Prairie Weather

Normal? NORMAL?? Do we even know what's normal anymore?

"This isn't a normal negotiation," Greg Sargent warns us.

... The current Republican demand, as I understand it, is that Dems must agree to Social Security cuts and a higher income threshold for the lower tax rates (either $400,000 or $500,000, depending on the source), in exchange for  an extension of middle class tax cuts (which Republicans also want) and an extension of unemployment benefits. If Dems don’t give up those things, while allowing Republicans to retain their debt ceiling leverage, taxes go up on everybody and unemployment benefits expire for over two million Americans.

Why would Democrats agree to Social Security cuts and lower tax rates on many wealthy households even as Republicans hold on to their leverage to extract still more in spending cuts later? No wonder a Dem aide described this as a “serious setback.” ...Sargent, WaPo

As we have noted already, the real fight is among Republicans.  Their disunity -- and childishness -- is the cliff we're paying for.  Still, there are elements within the Republican party who recognize a political opportunity.  Alex Blumberg explained on NPR this morning:

... Going off the cliff will let Congress sell a tax increase as a tax cut. Simon Johnson, an economist at MIT, walked me through how that works.

A big part of the fiscal cliff is the expiration of temporary tax cuts. So, for example, the 33 percent tax bracket will rise to 36 percent on Jan. 1.

Say you think the ideal rate for income in this bracket should be higher than 33 percent. Say you think it should be 34 percent. On Monday, Dec. 31, 34 percent is a tax increase. On Tuesday, Jan. 1, it's a tax cut. ... NPR

But we'd already figured this out.  Let's sincerely hope Democrats in both Houses are planning a joyful burning at the stake for their Republican colleagues -- and that way of dealing with Republicans becomes the new normal.

Obama's November win still grows

Political Wire is passing along this news from Florida's Orlando Sentinel:

An Ohio State University researcher has found that "as many as 49,000 people across Central Florida were discouraged from voting because of long lines on Election Day," the Orlando Sentinel reports.

"About 30,000 of those discouraged voters -- most of them in Orange and Osceola counties -- likely would have backed Democratic President Obama ... About 19,000 voters would have likely backed Republican Mitt Romney ... This suggests that Obama's margin over Romney in Florida could have been roughly 11,000 votes higher than it was, based just on Central Florida results. Obama carried the state by 74,309 votes out of more than 8.4 million cast." ...Political Wire

The problem we're doing nothing about

In Paul Krugman's column this morning, it becomes clear that no matter how good the information is out there it will always be muddled by the people with the megaphone --whether they're politicians or "pundits" or the media, and whether intentionally or not.

The problem we're doing nothing about consists of pundits, media, and pols -- and ourselves.  The deficit is a great example.  As pretty much any economist will tell us, our personal deficits bear no relation to America's deficit.  The "kitchen table" economics politicians often refer to are nothing like America's economics.  What government can and does do with respect to debt is quite different from what we are able to do as individuals with our own debts. Hard to explain, but true. Just keep in mind that if someone tries to pull that "kitchen table" on you, they're out to blind you to reality for their own reasons. 

And here's something else we need to internalize, starting today.  The Republicans -- more widely, our "deficit hawks" -- are likely to plunge us back into a deep recession*, maybe even want to plunge us back into a deep recession.  "Fiscal cliff" is an invention except in the sense that the Republican party would love to push us off a cliff and may succeed.

... It’s true that we face a time-sensitive issue in the form of the fiscal cliff: unless a deal is reached, we will soon experience a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that might push the nation back into recession. But that prospect doesn’t reflect a failure to “fix the debt” by reducing the budget deficit — on the contrary, the danger is that we’ll cut the deficit too fast. ... Paul Krugman, NYT

Keep that in mind.  Then move on to another reality: all this isn't just about being nice and finding a compromise.  The impression given by the media (carefully concocted to deceive) is that "both sides are to blame for the stalemate."  Nuh-uh.

... It’s true that elected politicians have been unable to “come together and compromise.” But saying that in generic form, and implying a symmetry between Republicans and Democrats, isn’t just misleading, it’s actively harmful.

The reality is that President Obama has made huge concessions. He has already cut spending sharply, and has now offered additional big spending cuts, including a cut in Social Security benefits, while signaling his willingness to retain many of the Bush tax cuts, even for people with very high incomes. Taken as a whole, the president’s proposals are arguably to the right of those made by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of his deficit commission, in 2010.

In return, the Republicans have offered essentially nothing. Oh, they say they’re willing to increase revenue by closing loopholes — but they’ve refused to specify a single loophole they’re willing to close. So if there’s a breakdown in negotiations, the blame rests entirely with one side of the political divide. ...Krugman, NYT

If you still like watching fights, then keep an eye on the real fight going on behind the curtain, the one that's taking place within the Republican party.  How that struggle shakes out could affect our futures a good deal more than the artificial bickering between party pundits and think-tankers on those Sunday morning news-and-interviews set-ups.

