Debt Super Committee Get Their Own Baseball Cards, Sort Of

Those of you who have lives may not know that US Presidents get their own cards in some Topps baseball card sets.

The current Oval Office occupant has not been left out.

  

The debt reduction super committee may not get a Topps card set, but this Atlantic article has put together stats that Topps can use to put on the back of the cards if the company chooses to issue a set.  All stats below are taken from the Atlantic article.

John Kyl--Position: Senator     Party: Republican
Statistics:  "He carries a lifetime 96.72 (out of 100) Senate vote rating from the American Conservative Union."

Chris Van Hollen--Position: Representative     Party: Democrat
Statistics:  During the previous two election cycles, Van Hollen helmed the Democratic Party's House campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

James Clyburn--Position: Representative     Party: Democrat
Statistics: He is the highest-ranking black member of Congress.

Rob Portman--Position: Senator     Party: Republican
Statistics: Having served as U.S. trade representative and as George W. Bush's Office of Management and Budget director, he brings budgetary experience to the table.

Xavier Becerra--Position: Representative    Party: Democrat
Statistics:  He's . . . a member of the House Progressive Caucus, meaning he's probably too liberal to jump on board with any grand super-committee compromise that can win more than one or two Republican votes.

Jeb Hensarling--Position: Representative     Party: Republican
Statistics:  Serving as Republican Conference chairman, Hensarling is the fourth-highest-ranking House Republican, and he's an across-the-board conservative, fiscal and social.  Hensarling carries a 98.96 lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, and in each of the last two years he's carried a rating of 100.

Pat Toomay--Position:  Senator     Party: Republican
Statistics: A former congressman, for years Toomey ran The Club for Growth, a D.C.-based economic-conservative group that pressures legislators to vote for an anti-tax, pro-business agenda and sponsors primary challengers against Republicans deemed too moderate.

Max Baucus--Position: Senator     Party: Democrat
Statistics:  Each delegation has its budget-and-tax wiz -- a guy or gal who actually knows how to work the numbers -- and that's what Baucus is for Senate Democrats.

Fred Upton--Position: Representative     Party: Republican
Statistics: Upton chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Rep. Joe Barton, who infamously apologized to BP, relinquished the top GOP spot on Energy and Commerce after the last Congress ended, and in the ensuing power-struggle over the committee chairmanship, Upton had to overcome insinuations that he's not conservative enough.

Dave Camp--Position: Representative     Party Republican
Statistics: As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Camp brings a knowledge of tax policy -- but also a history of non-enthusiasm for Paul Ryan's controversial budget plan. After Ryan released it, Camp said his committee wouldn't take it up, given that Ryan's plan would never make it through the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Patty Murray--Position: Senator     Party: Democrat
Statistics:  First elected in 1992, . . . she finds herself at the heights of Democratic power. This election cycle she took the helm as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, heading up the party's efforts to raise and spend money on Senate campaigns

John Kerry--Position: Senator     Party: Democrat
Statistics:  Seven short years ago, Kerry was running for president as the Democratic Party's standard bearer against president Bush. After that quest was derailed by Swift-Boat Veterans and wind-surfing photos, he hasn't quite made it back into a the national spotlight, even while serving as chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee after Vice President Joe Biden's departure for the executive. Serving on the super committee offers a high-profile task for the once-higher-profile Democrat.

Should Topps publish this set, I can see MC at the Dakota War College offering Cory Heidelberger at the Madville Times 3 Becerras for a Toomay and 2 Kyles.  Steve Sibson would probably try to corner the market on Hensarlring.

Can the London Riots Happen Here?

This paragraph and quotation from this Andrew Sullivan post interests and disconcerts me.

And the use of social media and nifty little bikes reveals the criminal opportunism here. But even Mary Riddell in the Telegraph sees the background of austerity, accelerating social inequality and the bleakness of the economic future as part of the context:

It is no coincidence that the worst violence London has seen in many decades takes place against the backdrop of a global economy poised for freefall. The causes of recession set out by J K Galbraith in his book, The Great Crash 1929, were as follows: bad income distribution, a business sector engaged in “corporate larceny”, a weak banking structure and an import/export imbalance. [emphasis mine]

The bolded phrasing perfectly describes the United States's economic situation over the past decade.  Further, we are living in era that seems to prize and reward belligerence over competence.  This Frum Forum post compares Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie to make the point.

While talk radio is urging Chris Christie to enter the race, it is demanding that Mitch Daniels exit. The Indiana governor drew accolades from many for his CPAC performance — but Rush Limbaugh and other talkers have blasted him for his talk of a truce on social issues and his decision not to insert a brand-new right-to-work initiative at the top of his agenda.

