Why did the Republicans think President Obama would cave in they precipitated an economic crisis?

Part of being a partisan ideologue--a key part--is gut-level contempt of your opponents. You're strong, they're weak. At best they're crafty. But they lack your own moral fiber, your warrior spirit, your nobility. They're all hat, no cattle.

This constantly leads partisans to underestimate the opposition. It's why the Japanese High Command decided to attack us at Pearl Harbor.

Partisans tend to be heedless of consequence. Their own inner song fires them up. They're driven by belief, not estimation.

And they see pragmatism and a willingness to compromise as lack of principle. They cannot grasp the concept of someone being willing to compromise because of their principles.

So they figure Obama is spineless and will always cave. It never occurred to them that he might compromise for the sake of the nation--and, later, under different circumstances, refuse to compromise--also for the sake of the nation. You've seen how they caricaturize Libruls as unpatriotic, selfish. lazy. Someone like this would indeed knuckle under in the face of Republican masculine aggression.

Especially considering the extraordinary level of harm the Republicans will do to the nation if the President doesn't cave and they carry through on their threat to cause a national credit default.

There are plenty of Republicans who aren't partisan ideologues. And there are certainly Democrats who are partisan ideologues. The difference is that the Democratic Party's partisan ideologues aren't in charge of their party. No Drama Obama is as cool under fire as any President we've had. Leftist ideologues think he's a closet Republican in fact--something no right wing ideologue has any idea of, since they get all their information from ideological media.

On the other hand, while the last Republican candidate seemed cool and collected--his ideological character showed in the fact that he was so certain of victory--despite every major poll saying otherwise--on election night he didn't even have a concession speech prepared because he was so certain of victory. That's the blindness of the ideologue.

And who's in charge of the Republican Party now? Seems like Ted Cruz, with John Boehner trying to stay ahead of him and not get Primaried. Boehner is not a radical Republican, but he is deeply committed to keeping his job, so all his ranting and calumnies serve to show how the crazies are running the asylum on the right hand side of the aisle, such that even the non-crazies have to act crazy just to hold onto their gigs.

This is what happens when you only listen to people who already agree with you and then attack someone who appears to have read Lao Tzu....

Once more, the Debt Ceiling...with feeling

The Republican pitch sounds plausible--they won't vote for raising the debt ceiling unless the Democrats get serious about spending reduction, because the deficit is the single most important issue before America today.

But the more you unpack their pitch, the less plausible it becomes. And the real reason becomes more visible: the Republicans' attempt to achieve minority rule over America.

Start at the end. Not only is the deficit not our most pressing issue (not that it isn't pressing), but the behavior of the Republican Party has demonstrated a complete disregard for the deficit over the past 13 years.

You can't be sure of what a party's spending priorities are when it isn't in power. Nowadays the GOP acts as if a different party was in power during the Bush II era of misrule. As if they collectively had a conversion "on the road to Damascus" the instant President Obama took the oath of office in 2008. But it's the same people. Even the so-called Tea Party Republicans aren't new to politics. Nearly all Tea Party activists are long-time Republican activists who are both social and fiscal conservatives, but who conceal their social activism until they gain office, and then go to town on their pet social issues, mostly oriented towards retrofitting women to the 1950 standards Tea Party types fondly recollect.

So--why talk about deficits if you don't mean it? To conceal the real goal, which is to cripple the federal government.

Why want to cripple the federal government? To prevent them from being able to effectively regulate the rich and powerful, who almost invariably have as their life goals becoming even more rich and more powerful. Only government stands between the solitary individual citizen and the rich and powerful, especially since the American union movement has been largely destroyed outside the public sector (and that's well on the way down the tubes--in part due to public sector employee avarice, to be honest).

The other reason to trumpet the deficit deceitfully is Southern white revanchism. Many white Southerners (and their rural soulmates in other states) are still fighting the Civil War. Look at their near-psychotic hatred of President Obama for a hint about this. Leftists hated Bush, of course, given his unusual mixture of towering ambition coupled with mediocre abilities--but they never claimed he wasn't an American citizen. They never claimed he wasn't a Christian. They never claimed he hated America. They never compared him to a monkey. And, of course, Bush was by historians' estimates the 6th worst president in American history, while Obama was rated as 15th best. Meaning that leftists' dislike of Bush was also more justifiable.

One more sign of the deceitfulness of the GOP's talk about the deficit being the most important thing is their rejection of ending the Bush tax cuts across the board--which would be best for reducing the deficit in immediate terms. And their rejection of any cuts to military spending. And their unwillingness to state just which so-called entitlements they'd cut, beyond general platitudes. It all makes their talk about the deficit a hollow trojan horse.

