;)
The Commentariat -- Dec. 3, 2012
My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on Ross Douthat's latest sermonette, one which I found particularly risible. ...
... Imani Gandy, writing in Balloon Juice: "As for Douthat’s claims that those who choose not to have children are somehow being decadent, it is fairly obvious that he is saying that women who choose to remain childless are selfish or damaged in some way. And for that bit of 1950s thinking, I offer Mr. Douchehat a hearty 'fuck you.'”
Cliff Notes
Jake Sherman & Carrie Brown of Politico: "House Republican leaders on Monday sent President Barack Obama a counteroffer aimed at avoiding the fiscal cliff, but it doesn't hike tax rates on the wealthy or deal explicitly with tricky issues like the debt ceiling and the sequester." ...
... The Washington Post has the GOP "plan," which it derives from this two-page letter from Speaker Boehner, et al. CW: As far as I can tell it doesn't begin to explain how these geniuses plan to garner that $800BB in increased revenues. What loopholes?
Peter Baker of the New York Times: "Mr. Obama, scarred by failed negotiations in his first term and emboldened by a clear if close election to a second, has emerged as a different kind of negotiator in the past week or two, sticking to the liberal line and frustrating Republicans on the other side of the bargaining table."
E. J. Dionne: "We became so accustomed to Obama’s earlier habit of making preemptive concessions that the very idea he'd negotiate in a perfectly normal way amazed much of Washington.... House Republicans have, so far, been unwilling to assume any risk to get what they claim to want. They seem to hope a deal will be born by way of immaculate conception, with Obama taking ownership of all the hard stuff while they innocently look on.... The only way to keep the next four years from becoming another long exercise in gridlock and obstruction is for Obama to hang tough now."
Caroline Bankoff of New York magazine: "In the spirit of political theater, John Boehner did an interview with Fox News Sunday during which he said, 'Right now I would say we're nowhere, period. We're nowhere.' He also described himself as 'flabbergasted' by the proposal [Treasury Secretary Tim] Geithner showed him on Thursday.... 'I looked at him and said, "You can't be serious,'" Boehner recounted. 'I've just never seen anything like it. You know we've got seven weeks between Election Day and the end of the year, and three of those weeks have been wasted with this nonsense.'" ...
... OR, as Andy Borowitz reports, "Tensions over the so-called fiscal cliff reached a boiling point today as House Speaker John Boehner accused President Obama of acting like he won the November election." ...
Raising taxes on the so-called top two percent -- half of those taxpayers are small business owners who pay their taxes through their personal income tax filing every year. -- John Boehner
By any measure, Boehner's statement ... was incorrect. Only a relatively small percentage [3%] of small-business owners would be affected by a tax increase.... There is some question, however,whether even that claim is especially relevant. Readers with personal experience have fiercely disputed whether higher taxes would make much difference in whether a small business would hire new employees. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post ...
... In a post titled "Operation Rolling Tantrum," Paul Krugman writes: "John Boehner has just declared that he's going to hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage every time we hit the debt limit. Nor will it be a case of holding the nation at gunpoint until it meets GOP demands; Republicans are signaling that they don't intend to make any specific proposals, they're just going to yell and stamp their feet until Obama soothes them somehow." Krugman predicts that if they keep this up, the 2014 election will be a referendum on the rolling tantrum/obstructionism of the GOP. ...
... Krugman elaborates in his column: "... when you put Republicans on the spot and demand specifics about how they're going to make good on their posturing about spending and deficits, they come up empty. There's no there there." ...
... Heather of Crooks & Liars: "Sen. Orrin Hatch continued the whining we've seen from Republicans over the fact that President Obama didn't immediately cave on these so-called 'fiscal cliff' negotiations in this week's Republican weekly address.... Much of what President Obama proposed this week appeared in his 20-page plan, released in October. If there's any party that hasn't negotiated in good faith for years now, it's the Republicans." With video.