Why is Chris Christie the heartthrob of the radio right, while Daniels is suddenly an intolerable RINO? Christie is not more conservative than Daniels, and arguably even less so. Christie told the Newark Star-Ledger that while personally pro-life, he won’t use his office to “shove that down people’s throats.” He supports New Jersey’s restrictive gun laws.  And like Daniels, he has decided it’s tough enough to face his public-sector unions that he does not need to start an unrelated fight over right-to-work with private-sector unions. Yet the most acid-tongued of all right-wing commentators, Ann Coulter, has championed a Christie candidacy, asserting that if he declines to run, “Romney will be our nominee and we’ll lose.”

The difference is this: talk radio is not much interested in the substance of a politician’s views or the reasons for decisions. Talk radio wants a confrontational style, and unlike the soft-spoken Daniels, the fierce Christie meets the test. The rule seems to be: it’s OK to be a Republican moderate – provided you are belligerent enough about it. [emphasis mine]

Apparently, belligerence is not enough.  This Eli Lehrer Frum Forum post illustrates that Eric Cantor gets rewarded for being a jerk.

I’m not the first to make this comment, but the current debt limit debate shows what the Tea Party movement (which I once basically supported) really values: being a jerk. Speaker Boehner has a close-to-perfect voting record on conservative issues, is not terribly warm in person (heck, Newt comes across better) and has proposed a good, tough spending cut plan. But he has also demonstrated a modicum of willingness to work with the president and appears to want to bring the debt ceiling crisis to a close.

Eric Cantor—who may well become speaker before the end of the year—does not disagree with Boehner on any major issue including the debt plan but, unlike Boehner, Cantor is basically a jerk who is willing to work against his own Speaker, the President, the financial interests that have traditionally supported his party and, indeed, just about everyone else so long as it keeps him in the media. I’m disgusted.

Cantor apparently is proud of jerk bona fides or stubborn.  From this Talking Points Memo post,

Will S&P's controversial decision to downgrade the country's bond rating -- and its explicit citation of GOP intransigence on tax revenue -- be enough to break the Republicans' broad opposition to tax increases in future deficit reduction legislation?

Not if House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) can help it.

In a Monday memo to the House GOP caucus, he candidly acknowledged that S&P faulted the party's unyielding stance on tax revenues for the downgrade. But he encourages members not to erase this bright line.

"Over the next several months, there will be tremendous pressure on Congress to prove that S&P's analysis of the inability of the political parties to bridge our differences is wrong," Cantor wrote. " In short, there will be pressure to compromise on tax increases. We will be told that there is no other way forward. I respectfully disagree.... I firmly believe we can find bipartisan agreement on savings from mandatory programs that can be agreed to without tax increases. I believe this is what we must demand from the Joint Committee as it begins its work."

In other words, House Republicans should unite against a plan that isn't dominated by Medicare cuts and contains no tax increases. There are 240 House Republicans, and during the debt limit fight, they followed Cantor's lead on this score.

Finally, there's this remarkable big lie that otherizes an entire political movement from Tea Party Nation CEO Judson Phillips.

"I will tell you ladies and gentlemen, I detest and despise everything the left stands for. How anybody can endorse and embrace an ideology that has killed a billion people in the last century is beyond me," (HT Andrew Sullivan)

Combine income disparity, belligerence, hubristic intransigence, and dangerous hyperbole, and one has a recipe for disaster.  I'm not predicting riots, but it seems as if the seeds of violent social unrest are being sown.

Quotation Of The Day: Debt Ceiling Debacle Edition

I can remember David Frum interviews frustrating and angering me when he served as spokesperson for the Bush administration.  Lately, he has seemingly become a political apostate that I frequently agree with.

From this CNN.com opinion column listing seven theses for Republicans:

6) Passion does not substitute for judgment.

Republicans and conservatives have worked themselves into a frenzy of rage and contempt for President Barack Obama. House Speaker John Boehner's post-deal PowerPoint for Republican House members was actually labeled "Two Step Approach to Hold President Obama Accountable" (PDF) -- as if the supreme goal of policy in this time of economic hardship were to fix the blame for all problems on the president. This exercise in finger-pointing satisfies the emotions of the Republican base. It does not accurately explain the causes of the crisis or offer plausible remedies.

7) You can't save the system by destroying the system.

In their passion, Republicans convinced themselves that the constitutional republic and the free-enterprise system were threatened as never before. Their response? To threaten to blow up the free-enterprise system and wreck the republic unless they gained their point.

