S&P in Bed with the Very Serious People? Paul Krugman Thinks So

Paris, Boulevard St. Germain, where the French sip coffee and
worry about what Standard & Poors thinks of their socialism.

And, from my perspective, Krugman proves it. From today's blog:

So S&P has downgraded France. What does this tell us?

The answer is, not much about France. It can’t be overemphasized that the rating agencies have no, repeat no, special information about national solvency — especially for big countries like France. Does S&P have inside knowledge of the state of French finances? No. Does it have a better macroeconomic model than, say, the IMF — or for that matter just about any one of the men and women sitting in this IMF conference room with me? You have to be kidding.

Krugman then, using two graphs of data, demonstrates, quite conclusively, that the UK is underperforming France, economically speaking. Yet the Brits are the darlings of the Very Serious People because they've talked and walked the austerity path, which not surprisingly has led UK to undergo a double-dip recession. But, hey, everybody knows austerity is expansionary!

France has itself double-dipped, but a case can be made that the eurozone did that to themselves with the austerity it has forced on its suffering periphery, i.e. the PIIGS.

No, Paul's right. France raised taxes to preserve their social safety net. S&P sleeps with the ideologues that think destroying the safety net shows how Serious you are.

At some point we'll stop listening to the ratings agencies. I stopped back when they were rating subprime-mortgage-backed securities AAA.

Do check out Krugman's data. It's striking.

Update. Fans of Atrios know he's good at coining phrases of merit, like "Very Serious People." Krugman's famous one is the "confidence fairy," meaning what will show up and stabilize the markets if we'd only slash Social Security and Medicare, which, of course is what DC's Very Serious People advocate. Because they're ready to "take tough measures."

All of this is actually pretty grim, but Krugman's in Yurp giving a talk to the IMF, so he flags this picture, apropos of catchy turns of a phrase. Don't miss it. Enjoy.

The Dolphins' Hazing Incident Punches a Hole in the NFL Machismo

Richie Incognito: Today's NFL? Tomorrow's NFL?

The American Human isn't dedicated to sports, although I like a good game as much as the next sports fan. Back in the day, going to a 49ers game was better than Disneyland.

Football is rapidly devolving into a "dudes signed up for this shit so what?" enterprise. And I understand that it's not insane to say that about athletes/entertainers who bet that the millions are worth it against the chance that they'll end up one of the losers.

But when the curtain is pulled back and what we see is the undeniable cruelty of a man like Richie Incognito, then we've got to wonder if we who provide the millions for these Neanderthal "warriors" aren't culpable. Hint: we are, we bloodthirsty bastards. Again, many will say "so what steroids and hard hits are part of the game get over it."

But Brian Phillips of Grantland says it better than I ever could:

Warriors make war on warriors. There's no room for crying in this game. You have a problem, you handle it on the field. Handle it as a man. Go down swinging. I hear you, NFL, and that's why I'm not here to move you or persuade you. If you have a penis and feelings, you'd better cut one of them off. I'm here to start a fight.

Because this — this idea that Jonathan Martin is a weakling for seeking emotional help — this is some room-temperature faux-macho alpha-pansy nonsense, and I am here to beat it bloody and leave it on the ground. Every writer who's spreading this around, directly or by implication; every player who's reaction-bragging about his own phenomenal hardness; every pundit in a square suit who's braying about the unwritten code of the locker room — every one of these guys should be ashamed of himself, and that's it, and it's not a complicated story.

 Read the whole thing. It's right on and some of the best sports writing I've read since I don't remember.

Sensible Reforms We Should Make Now, But...

The Times' Joe Nocera

...who knows if we'll make them. However, Joe Nocera, NYT columnist offers some clear-eyed thinking about how to be a better republic. And, boy, is there room for improvement:

• Move elections to the weekend.
• Term limits for the Supreme Court.
• Open primaries.
• End gerrymandering.
• Bring back the small donor.

I thought I liked lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court, but Nocera's right: It encourages nominating the youngest, stealthiest candidate a president can find; then the country lives or dies by it for decades. And, yes, it leads to a form of agism. Why not be able to appoint short-term wisdom instead of always going for the long-term, high-stakes political game?

When California went to the open-primary system, I was uncomfortable with it. Nocera points out that open primaries might prevent extremists like the tea party candidates from wagging the dog so much. Republicans will nominate more moderates if an internecine fight looks to knock them out altogether. That's already happened in CA.