And the Libertarian pick for president is....Barack Obama. Seriously.

That's right. Good Libertarians should vote for Barack Obama this November.

Get your jaw off the floor and I'll explain why.

Libertarians favor personal freedom & limited government, right?

Well--the best way to not get those two items is to let either major party gain control of all three branches of government. Because both parties agree on one thing at least: "to the victor belong the spoils." And by "victor" I don't mean you if your side wins. I mean your party's patrons--the individuals and groups whose political donations make it possible for your party's politicians to win.

This is why independents--including Libertarians--frequently vote for the governor or president of the other party from the one controlling the legislature--especially if the party controlling the legislature also controls the judiciary.

Both major parties have demonstrated that they cannot govern themselves--and that they are far more beholden to the individuals and special interests who are their patrons rather than their rank and file voters.

So a good Libertarian realizes that neither party runs by Libertarian principles. The Republican Party talks a more Libertarian game than the Democratic Party does, but it doesn't walk the walk. The GOP from 2000 through 2008, eight long years during which it enjoyed effective control of all three branches of government, increased government size enormously and the deficit enormously. That wasn't George Bush II's fault. In America the Chief Executive can't pass laws, though he can veto them. It was the Republican leadership's fault, most of which is still in place, since both parties have jiggered the laws to greatly favor the incumbents.

George Romney is closer to a Libertarian than Barack Obama. So what? Obama's domestic policies don't matter if Congress is GOP-controlled, and Romney's policies don't matter much either--just his right hand, needed to sign bills sent him. Does anyone doubt that he'll sign anything the GOP Congress sends him--as Bush II did for nearly his entire time in office?

If you think a Romney victory wouldn't lead to a massive expansion in government and a reduction in personal freedoms, you're dreaming.

I'm not making a prediction. I'm just pointing to what the Republican Party did from 2000 through 2010 federally and what it's done in the states it gained full control over in 2010. First order of business in the states, after running on a jobs, jobs, jobs theme? Pass anti-abortion laws and fire state employees.

Federally, Congressman Ryan alone has introduced dozens of anti-abortion bills to Congress and has consistently endorsed banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest--reflected in the fact that the Republican Party's official platform--that you can read yourself--says the same thing: banning all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest. Congressman Akins' mistake was in saying to the general public what the GOP actually believes but only wants its fervent evangelical base to hear.

Fiscally, the Ryan-Romney budget inflates the deficit enormously. Neither Ryan nor Romney are willing to specify exactly which loopholes they'd cut, even after persistent questioning by reporters. Given past actions by the GOP, you have no reason to believe they won't say which because they won't cut any loopholes that benefit any Republicans. And that's pretty much all of them--all that might alter the deficit at least.

No responsible, nonpartisan economist says we can close the deficit without raising taxes on the rich and the middle class as well as reducing government expenditures. It is Libertarian to pay as you go. Not to tax and spend. Not to borrow and spend. Congress won't spend less unless Obama's there to veto Congress's borrow and spend mania. The Tea Party congressmen promise they'll fix this. They won't. That's already happened with the Ryan budget, enthusiastically endorsed by the Tea Party Congressmen.

Voting for Obama is the less of two evils in November for Libertarians.

Here's FactCheck.org's current article on how Romney can't keep his tax promises.

When did the deficit become America's biggest problem?

This can be pinpointed: the deficit became America's biggest problem on the afternoon of January 20, 2009.

Before the moment--in the eyes of the Republican Party, its think tanks, its pundits, its talk show hosts, and everyone who voted for George Bush II in 2004--the deficit was no big woop. Remember what the #2 ranking Republican official said in the years when two wars and the biggest Valentine-made-o-money gift to the Richest Americans in a century was made?

But on January 20, 2009, a Democratic President was sworn in (or on the next day if you want to be a stickler about it)--and was handed the multi-trillion-dollar tab for the previous eight years. Then and only then did the deficit miraculously become a problem.

This isn't just ancient history, though the Republican Ministry of Propaganda would make it so. It means that on January 20, 2013, when/if President Romney is sworn in, the deficit won't cease to matter--it will remain a huge issue when it comes to taking from the poor--but it will cease to matter when it comes to giving to the rich.

None of this says anything one way or another about what sorts of stewards of the economy a Democratic House+Senate+Executive would be be.

But that's not in the offing. Our November choice will be between a Republican-controlled Congress and Judiciary in either case plus a Democratic President or a Republican president.

And the Republican contender has already promised a deficit-packed future.

