Obama to Propose Spending Freeze in SOTU Address

Hear is another reason I do not consider President Barack Obama a policy wonk. The Guardian reports Obama is going to propose a partial spending freeze in his State of the Union address.

Barack Obama is expected to call for a five year partial freeze on spending in his State of the Union address today as he gears up for a battle with Republicans over budget cuts and maps out a path to re-election.

But Republicans rejected the call, even before it was made, as "not enough".

Obama attempts to pander to Republicans. The result is Republicans still diss his partial spending freeze proposal.

The last economic genius that put a spending freeze on the federal government was President Herbert Hoover. The result was less money going into an already weak economy. Matt Yglesias was part of a conference call with an Obama administration official and confirms that a spending freeze will be in the State of the Union.

The Defense Department, the State Department and Homeland Security will not be cut. Obama and Republican Paul Ryan both like giving ballpark numbers about how much they will cut. When asked specifically what domestic programs they would cut they retreat.

Economist Brad Delong breaks down how Obama's proposal will have Hoover-like effects on unemployment.

But in a country as big as this one even this is large stakes. What we are talking about is $25 billion of fiscal drag in 2011, $50 billion in 2012, and $75 billion in 2013. By 2013 things will hopefully be better enough that the Federal Reserve will be raising interest rates and will be able to offset the damage to employment and output. But in 2011 GDP will be lower by $35 billion--employment lower by 350,000 or so--and in 2012 GDP will be lower by $70 billion--employment lower by 700,000 or so--than it would have been had non-defense discretionary grown at its normal rate. (And if you think, as I do, that the federal government really ought to be filling state budget deficit gaps over the next two years to the tune of $200 billion per year...)

And what do we get for these larger output gaps and higher unemployment rates in 2011 and 2012? Obama "signal[s] his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit," Jackie Calmes reports.

Obama extension of the tax cuts was about politics and a lack of seriousness about the federal deficit. The deficit needs a scalpel to cut wasteful spending. Getting more people back to work would increase tax revenue. Instead Obama decides to make Republican rhetoric of spending freezes into fiscal policy because it is easier than taking risky positions.

Progressives Realize Obama Is Not A Policy Wonk

Matt Yglesias points out that Obama is not being truthful when the President says he was more focused on policy than politics.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was deeply shaped by a desire to avoid politically damaging accusations of waste, fraud, and abuse rather than shaped to maximun stabilization bang for the buck. The administration forgot to appoint anyone to FED vacancies for over a year. And the Affordable Care Act is providing zero (if not negative) short-term stimulus out of a politically motivated desire to achieve a deficit-negative 10-year CBO score.

Brad Delong, economist and Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department, during the Clinton administration, wrote of Obama's failure to immediately appoint new members to the Federal Reserve governing board.

I think that the general rule in the future should be that nobody who has not served a full term as a state governor or managed a similarly large organization should be supported in any presidential run. FDR and DDE are certainly class acts of the twentieth century.

Joe Klein wrote in his book Primary Colors that Gov. Stanton (based on Bill Clinton) viewed Senators as "lesser breeds." Stanton thought Senators were unserious about governing. Obama is showing that trait. Obama can't be taken seriously about wanting the economy to recover if he can't even be bothered with FED appointments.

I talked to progressives on Twitter. I tweeted Jodi Jacobson of RH Reality Check

The preident that created this deficit commission and hired Lawrence Summers should not be called a policy wonk.

Jacobson's tweet back to me.

sir you are totally correct!

Steve Hynd of Newshoggers and I sent each other several tweets about Obama having no exit strategy for Afghanistan. I sent this tweet on Obama's lack of substance.

I think Dems elected their version of Charlie Crist. All feel good style and no substance. Obama('s) West Point speech was disaster.

Hynd tweeted me that he realized earlier that Obama lacked substance.

I said at the time they were electing another Tony Blair -say anything as long as you get elected

Doesn't not having an exit strategy for Afghanistan rule out being called a policy wonk? Especially since Obama has made it clear he intends to withdrawal troops from Afghanistan. To do that requires an actual plan for withdawal.

