Pelosi: "End the Filibuster!"

Demosthenes: "Damned Straight!"

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has some advice for her Senate counterparts: Try majority rule for a change. Pelosi, in an interview with the Huffington Post, called for an end to the filibuster, which she labeled "the 60-vote stranglehold on the future."

Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that "the Senate has to go to 51 votes, and not 60 votes."

The filibuster, which was not an original element of the Senate, has evolved over the body's history and has only recently become the upper chamber's standard operating procedure. The Senate was designed as a majority-rule institution that allowed for extended debate. Under the Constitution, the vice president is empowered to break 50-50 ties. Such a clause would be wildly out of place if the framers intended for a 60-percent majority to be required.

Senate Democrats are eying January as the time to reform the filibuster, when the Senate convenes a fresh Congress and votes to establish rules. New rules can be approved by a majority vote if the presiding officer, Vice President Joe Biden, allows the vote to go forward. Liberals in the Senate worked hard to reform the filibuster between the 1950s and 1970s, eventually succeeding in reducing the threshold from two-thirds to 60. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Rules Committee, is holding hearings looking into the future of Senate rules and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has endorsed some sort of reform.

Pity this couldn't have happened last year; it would have meant a whole hell of a lot for Americans' health. Then again, it probably should have happened last January; it was pretty obvious even then that the Republicans would be playing the obstructionist game, and that the Dems needed to seize any advantage they had.

As it is, I fear that this will run up against Democratic losses in the Senate; pundits will argue that "the public has said that they want the Republicans to have a greater say"; and Dems are nothing if not knock-kneed when been criticized by pundits. The time to take the advantage was back when they were ascendant.

Still, it's good that Pelosi has gone on the record on this. Considering how effective she's been when compared to her Senate counterparts, her endorsement is a big deal.

(By the by, happy belated Independence Day. I wasn't in a position to wish it until now. But I do wish it, and do still believe that America is an experiment that is worth its tribulations.)

British Treasury "Brace for 40% Cuts"

Well, if the United Kingdom wasn't in a depression before, it'll certainly be in one after this goes down.

Cabinet ministers have been ordered by the Treasury to plan for unprecedented cuts of 40% in their departmental budgets as the coalition widens the scope of its four-year austerity drive.
The eye-watering demand from the chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, was sent this weekend to cabinet colleagues ahead of a week in which ministers will step up emergency cost-cutting across the public sector.

The only departments not included in the Treasury trawl will be health and international development, which have been "ringfenced" for the current parliament. Education and defence will also escape lightly. Alexander has told the education secretary, Michael Gove, and the defence secretary, Liam Fox, to plan for two scenarios – cuts to budgets of 10% at best and 20% at worst over four years. All other departments – including the Home Office, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Transport – have been ordered to produce plans showing the impact of cuts of 25%, and at worst 40%.

Let us remember that this is all in the service of a complete fantasy: the idea that the invisible bond vigilantes will come in and punish the Sterling unless they try to fix budget issues that may hit 30 years from now IN THE MIDDLE OF A DEPRESSION.
(But, of course, Defense will remain untouched.  Since that's just how it works.)

The rich will become richer, and the poor will become desperate. Hell, they'll become homeless:

Ministers were also warned last night that the number of people classed as homeless in Britain could more than double because of "unfair" benefit cuts. The National Housing Federation, the body representing England's 1,200 not-for-profit housing associations, predicts that impending cuts to housing benefit will put a further 200,000 people at grave risk of homelessness and lead to a concentration of social problems in the most deprived areas of the country. Currently 140,000 people are classified as homeless in Britain.

Great. It's Dickensian England with iPads. Everything old is (horribly) new again.

Well, This is Amusing

Sometimes I feel that I should do a wee bit more self-promotion than I do. Though, if I did, amusing little coincidences like this wouldn't crop up as often.

Possibly the most amusing part? The writer mentions Ezra Klein, but clearly doesn't know much about him. If she did, she probably would have learned exactly who inspired him to start blogging in the first place.

