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'Serious’ Republicans vs.‘Starry-Eyed’ Progressives
Beltway media scorn People’s Budget, hail Ryan hoax
The budget proposal released on April 5 by Rep. Paul Ryan (R.-Wisc.) includes tax cuts for the wealthy, tax hikes for the middle class, drastic cuts in social spending and a radical restructuring of Medicare that would shift most of the cost of healthcare to seniors. Its dubious claims of deficit reduction rely on fatally flawed assumptions and inexplicable projections (CBPP, 4/7/11; CEPR, 4/11).
Meanwhile, the 76-member Congres-sional Progressive Caucus unveiled its own “People’s Budget” proposal on April 13, which would eliminate the deficit in 10 years without eroding social services or raising taxes on the working class. Serious economists like Paul Krugman (New York Times, 4/25/11) and Jeffrey Sachs (Huffington Post, 4/8/11) have spoken out in favor of the People’s Budget as, in Krugman’s words, a “genuinely courageous” plan and “the only major budget proposal out there offering a plausible path to balancing the budget.”
Guess which one the Beltway media have embraced?
Much of the avalanche of corporate media coverage about the Ryan plan has presented it as a serious solution to long-term budget problems, or at least the starting point of a serious conversation about the topic.
In Time magazine (4/18/11), readers learned that Paul Ryan—described as having “jet black hair and a touch of Eagle Scout to him”—
The magazine also declared that he is “a PowerPoint fanatic with an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents.”
Deep into the article, readers get this parenthetical warning:
So someone with “an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents” has presented a budget plan filled with obvious problems. How can both things be true?
For too many media outlets, probing the details of Ryan’s plan was less important than telling an appealing political story: that finally someone has presented a “serious” budget proposal. Lacking evidence to demonstrate the plan’s seriousness, media cited Ryan’s biography in order to supply the necessary credibility.
Thus the Washington Post (4/6/11) explained that Ryan is “wonky” and “an unlikely revolutionary.” The Post added that “Ryan studied economics in college, and in Congress he has embraced the weedy issues of the federal budget.” The Post’s lead wondered if Ryan can “really manage the hardest sales job in U.S. politics.” The paper seemed to think so:
Ryan’s “budget math” relies on, among other things, wildly implausible estimates concerning unemployment and government spending. Krugman (Conscience of a Liberal, 4/6/11) explains that the plan asserts without explanation that unemployment will fall to its lowest level in 50 years, and that the entire federal budget, excluding Social Security and health programs, can be slashed by more than two-thirds via unspecified cuts. But as salesman to the corporate media, it seems Ryan is largely succeeding.
New York Times columnist David Brooks (4/5/11) called Ryan’s budget plan “the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes...[which] will put all future arguments in the proper context.”
Even those who disagreed with Ryan’s plan found ways to praise it. In Time (4/7/11), Fareed Zakaria wrote that “Ryan’s plan is deeply flawed, but it is courageous.” Zakaria added that “Ryan makes magical assumptions about growth—and thus tax revenues,” and that other aspects are “highly unrealistic.” But still he concludes that it should be applauded as “a serious effort to tackle entitlement programs.”
And on NBC’s Chris Matthews Show (4/10/11), pundit Gloria Borger declared: “We have to give Paul Ryan an awful lot of credit because, as all of our august colleagues have said, yes, it does define the conversation for 2012.”
In a piece for Time.com (4/7/11), reporter Michael Grunwald noted the incongruity of such praise and wondered, “What’s so brave about fuzzy math in the service of Tea Party ideology”?
The Washington Post factcheck of the Ryan plan by Glenn Kessler (4/6/11)—the one cited in passing by Time—represented a genuine attempt to assess Ryan’s proposal. When Ryan claims that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found his plan would produce surpluses by 2040, most outlets report it as fact—like the April 6 Los Angeles Times, which explained that Ryan’s budget, according to the CBO, “would dramatically improve the nation’s overall fiscal picture, reducing deficits projected in President Obama’s budget and moving the federal government into surplus by 2040."