Republicans have become so gripped by pessimism and panic that they feel they have nothing to lose by rushing into a catastrophe now. But there is a lot to lose, and in these past weeks America nearly lost it. Let's hope that as America steps back from the brink, Republicans remember that it's their job to protect the system, not to smash the system in hopes of building something better from the ruins.

That's how student radicals think -- not conservatives.

Let's Kick Some Bad Cliches To The Curb

Or we could throw them under the bus.

The Madville Times and Dakota Today have been doing yeoman work to illustrate the vapid nature of the family budget cliche.

Equally ubiquitous and perhaps more useless, "we've got to stop kicking the can down the road" must disappear from our public discourse.

Instead, let's ask these three questions posed by Megan McArdle.

Which of these things shall we cut?  How shall we build a coalition to pass those cuts, and stick to them in the face of what is bound to be fierce and ugly resistance from those who the programs benefit?  And when we have decided that we can cut no further, what taxes will we raise to pay for what's left?

The focus group tested "kicking the can down the road" has allowed only one side of the political spectrum to dominate the argument.  I won't dignify what's happening by calling it a debate. The cliche doesn't allow for the third question at all.  Most importantly, the cliche dangerously oversimplifies a complex situation.

McArdle even includes this helpful chart to show how money is spent.

 

It should be clear to all but the most extreme partisan on either side that the solutions to the current mess will be painful and that both sides must kill a few of their own "zombie sacred cows."  The results of the current debate that has focused on "kicking the can" will probably result in the middle class being kicked in the groin.

I'm just guessing, but I expect if Americans were allowed to have a civil discussion based on McArdle's chart and questions, the budget cuts would be far different than the ones Americans will see over the next few years

A Messy Conspiracy Theory Thriller

I hate conspiracy theories.  See this reply on a Madville Times comment thread.  My distaste for theories like about Freemasons or the Illuminati notwithstanding,  I think we may be living in the middle of a dangerous conspiracy.

Earlier today, David Frum tweeted.

Why doesn't new Boehner bill just require Obama to resign in favor of a Republican before 2nd debt ceiling increase? Tidier.

Frum is both sardonic and correct.  Too much of this seems to be an effort to defeat Obama by manufacturing a constitutional crisis.  In fact, House Republicans be lining up a second crisis if the debt ceiling debacle fails to produce their desired result because the 14th Amendment will allow Obama to raise the debt ceiling without congressional approval.

In the Washington Monthly, Paul Glastris reports

There is more and more talk, especially among House Democrats, that if no compromise can be reached on the debt ceiling by August 2nd, Obama should assert his power under the 14th Amendment to raise the ceiling himself by executive order. Bill Clinton helped pave the way for this resurgent interest in the “constitutional option” by saying, in an interview with Joe Conason last week, that if he were in Obama’s shoes he’d do so “without hesitation.

Philosopher Ronald Dworkin writes in the New York Review of Books

Some Republicans have declared that if the president does accept the constitutional argument, and acts without their consent, they will try to impeach him. That would take only a majority of the House, which the Republicans control. Impeachment would be a tragedy because, even though the Democratic Senate would certainly refuse to convict, the process would waste a huge amount of the president’s time at a crucial and difficult moment of our history. But surely even the Tea Party representatives can understand that they would make fools of themselves by declaring that a president is guilty of “a high crime or misdemeanor” whenever he interprets the Constitution in a way they believe wrong, particularly when a substantial number of the nation’s lawyers agree with him.

I'm less sanguine than Dworkin about what the Tea Party will "understand."  In short, I expect either default or impeachment.  The biggest conspiracy may be that Tea Partiers are secretly enjoying the chaos they are creating. 

Literature And Politics Mix: Edmund Ross and Everyman

I suppose the current House of Representative membership would consider Profiles in Courage a leftist tract because it lists John F. Kennedy as the author.  In the current political climate, everyone might be better served if Theodore Sorensen, the man most responsible for the book, had his name on the cover.

The profile I remember most is the one about Edmund G. Ross.  Ross famously cast the vote that allowed President Andrew Johnson to remain in office.  Ross know the ramifications of his vote.

Later in life he wrote of the vote, “I almost literally looked down into my open grave.  Friendships, position, fortune, everything that makes life desirable to an ambitious man were about to be swept away by the breath of my mouth, perhaps forever.  It is not strange that my answer was carried waveringly over the air and failed to reach the limits of the audience, or that repetition was called for by distant Senators on the opposite side of the Chamber."

He immediately faced vitriolic attacks.  I do have to admire the style that American writing has lost.

