Paul Krugman destroys Mr. Etch-a-Sketch, Eric Ferhnstrom

June 3, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

If Willard "Mittens" Romney is going to try to sell his "Bush on streroids" economic plan to the voters, he should know better than to send his campaign spokesman Mr. Etch-a-Sketch, Eric Ferhnstrom, to do battle with a Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman.

As you would expect, Paul Krugman destroyed the economic nonsense of Ferhnstrom (and of the patrician prevaricator, George Will, as well) on This Week with "Mr. Snuffleupagus." On 'This Week,' Paul Krugman Destroys Romney Surrogate, Calls Ryan Plan a 'Fraud':

Unfortunately for Eric Ferhnstrom, a senior campaign advisor to the Romney campaign, Paul Krugman (who's been on a tear lately) was on "This Week" Sunday morning to dismantle all of his vapid talking points.

First, he pointed out that government spending has been cratering since 2010 — and openly mocked the idea that Mitt Romney has an answer to unemployment.

KRUGMAN: Well, the economy is weak. It's not terrible, but it's weak. The bitter irony here has to be for Obama, certainly for people like me, is that if the Republican answer is "let's slash spending, let's have low taxes," that's actually the policy we've been following. It's amazing, actually. Especially if you look at the last couple of years, what we've actually seen is sharply…

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me show you — we have a chart in your blog this morning.

["The chart below makes a first stab at such a calculation, but requires some further comment; when all is said and done, the role of government hasn’t actually grown." See The Level of Government Spending.]

KRUGMAN: Yeah, this is…

STEPHANOPOULOS: We created it. It shows the point you're making.

KRUGMAN: Yeah, this is real government spending, so it's federal, state and local combined, deflated, you know, adjusted for population growth and inflation, and it is plunging. It's plunging mostly because of cutbacks at the state and local level, because the aid that they were receiving in the stimulus has run out, but also because unemployment benefits have been expiring because Congress won't — you know, Republicans in Congress won't extend them.

So in effect – and, by the way, if you extend that chart backwards, there's been nothing like this since the demobilization after the Korean War. We're actually practicing government austerity on a scale that we haven't seen in 60 years. It's not the president's policy. In effect, we've already got the policies that Republicans say they will impose if they take the election, and yet, of course, it may lead to the defeat of this president.

Ivory tower political theory meets cold hard reality: the false premise of the ‘top two primary’ system

June 3, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

"There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos." – Jim Hightower

The Arizona Republic today has yet another opinion extolling the supposed virtues of the "top two primary," which is currently an inititiative drive in Arizona, but is a reality that will get its first test in California in its primary this Tuesday. (More about that later).

Media villagers love this supposed panacea for what the media villagers regularly portray as a broken political system, blaming the two major political parties. The rise in "no party preference" voters, the media villagers tell us, is evidence that our political system is broken.

The media villagers — most of whom register as independent/no party preference to maintain the illusion that they have no political bias — put "independent" voters up on a pedestal and extoll the virtues of independent voters as being the ideal voter. Some media villagers go so far as to argue that political parties have outlived their usefulness and we no longer need them.

And this is why media villagers should not have the power and influence that they enjoy over our politics and electoral process. Their "conventional wisdom" is always wrong.

James Fallows wrote this post at The Atlantic awhile back in response to the "Goodbye to All That" essay by Mike Lofgren, a Republican staffer on the Hill for nearly 30 years, who retired last year. 'People Don't Realize How Fragile Democracy Really Is' – The Atlantic:

More fundamentally, Lofgren argues that today's Republicans believe they are better off if government as a whole is shown to fail, not just this Democratic Administration. Republican hard-liners might seem to have "lost" the debt-ceiling showdown, in that they wound up even less popular than the Democrats are. But in the long view, Lofgren says, unpopularity for anyone in Congress, including their party's leaders, helps the Republicans: "Undermining Americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy," because it buildings a nihilistic suspicion of any public effort, from road-building to Medicare to schools. (Except defense.) As I say, read it for yourself.

When you're done, consider this message I received today, from another former Congressional staffer whose tenure overlapped almost exactly with Lofgren's. This too is worth reading carefully, for it advances an important complementary point:

Like Mike Lofgren, I am a retired Congressional staffer who worked for a House Member from 1985 until January of this year. Unlike Lofgren, I did not retire voluntarily; my boss, a moderate Democrat, lost his race for re-election last November. I found myself agreeing with virtually everything in Mike's article and immediately forwarded it to a bunch of my friends, some of whom remain working on the Hill.

Privately, many of us who have worked in Congress since before the Clinton Administration have been complaining about the loss of the respect for the institution by the Members who were elected to serve their constituents through the institution. I don't think people realize how fragile democracy really is. The 2012 campaign is currently looking to be the final nail in the coffin unless people start to understand what is going on.

