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 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."
and long-term, degenerative brain disease