Corporate Welfare, Part 2. Louise Story of the New York Times: "Texas offers more incentives to attract business than any other state, but the lines between decision makers and beneficiaries are often blurred, leaving questions about whether Texans or companies gain more.... To help balance its budget last year, Texas cut public education spending by $5.4 billion -- a significant decrease considering that it already ranked 11th from the bottom among all states in per-pupil financing.... Yet highly profitable companies like Dow Chemical and Texas Instruments continue to enjoy hefty discounts on their school tax bills...."
Justin Gillis & John Broder of the New York Times: "Global emissions of carbon dioxide were at a record high in 2011 and are likely to take a similar jump in 2012, scientists reported Sunday -- the latest indication that efforts to limit such emissions are failing." ...
... Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker writes that a carbon tax may be an idea whose time has come. "Not long ago, the Congressional Research Service reported that, over the next decade, a relatively modest carbon tax could cut the projected federal deficit in half. Such a tax would be imposed not just on gasoline but on all fossil fuels ... so it would affect the price of nearly everything, including food and manufactured goods." CW: but here's what I don't get: if the revenue generated is used to reduce the deficit, how does that substantially reduce emissions? I can't see that a "modest tax" would result in more than "a modest reduction" in fuel usage. If it's going to be treated as nothing more than a "sin tax," I can't see much point to it. If you have some insights on this, please share.
News Ledes
New York Times: "A military appeals court on Monday ordered the removal of the judge presiding over the prosecution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in a deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas, citing the judge's appearance of bias after he ordered Major Hasan forcibly shaved before the start of his trial."
New York Times: "President Obama called on Russia on Monday to renew a two-decade-old nuclear disarmament program that Moscow has threatened to cancel as the two sides try to figure out the future of a rocky relationship now that elections in both countries are behind them. Russia declared this fall that it would not renew the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which has helped rid the former Soviet Union of thousands of nuclear weapons since the end of the cold war. But in a speech, Mr. Obama chose to interpret the Russian statements as a negotiating position to change the program rather than halt it altogether." Video of the speech is here.
New York Times: "After showing a measure of unity against President Mohamed Morsi's decision to put his edicts above the law, Egypt's judges splintered on Monday, with one leading judicial official saying many judges would cooperate with plans to hold a public vote on a draft constitution supported by the president."
Guardian: "The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have ended months of intense speculation by announcing they are expecting their first child, but were forced to share their news earlier than hoped because of the Duchess's admission to hospital on Monday. News that the duchess is in the 'very early stages' of pregnancy with the third-in-line to the throne was officially released after she was taken to the King Edward VII hospital in central London, suffering from hyperemesis gravidarun, very acute morning sickness."
New York Times: "UBS, the Swiss banking giant..., is expected to pay more than $450 million to settle claims that some employees reported false rates to increase the bank's profits...."
Guardian: "Britain and France have summoned the Israeli ambassadors to London and Paris in protest at Israel's authorisation of 3,000 new settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem."
AP: "It's not clear how long it will take workers to clear a hazardous gas from a ruptured tank car that derailed from a freight train in southern New Jersey last week. More than 100 Paulsboro residents won't able to return to their homes in the 12-block evacuation zone until at least Saturday."
AP: "Japanese officials ordered the immediate inspection of tunnels across the country Monday after nine people were killed when concrete ceiling slabs fell from the roof of a highway tunnel onto moving vehicles below. Those killed in Sunday's accident were traveling in three vehicles in the 4.7-kilometer (3-mile) long Sasago Tunnel about 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Tokyo."
Al Jazeera: "Borut Pahor, Slovenia's centre-left former prime minister, has been elected president in a runoff vote, beating incumbent President Danilo Turk, preliminary official results suggest. Pahor won 67 per cent of the vote against Turk, who received a 33 per cent ... after nearly all votes were counted.... Slovenians voted on Sunday amid growing discontent with cost-cutting measures designed to avoid an international bailout."
New York Times: "The growing evidence of a link between and long-term, degenerative brain disease was amplified in an extensive study of athletes, military veterans and others who absorbed repeated hits to the head, according to new findings published in the scientific journal Brain."
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Reader Comments (29)
Good NYX column, Marie. But I suspect the Doughboy is much less informed. I think he just wants more white guys in the voter pool.
