[Peace-discuss] Paul Krugman: Divided We Fail

[C. G. Estabrook]

But to vote for the Democrats is to affirm the policies that they've put (rather 
kept) in place for the past two years, while they've controlled the executive 
and had super majorities in both houses of Congress.  They've done everything 
wrong, and not by accident.

Better to vote against them and demand what we want from the federal government 
- e.g., a jobs program at least proportional to the WPA (better much bigger); 
immediate withdrawal of troops and mercenaries from the Mideast (as much of the 
US Right has demanded for years); taking control of banks and companies "too big 
to fail" and running them in the pubic rather than private interest...

There are policy proposals out there, e.g., the Green New Deal Coalition - 
<http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1488/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2071>.


On 10/30/10 1:59 AM, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
>  Sorry, folks, I tried to copy the article but that also divided and
>  failed. The link should work, but be warned that what Krugman says is
>  very scary... (and he doesn't even mention adding to the Supreme
>  Court or the prospect of overturning Citizens' United...). --Jenifer
>
> 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/opinion/29krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
>
>
>  _ _Divided We Fail_
>
>
>  By PAUL KRUGMAN
> 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
>
>
>
>
Published: October 28, 2010
>
>  Barring a huge upset, Republicans will take control of at least one
>  house of Congress next week. How worried should we be by that
>  prospect?
>
>
>  Not very, say some pundits. After all, the last time Republicans
>  controlled Congress while a Democrat lived in the White House was the
>  period from the beginning of 1995 to the end of 2000. And people
>  remember that era as a good time, a time of rapid job creation and
>  responsible budgets. Can we hope for a similar experience now?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  No, we can’t. This is going to be terrible. In fact, future
>  historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a
>  catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of
>  political chaos and economic weakness.
>
>  Start with the politics.
>
>  In the late-1990s, Republicans and Democrats were able to work
>  together on some issues. President Obama seems to believe that the
>  same thing can happen again today. In a recent interview with
>  National Journal, he sounded a conciliatory note, saying that
>  Democrats need to have an “appropriate sense of humility,” and that
>  he would “spend more time building consensus.” Good luck with that.
>
>  After all, that era of partial cooperation in the 1990s came only
>  after Republicans had tried all-out confrontation, actually shutting
>  down the federal government in an effort to force President Bill
>  Clinton to give in to their demands for big cuts in Medicare.
>
>  Now, the government shutdown ended up hurting Republicans
>  politically, and some observers seem to assume that memories of that
>  experience will deter the G.O.P. from being too confrontational this
>  time around. But the lesson current Republicans seem to have drawn
>  from 1995 isn’t that they were too confrontational, it’s that they
>  weren’t confrontational enough.
>
>  Another recent interview by National Journal, this one with Mitch
>  McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has received a lot of
>  attention thanks to a headline-grabbing quote: “The single most
>  important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a
>  one-term president.”
>
>  If you read the full interview, what Mr. McConnell was saying was
>  that, in 1995, Republicans erred by focusing too much on their policy
>  agenda and not enough on destroying the president: “We suffered from
>  some degree of hubris and acted as if the president was irrelevant
>  and we would roll over him. By the summer of 1995, he was already on
>  the way to being re-elected, and we were hanging on for our lives.”
>  So this time around, he implied, they’ll stay focused on bringing
>  down Mr. Obama.
>
>  True, Mr. McConnell did say that he might be willing to work with Mr.
>  Obama in certain circumstances — namely, if he’s willing to do a
>  “Clintonian back flip,” taking positions that would find more support
>  among Republicans than in his own party. Of course, this would
>  actually hurt Mr. Obama’s chances of re-election — but that’s the
>  point.
>
>  We might add that should any Republicans in Congress find themselves
>  considering the possibility of acting in a statesmanlike, bipartisan
>  manner, they’ll surely reconsider after looking over their shoulder
>  at the Tea Party-types, who will jump on them if they show any signs
>  of being reasonable. The role of the Tea Party is one reason smart
>  observers expect another government shutdown, probably as early as
>  next spring.
>
>  Beyond the politics, the crucial difference between the 1990s and now
>  is the state of the economy.
>
>  When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, the U.S. economy
>  had strong fundamentals. Household debt was much lower than it is
>  today. Business investment was surging, in large part thanks to the
>  new opportunities created by information technology — opportunities
>  that were much broader than the follies of the dot-com bubble.
>
>  In this favorable environment, economic management was mainly a
>  matter of putting the brakes on the boom, so as to keep the economy
>  from overheating and head off potential inflation. And this was a job
>  the Federal Reserve could do on its own by raising interest rates,
>  without any help from Congress.
>
>  Today’s situation is completely different. The economy, weighed down
>  by the debt that households ran up during the Bush-era bubble, is in
>  dire straits; deflation, not inflation, is the clear and present
>  danger. And it’s not at all clear that the Fed has the tools to head
>  off this danger. Right now we very much need active policies on the
>  part of the federal government to get us out of our economic trap.
>
>  But we won’t get those policies if Republicans control the House. In
>  fact, if they get their way, we’ll get the worst of both worlds:
>  They’ll refuse to do anything to boost the economy now, claiming to
>  be worried about the deficit, while simultaneously increasing
>  long-run deficits with irresponsible tax cuts — cuts they have
>  already announced won’t have to be offset with spending cuts.
>
>  So if the elections go as expected next week, here’s my advice: Be
>  afraid. Be very afraid.
>
>
>
>
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