[WS:] If this will hasten the demise of the Empire, it is fine by me.
On that happy note, I am signing off for today due to overposting.
Wojtek
On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 10:40 AM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> We have nothing to fear but fear itself
>
> ---------- FDR
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/opinion/29krugman.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB
>
> Divided We Fail
> By PAUL KRUGMAN
> 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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