I found Ross Douthat's column to be quite offensive.
Roughly 25 years ago Mrs. Zee and I thought it was time to start a family, as our careers seemed to be on their way and we felt that we could therefore responsibly have children.
Unfortunately, as has been often the case for those of us who delayed parenthood 'til our thirties, we found that we were unable to have children of our own; after five years in a university hospital fertility program and several surgeries, we learned that we both had irreparable problems.
We chose not to adopt. At the time that we might have done so, the fad for birth mothers--and birth fathers--of adopted children to "re-assert" their parental rights was at its height. Who needed that heartache?
We also chose not to adopt "internationally" as neither the pre-natal care nor the genetic history of foreign-born children was available to potential parents. In retrospect we are grateful that we chose not to go this route, as we know a number of such adoptive parents whose children had serious inabilities to develop emotional bonds with their new parents, siblings, or anyone else, owing to their experiences in their early years.
We finally tried foster-parenting, asking to provide short-term, emergency, safe shelter to infants and young children who were in transit either to suitable relatives or longer-term, experienced foster parents--at least as a way to "break into" fostering.
Instead, the New Mexico State foster care system asked us on very short notice to provide emergency fostering to a teenager with serious emotional problems after years of abuse and neglect.
Although we stuck with this child for close to a year, we were in no way up to the challenge, and the state was of no real support; we had never dealt with children of our own, let alone such a troubled child.
Eventually, as he cut more and more school, sold the toys we gave him to schoolmates, resisted our efforts to help him with school, and stole from such friends as he had, we gave up.
Are we--Mrs. Zee and I--"decadent" for failing to work harder to become parents, one way or another?
According to Douthat, I guess we are.
The Douthat column us a classic example of how and why religion is destroying the world. And BTW, humans broke a record last year, 38billion lbs of carbon dioxide belched into the air. I just hope that he and his 10 children move to the Jersey shore.
Krugman's comparison of the GOP to crying babies with shitty diapers is pretty darn accurate. After years of this childish tactic, even those who pay little attention have to be catching on to this con game. I mean seriously, ever since they forced this situation of automatic spending cuts to take effect on Jan 1, what in the bloody hell have they been doing since then? Apparently no one on their side decided it could be pertinent to write up a plan B when negotiations would start.
They all just fucking sat there, receiving their monthly government checks in the mail, sucking hard on their favorite government teat, driving around in there limos.
In any other job, when you sit there for months on end with your thumb up your puckered asshole, you're fired.
According to the Huffington Post, Sheldon Adelson spent more than $150 million ($50 million more than previously thought) to influence the election, including
"$40 million to the Karl Rove-founded Crossroads GPS and at least $15 million to grassroots efforts with financial links to Charles and David Koch. Among other major beneficiaries of Adelson’s largess were the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which received almost $5 million from Adelson, and the Republican Jewish Coalition, which got the bulk of its $6.5 million budget" from Adelson. All this to try to buy off the criminal investigations of his Macau casino investments.
Here's the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/03/sheldon-adelson-2012-election_n_2223589.html
@Zee. You're quite right. Everyone who has made a decision about whether or not to have a child should be offended. Generally speaking, I would guess that -- on average -- those who decide against having children (at least at a particular time & in particular circumstances) make more reasoned decisions than those who decide to, or happen to, get pregnant. As to the number who reason, "Let's have a child to do our bit for the future of the national economy!" I'd guess that would be around zero. We are all decadent now.
Marie
P.S. As far as I know, Mr. & Mrs. Douthat have so far made the decision not to do their bit for the future of the national economy, tho I could be wrong on this.
@Calyban. What is obscene is not that Sheldon Adelson spent $150MM to throw elections, but that we have a tax structure that allows one man to have $150MM to throw away on throwing elections.
Marie
Russ has been running emulate rabbits meme on us for a while. He made quite a muck up of a 2007 try by settling on our "moral obligation" to procreate after he had suggested in a previous post that having children was a way to make oneself happy while making the1st offspring happy. Apparently, he has never heard of sibling rivalry.
