Trav Trivia

Volume 7, Number 2

April 25, 2011 -- This day being Easter Sunday as well as one of the days of Passover celebration it seems fitting to offer one and all a fervent wish for all of the joy and comfort afforded by your religious beliefs, whatever they may be, now and in the days ahead. No matter which way the political wind blow it looks like we will need forbearance for trying times and all of the help we can get to fortify the soul.

Not to overlook the festive nature of these holiday celebrations. The President was the host of a joyful Seder dinner at the White House as Passover began. The annual Easter Egg Hunt took place on the White House grounds today. With so many out of work it’s a wonder hungry adults weren’t competing with little children for hard boiled eggs in Easter egg hunts around the nation.

The ever thoughtful David Brooks reflected on religion in his NYT column Friday, sparked in part by taking in a performance of the heralded Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon” which he found “spiritual but not doctrinal.” He had a lot to say, but I found this passage particularly interesting: “… religion itself can do enormous good as long as people take religious teaching metaphorically and not literally; as long as people understand that all religions ultimately preach love and service underneath their superficial particulars; as long as people practice their faiths open-mindedly and are tolerant of different beliefs.”

Tolerant of different beliefs. Ah, there’s the rub, whether it’s in the Middle East or Middle America, it being only a matter of degree. We have our share of “social conservatives,” or more accurately “religious zealots” who won’t accept the fact that from the early 1600s this land was a refuge for people escaping from persecution by all of the religions of Europe. It was a rare place in the world then, where people could exist without conflict as per the Brooks paragraph above and wrote it in to the Constitution, made pretty clear in the First Amendment. A secular government on behalf of, or to ensure the free practice of religion. Many of us can find an ancestor or two if you trace back far enough who came over here to escape from religious persecution. I know I can. And yet the political tsunami of the midterm elections that swept so many Tea Party warriors into public office at both state and national level brought with it an assault on these treasured principals. Stand back or risk being trampled in the name of God.

The narrow religious beliefs of Republican Religious Righteous are being turned into legislation, and while that may seem on the surface to be acts of reverence the welfare of millions of Americans are affected. After President Obama announced that he considered the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines for the federal government as only being between a man and a woman unconstitutional, and the Justice Department would no longer defend it. The House of Representative Republicans contracted with a former Solicitor General Paul Clement, at a two-thirds reduced rate of $520 an hour to do so instead. At least they got a special price, but same-sex couples legally married in states like Massachusetts and Iowa will be denied 1,138 federal benefits such as joint tax returns, Social Security spousal benefits, and exemption from the Estate Tax. And they still want to save Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Oh, the lives of the Straight (and narrow as in minded).

Then there is the assault on Planned Parenthood, which can lead to a huge number of births to poor women and rise in unwanted pregnancies and therefore more abortions. U.S. Senator from Texas John Cornyn called the Planned Parenthood fight: “about spending money we don’t have on things that aren’t essential.” So those big tax cuts largely responsible for money we don’t have are ”essential” but not the welfare of millions of low income women are not. Religious objections to contraceptives, an old story that will not die.

Politics in Cornyn’s home state of Texas are often similar to a tent revival meeting. The governor, Rick Perry, made a surprising admission while defending the state’s abstinence-only birth control program by saying that he knew abstinence worked “from my own personal life,” which may tell me a little more than I care to know. Frankly I am glad we are not infested with a proliferation of Rick Perrys but while it may have worked for him, not so well for the rest of his state which leads the nation in the number of teenage mothers with two or more offspring. There has been an 800,000 increase in schoolchildren over the last decade and they all didn’t wade across the Rio Grande. Creationism, the U.S. as a “Christian Nation,” evangelical “family values” are all part of Texas politics. As Texas Representative Mike Villarreal said: “These folks are anti-abortion, anti-contraception and anti science.”

Jill Lepore, author and history professor at Harvard had an OpEd piece in the New York Times today with a bit of irony abut Tea Party people. “Tea Partiers dressed as Benjamin Franklin call for an end to social services for the poor; and the ‘Path to Prosperity”’ urges a return to ‘America’s founding ideals’ of liberty, limited government, and equality under the rule of law.” Jane Mecom, a sister of Franklin, had 12 children; she buried 11 and lived in poverty all of her life. Lepore writes “the story of Jane Mecom is a reminder that, especially for women, escaping poverty has always depended on the opportunity for an education and the ability to control the size of their families.” Would we really want to return to the time of Jane? Perhaps the Tea Party would be better served if it took her image as an icon rather than her brother Ben.

On ABC This Week, evangelical pastor Franklin Graham expressed questions about Obama's faith. So tell me the relevance? Is that supposed to determine the way he runs the country? President George W. Bush reported he got personal messages from God and look what happened. Faith or lack of same should be a private and personal choice in this a secular country and not a litmus test for governing.

This is not to denigrate faith on this day held holy by two great religions. To the contrary, it is meant to keep it in perspective, celebrating “all religions ultimately preach love and service” and being aware that earthly practitioners are mere mortals whose zeal can often lead to cruel and unnecessary human suffering.

Abuses by religious authorities are the story of mankind. Just look at the Middle East. And the Daily Beast reported on Hindu holy man Sathya Sai Baba, considered a living god by millions of followers, who died Sunday at the age of 86, who was accused of faking miracles, and a BBC program interviewed two American male devotees who accused Sai Baba of sexual harassment.

