Tag Archives: economy

The GOP’s Obamacare Suicide

by KiraMaitland Posted on October 2, 2013

Mother Jones

Is the Republican Party committing suicide this week? The final results of the shutdown blame game won’t be in until the government is un-shut. Yet at the same time that the party is allowing itself to be branded as an ideologically rigid outfit controlled by political hostage takers, it has been endangering its future by waging a high-profile but Alamo-like stand against Obamacare, just as a main component of the health care program is kicking in—and appears to be popular.

More MoJo coverage of the government shutdown.


The 10 Saddest Government Shutdown Goodbye Notes


The GOP’s Obamacare Suicide


30 Ways the Shutdown Is Already Screwing People


48 Ways a Government Shutdown Will Screw You Over


Yes, This Really Is Only the 2nd Government Shutdown in Recent History


How John Boehner Could Lose His Speakership


Harry Reid and John Boehner Really Loathe Each Other

If anything has defined the GOP in its must-destroy-Obama phase, it’s the party’s virulent opposition to the Affordable Care Act. And with Obama reelected, the economy slowly improving, and deficits slowly decreasing, Republicans have bet almost all the chips they have left on the decimation of Obamacare. With Sen. Ted Cruz wagging the party, the GOPers pushing for the government shutdown—aided and abetted by Rush Limbaugh, the Heritage Foundation, and other influentials of the far right—have focused exclusively on Obamacare. This confrontation over government spending has nothing to do with, well, government spending. The shutdown was merely a way for Cruz-controlled Republicans to vent about Obamacare. So if the Republican party stands for anything today, it is obstructing Obamacare. But here’s the rub: What if Obamacare works?

The initial response to yesterday’s opening of the state and federal exchanges that are providing affordable insurance plans to Americans who previously could not obtain coverage has Obamacare proponents dancing. Millions of Americans were not scared away by Koch-financed ads (including this rapey spot). Sure, there were glitches and websites crashed. But that’s natural, given the overwhelming demand. And the exchanges have weeks to work out the kinks before the December 15 deadline to finish enrolling people for the coming year.

So while the Republicans have succeeded in forcing a shutdown of the government—according to the latest polls, not a popular endeavor—their crusade against Obamacare has harmed their long-term prospects in several ways:

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The GOP’s Obamacare Suicide

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How to Bring Economies Back After a Natural Disaster

by SherlynHa Posted on September 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the Atlantic Cities website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In the wake of climate-related disasters, rebuilding is never just a matter of putting back the structures that were there before a storm. It needs to address the intangible, too, beginning with carefully considered strategies for economic recovery.

When Superstorm Sandy ripped through the Northeast, it caused both acute short-term economic losses, and also sustained economic challenges. Businesses were shuttered, insurance claims lagged, and out-of-pocket expenses continue to affect families, small business owners and communities.

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How to Bring Economies Back After a Natural Disaster

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Here’s Why the Public Blames Republicans for an Imminent Government Shutdown

by SherlynHa Posted on September 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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Just another quick reminder, because sometimes this stuff gets lost in the fog.

Q: Why do we need a 6-week Continuing Resolution to keep the government running?

A: Because Congress hasn’t passed a budget for the new year, which begins October 1st.

Q: And why is that?

A: There’s no mystery. Both the House and Senate passed budget resolutions months ago, but Paul Ryan and the rest of the GOP have refused to open talks with the Senate to negotiate a final budget number.

Q: Why is that?

A: They’ve been crystal clear about this. They wanted more leverage for their demands, and they figured the only way to get it was to threaten a government shutdown. Here’s the Washington Post last May:

Republicans face a listless summer, with little appetite for compromise but no leverage to shape an agreement. Without that leverage, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Tuesday, there is no point in opening formal budget negotiations between the House and the Senate.

….“The debt limit is the backstop,” Ryan said before taking the stage at a debt summit organized by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation in Washington. “I’d like to go through regular order and get something done sooner rather than later. But we need to get a down payment on the debt. We need entitlement reform. We’re very serious about tax reform because we think that’s critical to economic growth and job creation. Those are the things we want to talk about.”

This is why the public is likely to blame Republicans for a government shutdown: because Republicans have been very clear all along that they were deliberately stringing out the budget process so they could use a shutdown as leverage for their demands. At the time Ryan made the statement above, it looked like we were going to hit the debt ceiling before we hit the end of the budget year, so that was the “backstop.” Now it’s turned out that the end of the budget year will come first, so that’s become the backstop instead. Either way, though, Republicans have been quite open for months about their desire to delay negotiations until they had a government shutdown of some kind to use as a threat. Now they have it, and they’re using it.

