by David Safier I know the election is over and we can move onto other things. But both Kristel Foster and Cam Juarez, who earned places on the TUSD Board — an unpaid position — by running hard and fighting hard, put a bit of their own money into their races beyond the donations they … Read more
by David Safier Saw this bumper sticker driving home today. It's from Media Research Center, whose website is tellthetruth2012.com. To tell the truth, I don't see any gloating about the biased liberal polls on the site. But there I go, gloating again.
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Talking Points Memo reports that "a representative of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division declined to say Monday whether federal authorities were considering taking action in Maricopa County, Ariz., where Latino voters were allegedly steered towards provisional ballots on election day. DOJ Stays Mum On Arizona Ballot Counting: Civil rights organizations have … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: The Associated Press has called the race for Arizona's 9th Congressional District for Democratic candidate Kyrsten Sinema. Democrat Kyrsten Sinema beats GOP’s Vernon Parker in Arizona’s 9th Congressional District: Former Democratic state Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has been elected to represent a new Phoenix-area congressional district, emerging victorious after a bitterly fought race … Read more
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
I am sure that GOP wordmeister Frank Luntz has a satisfied smile on his face with how the "lamestream" media has has fully bought into his framing of a "fiscal cliff" — it is neither "fiscal," nor is it a "cliff." (I have used the term here, but I always put it in quotes.) We should call it the "austerity crisis" — but that reminds Americans of the errors the European Union has made with austerity measures.
Suzy Khimm at Ezra Klein's Wonkblog explains The fiscal cliff is an austerity crisis:
Reading the headlines this week, you might get the impression that the
country was hurtling towards a huge deficit catastrophe on Dec. 31. From
the front page of Thursday’s New York Times (“Back to Work: Obama Greeted by Looming Fiscal Crisis”) to today’s Wall Street Journal
(“Pressure Rises on Fiscal Crisis”), the rhetoric suggests that the
U.S. is facing a crisis akin to problems that have engulfed Europe. (A
Yahoo headline from 2011: “The U.S. Fiscal Crisis: Just Like Greece, With One Exception.”)
In fact, the problem with the fiscal cliff is precisely the opposite:
The tax hikes and automatic spending cuts that would kick in after Dec
31 would sharply curb our federal deficit through enacting major, sudden
austerity measures that would save the U.S. government about $720
billion in 2013 alone, according to the Bank of America’s estimates,
which would be about 5.1 percent of GDP.
“If we let all of those changes [happen], there would be a sharp
reduction in the budget deficit—in decline in debt to GDP, falling
deficits as a share of GDP,” says Chad Stone, chief economist at the
Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. “It’s all a dream for people
who want really sharp austerity.”
So the reason that the fiscal cliff could push us into another recession in 2013 is because it enacts too much deficit reduction upfront, not too little.