Today Maureen Dowd in the New York Times took issue with the beautification of Pope John Paul I coming up next Sunday by Pope Benedict, who put it on a fast track. John Paul had a winning persona, and was given to proclamations like: “The excessive hoarding of riches by some denies them to the majority, and thus the very wealth that is accumulated generates poverty.” (It would be bad taste of me if I were to note the wealth of the Vatican, and that of pastors of huge Protestant congregations in this country). But John Paul made no move to solve the problem of pedophile in the priesthood, nor did he address the role of women in the church, the ability of priests to marry or use of contraceptives. Right outside the Vatican’s door is the country with the lowest birth rate in Europe. You can’t tell me that lusty Italians follow abstinence only. Better Benedict should beautify Rick Perry.

We shouldn’t forget that Pope Pius XII remained silent about the Holocaust. And there have been 16 bishops that were credibly accused of pedophilia who stepped down from public positions but still maintain their titles. It seems those who need to have prayers said for them are religious authorities. A good prayer on this day would be, Oh Lord deliver us from religious zealots.

During the exodus Moses escaped the Egyptian army under the cover of darkness behind a smoke screen of hug bonfires he had set burning between the two forces while the Israelites stole away in the night. I am reminded of that by the way Republican Righteous use fear of deficits to foster their social changes. The action of Standard & Poor's, the rating agency that gave us AAA ratings on derivatives that were worthless, this week in lowering the U.S. outlook to “negative” while not very meaningful, just pandered to the fear factor. Republicans have a stable of lapdog experts, like the Heritage Foundation, that feeds them information any way they want it. So far spending cuts have been used mainly to pay for tax cuts.

Barry Ritholtzm, chief executive of Equity Research at Fusion IQ, an online quantitative research firm and writes: “The Big Picture blog says Social Security is fine. Sure, the retirement age will go higher, there will be means testing, and the income cutoff for contributions ($106,000) will likely double. But it will remain solvent.”

“Cutting spending to reduce budget deficits results in a fall in G.D.P. that makes the debt burden worse, not better” writes Yves Smith, writer of the blog Naked Capitalism. She is the head of Aurora Advisors, a management consulting firm, and an author.

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat writes in the New York Times: “we do not need to radically reform entitlements to keep the country solvent…Bush-era tax rates aren’t renewed in 2012…the deficit drops away in the next 10 years, and more important, it stays manageably low for the decades after that.”

Many economists and financial authorities believe restoring the taxes Bush cut on both the wealthy and the middle class while not solving the deficit problem combined with judicial spending cuts will make it manageable allowing it to steadily over time reduce to zero. The approach Republicans are taking has not worked in Japan, Ireland, Latvia, or England but who’s looking.

It does allow for social engineering and that fight is next up on the vote to increase the debt limit, in past years routine, but this time will be held hostage to the whims of the Tea Party zealots. On Fox News Sunday former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum said Republicans should refuse to raise the debt limit unless the president defunds the health-care law, even knowing that the country would likely go into default. Rep. Eric Cantor, chief G.O.P. honcho in the House has said about the same thing. Default it is, then. Hang on to your hats and go Wheeee.

In following the machinations of political figures these days there are few laughs along the way so you take them where you find them. I have come up with a new source of amusement as a slight moment of relief from the accumulated aggravation of following certain political figures. It is the “speak” feature on my computer. Mine is set as a female with a high, feminine voice. I happened to have an image on the screen with a quotation beneath it, which by chance I highlighted and clicked on “speak.” There he was, this stern arrogant figure lecturing me in a high squeaky female voice. The effect was very gratifying, making the guy a figure of ridicule. I particularly like to apply this to Newt Gingrich. It sort of turns him into an American “Castrato.” Unfortunately only the computer can do it. If there ever should be a movement to accomplish the real thing, perhaps led by a couple of his ex-wives, count me in.

 

Volume 7, Number 1

April 18, 2011 -- This is the time for numbers. We are awash in numbers. Big ones. So big that reports are that the average electronic device we use to work these numbers do not have the display capacity to handle them as you deal in trillions. I remember a time when computers were in their infancy—there was a race with IBM’s biggest and fastest computer with a man armed with an abacus. The abacus won. Today the abacus would have to be huge, the computer just big enough to hold a tiny chip or two.

Even this issue of Trivia, in a much more modest way, represents surprisingly big numbers. It is issue number one of volume seven, leaving behind it one a week for 312 weeks in a row (except for a one-week medical break) for an estimated 780,000 or more words. That is a big river of political flotsam that has flowed under the Washington Bridge. But who’s counting?

We’ve moved on from the phrase in the Clinton years from “It’s the economy, stupid” to “It’s the budget, stupid” which in the hands of those who are concocting them do not seem to have a lot to do with the economy but forces us to try to get out minds around the number “trillion.” As for me, I might as well be working with infinity.

So the parade of budgets begins. Sugar Plum Fairies they are not, although the Republican budget presented by Rep. Paul Ryan does make you think of “Nutcracker.” Ryan has had his solo dance in the spotlight, this week was President Obama’s turn.