Both pieces of, as Marie suggests, "Flintstone theology", appeared in The Atlantic. It would probably be easier, shorter and more truthful if he just said "we're scared, too many brown and black people and besides do what the red hats tell you."
The column http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2007/05/the-moral-obligation-to-have-children/54313/ and the previous post is linked in the piece.
Marie, your point about the carbon tax is right on. As a practical matter it is just a word game. There is no serious proposals to deal with GLOBAL warming. Any effort we make, good or bad will not stop the growing mess. Remember my comment a few weeks back. More than 80,000 more people a day. More food, more cars, more air conditioners, more factories. While we should make an effort to reduce emissions, we are just a piece of the global problem. It will never go away. If we want to protect America it will require a political leadership that will never happen. Here is NJ they are working hard to 'rebuild' the Jersey shore. Billions spent to put people and property at risk from hurricane Mandy. We don't get it and by the time we finally realize that there is more to life than making money it will be too late.
Ross Douthat is proposing a Ponzi scheme.
Well thank the gods on Olympus (a squabbly bunch--that Apollo is a serious pain in the ass and Ares and his bloody barking war dogs; enough already) for Paul Krugman. His general sense of propriety, proportion and, oh yeah, honesty, offers much needed sobriety and balance after a weekend of screaming mimis and fuzzy gregories and all their "both sides are to blame" and "Republicans have done all they can" blather.
May Cerberus usher them all directly to hell. Do not pass Go, do not collect insider trading profits.
To listen to the Fuzzies and the Boners and McConnell, he of the ever flapping jowls, the president is sitting on a time bomb of his own creation (they had nothing to do with it!) set to destroy civilization, or at least a number of toney Beltway Men's Clubs, all shiny with hardwood paneling and stinking with $5,000 bottles of the best Republican champagne iced down and ready for Obama's cave-in to those whip smart right-wingers, sharp of wit and heavy of pocket.
Except that, as Dr. Krugman points out, their offers, presented by Boner and Flappy as eminently reasonable (rich people and the military keep everything, poor people and the elderly bend over for their annual rectal stretching. *snap* Hear that? Cantor and Ryan already have the rubber gloves on.) and economically sound, are neither.
But you'd never figure that out by listening to the MSM. But according to right-wing world, anyone who tells the truth about their weak-ass ploy is a commie traitor and spy. Why can't people like Krugman either shut up or go along to get along? You know, like Fuzzy, as nice a drooling lap dog as there is in DC, or Chuckie Todd, or all those nice people at Fox who always do what they're told.
A sad state of affairs.
Maybe I can persuade Father Zeus to uncork a couple of lightning bolts to jolt those twits. His aim used to be pretty good.
When he wasn't drunk.
Hey kids, the pope has a twitter account!
Holy Crap, Benny!
And his Twitter handle apparently is going to be "Pontifex". Better, I suppose, than "Pederast". And not as long as "Ponti-fixes for other pederasts".
Wonder what his first tweet will be? Passwords for NAMBLA picture galleries? Or maybe messages to his old Nazi buddies.
Praise the lord for technology.
Ain't it grand?
Oh, and one more slightly humorous thing about the Top Pederast on Twitter.
Some Vatican flunky, trying to pump up il Papa's techno cred, stated breathlessly in some press release that the pope would be writing his very own tweets. Wow. No shit, huh?
Sounds like something you say about someone on their last legs: "Oh yes, and he can even go number one by himself! Number two, not so much."
Tweet away, Benny. The world awaits your breathless expressions of....well, of something.
At least Doucheboy will be awaiting. Maybe he can get props for his latest attack on Americans not abnormally unbalanced by religion, who choose not to do what he tells them, based on his uniquely warped vision of dogma.
Here's something that caught my eye in Douthat's––Marie calls it risible––I'd add ludicrous––little essay on the need for population growth:
" It’s a spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be."
Is he saying that less populated countries aren't innovative?