America Says "Cut DOD, Not Social Security"

Every so often, I'm pleasantly surprised. Not often, but occasionally. This is one of these times, as a focus group of Americans choose a path to deficit reduction that Washington's big deficit hawks weren't expecting:

President Obama’s deficit commission is moving forward with Social Security and Medicare explicitly in their sights. They got a dry run for how this effort is likely to sell with the public on Saturday as the Peter Peterson funded group America Speaks sponsored a series of 19 "21st Century Town Meetings." It seems that events didn’t quite go as planned.

The exercise was intended to convince people that there were no options other than large cuts to Social Security and Medicare to hit their deficit targets. To ensure this result, the America Speaks crew put together a booklet that exaggerated future budget problems (the exercise was for the year 2025) by assuming a worse budget path than the country is currently facing.

America Speaks also excluded the possibility that the Fed would buy and hold more debt, in effect continuing its current course. This would substantially reduce the interest burden facing the country in 2025. While in normal times this could cause inflation, that is unlikely to be a problem in the foreseeable future. In comparable circumstances, Japan’s central bank has bought an amount of debt nearly equal to the country’s GDP (the equivalent of $14 trillion for the U.S.) and its economy is still facing deflation. There is no reason that the Fed could not follow the same path, unless the goal is to force cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

The America Speaks folks also denied participants the option of reducing public sector health care costs by reforming the U.S. health care system. As they say at America Speaks, everything is on the table, except reforms that would hurt powerful industry lobbies. The America Speaks crew also neglected to mention the Social Security trust fund and that it would have enough assets to pay all benefits through the year 2043, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Given this stacked deck the participants rose up in revolt. They demanded the option to vote on a single-payer type health care system. The idea being to reduce costs by making health care more efficient rather than just cutting services in Medicare and other public sector programs. They also voted overwhelmingly for defense cuts and for every progressive tax option in the book, even though many had been seriously mischaracterized. For example, they listed the potential revenue from a financial speculation tax in 2025 as $30 billion a year even though there is good reason, based on the experience of other countries, to believe that we could raise close to ten times this amount.

I would not have expected this, considering how public opinion and the "acceptable options" are portrayed in the media. Nevertheless, here we are, with ordinary Americans saying "keep the 'entitlements', enact REAL health care reform, and ditch the wars".

It does raise a question, though. Considering these results, how on earth is it that the Dems aren't doing better? Is it because the people are being misled as to the options? Or is it because the Democrats don't understand what Americans actually wants?

"Until the pace of job growth picks up, consumer confidence is not likely to pick up."

You don't say?

The Very Temporary Filibuster

The amusing part about arguments like this one, in the comments thread of one of Yglesias' posts, is that you have so many Dems arguing that the filibuster is respected "out of respect for the institution", and that it means that "you just need sixty votes to pass a bill, face it".

They never admit that this wasn't the case under the Republicans. The Republicans pushed hard against the filibuster all the time, and didn't let the Dems get away with implying that you "need sixty to pass." It has only been the case since the Dems took control.

They also never stop to consider that it will stop being the case if the Republicans take over again. They either will not, or cannot, admit that the Republicans will come down on the filibuster like a ton of bricks. The "sixty to pass" rule will once again become "Democratic obstructionism", the Republicans will once again blame Democrats for not "reaching out" to pass Republican bills, and DINOs like Lieberman and Nelson will once again vote for cloture.

It's a mug's game. The Dems are suckers. They should NEVER stop hammering the Republicans day, after day, after day, NEVER letting up on the idea that the Republicans are abusing the filibuster. They should NEVER accept the idea that "you just need sixty to pass". They should NEVER let up on threats to go "nuclear", even if they don't plan to do it, just to keep the Republicans guessing.

But they'll do all of those things. Rank and file and Congress alike: suckers the lot of 'em.

ARREST THE NERDS!

Are the Toronto police seriously displaying the fake weapons of a Ren Faire participant as proof of the G20 protester's intentions?