As we all saw and heard he called for cutting $4 trillion (there’s that number again that won’t fit on my calculator) from the deficit over the next 12 years. It was a straight forward, realistic speech that had more to say then mere numbers. Reactions to it were predictable, responses from the far right could have been written in advance, Republican leaders were scoffing, Tea Party advocates disdainful, Rep. Ryan miffed at not being considered courageous (my interpretation, he didn’t like the tone), columnist David Brooks, every liberal’s favorite conservative, split the difference, liking half of Ryan’s Plan and half of Obama’s. If that sounds like Brooks is looking on the bright side, consider this comment from our most cerebral commentator: “Until we have a fiscal crisis that will make the recent recession look like a picnic. Then we’ll get serious and adopt something along the lines of Simpson-Bowles (the commission appointed by the President to consider solutions to the deficit problem). It’s just too bad that Medicare will have to collapse and millions have to be thrown out of work before we do.” Collapse of Medicare? Millions out of work? That is certainly a cheerful look at the future, one that sounds like it came from my keyboard.

It went down well for the most part with Obama supporters. Commentator Andrew Sullivan called it “Obama's moment of fiscal truth.” Economist/columnist Paul Krugman, frequent critic of the President for not going far enough said: “the vision was right, and the numbers were far more credible than anything in the Ryan sales pitch.” E. J. Dionne in the Washington Post called the speech “Presidential.” Dionne wrote: “the President was unequivocal in arguing that the roots of our fiscal problems lie in the tax cuts of the past decade that we could not afford. And he raised the stakes in our politics to something more fundamental than dry numbers on a page or computer screen.”

“We are rugged individualists, a self-reliant people with a healthy skepticism of too much government,” the President said. “There are some things we can only do together, as a nation. We believe, in the words of our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, that through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves.”

“We believe that in order to preserve our own freedoms and pursue our own happiness, we can’t just think about ourselves,” he said. “We have to think about the country that made those liberties possible. We have to think about our fellow citizens with whom we share a community.”

With Ryan, who has been called “courageous” over and over for his plan, sitting in the front row the President said: “There's nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don't have any clout on Capitol Hill.” Way to go, Bro.

We’ve reached the point where the very word “Tax” is an STD. In the speech Obama said Republicans “want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors each to pay $6,000 more in health costs.” Declaring the obvious: the “roots of our fiscal problems lie in the tax cuts of the past decade that we could not afford.”

It turns out two budget proposals are not enough. We may be headed for a Chinese menu of budgets from which to choose, one from column A, two from Column B. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, whose members are disappointed in the compromises President Obama has been making, have produced a budget proposal of their own. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) is co-chair of the caucus. Their plan calls for $4 trillion tax increase over 10 years. An increase in the top tax rate to 49 percent. A $2.3 trillion cut in defense spending and an increase in domestic spending. They also would revive the “public option” to offer government-run health care.

The Obama plan is two-thirds spending cuts and one-third tax increases. Bob Greenstein of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says fifty-fifty would be a reasonable mix. The Progressive Caucus budget is 80 percent tax increases: 22 percent cut in Army forces, 30 percent for Marines, 20 percent for the Navy, and 15 percent for the Air Force. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would end, weapons programs slashed.

On the other side of the see-saw are congressional freshmen who owe their souls to the Tea Party movement, and they do not believe the Ryan plan goes far enough. So sure enough they are coming up with a budget, led by freshman U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA).

Then there is the work of the Gang of Six, the three Republicans and three Democrats who have been long at work on a suitable bipartisan compromise. They are on the cusp of a plan of their own. On Fox News Sunday Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), a member said: “What the country needs to hear from the leaders in Washington is that we understand how big this problem is, and we’re willing to lose elections to do what is best for the country.” On CBS Face The Nation Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), also one of the six, basically concurred. Sounds like six guys in a game of Texas Hold’em, the pot being the economic future of the country.

This got me to wonder how many more budgets may come to the surface. Is every caucus going to present their own budget? So far I have not found a budget from the Tea Party caucus, but if there is one it must be a blank piece of paper since they don’t want to spend a nickel on anything. I went online to see how many caucuses there were, and was shocked. To form a caucus any two or more members can make up one and get it officially registered with the House. I found more than 159 of them in a list you can only characterize as eclectic. Who would have thought there would be an Albanian Issues Caucus? For that matter who would have thought Albania would have issues? As noble as they no doubt are having a Congressional Brain Injury Task Force and a Congressional Zoo and Aquarium Caucus can lead to a joke or two at their expense. Does the Friends of Thailand caucus met with the House Small Brewers Caucus now and then to quaff a few? Let us hope they keep their budget proposals to themselves.

The number 100 is the number of years since Margaret Sanger, then a nurse, was so upset as seeing how multiple pregnancies and births, 11 of them, had destroyed her Mother’s life she spent the rest of hers trying to teach women how to take control of their bodies. Ten to twelve or more births were common before and after the turn of the twentieth century. My paternal grandmother had twelve children, eight of whom lived to become adults. Women of the era wee just brood hens, living only to reproduce which kept them from achieving any kind of gender equality or contributing anything but children to society. It took years of concerted effort, being subjected to ridicule, criminal charges and persecution, on the part of Sanger in America and her British counterparts in the birth control movements like British “Mother of Birth Control” Marie Stopes before women got the right of control of their own bodies. Jessa Crispin wrote in The Smart Set recently about women of that era who had no access to birth control and often no one explaining to them how pregnancy even happens. With inability to prevent themselves from becoming pregnant they were at the mercy of fate. Their bodies wore down, and they often couldn’t afford to feed the children properly that they had.