After the vote, Kansas Supreme Court Justice L.D. Bailey sent a telegram to Ross, "the rope with which Judas Iscariot hanged himself is lost, but Jim Lane’s pistol is at your service."  A Kansas newspaper editorial read, “On Saturday last Edmund G. Ross, United States Senator from Kansas, sold himself, and betrayed his constituents; stultified his own record, basely lied to his friends, shamefully violated his solemn pledge and to the utmost of his poor ability signed the death warrant of his country’s liberty.  This act was done deliberately, because the traitor, like Benedict Arnold, loved money better than he did principle, friends, honor, and his country, all combined.  Poor, pitiful, shriveled wretch, with a soul so small that a little pelf would outweigh all things else that dignify or ennoble manhood.”

Ross was far from perfect; in fact, he was something of a political scoundrel. Still he did the right thing for the country in the face of radical opposition.

I don't expect Representative Kristi Noem to emulate Ross and do the right thing to prevent default.  My doubts don't spring from the fact that she was named one of the 50 Most Beautiful people in Washington.  I doubt her ability to do the right thing because of these two explanatory paragraphs.

Last fall’s campaign, in which she defeated Democratic incumbent and 50 Most Beautiful People alumna Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, was rife with images of Noem with gently mussed hair near a bale of hay or leaning against a fence post in the pasture.

Noem quickly became a star in Washington, having been asked by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his advisers to join the GOP leadership team before even getting into town.

 In short, Noem used her looks to get elected and get a leadership position for which she had not proven herself.  That cynical use of one's physical features reminds me of the allegory Everyman.  In the play, Beauty, as a character, tells Everyman, "Here at your will be we all ready. / What will ye that we should do?"  At the conclusion of the play, Beauty leaves Everyman at the sight of the grave. 

Beauty.

What—into this grave! Alas! Woe is me!(795)

Everyman.

Yea, there shall ye consume utterly.

Beauty.

And what,—must I smother here?

Everyman.

Yea, by my faith, and never more appear! In this world we shall live no more at all, But in heaven before the highest lord of all.(800)

Beauty.

I cross out all this! Adieu, by Saint John! I take “my tap in my lap” and am gone.

Everyman.

What, Beauty!—whither go ye ?

Beauty.

Peace! I am deaf, I look not behind me, Not if thou wouldest give me all the gold in thy chest.(805)

[Beauty goes, followed by the others, as they speak in turn.

At the sight of a her political open grave, I expect Noem will follow Beauty's example and leave ordinary citizens to deal with the ramifications of default.

Plains Pops: Debt Ceiling Debacle Sum Up

From Megan McArdle at The Atlantic,

What Wall Street, and the ratings agencies are worried about is not whether we can pay--we can--but whether we will.  A lot of Republicans seem to think that we can secure our AAA rating by showing the agencies--and the markets--that we've made serious cuts.  But if you achieve this end by holding the debt ceiling hostage, what you're really demonstrating is not a tough-minded commitment to entitlement reform, but a political system so broken that it has trouble taking even simple, obvious steps to keep the fiscal engine running.  Our AAA is not at risk because our current fiscal path is unsustainable, but because ratings agencies know what many GOP freshman and party activists apparently do not: that doing the unpopular things required to get the budget in balance is going to require both parties to hold hands and jump together.  Otherwise, whoever forces through their unpopular plan (huge tax increases/massive spending cuts) is going to get trounced at the next elections by an opposition party promising to undo whatever it is the party in charge has just done.

My reading of what the ratings agencies have said is that if the GOP somehow manages to force the Democrats to do everything their way, this will not secure our AAA; it will guarantee that we lose it, because it will show that we are currently unable to make the ugly bipartisan compromises that long-term budget balance requires, and raises the risk that sometime in the not-very-distant future, the other party will retaliate by threatening default.  That's what Wall Street cares about.  Not saving social security. Not lower spending.  They just care about getting enough consensus to keep the checks flowing.

From Annie Lowery in Slate

So we might not have a great term for what we have inaccurately termed the big "default" after Aug. 2. But we know its risk: a recession. And we know how we got here: idiots.

From The New York Times,

Not least, a downgrade would be a blow to American credibility and prestige, made all the worse for coming so shortly after the made-in-America global financial crisis. As a correspondent for the German newspaper Die Welt wrote a few days ago, “Out of the American 21st-century crisis could come the downfall of the dominant power of the 20th century.” That may be overheated. But no one can shrug it off. The markets and the rest of the world are worried, and they should be. We all should be.

From Doyle McManus in The Los Angeles Times,

In the short run, brinkmanship has worked for the House Republicans. Their single-minded stubbornness has forced both the White House and the Democratic-controlled Senate to bend in their direction.