He says the opposite, of course. Republican contenders always do, don't they? But he endorses the Ryan Budget without reservations. Look at any reputable economist's analysis of that budget--not the ones done by the Party's hirelings. Cuts to the social safety net alone won't start to close the gap. And even more tax cuts for the richest will increase it in fact. Both parties must sacrifice things that party holds dear, and neither party has proven able to fact this truth when they were in power across the board.

Presidents can't make laws. But they can veto them. An Obama second term would be a term of the veto pen, and given the Republican Party's fiscal profligacy, and given Romney's promise to be Congress's poodle, only an Obama second term gives us a prayer of reducing the deficit. 

The debt ceiling gives a blank check to the ever-growing Federal government!

Wrong. The debt ceiling is for our debts we've already incurred. That's why it's called the debt ceiling. At this instant our government's debts exceed revenues and fungible resources--as was also true, spectacularly, at the instant President Obama took office in 2008. This would remain true even if our federal government stopped spending anything it wasn't legally required to spend right now.

If you as an individual welch on your debts, you lose whatever assets your debtors can lay their hands on and your credit rating tanks. Then when you want to borrow money later on, you're going to pay the rates people with bad credit ratings pay--if you can borrow at all.

When a nation welches on its debts it can hang onto its assets unless it still has to borrow. But when and if it does, Whoa Nellie. And nations that welch on their debts always have to borrow. And the new higher rates ripple through the economy, affecting all but the very rich.

The time to question the need for a higher debt limit was when the deb were being incurred--when we went to war in two countries and gave the richest of the rich a sweet tax break, and put it all on the national credit card, passing the bill on to the next President, along with the reckless fiscal policies that the nation had to bail out when that bubble popped.

And the Republican Congress did vote to raise the debt limit--seven times during the Bush era. It appears that deficits don't count unless a Democrat is in the White House. Then suddenly it becomes the biggest crisis in American history. And jobs? Turns out that's not important at all. Which is logical. All the members of congress have jobs themselves, after all.

It's time to spend, spend, spend

No, I'm not kidding. All across America our infrastructure is crumbling. It absolutely will be repaired--we're not about to let our interstate highway system and bridges and dams and levees and sewer pipes and plants and water pipes and power lines go away. And deferred maintenance is usually tripled maintenance--meaning that its costs vastly less to fix things before they're totally broke.

My alcoholic grandmother is a perfect example of the Republican Congress. She bought a new Chevrolet in 1956 and never added oil or got it changed. And back then engines leaked oil--you always had some drip on the garage floor.

Eventually--after about 16,000 miles as I recall--the oil level dropped to the point that the engine seized.

Now compare the cost of a new engine vs. a couple of oil changes and a few quarts in between. Not to mention the experience of driving the car at the moment the engine seizes.

That's what's going on with our infrastructure. Remember reading about that bridge collapsing in the Midwest and killing a bunch of people? That was the poster child for the cost of deferred maintenance.

And it doesn't have to be quite that dramatic. A few years ago I hit a huge pothole while driving our camper van on a local freeway. The awning above the sliding door popped open and deployed at 65mph, costing us time and money that will never be counted as part of the cost of not repairing that pothole.

Now multiple my own little example by millions, and add that to official estimates of the multiplying factors of the costs of deferred maintanance.

Right now we are firing the people needed to do all this maintenance locally, regionally, and nationally, in the name of deficit reduction. This is exactly the same as a company balancing its books by refusing to pay its bills. It is exactly the same as calling Social Security an entitlement when most of it is our money, withdrawn from our paychecks throughout our working lives, then "borrowed" by Congress to spend on other things--and now telling us they don't want to pay back the money they "borrowed" from us--and that it's really not our money anyway--that we're living too long and there aren't enough young workers to support retirees.

Well, not as long as the hedge fund manager who got $4.7B for his labors last year paid 15% on his income, like all his fellow hedge fund managers and most of Wall Street's Masters of the Universe. What tax rate did you pay on your income?

I can't see how a party can call itself "conservative" and at the same time advocate welching on debts and stepping over dollars to pick up nickels via deferred maintenance. That's not how you economize. Our infrastructure is not a luxury. It's the core of what a government provides its people--and it's going to be paid, either now for X dollars or a few years for now for 3X or even 5X dollars (plus lives lost here and there).

The time for government to economize and lay off staff is when the economy is booming and the private sector can absorb laid-off government workers. The time for government to spend--yes, deficit spend--is when the private sector isn't hiring (or in the current case, hiring plenty of workers in China and Sri Lanka etc. but not in America) and the workers are needed to do maintenance projects that have to be done anyway.

Unless the Republican Party's vision of our future is for us to once more become hunters and gatherers in the forest in bands of warring tribes of a few dozen each. Is that what they really mean when they champion a "traditional lifestyle" ?

