Quote of the day: Republicans (mostly) love the horsies, plus Krugman bats back the loonies and Friedman targets "the center" in the U.S. and Iraq
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"I'm for the horsies, too. I'll vote for it. . . . [But] I can't believe that we are here today using the very limited time left to this Congress to deal with horsemeat."
--Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), on the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, the most important business the Republican House leadership could think of yesterday
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank offered these highlights from the nearly four-hour debate on H.R.503:
"What we are exposing today is a brutal, shadowy, shameful, predatory practice that borders on the perverse."
--Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.)
"These horses are eating our cellulose and costing us ethanol."
--Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa)
"The horses are part of the history of this nation, and the West would never have been settled if it weren't for the horses."
--DWT fave Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.)
"My horse Skychief Poco and I won the 1997 SandHills Rodeo and quarter horse shows team penning championship."
--Rep. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.)
POSTSCRIPT--Where are they hiding "In the Loop"?
Much as I admire Mr. Milbank, I didn't actually set out to read his report on the Republican save-the-horsies brouhaha. I was taken to it by a Post newsletter link to what should have been Al Kamen's "In the Loop" column, presumably back--finally!--from vacation. Further rummaging around washingtonpost.com got us no closer to the quarry than a claim from this past Monday that the column "will be back Friday."
Maybe they use some kind of freaky calendar down there in D.C., or maybe there's some mysterious Beltway Dateline to be crossed, but where I am, it's Friday. Don't these bozos realize that there are people out here who have gone weeks now without having Kamen to rip off?
ALSO TALKING--Krugman talks back to the fans of economic inequality
"Political analysts tried all sorts of explanations for popular discontent with the 'Bush boom'--it's the price of gasoline; no, people are in a bad mood because of Iraq--before finally acknowledging that most Americans think it's a bad economy because for them, it is. The lion's share of the benefits from recent economic growth has gone to a small, wealthy minority, while most Americans were worse off in 2005 than they were in 2000."
--Paul Krugman, from today's NYT column, "Whining Over Discontent"
"We are, finally, having a national discussion about inequality," writes our Paul, "and right-wing commentators are in full panic mode. Statistics, most of them irrelevant or misleading, are flying; straw men are under furious attack. It's all very confusing--deliberately so. . . . "
ALSO TALKING TOO--Tom Friedman sees a "center problem" in Iraq
"We are in trouble in Iraq now not because of what the 'fringes' there, or here, believe, but because of what the center in both places has been willing to tolerate or unwilling to change."
--Thomas L. Friedman, from his column today, "The Central Truth"
"Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism," notes Friedman, "and let's have an unprecedented wartime tax cut and shrink our armed forces. They told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism, but let's send just enough troops to topple Saddam--and never control Iraq's borders, its ammo dumps or its looters. They told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism, but rather than bring Democrats and Republicans together in a national unity war coalition, let's use the war as a wedge issue to embarrass Democrats, frighten voters and win elections. They told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism--which is financed by our own oil purchases--but let's not do one serious thing about ending our oil addiction. . . .
"We are also failing in Iraq because of what the Shiite and Sunni mainstreams--not the fringes--are tolerating. Democracy fails when centrist forces either won't stand up to extremists or try to use their violence for their own purposes. . . ."
[Note: As usual, the full texts of the Krugman and Friedman columns will be posted in a comment.]
posted by KenInNY @ 8:07 AM
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Here is the full text of the Krugman column:
September 8, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Whining Over Discontent
By PAUL KRUGMAN
We are, finally, having a national discussion about inequality, and right-wing commentators are in full panic mode. Statistics, most of them irrelevant or misleading, are flying; straw men are under furious attack. It's all very confusing--deliberately so. So let me offer a few clarifying comments.
First, why are we suddenly talking so much about inequality? Not because a few economists decided to make inequality an issue. It's the public--not progressive pundits--that has been telling pollsters the economy is "only fair" or "poor," even though the overall growth rate is O.K. by historical standards.
Political analysts tried all sorts of explanations for popular discontent with the "Bush boom"--it's the price of gasoline; no, people are in a bad mood because of Iraq--before finally acknowledging that most Americans think it's a bad economy because for them, it is. The lion's share of the benefits from recent economic growth has gone to a small, wealthy minority, while most Americans were worse off in 2005 than they were in 2000.
Some conservatives whine that people didn't complain as much about rising inequality when Bill Clinton was president. But most people were happy with the state of the economy in the late 1990's, even though the rich were getting much richer, because the middle class and the poor were also making substantial progress. Now the rich are getting richer, but most working Americans are losing ground.
Second, notice the amount of time that inequality's apologists spend attacking a claim nobody is making: that there has been a clear long-term decline in middle-class living standards. Yes, real median family income has risen since the late 1970's (with the most convincing gains taking place during the Clinton years). But the rise was very small--small enough that other considerations, like increasing economic insecurity, make it unclear whether families are better or worse off. And that's the point: the United States as a whole has grown a lot richer over the past generation, but the typical American family hasn't.