As NYT columnist Gail Collins wrote: “Margaret Sanger believed in the importance to women's lives and women's health of the availability of birth control, a term which she's credited with inventing.” Her famous informative pamphlets (which got her charged with obscenity) were What Every Girl Should Know (1916) and What Every Mother Should Know (1917). Every woman in America, especially those that do anything at all outside the home, owe a huge debt of gratitude to Margaret Sanger, a true heroine, mother of Planned Parenthood.

Yet here we are that hundred years after it all began with social conservatives in the House of Representatives on a mission to kill Planned Parenthood by cutting off funding with riders to the budget bill, part of wide-ranging attacks on women’s right to control their reproductive lives. I remember my Mother, who grew to maturity in the early Sanger era, telling me at the age of 101 that she thought no man had the right to tell a woman what she could or couldn’t do with her own body.

Collins put it in perspective by noting that while they use abortion to attack, they are really against contraception. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) made a big stir this week by saying in a rant on the floor of the Senate you go to Planned Parenthood for an abortion “and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.” When reporters contacted his office to point out the figure was really just 3 percent they were told it was “not intended to be a factual statement” which turned the heretofore obscure senator into a national figure. Kyle then said his staff said that, he didn’t, but he made no move to apologize for his original statement, but did take advantage of a Senator's privilege to change it in the Congressional Record to just read “If you want an abortion you go to Planned Parenthood and that's what Planned Parenthood does.”

“The fact is that 95 percent of the contraceptives on the market kill the baby in the womb,” said Jim Sedlak of the American Life League which is scientifically false. Pregnancy does not begin when the human egg is fertilized. Standard birth control pills keep the fertilized egg from implanting in the womb. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines pregnancy as beginning with the fertilized egg’s implantation. Planned Parenthood goal is to prevent unwanted pregnancies for less abortions and can spend no federal funds on abortions. No Planned Parenthood equals more abortions. Simple equation but math is too real for those who live in fantasyland.

House representatives used the budget bill like bulletin board to tack notices on, adding riders having nothing to do with the budget at what seems like whim. One such removes the gray wolf from the endangered species list a decision ordinarily made by a science-based federal agency. Prior to World War II my father ran a herd of cattle on ground that was the last stand of the Lobo Wolf in Texas but NASA ultimately took over that property not far outside Houston. There was no room in the space program for the Lobo Wolf, which is now extinct. So soon will be the grey wolf. But not self-centered congressmen I fear.

Craig Ferguson always begins his TV show that comes on after Letterman with “It’s a great day for America.” And it is if you are rich. Charles Blow wrote about this in the New York Times on Saturday. “It’s a really good time to be rich! If you’re poor, not so much”, he wrote. The “poverty rate for 2009 was 14.3 percent, higher than it has been since 1994, and the number of uninsured reached a record high. The average tax rate for the top 1 percent of households dropped by about 20 percent from 1979 to 2007, while the average tax rate for all Americans dropped by just 8 percent. Between 1992 and 2007 income for the top 400 households grew fully 399%.” It’s a great day for some Americans.

Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson received compensation worth $21.5 million last year. As the world's largest publicly-traded company its earnings rose over 50 percent. I think it would have been nice if the company had passed a little of that money to us shareholders rather than stuff all of it in Tillerson’s overalls. How long does it take 21.5 million to trickle down to us on the lower income ladder? I don’t have that long.

Every week new technology pops up to take the place of one thing or another that have been a part of our lives that require adjustments. Take book signing events. Authors take their newly published books and make a grand tour around the country to book store autographing copies for avid readers. It’s tradition. It sells books. It builds traffic for book stores. But now we have a problem.

People are now coming into book signings waving their Kindles, Nooks, or iPads at the author and ask that they be signed on the cover or pouch holding them. How then do you autograph and ephemeral, wispy collection of plus and minus digital pulses floating out there in space?

How big is the problem? By 2015, sales of e-books in the United States are expected to triple to nearly $3 billion. That kind of number you would expect to find in a budget deficit debate. What does that do for, or to the economy? We assume less books being printed, less jobs for printers, less jobs making paper or growing and harvesting trees. Will libraries become big computer storage systems with no one needed to restock shelves or stamp due dates? Will a Barnes & Noble become a sale outlet for the hardware of the ebook rather than the content? More jobs lost to technology. We are headed to the point where there will be few places to go to actually labor; we will just sit at home all day midst lights and wires and screen and keyboards, or more likely we will only have a little device that fits in the palm of our hand that does the work of all of that stuff with a mere swipe or two with one finger. As we march down the evolutionary trail will the day come when nine fingers of our species’ hands atrophy since we need only one?

Meanwhile we still have the book signing question and of course there is a new app for that. It works this way: reader poses with the author for a photograph, which can be taken with an iPad camera or an external camera. The image immediately appears on the author’s iPad (if it’s shot with an external camera, it’s sent to the iPad via Bluetooth). Then the author uses a stylus to scrawl a digital message below the photo. When finished, the author taps a button on the iPad that sends the fan an e-mail with a link to the image, which can then be downloaded into the e-book. So book signings become photo ops.

