The Commentariat -- May 29, 2012

David Brooks channels Alexander Hamilton. Homemade art.... My column at NYTX is on David Brooks' latest tour de farce. The NYTX front page is here.

President Obama honoring Medal of Freedom winners:

CW: We all know this one: "If the president does it, it's legal." -- Richard Nixon. But here's one I had not heard before, and considering the source, I've got to make it my

Quote of the Day: If I decide to do it, by definition it’s good policy. -- George W. Bush, in response to aides who told him his tax rebates were bad economic policy ...

... Former Reagan & Bush I aide Bruce Bartlett with more on Republicans as Keynesians.

NEW. How much does a CAT scan cost? Avik Roy of Forbes: it depends. The same facility can charge 20 times as much as its cash price for the same procedure, depending upon who pays & when. And legislators -- thanks to the healthcare lobby -- want to keep costs a secret.

Profs. Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers in Bloomberg News: "... the data tell us that a debt-ceiling standoff is an act of economic sabotage.... The next debt-ceiling battle could be worse, because the stakes are even higher. In addition to the threat of default, the U.S. is facing the so-called fiscal cliff: a raft of spending cuts and tax increases that will happen at the end of this year unless Congress acts to postpone them. Another stalemate would almost certainly plunge the economy into a deep recession."

Shaila Dewan of the New York Times: "Hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Americans are receiving their final unemployment checks sooner than they expected, even though Congress renewed extended benefits until the end of the year. The checks are stopping for the people who have the most difficulty finding work: the long-term unemployed.... In February, when the program was set to expire, Congress renewed it, but also phased in a reduction of the number of weeks of extended aid and effectively made it more difficult for states to qualify for the maximum aid. Since then, the jobless in 23 states have lost up to five months' worth of benefits." ...

... Brett Smiley of New York magazine: "... many of those individuals [who lost or are losing benefits] live in key battleground states including North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, and Florida.... Romney believes that jobless benefits incentivize laziness and discourage some people from taking jobs. He wrote in an op-ed in December 2010, "To remedy such problems we need a very different model, perhaps establishing individual unemployment savings accounts....'" CW Note: Smiley writes that Romney has said he can reduce the unemployment rate to about 6 percent by the end of his first term. What Smiley doesn't tell you is that the 6 percent figure is right in the ballpark of what the CBO & OMB project will be the unemployment rate at that time if nobody does anything about it. That is, Romney promises to do absolutely nothing.

Jo Becker & Scott Shane of the New York Times: President "Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding 'kill list,' poring over terrorist suspects' biographies on what one official calls the macabre 'baseball cards' of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises -- but his family is with him -- it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation."

President Obama penned an op-ed in yesterday's Stars & Stripes on "keeping faith with Vietnam veterans." ...

... AND Digby highlights "Arlington West" at Santa Monica beach: "Each Sunday from sunrise to sunset, a temporary memorial appears next to the world-famous pier at Santa Monica, California. This memorial, known as Arlington West, a project of Veterans For Peace, offers visitors a graceful, visually and emotionally powerful, place for reflection." The Arlington West Website is here. ...

... Joe Biden's Memorial Day tribute plans went awry. Details from the Onion.

The John Edwards of Illinois. Katherine Skiba & Todd Lighty of the Chicago Tribune: "Soon after Mark Kirk's [R-Illinois] ex-wife announced she would no longer support his 2010 run for the U.S. Senate, he brought her onto his campaign team, then quietly paid her after his victory. But Kimberly Vertolli, a lawyer who received $40,000 from the campaign, again is at odds with her ex-husband, filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Kirk and his then-girlfriend may have broken campaign finance law. The girlfriend, Dodie McCracken, who works in public relations, has acknowledged receiving more than $143,000 in fees and expenses for her campaign work. A former live-in girlfriend, she is no longer romantically involved with Kirk

Presidential Race 

Gene Robinson doesn't say anything others haven't said, but at least he's saying it in a major newspaper: "Not to put too fine a point on it, [Mitt Romney] lies. Quite a bit."

Got Milk? Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: read this story of a Romney gaffe all the way through.

Michael Crowley of Time: Republican governors contradict Romney on his doom-and-gloom claims about the state of the economy.

Jamelle Bouie has more on the Gallup poll (linked in yesterday's Commentariat) that shows Romney's huge lead over Obama among veterans. Bouie doesn't mention what I see as the big story here: Obama has made a three-year effort to expand aid to veterans; Romney suggested privatizing veterans' benefits would be a swell idea; plus, he thinks we should go to war with everybody except England, which really is not a good thing for the people who actually have to fight them, even if it does expand available military "jobs." What is the matter with these people? ...

