The Arizona Republic engages in ‘pundit’s fallacy’

June 4, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Steve Benen posted about Another Edition of the Pundit’s Fallacy:

A while back, Matthew Yglesias coined the term “Pundit’s Fallacy,” which refers to the “belief that what a politician needs to do to improve his or her political standing is do what the pundit wants substantively.” We see this happen just about any time political writers give “recommendations” to those running for office and reelection. Today’s deployer of the aforementioned fallacy is the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin.

Benen goes on to discuss how the Washington Post's far-right blogger Jennifer Rubin "giving 'advice' to someone who you think ought to lose, and to have that advice be for him to capitulate to his political opponents, is not advice in the normal sense, but some kind roundabout way of expressing your substantive views."

This applies equally well to the conservative editorial pages of The Arizona Republic. Let's be clear: Willard "Mittens" Romney could be "caught with a dead hooker or a live boy," as the old saying goes, and the Arizona Republic is still certain to endorse Romney for president this fall (have they ever endorsed a Democrat?)

So this editorial opinion in the Arizona Republic on Sunday suggesting that Democrats need more DLC/Third Way corporatist Blue Dogs who will sell out the Democratic Party's values and constituencies to serve the interests of corporations and to roll over and give the Tea-Publicans everything they want falls into the category of "Pundit's fallacy" (it reads like Robert Robb's usual tripe). Free-market Dems push back:

The impetus behind all the Democratic push-back against the "vampire" imagery is not hostility to Obama's re-election. Every one of the campaign critics bracketed his comments with support for the president.

More accurately, their comments represent the return of an aggregation of Democrats who do not reflexively view business or free enterprise as a bad thing. That was a perspective promoted by the Democratic Leadership Council, a pro-business wing of the Democratic Party that enjoyed much popularity during the Clinton years, including from Clinton himself.

Led by famous "third-way" advocate Al From, the DLC backed the 1996 welfare reforms and some school-choice plans, and opposed a government-directed single-payer health-care plan. It was viewed as enthusiastically pro-business.

It nearly dissolved in 2011 as the Democratic Party became increasingly infused with a view of business and free markets as malevolent and undertaxed.

The reaction of these important Democrats to the anti-market sentiments of the "vampire" ads is refreshing. If it leads to a resurrection of a more business-friendly party, all the better.

Paul Krugman: The GOP strategy is ‘a gigantic con game’

June 4, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Paul Krugman tells it like it is in the New York Times today, This Republican Economy:

What should be done about the economy? Republicans claim to have the answer: slash spending and cut taxes. What they hope voters won’t notice is that that’s precisely the policy we’ve been following the past couple of years. Never mind the Democrat in the White House; for all practical purposes, this is already the economic policy of Republican dreams.

So the Republican electoral strategy is, in effect, a gigantic con game: it depends on convincing voters that the bad economy is the result of big-spending policies that President Obama hasn’t followed (in large part because the G.O.P. wouldn’t let him), and that our woes can be cured by pursuing more of the same policies that have already failed.

For some reason, however, neither the press nor Mr. Obama’s political team has done a very good job of exposing the con.

What do I mean by saying that this is already a Republican economy? Look first at total government spending — federal, state and local. Adjusted for population growth and inflation, such spending has recently been falling at a rate not seen since the demobilization that followed the Korean War.

["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.]

How is that possible? Isn’t Mr. Obama a big spender? Actually, no; there was a brief burst of spending in late 2009 and early 2010 as the stimulus kicked in, but that boost is long behind us. Since then it has been all downhill. Cash-strapped state and local governments have laid off teachers, firefighters and police officers; meanwhile, unemployment benefits have been trailing off even though unemployment remains extremely high.

Over all, the picture for America in 2012 bears a stunning resemblance to the great mistake of 1937, when F.D.R. prematurely slashed spending, sending the U.S. economy — which had actually been recovering fairly fast until that point — into the second leg of the Great Depression. In F.D.R.’s case, however, this was an unforced error, since he had a solidly Democratic Congress. In President Obama’s case, much though not all of the responsibility for the policy wrong turn lies with a completely obstructionist Republican majority in the House.

Massachusetts under the microscope: ‘We’ve heard it all before’

June 4, 2012

Posted by AzBliueMeanie:

The Obama campaign released a minute-long ad today in nine swing states making the most extensive paid-media response yet against “Romney economics” (aka "Bush on steroids.")

Check out RomneyEconomics.com.

Video below the fold.

George Will from the one percent: Let’s you (non-union) and him (union) fight

June 4, 2012

by David Safier If you listen to George Will, there's a new elite in town: union members, or, as Will calls them, "the privileged." This is the battleground conservatives have been preparing for twenty years, at least.Their fear is, low paid workers will look at unionized workers and say, "I want the same kinds of … Read more

Preliminary Guide to AZ’s Congress And Legislative Elections

June 3, 2012

By Craig McDermott, cross-posted, by request, from Random Musings

OK, this post will be long and more than a little dry (kind of like AZ's
summers), but here are the sources of info –


From the Arizona Secretary of State:

– Voter registration counts in the new Congressional districts, as of April, here
– Voter registration counts in the new legislative districts, as of April, here
– Listing of candidates who have submitted nominating petitions for the Congressional, legislative, and statewide primary elections, here; Note – one or more candidates will have their candidacies challenged in some way or will withdraw or will somehow end up not on the ballot.  Right now, I can't predict which candidates will be impacted, so all analysis will be based on conditions "as is".


In the following analysis, I've stuck with practical considerations; my opinion of policy considerations can be summed up thusly – if an Arizona Republican is able to make it through a primary, he/she can safely be assumed to be anti-society and anti-Arizona's future.

To those who hoped last year's redistricting processes would help bring some balance to Arizona's political scene:

First the good news – it helped…

Now the bad news – …but not much.  A majority of districts remain so uncompetitive that the either the race is uncontested or will effectively be decided in the primary.

Gabby Giffords coming home for GOTV

June 3, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Announcement from the Ron Barber for Congress campaign: Gabby Giffords is coming home to Tucson to help get out the vote for Ron Barber in Southern Arizona. When:Saturday, June 9, 2012, 5-8 pm Where:The Rialto318 East Congress StreetTucson This election is important. It’s the choice between Jesse Kelly’s extreme ideas and Ron … Read more

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.