Shrinking = diminishing, weakening.

Saving = rescuing.

Politicians poll-test and then employ negative and positive word choices (for just about the same thing either way) to dishonestly influence public opinion.

And so now the New York Times.

Posted by: Ace at 02:47 PM | Comments (45)
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More and more member nations need bailouts.

At some point, the wealthy can't cover for the poor.

This was always a ridiculous idea. As this article notes obliquely, some states in Europe have had a drunken-sailor attitude about debt -- just spend until you run out, declare bankruptcy, accept a few years of austerity, limp along again -- and some, notably inflation-sensitive Germany, are committed to fiscal solvency.

The Eurozone supposedly unites all these countries economically, but these are not in fact inferior states subject to federal authority as in America, were the government can bring all states on to the same basic page (for better or for worse-- lately, worse).

The states that like to borrow and spend can keep on doing so. It's just that the consequences of their imprudence wind up to be largely a problem of Germany, which then, of course, just encourages them to keep doing it.

Until Germany's tapped, too.

Very worst of all worlds scenario going on here.

Recently, I asked a well-placed minister what plans had been put in place in case the eurozone started to unravel. He just looked at me blankly: “That’s not going to happen. There is too much political will behind the euro for them to let it go.” In other words, the Cameron Government shares the same complacent analysis as the European political class: this is not a real problem, we’ll muddle through somehow, it’s all the fault of the speculators, etc etc.

This is denial. The simple truth is that Greece, Ireland and Portugal are all bankrupt. Perhaps it is worth spelling out exactly what this means: however hard these countries try, and whatever austerities they impose, they will never, ever be able to pay off their debts.

In itself, this is not much of a problem – Greece and Portugal (though not Ireland) have gone bankrupt many times before, and always recovered. The tried and tested response is to default, then reschedule debts by reducing coupons (ie interest payments) and extending maturities, while allowing the national currency to depreciate so that the economy can once again become competitive.

Their membership of the eurozone, however, means that none of this can happen. There has, until recently, been an absolute determination in Frankfurt and Brussels that no European country should default. The reason for this is sobering: many leading European banks have massive exposure to the sovereign debt of these troubled countries.

Were Portugal or Greece to acknowledge formally that they are bankrupt, the big banks would have to come clean with investors about the true value of these loans. As a result, massive sums would have to be written off on the balance sheets of many of European bankingÂ’s most famous names, sending some spiralling towards bankruptcy. Even those that survived would have to cut back the scale of their operations sharply, thus curtailing lending to individuals and businesses. This, in turn, would damage business activity and send Europe yet deeper into recession.

Strapping yourself to drowning men is rarely a wise course to stay alive at sea.

Posted by: Ace at 02:38 PM | Comments (77)
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Interesting.

We have another chance to fight for deeper cuts; the 2011 budget was just the first one. Next we have the debt limit, and then the 2012 budget.

Boehner vows he won't pass a "clean bill," as Obama demands-- a "clean bill" just raises the debt limit without seeking any concessions or reforms.

Boehner says it'll be dirty.

Update: Does Obama Have Any Regrets? Sure. He Regrets He Didn't Vote "Present" More Often. Asked to explain the contradiction between President Obama (the debt limit must be increased) and soon-to-be-candidate Obama in 2006 (voting against such a rise, demanding the budget be, get this balanced), Jay Carney says Obama's new position is that he shouldn't have voted that way.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:09 PM | Comments (154)
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We need a new word. Plainly decisions aren't being made according to whether they're Constitutional or not. It's whether they're ickonstituional.

Here's a report from the WSJ.

We stress that the question before us is not, as Arizona has portrayed, whether state and local law enforcement officials can apply the statute in a constitutional wayÂ… This formulation misses the point: there can be no constitutional application of a statute that, on its face, conflicts with Congressional intent and therefore is preempted by the Supremacy Clause.

. . .

By imposing mandatory obligations on state and local officers, Arizona interferes with the federal governmentÂ’s authority to implement its priorities and strategies in law enforcement, turning Arizona officers into state-directed DHS agents.

As I've said before: The Arizona law is in full comportment with federal law. What it conflicts with is federal policy, which is to ignore the written, constitutionally-promulgated law.

Federal law may trump state law but does a shamefully dishonest secret policy choice trump both federal law and state law?

Full ruling here.

Gabe points out the majority's dismissive, condescending tone in Footnote Six:

We have carefully considered the dissent and we respond to its arguments as appropriate. We do not, however, respond where the dissent has
resorted to fairy tale quotes and other superfluous and distracting rhetoric.
These devices make light of the seriousness of the issues before this court
and distract from the legitimate judicial disagreements that separate the
majority and dissent.

