In the debt ceiling debate, Republicans and corporate media have somewhat similar strategies: The GOP can’t reach an agreement with the Democrats, because that would be a win for Obama. The media, meanwhile, can’t say that the Democrats are doing the right thing, even when they’re doing exactly what media pundits demand that they do because that would make the media seem like they were on the Democrats’ side.
Thomas Friedman‘s column today (7/27/11) is a great example of this. Aside from what sounds like a call for a series of Tom Friedman impersonation festivals (i.e., “a series of hearings under the heading: ‘What world are we living in?'”), what he’s asking for is basically just what Obama’s done:
For starters, two years ago Congress and the Obama administration would have collaborated on a series of hearings…. Then we would have put together “The National Commission for 21st Century America.”… We then sit down with a blank sheet of paper and say, “OK, given our current fiscal predicament, where should we cut spending and where must we raise new tax revenues so that we can bring our government back to solvency and, at the same time, reinvigorate our formula for growth and success.”…
“Such a plan requires cutting, taxing and spending. It requires cutting because we have made promises to ourselves on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that we cannot keep without reforming each of them.”
But we cannot possibly generate the savings–or the new investments we need in our formula for success–by just taking funds from these social programs and shredding the social safety nets…. That is why we need to raise new tax revenues as well–so we can simultaneously shrink the entitlements programs, but still keep them viable, and generate the funds needed to strengthen all five parts of our growth formula. Anyone who says that either entitlement reform or tax increases are off the table does not have a plan for sustaining American greatness and passing on the American dream to the next generation.
It’s hard to deny that this outline closely resembles the general policy approach, as well as the rhetoric and decision-making process, of the actually existing Obama administration. But Friedman can’t write a column saying he thinks the president has got basically the right idea; where’s the fun, or the bestselling book, in that? Instead, the columnist pretends that he’s making a brilliantly original proposal that is only likely to be carried out by his longstanding dream of a “radical centrist” third party:
Personally, I’ll support anyone with a real plan to cut spending, raise revenues and boost investment in the five pillars of our success–be they Democrats or Republicans. But if neither Republicans nor Democrats can see that we need a hybrid politics today–one that requires cutting, taxing and investing as part of a single nation-building strategy (phased in over time)–then I’ll hope for a third party that does get it and can take us where we need to go.
Hear that, Democrats? When you start talking about cutting spending, raising revenues and investing in the future, Tom Friedman is ready to support you. If he hears about it, that is.
Years have gone by and this president has NOTHING on the table.The CBO cant even rate anything he says because there is nothing to go on.So before we even begin(or end)this debate ,realize that the man some of you elected to fix this countries economic woes ,has not put his name to paper on anything.He has in fact made everything(in my conservative eyes)immeasurably worse. And now he banks every move on how it will hurt his bid for reelection which at this point should never enter the equation. This is the true measure of the man. Beyond discussion ,conjecture ,spin,or argument.He strikes a pose.The only adult in the room. Again not willing to put a plan to paper he worries about the perception of his sham persona, when he can add nothing more. Shame on anyone willing to give him another 4 years .
it’s really odd that the mustache of mediocrity has no idea what was actually being offered in the debate…maybe it was too hot, flat and crowded in nyc last week for him to bother paying attention, so he just phoned this column in
steve kornacki at salon has a similar piece with this great headline: “Does Tom Friedman even follow the news?”
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/07/27/friedman_obama_debt
Here’s Tom Friedman’s fellow columnist, Paul Krugman, on the latest notion from the mass media echo chamber that we need to follow some sort of middle road between two extremes (“The Centrist Cop-Out,” NY Times 7/28/11):
“I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read ‘Views Differ on Shape of Planet.’ But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?”
It does indeed appear that Friedman is that rare political columnist who doesn’t even follow the news.
Tom Friedman ceased being relevant a long time ago IMO.
Friedman said: “Anyone who says that either entitlement reform or tax increases are off the table does not have a plan for sustaining American greatness and passing on the American dream to the next generation.”
I say, anyone who would gut Social Security and Medicare would not be sustaining American greatness (whatever that’s supposed to be) and passing on the American dream to the next generation, which is going to need medical care and to retire someday.
Gee whiz — farts! I thought you had a beef w/ Milton — not Thomas — Friedman when I first saw this column’s headline.