These reforms can start on the local or state level. Why not get started?

A New, Progressive Agenda for Democrats to Pursue Fearlessly

During my childhood, which centered around the 50s and early 60s, the U.S. was mired in the Cold War, that is, I played baseball, pretend war, pretend cowboys and Indians, dug forts, loved fireworks, listened to rock 'n' roll on the playground on my transistor radio, went to school, played marbles, had "girlfriends" (girls that didn't mind me hanging around longer than 15 minutes), and generally assumed my parents would keep me clothed, fed, housed, safe, and with enough Christmas presents under the tree to not feel poor, or at least not horribly outclassed by the families with the two-car garages and split-level homes -- meaning we had nuclear war drills, were amused and confused at the notion of bomb shelters and then went back to playing baseball and cowboys and Indians.

In other words, Ike was president, the playgrounds and pastures of Colorado seemed endless and sufficient, and the U.S. was huge and inviolate. We went to the doctor and dentist when we needed to and most people I knew lived middle-class lives without really thinking about the poor or the rich, which seemed distant and trivial distinctions.

Why do I introduce this vision as a prelude to a hearty, fearless progressive agenda? For a serious reason: Dwight Eisenhower, hero of WWII, was practically a socialist when compared to the Very Serious People of our political classes, which explains, partly, why our current crop of liberals are so silent and limp when it comes to standing up to the Republicans and the moneyed elite.

The other reason is many Democrats are in thrall to the moneyed elite, as well. But they needn't be. They all remember having fresh milk waiting in the milk door in the kitchen, three square meals a day, good schools to attend, and that general feeling that they'd all have that when they grew up. And, generally, they did. They -- both progressives and conservatives -- know what a good, reliable, stable society felt like.

That was then, and this is now. Progressives still remember, and conservatives have either forgotten or switched to the dark side, by which I mean they've bought into the libertarian line or sold out to the moneyed elite by basing their agenda around making the rich richer in hopes of moving up to the upper classes themselves, something which most of them have accomplished. Okay, some of the progressives have, too, but they at least provide lip service to the needs of the middle and lower classes.

So, here we are. Why would Democrats pursue a fearless progressive agenda all of a sudden? Because it's tremendously popular across an extraordinary collection of groups, that's why! And it has a fabulous, very compelling likelihood of being extremely successful politically while being extraordinarily good for the country.

What would that agenda be? Simple:

1. Embrace entitlements, more properly known as social support programs, social insurance, or the safely net. Who should benefit by these social programs? Everybody. Therefore, we should:
2. Expand Social Security. Make its COLAs larger, not smaller. Make it solvent by gradually increasing the cap in payroll taxes from the current $113,500 over time until the system is stable for at least 75 years. Expand the Social Security Disability program until it is easier to qualify for, not increasingly difficult for anyone to qualify for. Let's take good care of our most vulnerable citizens.
3. Expand Medicare, slowly over time, until it covers everyone, even our undocumented workers. A health workforce is a productive workforce and is excellent for business. (The possibility of more contented people is not shabby, either.)
4. Expand public education to include universal preschool and daycare with licensed, educated teachers and practitioners. Healthy, well-educated, well-fed children don't suffer the stress and malnutrition that guarantees an underperforming bottom quintile or so forever.
5. Raise the minimum wage to a living wage, say, $15. Why should minimum-wage workers need welfare to get by when that's at the taxpayers' expense and only guarantees corporations higher profits? Where's the sense in that?
6. Guarantee human rights to all classes of people in the United States. Tell me, who do you wish to discriminate against? Who? Blacks? Hispanics? Women? Gays? Poor people? People in bad health? Veterans? Christians? Muslims? Jews? Who? Right. Then don't, simply don't allow discrimination against anybody.
7. Secure our borders. Fine, but don't shoot anybody to do it (unless there are clearly armed interlopers or confirmed terrorists with bombs, etc.). How about this as a working philosophy: Americans don't shoot anybody unless they absolutely can't make people safe without doing it. By that I mean police in our cities, towns, and rural areas, too.
8. Favor gun control and greatly reducing access to assault weaponry. Don't run from this issue. Be fearless. Guns make us less safe, and every study shows this. Large majorities favor sensible gun control, and that includes registration, databases, and whatnot. People want guns controlled and off the streets.
9. End or massively reduce the War on Drugs by changing it from a legal problem requiring imprisonment into a public-health problem requiring treatment. We have not just lost this war, it's killing us. And it's hasn't helped our Latin-American friends either (to wit, Mexico and Colombia, to name two).
10. Reforming congressional rules and practices until the legislative process makes sense to people and has a chance of being productive once again. Americans want this. They want to trust their governmental processes again. They want to believe that government by the people for the people is not just possible but the way we do business in government.

