Paul Krugman: SHAMELESS in the Senate (and LAME Dems have NO forceful response)....
Well, "THANKS!" to Paul Krugman's editorial in this week's New York Times. Krugman, of course, is the "Liberal" Princeton Economics professor that the New York Times choose to replace editorialist and editor A.M. Rosenthal when he was unwillingly packed off to retirement. During the Nixon administration's war on war-opponents and Democrats, Rosenthal was an outspoken advocate FOR Freedom Of The Press, and actively supported the Times' publishing of "The PENTAGON PAPERS," which was simply a compilation by the Department of Defense of their errors, mistakes, and miscalculations of the Vietnam war to date. Ironically, at the time that President Nixon was trying to arrest and imprison ANYONE for, A.) "leaking" government secrets such as The Pentagon Papers (that would be Daniel Ellseberg); and B.) ARRESTING ANYONE for opposing the war at all; one of the President's most vocal SUPPORTERS was WILLIAM SAFIRE, who in the future would join "Abe" A.M. Rosenthal as an editorialist (commentator) for the NEW YORK TIMES.
During the Clinton administration, far from preaching "Executive Privilege" as he had while a Nixon speechwriter, Safire despised the Clintons, and went after them tooth-and-nail, relentlessly in every column, for years. His columns degenerated to black farce, as for example when he wrote in one column "INDICTMENTS [against the Clintons for some imagined pre-Monica 'crime'] COMING DOWN THIS WEEK." In another INFAMOUS editorial, Safire wrote, AND HIS NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS PUBLISHED IN BOLD HEADLINES, "Hillary Clinton IS A CONGENITAL LIAR."
These slanderous, slurring, smearing, defaming headlines were, mind you, in the days long before Monica Lewinsky's extortion-dress ever hit the scene, back in the days of relative PEACE and PROSEPERITY for the USA under the Clinton administration.
Yet still the Times' farcical duo, SAFIRE and ROSENTHAL, jabbed their knives and skewers into the Clintons and Democrats EVERY DAY, with EVERY ARTICLE. The atrocious Times JOINED IN the fun, sending out other writers to imply that Clinton was guilty of trading missile and nuclear secrets to China, and convicting WEN HO LEE of TREASON without any actual conviction. This past week, Lee "won" about $1.85 million from the Times, the WASHINGTON POST, and other major media corporations for their DEFAMING his character with their INACCURATE, BIASED, MISLEADING, and DEFAMATORY reporting,
But in a TYPICAL example of how the corrupt and savage US judicial system works, the media's fine for defaming Lee was ONLY $1.85 million. This is probably less than they paid defending against Lee's case, and is certainly CHUMP CHANGE for any one of those corporations (TimesCo, PostCo, ABC, etc).; much less all of them together.
Which brings us back to Krugman. The Safire-Rosenthal duo were SO FARCICAL, SO DEFAMATORY, so Brown-Shirt thuggish, that having accomplished their newspaper JIHAD against the Clinton administration, they both had to be packed off to the farm. Casting about for a replacement with at least SOME "liberal" qualifications, the Times settled on Princeton Economics Professor Paul Krugman.
Krugman's articles on monetary policy and the bankruptcies of Latin American and overseas nations was, the Times' editors and publishers thought, "JUST THE TICKET!" to replace Safire or Rosenthal: a token liberal, but as someone well within "The Belly of the Beast" US economic-finance system, Krugman would be presentable and predictable.
NOT! Just how surprised the NYT's editors were at Krugman's OUTSPOKENESS vs. the atricious agenda and economic follies of the Bush Republicans we will never know, but one thing is for sure: any editor at the Times who actually READS one of Krugman's articles CAN BE UNDER NO DELUSION that the Bush-Republican agenda is actually extremely HARMFUL to American society.
To put it in a nutshell, Bush-Republican ECONOMIC POLICY is to TAKE AMERICA AS FAR BACK TOWARDS THE DAYS OF CHATTEL SLAVERY as possible; just as Bush-Republican "MORAL POLICY" (such as the Sen. Frist-Bush 'Marriage Amendment') is to take America as far back to the days of BIBLE THUMPING PREACHERS DEFENDING CHATTEL SLAVERY as possible.