So that’s that. They’re the ones who said they wanted a shutdown as leverage. They can’t really pretend otherwise at this point.

It’s also worth noting, just for the sake of nostalgia, Ryan’s claim that he was doing this because he really, really wanted to talk about entitlement reform and tax reform. That was always laughable—nobody thinks you can negotiate stuff like that in a couple of weeks with a gun to your head—and we haven’t heard much about it since. Still, it’s worth preserving for the memory vaults.

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Here’s Why the Public Blames Republicans for an Imminent Government Shutdown

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Watch: The Power, Faith, and Apocolyptic Embrace of Congressional Republicanism Fiore Cartoon

by cur07jqm Posted on September 27, 2013

Mother Jones

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Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

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Watch: The Power, Faith, and Apocolyptic Embrace of Congressional Republicanism Fiore Cartoon

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"Inequality for All": A Must-See Movie For the 99 Percent

by Christopherd3o Posted on September 27, 2013

Mother Jones

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Jacob Kornbluth’s new documentary Inequality for All, which stars economist and former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich, is being hyped as a “game changer in our national discussion of income inequality.” It probably won’t be that, since it’s preaching to the choir, but the film is a welcome addition to that discussion.

Inequality for All, which opens Friday, weaves between scenes of Reich lecturing clear-eyed Cal coeds in his Wealth and Inequality class, 1950s-style graphs and charts illustrating growing income disparity, and archival clips of happy white people in the post-World War II age of prosperity. There are also interviews with working-class people left behind by the American Dream, such as a worker at a California power plant that has hired anti-union consultants, and a mom who works at Costco and has $25 in her bank account.

Kornbluth also chats with the odd member of the 1 percent. “The pillow business is quite tough because fewer and fewer people can afford to buy the products that we make,” pillow-making millionaire Nick Hanauer explains. “The problem with rising inequality is that a person like me who earns a thousand times as much as the typical worker doesn’t buy a thousand times as many pillows every year. Even the richest people only sleep on one or two pillows.”

In a comprehensive and digestible way, Reich lays out the stark facts of income inequality (for example, the 400 Americans richest currently earn more than half the country’s population combined) and how we got here. He blames the decline of unionization, globalization, and technology for suppressing pay, and enriching the few, who then use their increasing political clout to protect their status. “When the middle class doesn’t share the gains, you get into a downward vicious cycle,” Reich explains as the film cuts to an Wheel of Fortune-type animation illustrating that cycle: Wages stagnate, consumption drops, companies downsize, tax revenues decrease, government cuts programs, workers become less educated, unemployment rises—and so on.

As Reich notes, he’s been “saying the same thing for 30 years” about growing income inequality. He worked to combat it during his stints in the administrations of Presidents Ford, Carter and Clinton, and now he’s fighting it from the outside, writing books, recording commentaries, and trying to instill his righteous fire in others. On the last day of class, he gives an inspirational sendoff, telling his students to go out and “change the world.”

The ending of Inequality for All is predictable, but that’s okay, because Reich is so likable—and he’s right.

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"Inequality for All": A Must-See Movie For the 99 Percent

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We Can Reduce Poverty If We Want To. We Just Have To Want To.

by grycjanekg Posted on September 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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Jared Bernstein makes an important point today: Several Nordic countries have made great strides in ending poverty, but it’s not because they have some kind of magic bullet. It’s because they give poor people more money and more services.

The chart on the right shows raw poverty levels in blue. The Nordic countries are basically about the same as the United States. There’s no Scandinavian miracle that provides high-paying jobs for everyone. However, once you account for government benefits, the poverty rate in the Nordic countries is about half the rate in America. Universal health care accounts for some of this, and other benefits account for the rest. Some are means-tested, others are universal. There’s no single answer. The only thing these countries have in common is a simple commitment to taking poverty seriously and doing something about it. Bernstein approves:

In the age of inequality, such anti-poverty policies are more important than ever, as higher inequality creates both more poverty along with steeper barriers to getting ahead, whether through the lack of early education, nutrition, adequate housing, and a host of other poverty-related conditions that dampen ones chances in life.

This situation is only going to get worse as automation improves. Still, we’re plenty rich enough to address it if we want to. There’s nothing stopping us except our own will to do it.

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We Can Reduce Poverty If We Want To. We Just Have To Want To.

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Republicans Are Blowing Up Yet Another Governing Norm

by fuirpycf Posted on September 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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I was chatting with a friend last night about the breakdown of governing norms in American politics. You know the drill: routine filibusters, mid-decade redistricting, flat refusals to allow votes on executive appointments, etc. But now there’s a new one on the scene. It’s a little more subtle than the others, though, so permit me an analogy.

