The Commentariat -- September 21

The Fall of Summers. It is fitting that September 21 marks the end of Summers. -- Karen Garcia

Buh-Bye, Larry. AP: "President Barack Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, plans to leave the White House at the end of the year, a move that comes as the administration struggles to show an anxious public it's making progress on the economy." CW: I assume that Julie Pace, the AP reporter on this story, added the last line for ironical impact: "... but [Summers] looks forward to returning to Harvard to teach and write about the economic fundamentals of job creation." The New York Times has the full official announcement.

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Obama’s Wars,” by the journalist Bob Woodward, depicts an administration deeply torn over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there amid suspicion that he was being boxed in by the military. Mr. Obama’s top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work." Update: Washington Post story by Steve Luxenberg here. ...

... Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times reviews Woodward's book.

CW: when I need a Nobel Laureate to back up my observations, Paul Krugman is apt to come through, as he does here: "the [Obama] administration seems to go out of its way to alienate its supporters." ...

... Shahien Nasiripour of the Huffington Post has the money quote on Jacob Lew's Senate committee testimony to which Krugman refers. Oh, and Nasiripour reminds us that Lew is "a former Citigroup executive." ...

... Not a Whole Lot of Shakin' up Going on. Alas, Andrew Leonard of Salon probably has it right on the End of Summers: "Obama replaced Romer with his longtime advisor, Austan Goolsbee, ensuring near perfect continuity with his original economic team. He replaced Orszag with former Clinton budget director Jacob Lew -- the very antithesis of a shakeup." ...

... Robert Reich: "After three decades of flat wages during which almost all the gains of growth have gone to the very top, the middle class no longer has the buying power to keep the economy going. It can’t send more spouses into paid work, can’t work more hours, can’t borrow any more. All the coping mechanisms are exhausted."

Republican strategist Mark McKinnon in the Daily Beast: President Obama has a "Velma Hart problem." Here's Hart on CNN:

Mark Thompson of Time: "... military paychecks were the key engine of income growth for many of the cities that saw their average pay grow the fastest last year. In fact, the 11 cities with the fastest income growth all boast major military installations that help drive their local economies.... What does it mean when the nation's cities with the fastest-growing payrolls are dedicated to fighting wars instead of cancer, building brigades instead of bridges, and training combat engineers instead of computer engineers?"

Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "Official and independent budget estimates show that letting tax rates spring back to pre-Bush levels for all taxpayers would bring the country within striking distance of meeting President Obama's goal of balancing the budget, excluding interest payments on the debt, by 2015."

Jim Rutenberg & Kate Zernike of the New York Times: President Bill Clinton "... has emerged as one of the most important defenders of President Obama’s Congressional majorities. Some candidates are asking for his help on the campaign trail, rather than the president’s. Even though Mr. Clinton insisted on Monday that he was only 'peripherally and fleetingly' back in politics, he has been headlining rallies and fund-raisers across the country to buck up the depressed party faithful."

Ben Smith & Keach Hagey of Politico: the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert "dueling" marches October 30 are a "practical" joke that may energize young voters.

Christine O'Donnell is clearly a criminal, and like any crook she should be prosecuted. Ms. O'Donnell has spent years embezzling money from her campaign to cover her personal expenses.... Thieves belong in jail not the United States Senate. -- Melanie Sloan, CREW director

Andy Barr of Politico: "The campaign watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a pair of complaints with the Federal Election Commission Monday accusing [Christine] O'Donnell of using more than $20,000 in campaign funds for personal expenses."

Flash Cookies. Tanzina Vega of the New York Times: "Since July, at least five class-action lawsuits filed in California have accused media companies like the Fox Entertainment Group and NBC Universal, and technology companies like Specific Media and Quantcast of surreptitiously using Flash cookies. More filings are expected as early as this week. The suits contend that the companies collected information on the Web sites that users visited and from the videos they watched, even though the users had set their Web browser privacy settings to reject cookies that could track them."

President Obama on CNBC's "Investing in America": Full Session:

New York Times: "It was billed as 'Investing In America,' a live televised conversation between President Obama and American workers, students, business people and retirees on the state of the economy, a kind of Wall Street to Main Street reality check. But it sounded like a therapy session for disillusioned Obama supporters." AND here's a page of CNBC links about the town hall meeting.

When Greed Became Good

          Sacrifice is for the little people. -- Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman writes, "Political rage is coming not from the jobless, but from the very privileged, who are furious at the thought of their tax cuts expiring."

The Constant Weader add another reason to be furious at the greedy, self-pitying rich:

Tiny Violins, Please.

This country changed dramatically when the fictional characters Ronald Reagan & Gordon Gecko made greed “good.” We went from being a country where the majority believed they were their brothers’ keepers to a country that proudly perverted the Golden Rule: “Do unto others before they do unto you.” We became, seemingly overnight, avaricious & characterless. The “Greatest Generation” and the “Make Love, Not War” generation faded or adapted to the new cynicism. The federal government, which had pulled the nation out of the Great Depression, became the enemy, not the source and defender of the nation’s welfare.

The great irony in this disgusting transformation is that its leaders effected it on the completely false claim that they spoke for the “Moral Majority.” There was nothing moral about them. Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a city so misnamed that it was the exact opposite of a “city of brotherly love.” It was the city that was the center of American apartheid, where civil rights workers were murdered & the juries of their peers let their murderers off. Reagan knew what he was doing: he was telling the white bigots they could count on him to end the push for racial equality. They could. And he did. Although Reagan increased the size of government, he and his enablers did everything possible to end federal protections for all ordinary Americans, not just black Americans. They abandoned civil rights legislation. They deregulated financial institutions. They ran roughshod over federal lands, treating them as resources for mining, logging and ranching interests. They waged war on unions, even firing some of the most critical workers in the nation – air traffic controllers. As for their protection of children -- they said school lunch programs could consider ketchup to be a vegetable. Moral? More like stomach-churning.

The result of the Reagan/Gekko Revolution was both predictable and catastrophic for the average American. Last week Bob Herbert cited statistics Robert Reich gathered about those whiney super-rich Americans. Herbert, via Reich, noted that the share of the national income that has gone to the top one percent of income-earners was 8 or 9 percent in the 190s, rose to 10 to 14 percent in the 1980s, went to 15 to 19 percent in the late 1990s, and in 2007, the last year for which figures are available, Americans in the top one percent of income were “earning” more than 23 percent of all income going to all Americans.

And now. And now. Those inglorious bastards – who instead of taking in 8 percent of national income as they did in pre-Reagan/Gekko days, are hoarding 23 percent of national income -- are complaining that they might have to pay a little more in taxes on their unprecedented windfalls. Everything about these greedy, “entitled,” super-rich Americans is despicable. Everything. Their enablers in the Congress are beyond despicable. They have all earned their places in Dante’s Ninth Circle. But before their descent, instead of “subjecting” the whiners to Obama’s wimpy proposal to merely allow tax cuts for the wealthy to lapse, I suggest Congress tax income above $250,000 at 95 percent.