There you have it. I could have forgotten something or could have tailored the explication in a more concise way. But this is a start, and we progressives should be shouting it from the rooftops, getting shrill about it in our blogs, newspapers, and magazines, and emailing our politicians about it non-stop. Our United States will be better off, substantially better off if we did.

More later, much more.

Ken Cuccinelli Aside, This Is Creepy -- and UnAmerican

Well, maybe it is state-of-the-state American nowadays. It certainly echoes soon-to-be-former VA Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's fascination with anuses:

The Constitution is more than under assault. It's broken. At least in states like New Mexico and the Sun Belt. May the law-enforcement hysteria someday stop.

Footnote. The point of calling attention to a decision of the Court that weakened the 4th Amendment is that the decision prevents magisterial mistakes from causing the exclusion of tainted evidence, e.g. a judge issues a warrant in error and the courts can use the evidence in prosecutions anyway (judge: Oops, my bad! Have a nice time in prison!). And, I would imagine, protects judges, police officers, and doctors from civil suits and damages, e.g. the judge issued a warrant so it was okay to probe your anus for several hours even though it turned out we dragged you into a hospital for nothing. Bygones!

Also, too, the War on Drugs inspires this wacky pursuit of justice, with its untrained, unproven canines "alerting" to a driver's car seat, hence eight invasive, inconclusive medical procedures on a guy who glided through a stop sign (or failed to signal a turn)? Jeez...

Post-Election: A Brief Survey of the Crazy That Was Ken Cuccinelli

Update. It's worth pointing out that this extreme far-right, hostile-to-women, anti-abortion, anti-birth-control, anti-gay, anti-labor, obsessed-with-sodomy person who brought attention to himself by strongly supporting the placing of unnecessary medical equipment up women's private parts -- now mandatory under state law (who loves limited government?) -- lost by less than 2.5% of the vote of the citizens of Virginia. So read my "takedown" with that in mind. Let's hope it's not so close next time...

Governor-elect Terry McAuliffe enjoying a light moment.

From my perch in solid blue San Francisco Bay Area, I can safely view the election of Terry McAuliffe and be happy. After all, he's one of us, the good guys, the supporters of equality, social spending, same-sex marriage, education. I can even ignore how smarmy he has always seemed, but what do I know? The Clintons love him.

The Washington Post points out blithely in post-election analysis that now comes the hard part for Terry McAuliffe: governing. So true. Why do I think McAuliffe chuckles when he hears that? Sez the Post:

RICHMOND — Virginia has opened the doors to its 200-year-old Executive Mansion to a flamboyant Democratic cheerleader who will have to overcome skepticism and a GOP-dominated House to effectively govern a state with more than 8 million residents.
With no experience in state government and an agenda outlined only in broad strokes, Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe eked out a win Tuesday on a promise to expand Medicaid, invest in education, improve transportation, promote green technology, protect access to abortion, and ensure that Virginia is welcoming to gays and scientific inquiry.

I don't know, but McAuliffe's list of promises sounds rational and is a great step forward and away from near-miss Ken Cuccinelli, who embodied -- before his almost predictable flame-out -- the nutty extreme of tea-party craziness.

To wit -- in 2013 America -- Ken Cuccinelli decides to impress his constituents with his fervent opposition to sodomy. Why? For the children. American children are safer when there's no sodomy.

I want to be your governor! (I'm politically ambitious!) I'm declaring my undying hatred and disgust for sodomy! Sing it from the rafters! Let it echo among the hills of Virginia! NO SODOMY!

Mr. Clean.

Wait. Wasn't this already adjudicated? Didn't a three-judge panel of the 4th-Circuit Court of Appeals just this March already decide that, based on the seminal Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court case, a decision written by conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, that sodomy was okay between consenting adults? Among consenting adults, for that matter? Well, uh, okay, yeah, I guess.