This refers to the holding opinion's claim that various sections of federal law permitting and also requiring state assistance in identifying illegal aliens is somehow proof that the federal government actually means to prohibit state assistance in identifying illegal aliens.

The court's way of dispensing with this is to basically claim that while "incidental" state assistance in this matter is okay (being as that it's expressly required by federal law, that's not much of a concession), a "systematic" enforcement of it conflicts with federal law.

Why? Well, they don't really say. They're sort of just making it up and saying "Because I said so."

But as I said, they are taking federal policy -- which is to generally ignore immigraiton violations -- as trumping written, voted upon, federal law.

Federal law is passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law by the president. That's the procedure the Constitution provides for.

On the other hand, a policy is just set by a single man (the president) and has no force of law. Especially not when it explicitly contradicts the written law.

But because the feds have decided their policy is really -- no matter what the law says -- to throw the rubes a once-in-a-while immigration enforcement but otherwise ignore it, the court claims, just because it says so, that policy likewise restrains state law.

The "fairy tale" criticized by the Court seems to be this, an argument in a footnote:

We strive to read Congress’s enactments in a reasonable manner. Am. Tobacco Co. v. Patterson, 456 U.S. 63, 71 (1982) (“Statutes should be
interpreted to avoid untenable distinctions and unreasonable results whenever
possible.”). Is the majority’s reading of § 1357(g)(10) reasonable?
Imagine, for a moment, its implementation. Morning dawns at the Pima
County (Tucson) SheriffÂ’s Office. The watch commander assembles the
deputies: “Officers, in your patrols and arrests today, please remember the
Ninth Circuit has told us that if you encounter aliens you suspect are illegally
present in this country, you may check their immigration status with
federal immigration officers, and cooperate with federal agents in their
identification, apprehension, detention and removal, but only (1) if called
upon by the federal authorities to assist, or (2) absent such request, where
necessary, but (3) then only on an incidental basis, and (4) not in a routine
or systematic basis.” Officer Smith responds: “Commander, does that
mean that, unless asked by the federal officers, we cannot determine
immigration status of suspected illegal aliens from federal immigration
officers or cooperate to help in their removal in each case in which we
have reasonable suspicion, but, on the other hand, that we can do so when
necessary, but then only once in a while? When will it be ‘necessary’?
Second, for every ten suspicious persons we run across, in how many
cases are we allowed to request immigration checks and cooperate with
the federal authorities without our immigration checks becoming ‘systematic’
and ‘routine,’ rather than merely ‘incidental’?”
Rather than explain the content of the conditions which it invents—
“called upon,” “necessity,” “systematic,” and “routine”—the majority
turns up its nose at a scenario made all-too-probable by its vague limitations;
limitations themselves bereft of structure for lack of citation of
authority. As in the case of its refusal to refute its traducing of statutory
language (see footnote 5, supra). the majority declaims the impropriety of
my criticisms, rather than discuss why they are wrong. But that does not
shed any light on the question likely to be asked by the SheriffÂ’s Deputy:
“When can I detain a suspect to check his immigration status?”

Well, that's not a fairy tale; that's actually correct. The court can think of no reason to overturn a state law except a single man has decided on a policy without the force of law and he doesn't like the state law so of course it is unconstitutional. It dresses this up by claiming federal law requires that inspection of suspected foreign aliens must be only "incidental" and sporadic -- but nowhere does federal law ever say that.

That may be what the President wants, but that's not the law.

State laws are now being overturned because President Awesome doesn't like them. Citation: I won.

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (148)
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One party is telling you what they actually want to do. That's a perilous course, because the realistic options are not pretty -- either a broad reduction in welfare benefits for the middle class, or a dramatic hike in taxes for the middle class, as they pay more and more money to the government to have the government turn around and give them back in welfare benefits 65% of what they paid for them. (Because government is inefficient and there's always a subsidy for someone else.)

The other party is hiding what they actually want to do, which is generally the politically smart course, except in this case, it will result in the undoing of the American economy.

Liberals are not in fact "looking for new ideas" in this discussion. They've always had the same idea -- raise taxes, especially on the middle class, because that's where the money is, as Willie Sutton said when asked why he robbed banks.

Even the liberal commentariat, who cannot be voted out of office for such punish-the-middle-class policies, will not state this forthrightly.

Oh, they'll imply the living hell out of it. But they won't say it, because their liberal readers also don't want to pay significantly more in taxes and strongly prefer to be spoon-fed economic baby-food lies that the hole can be closed just by raising taxes on conveniently-other people.