The Post’s Kessler, however, reports that this claim “seriously overstates the case,” since the CBO analysis “reflects the scenarios that Ryan has concocted. There are, for instance, no real revenue estimates, just an assumption that federal revenues will remain at about 19 percent of GDP.” The spending cuts imagined by Ryan are equally implausible—a “bare-bones government …not experienced since before the Great Depression.”
Kessler also noted that Ryan claims substantial savings—$1.4 trillion, in fact—from a repeal of the new healthcare law—without any explanation for why he rejects the CBO’s determination (CBO Director’s Blog, 1/6/11) that a repeal would actually cost hundreds of billions. The verdict was, as Time parenthetically noted, that the plan deemed brave and serious was based on “dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures.”
Meanwhile, the Beltway media reaction to the People’s Budget ranged from indifferent to scornful. Not a single hard news story on the proposal ran in the New York Times, Washington Post or USA Today. The Post’s Dana Milbank (4/14/11) covered the unveiling of the “far-left” budget only to mock it, spending much of his time making fun of the “starry-eyed” progressives’ press conference and attire. Milbank snidely commented on Caucus co-chair Raul Grijalva’s tie, which “hung loosely from his neck and ended five inches above his waistband,” and noted that
Milbank snorted that the budget proposal
Milbank treats these policies as self-evidently absurd—even though, unlike Ryan’s tax cuts for the rich and dismantling of Medicare, they’re actually quite popular with the public. Polls show large majorities favor taxing the wealthy to reduce the debt while strongly opposing cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security (ABC/Wash-ington Post, 4/14–17/11; Pew Research Center, 3/8–14/11). Opinions on cutting the military budget are more evenly split, but when asked to choose between cutting “defense spending,” Medicare/Medicaid or Social Security (Reuters/Ipsos, 3/3–6/11), 51 percent of respondents chose military spending, while only 28 percent chose Medicare/Medicaid and 18 percent chose Social Security.
The most coverage the People’s Budget received was on MSNBC from liberal hosts like Cenk Uygur and Rachel Maddow. Maddow (4/22/11) marvelled at the remarkable lack of interest by the rest of the corporate media:
Her guest, Washington Post columnist and Center for American Progress fellow Matt Miller, responded:
It’s true that the Beltway media largely serve as stenographers to power, and the Progressive Caucus does not represent the “mainstream” of the Democratic party, as defined by the party’s center of gravity in Washington. But remember that Ryan’s plan had all of 13 Congressional supporters even months after he first formally introduced it in January 2010 (Washington Post, 8/2/10). That didn’t stop him from getting hundreds of media mentions and dozens of interviews throughout the year, including plenty of praise for his “political courage” (e.g., USA Today, 9/7/10), well before the midterm elections skewed the party further to the right and shifted Ryan’s plan to the GOP “mainstream.”
Don’t expect the People’s Budget to ever get that kind of coverage. The “mainstream” of the two parties will always get the most ink, but where the GOP fringe gets its own slice of the coverage, progressives regularly go home empty-handed. The Progressive Caucus isn’t ignored because they’re not the mainstream of the Democratic Party, they’re ignored because they threaten the vital interests of the most powerful people in Washington—people who knot their ties appropriately and hobnob with Beltway reporters on a regular basis.
70 Comments so far
Show AllRyan's budget is courageous. It is courageous to propose impoverishing and murdering millions (knowingly, 2nd degree, if not intentionally, 1st degree) of the nonwealthy seniors and other vulnerable citizens in order to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, wars for resources, the insane budgets of the MIC, and corporate welfare in general. And that is the kind of courage the members of the corporate media admire.
And it is serious too. Murder is a serious business after all.
Quite right. It's a true stab in the back to most of the hoi pollio. It takes a truly remarkable person to present this, and an equally remarkable press corp to so thoroughly dissect the luster and illumination of the lipstick.
It is precisely the "kind" of (sigh) courage they prefer. Ryan like them is a young lackey and shill of the powerful and wealthy and they are both trying to make their respective Corp. masters/bosses happy in that effort. So ASS KISSING is re-defined as Courage and presenting a plan that actually reflects what "the people" want is considered beyond the pale and outside "normal / mainstream ( AKA CORP approved ) speech.
kivals,
Murder it is.
