"Nobody knows it," says Paul Krugman, "but 2014 was the year of 'Yes, we can' "

"[O]ver the past year, a U.S. government subjected to constant bad-mouthing, constantly accused of being ineffectual or worse, has, in fact, managed to accomplish a lot. On multiple fronts, government wasn't the problem; it was the solution. Nobody knows it, but 2014 was the year of 'Yes, we can.' "

-- Paul Krugman, in his NYT column today, "Tidings of Comfort"

by Ken

"All year," says our Paul in this column reflecting on what he says seemed to him an "unusually subdued" Christmas, "Americans have been bombarded with dire news reports portraying a world out of control and a clueless government with no idea what to do." And yet the reality, he says, is that

if you look back at what actually happened over the past year, you see something completely different. Amid all the derision, a number of major government policies worked just fine — and the biggest successes involved the most derided policies. You’ll never hear this on Fox News, but 2014 was a year in which the federal government, in particular, showed that it can do some important things very well if it wants to.

It's what happens when, alas, control of the national discourse is surrendered to the Right-Wing Noise Machine, which cares only about lies the Noisemakers craft to make them, their masters, and/or their stooges richer, more important, or whatever the hell it is that drives these beasts. Goodness knows we've picked at the "why"s frequently enough. Suffice it to say, for now, that the Lying Liars of the Right have what seem to them ample reasons for dealing only in lies, obfuscations, and delusions. And Paul starts with one that came up in Noah's 2014 Year in Review: the suddenly disappeared crisis that was about to consume the Republic -- "a subject", Paul notes, "that has vanished from the headlines so fast it’s hard to remember how pervasive the panic was just a few weeks ago."

EBOLA!

It was, of course, a panic that was friven if not actually created in large part by the Lying Liars to bolster their election prospects [lots o'links onsite] --

[M]any politicians dismissed the efforts of public health officials to deal with the disease using conventional methods. Instead, they insisted, we needed to ban all travel to and from West Africa, imprison anyone who arrived from the wrong place, and close the border with Mexico. No, I have no idea why anyone thought that last item made sense.

As it turned out, however, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, despite some early missteps, knew what they were doing, which shouldn’t be surprising: The Centers have a lot of experience in, well, controlling disease, epidemics in particular. And while the Ebola virus continues to kill many people in parts of Africa, there was no outbreak here.

THE ECONOMY

"There’s no question," says Paul, "that recovery from the 2008 crisis has been painfully slow and should have been much faster. In particular, the economy has been held back by unprecedented cuts in public spending and employment."

But the story you hear all the time portrays economic policy as an unmitigated disaster, with President Obama’s alleged hostility to business holding back investment and job creation. So it comes as something of a shock when you look at the actual record and discover that growth and job creation have been substantially faster during the Obama recovery than they were during the Bush recovery last decade (even ignoring the crisis at the end), and that while housing is still depressed, business investment has been quite strong.

What’s more, recent data suggest that the economy is gathering strength — 5 percent growth in the last quarter! Oh, and not that it matters very much, but there are some people who like to claim that economic success should be judged by the performance of the stock market. And stock prices, which hit a low point in March 2009, accompanied by declarations from prominent Republican economists that Mr. Obama was killing the market economy,have tripled since then. Maybe economic management hasn’t been that bad, after all.

"THE HIDDEN-IN-PLAIN-SIGHT TRIUMPH OF OBAMACARE"

As Obamacare finishes up "its first full year of implementation," Paul says,

It’s a tribute to the effectiveness of the propaganda campaign against health reform — which has played up every glitch, without ever mentioning that the problem has been solved, and invented failures that never happened — that I fairly often encounter people, some of them liberals, who ask me whether the administration will ever be able to get the program to work. Apparently nobody told them that it is working, and very well.

In fact, Year 1 surpassed expectations on every front. Remember claims that more people would lose insurance than gained it? Well, the number of Americans without insurance fell by around 10 million; members of the elite who have never been uninsured have no idea just how much positive difference that makes to people’s lives. Remember claims that reform would break the budget? In reality, premiums were far less than predicted, overall health spending is moderating, and specific cost-control measures are doing very well. And all indications suggest that year two will be marked by further success.

ON THE FOREIGN-POLICY FRONT --

"And there’s more," Paul says. On the foreign-policy front, of course, the president has been battered from all directions by Lying Liars and Braying Imbeciles whose claim to superior wisdom is belied by their near-psychotic obliviousness to the realities of every one of the situations they bray about. In spite of which, Paul notes, " at the end of 2014, the Obama administration’s foreign policy, which tries to contain threats like Vladimir Putin’s Russia or the Islamic State rather than rushing into military confrontation, is looking pretty good.


"THE COMMON THEME HERE,"

says Paul, is what I put at the top of this post. Though you won't hear it from the Lying Liars or their masters, accomplices, and stooges, "on multiple fronts, government wasn't the problem; it was the solution."