Not good enough for aspiring goober-natorial Ken Cuccinelli! Thinking of the children, the VA AG decided to appeal. I mean it's SODOMY.

The March 12 ruling of the appeals court’s three-judge panel overturned a lower court decision upholding the conviction of a 37-year-old man charged in 2005 with soliciting a 17-year-old woman to engage in oral sex. No sexual encounter took place, records show.

The Attorney General’s office argued that the Supreme Court’s Lawrence decision didn’t apply to cases involving minors. But 4th Circuit Appeals Court Judge Robert King, who wrote the majority opinion, said the Lawrence decision rendered the Virginia sodomy statue “facially” or completely unconstitutional.

The full 4th-Circuit Court decided, a few weeks after Cuccinelli's appeal to reject it outright without a hearing. Not a single judge voiced support for Cuccinelli's attempt. In August, John Roberts, acting for the Supreme Court, rejected Cuccinelli's request for a stay of the 4th Circuit's ruling.

There's still hope for Cooch: The Supreme Court has yet to announce whether it will take up the case in the new session. An announcement is expected in early 2014.

Mother Jones has the last word on Cuccinelli's anti-sodomy crusade:

Maybe Ken Cuccinelli Shouldn't Have Built His Campaign Around Sodomy

Ya think?

Footnote. I know I failed in my promise that this be a "brief" survey of Cooch's craziness, but then by only writing about his fascination with sodomy I also failed to deliver a "survey." So, let's remind readers that Cuccinelli's brother in arms, soon-to-be-ex-governor Bob McDonnell's nickname is Governor Transvaginal Ultrasound. Why? Because both supported a bill to require all women seeking abortion in Virginia to undergo a totally unnecessary, extremely invasive procedure that some women (all women, one would expect) would consider degrading.

Governor Bob McDonnell: Transvaginal ultrasound? Sounds fun!

Unfortunately, this Virginia craziness has sparked efforts by Republicans in Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin to enact their own transvaginal ultrasound laws. Go Team Red!

This concludes, for the time being, this brief survey of the crazy, which, despite the Virginia rebuke, shows no signs of letting up. Here's hoping the women's vote can turn that around.

Strengthening Social Security -- Sherrod Brown's Great Start

Update. Major oops: This is Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa's bill. Sherrod Brown only stepped forward to endorse the bill. Still, a good step forward. Also, Atrios flags this Greg Sargent post on the wisdom of pushing a liberal entitlements agenda: People like entitlements!

Daily Kos flagged this new bill brought by Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. It's a great start on reforming Social Security in a good way: expanding it.

The bill would:

Strengthen Benefits by Reforming the Social Security Benefit Formula: The bill would change the method by which the Social Security Administration (SSA) calculates Social Security benefits. This change will boost benefits for all Social Security beneficiaries by approximately $70 per month, but is targeted to help those in the low and middle of the income distribution, for whom Social Security has become an ever greater share of their retirement income.

Ensure that Cost of Living Adjustments Adequately Reflect the Living Expenses of Retirees: the bill would change the way the Social Security Administration calculates the Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA). Currently, the annual adjustment is tied to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all Urban Wage Earners (CPI-W) in order to account for inflation. The CPI-W is based on a basket of goods that does not adequately track the purchases of seniors. For example, unlike younger working age Americans, retirees spend significantly more on medical care, whose costs have been rising much more quickly in recent years. As a result, to ensure that benefits better reflect cost increases facing seniors, future COLAs will be based on the CPI for the Elderly (CPI-E). The CPI-E is an experimental index that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been keeping since 1982. Making this change to Social Security is expected to result in higher COLAs, ensuring that seniors are able to better keep up with the rising costs of essential items, like prescription drugs.

Improve the Long Term Financial Condition of the Trust Fund: Social Security is not in crisis, but does face a long-term deficit. According to the most recent Social Security Trustees report, the Trust Fund will be able to pay full benefits through 2033, or another 20 years. To help extend the life of the trust fund, and decrease the 75 year actuarial deficit, the legislation would phase out the current taxable cap of $113,700 and instead ask the wealthiest Americans to contribute to the program the same share of their income as the middle class.

More like this, Congress. Citizens, back this stuff. Write your congresspeople.