It's time to defend ourselves.
Target the media first. They bring the lies into homes and wash the brains with filth. Perhaps it is time to redirect the fear factor back to its source. They are cowards all, who hide behind gates and guns.
We are not talking about whether to build this bridge or that new highway. People's lives are at stake and we're talking about millions.
Thanks for calling it like it is.
Buck
The corporate mass-media commentariat exists to manufacture and maintain the power elite's self-serving social fantasy, or construction of "common-sense" reality and received wisdom.
The infotainwhores mentioned in the article are the enthusiastic hall monitors and bouncers who rigorously enforce approved orthodoxy and normative, conformist, judgements of what's acceptable, reasonable, practical, and ethical.
This requires them to incessantly patrol the boundaries of social and political discourse, and separate acceptable legitimate ideas and discussion from unacceptable deviant ideas and discussion.
They thrive on a smug, supercilious rhetorical double helix: sycophantic approval for "realistic", "savvy", "tough", "smart" mainstream politicians and leaders-- including deliciously provocative "mavericks", and derisive dismissal of "impractical', "idealistic", "unworkable", "fringe" losers, dreamers, and kooks-- including demons du jour like hopeless "conspiracy nuts", although the latter don't surface much in economics issues.
So it's to be expected that the mass-media gatekeepers will stay in formation to assiduously mow down any challenge to the orthodoxy that serves power in the Amerikan Imperium.
Terrific description of our 4th estate, Mr. Servant. Thanks.
Great post, Obedient Servant, but my dear, why are you being so NICE to the smug, supercilious and syncophantic in the press corps? Are you losing your bite in your advancing age?
It's their *job* to do what they do. That is what they are paid to do. And who ultimately pays them? Anyone who watches them or buys from their advertisers. Change channels, or keep a list of their advertisers. Just complaining is bootless. Take action: follow the money.
What's couragious about the Ryan plan is the way it cuts taxes on Ryan's primary financial backers, and the way it gets rid of 'big government death panels' by leaving ailing grandparents just enough money for suicide pills.
Yeah, granny, every man IS an island. Next time that 'Eagle Scout' offers granny an escort across the street, I hope she sticks him with her umbrella.
This article, as is common with FAIR writers, is a remarkably well-researched and argued piece. It demonstrates the formidable power of the mainstream media to control not only the range of "electable" candidates for office but also the range of policy choices that are "realistic." Many images come to mind in reading this. One is that of the writer (I think it was C. Wright Mills) who coined the term "crack pot realism" to define people who hold to "obvious" solutions to problems that are actually false solutions: in this case Ryan's "courageous" budget which is but a codification of crack-pot "supply side" economics which have proven only to produce economic misery.
Also there comes to mind a term mentioned by Paul Street in his most recent book on Barack Obama (The Empire's New Clothes). It seems that even "starry-eyed progressives" (those who tie their neckties wrong and propose "unrealistic" budgets that would actually work to the public's benefit) have their uses to dominant forces in the halls of power. Obama was supposedly selected by these forces as "their man" to advance Wall Street and Pentagon interests because of his high-toned progressive rhetoric that would appeal to those outside the narrow range of media-accepted center political views: a rhetoric that is only rhetoric and therefore not threatening to their control of what he would actually DO as President. One strategist was alleged to have mused about the value of such a person to the interests of plutocrats by posing the question: "what is the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?" Given the ability of Obama to raise huge campaign funds, his "idealism" apparently had a high dollar value indeed---and he tied his ties beautifully.
Great post. As an adjunct to it, over the 3-day weekend, upon opening Yahoo, among its headlines was something from the Wall Street Journal that said something to the tune of, "It pays to spy on your neighbor."
Last night I was contemplating the full import of this headline, and this is what occurred to me:
Bernays influenced a lot of corporate thinking. He paved the way to billions of funds getting directed at public relations so that public attitudes could be molded according to product sponsors' bidding. The investment has mostly paid off, and to those honest enough to observe the effects, it's clear that subtle brainwashing works.