Paul Krugman lends an academic, literate, and economic context to this discussion, that, scratch Mr. Bush and his supporters, and you see those who long for the days of chattel slavery, both as a means of cheap labor, and as a means of "social values", with a hard-core minority of wealthy and powerful lording it over the peons and public, using themes and memes of "Moral Values" to maintain such a system.
Well, enough from us! Below is Mr. Krugman's latest, "SHAMELESS in the Senate", aka "Seeing African-American Katrina Victims FLEE New Orleans is not a MISTAKE from the view of the Bush-Republican Party and the US Senate.... IT IS A DESIRABLE OUTCOME that effectively DISENFRANCHISES a strong Black voting constituency!"
Of course, the murderous Bush-GOP can only push such atrocious policies WITH THE COMPLICITY of "the major media" such as the WASHINGTON POST and the NEW YORK TIMES.
So, as you read Krugman's article, just ask yourself: "If any of Mr. Krugman's assertions are true, WHY AREN"T THEY IN BOLD HEADLINES, supported by other reporter's by-lines, on the front-pages of the New York Times EVERY SINGLE DAY?"
-------------------------------------------------
Paul Krugman: Shameless in the Senate
--The New York Times, June 5, 2006
The Senate almost voted to repeal the estate tax last fall, but Republican leaders postponed the vote after Hurricane Katrina. It's easy to see why: the public might have made the connection between scenes of Americans abandoned in the Superdome and scenes of well-heeled senators voting huge tax breaks for their even wealthier campaign contributors.
But memories of Katrina have faded, and they're about to try again. The Senate will probably vote this week. So it's important to realize that there's still a clear connection between tax breaks for the rich and failure to help Americans in need.
Any senator who votes to repeal the estate tax, or votes for a "compromise" that goes most of the way toward repeal, is in effect saying that increasing the wealth of people who are already in line to inherit millions or tens of millions is more important than taking care of fellow citizens who need a helping hand.
To understand this point, we need to look at what Congress has been doing lately in the name of deficit reduction.
The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which was signed in February, consists mainly of cuts to spending on Medicare, Medicaid and education. The Medicaid cuts will have the largest human impact: the Congressional Budget Office estimates that they will cause 65,000 people, mainly children, to lose health insurance, and lead many people who retain insurance to skip needed medical care because they can't afford increased co-payments.
Congressional leaders justified these harsh measures by saying that we have to reduce the budget deficit, and there's no way to do that without inflicting pain.
But those same leaders now propose making the deficit worse by repealing the estate tax. Apparently deficits aren't such a big problem after all, as long as we're running up debts to provide bigger inheritances to wealthy heirs rather than to provide medical care to children.
And the cost of tax cuts is far larger than the savings from benefit cuts. Under current law — what I once called the Throw Mama From the Train Act of 2001 — the estate tax is scheduled to be phased out in 2010, but return in 2011. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, making repeal permanent would cost more than $280 billion from 2011 to 2015. That's more than four times the savings from the Deficit Reduction Act over the same period.
Who would benefit from this largess? The estate tax is overwhelmingly a tax on the very, very wealthy; only about one estate in 200 pays any tax at all. The campaign for estate tax repeal has largely been financed by just 18 powerful business dynasties, including the family that owns Wal-Mart.
You may have heard tales of family farms and small businesses broken up to pay taxes, but those stories are pure propaganda without any basis in fact. In particular, advocates of estate tax repeal have never been able to provide a single real example of a family farm sold to pay estate taxes.
Nonetheless, the estate tax is up for a vote this week. First, Republicans will try to repeal the estate tax altogether. If that fails, they'll offer a compromise that isn't really a compromise, like a plan suggested by Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, that would cost almost as much as full repeal, or a plan suggested by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, that is only slightly cheaper.
In each case, the crucial vote will be procedural: if 60 senators vote to close off debate, estate tax repeal or something close to it will surely pass. Any senator who votes for cloture but against estate tax repeal — which I'm told is what John McCain may do — is simply a hypocrite, trying to have it both ways.