But their politicians will not only not say this but will lie and strongly deny it.

This is what liberals want to do -- it is almost universally desired by all liberals. But they don't have the guts to say so. So they plot us on a course of exploding spending coupled with static revenue, a combination which will literally end the United States as we know it within a decade and a half.

They would rather let it all burn down than admit to the public they've lied to all their lives. Good Little Communists know that oftentimes the Vanguard must deceive the great unwashed about the actual goal).

So here' Krugman:

Among other things, the latest budget deal more than wipes out any positive economic effects of the big prize Mr. Obama supposedly won from last December’s deal, a temporary extension of his 2009 tax cuts for working Americans. And the price of that deal, let’s remember, was a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts, at an immediate cost of $363 billion, and a potential cost that’s much larger — because it’s now looking increasingly likely that those irresponsible tax cuts will be made permanent.

Let me risk embarrassment by taking a Krugman Number as the real number. That is a mistake right out of the box; he lies. But for the sake of convenience, let me pretend I think Krugman Numbers are real numbers and not imaginary ones like the square root of negative one.

$363 billion is about $181.5 billion per year, Krugman. Our deficit, per year, is $1.65 trillion, and that, I repeat, is just the deficit. (Actual government spending is about $3.7 trillion per year.)

Let's go along with your proposal and just end those "Bush tax cuts." (Notice, by the way, that I think he means the Bush tax cuts for the top bracket, whereas the Bush tax cuts actually reduced taxes on the middle and lower classes too -- but he calls that aspect of the tax cuts "his [Obama's] 2009 tax cuts for working Americans.")

Okay, so, hypothetically, the "Bush Tax Cuts" are now ended. Poof. That brings the yearly deficit from $1.65 trillion all the way down to... $1.468.5 trillion per year.

And what next, Krugman? You violently oppose any reduction in spending so you must have in mind either:

1) The simple collapse of government and the economy, or

2) Generating more revenue from somewhere else

Where else, Mr. Krugman? Where are you imagining you can get ten times the $181.5 billion per year you just heroically "saved" us?

And what next?

Maybe you're thinking we should not just revert to Clinton levels of taxation on the rich, but increase them. Let's say we jack up taxes on the rich even more, such that we bring in another $363 billion per hear.

Still over $1 trillion in hock per year, every year, year in, year out. Like the clockwork of a cheap alarm clock serving as the timer for a shrapnel-loaded terrorist bomb.

And what next?

Where are you going to get that $1 trillion+ per year? Please, you're a smart man. Surely you must have some idea of where to get that money.

Surely you're not just sitting there telling us that we cannot cut a dime from spending, but also cannot raise taxes any further, and therefore are simply arguing in favor of debt destroying the country in 10-15 years.

Surely you have some opinion on where another $1 trillion, per year, can be had from.

I understand what your Step One is. Obviously I understand Step One -- it's all you ever want to talk about.

What I'm really curious about is -- what is Step Two, and what is Step Three? Oddly enough you suddenly get very quiet about those later steps.

Everyone knows what Step One. Stop f**king writing endlessly about Step One.

Tell us what your Step Two is. You write two columns per week; you can "waste" a single column taking a break from arguing for Step One to at least sketch out the vague parameters of Step Two.

And then what, Krugman?

And then what?

And then what?

If you steadfastly refuse to tell us, shall I just assume there's a reason for that? Shall the middle class also assume along with me your plan is detrimental to our interests and our desires?

If you had a Step Two that was appealing to us, I have to think you'd eagerly share it.

And what next?

And what next?

Krugman's colleague makes a similar point.

The best thing about the long-term budget proposal from Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is that it forces Americans to confront the implications of their choices. If voters want taxes that amount to roughly 18 percent of G.D.P., then they are going to have to accept a government that looks roughly like what Ryan is describing.

The Democrats are on defense because they are unwilling to ask voters to confront the implications of their choices. Democrats seem to believe that most Americans want to preserve the 20th-century welfare state programs. But they are unwilling to ask voters to pay for them, and they are unwilling to describe the tax increases that would be required to cover their exploding future costs.

Raising taxes on the rich will not do it. There arenÂ’t enough rich people to generate the tens of trillions of dollars required to pay for Medicare, let alone all the other programs. Democrats, thus, face a fundamental choice. They can either reverse President ObamaÂ’s no-new-middle-class-taxes pledge, or they can learn to live with Paul RyanÂ’s version of government.

