As a follow up to my point about how I can't get past the Crazy from the Right, here's a good blog post from David Frum, the apostate conservative blogger.  It makes the point that conservatives keep arguing against straw men, extolling the virtues of capitalism vs. socialism, as if there's another side that's proposing full socialist solutions.  The summation line is the one I really liked:

All these questions are raised within the context of an almost universal national commitment to market economics. If we didn't live in a market economy, these questions wouldn't arise in the first place. To answer them by invoking the superior merits of capitalism over socialism is like an auto mechanic answering questions about a malfunctioning car by launching into a speech about the superiority of the automobile over the horse as a means of conveyance.

Exactly.

The American Right's Middle East Peace Plan: The One State Solution

Wow.  This article from an Illinois Republican Congressman really is striking.

It has been 64 years since the United Nations General Assembly approved the Partition Plan for Palestine and the struggle to implement a “two-state solution” began. Today, we are no closer to that end. That reminds me of the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that definition, everyone who continues to cling to the delusion of a two-state solution is insane. There is no such thing as a two-state solution. It cannot work, it has not worked, and it will not work.

That sure is depressing... and I understand where he's coming from.  The Palestinian polity seems so hell-bent on Israel's destruction that the Two State Solution often seems beyond reach.  Israel isn't helping the situation much either by continuing to build settlements in the West Bank, making an eventual Palestinian state unviable.  For me, when confronted with this problem, I like to point to the intractable world problems of my younger days, in Northern Ireland and South Africa- two places in which peace and justice seemed completely hopeless.  Now both places are at relative peace.  Does that mean Israel and the Palestinians are fated to make peace?  No, not at all, but it means it's possible, with enough patience and enough hard work and enough motivation from both sides.

Representative Joe Walsh, however, must disagree- he's given up on peace.  So he's turned to another solution: Israeli dominion over Palestinians forever:

It is time to let go of the Two-state-solution insanity and adopt the only solution that will bring true peace to the Middle East: a single Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.  Israel is the only country in the region dedicated to peace and the only power capable of stable, just, and democratic government in the region.

 But don't worry; the Arabs will be fine with this arrangement:

Those Palestinians who remain behind in Israel will maintain limited voting power but will be awarded all the economic and civil rights of Israeli citizens.

So Rep. Walsh's definition of "democratic government" apparently is not in conflict with a system that denies full voting rights to residents who happen to be Palestinians.  I have a sneaky feeling that the Palestinians might not quite see it that way.

More evidence here that the Republican party in the US, in its zeal to demonstrate its support for Israel, has staked out a position much more extreme than any but the most wacked-out religious zealots in Israel.  I don't think Israel needs friends like Joe Walsh.

Responses to My Wingnut Correspondent- Liberal Spending Edition

So I do have a little addiction problem.  I have this conservative correspondent whom I've never met- well, it might be more accurate to call him a Reactionary than a conservative.  I don't get a chance to talk much with people like Ron, a true Tea Party guy and caricature of the movement, right down to the "covering my ears, don't bother me with facts" method of debate.  He's not a Christian fundamentalist, so I guess in that sense he's not quite the face of the far Right, but he's the closest I've come to.

Anyway, Ron bombards me with the Wingnut emails that ping around his circle, and I spent a lot of energy a while ago refuting them in turn.  Last year the group we were engaged in broke up, which has been a great blessing, as we were just going around in circles in our debates.

But I mentioned my addiction problem: although our larger group is finished, I emailed him a few articles when I just couldn't resist, and now I'm back on his list, receiving a half dozen emails a day with the same old stuff.  I'm getting better at ignoring most of them and shortening my responses to the ones I do answer (this is the Harm Reduction Model, for those of us in the addiction field- I should really be abstinent, but I'm trying to just lower the intensity first).  But this got me thinking: since I want to answer these same old memes as they come across, maybe I could compose some comprehensive blog posts, keep them bookmarked, and just send them back to him every time he sends me the same old point. 

So here's my first attempt.  I received this note today:

When is it enough?

When does an alcoholic get enough alcohol?