Despite the guy having absolutely no connection to the protesters, and using deliberately blunted weapons?

This isn't even evil. It's just pathetic.

The Irish Illustration Of the "Unleashed BS" Theorem

Austerity is supposed to benefit the economy by clamping down on government and "unleashing market forces", right?

Well, Ireland is the proverbial poster child for austerity. It's carved up its budget expenditures. So, how are those unleashed forces looking?

“When our public finance situation blew wide open, the dominant consideration was ensuring that there was international investor confidence in Ireland so we could continue to borrow,” said Alan Barrett, chief economist at the Economic and Social Research Institute of Ireland. “A lot of the argument was, ‘Let’s get this over with quickly.’ ”

Rather than being rewarded for its actions, though, Ireland is being penalized. Its downturn has certainly been sharper than if the government had spent more to keep people working. Lacking stimulus money, the Irish economy shrank 7.1 percent last year and remains in recession.

Joblessness in this country of 4.5 million is above 13 percent, and the ranks of the long-term unemployed — those out of work for a year or more — have more than doubled, to 5.3 percent.

Oh. That sounds horrible.

Well, uh, certainly the market has rewarded Ireland for its austerity, right? For unleashing market forces and clamping down on the dead hand of government and all that?

Despite its strenuous efforts, Ireland has been thrust into the same ignominious category as Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. It now pays a hefty three percentage points more than Germany on its benchmark bonds, in part because investors fear that the austerity program, by retarding growth and so far failing to reduce borrowing, will make it harder for Dublin to pay its bills rather than easier.

Oh. So there has been absolutely no benefit at all. The market was unleashed, and repaid Ireland by biting down and biting hard.
So how do they hope that they'll get out of this?

Now, the government is pinning nearly all its hopes on an export revival to lift the economy. Falling wage and energy costs, and a weaker euro, have improved competitiveness.

Well, hey, it worked for Canada in the 1990s, right? Sure, Canada had its own currency (which dropped like a stone) and used that to export to a surging American economy. Sure, it's literally impossible for everybody to export their way to prosperity, especially now that Americans are no longer the buyers of last resort. Sure, it doesn't seem to be paying any dividends now, and the market appears to be punishing austerity instead of rewarding it.
But if we just believe enough, the market will reward us! Right? Right?

That's why the "unleashed market" thing is BS. It's not economics. It's not even ideology. It's faith. It's Millenialism with math.  And while faith is a nice way to sort out your moral compass and think about your place in the universe, it's no damned way to run an economy.

Krugman sums it up:

The key thing to bear in mind about calls for harsh austerity in the face of a a depressed economy is that such calls depend on two propositions, not one. Not only do you have to believe that the invisible bond vigilantes are about to strike — that you must move to appease markets, even though right now bond buyers are willing to lend money to the United States at very low rates; you must also believe that short-term fiscal cutbacks will in fact appease the markets if they do, in fact, lose confidence.

That’s why the Irish debacle is so important. All that savage austerity was supposed to bring rewards; the conventional wisdom that this would happen is so strong that one often reads news reports claiming that it has, in fact, happened, that Ireland’s resolve has impressed and reassured the financial markets. But the reality is that nothing of the sort has taken place: virtuous, suffering Ireland is gaining nothing.

Of course, I know what will happen next: we’ll hear that the Irish just aren’t doing enough, and must do more. If we’ve been bleeding the patient, and he has nonetheless gotten sicker, well, we clearly need to bleed him some more.

Damned unbelievers.

A (Very) Short Primer on Macroeconomic Policy Analysis

If someone uses the word "unleash", it's bullshit.

(This has been a (very) short primer on macroeconomic analysis.)

Byrd Passes Away at 92

It's too bad. He was living proof that you can transcend your old prejudices and hatreds to become something far greater and nobler. In a country where Republicans and conservatives seem to delight in their prejudices and hatreds, he was a welcome counter-example.