One thing that especially resonated with me about Mike's piece is the importance of "low information" voters. The mainstream media absolutely fails to understand how little attention average Americans really pay to what goes on in all forms of government. During our 2008 race, our pollster taught me (hard to believe it took me 24 years to learn this) that the average voter spends only 5 minutes thinking about for whom to vote for Congress. All the millions of dollars of TV ads, all the thousands of robo-calls and door-knocks, and it all comes down to having a message that will stick in the voters' minds during the 5 minutes before they walk into the voting booth.

The media likes to call this group "independents," which implies that they think so long and deeply about issues that they refuse to be constrained by the philosophy of either party. There may be a couple of people out there who fit that definition, but those are not the persuadable voters campaigns are trying to capture. Every campaign is trying to develop its candidate into an easy-to-remember slogan that makes him or her more appealing than the other guy. Actually, because negative campaigning is so effective, they are more often trying to portray the opponent as more objectionable ("I guess I'll vote for the crook because at least he won't slash my Medicare).

Massachusetts under the microscope: Mittens’ broken promises

June 2, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Does anyone else find it curious that when a Democrat from the Bay State runs for office, all you ever hear from the media is "Taxachusetts." Willard "Mittens" Romney was governor of "Taxachusetts" and I'll bet much of the public is not even aware that he was governor since Mittens is running away from his record as governor.

Mittens was governor for one term – Massachusetts media say that he had already started running for president halfway through his term. At least the Quitta from Wasilla, Sarah Palin, had the good graces to resign and give up the paycheck.

If you listen to Mittens running for governor in 2002, he said exactly the same things that he is saying now — he is reading from the same script (or lines that he has memorized). It's like a broken record.

Romney ran for governor of Massachusetts promising more jobs based upon his alleged business acumen at Bain Capital, that he would reduce the debt, and promised smaller government. By the time Romney left office, Long-term debt had Increased more than $2.6 billion, taxes and fees had Increased more than $750 million per year, and the size of government had grown. 

Massachusetts had fallen behind almost every other state in job creation. As Romney’s opponents have frequently, and correctly, noted, Massachusetts ranked 47th in job growth over the entirety of Romney’s term. FactCheck.org : Romney’s Shaky Job Claims.

We already know from experience what will happen with Romney economics. It didn't work then, and it won't work now. Especially since the Romney economic plan is "Bush on steroids." David Cay Johnston: "Romney's Tax Plan is George W. Bush on Steroids" – (YouTube). If you liked the Bush Great Recession, you're going to love the economic ruin that Mittens Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan have in store for you.

The Obama campaign has put Mittens' record in Massachusetts under the microscope this week. Here is the ad "Broken Promises: Romney's Massachusetts Record" (below the fold).

A subtle shift in coverage of the Rio Nuevo Board at the Star

June 2, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

OK, so this story is more than a week old, but you may have missed its importance. For several years now, the Arizona Daily Star has gone out of its way to trash City of Tucson government. A certain editor and what David Safier tagged The Brodesky/O'Dell tag team (AKA, the B&O Journalistic Railroad) had all the answers, and the City could never do anything right.

More importantly, the Star gave a platform to the mouthpiece for the state legislature-imposed Rio Nuevo Board, Jonathan "Payday" Paton, to also trash the City of Tucson government. There was not a whole lot of separation between what the Rio Nuevo Board had to say through Paton and what the Arizona Daily Star had to say.

But there has been a subtle shift in coverage of the Rio Nuevo Board at the Star of late. The John Munger-Jodi Bain-Jonathan Paton triumvirate that controls the state legislature-imposed Rio Nuevo Board has spent all of its time on litigation and investigations rather than producing any tangible results since it was imposed on us.

The breaking point seems to have been a second notice of claim in anticipation of litigation filed a couple of weeks ago. City drops mediation plan with Rio Nuevo:

The City Council voted Tuesday afternoon to end all mediation with the Rio Nuevo District after receiving a $25 million notice of claim against the Tucson Convention Center.

The vote was calculated to force the dispute between the city and state-appointed Rio Nuevo Board over who owns what property and owes what money to go to a judge to decide.

"If trying to talk to (the Rio Nuevo Board) about putting $1 million into the TCC generates a new $25 million notice of claim," said City Attorney Mike Rankin, "I think my responsibility is to tell the mayor and council that there is no reason to spend time in mediation."

Rankin said his next step will be to advise Rio Nuevo that the mediation is off, "and that any offers that we had put on the table are no longer on the table. And we'll let the litigation play out."

Legislative District 9 (The New One) Democratic Representative Candidates’ Debate

June 2, 2012

By Michael Bryan We had a great discussion of the issues facing Arizona Wednesday evening at Drinking Liberally at The Shanty, here in Tucson. I moderated a debate among the three Demcratic candidates for State House in LD9: Dustin Cox, Mohur Sihdwa, and Victoria Steele. We convered a lot of ground, and the resulting event … Read more