Bonus: Krugman Wants Ryan To Offer Specifics. Are you kidding me here? Krugman's deficit-ending policy begins and ends at $363 billion dollars (and continues, based on what he's willing to tell us, nearly $1.5 trillion deficits every year until the government and economy simply collapse), but he thinks it's a very good criticism of Paul Ryan that Ryan isn't being specific enough about raising taxes:

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center puts the revenue loss from these tax cuts at $2.9 trillion over the next decade. House Republicans claim that the tax cuts can be made “revenue neutral” by “broadening the tax base” — that is, by closing loopholes and ending exemptions. But you’d need to close a lot of loopholes to close a $3 trillion gap; for example, even completely eliminating one of the biggest exemptions, the mortgage interest deduction, wouldn’t come close. And G.O.P. leaders have not, of course, called for anything that drastic. I haven’t seen them name any significant exemptions they would end.

Yeah, um, I'm not seeing Krugman "name any significant" new source of revenue, either. At least Ryan is offering the idea in principle.

What's Krugman's idea?

I got step one -- $363 billion over two years, or $181.5 billion per year. Which leaves us with only a $1.5 trillion hole to close, each and every year until the end of time end of the First American Republic.

And then what?

And then what?

And then what?

Posted by: Ace at 11:17 AM | Comments (364)
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Obama's new plan, same as the plan for the last 50 years.

There's a problem with this plan. The problem is, "And then what?" I'm not talking about the almost-certain retardation of the economy due to a higher taxes. I mean "And then what?" because raising taxes on the rich produces a nearly trivial "windfall" in revenue.

It's not nearly enough. So -- "And what next?"

The obvious answer is "We tax the middle class at significantly higher rates," because that's the only way to really up the government's allowance. Only the middle class has the combination of money plus huge numbers of taxpayers in this class to really raise revenue.

Obviously revenue from raising taxes on any particular class is determined by:

X (the amount of $ you expect to get from each taxpayer on average) *
Y (the number of taxpayers giving the government that $)

There are a fair number of poor, but they don't have enough money to really tax the crap out of them.

The rich have the opposite problem -- X is high for them, but Y is pretty low.

Only the middle class has that wonderful combination of solid X and huge Y.

So, Mr. President -- "And what next?" The increased taxes on the rich will not more than scratch the surface of the problem.

And what next?

The Democrats know this is the only possible way to support the leviathan welfare state they want. But they will not be straight with the middle class taxpayers that they expect, at the moment of general economic collapse, to fund it.

They continue telling the middle class that if we just goose the tax rates on the rich by 5% or 10% the we're on Easy Street. And the middle class, unfortunately, largely believes them, because they don't understand the true size of the problem, nor the relatively few number of people qualifying as "rich."

Ed Morrissey notes that the Wall Street Journal points this out, but in a very soft way:

Eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the highest earners, however, will only put a small dent in the projected deficit.

When the media believes the public is "misinformed" on a key issue in such a way that hurts Democrats, they keep trying to "educate" the public out of its misunderstanding. They really, really wanted you to know that (in the opinion of most intelligence analysts who were wrong Iraq having WMD and Iran not working on WMD) Iraq had no connection to 9/11 or the anthrax attack.

But here, they seem to be quite comfortable with letting the public believe that the only thing we're really arguing about is whether we should raise taxes by 5% or 10% on a politically small and relatively unpopular group.

Not so.

And then what?

Republicans need to hammer this relentlessly and come armed with numbers.

The choice is not between reforming and reducing spending and keeping tax rates on the rich at their current level.

The choice is between bankruptcy and ruin, or raising taxes significantly, seriously on the middle class, or reforming and reducing spending.

"Raising taxes on the rich" is a "false choice," as our false choicer in chief would say, or better yet, a "distraction."

The media will not tell the public this, of course. Republicans have to, and insistently, and constantly.

Posted by: Ace at 10:10 AM | Comments (338)
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A Documentary

(And mid-day open thread/respite from DOOM)

Includes multiple quotes from “Stuff Jefferson Said,” annotated 3rd printing from 1924, leather-bound edition with limited-print dust jacket. And startling information about Abigail Adams you were probably unaware of. Video is SFW but headphone use is highly recommended.

Part One of “The Vowels:”

Part Two below the foldÂ…
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Posted by: Genghis at 09:15 AM | Comments (61)
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Apparently, the plebs are getting ructious, and it's giving the ruling class heartburn.

[S]tatus quo and stagnation are not an appealing platform, especially for one who campaigned as the candidate of hope and change. Democrats are playing defense, hoping for a shift of opinion. So far, it hasnÂ’t happened.