 
(Columnist and author Gail Collins and a purveyor of trivia by way of illustration)

There seems to be a constant demand for new apps. In an effort to make a buck or two I’m thinking about producing something for Twitter. Most tweets are mundane, reporting ordinary predictable events. A list of prewritten tweets might be useful, a time saver and a way to get something out there without having to think about it. A hundred tweets, say, coded by numbers. Just tap a number 23, say and send out automatically “Time to grab a bite to eat so I am going to drop by a nice little restaurant for a cool drink and a light meal. Have to watch those calories you know, cholesterol too.” Or number 52 ought to work any time. “Just turned off the news. Can you believe what Congress did today? It’s enough to make you want to move to Canada, although Costa Rica might be a better choice.” Number 67: “Big pay day for the sharks at Goldman Sachs. Millions for hundreds just for playing Monopoly with other people’s money. The game is real, the financial instruments often aren’t.” If you think the last one wouldn’t get much use you haven’t been keeping up with the news lately. Seems like this has been coming up every week.

The problem I’ll have is getting this out quickly before Twitter gives way to some other technology, becomes obsolete and fades into oblivion. Along with said writer of the apps.

 

Volume 6, Number 52

April 11, 2011 -- The revival of the 1961 musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” that is popping up on Broadway now with Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame as the leading character has one of the most rousing finale numbers ever heard in the theater, “There’s A Great Big Brotherhood of Man,” sung with great gusto by a stage full of powerful voices. Or so it was in the original and must be so in the revival. The Brotherhood of Man.

With that musical number in mind we might have thought it was an out-of-town tryout in Washington this weekend as congressional Democrats, Republicans, and the White House reached a Perils of Pauline last second budget compromise that avoided a government shutdown a little after 11 pm on Friday, midnight being the deadline. We could hardly call it “Brotherly” I suppose, although would it were so, and any agreement at all between these forces seems unusually so. A featured player in that original production was Rudy Vallee and for some reason I see his resemblance to present day Speaker of the House John Boehner.

So what was the deal? Cuts of about $38 billion from federal spending this year. And just as important or maybe more so none of those nasty Tea Party riders delivering major blows to the Planned Parenthood and environmental regulations. It is an agreed upon deal, not a done deal. They voted to extend the present budget one more week to give them time to do the legislative paper work to put it into law.

The President put it this way, “Programs people rely on will be cut back.” And “Needed infrastructure projects will be delayed,” but he expressed hope it was the beginning of bipartisan cooperation. Tea Party members of the House are not happy with it. But John Boehner said it will “help create a better environment for job creators in our country.” While I hope so I wish I could understand it. By cutting spending on programs you cut jobs which makes business so happy they hire people for positions they’ve been able to do without which we assume they no longer need until the demand for their goods or services grows which happens when more people have jobs with money to spend. Say what?

The federal budget is like this country’s owner’s manual. By how it allocates funds it lays out how we citizens will live and interact with one another. And as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said on Fox News Sunday that last week’s budget deal was just “the first bite of the apple.” This isn’t really about money. As Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) is quoted as saying, “We want to see real structural, cultural-type changes tied to this debt ceiling. We're not interested in a one-off kind of savings, or anything small.” Structural and cultural changes means he and his cohort want us to live different lives, kind of as in South Carolina, the state that ate the nation. Next he will be telling us we all have to eat grits. It’s like religion. I like grits, but I don’t want to be compelled to eat it.

Dana Milbank in the Washington Post was disgusted with what he saw as political theater. The big brouhaha involved a fraction of one percent of the federal budget but all parties involved fought to see who could best stir the pot. Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post counted seven shutdown-related news conferences in seven hours on Friday. About the only government figure not to call a press conference was Abe at the Lincoln Memorial.

The Republican blueprint for how we should be living our lives is now out in the form of a proposed budget by the new star on the G.O.P. horizon, Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee. He is the newest figure for media figures to fawn over, less that he is making a wonderful proposal but more that he actually made one. It reminds me of a gag Ellen DeGeneres used to make before owning up to a difference in gender. She praised a live-in lover as being special because he actually took out the garbage. “Anyone,” she said, “could (perform sexual intercourse) but HE put out the GARBAGE!” Anyone can talk about a cut to smithereens budget but Ryan actually made one.

There is something to be said for that although even many conservatives admit it is flawed but at least we know what the conservative blueprint for our future looks like. In the coming weeks and months up until the 2012 election is over and done with this will still be roiling along. Last Friday columns by two New York Time writers appeared basically side by side; from the left, Paul Krugman, on the right, David Brooks, each, of course, with a different take.

Brooks: Ryan’s “bold proposal” has “moved us off Unreality Island.”

Krugman: Ryan’s “plan isn’t remotely serious; on the contrary, it’s ludicrous…and it’s also cruel.”

Brooks sees flaws. It “does not address the structural problems plaguing the American economy: wage stagnation, inequality, declining growth rates. It doesn’t have an answer to rising health care costs. Nor does it leave room for future policy creativity; there’s no money to allow future generations to rise to unforeseen challenges.” It is, “unacceptable to moderate voters.” It needs to “generate tax revenues equal to 20 percent of G.D.P., not the 18 percent he proposes. This would allow us to preserve some of the discretionary spending programs that Ryan cuts.” That’s all, David? That’s like a switch on the old joke, other than that Mr. Lincoln how did you enjoy the play?

Krugman says the numbers used in the plan are bogus stemming for the most part from the Heritage Foundation and don’t stand up to those generated by the Congressional Budget Office. “The Heritage Foundation set off a gigantic boom, lower taxes mean higher revenue” Krugman reports while the “Congressional Budget Office concludes over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law.”