That somehow less babies born equals stagnation in new ideas, new inventions? That's simply not true. This spirit––opting for the present over the future–-isn't that what the Republicans have been doing––think global warming, think health care, etc? And do I sniff a gay marriage rebuff in all this? As though gay marriages don't have children, but obviously not the way Ross's god intended.
Thanks to Zee for his comments. Well said.
An Australian pol tried exhorting women to have more kids...
http://cnsnews.com/node/15539
"Costello, widely regarded as a prime ministerial hopeful
when John Howard finally retires, told reporters
that having two children per family simply wasn't
enough "to fix the ageing demographic."
Costello said, ending the press conference
by telling journalists: "Go home and do your patriotic duty tonight.""
( I know the citing is wrong, but better more than less.)
mae finch
Ahh shucks Akhilleus you ruined all the fun!
I'd also heard about Jesus Junior's new tech savvy voice of God, but I was still unaware of the name of his account.
Naturally my intuition led me to explore the potential options, but I was apparently way off.
Pontifex? Lame. I was thinking something more appropriate would be along the lines of, oh I don't know:
#fondlehissac
#Jizzus
#Creampie
#divinesensations
#justthetip
Marie, is it possible that the Doughnut hasn't figured out how to create more humans?
Marvin,
He tried to figure it out once but that other gender of humans with which he, like most Republicans, seems completely ignorant, befuddled him by whispering, at an extremely dangerous time for little Douchie (he was checking his catechism to see what to do with that little piece of parakeet proudflesh hidden in his tightie whities--the ones on which his mother had emroidered medieval looking crucifixes), that she was on the pill. This hint of apparent lust (she must have been blotto), along with the taint of a horrid contraceptive plan, caused him to flee in abject terror.
But not to worry. Shortly thereafter, he took up with a much less scary, more docile sexual companion, Ms.(or Mr., no one knows for sure) Blow Up Doll.
After some years with his doll, and his additional catechism training, of course, Douthat now feels fully qualified to lecture the rest of us about sex--but only if you're gonna do it to procreate.
That sex for pleasure stuff is right out.
Safari,
fondlehissac?
Yowza!
You might have a winner there.
Carbon Tax? Would speculate its success would depend on how it was formulated and imposed. Previously pollution credits (re for SO2 and other components of acid rain) seem to have worked to some extent, tho' acid rain continues to fall in lesser amounts--hard to tell since percentages, the way in which "success" is usually measured, don't easily translate into absolute numbers. As so much else depends on how you do the math.
Overall, seems to me so-called market solutions work the same way corporate taxes work; that is, poorly. Not only do corporations pass on as much of the tax as possible to consumers, maintaining their often egregious profit margins, but when credit trading opens whole new realms of loophole possibilities, an area of tax avoidance they are already practiced at.
What we don't want to talk about (like Douthat and his hidden message of white vs. brown babies) is the ability of an economic system whose success depends on short-term profits to magically move the human and environmental costs it happily ignores into center focus, when all its incentives are to do otherwise.
In short and aside from Marvin's observation that global warming is a global problem, any carbon tax imposed must have real teeth and be accompanied by a set of very strict regulations with real penalties. I'm not sure the US government is strong enough to arrange that.
My larger concern, which climate change issues only hints at, is that we are faced with a series of global problems (which Douthat's insane breeding program would only make worse) and have no global government structure able to deal with them. For another depressing instance of untreated global problems that are changing our world in ways difficult to comprehend and impossible to control, it's obvious multi-nationals' trade and employment practices have no effective overseer, whatsoever.
A smaller but more immediate problem: Why doesn't "overseer" have one more "e?"
CW: I received an e-mail notification of this comment by @Ken Winkes, but it has otherwise completely disappeared. So here it is:
Carbon Tax? Would speculate its success would depend on how it was formulated and imposed. Previously pollution credits (re for SO2 and other components of acid rain) seem to have worked to some extent, tho' acid rain continues to fall in lesser amounts--hard to tell since percentages, the way in which "success" is usually measured, don't easily translate into absolute numbers. As so much else depends on how you do the math.
