[Vision2020] constitutional matters

Fri Dec 30 09:56:09 PST 2011

I agree that the office of the president does not supersede the Constitution. However, with the announcement that Bin Laden had been killed, the republicans choked out hearty congratulations to Obama in their glee. I do agree that close scrutiny of presidential powers is in order here. However, this current stir is just another ploy to steal Obama's wind in his sails by a very unscrupulous mass of individuals. 
When I look at any of the republican candidates for the presidency, to say it mildly, I become very worried for the future of our nation. At least we know what Obama is going to do. He has come through on nearly ALL of his campaign promises.  
Sincerely,
Roger Hayes/Moscow 
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Subject: Vision2020 Digest, Vol 66, Issue 182

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Today's Topics:

   1. Keynes Was Right (Art Deco)
   2. Re: Fw: Mr. Paul?s Discredited Campaign (Art Deco)

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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 09:07:25 -0800
From: "Art Deco" <deco at moscow.com>
To: <Vision2020 at moscow.com>
Subject: [Vision2020] Keynes Was Right
Message-ID: <EAD4214249E04414ACFA50E2ECC5E7A7 at cobra>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

a.. 

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December 29, 2011
Keynes Was Right
By PAUL KRUGMAN
"The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury." So declared John Maynard Keynes in 1937, even as F.D.R. was about to prove him right by trying to balance the budget too soon, sending the United States economy - which had been steadily recovering up to that point - into a severe recession. Slashing government spending in a depressed economy depresses the economy further; austerity should wait until a strong recovery is well under way. 

Unfortunately, in late 2010 and early 2011, politicians and policy makers in much of the Western world believed that they knew better, that we should focus on deficits, not jobs, even though our economies had barely begun to recover from the slump that followed the financial crisis. And by acting on that anti-Keynesian belief, they ended up proving Keynes right all over again. 

In declaring Keynesian economics vindicated I am, of course, at odds with conventional wisdom. In Washington, in particular, the failure of the Obama stimulus package to produce an employment boom is generally seen as having proved that government spending can't create jobs. But those of us who did the math realized, right from the beginning, that the Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (more than a third of which, by the way, took the relatively ineffective form of tax cuts) was much too small given the depth of the slump. And we also predicted the resulting political backlash. 

So the real test of Keynesian economics hasn't come from the half-hearted efforts of the U.S. federal government to boost the economy, which were largely offset by cuts at the state and local levels. It has, instead, come from European nations like Greece and Ireland that had to impose savage fiscal austerity as a condition for receiving emergency loans - and have suffered Depression-level economic slumps, with real G.D.P. in both countries down by double digits. 

This wasn't supposed to happen, according to the ideology that dominates much of our political discourse. In March 2011, the Republican staff of Congress's Joint Economic Committee released a report titled "Spend Less, Owe Less, Grow the Economy." It ridiculed concerns that cutting spending in a slump would worsen that slump, arguing that spending cuts would improve consumer and business confidence, and that this might well lead to faster, not slower, growth. 

They should have known better even at the time: the alleged historical examples of "expansionary austerity" they used to make their case had already been thoroughly debunked. And there was also the embarrassing fact that many on the right had prematurely declared Ireland a success story, demonstrating the virtues of spending cuts, in mid-2010, only to see the Irish slump deepen and whatever confidence investors might have felt evaporate. 

Amazingly, by the way, it happened all over again this year. There were widespread proclamations that Ireland had turned the corner, proving that austerity works - and then the numbers came in, and they were as dismal as before. 

Yet the insistence on immediate spending cuts continued to dominate the political landscape, with malign effects on the U.S. economy. True, there weren't major new austerity measures at the federal level, but there was a lot of "passive" austerity as the Obama stimulus faded out and cash-strapped state and local governments continued to cut. 

Now, you could argue that Greece and Ireland had no choice about imposing austerity, or, at any rate, no choices other than defaulting on their debts and leaving the euro. But another lesson of 2011 was that America did and does have a choice; Washington may be obsessed with the deficit, but financial markets are, if anything, signaling that we should borrow more. 

Again, this wasn't supposed to happen. We entered 2011 amid dire warnings about a Greek-style debt crisis that would happen as soon as the Federal Reserve stopped buying bonds, or the rating agencies ended our triple-A status, or the superdupercommittee failed to reach a deal, or something. But the Fed ended its bond-purchase program in June; Standard & Poor's downgraded America in August; the supercommittee deadlocked in November; and U.S. borrowing costs just kept falling. In fact, at this point, inflation-protected U.S. bonds pay negative interest: investors are willing to pay America to hold their money. 

The bottom line is that 2011 was a year in which our political elite obsessed over short-term deficits that aren't actually a problem and, in the process, made the real problem - a depressed economy and mass unemployment - worse. 

The good news, such as it is, is that President Obama has finally gone back to fighting against premature austerity - and he seems to be winning the political battle. And one of these years we might actually end up taking Keynes's advice, which is every bit as valid now as it was 75 years ago. 

_____________________________
Wayne A. Fox
wayne.a.fox at gmail.com
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 09:29:03 -0800
From: "Art Deco" <deco at moscow.com>
To: <Vision2020 at moscow.com>
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Fw: Mr. Paul?s Discredited Campaign
Message-ID: <AC08AACA46944EB89619B17F92E2ECEA at cobra>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"

I agree with Rumelhart to the extent that things in this country [and globally] are broken beyond the traditional politicians' ways of repairing them.  We need bold, realistic, non-poll-driven leaders who can convince us to re-evaluate our situation, offer feasible solutions, and to convince us to make the inevitable selfless sacrifices necessary.

