and pro-business. This is not rocket science.

Irony, Vibe and Erykah Badu

The Angry Black Woman has an interesting post on Erykah Badu's Vibe cover story. ABW clips a great quote from Badu, which I show in a screencap after the cut, along with Vibe's rephrasing of the quote.

Rick Wolff on S&P in the Guardian

A familiar voice in the Guardian on S&P's judgment on US debt. He says there are "two sane responses: laughter and a yawn." My favorite is this paragraph:

The first [reasonable reaction to S&P's announcement] is sheer incredulity. S&P is famous for having issued what Senator Carl Levin (chair of the Senate investigations subcommittee) recently called "inflated credit ratings" prompted by "rampant conflicts of interest" in the US financial industry. Senator Levin named this company a "key cause" of the economic crisis. That is polite-speak for having published misleading information about credit risks and/or having shown monumentally poor judgment in assessing such risks. So, we now should take seriously what this utterly compromised company says? What?!

This nicely summarizes my own first thought when I heard that S&P was issuing a warning on U.S. debt. Please.

In which I pwn Boing Boing. (?)

This post on my beloved BoingBoing irked me:

Philip Greenspun divided the U.S. 2011 federal budget by 100,000,000 and wrote a little parable:

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family's income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

Understanding Congress's solution to the federal deficit problem.

Oy! This is terrible economics.

Understatement of the day, by Mark Thoma

Republicans aren't Exactly Known for Their Willingness to Cooperate:

The news people are telling me that Obama gave a bad speech -- it made Republicans so mad they'll be uncooperative. "Astute observers" are making the same claim.

And they seem to be serious.

Republicans, of course, would never engage in "aggressive partisan attacks," refuse to play unless they get their way, or use other tactics that might poison the well of cooperation.

I'll say.

Chuck Schumer has a letter for me to send to my Congressperson

Here it is:

As an American, I want my representatives in Congress to avoid a government shutdown. That means finding bipartisan compromise.

But bipartisan compromise will not be found in domestic discretionary spending cuts alone.

We need to scour all parts of the budget that contribute to the deficit, not just the parts of the budget that some of us don't like. We need to reset the budget debate to look at the changes we can make that will have the biggest impact on the deficit.

That means looking at things like military spending, agriculture subsidies, and revenue raisers.

Please, don't shut down our government because the debate over the budget got stuck in a rut. Reset it.

Where to begin?

There's so much interesting stuff in this zero hedge post, that you should just go ahead and read the whole thing. I'll wait.

OK! Well, where to begin. The blurb that got me to read the whole article was this one, quoted from the State Department website (click on 'economic'):

Economic conspiracy theories are often based on the false, but popular, idea that powerful individuals are motivated overwhelmingly by their desire for wealth, rather than the wide variety of human motivations we all experience. (This one-dimensional, cartoonish view of human nature is at the heart of Marxist ideology, which once held hundreds of millions under its sway.)