But brinkmanship always carries the risk of actually going over the cliff. If the impasse over the debt ceiling causes economic chaos, Boehner and his party will get much of the blame. Already, polls suggest that this debate has been a "negative sum" game for its protagonists: Obama and both parties in Congress have all fallen in public esteem.

The debate has also changed at least one aspect of the way Washington does business. Raising the debt ceiling was once a routine piece of fiscal management, but now, for many in the GOP, it's become a matter of principle, and an indispensable point of leverage too. No matter what happens between now and Aug. 2, we are likely to find ourselves back at the brink again all too soon.

From USA Today,

Republicans in Congress deserve credit for forcing spending cuts. Democrats initially showed little or no interest. But GOP rigidity has pushed the United States to the brink of a self-inflicted crisis that risks great harm to the nation, and that is unconscionable.

Finally, Clive Crook in The Atlantic

In a column for the FT, I confess that I am having second thoughts about America's long-term prospects. Hitherto an optimist about the country and its future--a militant anti-declinist--I am increasingly dismayed by the chronic incapacity in Washington. It's not just the debt-ceiling impasse, though heaven knows that is bad enough...

There's really nothing to add.

Superman Reinvented Himself; Congresspeople Probably Will Stay The Same

Grant Morrison talks about the motivation for his changes to the Superman mythos.

For the first chapter, I went back to Action Comics #1 — I've always seen it nostalgically. But when I read it again, I thought about how it must have seemed in 1938. Nothing like it had ever been done before, even the narrative and the types of editing were so advanced that they had no idea what was happening. It was like MTV with the fast cut. That completely rewired me as to what Superman was all about. In the original, he's this brash young champion of the oppressed.

He doesn't care about the law, he's all about justice. If the law gets in his way, then he'll break the law quite happily. That really informed what we're doing now. The hero that worked in the Depression was the champion of the poor, and that could work again in our current context. I was bringing him back to those roots, a Superman who can be hurt, who can be messed up, who can bleed. He struggles to do what he does, but at the same time, he's not a figure of the law, he's not a patriot or a dad figure. It's taking him back to the idea of just having superpowers and a t-shirt and jeans.

Between now and August 2, I expect some Congressperson to take to the floor to denounce Morrison for turning Superman into a Marxist.  After all only a Marxist would be "a brash young champion of the oppressed" or a champion of the poor."  In this "current context," Congress doesn't seem to want to do anything else, so they might as well revive the Kefauver comic book hearings.

On second thought, some congresspeople may be too busy.  ThinkProgress reports,

Speaking on conservative radio host Laura Ingraham’s show this morning, Boehner agreed that failing to raise the limit before the deadline would be devastating, and said the “chaos” plan won’t work when asked by Ingraham what’s motivating the recalcitrant Republicans:

BOEHNER: Well, first they want more. And my goodness, I want more too. And secondly, a lot of them believe that if we get past August the second and we have enough chaos, we could force the Senate and the White House to accept a balanced budget amendment. I’m not sure that that — I don’t think that that strategy works. Because I think the closer we get to August the second, frankly, the less leverage we have vis a vis our colleagues in the Senate and the White House.[emphasis in original]

Boehner should remind the members of his caucus that they're neither poor nor oppressed, so Superman won't come save them.  The worst part of this situation is that Superman is fictional, so no one is going to save the rest of us from their stupidity.

Debt Ceiling Questions

I was unable to attend Congresswoman's Noem's Yankton appearance.  This David Bell post at the Frum Forum makes me wish I had been there.

According to the Yankton Press & Dakotan coverage, "Noem . . . fielded audience questions on a number of subjects."  One of her responses was described thusly.

An audience member asked how the federal government could hit its debt limit of $14 trillion yet continue operating until August. Noem explained that U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner used what he termed “extraordinary measures” such as delaying payments to keep the federal government afloat.

The answer may be fine as far as it goes, but  Bell has a whole list of questions that he wants politicians to answer.

*ask the next Senator you see about the Credit Default Swap situation;

*ask the next Congressman you run across at a fund-raiser about the size of the global derivatives market;

*ask the next Washington, D.C. politician you meet how many swaps and derivatives contracts he or she has personally arranged.

I have to admit that I generally use "derivative" as an adjective meaning "lacking originality."  Were I to use the word in a sentence, I would say "Congresswoman Noem's statements were derivative of John Boehner's talking points."  I'm glad, therefore, that Bell concludes with this less technical question.

And, the coup de grace, just ask anyone if they think it is wise to test a theory about marketplace behavior when failure of that test could severely undermine the confidence of markets all over the world about the reliability and judgment of United States policymakers.

I would have loved to hear Noem's answer to that one.