G20 Damage

Just a quick reminder that the monomaniacal focus on deficit reduction at the G20 meeting is going to do more damage, to more people, than a thousand kids with bricks could do with a free hand and a year's supply of Red Bull.

Why Are the Toronto Police Assaulting Journalists?

From the Twitter of Steve Paikin

i was "escorted" away by police so couldn't see how many arrested, but it must have been dozens.
half a minute ago via web

literally more than 100 officers with guns pointing at the crowd. rubber bullets and smoke bombs ready to be fired. rubber bullets fired
1 minute ago via web

so the police just started arresting people. i stress, this was a peaceful, middle class, diverse crowd. no anarchists
3 minutes ago via web

police on one side screamed at the crowd to leave one way. then police on the other side said leave the other way. there was no way out.
4 minutes ago via web

the demonstration on the esplanade was peaceful. it was like an old sit in. no one was aggressive. and yet riot squad officers moved in.
5 minutes ago via web

i can appreciate that the police were on edge today, after seeing four or five of their cruisers burned. but why such overreaction tonight?
6 minutes ago via web

the officer who escorted me away from the demo said, "yeah, that shouldn't have happened." he is correct. there was no cause for it.
7 minutes ago via web

no cameras recorded the assault. and it was an assault.
7 minutes ago via web

a third punched him in the stomach. totally unnecessary. the man collapsed. then the third officer drove his elbow into the man's back.
8 minutes ago via web

the journalist identified himself as working for "the guardian." he talked too much and pissed the police off. two officers held him....
8 minutes ago via web

they repeated they would arrest me if i didn't leave. as i was escorted away from the demonstration, i saw two officers hold a journalist.
9 minutes ago via web

i saw police brutality tonight. it was unnecessary. they asked me to leave the site or they would arrest me. i told them i was dong my job.
10 minutes ago via web

have left the demonstration on the esplanade. have got to a computer. here come a lot of tweets about what i saw.
11 minutes ago via web

i. gone police escor me away
about 1 hour ago via mobile web

weapons are rubber bulles
about 1 hour ago via mobile web

mny arress now. inexplicable ppl say "we wan o go home cops overwhelming crowd
about 1 hour ago via mobile web

Steve Paikin is one of the best-known, most respected journalists in Canada. He moderated their last federal leadership election debate. He has no axe to grind, no ideological agenda; and he is exactly the wrong person to piss off.

So why the hell did the police come within a hairsbreadth of beating the holy hell out of him? And verifiably assault a journalist from the Guardian? Yes, there was violence against property earlier today. Compared to what could have happened, it was almost orderly. But as I said, police overreaction WILL CAUSE ESCALATION.

Up until now, they hadn't. Even the tear gas incident was relatively minor compared to what COULD have happened. They were showing restraint. And now this.

I'm not looking forward to tomorrow.

Welp, They're Rolling Out the Tear Gas

Reading the G20 coverage. Looks like the black bloc is up to their usual thing, smashing windows in Toronto. Looks like the traditional response is about to kick in, too, as the police start firing off the tear gas.

Expect escalation. Twitterers appear to be saying that the black bloc are only about 100 out of the thousands of protesters. But once the relatively peaceful majority starts smelling the tear gas, at least some will decide to join the black-clad anarchists in the violence. This is almost certainly only going to get worse, though Toronto's poor weather this weekend may help diminish things.

What I'm really concerned about is what happens tonight. There is supposed to be some kind of "all night unpermitted dance party". It's not supposed to be a protest, and certainly not a violent protest. But if the police try to clear these guys off the streets, it could get even uglier than what the world is seeing right now.

Once Again, The Right Works the Ref

Wasn't expecting the "ref" to ever be Ezra, of course, but then he goes and shuts down a liberal/centrist mailing list because conservatives lost their shit over it.

That this will not mollify them should go without saying. That much is clear from seeing the fine collection of hypocritical mouthbreathers in the comments who scream about "POST LIBERAL BIAS" while letting throwbacks like Hannity and Limbaugh or Krauthammer pass with a chuckle and a smile.