Third, notice the desperate effort to find some number, any number, to support claims that increasing inequality is just a matter of a rising payoff to education and skill. Conservative commentators tell us about wage gains for one-eyed bearded men with 2.5 years of college, or whatever--and conveniently forget to adjust for inflation. In fact, the data refute any suggestion that education is a guarantee of income gains: once you adjust for inflation, you find that the income of a typical household headed by a college graduate was lower in 2005 than in 2000.
More broadly, right-wing commentators would like you to believe that the economy's winners are a large group, like college graduates or people with agreeable personalities. But the winners' circle is actually very small. Even households at the 95th percentile--that is, households richer than 19 out of 20 Americans--have seen their real income rise less than 1 percent a year since the late 1970's. But the income of the richest 1 percent has roughly doubled, and the income of the top 0.01 percent--people with incomes of more than $5 million in 2004--has risen by a factor of 5.
Finally, while we can have an interesting discussion about questions like the role of unions in wage inequality, or the role of lax regulation in exploding C.E.O. pay, there is no question that the policies of the current majority party--a party that has held a much-needed increase in the minimum wage hostage to large tax cuts for giant estates--have relentlessly favored the interests of a tiny, wealthy minority against everyone else.
According to new estimates by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, the leading experts on long-term trends in inequality, the effective federal tax rate on the richest 0.01 percent has fallen from about 60 percent in 1980 to about 34 percent today. Meanwhile, the U.S. government--unlike any other government in the advanced world--does nothing as more and more working families find themselves unable to obtain health insurance.
The good news is that these concerns are finally breaking through into our political discourse. I'm sure that the usual suspects will come up with further efforts to confuse the issue. I say, bring 'em on: we've got the arguments, and the facts, to win this debate.
• • • • • • • • •
And here is the full text of the Friedman column:
September 8, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Central Truth
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
To listen to the latest Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld speeches, you'd think that our biggest problem in Iraq is a violent minority of "extremists," defying the democratic will of the Iraqi people. And you'd think that our biggest problem at home is a misguided group of Democratic appeasers, who want to cut and run in the great totalitarian struggle of the 21st century.
I wish it were so. Unfortunately, we are in trouble in Iraq now not because of what the "fringes" there, or here, believe, but because of what the center in both places has been willing to tolerate or unwilling to change.
We have a "center problem."
Let me explain: We are stalled in Iraq not because of something some fringe antiwar critics said, or did, but because of how the Bush team, the center of U.S. policy, approached Iraq from the start. While it told the public--correctly, in my view--that building one example of a tolerant, pluralistic, democratizing society in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world was really important in the broader war of ideas against violent radical Islam, the administration acted as though this would be easy and sacrifice-free.
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism, and let's have an unprecedented wartime tax cut and shrink our armed forces. They told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism, but let's send just enough troops to topple Saddam--and never control Iraq's borders, its ammo dumps or its looters. They told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism, but rather than bring Democrats and Republicans together in a national unity war coalition, let's use the war as a wedge issue to embarrass Democrats, frighten voters and win elections. They told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism--which is financed by our own oil purchases--but let's not do one serious thing about ending our oil addiction.
Donald Rumsfeld demonizes war critics as "morally confused." But it is the "moral confusion" at the heart of the Bush policy--a confusion between its important ends and insufficient means--that has hobbled us from the start. It truly, truly baffles me why a president who bet so much of his legacy on this project never gave it his best shot and tolerated so much incompetence. He summoned us to D-Day and gave us the moral equivalent of the invasion of Panama.
But there is not only a problem at the center of U.S. policy. We are also failing in Iraq because of what the Shiite and Sunni mainstreams--not the fringes--are tolerating. Democracy fails when centrist forces either won't stand up to extremists or try to use their violence for their own purposes.
The short history of the Iraq war is that the Sunnis in Iraq, and in the nearby Arab states, refused to accept one man, one vote, because it meant bringing the Shiite majority to power in Iraq for the first time. The Sunni mainstream, not the minority, believes Shiites are lesser Muslims and must never be allowed to rule Sunnis. Early in the Iraq war a prominent Sunni Arab leader said to me privately, "Thomas, these Shiites, they are not real Muslims."
For two years, the Shiite center in Iraq put up with the barbaric Sunni violence directed against its mosques and markets--violence the U.S. couldn't stop because it didn't have enough troops, and because the Sunni center inside and outside Iraq tacitly supported it.
But eventually the Shiites snapped, formed their own death squads, turned to Iran for military aid, and focused more on communal survival than on making Iraq's democracy work. Today we have Shiite and Sunni parties in the cabinet, but with their own private militias--exactly like Lebanon during its civil war. So, where the Iraqi center stops and the violent fringes start is no longer clear.
The dominant struggle in Iraq today, writes the Iranian-American analyst Vali Nasr in his provocative new book, "The Shia Revival," is not "the battle of liberty against oppression, but rather the age-old battle of the two halves of Islam, Shias and Sunnis. This is the conflict that Iraq has rekindled, and this is the conflict that will shape its future."
Just staying the course will not contain it. But before we throw up our hands on Iraq, why not make one more big push to produce a more stable accord between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds over how to share power and oil revenues and demobilize militias. We still don't have such an understanding at the center of Iraqi politics. It may not be possible, but without it, neither is a self-sustaining, unified Iraqi democracy.
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