If I ask my neighbor for a cup of sugar and he tells me to get lost, everyone agrees that he’s being a dick. Under our usual social norms, that’s a pretty reasonable kind of favor to ask. On the other hand, if I ask him to give me his car because I totaled mine, everyone agrees that I’m the one being unreasonable. That goes well beyond the kind of favor you’d normally expect from a neighbor.

The problem with this norm is that it’s not really provable. Is asking for a cup of sugar really a reasonable request? Says who? Conversely, why can’t I have your car? I say that’s perfectly reasonable. Sometimes stuff like this ends up in court, but for the most part we rely on a social norm of reasonableness to adjudicate things like this. It’s the only practical way to keep society humming along.

But this is the latest norm to go down for the count in Washington DC. House Republicans have decided to issue a laundry list of demands in return for raising the debt ceiling that go way, way beyond the usual bargaining norms of Washington. If they had proposed, say, a cut in SNAP funding, that would be politics as usual, to be fought along the usual lines. But demanding the elimination of a historic piece of social welfare legislation? Or the absurd ransom note on the right, courtesy of Steve Benen? That’s just not the same thing and everyone knows it. Unfortunately, the norms of the press don’t really allow them to say that. So you get story after story about all the previous government shutdowns, or about the various hobbyhorses that have been attached to debt ceiling legislation in the past, with the strong implication that, really, what’s happening today isn’t all that unusual.

It is, though, and everyone knows it perfectly well. But you can’t prove it. So reporters end up in he-said-she-said mode and the public ends up evenly divided about whether Republicans are bargaining in good faith.

And with that, yet another governing norm is on life support. The problem is that in any complex culture, norms are every bit as important as formal rules—something that, in other contexts, conservatives harangue us about constantly. They should think a little harder about why they feel that way as they go about their business of blowing up Capitol Hill. There might actually be a good reason that all these norms have evolved organically over the past couple of centuries.

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Republicans Are Blowing Up Yet Another Governing Norm

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America’s Nuke Plants Are in Trouble

by gt67dx1 Posted on September 25, 2013

Mother Jones

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America’s fleet of nuclear power plants might be on the cusp of an industry crisis, according to an investigation by Inside Climate News and a recent report from Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment. The industry has been plagued by a streak of plant closures, which come as regulations, expensive upgrades, and newly cheap natural gas have made nuclear increasingly uncompetitive in the energy market. Plants in Vermont, Wisconsin, California, and Florida—the first plants to close in 15 years—have announced this year that they’re shutting down. And more are on the chopping block. According to the report, the industry might shrink in the coming decades, sinking hopes of America being at the start of “nuclear renaissance.”

Six years ago, amidst tax credits and nuclear-friendly regulation, a flood of proposed nuclear projects appeared to be the end of the drought that followed the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island plant, when a partial meltdown stoked fears of a nuclear disaster and halted all new uranium power plant construction. But today, plans for more than half of the 28 new reactors that were proposed have been put on hold or canceled, and those that have gone ahead have suffered from delays and heaping budget overruns. Sixty-two percent of US plants have been operating for more than 30 years—and 20 percent for more than 40 years (the limit of their projected lifespan when they were built). And utility companies are becoming more reticent to pay for their expensive upgrades now that the natural gas boom has created a glut of cheap power.

The newly announced closures are just part of the grim picture the nuclear industry is facing. A 2012 court ruling blocked new permits from being issued until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can assess the risks of storing spent fuel at plant sites, and at least five projects that would boosted the output of existing plants have already been canceled this year. The projects that are continuing in Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee are beleaguered by delays and cost overruns.

The report from Vermont Law School’s Mark Cooper, a senior fellow at the school’s Institute for Energy and Environment, paints an even more dire picture. “With little chance that the cost of new reactors will become competitive with low carbon alternatives in the time frame relevant for old reactor retirement decisions,” the report intones, “attention will shift to the economics of keeping old reactors online, increasing their capacity and/or extending their lives.” Of the 99 operating nuclear plants, the report says, “in terms of basic economics, there are three dozen reactors that are on the razor’s edge.”

The culprit for nuclear’s shrinking margins is the glut of cheap natural gas. When the nuclear renaissance was being prophesied in the mid 2000s, natural gas prices were more than four times what they are today. In this more competitive climate, David Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Inside Climate News, “you’re basically one surprise away—one component problem away—from not having the economics favor you.” Another major burden facing the industry, the question of what to do with reactor waste, and how to pay for it, is being argued by the Department of Energy Wednesday morning, defending a fee it imposed for a future nuclear waste repository.

