Jack & Jill Politics

Lack of electrical generating capacity. It takes a number of years to build power plants even ones using natural gas; coal, hydroelectric and nuclear even longer. When you pump money the way Chavez has into the economy much of it goes to labor saving and entertainment enjoying electronic appliances.

zackboston and everyone else looking for things to do w/ children:
mortonarb.org/tree-plant-advice
It is part of the Morton Arboretum project to let children learn how to tell how old the tree is they see everyday

I hear you RobM. I was in some of the ' chi-chi-' western suburbs the other day and was shocked to see how many vacant storefronts I saw in the commercials areas.

Sunday, January 03, 2010

The Peterson Principle

by digby

I see that the press is once again taking Pete Peterson's deficit propaganda and regurgitating it as news. You'll recall that CNN did the same thing last year when they showed the agitprop documentary IOUSA and then hosted a “discussion” about it featuring a panel luminaries who all agree with the premise. Now the Washington Post has joined CNN as a willing outlet for Peterson propaganda disguised as news. Dday has the full story in all its hideous context.

I have been accused more than once this past year of being absurdly obsessed with these deficit scolds and their plans to inhibit progressive government. People have said I was overstating the problem and they insisted that it was wise for the administration to talk about a Grand Bargain in order to somehow disarm the opposition. Indeed, I was told early on that it was actually a cunning strategy to fool the Republicans into backing health care reform as deficit reduction. (That plan didn't work out too well.)

Instead of being co-opted it's gaining traction and the congressional fiscal fetishists are about to stage quite a drama. (They had threatened to do it before Christmas, but relented at the last minute and agreed to put it off until after the New Year.)

The agreement sets up a Jan. 20 vote on a longer term debt limit expansion, which would raise the ceiling to about $13 trillion. It would include votes on several Republican amendments on that date, as well as related Democratic amendments. The amendments will need 60 votes to pass.

The most closely watched may be an amendment offered by Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and ranking member Judd Gregg, R-N.H., creating a special commission to recommend binding steps to reduce entitlement spending.

Whether that particular gambit succeeds this year remains to be seen. Conrad had threatened to filibuster the whole bill unless they got their way last month. But they will not give up. That commission is what Peterson has been explicitly demanding and is the vehicle they see as the most efficient way of dismantling the safety net. (Believe me, Medicaid and the insurance subsidies in the new health care reform will eventually be included.)They will just keep coming.

And now we can see that they have a fully formed propaganda strategy as well with this news service that will salt the nation's newspapers with “objective” stories about how we must end entitlements or risk the destruction of the world as we know it.

That post I wrote a year ago about the IOUSA documentary said this and I think it still applies:

I say this is a shock doctrine documentary because it is nearly impossible for me to believe that it is a coincidence that the deficit hawks have put together this slick “non-partisan” documentary and well financed campaign to cut spending at the moment of what many people believe is America's greatest economic peril since the 1930s. They are, quite obviously, attempting to use the crisis to dismantle the social safety net and avoid doing the real work of reforming the financial system. Shock Doctrine 101.

And when I say slick and non-partisan, it really is. The show also featured a panel with none other than the smarmy village saint Bill Bradley and the Clinton era deficit maven Alice Rivlin. Of course, it also included hedge fund king and deficit fetishist Pete Peterson and his little dog ex-CBO GAO chief David Walker. (Walker seems to be halfway aware that he might not be on the right track, but he's committed to this project.) It couldn't be more in keeping with the post-partisan, non-ideological zeitgeist. Except it's ideological to the core.

One would think this message is so dissonant that no one could possibly find it persuasive. After all, they are worrying about some potential future catastrophic event while we are in middle of a current calamity. But it's actually very clever —you can see by the press release that it sounds like they are talking about the current problem, even though their prescription is exactly the opposite of what is required . Indeed the diabolical effect of this project and its timing is that it's designed to make people believe that government spending is the cause of the current economic crisis.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/peterson…