But, then again, he's a Post reporter now. It wouldn't be the Washington Post if it didn't roll over and show its belly at the slightest Republican whine, now, would it?

Edit: Not that I was ever really a fan of Journolist. It started as a collaborative project with Joe Klein, and that never bodes well. It was probably always doomed, too, since "privacy" on the Internet between people using their real names is about as solid and weighty as a desert cloud. It was likely to be shut down sooner or later.

But damn, Ezra, you didn't need to feed the wildlife when you did it. I mean, you helped give aid and comfort to Jeffrey Goldberg. That should be some kind of misdemeanor offense.

Well, Looks Like the Banks Won

Hey, remember when everybody was defending the insurance-company-handout health care bill by saying that the financial reform bill will be the one where Dems really get to be tough?

Looks like that was bullshit too. Bank stocks are rising at the passage of the financial reform bill, because it don't reform sweet fuck-all.

Just goes to show: never, ever listen to a Dem or a Dem apologist saying "if we compromise now, we'll get more later." They will just keep saying it forever. "Later" will never, ever come.

(Well, a kind of "later" will come. The kind where the Republicans take the country over again because at least their policy incompetence isn't matched by political incompetence. But that's not exactly the "later" they were talking about.)

The Republicans Voted to Let 1.2 Million Americans Starve

Okay, now that we've hit the point where the Republicans are cheerfully voting to kill poor people, can somebody please tell the Dems to KILL THE GODDAMNED FILIBUSTER ALREADY?

The Senate is a broken institution that will be the death of all that America once stood for.

McChrystal's Out

And it would appear that the Earth doth quaketh at his absence.

(Though in Canada for some reason.)

At Least Douthat Has a Rich Inner Fantasy Life

Ross Douthat once again proves two things: that a conservative columnist is no more reliable than a bog-standard  conservative blogger, and that you can tell any story about your intellectual opponents you wish, if you're willing to make every thing up along the way.

There isn't much there that he substantiates, and even less that makes sense. His descriptions of liberals comes right out of his own head, and his prescription for America's problems—principally caused by his own conservative doctrines—sound exactly like the kind of crap that got everybody into this mess in the first place.

Like all the best conservative rhetoric, it's rich with projection. A conservative whinging about liberalism's "unfalsifiable" theory would be hysterical were it not tragic, considering his own movement's history of almost cult-like faith in its own doctrines. Pairing it with a complaint about liberals' belief in presidential power is even more insane, considering the hysterical conservative defenses of every Bush era excess in the name of "national security. But the part where he attempted to tie liberal doctrine to foreign policy hawkishness? Honestly, that'll just blow your goddamned head off with sheer force of chutzpah. 

The most fantastic element is his closing:

But it’s here, with the looming fiscal crisis, that the more legitimate liberal fear comes in. Liberals had hoped that Obama’s election marked the beginning of a long progressive era — a new New Deal, a greater Great Society. Instead, from the West Coast to Western Europe, the welfare state is in crisis everywhere they look. The future suddenly seems to belong to austerity and retrenchment — and even, perhaps, to conservatism.

American unemployment is still at 10% thanks to the enduring effects of Bush-era policies and Greenspan's Randroid delusions, the Euro is facing extinction thanks to the German conservative government being unwilling to consider the possibility that Germany's economy isn't the only one worth paying attention to, and the Gulf of Mexico is being stripped clean of life thanks to the overly-cozy relationship between business and government that conservatives cheer with every breath. Every single problem that faces the world can be laid at the feet of conservative doctrine, and the future "belongs to conservativism"?

Ross, with that kind of track record, I certainly hope not. If the near future belongs to conservatism, the time that follows it will probably belong to either the anarchists...

...or the cockroaches.