There is something else at work, too, blissfully under the radar. Consider Madison Avenue's connection to fashion. It's interesting, not to mention wasteful, that people feel quite embarrassed if it's remarked that their clothing is out of date. Therefore each year, perfectly fine fitting clothes are discarded because they are no longer perceived as fashionable.
I realized that The Wall Street Journal was making it hip, cool, and/or fashionable to report on any suspicious activities on the part of our neighbors.
During the 90-minute delay at an airport in Texas recently, the airport audio system kept streaming a similar message, about reporting on any suspicious activity.
Years ago it was considered pretty disgusting to BE a snitch. Now, in a depressed economy, the Wall Street Journal is beginning the PR intent upon making spying on your neighbors a really cool thing to do. Plus you get paid for it!
The sinister nature of the elites and their operators can never be under-estimated. We need new words to reflect the disgust and despair their abhorrent actions. generate.
Lastly, what exactly IS suspicious behavior? is it that long-haired neighbor who doesn't go to your church? Is it that quiet girl always writing in her journal out back? Is it the kid who rebels against his parents at age 9?
Authoritarians like control. They relish rules that limit human expression. This call to report "strange/suspicious" activity is the beginning slide into a society where every behavior will need to be watched, or otherwise forced to adapt to robotic metrics. I don't think Orwell wanted to be right... it seems to me he was painting the picture of a cautionary tale to guard rigorously against.
" I don't think Orwell wanted to be right... it seems to me he was painting the picture of a cautionary tale to guard rigorously against."
Isn't it amazing that this new century has ushered in just that; the rise of the Orwellian Era. It would appear we've thrown "caution" to the wind and are headed at breakneck speed in lockstep towards a "Big Brother" even Orwell didn't totally envision...
What would be nice to see is a point by point comparison of the Ryan budget and the People's budget. Where is 10-year savings going to come from, and who is that savings going to go to? I think a point by point comparison is a "backdoor" way of communicating the People's budget to the people. Right now, I think a lot of American's are confused about the Ryan budget, and it would help to dispel that confusion by comparing it to something other than the huge debts of the status quo. As long as Ryan's budget is being compared to the status quo, many people are going to find it preferrable. Progressives need to force a proper comparison to an actual alternative.
Sadly, my guess is that the average American would find it FAR to tedious to read such an article. Right-wingers would immediately sense conspiracy and lies. Which leaves us, and we pretty much already know the truth. Still it is a good idea and one or two here and there would learn something.
Thanks. I'm just saying that any pundit that discusses the Ryan plan against the 'do-nothing' alternative should be called out for making a false comparison, since the 'do-nothing' alternative is so bad it would make ANY stinker smell like a rose by comparison. As this article relates, the REAL alternative to the Ryan plan is the People's plan. Any pundit who discusses the one without the other is offering a false comparison, and the least we can do is call them out on it.
Doh, it's easy, let me explain:
It's realism if it's mainly bad for the average person and it's idealism if it's mainly bad for a handful of power concentrations. You're an idealist if you look further than your nose and care about what kind of life your children will have; you're a realist if you care about nothing but next quarter's profits. You're courageous if you propose taking away wealth from people who've worked for it all their lives, but if you have the idea of limiting cancerous power concentrations, you're a cowardly socialist or a communist.
You're a warrior if you're sitting in a military base and killing people on the other side of the world using live action video games; you're a terrorist if you kill invading Westerners on the soil of your own country while risking your own life. You're an enterpreneur if you manage to build a company like Microsoft, but terrorist scum if you build an organisation like Wikileaks. You're a producer if you're an industrial farmer raising pigs and chickens that never know what it's like not to be touching another animal all through their lives; you're a criminal if you produce carrots in your home garden.
You're a responsible bastion of society whose opinion is important if you only manage to create, mishandle, misunderstand and still abuse the biggest economic crisis in decades to gain even more power; you're worthless scum if you're late with your mortgage payment. You're a criminal if you smoke a joint and you're black; you're just having harmless fun if you smoke a joint and are white.
You're all about personal responsibility, tough individualism and making it on your own if you want taxpayer money to be spent on stuff taxpayers don't want; you're commie scum if you propose that the money people are paying should be spent with their approval.
Got it yet?