Obama cannot be taken seriously on financial reform when Lawrence Summers was his cheif economic policy adviser. In the Clinton administraton, Summers pushed for the the Commodities Futures Moderation Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The former barred derivatives from being regulated. The later repealed the Gless-Steagall Act and allowed investment and commercial banks to merge. Anyone paying attention knows derivatives helped lead to the 2008 Wall Street crash. The investment banks had to be bailed out because Americans put their savings accounts into the commercial banks whose investment branches made horrible deals. The Gless-Stegall Act was signed by Roosevelt to protect people from losing their savings. Obama went into the White House facing a financial crisis. The man he chose as his chief economic adviser was the person who helped laid the ground work for the 2008 crash. What serious policy wonk would put Summers back in power?

The reason many Americans can not afford health insurance is because of cost. Blue Cross and Blue Shield have raised premiums 20 percent this year. If you are counting on the state legislatures to set fair health insurance exchanges then you will be sadly disappointed.

"The pressure that the industry can bring to bear in state legislatures is unbelievable," said Robert Hunter, former insurance commissioner in Texas. "They pretty much get what they want."

The CBO never took in account the health insurance industry raising premiums. Obama never intended to lower the costs of health care. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington had to sue the White House to get visitor logs. What was revealed is that Obama met 27 times with health care industry lobbyists. Obama violated his own loobyist ban and vow for transparent government. The health care industry wanted an insurance mandate and a promise from Obama to veto Medicare being allowed to negotiate for lower drug prices.

This is not about a President being 100 percent progressive. Obama policies (or lack of) will keep troops in Afghanistan, will force Americans to buy increasingly expensive health insurance and ignores the financial problems facing America. Obama is turning out to be a horrible President. Mitt Romney could have made the same horrible health care reform and lack of seriousness on Afghanistan. The American public doesn't like Obama's health care or financial policies because they are bad. Not because the country misses George W. Bush.

The poll results shows solid support for repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Which makes it insanely stupid for Democrat Carl Levin to be negotiating with John McCain to strip the DADT repeal language from the defense appropriations bill. You know Levin has miscalculated when Joe Lieberman is on the right side of the issue.

“The Senate has passed a defense bill for 48 consecutive years. We should not fail to meet that responsibility now, especially while our nation is at war,” Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement on Tuesday. “We must also act to put an end to the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy that not only discriminates against but also dishonors the service of gay and lesbian service members.”

I agree with Matt Yglesias that Republicans filibustering the defense appropriations bill would be a politically losing proposition.

The White House seems to be getting the message. It is amazing how the Obama administration wants to cater to the base after a bruising midterm election. This is why I continue to say progressives shouldn't be Democratic apologists. The only way to get good legislation passed is to put pressure on Democratic leaders. Remember, the White House killed a DADT repeal amendment when it had super-majorities in 2009.

Unemployment Reality

The Bureau of Labor Statistics came up with an unsurprising table showing the more education one has attained the less likely he or she is unemployed. High school dropouts have a 14.7 unemployment rate. That is a stark difference from the 5.3 unemployment rate of people with a Bachelor's degree and higher.

Matt Yglesias posted a chart on his blog. Yglesias views unemployment through college elitism. I think he partially hit and misses the point about Washington's disconnect with unemployment. Sen. Ben Nelson felt unemployment ceased "to be an emergency." Republicans are even more detached from economic reality than their counterparts. Rep. John Boehner compared Obama's effort to give states money to retain teachers to the bank bailout. Nevermind that these teachers are doing a needed service. Boehner is more concerned with getting out his Frank Luntz's approved talking points.

Health Industry Lobbying

Matt Yglesias and Ryan Powers have interesting posts on how the health industry has spent vast sums of money to stop health care reform. The lobbying dollars shifts to the party in power. The biggest beneficiaries of been the Blue Dog Democrats.

Overall, the typical Blue Dog has received $63,000 more in campaign contributions from the health-care sector than other House Democrats over the past two decades, according to the CRP analysis. The top three recipients were Rep. Earl Pomeroy (N.D.), with $1.5 million, and Tennessee Reps. Bart Gordon and John Tanner, both of whom collected over $1.2 million from the industry and its employees, according to the data.

The only major health care policy proposal off by Blue Dogs is the trigger. Current private health care would run in it's current state. If the costs become too high then that will "trigger" Congress to respond. The trigger is a stalling tactic and should be treated as such.

The Yglesias Torture Question

Matthew Yglesias asks if conservatives understand torture. Judging by comments from my blog they haven't bothered to read the memos. I wrote the post "Why We Should Care About Torture." A commenter named James argued deprivation is not torture. A memo by Steven Bradbury of the Office of Legal Council argued sleep deprivation would not inflict pain. Bradbury cited Prof. James Horne's book "Why We Sleep: The Functions of Sleep in Humans and Other Mammals." The memo admits the paticipants of Horne's sleep experiments were "free to move about and engage in normal activities." Horne's experiments were being used as a defensive cover for torture. The memos admits "important differences" between Horne's study and CIA interrogations.

