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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (113596)	5/15/2012 11:09:28 AM
From: John Vosilla	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Unintended Consequences’: Former Bain Exec Sparks Controversy Over Income Inequality, Edward Conard sets out to provide "a prescription for how to grow the economy." Thanks to a recent NY Times Magazine article, and because he worked closely with GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney at Bain Capital, Conard has become a lightning rod for controversy -- described by some as a champion of income inequality. There are elements of this in Conard's book -- such as when he argues the societal benefits of economic competition is closer to 20-to-1 -- meaning society gets $20 of value for every $1 an investor earns -- vs. the 5-to-1 level commonly cited. But, in reality, Conard's book is pretty standard conservative economic fare wrapped with a philosophical view that is unique, at least in its public expression. "Underneath the book is a moral argument," he says. "Talented people have a responsibility to get the training they need to be successful risk takers and go out there to take risks. What I see is surplus of talented people and a shortage of people willing to take the risks." Then there are people who have already achieved great wealth, either through their own talents and labor or thanks to the success of their predecessors. Typically speaking, these people are not prone to take great risks, in part because they have so much to lose. But Conard doesn't make a big distinction, suggesting there are people who take "career risks" by leaving their jobs to start a company, and people who take "financial risk" by supporting those entrepreneurs. About the only time he was at a loss for words is when I asked him if Mitt Romney is still taking risks and thus deserves to pay a tax rate based on the carried interest tax deduction paid by private equity funds, or whether that rate itself is fair. finance.yahoo.com

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (113596)	5/15/2012 1:09:16 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

A lesson never learned By Steve Benen - Tue May 15, 2012 12:36 PM EDT It was, to my mind, the worst thing an American major party has done, at least in domestic politics, since the Civil War. Last summer, congressional Republicans held the full faith and credit of the United States hostage, threatening to impose a catastrophe on all of us, on purpose, to achieve a specific (and unnecessary) policy goal. It was a move without parallel. The entirety of a party threatened to deliberately hurt the country unless their rivals paid a hefty ransom -- in this case, debt reduction. It didn't matter that Republicans were largely responsible for the debt in the first place, and it didn't matter that Republicans routinely raised the debt ceiling dozens of times over the last several decades. This wasn't just another partisan dispute; it was a scandal for the ages. This one radical scheme helped lead to the first-ever downgrade of U.S. debt; it riled financial markets and generated widespread uncertainty about the stability of the American system; and it severely undermined American credibility on the global stage. Indeed, in many parts of the world, observers didn't just lose respect for us, they were actually laughing at us. It's the kind of thing that should have scarred the Republican Party for a generation. Not only did that never happen, the Republican hostage takers are already vowing to create this identical crisis all over again, on purpose. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will threaten Tuesday that Congress will not raise the debt limit next year without spending cuts greater than the size of the debt ceiling increase. According to excerpts of the remarks Boehner will deliver to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation fiscal summit on Tuesday afternoon, the Ohio lawmaker will "insist on my simple principle of cuts and reforms greater than the debt limit increase." [...] He will also tell the audience: "We shouldn't dread the debt limit. We should welcome it. It's an action-forcing event in a town that has become infamous for inaction." It's not hyperbolic to characterize this as madness. Boehner is, in no uncertain terms, announcing that he and his party will deliberately hurt the country -- and he's calling his hostage-taking strategy an "action-forcing event." At a certain level, it's true that holding a gun to someone's head forces "action," but it's also true that such aggression tears at the fabric of the body politic. I should emphasize that Boehner's comments don't come as a surprise. After the crisis was resolved last summer, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities President Robert Greenstein explained, "Those who have engaged in hostage-taking -- threatening the economy and the full faith and credit of the U.S. Treasury to get their way -- will conclude that their strategy worked. They will feel emboldened to pursue it again every time that we have to raise the debt limit in the future." And that's exactly what has happened. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told Fox News that the GOP-created crisis "set the template for the future." He vowed, "We'll be doing it all over" in 2013. In case anyone's forgotten, over the last 72 years -- before 2011 -- Congress raised the debt ceiling 89 times. Lawmakers from both parties, working with presidents from both parties, treated this as routine housekeeping. Preconditions have never been applied to this process, and neither party has ever used the law to hold the nation's full faith and credit hostage. Clean debt-ceiling votes weren't always popular, but they've been a standard American norm for generations. Last year, radicalized Republicans changed the game, and they apparently have no intention of going back. This wasn't a one-time hostage strategy, threatening the nation's wellbeing in a fit of partisan rage; this was the creation of a new norm, to be repeated forever more. Why? Because the dangerous scheme worked -- when radicalism is rewarded, the result is more radicalism.