It's not about the national debt

"The discussion in Washington seems to be entirely about the deficit.
"That's not the big problem in this country. The big problem is jobs and economic growth.
"And it's all this discussion about what government programs are we going to cut?
"The Republicans are completely controlling the debate. And the President isn't even saying 'What really matters is jobs and economic growth, not deciding how many FBI agents you're going to fire.'" 

--Jeffrey Toobin, CNN analyst, 6/30/11

How to balance the budget using conservative principles

Here's a solution no one is proposing: adopt the Republican tax code that was in use during the Eisenhower presidency--a time of dynamic industrial growth, infrastructure building and social equity under one of the best Republican presidents ever. And he got the country a balanced budget--balanced in large part by relatively high tax levels--especially on the very rich, with a top rate of 91%.

So let's all praise the virtues of conservatism and the Republican Party, and respecting tradition and proven practices: reinstate the Eisenhower tax code.

I'd love to hear what Boehner, Palin, Mitchell and Limbaugh--the heads of today's \"Republican\" party--would have to say in a debate with a real Republican like General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, unlike those clowns, was a real conservative in the actual, traditional sense of the term.

The deficit or unemployment--tackle which first?

The Republican Party leadership and nearly all of its members in Congress don't care about the deficit. They're only using "The Deficit" as a tool to defeat Democrats. They'll abandon it as soon as they regain power.

I'm not reading minds. Just relying on what they did when they were in power.

The Republicans in Congress--especially their leadership--have no interest in deficit reduction, except as a propaganda tool until the instant they regain power.

I don't have to be a mind reader to say this. I just have to remember what these amoral moralizers actually did--as opposed to what they said--when they controlled all three branches of government for six years.

And when they regain power, they've given us no reason to believe they won't take up where they left off: with as much government expansion as Democrats like (only in different areas), enormous tax cuts for the rich, inconsequential tax cuts for the middle class (offset by all the hidden forms of taxation Republicans have become adept at levying), and major belt-tightening for the poor--all adding up to a big ramp-up of the deficit.

They're done this pretty much every time they've gotten into power, justifying it by claiming that if we give the rich what they need to become the ultra-rich, these Masters of the Universe will deign to toss us a few crumbs.

Only they don't. In the recovery from the 2000 downturn, middle class real wages didn't go up--the ultra-rich appropriated pretty much all the increase brought about by the recovery. Turns out feeding greed doesn't satiate it--it just ramps up to take the present largesse for granted as it lusts for more...always more.

So now they're lying. Unless you believe they've had a spiritual awakening as cataclysmic as St. Paul had on the road to Damascus.

None of this means the Democrats in Congress and the White House are angels with halos. It just means that putting the Republicans back in power--even if you believe that deficits are the problem, rather than unemployment--won't get you what you want.

The problem is that cutting spending now is what our intuition tells us to do, and what Professor Krugman advocates is counterintuitive.

But we can't depend on our intuition any more than we can depend on Republican leaders (as opposed to Republican rank and file, of whom I know many, including my spouse, who I would and do trust with my life).

See, our intuition evolved to keep us safe and happy as nomadic hunters and gatherers in the highlands of East Africa 100,000 years ago. It hasn't changed since we started adapting our environment to us instead of adapting to our environment.

Go back to living as a nomadic hunter/gatherer and you'll be able to rely on your intuition. Otherwise you have to take it with a grain of salt.

And here we have to remember that no one is saying "deficits don't matter." You remember who actually said that, right? President Obama is just saying we should be spending now--in specific ways--to get us out of this slump. He never said we could or should do that indefinitely.

The Achilles Heel of the Democrats is that--even accepting liberal economists Paul Krugman's position (tackle unemployment now, then the deficit when the economy has recovered), which I generally do--government employees are generally overpaid relative to their employers in the private sector--us. And that includes unfunded pension time bombs that are starting to bankrupt cities, counties and state governments.

Democrats would do a lot to gain credibility for their position if they tackled this issue aggressively.

Oh, and to those who blame this downturn on Obama--it takes a lot less time to rob a bank than to build such an institution. And the Republicans had six years to loot the treasury, which they did with a vengeance. It will take vastly longer than that to rebuild all the regulatory mechanisms they destroyed as they looted and pillaged--like bank robbers blowing up the alarm system and the safe locks.

They may well persuade enough people that Obama did this to us instead of the Republican leadership. After all, money talks, and the Republicans' paymasters have literally billions to spend on black-is-white up-is-down propaganda.

Limitless campaign spending puts the bullhorns in the billionaires' hands. Obama was able to overcome this in 2008 through adroit campaigning, but a repeat performance will be dicey at best.