“Privatizing Medicare” (with a voucher system to buy insurance policies) “does nothing, in itself, to limit health-care costs. In fact, it almost surely raises them by adding a layer of middlemen.” According to the CBO ‘by 2030 the value of a voucher would cover only a third of the cost of a private insurance policy.”

And, the “$4 trillion in spending cuts he proposes over the next decade, two-thirds involve cutting programs that mainly serve low-income Americans. By repealing last year’s health reform, without any replacement, the plan would also deprive an estimated 34 million nonelderly Americans of health insurance.”

Well, Paul, not to worry. Your cohort Brooks says: “With a few straightforward changes, his budget could be transformed into a politically plausible center-right package that would produce a fiscally sustainable welfare state while addressing the country’s structural economic problems.” Little Miss Sunshine Meets Chicken Little.

Count me as one who believes short-term stimulus combined with long-term trims that take effect when the economy is healthy again is the way to go. But that is not going to happen. And the radical right will have another opportunity for holding the government at ransom later in the year when it is time to vote again on raising the ceiling on the deficit. Social conservatives will again flex their muscles. Nicholas Kristof in the NYT had some thoughts on one contentious issue that will always be with us.

Take the cuts to Planned Parenthood. Kristof writes: “publicly financed family planning prevented 1.94 million unwanted pregnancies in 2006, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health. The result of those averted pregnancies was 810,000 fewer abortions.”

Guttmacher found that every $1 invested in family planning saved taxpayers $3.74. Guttmacher Institute calculates that a 15 percent decline in spending there would mean 1.9 million more unwanted pregnancies, 800,000 more abortions and 5,000 more maternal death. But a lot of those “social conservatives” believe as Bill Maher put it, life begins at erection.

To what degree they will go after the gay community is not yet clear, but go after them they surely will. Odd news items in the gender-bender world. Many people in India protested at a publicized suggestion that revered Mahatma Gandhi had an intimate relationship with another man. So what if those robe he wore looked a lot like dresses. And so what in general since it would not alter all that he accomplished. In another report the remains of what is believed to be a homosexual male Neanderthal has been found. Poor guy didn’t have a closet he could out of. And it does make you wonder what caused the species to die out.

On the subject of Neanderthals, the compensation of CEOs at 200 major companies has been published. They received, on average, a $9.6 million paycheck last year. Viacom's Philippe P. Dauman, who made $84.5 million for nine months of work. Now there is a tribute to How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. J. Pierpoint Finch would be envious. I don’t believe you can make that kind of money even from a Harry Potter movie. If you would like to run down the list to see what your favorite CEO earned, or what the company in which you own stock generously gave the top dog instead of distributing it to stock holders, click on this link to coverage in the New York Times.

http://projects.nytimes.com/executive_compensation?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25

A government shutdown, had it occurred, would not have meant much to those two hundred citizens. And in case of a government shutdown not all government employees would go on furlough. Many of them, like congressmen and air traffic controllers, are considered too essential, in the one case to prevent catastrophic crashes of airplanes and in the other to cause catastrophic crashes of government. Congressmen who caused the shutdown which would cost millions of furloughed workers pay would still get paid in any case. While a shutdown seems to have been averted this time (it is still tentative, for one more week) emergency plans were made.

In the spirit of David Letterman we might consider top ten things furloughed and otherwise affected federal workers might consider doing to stay up to while off should that yet come to pass.

10. Workers from the National Zoo could practice keeping their hand in by sitting on park benches and feeding the squirrels.

9. It’s an opportune time for employees of our National Parks to take a trip to Disneyland.

8. Members of the F.B.I., with time on their hands, could profit by reading a novel by John le Carré.

7. Since the Internal Revenue Service will not be able to issue refund checks they could take the time to figure out what to do with the interest those idle funds will accrue and who should declare it.

6. Smithsonian furloughed employees will have an opportunity to see what the contemporary world looks like.

5. Lawyers forced to suspend work on federal cases would find time well spent reviewing episodes of the Law & Order series.

4. While Passports will not be issued, employees could take this time to seek advice on how to avoid corporal tunnel syndrome from doing all of that pounding and stamping.

3. As it happened thousands of government-issued BlackBerrys will be ordered turned off in a shutdown leaving thousands with a good opportunity to clean out ear wax.

2. Environmental Protection Agency staff whose job it is to supervise cleanup of toxic waste, with time on their hands, will feel right at home hanging out at Marie Calendar restaurants.

1. Those on furlough from answering medical emergency hot lines? Just follow Charlie Sheen on Twitter.

 

 

Volume 6, Number 51

April 4, 2011 --

 

“Oh to be in England

Now that April's there.”

 

April it is, but if Robert Browning were alive today he might express it as: “Oy, to be in England now that Cameron’s there.” Things are not what you might call “tickety-boo,” in a sedate country only where such a dainty phrase might be employed to describe disaster.

It is pretty clear what has happened there so far under the aegis of Prime Minister David Cameron where his Conservative Party and its coalition partner in crime the Liberal Democrats set out to make drastic budget cuts for a quick deficit reduction. So far more than a half million jobs have been lost, cut backs on social welfare spending has been dramatic, and a raise in the pension age to 66 has been moved up to 2020, four years earlier than planned. Cuts to education have been massive, breaking campaign promises and doubling or tripling tuition for many students.