ATOM/BLOVIATOR: Honest, accurate assessments. Thank you.
maciak: you're very right to collar the Progressive Caucus. They used to be my heroes (who better in D.C. than Barbara Lee or Dennis Kucinich?), like their near-cousins the Black Caucus, but virtually every one of them drank the Obama kool-aid and climbed aboard the bandwagon of "support" for travesties the like of "health care reform" and abandoned among other things their "out of Iraq caucus" once GWB was no longer the commander-in-chief of forces there. As for "together we can" do what PC can or won't do, please be specific of HOW you think we "can."
MACIEK: Please re-read Bloviator's post. Just because you have created a blog doesn't mean that the majority of US citizens get their data from such sources. You're blaming Progressives, as if they lack a cogent narrative, when the real problem is lack of ACCESS to the key pulpits from which to make accurate information available to the public.
It's a right wing talking point that Progressives, and/or the Left, lacks message. What it lacks is an apparatus to get its MESSAGES across. To the one trick pony team, there IS only one message: What Big Money wants = what goes. To people with functioning brains, hearts, and souls, there are quite a few ongoing tragedies that compete for our attention, time, and dollars.
The kind of analysis that feeds into right wing memes reminds me of a scene like this:
In the ring we see David up against Goliath.
(David = The Progressive causes and Goliath = big money and its control of established channels of power and influence)
The fawning media/sycophantic press decides on a meme to circulate. It might go something like, "Gee, I don't think David's been practicing his aim much these days. He should concentrate on a a more efective strategy." Or something like that.
Pretending there is a level playing field, or that equal access factors into decision- making, as well as public opinion is THE GREAT LIE!
If you're asking citizens to step out in front of a tank, then YOU be the hero. The U.S. is the most heavily armed place in the world. We live inside the belly of the beast. You feed the cause by calling the Left spineless; what, for not wanting to become martyrs? When you're ready to die for a cause... then you have the right to cast the aspersions you do.
There may be larger forces that shape our (human) ends... or mass destiny. And while your posts are like a breakfast cereal, with a decent raisin here or there, they otherwise read like a Jackson Pollack, "toss it ALL at the canvas," and let the viewer determine what IT means.
What makes you think YOU are taken seriously? Just because you toss your opinions and get some imbecile to back you? Please...
You're playing the part of agent provocateur, suggesting the ONLY path left is the violent one, and when I mirror that back at you I am accused of lacking reading comprehension? A very odd castigation given the fact that I am both a certified English teacher and published writer.
What creds do you possess, big shot? Use of power words like "turd?" A blog of your own? Something everyone and their cousin has these days? Does that allot to you credibility?
I don't know anything about most of the media cited in this article, because I don't watch TV or cable news or see most of the print media mentioned. But I do read most of the NY Times six days a week. I say most, because I don't bother with the columns written by David Brooks. He is a creature from the Black Lagoon (The Washington Spectator) who was hosed off by the Times to give the impression that it is "fair and balanced."
The paper did the same thing a generation ago with William Safire, a second-rate speech writer for Spiro Agnew, who spent his career with the Times doing little else but defending Israel.
I continue to read the Times, regardless of its crazy belief that it has to balance its opinions (I wonder why it doesn't put a Creationist on the page where it mentions religion?).
Orwell once wrote that there were not enough newspapers in the U.K. to guarantee that at least one or two independent ones would resist being co-opted by the government. I believe he siad that about a dozen existed at the time (in the 1940s). Considering the size of the U.S., we would need many more than a dozen.
At least the Times has Krugman.
That's pretty thin gruel. He's supported Obama, and told us we should support Obamacare. Time to see the light, Greg.
Obamacare is a step in a good direction.
You have got to be kidding! Forcing people to buy health insurance from giant corporations who pay their CEOs multimillions/year and do their best to deny claims? Obamacare does nothing for the people who can least afford insurance. When will the US really get HEALTH CARE reform? All people deserve health care and buying medical insurance doesn't guarantee that at all.
Don't read the NY Times. It clouds your mind, misdirects you, costs money, and destroys natural resources. Unless you like someone lying to you for entertainment value. I happen to despise that.