But will the Senate vote for cloture? The answer depends on two groups of senators: Democrats like Mr. Baucus who habitually stake out "centrist" positions that give Republicans almost everything they want, and moderate Republicans like Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island who consistently cave in to their party's right wing. Will these senators show more spine than they have in the past?
In the interest of stiffening those spines, let me remind senators that this isn't just a fiscal issue, it's also a moral issue. Congress has already declared that the budget deficit is serious enough to warrant depriving children of health care; how can it now say that it's worth enlarging the deficit to give Paris Hilton a tax break?
During the Clinton administration, far from preaching "Executive Privilege" as he had while a Nixon speechwriter, Safire despised the Clintons, and went after them tooth-and-nail, relentlessly in every column, for years. His columns degenerated to black farce, as for example when he wrote in one column "INDICTMENTS [against the Clintons for some imagined pre-Monica 'crime'] COMING DOWN THIS WEEK." In another INFAMOUS editorial, Safire wrote, AND HIS NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS PUBLISHED IN BOLD HEADLINES, "Hillary Clinton IS A CONGENITAL LIAR."
These slanderous, slurring, smearing, defaming headlines were, mind you, in the days long before Monica Lewinsky's extortion-dress ever hit the scene, back in the days of relative PEACE and PROSEPERITY for the USA under the Clinton administration.
Yet still the Times' farcical duo, SAFIRE and ROSENTHAL, jabbed their knives and skewers into the Clintons and Democrats EVERY DAY, with EVERY ARTICLE. The atrocious Times JOINED IN the fun, sending out other writers to imply that Clinton was guilty of trading missile and nuclear secrets to China, and convicting WEN HO LEE of TREASON without any actual conviction. This past week, Lee "won" about $1.85 million from the Times, the WASHINGTON POST, and other major media corporations for their DEFAMING his character with their INACCURATE, BIASED, MISLEADING, and DEFAMATORY reporting,
But in a TYPICAL example of how the corrupt and savage US judicial system works, the media's fine for defaming Lee was ONLY $1.85 million. This is probably less than they paid defending against Lee's case, and is certainly CHUMP CHANGE for any one of those corporations (TimesCo, PostCo, ABC, etc).; much less all of them together.
Which brings us back to Krugman. The Safire-Rosenthal duo were SO FARCICAL, SO DEFAMATORY, so Brown-Shirt thuggish, that having accomplished their newspaper JIHAD against the Clinton administration, they both had to be packed off to the farm. Casting about for a replacement with at least SOME "liberal" qualifications, the Times settled on Princeton Economics Professor Paul Krugman.
Krugman's articles on monetary policy and the bankruptcies of Latin American and overseas nations was, the Times' editors and publishers thought, "JUST THE TICKET!" to replace Safire or Rosenthal: a token liberal, but as someone well within "The Belly of the Beast" US economic-finance system, Krugman would be presentable and predictable.
NOT! Just how surprised the NYT's editors were at Krugman's OUTSPOKENESS vs. the atricious agenda and economic follies of the Bush Republicans we will never know, but one thing is for sure: any editor at the Times who actually READS one of Krugman's articles CAN BE UNDER NO DELUSION that the Bush-Republican agenda is actually extremely HARMFUL to American society.
To put it in a nutshell, Bush-Republican ECONOMIC POLICY is to TAKE AMERICA AS FAR BACK TOWARDS THE DAYS OF CHATTEL SLAVERY as possible; just as Bush-Republican "MORAL POLICY" (such as the Sen. Frist-Bush 'Marriage Amendment') is to take America as far back to the days of BIBLE THUMPING PREACHERS DEFENDING CHATTEL SLAVERY as possible.
Paul Krugman lends an academic, literate, and economic context to this discussion, that, scratch Mr. Bush and his supporters, and you see those who long for the days of chattel slavery, both as a means of cheap labor, and as a means of "social values", with a hard-core minority of wealthy and powerful lording it over the peons and public, using themes and memes of "Moral Values" to maintain such a system.