Libraries are being shut down and hospitals are facing staff shortages. The value added tax has been increased by 20 percent which primarily hurts middle class and lower-income people.

As a result hundreds of thousands of sedate British citizens are marching in London in protest of such a slash-and-burn political agenda. The government has lowered economic projections. Economist/columnist Paul Krugman sees this as “balancing budgets on the backs of working class people rather than asking the rich to pay their fair share.” I seriously doubt if those protesters marching on the streets of London wear monocles.

British are brethren, we may be the spawn of England but we are not England, Washington is not London, correct? I wouldn’t count on it. The slash and burn gene seems dominate now in the halls of Congress. We have our own brand of right-wing attacks on the middle class with our own special touches. The Brits have not been brazen enough to reduce revenue in a financial crises by cutting taxes on the super rich, and they are not using deficits as a tool for social engineering. I guess they have much yet to learn if they intend to become neocons on the American model.

Just when you think you have seen and heard everything that can be said on how to fix the economy a brand new one pops up, like this one which is so off the wall I am stunned. Paul Krugman reported on this, calling it “Mellon-style liquidationism,” based on the advice then Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon gave to President Herbert Hoover as the economy crashed into the Great Depression of the thirties. We all know how that worked out.

Well, a couple of weeks ago Republican staff of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee released a report, “Spend Less, Owe Less, Grow the Economy.” It is their view that job destruction (not job creation) is the way to go because it leads to lower wages (and isn’t that a good thing), which leads to job creation. Now think about that. First you destroy jobs creating unemployment so industry can hire more people at lower wages which creates jobs which would lead to higher wages at which point you would have to destroy jobs again. Or I think that’s it.

So we are set to follow Britain into expansionary austerity, where in their case the economy has stalled and business confidence has fallen to a two-year low and the government’s has made new, more pessimistic projections. Jolly well grim, chaps.

We need a budget agreement before Friday or the government shuts down. There is a group of senators called The Gang of Six, even-steven Republican and Democrat, who have been seriously working to prevent this from happening, using the debt commission’s plan to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years through spending cuts and elimination of tax breaks as a point for negotiations. It is difficult for me to say anything positive about Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn considering how much Sturm und Drang he has been responsible for in his time in the Senate but along with Democratic Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois compromises are being made.

The problem they have now is to get members of their respective parties to buy their compromise. The Tea Party driven members of the House are holding the bill at ransom not only to get their draconian budget cuts, but to get the riders to the bill they want that have nothing to do with the deficit, such as upholding the Defense of Marriage Act, trying to defund Planned Parenthood, cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Endowment for the Arts, NPR, and even AARP. There are19 amendments that deal with air, water, or land regulations and, for whatever reason they want to strike the word “arctic” from a provision of the Clean Air act. Stick ‘em up, Senators.

However, today on ABC This Week, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) agreed that a government shutdown is not imminent. Just what they base that on is not clear although as Schumer has been saying “the one group standing in the way here is the tea party.” He said he had “no problem” with reporters hearing him tell fellow Democrats to describe the tea party as “extreme.” “They are extreme” he said. Well now isn’t that shocking.

Harry Reid on CBS Face the Nation today: “The tea party is dictating a lot that goes on with the Republican leadership in the House and it shouldn’t be that way.” On the same program Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) thought Tea Party people as Republicans was just fine, although as I recall at one point last year he got into a confrontation with some of them at a rally. But now they are in Congress and his party needs their votes. No hypocrisy here.

I liked the way NYT columnist Gail Collins described budget negotiations in her weekly banter with fellow columnist David Brooks. “Democrats keep cutting little chunks out of discretionary budget and tossing them to the howling House Republicans. But it doesn’t seem to be doing much good.” For his part Brooks wrote “I’m for fining voters if they continue to want more government than they are willing to pay for.” Collins: “It’s all about imaginary numbers. Are the cuts supposed to be a percentage of the budget from the beginning of the fiscal year, or the moment the Republicans took control, or next Tuesday?” I’m so glad other people besides me don’t understand this damn thing. At the doctor’s office this week my blood pressure came in at 110 over 60. Either I am getting inured to the terrible shape of the State of the Union or I am just fading away.

Numbers, numbers lots of interesting numbers in the air out there. How does $9.3 million strike you? That’s what Charles E. Haldeman Jr. was paid for two years after joining Freddie Mac as CEO. Fannie Mae’s chief Michael Williams received $9.3 million for the two years. The top six executives at the companies received $35.4 million over the two year period. You can’t say we, the people, don’t pay well.

Hedge fund founder and chief executive John Paulson earned a record $4.9 billion in 2010 after betting on gold. Meanwhile the Florida House of Representatives has bills in work with the deepest and most far-reaching cuts in unemployment benefits in the nation. And Missouri has halted extension of pay for unemployment. Some of that big money needs to start trickling down.

At least good old American corporations are making a lot of money and can kick in money to keep us going even if the top marginal tax rate was three times less than during the Eisenhower year and substantially lower than during the Reagan years. General Electric posted worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, while profits at JPMorgan Chase were up 47 percent to $4.8 billion. But GE didn't pay any corporate taxes last year. Zero. Zilch. And Bank of America, our biggest bank has paid no taxes in two years. Murdoch's companies like News Corporation have made billions of dollars and paid no taxes. The next time you watch Glenn Beck you should be comforted to remember that it’s a freebie … for Murdoch.