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It's when we Americans are put to the test that we show what we're really made of -- say howdy to ebola lawyers

Yes, the tireless David Sipress is still manning The New Yorker's "Daily Cartoon" beat. (You can click on today's offering to enlarge it.)

by Ken

I know I'm taking a certain liberty in tacking David Sipress's New Yorker "Daily Cartoon" for today onto a post that's actually concerned with getting tough on ebola. But really, terrorism, ebola, it's all the same thing, isn't it? It's all those things that present tough Americans with a need and an opportunity to, you know, be tough, to be the loud-mouthing, fist-packing, gut-toting blowhards God put us on this earth to be.

Actually, I suppose ebola is a little different. Unlike all those other depredations like Islamic extremism which sneak into God's Country principally via our shockingly underdefended Mexican border, ebola is headed for us even as we speak via an airport near you.

But we're Americans, and we fight back. And remember, we've got guns. So I say you can keep the image of David Sipress's debate combatants in mind as you read this Washington Post "In the Loop" report (which sure sounds like it was written by our pal Al Kamen) about the counter-attack against invading hordes of ebola, "Got Ebola? Call a doctor. Or maybe a lawyer."

There’s one known active case of Ebola in the United States, and President Obama was quick to remind the nation Tuesday that “only two people so far have contracted Ebola on America soil.”

But fears abound, and one Washington law firm is making itself available for all your Ebola-related legal needs.

Arent Fox is organizing a live panel discussion at its New York office on Nov. 12 to help businesses and employees with pressing concerns about the spread of Ebola — which “places caregivers in a situation where a minor error can be lethal,” Arent Fox warns ominously in a news release.

Lawyers are prepared to address any number of Ebola-related legal quandaries. Not sure what those would be? The firm has prepped a list of questions you might want to ask. Such as: How do you handle an employee who has been quarantined by the government? Can an employee who has been exposed to Ebola be ordered to stay home? Do your insurance policies have an exemption for biological or contagious diseases?

The lawyers, representing the firm’s labor, health-care and insurance practices, can also provide some historical perspective on Ebola, specifically whether “significant events” such as 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy provide any guidance for Ebola response.

Darrell Gay, a partner at Arent Fox, said that the firm contacted some clients to raise some of the above questions, and that those clients realized they had no idea how they would or should handle these worst-case Ebola scenarios.

“The issue is we don’t know how far it’s going to go,” Gay said. “The objective is to have the company thinking about it rather than shooting from the hip.”

Just in case.

FOR STICKLERS WHO PERSIST IN SEEING EBOLA
AND TERRORISM AS SEPARATE DEPREDATIONS

Hey, I hear you. I can try to work with you. Here's what I suggest: Simply reimagine today's Sipress cartoon as a pair of cartoons. Something like this:

"Now we'll turn to the issue of who will be tougher on terrorism."

"Now we'll turn to the issue of who will be tougher on ebola."

This works just fine, doesn't it? Actually, it's better, I think.

And would be better still if we kept looping the drawing substituting other things right-wing crackpots have their racing hearts set on being tough against, including but by no means limited to: godless vote frauders, godless taxers-and-spenders, godless climate-changists, godless baby-killers, godless takers-not-makers, godless Frenchies (and all things French), godless warriors against Christmas, godless aliens (of both the extra-territorial and extra-terrestrial kind), godless "other" people (including all those of of all colors unapproved by God).

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The House Republican Extremists And Ebola

Tea Party extremist Frank Guinta voted to cut the Center for Disease Control budget-- and now he's whining about inadequate response to ebola

On February 19, 2011 the Republican Party decided to cut funding for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in 2011. Although Ron Paul didn't vote that day, only 3 Republicans recognized the folly of what the House Republicans were doing: John Campbell (R-CA), Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Walter Jones (R-NC). Although every single Democrat-- even the most corrupt reactionary Blue Dogs and New Dems-- voted NO, the bill passed 235-189.

When asked what the biggest challenge facing the CDC was 4 months later, Thomas Frieden, who had been director for exactly two years, went right to the point: "CDC’s budget was cut by $740 million between fiscal ’10 and fiscal ’11. That’s an 11 percent reduction in our budget authority and the lowest budget authority CDC has had since fiscal 2003. We’ve had to make very difficult and painful choices that are resulting in program reductions and eliminations, reduction in the number of staff working on projects, reductions in dollars going out to state governments for prevention, for preparedness, for lead poisoning prevention, for asthma management. State and local governments have had to cut about 45,000 public health jobs in the past two years, and the CDC budget cuts may require them to reduce staffing by another 1,000 staff. So this, to me, is the biggest challenge."

Now Republicans like House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (MI-06) and House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (MN-02) are trying to use the fear of an Ebola epidemic against their Democratic opponents. But neither Paul Clements nor Mike Obermueller voted to cut funding for the CDC. Upton and Kline did. Clements and Obermueller both opposed the cuts. Upton used the ebola crisis as an excuse to cancel the one debate with Clements he agreed to, knowing full well that Clements would remind Michigan voters that Upton was key to cutting the CDC budget.