Well, I would guess most would say it is the world's most important newspaper. It keeps one informed as to what is happening as compared to what we might wish. It costs me nothing and I read it on the Internet, thereby doing very little in the way of destroying natural resources. I usually google any articles I wish to read, then link back to the Times, thereby avoiding their limit on free articles.
I'v always had a warm spot in my heart for FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) since I began backing that organization in the 1980s, likey late 1980s, but I have to say here again the framing of the issue of deficits is off target. The deficits aren't the problem. The surpluses are. In hard times, it's basic economics no country should have a balanced budget. It's just what Herbert Hoover did. We know the results of that. The Wiemar Republic politicians did the same and even worse results came into play. Let's get to framing issues in a way that favors the progressive side. "The pictures in peoples heads" are the key to which side will win in the political and pubic arena. We can't afford the luxury of allowing those who favor this corrupt hierarchal system defining the issues and especially the way we define them. We have to be honest and say as Franlin D Roosevelt would that deficits are good for us. What we don't want is surpluses which always favor the dead beat over wealthy pampered power elites who never had to earn a living in their damn lives. We created the wealth as even Adam Smith admitted by default, and they robbed us of same. We need to frame the issues thusly. The other side is pack of jackels and criminals which we seek to bring to justice. I say let justice be done though no failed gay male prostititue from Vienna should ever again get to make grade B movies in Hollywood and go on to be Governor of California. Hell I even got sick of his damn dialect.
I've tried some talk of deficits are not the problem at the moment and we need more stimulus spending. It appears to me, from the responses I've gotten, that the framing has moved such that people refuse to believe me. It is certainly disheartening, but the republicans (and yes, with Obama's stupid help) the public seems mostly swayed against more stimulus. They have bought the argument that the government needs to hunker down and not continue spending when the deficit looks a little scary. The fact that this is all self defeating and damages the future is simply not comprehended.
It is good for understanding the "left wing" (hahaha) of acceptable ideology and the official version and interpretation of facts, but not really facts themselves, unless they absolutely cannot be distorted.
Do remember that it is now a Rupert Murdock rag. Always consider the source.
EL CHI: If I work for a bank, and 5 years later it's learned that the bank president extorted funds, am I in any way responsible?
Some may be known by the company they keep, but how about the innocents?
What is the motive behind some present in this forum specifically, it would seem, to discredit those who are trying to do something positive, informative, or noteworthy in especially compromised, and equally difficult times? Does it fill some egos, like hot air balloons, to attempt to take others' efforts down a peg or two? Or is the intent darker, aimed at ruining their credibility or reputation, altogether?
FAIR is great. Support it.
Wow. This is the first I heard about the Peoples budget, and I try to keep up on these things. Does anyone know what is in it?
Check out the website for the Progessive Caucus' People's Budget here: http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=70
"'Serious’ Republicans vs.‘Starry-Eyed’ Progressives"
Actually it is the progressives who are pragmatic, common-sense, serious, and das kapitalists and their little pawns who are starry-eyed and delusional. The implication is that eliminating the delusions makes more progressives and more progress. Progress toward less plunder and destruction.
By ousting the Blue Dogs, Progressive Democrats will win.
From what I have seen the CBO projections are quite good. One does need to read and understand exactly the procedure followed. Sometimes people ask for a CBO projection based on a certain framework of the asker's determination. In such cases the outlook is but partial, and not a true picture of future expectations,
"gives a sense of how things would be if liberals ran the world: no cuts in Social Security benefits, government-negotiated Medicare drug prices, and increased income and Social Security taxes for the wealthy. Corporations and investors would be hit with a variety of new fees and taxes. And the military would face a shock-and-awe accounting: a 22 percent cut in Army soldiers, 30 percent for the Marines, 20 percent for the Navy and 15 percent for the Air Force. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would end, and weapons programs would go begging."
There is supposed to be a problem with this? Seniors not having to worry about being able to pay their bills and having their SS cut off by some greedy congress? A savings to the medicare system of what, 40%, when paying for drugs for seniors? I thought that we were supposed to be TRYING to save money, this would be a problem? I am assuming the article means decreased wealth for the rich, and that would be a problem for WHO, exactly, besides the ultra rich? What are they doing with it that is helping any of US, anyway? And they should be paying more, they have damn near everything now as it is.