... Ed Kilgore of Washington Monthly also notes that Congressional Republicans demanded "during the debt-limit negotiations to expose veterans programs to the 'defense sequester' to lessen the impact on current Pentagon spending"; i.e., one more way to cut veterans' benefits.

CNN: "Mitt Romney said Monday he wasn't concerned about Donald Trump's commitment to the 'birther' conspiracy, one day before the GOP presidential candidate hosts a fund-raiser alongside the celebrity business magnate."

Local News

Disenfranchisement, Florida-Style. Judd Legum of Think Progress: "Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) has ordered the state to purge all 'non-citizens' from the voting rolls prior to November’s election. But that list compiled by the Scott administration is ... riddled with errors...." Hundreds, probably thousands of people whom Scott will disenfranchise are citizens eligible to vote. "An analysis of the state-wide list by the Miami Herald found that 'Hispanic, Democratic and independent-minded voters are the most likely to be targeted' as ineligible by the list. Conversely, 'whites and Republicans are disproportionately the least-likely to face the threat of removal.'" CW: What a surprise.

News Ledes

New York Times: Mitt "Romney, who formally secured the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday by winning delegates in the Texas primary, introduced a new line of criticism: accusing the president of squandering taxpayer money on companies like Solyndra, which declared bankruptcy last year after receiving $528 million in federal loan guarantees. It amounted to a counterpunch to the White House&'s assault on Mr. Romney's tenure as head of Bain Capital...."

AP: "Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and tea-party backed former state Solicitor General Ted Cruz are heading to a runoff in the state's Republican primary for U.S. Senate."

CW: this is surely going to cause a big flap in Right Wing World. AP: "The White House said President Barack Obama misspoke on Tuesday when he referred to a 'Polish death camp' while honoring a Polish war hero."

AP: "Americans confidence in the economy fell the most in eight months as worries about the weak jobs, housing and stock markets continue to rattle them."

AP: "The U.S.-led NATO force in Afghanistan killed al-Qaida's second highest leader in the country in an airstrike in eastern Kunar province, the coalition said Tuesday. Sakhr al-Taifi, also known as Mushtaq and Nasim, was responsible for commanding foreign insurgents in Afghanistan and directing attacks against NATO and Afghan forces, the alliance said." (See also today's Commentariat.)

New York Times: "International efforts to pressure Syria intensified on Tuesday, as the United Nations special envoy Kofi Annan began talks with President Bashar al-Assad in the capital, Damascus, after the chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that continued atrocities could make military intervention more likely." ...

     ... Reuters Update: "France and Australia threw out Syrian diplomats from their capitals on Tuesday and other countries were due to follow suit as revulsion over the killing of more than 100 civilians in a Syrian town spurred them to act against President Bashar al-Assad." ...

     ... The Times story has been updated to reflect that the U.S. & other nations have ejected Syrian diplomats.

Washington Post: "With Tuesday's Texas primary, [Mitt Romney] is poised to secure the 1,144 delegates required to clinch the Republican presidential nomination at the party's August convention."

New York Times: "Dewey & LeBoeuf, the law firm crippled by financial miscues and partner defections, filed for bankruptcy on Monday night, punctuating the largest law firm collapse in United States history."

The Commentariat -- Memorial Day 2012

National Cemetery at Santa Fe, New Mexico. Photo by Michael S. Lewis.

CW Note 1: My parents are buried in the Santa Fe cemetery. My father was a bombardier in the European theater during World War II. Rick Hertzberg of the New Yorker pointed me to Loudon Wainwright III's song below, the title of which has just become true for me, too. (The intro to the song included in the audio on the New Yorker site is excellent.) So Wainwright's observation -- something I have thought of in the abstract and must now shift to the concrete -- gives me a new way to remember my father:

CW Note 2: Thank you to everyone who joined yesterday's Comments thread. I was only able to skim the comments as they came in, but late yesterday I made time to read them through. Your remarks were a pleasure to read, and it's an honor to have such astute commentary appearing here. There are few -- if any -- sites on the Web where the writers match you.

CW Note 3: My column for NYTX on Friedman, which wasn't posted till late yesterday afternoon, is still there.

Marilynn Marchione of the AP: "A staggering 45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21 percent who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told The Associated Press."

On this Memorial Day, a salute to the 101st Chairborne Division. Many thanks to Max Blumenthal for reporting this story back in 2007, & to Driftglass for highlighting it yesterday:

     ... Driftglass: "So that we might never forget that, before they put on tri-corner hats and pretended they had never heard [of] George W. Bush, the members of the 101st Republican Chairborne division were the most loyal members of Commander Cuckoobananas' Amen chorus."