Votes like cutting the CDC budget went into the decision New Hampshire voters made in 2012 to fire crackpot extremist Frank Guinta, who favored the cuts and voted for them. NH-01 voters turned out for Carol Shea-Porter against Guinta, 171,650 to 158,659 in a red-leaning R+1 district. At a debate Tuesday evening, Shea-Porter reminded the audience that Guinta, who was whining about the CDC's response to Ebola, voted to drastically cut their budget: "I feel very comfortable saying the president and the administration should have done more, faster. I think that Frank Guinta should feel comfortable saying yeah, that he screwed up by cutting the funding there."

Republican scare-mongers have been going on TV and falsely telling voters that doctors are wrong on Ebola and that the virus is airborne. Republicans all say they aren't scientists when it comes to Climate Change but when it comes to ebola, they are doing everything they can to stoke fear and panic and the undercut health care professionals and experts. If you'd like to help replace Upton and Kline with Clements and Obermueller, (as well as replacing Ebola-enablers Paul Ryan and Sean Duffy in Wisconsin with Rob Zerban and Kelly Westlund) you can contribute here. And to keep Guinta from getting back into Congress, you can help Carol Shea-Porter here.

Why Don't We Have A Doctor Leading The Charge Against Ebola?

The ugly faces of the Texas Ebola problem

Republicans are still trying to make Ebola a campaign issue.

Yesterday we saw how Republicans have used fear mongering to imply Democratic women candidates are not up to the job of fighting Ebola (or ISIS)-- despite the courageous work women, from nurses to CIA agents, are actually doing on the front lines in both battles. Now Republican lawmakers have been caterwauling that Obama appointed a bureaucrat as Ebola Czar instead of a doctor, seemingly unaware-- or worse, deceitful-- that every single Republican-- including fake moderates like Susan Collins (R-ME), Dean Heller (R-NV) and Mark Kirk (R-IL)-- blocked the president's nomination for Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, a physician from Florida. He was nominated in November, 2013 and, at the insistence of the NRA, Rand Paul put a block on his nomination. (He called assault weapons a health care issue and the gun nuts flipped out.)

Brad Bannon, writing for US News and World Report pointed out the Republican hypocrisy. "Republicans, shamefully criticizing President Barack Obama’s response to the problem, are like someone who drills a hole in the bottom of a ship and then blames the captain for sinking it."

Sadly we don’t have one because the GOP has blocked a vote on the president’s nomination of Dr. Vivek Murthy to the post. Murthy has the ideal background for the job: Currently he is a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, one of the best hospitals in the nation. He is also an instructor at Harvard Medical School. Murphy has a medical degree and an MBA from Yale University and an undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard.

Why would GOP senators have blocked a vote on the nomination of a doctor with medical credentials such as Murthy’s? The answer, of course, is the iron grip the National Rifle Association has on the Republican Party. The NRA objects to Murthy’s nomination because he believes that guns are a public health hazard. And it’s pretty obvious to everybody except the NRA die-hards that guns are a clear and present danger since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports there were 335,609 gun deaths in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010. If that’s not an epidemic, nothing is... [T]he GOP would rather take on the president than Ebola and would rather use the health crisis as a partisan battering ram than work with Obama to deal with this grave health crisis. Republicans are using Ebola as a political football, and it’s time for a bye week.

Texas crackpot senator Ted Cruz-- whose state is the epicenter of the American Ebola crisis-- claims, quite falsely, that Murthy "we don’t have [a surgeon general] because President Obama, instead of nominating a health professional, he nominated someone who is an anti-gun activist. We expect this from someone like Ted Cruz, but why are professed "centrists" like Susan Collins following him (over the cliff)? Republicans in the House don't even seem aware that Republicans are blocking the confirmation of the president's surgeon general nominee. Take Tea Party spokesmodel, Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) who went whining to Fox that the surgeon general should be heading Ebola response. He seems to be missing one vital piece of information-- and Fox isn't about to enlighten him.

Utah GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz on Wednesday questioned President Obama's decision to appoint what he considers a political operative to lead the country's Ebola response, instead of the acting-United States surgeon general.

"I want a doctor telling me how to deal with this," Chaffetz said on Fox News'America's Newsroom."

Obama on Friday named Ron Klain, a former chief of staff to Vice President Biden, to the Ebola post.

"You have somebody who's got a medical history, background, expertise, who understands the bureaucracy," Chaffetz said. "Why aren't we empowering that person? I don't understand why the Obama administration is doing it this way, but they chose somebody who's political and not somebody who is actually a doctor."

Chaffetz said Klain is already "off to a bad start," considering that on Monday he told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he could not testify at an upcoming hearing.

"It seemed like a simple request, but he refused," Chaffetz said.

"What does that say about this position that he's filling? If he doesn't feel comfortable answering very basic questions from Congress, is he really ready to be up on the job when it's happening in real time, right now?"

Chaffetz also put blame on the president for eliminating a bio-defense special assistant position that was present in the previous two administrations.

"It's bigger and broader than just Ebola," he said. "There are other types of things that can be infectious diseases or bio-attacks on the homeland. And yet, President Obama got rid of that position."

Yep, Republicans want to fight Obama-- and women-- not Ebola... and not any other legitimate threats to the well-being of America or Americans. It's in their obstructionist, selfish DNA. That's why they're Republicans.