The share of U.S. taxes paid by corporations has fallen from 30 percent of federal revenue in the 1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce must be so proud.

This was a week of roiling commentary about the President’s speech about our mission in Libya. Everybody, but everybody has an opinion on it. When Obama makes a speech it is as though he hangs himself up like one of those targets in a shooting gallery and says take your best shots. Did he move fast enough, should he have moved at all, what is our end game, should we lead, should we follow, ever put troops on the ground or what? I don’t want to get into it. As far as I am concerned he made a measured, serious, thoughtful explanation of what we are doing using his best judgment rather than running off in all directions, which is what we hire him for. This is a call I couldn’t make and I’ll leave it up to him. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates described the situation this way: “It's pretty much a pickup ballgame at this point.” It’s a pretty big sand lot out there.

Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post comments about the media bringing back failed public figures to pontificate on current events. Donald Rumsfeld turned up on ABC’S “This Week” to tell us what to do about Libya and to criticize the President on his actions. Alan Greenspan had a piece published in the journal “International Finance” on how we should handle the economic crises he almost created single-hand. Best of all Fox News came up with retired Marine Col. Oliver North, he who ran the secret war in Nicaragua to say the President should not have acted without the clear consent of Congress. For the Colonel to make that statement confirms the notion of the size of a Marine’s certain body parts.

“Public officials who have failed spectacularly in office should have the common decency to retire in disgrace” says vanden Heuvel. “In Japan, high officials who failed so spectacularly would be contemplating seppuku. In Britain, they’d resign, repair to drink and end up in the House of Lords. In America, they become pundits and are offered a stage to argue the same ideas that earlier brought the nation to near-ruin, rewriting history to fit their theory.” In my opinion, seppuku is too good for Oliver North.

April Fool’s Day was Friday and things being what they are it was a little hard to tell what was an April Fool faux from the real. However various blogs and Web sites took the occasion to have some fun. The New York Times ran a list of what turned up; here is a sampling.

 

• Whole Foods departed from its tone of gravity, devoting its Web site to such things as “Insects Raised With Compassion,” and “Save Money with Refurbished Spices,” as well as offering a new option to “have your whole paycheck automatically converted to a Whole Foods Market gift card.” To see it click on this link: Whole Foods
• Gmail Motion (the link to click) came up with “Now you can control Gmail with your body!” It includes mock videos of thee gyrations to do in front of your computer to search, scan or do all of the things the voice aps let you do.
• WestJet’s site says that it’s introducing a “state-of-the-art money-saving feature.” Helium mixed in ventilation system lightens the load.
• A post on Huffington Post mocked the new system The New York Times introduced to charge digital readers after a certain number of views. (“On HuffingtonPost.com you can view the first 6 letters of each word. After 6 letters, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber”).
• Toshiba offered a 3D monical. For Cyclops I suppose

 

Well, the first of April offers a fine opportunity for false news reports. It’s a couple of days late, but I have a few to offer. To wit: 

 

• Sarah Palin was photographed coming out of an office of Planned Parenthood, an organization under attack by fellow Republicans, accompanied by daughter Bristol. “Better late than never” the ex-governor was quoted as saying.
• Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn, who denies that industrial emissions have anything to do with global warming said in a statement that as long as the Vatican was allowed to burn the ballots cast by Cardinals in voting for a new Pope, sending smoke up the chimney to announce the results he would not vote to for cap and trade in this country.
• In a tearful appeal to members of the House, Speaker John Boehner asked that they not pass legislation that might create jobs to make sure that every young person would have the opportunity to live the American Dream: being unemployed.
• On learning that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has a Jewish heritage Senator Joe Lieberman demanded the despot at least call a 24-hour truce at sundown every Friday.
• Former Bush Administration Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld criticized President Obama for not moving quickly to curb unrest in the Middle East by making massive shipments of thumb screws to the leaders of countries with whom we have close ties like Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the like saying it would be a humanitarian gesture.
• In his regular pronouncement of the day, probable-possible-who knows Republican presidential candidate now Catholic Newt Gingrich proposed the discouragement of voter fraud by requiring all voters to receive and consume a communion wafer before being allowed in the booth to mark their ballot which some observers call a brazen move to prevent Muslim and Jewish citizens from voting because they tend to vote the Democratic ticket.
• There is a fund drive underway to raise money to sponsor the Florida preacher, Terry Jones of Gainesville, who burned the Koran thereby triggering the fatal attacks in Afghanistan, as a missionary to the Taliban where he can take the opportunity to personally convince them that the Prophet Mohammad was a fraud.
• After learning that former president Ronald Reagan was at one time the president of a union, the Screen Actors Guild, Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) is forming a union of governors to be called Union of DeUnionizers with membership dues to be paid by their states.
• Representative Michele Bachmann, the author of the “Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act” offered another bill making a short circuit illegal, punishable by cattle prods
• A caucus of House Republicans produced a new immigration bill which consists of drastic cuts to funds for education. As Tea Party leader Rep. Michele Bachmann explained “We do not need to import uneducated, untrained workers willing to do physically demanding heavy labor in order to survive when we can grow our own.”
• The Chamber of Commerce issued a statement declaring that now that there are so many Tea Party conservative in the House and the Chamber’s massive lobbying efforts appear to have paid off, mot to worry, the state of the Union is just “tickety-boo.” Which would be the cruelest April Fool’s joke of all.