Month: October 2013

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

A fascinating headline in the Washington Post today: Business
groups stand by Boehner, plot against tea party:

[I]nfluential organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are
standing behind Boehner. More importantly, Boehner’s friends in the
business community are getting ready to take sides in a few Republican
primary races against tea party candidates in Michigan, Idaho and
Alabama who could cause the House speaker more trouble.

* * *

Now that the shutdown and debt-ceiling fight have exposed a rift in
the Republican Party, lines are being drawn in the battle for control:
On one side, there is Boehner and his circle of powerful business
allies. On the other, tea party lawmakers and activist groups such as
Heritage Action and the Club for Growth.

“I don’t know of anybody
in the business community who takes the side of the Taliban minority,”
said Dirk Van Dongen, longtime chief lobbyist for the National
Association of Wholesaler-Distributors who has known Boehner since the
lawmaker’s first election.

In the hallways of the country’s leading trade associations, there is
talk about taking on tea party Republicans in at least three states.

Just three? Fight them everywhere they are!

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Ezra Klein has a couple of good reports today on the bipartisan Senate deal to end the government shutdown and to raise the federal debt ceiling in his Wonkbook post, and this: If
Ted Cruz didn’t exist, Democrats would have to invent him:

The culmination of the [Cruz] strategy, today, is that Republicans are reopening the government and raising the debt ceiling in return for…nothing.

There are no policy concessions from the Democrats (income
verification is already part of Obamacare). There are no procedural
concessions from the Democrats. Just the opposite, in fact.

Democrats managed to get the budget conference they've been pursuing
for six months. They got a CR of the length they wanted and ending
before the next sequestration cuts rather than six-month CR that Sen.
Susan Collins proposed. They got a debt-ceiling increase all the way
into February. This is far beyond what Democrats thought possible on
Sept. 30.

But the strategy Ted Cruz managed to force on the GOP was so suicidal
that Democrats felt comfortable forcing Republicans to cave completely.

Laura Conaway prepared a different chart for the Rachel Maddow Show on Wednesday night. The GOP's epic defeat in one chart:

Posted by Bob Lord

Last night, I posted on the gibberish from Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller on inequality. Essentially, Shiller believes inequality is the most important problem we face, but he thinks we should wait for it to get worse before taking action. 

Contrast that to Joe Stiglitz, also a Nobel Prize winner. In a NY Times op-ed, Inequality Is A Choice, Stiglitz is clear on how we arrived at where we are today:

American inequality began its upswing 30 years ago, along with tax decreases for the rich and the easing of regulations on the financial sector. That’s no coincidence. It has worsened as we have under-invested in our infrastructure, education and health care systems, and social safety nets. Rising inequality reinforces itself by corroding our political system and our democratic governance.

He outlines the devastating impact of inequality: