That the rest of the world is able to do something that the U.S. can’t seems an odd principle for the entrepreneurship advocates to espouse. While holding that regulation destroys innovation, our wingers claim that we are going to give up our advantages by providing health care to everyone. Regulation of our health care system is the danger they predict; freedom to be sick doesn’t seem like much of an argument, but it’s the best they’ve got.

Dr. Krugman has already pointed out that this country spent its way into the present crisis with tax breaks for business that did not produce the employment they were claimed to. Today, he provides some specifics of the health plan proposed for the U.S. public.

Let me start by pointing out something serious health economists have known all along: on general principles, universal health insurance should be eminently affordable.

After all, every other advanced country offers universal coverage, while spending much less on health care than we do. For example, the French health care system covers everyone, offers excellent care and costs barely more than half as much per person as our system.

And even if we didn’t have this international evidence to reassure us, a look at the U.S. numbers makes it clear that insuring the uninsured shouldn’t cost all that much, for two reasons.

First, the uninsured are disproportionately young adults, whose medical costs tend to be relatively low. The big spending is mainly on the elderly, who are already covered by Medicare.

Second, even now the uninsured receive a considerable (though inadequate) amount of “uncompensated” care, whose costs are passed on to the rest of the population. So the net cost of giving the uninsured explicit coverage is substantially less than it might seem.

Putting these observations together, what sounds at first like a daunting prospect — extending coverage to most or all of the 45 million people in America without health insurance — should, in the end, add only a few percent to our overall national health bill. And that’s exactly what the budget office found when scoring the HELP proposal.

The wingers appear to have nothing but opposition to public interest as a basis for existence. It’s not surprising that their arguments are creative,but lack substance, as they are not the true story.

The right wing is against the left, and that is its attraction. Unreasoning obstruction isn’t a tactic, it’s the character of the movement. Sadly, there is still a faction of the voting public that identifies with mindless opposition to anything progressive and in the public interest.

Hopefully, the wingnuts can be cured by rational behavior over time.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

Most of you immediately recognized the abbreviation for Too Much Information, TMI, so welcome aboard. The episodes of normally functional, if not impressive, public figures putting up incredibly dumb communications on Twitter, Facebook and the like are pretty funny as those publicity users try to adjust to a whole new world.

The communication that made it possible for everyday citizens of Iran to maintain some hold on their government has given us all sorts of possibilities for direct lines among us people. Where media has dominated for much of our lives, at least attempting to portray itself as the real source for knowledge, that imaginary role has failed increasingly as the newspapers sell themselves to the highest bidder.

Suddenly the office seekers are finding out they can’t establish a few trusted reporters to deliver their message to, and expect us to suck it in. Now they need to communicate. The results are enchanting. Who would have thunk it was important to him, not what he concluded about the peccadilloes of his party, but what Newt had for dinner. Twittering about hearing voices is a new way to claim sacred communication status among those who are so inclined.

A new standard for chatter is desperately being sought by the ‘personalities’ who thought they had their images covered. How diverting for staff, to try making a new sort of person up, some one sympathetic to keen observers and casual browsers at the same time. However, the field of online communications has real dangers for security personnel.

For the secret services in England, the communications of its operatives are suddenly making problematic their official security measures. His wife’s online persona suddenly is a problem for having a casual social presence with friends that wasn’t protected from sharing at large.

Personal details about the life of the next head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, have been removed from social networking site Facebook amid security concerns.

The Mail on Sunday said his wife had put details about their children and the location of their flat on the site.

The details were removed after the paper contacted the Foreign Office.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband denied claims security had been compromised, saying: “You know he wears a Speedo swimsuit. That’s not a state secret.”
(snip)
Former Prime Minister Sir John Major said the issue had been “overblown”.

He said: “I know John Sawers. He’s a very able man, he’s a very able appointment. It’s pretty unfortunate that this has happened, I think that is true.

“But I think when you’re faced with leaving Iraq possibly too early, huge problems in Afghanistan, the mess in Pakistan, the depth of the recession, I think this falls a long way below those.”

Sir John Sawers is due to replace Sir John Scarlett as head of the overseas Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).

While most of the people I chat with are pretty well known to me, and their secrets are just that, all of us know that trolls like to wriggle in and try to find tidbits to make a hullabaloo about. One likes to accuse members of our circle of being twisted in some way, or having a seamy side that they alone have recognized.

What sort of motivation the nuisances operate from is a sad sidelight to the substantial support most of us find in online communications. What would be the national threat to anyone who carries on normal communications that may reveal security concerns is yet another wrinkle in the possibilities of our chatter. Your swimwear look isn’t going to tear down anyone’s marriage, most probably, but your address may make you vulnerable.

Online most of us have a rich and satisfactory circle of friends, associates, and like-minded social contacts. It’s probably not a possibility for all of us, though, and the public exposure has to be obvious from the start.

In a public position, especially one that deals with security issues, there will have to be limits of exposure. Sadly, it appears that online life will have to stay virtual for anyone in a sensitive position.

In the groupings where I have conversations, we tend to let each other know when one of us is taking chances with some one who’s been untrustworthy in the past.
All of us have learned to wait and let any new member establish a persona that we recognize for basic consideration and reputable practices. Hopefully, this kind of protective attitude can be adopted by those in the field of security to those it needs to protect.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

Reading a troll comment at another blog about the libruls being parasitical on the country really brought me up sharp. With almost a decade of wingnuts sucking the blood of the working people of this country, it takes amazing incomprehension of reality to arrive at the concept that the progressives are taking something away from the society.

By reducing taxes on the business segment, jobs were supposed to be produced, and the economy made more prosperous. Jobs going overseas in manufacturing was supposed to be replaced by high-tech jobs, and U.S. workers all rising into a higher pay scale and better conditions. As we know by observation, quite the reverse has been true. Yet no attempt to counteract that effect has been made, and the U.S. worker, and economy, have come to disastrous loss of earning power.

Noam Chomsky gave a lecture on this recently that bears a bit of attention from us all.

It’s always well to keep in mind a astute observation by Adam Smith about policy formation in England. He recognized that what he called the “principal architects” of policy—in his day, the merchants and manufacturers—make sure that their own interests are most peculiarly attended to, however grievous the impact on others, including the people of England, but far more so those who were subjected to what he called the “savage injustice of the Europeans,” and particularly in conquered India, his own prime concern. We can easily think of analogs today. His observation, in fact, is one of the few solid and enduring principles of international and domestic affairs well to keep in mind.
(snip)
Along with the fact that bailing out banks is not uppermost in the minds of the billion people now facing starvation, not forgetting the tens of millions enduring hunger in the richest country in the world, well, also sidelined is an easy way to make a significant dent in the financial and the food crises. It’s suggested by the publication a couple days ago of the authoritative annual report on military spending by SIPRI, the Swedish peace research institute, the scale of military spending is phenomenal, regularly increasing, this last year as well. Now, the US is responsible for almost as much as the rest of the world combined, seven times as much as its nearest rival, China. No need to waste time commenting.

This distribution of concerns reflects another crisis here, kind of a cultural crisis, that is the tendency to focus on short-term parochial games. That’s a core element of our socioeconomic institutions and the ideological support system on which they rest. One example, now prominent, is the array of perverse incentives that are devised for corporate managers to enrich themselves. And, for example, what’s called the “too big too fail” insurance policies that are provided by the unwitting public. And deeper ones. They’re just inherent in market inefficiencies.
(snip)
Well, in substantial measure, the food crisis plaguing much of the South and the financial crisis of the North have common roots, namely the shift towards neoliberalism since the 1970s. That brought to an end the postwar, post-Second World War, Bretton Woods system that was instituted by the United States and Britain right after World War II. It had two architects: John Maynard Keynes of Britain and Harry Dexter White in the United States. And they anticipated that its core principles, which included capital controls and regulated currencies—they anticipated that these principles would lead to relatively balanced economic growth and would also free governments to institute the social democratic programs, welfare state programs, that had enormous public support around the world.

And to a large extent, they were vindicated on both counts. In fact, many economists call the years that followed, until the 1970s, the “Golden Age of Capitalism.” That Golden Age led not only to unprecedented and relatively egalitarian growth, but also the introduction of welfare state measures. Keynes and White were perfectly well aware that free capital movement and speculation inhibit these options. Professional economics literature points out what should be obvious, that the free flow of capital creates what is sometimes called a “virtual senate” of lenders and investors who carry out a moment-by-moment referendum on government policies, and if they find that they’re irrational, meaning they help people instead of profits, then they vote against them, by capital flight, by tax on the country, and so on. So the democratic governments have a dual constituency, their own population and the virtual senate, who typically prevail. And for the poor, that means regular disaster. (Emphasis added.)

That short term profits, at corporations, have been substituted for development of long-term profitability has resulted in executives directing all profit to themselves - rather than profits for the firm, with its many employees and shareholders.

The controls that the past maladministration removed were keeping the economy from tanking, and by removing them the right wing has preyed on us all. The parasitical aim of the right wing is to keep the worker from profiting from the labor that we put out, and take as much away as we can stand. Of course, they’re exceeded the limits and produced a worldwide economic crisis.

It will take a long time to recover and it will take the release of control - or taking away of control from those moneyed interests. Without control of the business community, they destroy themselves. We’ve learned the lesson again.

The wealth of a society cannot be taken away from the members of that society without destroying it.

Celebrate Independence Day.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

The vast wasteland that the U.S. economy has become hasn’t given a lot of room for hope. Positive reports about the decrease in increases of unemployed numbers really just doesn’t excite anyone. Telling statistics, instead, are about increased savings as workers prepare for a bleak future.

Dr. Krugman takes a page from Pres. Obama’s own book, and urges a big boost for the economy before we lose more ground still.

… many members of my profession are playing a distinctly unhelpful role.

It has been a rude shock to see so many economists with good reputations recycling old fallacies — like the claim that any rise in government spending automatically displaces an equal amount of private spending, even when there is mass unemployment — and lending their names to grossly exaggerated claims about the evils of short-run budget deficits. (Right now the risks associated with additional debt are much less than the risks associated with failing to give the economy adequate support.)

Also, as in the 1930s, the opponents of action are peddling scare stories about inflation even as deflation looms.

So getting another round of stimulus will be difficult. But it’s essential.

Obama administration economists understand the stakes. Indeed, just a few weeks ago, Christina Romer, the chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, published an article on the “lessons of 1937” — the year that F.D.R. gave in to the deficit and inflation hawks, with disastrous consequences both for the economy and for his political agenda.

The well-being of the country is at stake. The lesson has been learned before, and denial is not keeping the larder stocked in the nation’s jobless households.

# Average workweek fell to a record low and weekly hours also fell. Aggregate hours fell including in the manufacturing sector. Average hourly earnings rose 2.7% y/y and weekly earnings rose only 0.9% y/y . The diffusion index fell indicating that more number of industries shed jobs. The unemployment duration rose to a record 17.9 weeks. Around 29% of the unemployment workers have been so for six months and over 52% of the unemployment workers have been so for three months. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
(snip)
# In the last two recessions though initial claims peaked just before the end of the recession, then stayed elevated for a long period following the recession - a jobless recovery’. There is a good chance this recovery will be very sluggish too and claims will remain elevated for some time. (Calculated Risk Blog)
# Firms are trying to maintain profit margins by cutting labor costs. Job losses and rise in unemployment rate will continue through 2010 with a slow start in hiring (jobless recovery). Firms will begin by hiring part-time and temporary workers first before hiring full-time workers.

With news like yesterday’s, investors dumped more stocks. Without consumers, the economy is dead in the water.

The individual workers’ vital place in the economy at last is being seen as the mainstay of a consumer economy by the general public as well as by the left. With job loss and salary shrinkage over the previous decade, we lost the impetus for growth. Returning to viability will take a long time, possibly another decade, to build back up.

The lessons may fail to sink in for the obstructionist element, which is a good way to tell which can be trusted with the country’s future. The recent past has provided excellent, painful, object lessons in who not to trust.

Simple, dependable, test; anyone telling you taxes are the problem and the answer, is hyping a fraud, and isn’t guarding your interests.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

The mileage based insurance for autos being proposed in California has some promising aspects. I may be somewhat influenced by having used public transportation on my long commute to Dallas, some years back. It’s a great influence on drivers to keep their commute minimal.

Proponents contend that the plan could create a variety of other benefits. Fewer vehicles probably would be on the road, which could curb traffic congestion as well as curtail global warming through the reduced greenhouse gas emissions spewed out of car tailpipes.

Poizner did not say how much the average motorist could save under such a plan. Similar products, which have been tried on a limited basis in 34 states as well as in Canada, Japan and Europe, have saved policyholders money. Premiums dropped by 13% to 54% for GMAC Insurance policyholders, whose mileage was monitored by parent General Motors Corp.’s OnStar satellite tracking system.

But drivers who have long work commutes or live in remote or rural areas might find it more economical to stick with conventional rates not based on exact miles driven.

No one would be forced to buy a pay-as-you-drive policy and no insurance company would be required to offer such a program, Poizner said. Rather, California’s extremely competitive auto-insurance market should create “the right kind of financial incentives for insurance companies and consumers to begin to take some bold steps to reduce the number of miles driven,” he said.

Major insurance companies, which over the last year have participated in hearings and workshops that developed the proposed regulations, said they were at least conceptually on board with setting rates by the mile.

“The proposal has a lot of merit and is definitely something we might want to explore,” said Brian Dwyer, senior vice president for automobile products at Los Angeles-based Farmers Insurance Group, a unit of Zurich Financial Services Group of Switzerland. (On Friday, Farmers finalized its acquisition of Woodland Hills-based 21st Century Insurance, a leading low-cost carrier.)

Motorists who opt for a pay-as-you-drive policy would have several ways to have their mileage measured under the regulations. Those options include odometer readings taken by insurance companies, auto-repair shops or smog-check stations.

Owners could also agree to install in their vehicles electronic transmitters that automatically report mileage to insurers. Insurers, however, would be prohibited from using such devices to monitor where a customer drives.

An environmental quality for insurance is a very good plan. Recent experience has convinced me that the insurance industry is badly in need of better supervision for a variety of reasons. Contributions to environmental quality would be a good start.

For those of you who’ve been talking with me in comments at eschaton, you already know that I got hit by a truck last week and have had a few revelations about insurance practices. While my car was damaged by a large truck backing up at a low speed, the insurance appraiser declared it a total loss. Today at the auto body shop, I got stares of amazement at that information, an amazement which I certainly understand. The body work is almost minimal, damage to working parts is absent. It’s an appalling thought that if I didn’t have the resort I’ve taken, of buying the car back at salvage rates, the amount the insurance would pay me would never get me into another good car like my Honda Civic.

Since my experience, I found out that several people have had this same experience. When a good car with a few repairs would get high offers in a used car market, my suspicions are aroused about how the appraisal relates to the used car value. While I have no direct knowledge of the industry, I can see that a used car dealer would be buying low and selling high. If I didn’t have the resort of buying back the car from the insurance company, I’d be facing the opposite aspect. From a minimal payment for my car, I’d be shopping at high prices for a comparable one.

The recent public exposure of insurance companies looking for reasons to turn down claims against the policies they sell is indicative of an industry that is not doing its job. My inside look at what their practices are in appraisal doesn’t give me any assurance that there aren’t other problems with insurance in overall operations.

There is little insurance regulation in Texas, and I doubt that the pay-go insurance policy will make it here anytime soon. That would be a good influence on us all, though, and I look forward to its development.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

Are our grandchildren safe now? It seems that a lot of the removal of protections for them is being seen for the threat to our future that it was, and in its turn removed. Today, the forest service has been returned to actual service, instead of used as another environmental hazard.

A federal judge has struck down the Bush administration’s change to a rule designed to protect the northern spotted owl from logging in national forests.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled from Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday that the U.S. Forest Service failed to take a hard look at the environmental impacts of changing the rule to make it easier to cut down forest habitat of species such as the spotted owl and salmon on 193 million acres of national forests.

“I am hopeful that this is the last nail in the coffin to (President George W.) Bush’s assault on our public forests,” said Pete Frost, an attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene, which represented plaintiffs in one of two cases challenging the rule.

At stake was a provision of the National Forest Management Act that required maintaining viable populations of species that indicate the health of an ecosystem, such as the spotted owl. The Bush administration changed the rule last year so it required a framework of protection, rather than maintaining viable populations of wildlife.

The ruling marked the third time federal courts have turned back attempts to change the 1984 version of what is known as the viability rule within the National Forest Management Act.

The judge wrote that an environmental impact statement done by the Forest Service “does not evaluate the environmental impacts of the 2008 rule,” and the agency failed to comply with Endangered Species Act requirements to consult with other federal agencies on whether the rule changes would jeopardize the survival of endangered species.

The world is safe for now from the depredations that were perpetrated over the years that the wingers dominated. The threat continues, though, while destructive claims continue to be heard equally, through the media, with reputable voices.

The Senate now has a sufficient majority of Democrats, which should keep the world safer for awhile. This assumes that the new majority will see through the winger sham of deregulation’s being good for business. As one safety scare after another has disrupted our markets (food poisoning from spinach and peanut butter for instance) it should have become clear enough that deregulation is a threat, not a benefit.

The future of our world is in better hands today. Now, while they have the advantage, the sane members of Congress should put in place solid members of the judiciary and executive branch, continuing protections for the public for as long as possible.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

In the previous maladministration, the constitution was viewed as an annoyance. That made it hard to make a fuss when other presidents in other countries violated their constitutions. In Colombia, President Uribe sought to keep office despite constitutional term limits. While Uribe courted the previous maladministration by participating in its ‘drug war’, it distinguished itself by building up body count figures to court more U.S. funds by murdering civilians and re-labeling them as the enemy. That was overlooked by the then U.S. maladministration in its big rush to get ‘free’ market trade going with Colombia despite the atrocities involved.

How embarrassing, now Uribe is visiting the U.S. under Obama while President Zelaya of Honduras is kicked out for seeking to do the same thing Uribe is seeking to do. While we can’t officially announce that a coup has happened because then we’d have to cut off all aid to Honduras, our government, along with most of the world, is sternly admonishing the army, Congress, courts and presently installed president of Honduras to take him back.

This would make great comedy material, except that it concerns serious concerns of worldwide emergencies. In June, 2008, riots in Honduras and neighboring countries protested hunger, a problem that is on the increase as the world suffers from the greedy manipulations of deregulated financial industry in the U.S.

Concerned humanitarians of the world still look on the security of a country as the well-being of its people. The Guardian features one expression of those humanitarian aims.

We condemn the military coup and kidnapping of the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. On Sunday 28 June, President Manuel Zelaya Rosales was kidnapped, removed from his home by force, rendered incommunicado for several hours and expelled from his country. Soldiers also seized Honduran foreign minister, Patricia Rodas, and the ambassadors of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The military and coup conspirators are trying to suppress popular demonstrations and news by blanket military presence, curfews and intimidation of reporters.

President Zelaya was working to free his country from decades of hunger and poverty. This military coup is an illegal attempt to use armed force to overturn the course of democracy and social progress chosen by the Honduran people at the polls. We urge every government in the world to demand the restoration of the democratically elected president and to pledge not to recognise the illegal government put in power by a military coup.
Colin Burgon MP, Ken Livingstone, Dr Francisco Dominguez Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, Tony Woodley Unite, Gerry Doherty TSSA, Matt Wrack FBU, Brian Caton POA

While the U.S. lost the right to represent itself as an example to follow, in the last maladministration, it has the opportunity now to represent our basic decency and get out of the process of making world affairs purely a business.

The public interest has not lost out to profit motive in much of the world. The U.S. can turn that around now, by cutting out support for tyrants and leaders who violate their constitutions and undercut their people.

The visit of Uribe would make a great opportunity for just that. We overlooked the attempts of Uribe to overthrow the constitution of Colombia, along with his regime’s brutality. We have violated our nation’s principles in seeking good relations with regimes that violate their own people’s rights, and their interests. What a good time to turn that around, by ending our partnership with Uribe and the pretense of a ‘war on drugs’ that has failed there and throughout the world.

President Obama can depart from the very bad example set by his predecessor by giving our support to people rather than to big business interests. This would be a major advance back into civilization from the atrocities of the previous regime.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

Urban legend prevails in the wingnut realm. The Census is a very feared bugaboo, and declarations by head nutcase Bachman that she will not obey our laws and give the information it requires for government logic are providing fodder for the mills of the survivalists.

Seen as an evil plot, like chlorination, the census struggles on trying to represent our actual composition as a country. In Mother Jones, a conversation on the freakish views that keep people hiding from giving their information covers the issue nicely.

MJ: Do you think the Census Bureau has been damaged by partisan activity?

KP: It’s a complicated question because the partisan activity goes back to 1790. [Laughs.] The first presidential veto, by George Washington, was a veto of Alexander Hamilton’s formula for apportioning the House, and the one that Washington preferred was one that Thomas Jefferson produced, and that was one partisan issue. The apportionment formula that Jefferson produced gave an extra seat to Virginia. Everybody knew what that game was. [Laughs.] Look, partisan interest in the census is simply nothing new. Has there been damage over that period? Yes, on and off.

I think the sampling fight, whatever it was, was deeply unfortunate. The actual assertion that the Census Bureau could behave in such a way as to tilt things one way or the other way in the partisan sense, is, on the face of it, a silly charge. It’s the same Census Bureau that’s considered to be incompetent by some people, and then some of the same people are saying that this incompetent agency is so clever and so Machiavellian that it can design a census for partisan reasons. It just doesn’t compute. Now, did [accusations of partisanship] damage the census? Yes, it damaged the idea of sampling. I like to tell the people I interact with who are against sampling, “Next time you want to go to the doctor for a blood test, don’t say, ‘I want you to take out a little bit,’ say, ‘Take out all of it!’” How else will you know? When you wake up in the morning and you want to find out whether it’s raining, you don’t look out every window of your house; you look out one window. There: You sampled. So the idea that we turned the word “sampling” into a dirty word is deeply, deeply damaging, not to the Census Bureau, but the idea of fiscal integrity. Every other number we use to govern society—unemployment numbers, trade statistics, health care, how many people are uninsured—all of those numbers are based on samples.
(snip)
The whole foreclosure crisis is a major crisis because whole hunks of the country are empty when they should be functioning neighborhoods. There are just a host of problems. And then there are the ones we can’t predict. Who knows? Natural disasters, strikes, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen. I know it’s going to be difficult; it’s always difficult to do a serious census, especially with today’s economic, political, and general cultural circumstances. Let me ask you a question. Let’s say there are 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country. What percentage of those people do you think will mail a questionnaire back in?

MJ: Ten?

KP: Whatever it is, it’s a low number.

The numbers the government uses to allocate funds are going to be skewed in favor of the stable households, rather than those needing funds more desperately. This is not a help.

The wingnuts are making a hurdle against fair distribution. No surprise there. Increasingly, those who have already suffered from their empowered ideology are scheduled to be hit yet again.

Hopefully there will be responsible reporting on the facts, but more likely, the loudest voices with the most spectacular nonsense will get the attention. From covering the freak show, our pundits increasingly have become part of it. The country is learning the hard way that it is ill served by media babble.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

After the many times I’ve featured the ignorance of WaPo editorials, may I point out that it’s just useless to point out that they’re clueless, then continue giving them hits. As a parting gesture to any pretense of dignity, WaPo has fired their redeeming feature, Dan Froomkin. The voice of reason lies bleeding and dead there, and I will not be going there to give them proof of readership anymore.

Many of the rational voices I visit are in accord. The editors at WaPo create dissent by their rampant nonsense but when readers comment - usually giving real information that WaPo ignores - the editors count it as ‘popularity’. I am joining the departing horde and recommend you do the same.

…there was also sadness this week, and I’m not talking about the deaths of entertainment icons from the 1970s. I am talking about the WashingtonPost.com website, which has booted out one of the best bloggers on the web.

Dan Froomkin’s “White House Watch” column today will be the last one that appears on WashingtonPost.com. Froomkin has expressed interest in possibly moving the column elsewhere and continuing it, and I consider this a test of whether newspapers are (a.) smart enough to realize this is the way to modernize and move into the future of journalism, or (b.) dumb as a bag of hammers. WashingtonPost.com has obviously chosen the (b.) route. Because Froomkin’s column is a shining example of how newspapers could migrate from their print business model to the more interactive web-based model they need to be in to survive.

Froomkin was fired, it was announced, because his “ratings” had dropped after Obama was elected. This is utter hogwash. In the first place, his column “White House Watch” (it started as “White House Briefing” but was changed later) was dedicated to putting the executive branch under a microscope and reporting what was there. Of course, the Bush White House was more fertile ground for this, especially towards the end. But Froomkin did not back off from examining Obama’s White House, and has been severely critical of Obama’s decisions on secrecy and openness and torture and accountability.

The real reason his numbers dropped is that the editors stopped putting a link to his column on their front page. When Froomkin got progressively harder and harder to find, fewer and fewer people found him. In other words, his ratings dropped because they didn’t feature him as prominently anymore. This is the new online reality — your hit count depends on a link on the front page of the site. The more prominent, the higher your hitcount will be.

But dark suspicions have been raised (mostly by his loyal readers) that Froomkin was fired because he dared to contradict one of the very conservative op-ed writers on the Washington Post payroll (the two entities, Washington Post and WashingtonPost.com are supposedly “separate,” I should mention). The Washington Post has become a safe haven for such ultra-conservative commentators (they not only have an ex-Bush speechwriter, but they also hired William Kristol after the New York Times got tired of him being so wrong so often). So, in keeping with this conservative bent, Froomkin had to go.

This is pathetic and is an outrage. Anyone who agrees should contact the ombudsman at: ombudsman@washpost.com and let him know how you feel. [I disagree - Ruth]

What is truly pathetic is that the newspaper which a few decades ago brought down an American president is now not even worth reading anymore, because the only thing in it that isn’t the equivalent of Fox News is their cartoonist Tom Toles (who is excellent). A bastion of journalism has, quite literally (at least for me) been reduced to a cartoon. Pathetic.

Let’s see… bring down a government, sell lots of newspapers… pack the staff with neo-cons in possibly the most liberal city in America, get ready for bankruptcy. No wonder newspapers are in such trouble, if this is the way they plan their business models. (Emphasis added.)

Pathetic is one description for bringing down what used to be a heroic voice for justice, and for digging out the truth as a newspaper is supposed to do. The glory days at WaPo have been brought down, to the use of those actively destroying functional government. Deregulation has been enthroned where public interests used to reign.

This is radical overthrow of the truth, and my response is to leave.

No more hits for WaPo.

[You can see the dreadful effect of major media promoting false information by the idiotic quality of some of the winger comments sliming here.]

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

While it is diverting to listen to born-again fiscally responsible wingnuts piping up on the floor of the House to insist social programs are going to break the bank, it’s actually happening among the leaders. Working its way through obscure official channels rather than in the dog and pony shows the freakish right wing keeps throwing, Pay-Go legislation is being put in place to give actual underpinnings to our national government.

After the ‘throw money at rich folks’ approach the wingers employed over eight years in total power over spending, this works back toward sound finances. Soundness is much needed, as those burned by our catastrophic behavior in world finance are beginning to look at replacing the almighty dollar with a currency not subject to winger whimsy.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers grilled White House Budget Director Peter Orszag at a hearing Thursday over the administration’s flexibility on a new pay-as-you-go law that would allow for trillions of dollars in exemptions.

The administration is asking lawmakers to pass legislation that would require any new federal program to be paid for either by cutting spending or raising taxes. But the White House has agreed to exempt a few big-ticket items that have added to the nation’s budget deficit.

During the House Budget Committee hearing, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) noted the exemptions will cost more than $3 trillion over 10 years. Policies that won’t be subject to pay-go restrictions under Obama’s bill include the extension of middle-class tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration, funds to keep the Alternative Minimum Tax from hitting middle-income Americans and Medicare payments to physicians.

“If we don’t extend a number of these [exemptions], we could see an increase in the reduction of the deficit,” said Becerra, the vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

Orszag said items were exempted because neither lawmakers nor the White House have come up with ways to pay for them. Those policies also have broad support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

But Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) suggested lawmakers consider letting more of the tax cuts, championed by President George W. Bush, expire, and not just the ones for those Americans making more than $200,000.
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House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who has called on the House to take up the bill in July, said the pay-go law is necessary to stem the increase in debt.

“By reducing the amount of money spent on interest payments on the debt, we will be better able to make investments in areas that make our economy strong, such as healthcare, energy and education,” he said.

The measure has less support in the Senate; though Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has backed it, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), whose Senate Budget Committee would mark up any pay-go bill, has criticized the measure for exempting expensive items.

But Hoyer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have pledged not to consider any new tax bills from the Senate unless the upper chamber takes up pay-go legislation. The House leaders’ pay-go promise came in response to the $3.6 trillion budget resolution, which called for discretionary spending levels higher than Blue Dog Democrats wanted.

Reality won’t get much attention in the media, but reality bites when the actual practice is profligacy. Returning to sound finances is overdue. When our society suffers real losses as it has in school spending, infrastructure, and collapse of our health system, we are required to get hold of the process of spending again.

The slow, steady progress of return to sanity is being accomplished by leadership while the opposition scurries about trying to light the fires faster than they can be put out.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )