Maybe people in DC falsely believe that the whole world hates stimulus spending because the only calls that legislators get are from teabaggers.
Hint.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!
Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.
This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.
That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.
He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.
“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.
Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.
We still have time to mess this up!
They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.
Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.
Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.
Peak wingnut was a lie.
Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.
Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity
Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.
The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.
Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.
When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.
Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll
The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.
Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.
Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.
Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.
El Cid
Also, I don’t think a lot of high level policymakers give that much of a shit if approximately 1 in 5 Americans in the labor force aren’t employed or working unwillingly part time, nor if we spend the next decade puttering around like Japan’s weak decade. What do they care?
liberal
I agree that might be one of the reasons, but I would assume that the bigger problem is that the elites want austerity, just like they seem to want to transfer wealth upwards by welching on the promises implicit in the SS trust fund.
El Cid
@liberal: Yeah, they favor austerity when it benefits the right people.
liberal
@El Cid:
Yeah, a good healthy chunk of it is lack of relevant experience as one of the “small people,” in tandem with a lack of empathy. (As an “educated white collar worker,” the nominal unemployment rate I face is far lower than the working class. Yet I somehow have the power of imagination to understand what a 10+% (higher if you count discouraged workers and the underemployed) must feel like.)
Let’s be honest here, though. Bravado aside, these elites couldn’t see an $8T housing bubble. Frankly, they’re not very smart, and thus aren’t able to do good scenario planning.
liberal
@El Cid:
You mean, they don’t favor austerity for people or organizations who were bondholders of major financial firms which were (despite happy talk to the contrary) insolvent after the Crash? I’m shocked!
mnpundit
Considering how often this blog blegs us to call Congress that statement can’t possibly be true Tim.
El Cid
@liberal: They work pretty hard, though, at making sound like it’s good for all of us. Pretty much everyone I know thinks the biggest problem we have is the deficit, because of all the inflation (which doesn’t exist and no one is predicting and actually we need some), but also Obama hasn’t done enough about the jobs etc.
liberal
Adding, some of those quotes from Keynes that Krugman trots out really shows to me that the operating psychology is the same as in the 1930s. The more things change…
liberal
@El Cid:
Heh. My favorite is these guys who think that just because the Fed is injecting “base money” into the banks, that the total money supply must go up and it must be inflationary.
I don’t know much (or enough) about the monetary system, but I know enough to say they don’t know anything.
liberal
I should add that one of the weird things about the world is the manner in which people running the financial system over there in Yurp make even Geithner look good.
El Cid
@liberal: Like I’ve said before, I think a lot of people use the word “inflation” to mean that it’s harder for them to afford stuff now.
jwb
@mnpundit: I’m glad that Tim puts up these blegs occasionally.
liberal
@El Cid:
I’ve seen polls about that too, but Krugman’s point that voters generally don’t give a shit about deficits is surely correct, given how much they cared about them during Republican misrule. It’s pretty clear that all the screaming about deficits now is somewhat driven by the Republicans. (The rest is driven by people like Pete “I want to cancel Social Security, and I don’t want to taxes on carried interest to be raised” Peterson.)
PaulW
Suggest to every unemployed person you know to mail their resumes to every Senator – both parties – with cover letters pleading for jobs, as a reminder that there’s 25 million Americans desperate for work.
liberal
@jwb:
Yeah, Tim’s good.
jwb
@liberal: I think people may well care about the deficit, even when the Goopers are increasing it. But I don’t think most people understand the deficit, nor how a public budget differs from a private one.
Miss Kitka's Comrade Wayne
¡Empatar o morir!
El Cid
@liberal: I’m not suggesting that today’s “deficit” concern isn’t ginned up artificially, because they only ‘matter’ under Democratic Presidents and only insofar as it’s an excuse to cut social welfare spending & development investment.
But it’s enough chatter to help the “pain caucus” finally impose on us the ‘advice’ (extortion over economic systems in return for ‘loans’ already repaid back many times via interest) they used to give via the IMF and World Bank to South America and Africa, so that they’d have the discipline to cut elementary school budgets and charge fees and cut public health programs and stop supporting the development of local industry and get back to just exporting their natural and agricultural primary products at a cut rate.
cleek
@liberal:
Harpers ran a story a year ago comparing Obama to Hoover.
i read that when it came out and dismissed it as overly pessimistic – Obama couldn’t be that timid and conventional, could he ?
good for author Kevin Baker for being a year ahead of conventional wisdom. i guess.
cat48
THIS GALLUP POLL CAME OUT YESTERDAY & THOSE POLLED WANTED STIMULUS SPENDING AS NUMBER ONE ISSUE. Congress needs to get a clue!
PRINCETON, NJ — Among four pieces of legislation Congress could consider this year, Americans are most supportive of authorizing more economic stimulus spending. Specifically, according to a June 11-13 USA Today/Gallup poll, 60% of Americans say they would favor “additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy.”
2010 Congressional Legislative Priorities: Stimulus Spending, Energy Regulation, Bank Regulation, Healthcare Reform Repeal
Independents Open to All Proposals
Republicans and Democrats are diametrically opposed in their reactions to the proposals tested in the new poll, while a slim majority of independents favor all four — including repealing healthcare reform.
Stimulus spending emerges as the most widely favored proposal of the four, overall, because of support that is particularly high from Democrats (83%) and relatively high from Republicans (38%) compared with the other Democrat-favored items.
2010 Congressional Legislative Priorities, by Party ID
Bottom Line
The American public has a generally positive reaction to each of four varied pieces of legislation Congress might consider this year, with slim majorities of political independents in favor of all of them. While none of the four proposals bridges partisan disagreement, the idea of new economic stimulus spending to create jobs generates the most crossover appeal from Republicans while achieving particularly high support from Democrats.
Americans’ support for jobs-directed stimulus spending may seem at odds with separate Gallup polling showing significant public concern about the federal debt. However, it should be noted that the stimulus question wording highlights the economic benefits of new spending. In line with this, recent Gallup polling has found that despite their debt concerns, more Americans choose the economy than the federal budget deficit when asked how important each will be to their vote for Congress this fall.
Survey Methods
Results for this USA Today/Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted June 11-13, 2010, with a random sample of 1,014 adults, aged 18 and older, living in the continental U.S., selected using random-digit-dial sampling.
liberal
@cleek:
Really good comment, cleek.
I think I read it when it came out. I’m guessing that my impression was that it wasn’t too pessimistic, but I don’t recall for sure. My reasoning wouldn’t have been that Obama himself was clearly not going to be radical enough, but that it’s a rare quality in a leader, so the best bet—the Bayesian prior, if you will—was against it.
liberal
@cleek:
Actually, Krugman was right on also, in terms of predictions. He claimed that the proposed stimulus was good, but back-of-the-envelope numbers showed it was too small by about a factor (of 2, IIRC). And because it was too small, even though it would help by cutting job losses compared to the do-nothing policy regime, the unemployment rate wouldn’t really drop a lot, with the result that the budget hawks would say, “look, we already had one round of stimulus, and it didn’t solve things completely, and you don’t get another one.”
That’s been completely born out by events.
liberal
…hmm, is it just me, or are things a little on the slow side around here? Folks on vacation?
Maybe we need to start another I/P thread…
liberal
@cat48:
Who cares what most Americans think? All that matters is what Pete Peterson thinks.
El Cid
Good news everyone!
Bondo
I think we should start electing politicians who know what selection bias is. People who contact their representatives aren’t representative of one’s constituency and thus should be completely ignored. I’d rather have a politician who follows polling than one who follows call counts…even more I’d like a politician who just does what he or she thinks is right.
tatere
I am so sure that Dianne Feinstein would do the right thing if only enough liberals would call her office. On Mars.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
I’ve seen some people (I think Kthug was one) theorize that people say “deficits” as a catch-all for their problems with the government’s priorities. IOW, in their minds job creation is something that would help with the deficit, not add to it. Of course, in the long term, they’re right, but it allows Republicans to point to polls and say, “See, nobody wants more government stimulus!”
Mnemosyne
@cat48:
I’m not despairing about the administration’s decisions just yet, because Obama is informing the G20 that worldwide massive cuts right now would be disastrous:
Once again, this seems to be one of those areas where the Blue Dogs are insisting that we tie a rock to our feet before we can try to swim out of the whirlpool we’re being sucked into.
(via Washington Monthly)
liberal
@Mnemosyne:
That’s a glass half-full half-empty issue.
Half full: discussion here not nearly as f*cked up as it appears to be in Europe.
Half empty: discussion in Europe even more f*cked up than here.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
I have to go with half full, because otherwise I would slit my wrists. YMMV.