Well, enough from us! Below is Mr. Krugman's latest, "SHAMELESS in the Senate", aka "Seeing African-American Katrina Victims FLEE New Orleans is not a MISTAKE from the view of the Bush-Republican Party and the US Senate.... IT IS A DESIRABLE OUTCOME that effectively DISENFRANCHISES a strong Black voting constituency!"
Of course, the murderous Bush-GOP can only push such atrocious policies WITH THE COMPLICITY of "the major media" such as the WASHINGTON POST and the NEW YORK TIMES.
So, as you read Krugman's article, just ask yourself: "If any of Mr. Krugman's assertions are true, WHY AREN"T THEY IN BOLD HEADLINES, supported by other reporter's by-lines, on the front-pages of the New York Times EVERY SINGLE DAY?"
-------------------------------------------------
Paul Krugman: Shameless in the Senate
--The New York Times, June 5, 2006
The Senate almost voted to repeal the estate tax last fall, but Republican leaders postponed the vote after Hurricane Katrina. It's easy to see why: the public might have made the connection between scenes of Americans abandoned in the Superdome and scenes of well-heeled senators voting huge tax breaks for their even wealthier campaign contributors.
But memories of Katrina have faded, and they're about to try again. The Senate will probably vote this week. So it's important to realize that there's still a clear connection between tax breaks for the rich and failure to help Americans in need.
Any senator who votes to repeal the estate tax, or votes for a "compromise" that goes most of the way toward repeal, is in effect saying that increasing the wealth of people who are already in line to inherit millions or tens of millions is more important than taking care of fellow citizens who need a helping hand.
To understand this point, we need to look at what Congress has been doing lately in the name of deficit reduction.
The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which was signed in February, consists mainly of cuts to spending on Medicare, Medicaid and education. The Medicaid cuts will have the largest human impact: the Congressional Budget Office estimates that they will cause 65,000 people, mainly children, to lose health insurance, and lead many people who retain insurance to skip needed medical care because they can't afford increased co-payments.
Congressional leaders justified these harsh measures by saying that we have to reduce the budget deficit, and there's no way to do that without inflicting pain.
But those same leaders now propose making the deficit worse by repealing the estate tax. Apparently deficits aren't such a big problem after all, as long as we're running up debts to provide bigger inheritances to wealthy heirs rather than to provide medical care to children.
And the cost of tax cuts is far larger than the savings from benefit cuts. Under current law — what I once called the Throw Mama From the Train Act of 2001 — the estate tax is scheduled to be phased out in 2010, but return in 2011. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, making repeal permanent would cost more than $280 billion from 2011 to 2015. That's more than four times the savings from the Deficit Reduction Act over the same period.
Who would benefit from this largess? The estate tax is overwhelmingly a tax on the very, very wealthy; only about one estate in 200 pays any tax at all. The campaign for estate tax repeal has largely been financed by just 18 powerful business dynasties, including the family that owns Wal-Mart.
You may have heard tales of family farms and small businesses broken up to pay taxes, but those stories are pure propaganda without any basis in fact. In particular, advocates of estate tax repeal have never been able to provide a single real example of a family farm sold to pay estate taxes.
Nonetheless, the estate tax is up for a vote this week. First, Republicans will try to repeal the estate tax altogether. If that fails, they'll offer a compromise that isn't really a compromise, like a plan suggested by Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, that would cost almost as much as full repeal, or a plan suggested by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, that is only slightly cheaper.
In each case, the crucial vote will be procedural: if 60 senators vote to close off debate, estate tax repeal or something close to it will surely pass. Any senator who votes for cloture but against estate tax repeal — which I'm told is what John McCain may do — is simply a hypocrite, trying to have it both ways.
But will the Senate vote for cloture? The answer depends on two groups of senators: Democrats like Mr. Baucus who habitually stake out "centrist" positions that give Republicans almost everything they want, and moderate Republicans like Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island who consistently cave in to their party's right wing. Will these senators show more spine than they have in the past?
In the interest of stiffening those spines, let me remind senators that this isn't just a fiscal issue, it's also a moral issue. Congress has already declared that the budget deficit is serious enough to warrant depriving children of health care; how can it now say that it's worth enlarging the deficit to give Paris Hilton a tax break?
posted by verifi at 6:58 AM
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