Posted by: Monty at 08:46 AM | Comments (160)
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Via Insty comes this LAT op-ed (yeah, I know, bear with me) about the latest liberal idea for making the economy more "fair": ending Roth IRA's. I won't sport with your intelligence by getting into the argument -- it's profoundly dumb -- but it does provide yet another example of the liberal belief that all money belongs to the government by default; the only question is how much they let you keep. Thus the war on "the rich". (And the definition of "rich" keeps sliding downward, have you noticed? Pretty soon that piss-smelling bum down by the bus-stop will be considered "rich" because he has an actual la-di-dah belt to hold up his pants rather than a frayed length of clothesline like the rest of us.)

The end times are surely upon us - the donks pretend to have budget-cutting religion. If you want to know if the Tea Party had any impact at all on the Democrats, wonder no longer. It wonÂ’t make any difference that matters, of course; Democrats exist to tax and spend. ItÂ’s what they do. But the cutters have won the rhetorical war -- weÂ’ll see how far it gets us in the actual process of living within our means as a nation. Do we dare to look on that far shore?

And about that budget fight we just went through? ItÂ’s only the preliminary match. The title card fight is yet to come.

UK and the Netherlands to Iceland: Give us our money! Iceland: What money?

The SS/Medicare impasse is receiving a lot more attention now than even last year, but it’s still mainly of the “soul-searching” variety rather than the “here are the hard cold facts” variety. I expect the “Republicans want to kill grandma!” rhetoric to become pervasive as the 2012 campaign season builds up a bigger head of steam. I also expect the AARP to become fully engaged in the fear-mongering among the rocker-jockey set.

Can’t sell your house now that you’re badly underwater on your mortgage? That plot of land you bought back in ‘08 more of a drain on your pocketbook than you’d anticipated? No worries! The Chinese will buy your real estate. And will pay top dollar!

Speaking of the Chinese -- itÂ’s like Bizarro world or something when the Chinese post a trade deficit for the first time in seven years. How could this happen? Commodity prices, kids -- food, fuel, and raw materials. Inflation is going through China like a honey badger through a beehive.

Veronique de Rugy puts us some f’in knowledge on spending cuts, myths versus facts. This goes to the heart of the “tax vs spend” war between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats believe, with religious fervor, that taxes must be raised to meet spending needs -- because to them, every penny of spending is necessary and vital. All money belongs to the government by default; the only question is how much they allow the peasants to keep. (See the Roth IRA story above.) In the land of the Democrats, there is never any fat; any cut immediately hits muscle and bone.

Though in fairness the GOP has an equally intractable problem: they love big government just as much as the Democrats, but they donÂ’t like taxing people to pay for it.

ECB rate hikes could admister the coup de grace to Ireland, Portugal, Greece, and even Spain. I donÂ’t know that a rate-hike will do more than hasten the inevitable, really -- what else can the PIGS do at this point but default? The citizens wonÂ’t stand for the kind of austerity that would be required to pay off the bond-holders -- especially given that those bondholders are primarily French and German banks (as well as the ECB). It seems to be a basic question of math: there is no possible way that these countries can pay off the debt they owe. Yet the merest thought of the breakup of the Eurozone gives the unelected Eurocrats a bad case of the vapors; they refuse to even consider the possibility -- in public, anyway. Yet reality is asserting itself, as it always does.

How did Trump get to be so popular in certain political circles? HereÂ’s my take: when all we have to choose from are fools, ceteris paribus, Americans tend to choose the most entertaining fool.

Congressman Paul Ryan on Meet the Press. You can tell he has the Democrats scared because theyÂ’re trying to do two things at once: make him look like an extremist nutcase; and at the same time say the same things heÂ’s saying, only with Democrat frosting on it.

And at last -- when the DOOM! finally arrives; when the wailing and groaning and gnashing of teeth drowns everything else out; when the living envy the dead; we will have one last miserable truth hammered home: itÂ’s all our fault.

[UPDATE 1]: Let's check in with VDH and see if Callie is still boned. ...yeah, still boned.

[UPDATE 2]: Dylan plays China, allows the ChiComs to dictate his playlist. Can't have those hippies getting the peasants all riled up, now can we?

[UPDATE 3]: The government's motto is not E Pluribus Unum; it's Over-promise and Under-deliver.

[UPDATE 4]: Eli Lehrer: "Pensions aren't the problem!" Tom Cross, Illinois House Minority Leader: "Au contraire, mon frère!"
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Posted by: Monty at 04:58 AM | Comments (256)
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By day chasing the scum of the universe. Come night, you're the wedding fairy.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:57 AM | Comments (161)
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