Though not traditional, I do not think Ron Paul is one of those leaders.

His view of the world and his positions are too simplistic for the complex, diverse, globally competitive world we live in.  The latest revelations have shown that his integrity does not rise above the minimum standard.  The simplicity of his views are his main attraction to many, but reality is the barricade to his views ever producing workable solutions -- they would be even more disastrous than the messes we now face.

In addition, some of his views are so abhorrent and/or crackpotty that he would not be likely to convince congress to implement them in the face of public opinion.

Having said that, I am unable to suggest any leader or group of leaders that seem capable of fixing things.  The best I can hope for is that we elect the lesser of the evils, at least by a little, to struggle on.

I'm glad I'm old and not likely to live too much longer.  I don't not want to see the result of where the world is heading and the foolishness of those in power resisting what needs to be done to change that direction.

w.

From: Sunil Ramalingam 
Sent: Friday, December 30, 2011 7:54 AM
Cc: vision 2020 
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Fw: Mr. Paul?s Discredited Campaign

Why doesn't the NYT address Paul's stances on foreign policy? On defense spending?

Sunil

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Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:38:24 -0800
From: godshatter at yahoo.com
To: deco at moscow.com
CC: Vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Fw: Mr. Paul?s Discredited Campaign

I'm beginning to believe that Ron Paul is our only hope to stop the downslope this country is on.  For example, the Transportation Security Administration just got an extra $7.85 billion in funding for 2012, including several hundred million dollars of funding for whole body imagers.  This passed both the House and the Senate.  Does anyone here actually believe that terrorism is a personally actionable danger?  Do you change your behavior at all due to the threat?  Do you think all the security theater is worth the money?

Ron Paul is about the only guy out there that votes against this kind of crap.  Pretty much everybody else, (R) or (D), votes it in.  All they seem to argue about is who is getting the pork.

As I see it, your choices are 1) the same old shit, but next year having slipped even farther away from rationality or 2) this one bat-shit crazy dude that might actually try to do something about it.

One thing I've noticed this year is that Ron Paul is actually getting press.  There was a massive grassroots campaign for him the last couple of elections, but nobody in the media would take him seriously as an actual candidate.

The fact that they have started the smear campaign means that there is actually a chance of getting him in office.

My advice?  Don't vote for the person that looks like the most responsible Dad, or the guy that looks like he's someone you could have a beer with, or the one that looks like a he's a successful lawyer.  All of those guys are going to perpetuate the power grab that has been going on for the last few decades.

Vote for the dude that puts the fear of God into the others.  Vote for the one that will work to decrease their power, not the others that only want to increase it for personal gain.

Sure, he's a bag of mixed nuts sometimes.  But he's the only one with half a chance to shake things up a bit.

This should be a fun election year.

Paul

On 12/28/2011 11:35 AM, Art Deco wrote: 

  a.. Reprints 

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  December 27, 2011
  Mr. Paul?s Discredited Campaign
  Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 
  Now, making things worse, he has failed to convincingly repudiate racist remarks that were published under his name for years ? or the enthusiastic support he is getting from racist groups. 
  Mr. Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas who is doing particularly well in Iowa?s precaucus polls, published several newsletters in the ?80s and ?90s with names like the Ron Paul Survival Report and the Ron Paul Political Report. The newsletters interspersed libertarian political and investment commentary with racial bigotry, anti-Semitism and far-right paranoia. 
  Among other offensive statements, the newsletters said that 95 percent of Washington?s black males were criminals, and they described the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?s birthday as ?Hate Whitey Day.? One 1993 article appeared under a headline lamenting the country?s ?disappearing white majority.? Other articles suggested that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, praised the Louisiana racist David Duke and accused some gay men with AIDS of deliberately spreading the disease, ?perhaps out of a pathological hatred.? 
  A direct-mail ad for the newsletters from around 1993 warned of a ?coming race war in our big cities? and said there was a ?federal-homosexual cover-up? to suppress the impact of AIDS. 
  Mr. Paul, who, beginning in 2008, has disavowed the articles and their ideas, now says that most of them were written by others and that he was unaware of their content. Even if that were the case, it suggests a stupendous level of negligence that should force a reconsideration by anyone considering entrusting him with the White House. 
  When the newsletters first became an issue during his Congressional campaigns in the 1990s, however, he did not deny writing some of them or knowing about them. 
  Mr. Paul has never given a full and detailed accounting of who wrote the newsletters and what his role was in overseeing their publication. It?s especially important that he do so immediately. Those writings have certainly not been forgotten by white supremacist and militia groups that are promoting his candidacy in Iowa and in New Hampshire. 
  The Times reported on Sunday that dozens of members of the white nationalist Web site Stormfront are volunteering for the Paul campaign, along with far-right militias, survivalists and anti-Zionist groups. Don Black, the Stormfront director, said his members were drawn to Mr. Paul by the newsletters and his positions against immigration and the Fed (run by Jews, Mr. Black said), even if Mr. Paul were not himself a white nationalist. 
  Mr. Paul, saying he still hopes to ?convert? these supporters to his views, has refused to disavow them or to chase them out of his campaign. If he does not do so, he will leave a lasting stain on his candidacy, on the libertarian movement and, very possibly, on the Iowa caucuses. 

  _____________________________________
  Wayne A. Fox
  wayne.a.fox at gmail.com

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