IT'S TIME FOR SOME ONE-ON-ONE STREET BALL!
President Obama’s belief that he can transcend the partisan divide has warped his economic strategy. He was expected to come out with a really strong stimulus plan, reflecting both the economy’s dire straits and his own electoral mandate. Instead,he offered a plan that was clearly both too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts. Why? Because he wanted the plan to have broad bipartisan support, and believed that it would.
Obama’s post-partisan yearnings may also explain why he didn’t do something crucially important: speak forcefully about how government spending can help support the economy. Instead, he let conservatives define the debate, waiting until late last week before finally saying what needed to be said — that increasing spending is the whole point of the plan.
Obama was reduced to bargaining for the votes of those centrists. And the centrists, predictably, extracted a pound of flesh — not, as far as anyone can tell, based on any coherent economic argument, but simply to demonstrate their centrist mojo. They probably would have demanded that $100 billion or so be cut from anything Mr. Obama proposed; by coming in with such a low initial bid, the president guaranteed that the final deal would be much too small.
Such are the perils of negotiating with yourself.
(ALTERNET)
Domingo Soto's Personal Blog https://domsoto.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Monday, February 09, 2009
Tear Down This Myth: How Reagan's Legacy Haunts Our Future | Media and Technology | AlterNet
REAGAN AND REVISION
It's always sunny at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California where "The Great Communicator" speaks out from the great beyond. But he leaves out some very important details about his time in office. There's no note about his administration accumulating more debt in real dollars than all the presidents who came before him combined. Or, about the fact that the federal payroll increased from 1981 to 1989. No mention, either, of the Iran-Contra affair, the scandal that almost toppled his presidency. How about the lower class backs he rode, or about who exactly benefited from his tenure, and who is now paying him back by helping construct his memorial? Mum's the word.
(ALTERNET)
It's always sunny at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California where "The Great Communicator" speaks out from the great beyond. But he leaves out some very important details about his time in office. There's no note about his administration accumulating more debt in real dollars than all the presidents who came before him combined. Or, about the fact that the federal payroll increased from 1981 to 1989. No mention, either, of the Iran-Contra affair, the scandal that almost toppled his presidency. How about the lower class backs he rode, or about who exactly benefited from his tenure, and who is now paying him back by helping construct his memorial? Mum's the word.
(ALTERNET)
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Media Matters - Limbaugh, Hannity, and the GOP: an iron triangle of stimulus misinformation
BIG FAT LIARS
On any given day during the current congressional debate over the economic recovery plan, chances are good that Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity will say something false about the administration's or congressional Democrats' efforts to pass a bill. And they do not promote these falsehoods in isolation; they are often promoted concurrently with each other and with Republican members of Congress.
(MEDIA MATTERS)
On any given day during the current congressional debate over the economic recovery plan, chances are good that Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity will say something false about the administration's or congressional Democrats' efforts to pass a bill. And they do not promote these falsehoods in isolation; they are often promoted concurrently with each other and with Republican members of Congress.
(MEDIA MATTERS)