We understand from OMS, and from our review of the literature on the physiology of sleep, that even very extended sleep deprivation does not cause physical pain, let alone severe. physical pain." "The longest studies of sleep deprivation in humans, .. [involved) volunteers [who were deprived of sleep for g to 11 days" .. Surprisingly, tittle seemed to go wrong with the subjects physically. The main effects lay with sleepiness and impaired brain functioning, but even these were no great cause for concern." James Horne, "Why We Sleep: The Functions of Sleep in Humans and Other Mammals" 23-24 (1988) ("Why We Sleep") (footnote omitted).. We note that there are important differences between steep deprivation as an interrogation technique used by the CIA and the controlled experiments documented in the literature. The subjects of the experiments were free to move about and engage in normal activities and often led a "tranquil existence" with "plenty of time for relaxation," See iii. at 24,

Blogger Hizroy contacted Horne. The Professor remarks extended sleep deprivation during interrogation "possible trauma, even blood loss." Horne expresses doubt that sleep deprivation could produce useful information from detainees.

With additional stresses as in ‘coercive techniques’, the situation for the sleep deprived victim becomes deplorable, as the mind and brain under these circumstances trigger the body’s defences to create a physiological ‘alarm reaction’ whereby, for example, various stress coping hormones are mobilised and prepare the body for possible trauma, even blood loss. I emphasise that this alarm reaction is not present under ‘pure sleep loss’ as I have just described. Prolonged stress with sleep deprivation will lead to a physiological exhaustion of the body’s defence mechanisms, physical collapse, and with the potential for various ensuing illnesses. We don’t know at what point this latter phase would be reached with ‘coercive techniques’, but to claim that 180 hours is safe in these respects, is nonsense. Moreover, whereas physical pain may not be particularly apparent even at this stage, the mental pain would be all too evident, and arguably worse than physical pain.

Even if one was to be pragmatic and claim that this form of sleep deprivation produced ‘desired results’, I would doubt whether the state of mind would be able to produce credible information, unaffected by delusion, fantasy or suggestibility.

Conservatives are willfully ignorant about the true implications of torture. Conservatives spents years denying the United States tortures. Now they say torture produces good intelligences. Even Dick Cheney is having problems citing instances where torture produced valuable intelligence. The only argument conservatives have left is an "eye-for-an-eye" justice.

FISA Bill On Hold

Harry Reid pulled the FISA bill at the last moment. Reid denies Christopher Dodd and the blogosphere had anything to do with his decision.

"He blinked," Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said of Reid. "It's clear that this was not going to be easy. On the one hand he wanted to rush this process and think he could strong-arm everybody to giving up their rights as senators. They threw sand in the gears."

There is no other logical reason. The Senate voted 76 to 10 to vote on the bill. It would have passed easily with bipartisan support.

Matt Yglesias misses the point. It has less to do with the will of the Senate body than the lobbying power of the telecommunications industry. Notice how the other Democratic presidential candidates have failed to take the initiative on the FISA bill. Money makes the world and presidential campaigns go.

Dodd thanks his supporters.

Maternal Mortality and Abortion

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof did a several video pieces on maternal mortality in Solalia. Many women have high risk pregnancies. Which makes the findings of the findings of the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization study.

An estimated 42 million abortions were induced in 2003, compared with 46 million in 1995. The induced abortion rate in 2003 was 29 per 1000 women aged 15–44 years, down from 35 in 1995. Abortion rates were lowest in western Europe (12 per 1000 women). Rates were 17 per 1000 women in northern Europe, 18 per 1000 women in southern Europe, and 21 per 1000 women in northern America (USA and Canada). In 2003, 48% of all abortions worldwide were unsafe, and more than 97% of all unsafe abortions were in developing countries. There were 31 abortions for every 100 livebirths worldwide in 2003, and this ratio was highest in eastern Europe (105 for every 100 livebirths).

Women need abortion when their pregnancy endangers their lives. Most third world abortions are performed by people lacking medical training. These abortions often prove fatal.

The study makes clear that people need accurate information on what does or doesn't constitute a safe abortion. Christian conservative give inaccurate information about the risks of abortions performed by medical professionals. It is imperative women are educated about contraception and high-risk pregnancies.