Israel Drops Blockade on Everything Except "Weapons"

Well, it looks like the flotilla worked:

Israel's government decided Sunday to draw up a list of items banned from Gaza limited to weapons and materials deemed to have military uses and said the easing of the three-year-old blockade of the Palestinian territory would be implemented immediately.

The list of banned goods replaces an old list of allowed items that permitted only basic humanitarian supplies for the 1.5 million Gazans. Under the new system, the government said practically all non-military items can enter Gaza freely.

"From now on, there is a green light of approval for all goods to enter Gaza except for military items and materials that can strengthen Hamas' military machine," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.

The CSM points out that there are still a lot of problems with this, but the fact remains that Israel's policy towards the Gazans was changed as a result of the flotilla. More than that, it was changed as a result of the international outcry that resulted.
So it would appear that the commando raid was an even more disastrous failure than originally anticipated. Not only did it lose Israel the goodwill of almost everybody outside of North America, it led to the Gazans being taken off their "diet".  One can only wonder what will happen next.

Rahm's Quitting...Due To Obama Admin's "Idealism"

If I didn't read it, I wouldn't believe it.

Washington insiders say he will quit within six to eight months in frustration at their unwillingness to "bang heads together" to get policy pushed through.

Mr Emanuel, 50, enjoys a good working relationship with Mr Obama but they are understood to have reached an understanding that differences over style mean he will serve only half the full four-year term. Friends say he is also worried about burnout and losing touch with his young family due to the pressure of one of most high profile jobs in US politics.

"I would bet he will go after the midterms," said a leading Democratic consultant in Washington. "Nobody thinks it's working but they can't get rid of him – that would look awful. He needs the right sort of job to go to but the consensus is he'll go."

A Simpsons quote seems to be appropriate here. "But why now? Why not two years ago?"

He never should have had the job to begin with. The only heads he ever banged were progressive and Congressional reps; if you were a blue dog senator, he treated you like a king. No matter how useless you were.

An official from the Bill Clinton era said that "no one will be surprised" if Mr Emanuel left after the midterm elections in November, when the Democratic party will battle to save its majorities in the house of representatives and the senate.

It is well known in Washington that arguments have developed between pragmatic Mr Emanuel, a veteran in Congress where he was known for driving through compromises, and the idealistic inner circle who followed Mr Obama to the White House.

His abrasive style has rubbed some people the wrong way, while there has been frustration among Mr Obama's closest advisers that he failed to deliver a smooth ride for the president's legislative programme that his background promised.

"It might not be his fault, but the perception is there," said the consultant, who asked not to be named. "Every vote has been tough, from health care to energy to financial reform.

"Democrats have not stood behind the president in the way Republicans did for George W Bush, and that was meant to be Rahm's job."

Yes, it was. But, clearly, Rahm didn't know how to do it. All he knew how to do was water down legislation so much that nobody would give a damn if it passed, not to ensure that people vote for quality legislation. That was the source of the "frustration"; his "pragmatism" is based on little more than a wholesale lurch to the right.

There were sharp differences over health care reform, with Mr Emanuel arguing that public hostility about cost should have forced them into producing a scaled down package. Mr Obama and advisers including David Axelrod, the chief strategist, and Valerie Jarrett, a businesswoman and mentor from Chicago, decided to push through with grander legislation anyway.

And, again, this shows just how blinkered Rahm was. The public wasn't just angry about cost, they were angry about cost and the corporate handout. The public probably would have supported a public option, even if it was pricier—though it wouldn't be—since they wouldn't have thought that their hard-earned money was going to the Dems' elite buddies in the insurance industry. Yes, you would have still had tea partiers screeching about deficits. But anybody in Rahm's position should have figured out that they were never going to pull the "D" lever in the first place. Rahm didn't, but that's why Rahm shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Hell, the guy was only there as a concession to the Clinton faction. That battle is long over, so why not jettison Emanuel? He serves no useful purpose except pissing off progressives, protecting DINOs, and taking credit for what Dean accomplished in 2006. He's a big reason why Obama's situation is "troubled" in the first place.

Good riddance.