A Bully AND a Phony. Paul Krugman: "For the modern American right doesn't care about deficits, and never did. All that talk about debt was just an excuse for attacking Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and food stamps. And as for [Gov. Chris] Christie [R-N.J.], well, he's just another fiscal phony, distinguished only by his fondness for invective.For the modern American right doesn't care about deficits, and never did. All that talk about debt was just an excuse for attacking Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and food stamps. And as for Mr. Christie, well, he's just another fiscal phony, distinguished only by his fondness for invective."

"A" Is for "Average." If you wonder why students r dum, here's one answer -- grade inflation. Remember those "Easy A" classes? Now they're all Easy A classes, so grades provide no motivation to excel. This also helps explain why prestigious schools are relatively more prestigious: since a potential employer can't tell squat from a grades transcript, she feels safer in taking the Harvard grad over the Miami-Dade College grad. Mark Perry of the University of Michigan: "National studies and surveys suggest that college students now get more A's than any other grade even though they spend less time studying." ...

... AND David Catanese & Dylan Byers of Politico: the Boston dailies, especially the Herald, are deeply invested in the Brown-Warren race.

"69 acres of waterfront land on the west shore of Staten Island, complete with a two-story gymnasium, a baseball diamond and an open-air pavilion...." Thomas Kaplan of the New York Times: "After cutting costs through traditional means like freezing wages of state workers and consolidating government offices, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is embarking on a less conventional effort: trying to sell New York's old prisons."

Stupid Zombie Story. Now the Boston Globe is promoting it. Mary Carmichael of the Globe (May 25): "US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has said she was unaware that Harvard Law School had been promoting her purported Native American heritage until she read about it in a newspaper several weeks ago. But for at least six straight years during Warren's tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school. According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves."

Presidential Race

Frank Newport of Gallup: "U.S. veterans, about 13% of the adult population and consisting mostly of older men, support Mitt Romney over Barack Obama for president by 58% to 34%, while nonveterans give Obama a four-percentage-point edge."

John Heilemann of New York magazine has a long article on Obama's campaign strategy. I've read at it (I'll go back to it later); it looks mildly interesting.

Reid Epstein & Ginger Gibson of Politico: "Mitt Romney has made it clear what he's against. What he'd be for as president is another question. The presumptive GOP nominee has some Republicans worried he lacks the 'vision thing' that has hurt previous presidential candidates and haunted George H.W. Bush in his quest to succeed Ronald Reagan."

Sometimes Even George Will Is Right. Jake Tapper of ABC News: "On 'This Week,' ABC News' George Will called Donald Trump a 'bloviating ignoramus,' questioning why presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is associating with the real estate mogul, who once again falsely questioned President Obama's birthplace this week." ...

... Adele Stan in Washington Monthly: "I'm still waiting for the uproar. Any day now, hordes of reporters will pummel Romney relentlessly with questions about his use of a hate-monger to bring him some dough, right? Yeah, right."

News Ledes

ABC News: "In his second address this Memorial Day, President Obama paid specific tribute to those perished during the Vietnam War on the 50th anniversary of its beginning. He recalled the sacrifice of the troops who served there and the unjust blame that was heaped on them upon their return. 'It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened. That's why here today we resolve that it will not happen again,' Obama told vets and their families gathered at the Vietnam War Memorial on the national mall." Washington Post story here.

President Obama commemorates Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery:

New York Times: "Kofi Annan, the United Nations special envoy for Syria, arrived Monday in Damascus, where he expressed horror at the massacre of more than 100 villagers in Houla and urged both sides to stop fighting."

AP: "American missiles killed five suspected Islamist militants close to the Afghan border, the latest in a barrage of attacks that show Washington is ignoring Islamabad's demands it halt the strikes, Pakistani officials said Monday."

Guardian: "Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of being behind the biggest leak of state secrets in US history, is being denied a fair trial because the army is withholding from him crucial information that might prove his innocence or reduce his sentence, his defence team is arguing. With Manning's court-martial approaching in September, his legal team has released details of what they claim is a shocking lack of diligence on the part of the military prosecutors in affording him his basic constitutional rights." CW: I'd link to the New York Times story on this -- but there isn't one.

AP: "Former Prime Minister Tony Blair testified Monday he never challenged the influential British press because doing so would have plunged his administration in a drawn-out and politically damaging fight." ...

... New York Times: "An antiwar protester broke into Britain's long-running judicial inquiry into press ethics through a supposedly secure corridor on Monday as former Prime Minister Tony Blair was giving evidence, accusing him of being in the pay of JPMorgan Chase bank when he sent British soldiers in support of American troops during the 2003 invasion of Iraq."

