The Commentariat -- August 4

Karen Garcia recommends this Al Jazeera video -- "Fault Lines" --  and so do I:

"Hope Is Not a Plan." Paul Krugman: the Obama Administration keeps saying the economy is better (or is getting better) than it is, which does nothing but "squander its credibility.... Do they think the markets will be reassured? Do they think consumers will be reassured? ... Spin is part of politics. But sometimes you have to know when to stop." ...

... Pick Your Universe. Conservative David Frum: Krugman is consistently right about the economy; the Wall Street Journal editors are consistently wrong.

Barack Wall Street Obama. Dan Eggen of the Washington Post: "About a third of the money [President Obama's] top fundraisers have brought in this year has come from the financial sector, suggesting that strained relations with Wall Street have not hurt the president’s ability to attract donations there for his reelection campaign, according to data released Friday by the Center for Responsive Politics."

A Little More Monday-Morning Quarterbacking on the Deficit Law:

Dan Eggen of the Washington Post: "Health-care and defense lobbyists are quickly gearing up for a major lobbying and public relations campaign in response to this week’s debt-limit deal, which could force hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts for two of Washington’s most powerful industries.... The [super committee/trigger] approach appears tailor-made to produce a frenzy on K Street, where major lobbying firms and trade groups are already laying out strategies for protecting their interests." ...

... Law Prof. Daniel Markovits in a Los Angeles Times op-ed: "... the debt deal represents a substantial success for President Obama and the Democrats. It does indeed impose cuts that will slow the economic recovery and unjustly burden working Americans. But the deal is much nearer an affirmation of the president's core commitments than a surrender. Moreover, the deal that the president got is much, much less bad, from the progressive point of view, than a coldly rational observer would have predicted. The reason the president beat the odds is simple: The Republicans blinked." ...

... James Fearon of the Monkey Cage agrees with Markovits: "Seems to me that [President Obama] has very little bargaining power to begin with in a legislative situation like this one. And this is not so much because the economy is terrible and his favorability ratings are low, but because the U.S. Constitution has it that Congress organizes its own procedures and makes the laws, basically." He asks his readers to respond, & a very good discussion ensues. ...

... Kevin Drum noted the precipitous drop in Monday's stock market & wonders if  "America has the stupidest goddamn investors on the planet.... Has Wall Street really been sitting idly by during the whole debt ceiling debacle and has only now realized what it really means? Can they really be so steeped in the Fox News fantasyland that it never occurred to them until now that cutting federal spending during an economic downturn wasn't really a great idea? Seriously?" ...

... AND Actor Matt Damon on the debt/deficit deal:

** David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal: "Two big sectors of the U.S. economy have been on steroids: finance and health care. If anything is crowding out more productive activities, it's them, as [Prof. Paul] Romer argued in a recent National Academy of Sciences lecture. The bloated financial sector — all those brains lured by big bucks who might otherwise have been employed in science, software, engineering or other fields — has harmed the U.S. economy more than any of our post-World War II communist adversaries did. The American health system costs more per person than any other, but isn't delivering the world's healthiest people.... Profit-seeking players in finance and health care have captured Congress, resisted regulation that would curb their excesses and exploited antiquated rules and policy for private gain."

Fred Kaplan of Slate: "... The Pentagon budget on the table for next year — not including the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — amounts to $553 billion, shy by just over 3 percent. (Including the costs of those wars shoots the figure up to $671 billion, or 17 percent higher than the Cold War peak, i.e., 17 percent more money than the largest sum [adjusted for inflation] the United States ever spent in one year on the military since the Korean War.) ... The Defense Department is as much a bureaucracy as any other federal agency.... It's time to start setting priorities...."

Dylan Matthews of the Washington Post: "Everything you need to know about the FAA shutdown in one post." CW: Matthews is right; his post contains more info than I found from reading several long news stories.

Eliot Spitzer in Slate: "Last week, a conservative panel of judges on the D.C. Circuit's Court of Appeals — the second-most important court in the land — struck down an effort to inject a tiny bit of democracy into corporate governance." The issue: the SEC had imposed a regulation requiring corporations to allow certain shareholders to nominate their own slate of directors; the D.C. court decided that was too much of an imposition on the poor, put-upon corporations. Read the whole article.

AND Matt Damon explains to dumb reporter & dumber camera man why teachers teach. (That's Damon's mother standing beside him; she's a teacher):

Frank Bruni celebrates two films by and about women: "The Help," based on the novel by Kathryn Stockett, & "Bridesmaids." Here's the trailer for "The Help":

Aah, what the hell, let's do "Bridesmaids," too:

Local News

Voter Fraud, Koch Bros. Style. David Catanese of Politico: the Koch-backed astroturf group "Americans for Prosperity is sending absentee ballots to Democrats in at least two Wisconsin state Senate recall districts with instructions to return the paperwork after the election date. The fliers, obtained by Politico, ask solidly Democratic voters to return ballots for the Aug. 9 election to the city clerk 'before Aug. 11.'" ...

     ... Update: AFP claims it was a "printing mistake." Uh-huh. "The Wisconsin Democratic Party has already filed a formal complaint with the state’s Government Accountability Board over the misdated absentee ballots. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee is also calling for an investigation."

News Ledes

Politico: "House and Senate leaders on Thursday brokered a 'bipartisan compromise' over Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization, ending — if only temporarily — a two-week standoff that had sidelined 4,000 FAA employees as well as 70,000 construction workers involved in airport improvement projects and cost the government tens of millions of dollars in uncollected revenue from the airline industry.... Under the arrangement, the Democratic-controlled Senate on Friday will pass by unanimous consent a bill the Republican-led House passed in July that temporarily allows the FAA to conduct its business and slashes $16 million from the budget for subsidies paid to rural airports. That would allow the FAA to recall its furloughed employees and get up and running again at full strength -- at least until Sept. 16, when the temporary extension would expire. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood could then use his authority to grant waivers to any rural airports faced with losing the subsidy."

AP: "Stocks are plunging in another broad sell-off as investors grow concerned about an economic slowdown in the U.S. and Europe. The Dow Jones industrial average dove more than 350 points, erasing its gains for the year." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Stocks around the world fell sharply Thursday on intensifying investor fears about a slowdown in global economic growth and worries about Europe’s ongoing debt crisis, which is centered now on Italy and Spain. Stock market indexes in the United States and Europe dropped more than 4 percent as Japan intervened to weaken its currency and the European Central Bank began buying bonds to try to calm markets."

Reuters: "Authorities issued a lockdown on Thursday at the campus of Virginia Tech, site of a 2007 mass shooting that killed 32 people, after a man suspected of carrying a gun was seen on campus, the school said."

Bloomberg News: "U.S. Senate leaders ended an impasse over stalled free-trade agreements, agreeing to vote after the August recess on benefits for workers who lose their jobs because of overseas competition, then take up the trade deals. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky pledged action yesterday to pass the agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office and Republican House Speaker John Boehner praised the compromise, signaling all sides concur on the process."

Washington Post: "Greeting 2,400 cheering supporters who paid as much as $35,800 to get inside the campaign fundraising party, [President] Obama took the stage at the Aragon Entertainment Center after an introduction from his former chief of staff, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D), and a birthday song from performers Jennifer Hudson, Herbie Hancock and OK Go." Chicago Tribune story here.

New York Times: "Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary and dean of President Obama’s economic team, is expected to stay through the president’s term after intense White House pressure, according to officials familiar with the discussions. But Mr. Geithner has not yet notified the White House of his intentions, and family considerations could still win out, advisers say."

Politico: "Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) made his resignation official Wednesday, clearing the way for a special election to succeed him."

Al Jazeera: "The trial of Egypt's former interior minister, Habib al-Adly, and six senior security officials, has resumed. The accused all face charges related to their involvement in the killing of protesters during the revolution earlier this year, which toppled the government of the former president, Hosni Mubarak."