And maybe that makes for the real argument, anyway. Dr. Milton worked his U of Chicago School of Economics position to justify “trickle down” economics in as little as 3000 lectures. And for the low, low price of as little as 49 countries. Fortunately, few of its victims — from the Southern Cone of the Americas right up to and through the fall of the Eastern Bloc in Europe — had to sit through the lectures. Thus, they had more free time for subjugation by: 1) US foreign policy, 2) the IMF, 3) the World Bank, and 4) the new autocrat. That’s quite a feat when you consider the nonsense Dr. Milton espoused. And all the artificial pseudo-mathematics and -physics lying behind virtually all of his work.
Remove all the barriers to free market economics and you’ll have the Invisible Hand of God guiding every financial investment w/markets trending to deliver just the right amount of goods and services for just the right amount of national priorities at just the right cost and wage scales for just the right amount of consumers to enjoy just the right amount of personal comfort. And once all that is achieved — the system will become “self-perpetuating.” And — therefore — virtually moot. That’s nice to know when next month’s Social Security check doesn’t come. And it’s not coming because our free-market economy is “withering away.”
The last time claptrap like this was proposed rather closely resembled the Aryan “super race” doctrines of Heinrich Himmler and Josef Goebbels. That’s probably because it was exactly that. Think of Milton Friedman’s free market as “eugenics” — and a pure master race will produce just the right amount of everything at just the right price for people who think just the right amount of racial theory to subordinate just the right amount of untermenchen to do the right amount of sweatshop and stoop labor for their masters’ — not the subjected’s — maximum performance and pleasure.
In other words, slavery won’t be slavery anymore.
“Eugenic” economics will even out-perform Thomas Friedman’s “The Earth Is Flat”‘s ridiculous nonsense. How — you say? By preventing any future “race to the bottom” economic fallout when one adds Keynesian-inspired “bottom up” economic stimulus. True, one might have to work out the semantics of all this for our watch dog MSM. Because it will come in the form of a DNA-based “lebensborn program” which no economy has ever achieved to its satisfaction.
That is, unless Rupert Murdoch says it has. And he and his Empire leave out the part about it requiring is the substitution of race-based economics for a millennia of human morality.
That’s why — when somebody mentions THOMAS Friedman’s name in all this — I think its just some guy using part of Milton’s name for his “nom de guerre.” Or — better yet — for his “embedded journalist de guerre.”
Unless we say “no more!” — all human morality is headed toward becoming nothing but a conundrum of simple ideologies based on little more than circular arguments. In fact, to many it’s already here. The deficit ceiling and the biggest cuts in social services in the history of mankind have been “done deals” for over a year. Guess what? We lose — the people whose sweat has built so much of this country. All Obama and the Tea Party Congress have had left to do is the shouting. [AKA: “posturing.”] Right up to the very end.
“Reforming Social Security”? Hmmmm! Well, one of the problems with the money that goes into entitlement programs is that we have cost of living adjustments for recipients – SO – Congress should increase the maximum income the people pay into social security for. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think they’re not doing that. If there is anything wrong with Social Security or Medicare, its that they’re being strangled on the vine by the same people who keep carping about there being something wrong with them! But that’s a standard tea party tactic.
Income taxes too high???? For big corporations and the very rich, the effective tax rate is at the lowest they’ve been since World War Two.
As a grad student in Econ at Vanderbilt decades ago, my advisor advised me to attend a lecture by a visiting economist from UChi named Milton Friedman. “Uncle Miltie” as I’ve called him ever since, spoke very evenly and with a matter of fact tone. I sat there thinking Wha? over and over. It was all new to me. And new to the economics profs, Harvard Ph.D.s to a man. I could read their faces:”Is this guy nuts or is he pulling our legs?” But some VIP’s decided that Uncle Miltie’s nostrums would be just the cover they needed to do what they wanted to do anyway–screw over the finances of a lot of poor countries and extract a lot of money from them. I’ll give him this: he was a very good writer for an economist.
Similarly the Neocons who did so much to get us into the Iraq War worshiped at the feet of Leo Strauss, UChi’s leading political philosopher of that time, one of whose teachings was that to rule over the masses, the self-chosen few had to lie all the time, because that’s all the masses could believe.
Ah the good ol’ days, the early ’60’s!