Corporations and investors SHOULD be taxed, and there should be NO loopholes. They are paying next to and in some cases, less than nothing and profits are through the roof. How the hell does THAT make sense?
And seeing as how we spend as much on "defense" as everyone else in the rest of the world COMBINED, how would that be a problem? We can cut things by half and STILL be just as competitive as anyone. In fact, if we'd stop just hiring scum like Blackwater (just another word for sewage) that cost us ten TIMES what our military does for the same jobs, that would save us tens of billions right there. The ILLEGAL wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan SHOULD be over. Why on earth would any sane person want them to continue? Only a complete sadistic loser would WANT the wars to continue. Which explains the whole right wing in BOTH parties. As to those weapons systems, quite a few are things the military doesn't even WANT. They are political pork, nothing else. Kill 'em off. We should be putting our people to work making things that make life better, not to end it. What a filthy, scummy, deadly country we have become. Kennedy gave us the Peace Corps, and we went around trying to help people make their world better. Now, after 35 years of right wing control, all we do is sell them guns so they can kill themselves and each other. How quickly we have slid.
If this is what the right sees as their version of hell, I really have to ask what is wrong with those people? This is EXACTLY what would set this country back on the right track. Add in publicly financed elections and an end to corporate personhood, and you've really got a country that a people could be proud of. I honestly don't see how there is a problem with ANY of that.
Neither were they progressives
Clinton was the best republican president we've had since Eisenhower (the last GOOD republican, IMHO). he sure as hell wasn't a democrat. A real democrat would NEVER have pushed through NAFTA after Bush 1 failed to get it done. He wouldn't have signed the Media consolidation act, either. Or done the GATT deal. His actions tell you what he REALLY is and was. Same goes for Obama, whose actions are far more republican lite than anything a real democrat would have ever done.
Just like Blanche Lincoln, merely having a D behind your name doesn't actually MAKE you a democrat.
And BTW, you might want to brush up on your reading skills. The word "republican" appears NOWHERE in my post. I specifically mentioned the "right wing in BOTH parties", did I not? Sorry, but if you are going to criticize me, then at least make it about something that I actually SAID. It's bad form to complain about something not even mentioned in the statement.
Its called idiocy.
Right now there cannot be a more idiotic nation on the planet.
Wake up!
Wake up little USA!
Wake up and kick the rutting fools out of your bed.
They are fucking----oh&^%$#@*!,---sorrysorrysorry, I mean taking advantage of you little Suzy.
But then perhaps you like it?
You must admit titling the thing "The Peoples Budget" was like hanging a 'KICK ME' sign on it. If progressives would figure out how to LOOK like the cool kids maybe we wouldn't keep getting our lunch money stollen.
Progressives ARE the cool kids. The hip people of the world are all progressives. Republicans are squares. They know they can never be cool and are jealous and hateful about it, so they try to justify their inadequacy by claiming that square = "serious" and cool = "starry eyed".
"The people" are what democracy is all about. If using the term to describe a bill says "kick me", then we've forgotten what America is supposed to stand for.
Recent psychological studies reveal that about 6 % of the population has no ability at all to make simple quantitative judgments. Now to the speculation-- I believe a disproportionate number of such afflicted individuals become journalists. This would account for why they have no ability to analyse a budget plan, ask who is affected and what consequences ensue. Having no ability to do such analysis they use the part of the mind that picks up on gossip and rumor and repeat what they are told. Don't blame the impaaired journalist--blame yourself for reading or listening to him..
You make a valid point.
You apparently do not work for a newspaper or in the media . True journalists, those who report the facts without spin or editorializing, are an endangered species. Today sound bite gatherers, not journalists, give us the news their corporate masters want us to hear. We hear very little about what the Supreme Court is doing although it is arguably the most important body in government. What we do hear about is Brad Pitt's baby and where is Sarah. The American media has been reduced to the lowest common denominator and become a security blanket for those who are afraid of the future.
The American media is part of a very corrupt system of government by and for corporate America. They are overwhelmingly pro-war and right wing on everything but social issues.