Washington Post: 'In recent weeks, investigators working in four countries have amassed new evidence tying the disparate assassination attempts [on U.S. officials] to one another and linking all of them to either Iran-backed Hezbollah militants or operatives based inside Iran, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern security officials. An official report last month summarizing the evidence cited phone records, forensic tests, coordinated travel arrangements and even cellphone SIM cards purchased in Iran and used by several of the would-be assailants, said two officials who have seen the six-page document."

AP: "One of the Vatican's biggest scandals in decades appears to be widening with reports that an Italian cardinal may be involved in a power struggle involving leaked documents, corruption and intrigue. The pope's butler, who has been arrested in the scandal, has pledged to cooperate in the probe."

The Commentariat -- May 27, 2012

My column in the New York Times eXaminer just went up. It's titled "A Column about Nothing," which is to say it is commentary on Tom Friedman's column. The NYTX front page is here.

"The New Political Correctness." Paul Krugman: "... right-wing political correctness -- unlike the liberal version -- has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of Newspeak: to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order. Thus, even talking about 'the wealthy' brings angry denunciations; we're supposed to call them 'job creators'. Even talking about inequality is 'class warfare'."

"If Obama is a socialist, he's a lousy one":

New York Times Editors: "It is absurd ... for Republicans to attack Mr. Obama for carrying out an unprecedented 'regulatory jihad' when, in fact, the administration has a mediocre record when it comes to curbing dangerous practices by industry.

Prof. Tim Jackson in the New York Times: increasing productivity is not necessarily a great idea. For instance, "there are sectors of the economy where chasing productivity growth doesn't make sense at all. Certain kinds of tasks rely inherently on the allocation of people's time and attention." Jackson specifically cites the healthcare industry. If you recall, David Brooks wrote this week that Mitt Romney would bring efficiency improvements to those sluggish doctors and nurses.

Lincoln Caplan, in a New York Times op-ed, outlines the briefs in support of the Montana Supreme Court's decision to uphold its election laws; the Supreme Court is expected to respond next month.

The Butler Did It. Adele Stan in the Washington Monthly: The Vatican confirmed that it had arrested Paolo Gabriele for leaking documents to journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi. "At issue are confidential letters to and from Pope Benedict XVI regarding the Vatican’s financial dealings.... So, in arresting Gabriele, the Vatican is doing what it does best with those who would challenge its sources and methods: putting the screws to them. You'd think that the pope and his men might be so consumed with straightening out the Holy See's financial mess, and penitentially finding the institution's way back to the straight and narrow that they'd have little time to do much else. But, no, instead the pope has seen fit to focus his institution's resources on a mission designed to bring U.S. nuns into line."

Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times: 'With nothing more than ledgers of stolen identity information -- Social Security numbers and their corresponding names and birth dates -- criminals have electronically filed thousands of false tax returns with made-up incomes and withholding information and have received hundreds of millions of dollars in wrongful refunds, law enforcement officials say. The criminals, some of them former drug dealers, outwit the Internal Revenue Service by filing a return before the legitimate taxpayer files. Then the criminals receive the refund, sometimes by check but more often though a convenient but hard-to-trace prepaid debit card."

Maureen Dowd: Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is on the Secret Service's case; unfortunately, Mark Sullivan -- the Secret Service director -- is not.

Nathaniel Frank in Slate: Colin Powell poses as a leader, but he's "always following others."

The Trial of Casanova. CW: I've avoided linking to reports on this story, but what the hell. Here's one iteration from Libby Copeland of Slate: John Edwards, on trial in a case related to his having an extramarital affair & fathering a child with his lover while running for POTUS, has been observed flirting with one of the alternate jurors.

Presidential Race

Photo via New York magazine.

Jonathan Chait: "The real news in Mitt Romney’s interview with Mark Halperin ... is that Romney openly repudiated the central argument his party has been making against President Obama for the last three years: that he spent too much money and therefore deepened the economic crisis. Indeed Romney himself had been making this very case as recently as a week ago. But in his Halperin interview, Romney frankly admits that reducing the budget deficit in the midst of an economic crisis would be a horrible idea.... We're all Keynesians during Republican administrations."

Charles Pierce: "... didn't Romney, in saying that, pretty much blow up the entire rationale for over 30 years of Republican economics right there? Cutting government spending will throw us into a recession or depression? No Christmas cards from the Ryan household this year, Willard. That this remarkable moment sailed over Halperin's head and lodged in the wall behind him goes without saying."

News Ledes

New York Times: "The National Labor Relations Board announced on Sunday that one of its five members, Terence F. Flynn, had resigned after the board's inspector general found that Mr. Flynn, a Republican, leaked documents to G.O.P. allies."

New York Times: "The United Nations Security Council on Sunday unanimously condemned the Syrian government for its role in the massacre of at least 108 villagers, with new details emerging from international observers that appeared to prompt rare Russian cooperation in criticizing its ally in Damascus."