I was troubled by Matt Yglesias's post on the study.

What's more, I'm not really sure why one would think that the case for reproductive freedom hinges crucially on the idea that making abortions safer, more affordable, and more convenient to obtain has no impact on the number of abortions people get. After all, if nothing else the very dangerous nature of the abortion procedure in the abortion-banning countries constitutes a sound consideration against getting an abortion in those places. Legal abortions not only allow women determined to terminate their pregnancies do so safely, but they allow women determined to manage their pregnancies safely do so by terminating them. Meanwhile, it seems that legal abortion helps promote relatively more permissive attitudes about sex.

I live on the border of a rough area in Tampa. Women I have seen get pregnant repeatedly are not properly educated about contraceptives. They are also don’t get abortions. The state usually takes the kids because they have financial and personal problems parenting. I have no idea whether or not they are having more or less sex than women whom have abortions. Neither can Matt.

Making abortion illegal would not stop people from having sex. I’m curious how can Matt know how much sex women were having before Roe v Wade? I have been googling and haven’t found an actual study (not counting Christian Right b.s.) that backs up Matt’s claim.

Matt also states as fact that abortions went up after Roe v Wade. Statistical data wasn't kept on abortions before then. So he makes a claim without being able to back it up. I got nothing personal against him. It does prove Matt didn't read the study he is dissing.

Prior to the nationwide legalization of abortion, information on the number and rate of abortions was not gathered, and estimates of illegal and self-induced abortions varied widely. In the years immediately following the Roe v. Wade decision, the number of LEGAL abortions grew rapidly for several reasons. The number of physicians trained and experienced in the procedure increased, and a nationwide network of outpatient abortion clinics developed that enabled women who would previously have had an illegal abortion, or would not have been able to obtain one at all, to do so legally in a medical facility.

Opps.

Jill Filipovic gets credit for taking Matt to task for that.

Update: Ross Douthat continues the myth that abortion rates went up after Roe v Wade.

Whereas we know that when abortion was legalized in America in the early 1970s, the abortion rate went up dramatically; we also know that Western Europe, which has lower abortion rates than the U.S., also has (somewhat) more restrictive abortion laws. Which suggests if you're serious about reducing the abortion rate in America (as opposed to taking the "more abortion is a good thing" line that Matt espouses), the Edelstein-Saletan answer is something of a cop-out; if some kind of restriction isn't on the table, you probably aren't going to get very far.

I feel like banging my head against a wall. Just because people have been saying that for years doesn't make it true. That thinking is how everyone took Bush's claims about Saddam Hussein's WMDs at face value. People, do research.

Meet the TNR Iraq Blogger

It's amazing how much time the Right spent trying to scream that the soldier who wrote under the pseudonym Scott Thomas didn't exist. The Weekly Standard and the National Review lead the charge. It didn't matter that they had no actual evidence or did no responsible investigative reporting. Ideology and pro-Iraq war support came first.

Now Scott Thomas has come forward and revealed his real identity as Scott Thomas Beauchamp.

I am Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division.

My pieces were always intended to provide my discrete view of the war; they were never intended as a reflection of the entire U.S. Military. I wanted Americans to have one soldier's view of events in Iraq.

It's been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq. I was initially reluctant to take the time out of my already insane schedule fighting an actual war in order to play some role in an ideological battle that I never wanted to join. That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name.

Will the Weekly Standard and National Review stand by their writing or just pretend that the controversy they started never happened? I'm betting on the latter. Both publications should of had a major editorial review of how they wrote such factually inaccurate articles. Instead, they attack a soldier they claimed never existed here and here. Real classy.

Other lefty bloggers share their thoughts.

"That's just crazy. All these people need to stop," writes Matt Yglesias. "They need to apologize to the people at TNR who've wasted huge amounts of time dealing with their nonsense."

The Right bitches about the "liberal media." People would take their complaints more seriously if they didn't have tv and radio host throw on-air temper tamtrums and print journalists that posted corrections. Instead, they have a noise machine.

Shakes makes a great point.

Which is why I think we should hold Foer and TNR to some account. It was obvious how all this would play out. Any of us on the Left who share the stories of antiwar soldiers, or soldiers just telling the ugly truth of war, need to be prepared. Better prepared than that, anyway.

The rightwing noise machine will attack. It's not important if the Right makes a valid point. What they want to make of is that people don't hear the other side make valid points. They want you to believe it's a shiny happy people world.