According to Inside Climate News, “the U.S. industry has weathered tough times before. A similar combination of economic stresses led to the closure of ten reactors in the mid-to-late 1990s, prompting the Department of Energy to predict that 50 reactors would be mothballed between 1995 and 2015.” Despite the dire forecast, only 15 reactors were decommissioned since 1995.

There is light on the horizon, however, for a new generation of nuclear plants that could run on the spent fuel from the current fleet (which surely beats sprinkling it from airplanes). According to a story in Wednesday’s New York Times, Bill Gates has made this new breed of nuclear reactors a pet project. Terra Power, which is led by Gates and former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold, is shooting to build “a new kind of nuclear reactor that would be fueled by today’s nuclear waste, supply all the electricity in the United States for the next 800 years and, possibly, cut the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation around the world,” according to the Times. It’s courting China as a lead partner for the $5 billion prototype project.

Read the whole Inside Climate News story here.

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America’s Nuke Plants Are in Trouble

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If We Reach the Debt Limit, Obama Will Probably Just Break Through It Anyway

by Emily Collins Posted on September 25, 2013

Mother Jones

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We have various laws that require the federal government to disburse money. However, if we reach our statutory debt limit without Congress raising it, we’ll have another law that says the government can’t borrow any more money. Matt Yglesias comments:

So we’re headed straight for a legal and constitutional crisis that could also become a financial crisis.

What laws does the executive branch follow and which does it break? What litigation will result from any decision, and who will prevail? I think the conventional wisdom actually somewhat overstates the odds of this leading to a total financial meltdown. Worst comes to worst, you pay people with IOUs for a week and then organize an “illegal” debt auction where bonds will sell at a modest premium to currently prevailing rates and ultimately the courts legitimize the option. But that will definitely be a kind of constitutional meltdown that will permanently shake confidence in the American financial and political system.

I don’t know if this is exactly how things will unfold, but it’s in the right ballpark. I realize that a lot of people are still pushing the platinum coin thing, but keep in mind that even if you don’t buy any of the arguments for why it’s illegal, it only works if you can deposit the coin at the Fed. And the Fed has already said it wouldn’t accept it. So it’s not a live option no matter how passionately you believe it’s legal.

But if the debt ceiling showdown lasts more than a couple of weeks, it’s likely that President Obama will simply order the Treasury to start auctioning bonds regardless. Maybe under the authority of the 14th Amendment, maybe under his authority as commander-in-chief. Maybe he’ll declare a state of emergency of some kind. Who knows? But eventually this is how things will work out, with Obama acting because he has to, and because he knows that courts will be loathe to intervene in a political dispute between the executive and legislative branches.

In any case, it would be a helluva mess. Republicans really need to grow up and stop treating the livelihoods of millions of workers and the good faith of the United States as mere partisan chew toys. It’s long past time for the business community to stage an intervention.

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If We Reach the Debt Limit, Obama Will Probably Just Break Through It Anyway

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Investors Probably Aren’t Very Worried That America Will Default on its Bonds

by Alexandra Smith Posted on September 24, 2013

Mother Jones

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Have you noticed that I’m desperately trying today not to write about the idiotic budget theater currently playing an unlimited engagement at the Capitol Hill Vaudeville Palace? You haven’t? Well, I am. It’s just too childish and depressing and monotonous to bear.

I’m sure I’ll buckle under the strain eventually and write about it again. But not today. I. Will. Be. Strong. In the meantime, Jim Tankersley draws our attention to the chart on the right. I used to hate blog posts called “_____ in One Chart,” but ever since ” _____ in 13 Charts” became the new normal, I actively look forward to posts with only a single chart in them. This one shows the trajectory of the US sovereign CDS spread, which is theoretically a measure of how likely it is that treasury bonds will default. On Monday, it shot up from about 22 basis points to 32 bps.

So what does it mean? Probably nothing. For a variety of reasons, the US sovereign CDS market is very thin, which means this spike could have been the result of just two or three trades. And historically, even 32 bps is pretty low. We’ve seen spikes well above 50 bps several times in the past few years.

Beyond that, of course, it just doesn’t make sense. Even if we have a debt limit crisis, there’s zero chance that holders of treasurys will miss any payments. So what this spike really tells us is probably two things. First, a few people have decided to take out a bet that some other people will panic, allowing them to make some money selling their positions for a quick profit. Second, the CDS markets often don’t tell us much of anything useful. After all, nothing happened on Monday that we didn’t already know on Friday.

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Investors Probably Aren’t Very Worried That America Will Default on its Bonds

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