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In the event no compromise is found, however, the Congressional Budget Office and many private economists warn that the sudden pullback in spending and the rise in taxes would push the economy into recession in the first half of the year. Under this outcome, Mr. Gault said, the economy could shrink by 0.5 percent over all of 2013.

With the clock ticking, some observers bolstered their criticism of Washington. “If we have a recession, it’s unforgivable,” said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group. “For the first time in modern history, we will have a self-inflicted recession in the U.S.”...Business Day, NYT

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If your brain is in a tangle, you're feeling low, and you don't know who to believe, here is a very useful guide back to sanity... and self-esteem.  Oh, and fill your glass with champagne and/or go visit the vineyards in Champagne.

Making out like bandits. I mean making out like the gun lobby.

The NRA uses ideology (mostly against peace-loving, healthy Americans).  But it's not about ideology.  It's about money -- the wealth of the gun manufacturer and its lobby, the NRA.  Like many institutions, whether they're about breast cancer, clean food, orphans, or Christianity, begin by raising money for the cause and end up focusing on raising money to keep the institution in business and its leaders in a job.

Wayne LaPierre's idea of putting an armed guard in every schoool means money in the pockets of his lobby group and the industry it serves, pure and simple.  Indignation in the service of the his wallet, not the  nation.  The NRA has become a group of bandits, presumably well-armed, and allied to a "cacophony of paranoia and incoherence" -- and violence -- within the Republican party.

Trying to guarantee safety via armed protection of any venue that might attract a maniac bent on killing as many people as possible before being killed or killing himself would require armed guards in many other places: playgrounds, daycare centers, amusement parks, theatres, shopping malls—anyplace where a shooter might find a crowd.

Under the N.R.A.’s proposal, by the way, the multi-billion-dollar costs of recruiting, training, and arming the new force of armed school guards, which would be roughly the size of the French army, are to be borne by the Federal government—the same Federal government that the N.R.A. normally views as an evil octopus with jackboots on all eight tentacles. In his prepared script for his “press conference,” LaPierre dismissed these costs with a wave of the hand, saying, “With all the foreign aid, with all the money in the federal budget, we can’t afford to put a police officer in every school?” (Italics his.) The N.R.A. is an important component of the conservative movement. This latest proposal is a striking instance of that movement’s devolution into a cacophony of paranoia and incoherence. ...New Yorker

Hendrik Hertzberg makes a great point.  And I like his conclusion to all this nonsense on the part of the NRA.

Let’s put a police officer in every gun shop—there are slightly more than fifty thousand—in the United States. That would be half as expensive, and much, much more to the point. ...New Yorker

All right!!

Andy Borowitz understands Senator McConnell

It's about time somebody explained Mitch McConnell to decent Americans who have been wondering "What the.."

Well, here's what.  It takes someone with a sense of humor to parse our Congress.  Through all this fiscal cliff ha-ha, Borowitz has managed to keep his wit about him.  He gets McConnell.

“We’re hearing a lot about the country plunging back into recession and millions of people being thrown out of work,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). “What we’re not hearing much about is how our Sunday is being completely and irrevocably ruined.”

Senator McConnell said that when President Obama called the Senate back to work on a budget deal this weekend, “At first I thought he was kidding. Not only have I never worked on a weekend, I’ve never met anyone who’s done such a damn fool thing.”

The Senate Minority Leader added that “if saving this country means working Saturday and Sunday, then I’m not sure this is a country worth saving.”...New Yorker

In case you don't quite get it, here's the payoff.

“For years, people have run for Congress because they knew that serving here was synonymous with not working,” he said. “If that’s going to change all of a sudden, a lot of us are going to feel very betrayed.”...New Yorker

Obama understands Republicans a lot better than they understand him

Congressional Republicans in the middle and on the right-hand side of their party are just no good at things Americans are expected to get good at, things like democracy, civility, and working for a living.  The president said today in a TV interview:

"They say that their biggest priority is making sure that we deal with the deficit in a serious way, but the way they're behaving is that their only priority is making sure that tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are protected. That seems to be their only overriding, unifying theme." ...via Political Wire

Well, the tax breaks for sure.  And let's not forget that they're dependent on their patrons . The very people who are able to afford the classy bookkeeping that gives them much lower taxes often wind up in tax brackets below those of workingAmerica.  A lot of what they save goes straight into Republican campaign coffers. 

It doesn't buy down the deficit, that's for sure. And it doesn't give us representatives who represent us, much less do the job they're paid to do.  First Gingrich, now Beohner and McConnell.

The 104th Congress (1995-1996) currently holds the ignominious distinction of being the least productive session of Congress ... Just 333 bills became law during that two-year period, meaning the 112th Congress needs to send nearly 100 more bills to Obama's desk in the next few days if it wants to avoid going down in history -- an unlikely prospect, considering that both chambers are squarely focused on averting the 'fiscal cliff' before the new year. ...HuffPo via Political Wire