Overall, seems to me so-called market solutions work the same way corporate taxes work; that is, poorly. Not only do corporations pass on as much of the tax as possible to consumers, maintaining their often egregious profit margins, but when credit trading opens whole new realms of loophole possibilities, an area of tax avoidance they are already practiced at.
What we don't want to talk about (like Douthat and his hidden message of white vs. brown babies) is the ability of an economic system whose success depends on short-term profits to magically move the human and environmental costs it happily ignores into center focus, when all its incentives are to do otherwise.
In short and aside from Marvin's observation that global warming is a global problem, any carbon tax imposed must have real teeth and be accompanied by a set of very strict regulations with real penalties. I'm not sure the US government is strong enough to arrange that.
My larger concern, which climate change issues only hints at, is that we are faced with a series of global problems (which Douthat's insane breeding program would only make worse) and have no global government structure able to deal with them. For another depressing instance of untreated global problems that are changing our world in ways difficult to comprehend and impossible to control, it's obvious multi-nationals' trade and employment practices have no effective overseer, whatsoever.
A smaller but more immediate problem: Why doesn't "overseer" have one more "e?"
Ken Winkes
@Ken Winkes: okay, here's where I admit I'm a complete nincompoop (nincomepoop?). Where would the extra "e" go in "overseer"?
Marie
All this talk about babies and women having a lot of them brings to mind our old friend Rick Santorum who hyperventilated on the floor of the Senate his obsessive interest in the reproductive condition and like other high-status male primates was intent on controlling when and how females reproduced. If I recall the Santorums declined to terminate a pregnancy when it was known that the baby might not live and might kill Mrs. S. If this sounds outlandish it appears to be on some state legislative laws that want to prevent all abortions no matter what. We do know that since women have gained control of their fertility, four phenomena have become apparent in developed countries: a decline in the per capita birthrate; a rise in the average age of first-time mothers; an increase in the number of women in the job market; and a diversification of women's lifestyles with the emergence, in many countries, of couples and single women without children. Amazing how we continue to have to fight for our place at the table again and again.
Overseer from the word oversee I see no extra "e", but like Marie, perhaps I'm over looking something I can't see?
I think Ken means "oversee" already has two e's so it should be overseeer.
@Barbarossa: Yup. You must be a "seeer." You read my mind.
@Ken Winkes. You do have a point inasmuch as the British pronunciation is more like "over-see-er." The American pronunciation is "over-seer." I say "ovah-seer."
Marie
Posted this to Marie's column, but it fits here as well:
Unfortunately, many who should know better, including almost all politicians of any persuasion, sweep the catastrophe of relentless reproduction under the carpet, as any suggestion for urgent population shrinkage is a career breaker. Except in China. All one needs do is to plug any growth rate into a compound interest calculator and run it out a few decades. Oh, sorry, math class is hard.
If we were serious we would give a deduction for the first child, none for the second, remove the original for the third, and then charge for each additional. HaHa.
For a sobering reality chek based on solid data: The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen. The seventh mass extinction is underway, driven only by population growth.
We weren't any better behaved when our global population was only a few hundred million, but at least we were not skinning our shrinking planet.
re: Carbon Tax
British Columbia introduced a carbon tax in 2008 to reduce carbon emissions and help the province reach its greenhouse gas emissions goals. A selection of tax levels based on a tax of $10/tonne of carbon.
propane: 2.31Cents per liter.
gasoline: 3.33 " " "
heavy fuel oil: 4.73 " "
coal: $30 per tonne
The price of gasoline in BC is 10% more than the national average and consumption is 5% less. The carbon tax will rise to $15 per tonne on July 1. The tax is to be reviewed for fiscal 2013 but I don't think it will be rescinded.
A Canadian economist (J Rubin) suggested that it would be in the US's interest to enact every possible carbon reducing measure and then charge all imports a duty based on what the cost to an American manufacturer would be of those taxes and levies not imposed by the sources own country thus forcing all nations to act in their own, and the world's interests or forgo trade with the US.
Akhilleus: could you please provide a reference so I can see for myself where the pope has been shown to be a pederast and member of NAMBLA? Thank you.