When does a drug addict get enough Cocaine?

When does an obese person get enough Food?

When do Democrats get enough of our Dollars?

NEVER!

They are all hooked! When you're hooked it is

NEVER ENOUGH!

The only way to stop the abuse is for US to

TAKE the Alcohol, Drugs, Donuts and Dollars AWAY!

We can do the Dollar part in November,

If we don't they'll take every Dollar,,they can't help it!

(This guy is fond of large font, bold letters, and the color red, though curiously this one wasn't in red)

So I guess the point here is that Democrats specialize in spending tax money, and can't help themselves.  Let's look at the numbers a bit.  Here's a graph of total US federal spending since 1970:

Now it looks to me like there's a pretty steady increase in spending for the most part, with an increase in the trend line during the mid-2000s.  When Republicans were in control of congress and the presidency. 
But that graph is hard to read.  So here's something I had saved from a previous blog post, which lays out the change in government spending during the first terms of the last five presidents:



Now to be fair, presidents shouldn't get all the credit or blame for budgets passed by congress on their watches.  But they ought to get some of the credit/blame, right?  This graph shows that all three Republicans presided over much greater spending growth than the Democrats during their first terms.

But what about the exploding deficits under Obama, you ask? Well, that's not really about government spending- it's about revenue. Here's recent tax receipts:

The Great Recession murdered tax receipts- that's why the deficit is so big. On top of that, taxes have been slashed as part of the stimulus packages that have been passed.

So recent history shows that Democratic presidents sign budgets that grow spending much slower than Republicans do.  In the current environment, Democrats have proposed no big new spending outside of the Affordable Care Act, which is fully paid for through various increased taxes.

So when you look at the evidence, if you want a party that will be more likely to reduce the deficit, it looks like a Democratic president is the way to go.

Now maybe the Republican party has changed.  But keep in mind that Mitt Romney's campaign and Paul Ryan's budget proposals aren't at all specific about the spending cuts they have in mind, outside of slashing programs for the poor.  But to make up for all their very specific and enormous tax cuts for the wealthy, there isn't enough money in social spending to make the math work.  Until their plan has some meat on them, we shouldn't be buying.

"Gay Republican" Becomes an Oxymoron

How could any gay person vote for a Republican?  I mean, look what just happened to this guy:

As the fallout over the resignation of Mitt Romney’s openly gay foreign policy adviser continues today, much of the commentary is centered on the question of whether Romney’s aides pushed Grenell out in response to the uproar among social conservatives over the appointment.
...
“The Romney campaign should have spoken up publicly in defense of Rick against the attacks over the past two weeks,” GOProud’s executive director Jimmy LaSalvia said in an interview with me just now.

“This was an opportunity to send an important message that Mitt Romney wants everybody to get behind him and to support his camapign,” LaSalvia continued. “They let that opportunity pass.”

So the Romney campaign hired an openly gay man to advise on foreign policy issues, and the religious fundamentalist wing of the party took him out.  In the Republican coalition, there's just no place for openly gay people right now.

But what continues to strike me is that GOProud still exists.  I mean, who are these people?  I understand how hard it would be if you strongly believed in low tax rates on rich people but happened to be gay- neither party fits you very well.  But while you'd hate the economic policies of the Democrats, that still seems preferable to voting for a party that says repeatedly that it hates you.

On one hand, I think that if President Obama were stronger on gay issues he might have 100% of the gay vote, but on the other hand I can't imagine it really matters- any gay person who's still in the GOP is completely unhinged.

Why Can't We Say It? Republicans are the Problem

Here's a good piece from the Wapo.

It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.
The post-McGovern Democratic Party, by contrast, while losing the bulk of its conservative Dixiecrat contingent in the decades after the civil rights revolution, has retained a more diverse base. Since the Clinton presidency, it has hewed to the center-left on issues from welfare reform to fiscal policy. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.

I've been pushing this idea for a while, and I remind my readers of two things I've been saying:

1. The Republican party has clearly moved far to the Right on many many issues over the past 15 years, from Climate Change to Taxes to Immigration to Abortion/contraception, etc.  The Democratic party, by contrast, has not moved further Left on any issue except gay rights, and even there it's been very slow.  I've challenged conservative correspondents and the many thousands of readers of this blog to disprove this point, and nobody has even tried.
2. The article I linked to above talks about the filibuster use and how the media should be reminding the public what a huge change in governing this has brought about thanks to unprecedented Republican use of it.  Here I repeat my prediction that if the GOP gains the presidency and the Sentate, and the Democrats start to use the filibuster in the same way the Republicans have for the past three years, the Republicans are just going to end the filibuster entirely and change the rules.  This will be met with much gnashing of teeth by pundits, but it's what Democrats should have done in 2009.  If Democrats somehow hold on to the Senate and presidency, the filibuster needs to be ended, but unfortunately liberals are too lily-livered to do it.

Austerity vs. Stimulus Again

In a (perhaps futile) effort to get past my confirmation bias on economic theory, I've been tracking the relative outcomes associated with western countries that instituted austerity vs stimulus measures. A few months back I was pointed to an article questioning whether the UK had actually done austerity. I was wondering about that in light of this, a news item reporting that the UK is officially in recession again. I searched a bit to see whether I could find whether the country had actually instituted austerity.

So has the UK cut spending in an attempt to balance their budget and promote growth? Yes:

At the start of its term in 2010, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government has announced the biggest cuts in state spending since World War II.

Savings are estimated at about £83bn are to be made over four years. The plan is to cut 490,000 public sector jobs. Most Whitehall departments face budget cuts of 19% on average. The retirement age is to rise from 65 to 66 by 2020.

The budget deficit is about 10% of GDP and unemployment - officially 2.67 million (8.4%) - is at its highest level since 1994.

In the 2012 budget, Chancellor George Osborne announced several measures to ease taxes - including a 5% cut to the top rate of tax and a rise in the personal income tax allowance threshold.

However, he also cut the personal income tax allowance pensioners receive, reduced child benefit and raised taxes on tobacco and other items.

Public anger over the cuts has grown. More than 250,000 people demonstrated in London in March 2011 - the city's biggest protest since the 2003 Iraq war.

Protest camps sprang up in cities across the UK towards the end of 2011, echoing similar "occupy" sit-ins around the world.

Now maybe there's another way to look at the UK's government spending; maybe they didn't really do austerity like this piece says. But if not, this is a strong data point for Keynesian formulations. The UK is a great example to counterpose with the US because over there austerity was not required by anyone (as in Spain or Ireland, where the ECB gave them no choice), and of course the UK has its own currency like the US so monetary options are on the table unlike in the EU.

It's not a perfect comparison of course- for one thing, the US hasn't continued to do stimulus and has endured severe government spending cuts at the state and local levels- but it's still worth watching.

Social Security's Fake Crisis- UPDATED

Digby points me to this article about how the media has changed the shaping of the narrative around Social Security to reflect the talking points of right wingers who are opposed to the program.  It reminds me again about how idiotic the whole debate is around Social Security in the US.

There are lots of problems here that are really hard to solve.  Medicare is projected to break the bank if we can't rein in spending, for example.  But Social Security is easy, and there are a bunch of ways we can take its solvency past 2036 (it doesn't run out of money until then).  We can:

1. Raise the ceiling of contributions for people making more than $106,000 (currently we only pay SS taxes on the first $106K of income- if we raised that to the first $140K we could solve the problem right there, nice and clean- that's my favorite solution).  But if you don't like that, we could:
2. Raise the retirement age
3. Decrease benefits to 80% of current levels
4. Raise the contribution for everyone
5. Means-test the program (my least favorite solution- the program is now for all of us, which helps all of us support it)
6. Some combination of 1-5

So there's just no crisis.  Simply put, there is a problem with many solutions, all of which would work, but all of which have positives and negatives.  Unfortunately, the media and the Common Wisdom inside the beltway keep dragging us through the crisis swamp.

UPDATE: Just stumbled upon this post from Kevin Drum explaining ways to fix social security.