Fiscal Responsibility

I'm sure Rove was all for a massive transfer of wealth from the U.S. Treasury into corporations like Halliburton through no-bid, no-oversight contracts in Iraq.
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And he wants to complain about tax breaks to the working poor?
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Not that this is news, but what a monumental a**hole that squatty little rat is...

What is this "governing" that Rove speaks of?

and yes, I'm with Ezra. If you're gonna run deficits, run them to create capital. Like railroads and a smart electrical grid and bridge maintenance.
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Joe--part of your job is to resist the claims that any spending on infrastructure is pork. It's an easy story to write, but any investment in infrastructure has to be in somebody's congressional district. The real pork, at the moment, is largely in the military procurement budget.

I don't want to hear anything further from or about Herr Rove unless and until he's eaten alive by wolverines. Badgers, maybe.

"The Bush-Rove way of knowledge has run its course, and it was not only fiscally irresponsible, it was bad politics and even worse policy."
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Trouble is, the Bush-Rove way is the Reagan-Atwater way that went before it. It's the Republican way. One only wonders what sort of Republican-created catastrophe it will take for you and your peers to finally come to terms with it.

Karl Rove: "Team Obama is about to learn that it's easier to campaign than to govern."
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Karl has already taught our nation that cruel lesson.
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About the stimulus. Where there are vast amounts of money, there lurk vast numbers of thieves. Obama's task is to find a bunch (like a gazillion million), honest CPA's who will oversee the task at hand. Good luck with that.

Over at OpenLeft, Bowers has a useful breakdown.

The Wall Street Journal has seriously relaxed is journalism standards of late, allowing that tool a platform to spout more of his partisanship cant. Want to govern effectivly? Listen to Karl Rove and then do the exact opposite.

queen, the WSJ is more about Murdock than the Supreme Right Wing Tool Rove. Murdock also pays for the Simpsons. Go figure. Ain't we livin in a strange world these days.

The WSJ has never been the same since Murdock took over. I hear he has his eye on the NYT as well. Now there is a grade A tool for you.

With all due respect to Lincoln, Murdock has proven that you can fool a majority of the people all of the time.

I'm really glad to see the smart grid highlighted. That seems to me to be the lowest hanging fruit.

Here's the most important part of Ezra's post:
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In Washington, there is a thing called "fiscal responsibility." This thing called "fiscal responsibility" is different than fiscal responsibility. Fiscal responsibility, presumably, is smart fiscal management that deals forthrightly with looming problem. "Fiscal responsibility" is a particular set of biases and policy priorities, best exemplified in the person of Robert Samuelson. Among them: Entitlements are unsustainable. Social Security must be trimmed. Medicare must be cut. Medicaid must be slashed. The budget is in danger and austerity is our only cure.
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This all sounds very responsible. The problem is that it's not, uh, true. The budget is in dire straights. But Social Security is fine. And Medicaid isn't even facing real problems. It's Medicare. And Medicare's problems are the same problems facing health care as a whole. And the problem is simple: If costs keep growing at the current rate, it will destroy the federal budget and force a decline in real incomes. The government can't afford it, and nor can the private market. The answer, then, is obvious enough: Health care reform that focuses on cost control. But advocates of "fiscal responsibility" haven't made that argument. They've argued for entitlement commissions that will cut the cost of entitlements. And what happens 10 years later, when cost growth makes Medicare unsustainable again?

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When will the idiot centrist Beltway cocktail weenie circuit admit that Saint Russert was wrong as wrong can be, and that universal health care will solve the "entitlements problem"...that Social Security isn't the problem --health care cost inflation is the real enemy of prudent fiscal policy?

"When will the idiot centrist Beltway cocktail weenie circuit admit that Saint Russert was wrong as wrong can be, and that universal health care will solve the "entitlements problem"...that Social Security isn't the problem --health care cost inflation is the real enemy of prudent fiscal policy?"
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Never...as long as corporate profits are at stake.

Let's hope Holder is confirmed and the Congress gets to haul Rove, Miers and others before their committees. Rove needs a serious working over - verbal waterboarding. He is as shameless as his far right buddies. I am also looking to Brad the Scholz getting his comeuppance. Sadly, revenge is coursing through my blood stream, today.

By the way: three cheers for the captain and his crew for a very happy ending to the flight. Thanks to the Invisible Hand.

Why do we give alledged felons like Rove any airtime. He needs to marginalized by ignoring him.

stuart and shepherd, good points that need further discussion. I'll throw this bomb for a start. Most children and those under the age of 40 don't generally suffer serious illness and only require preventive care. Those who suffer real serious illness requiring intensive care are the elderly. Health costs are inflated by 5 year olds with common passing colds languishing in doctors offices. The doctors gouge the system by those children.

'Team Obama is about to learn that it's easier to campaign than to govern.'
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We're seeing the same condescending attitude in Bush and Cheney. Given their record, it's astonishing that these guys are still able to maintain their arrogance and conceit.
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I do have one political concern about the way they are trying to frame their administration versus the coming Obama administration. Along with repeating the mantra that there were 'no terrorist attacks on American soil' (since the last one), they are repeatedly claiming that virtually all changes Obama intends to make (FISA, Guantanamo, Iraq, etc.) leave the country open to attack. They seem to be setting up the Democrats for political attacks when the next (inevitable) terrorist attack happens. Even the Bushies predict that eventually an attack WILL happen, and Bush has left the country woefully unprepared to protect itself. Until the nations defenses are bolstered we will continue to be vulnerable, and even after that we could probably be hit.
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I wouldn't be surprised if they are hoping for a political comeback with an attack on the US. It would allow them to point fingers and shout 'I told you so'. Where the Democrats came together with the repugs after 9/11 in a show of unity, I don't expect that sort of behavior from the GOP.

"They seem to be setting up the Democrats for political attacks when the next (inevitable) terrorist attack happens."
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They've already tried to blame them for the last one, nine months into the Bush presidency, after he was warned by the outgoing administration and the CIA that "bin Laden [Was] Determined to strike US". GOP-invented, MSNBC-catapulted thesis: it was Clinton's fault because the CIA didn't assassinate bin Laden when they had the chance (no word on how many chances the Bush Administration overlooked while planning to invade the wrong country). FYI, it's what Republicans do to try to level the playing field with Democrats, lacking the ability to, you know, run the government.

Joe Klein: "Obama's tax cuts for the working poor."

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"Obama's tax cuts for the working poor"? Hahahahaha. Obama will not be providing "tax cuts for the working [so-called] poor." The so-called "working poor" pay no federal income taxes. Consequently, those who pay no federal income taxes can not have their taxes "cut". Obama and his like-minded socialists intend on giving them money (i.e., welfare payments) confiscated from those Americans who actually pay federal income taxes (i.e, Republicans). Got it, socialists?

textee give it a rest. Can't you even once come up with something constructive to say. Do you have so much hate bottled up inside that you can't even imagine or remember what it was like to be civil to other people. Just because someone doesn't pay income tax doesn't mean they don't pay taxes. They pay payroll tax, they pay medicare tax, they pay sales tax, they pay fees which are taxes on everything from dmv to toll roads. The poor tend to smoke more than anyone else so they pay excise tax, if they're poor in this society I can't blame them for needing a drink every now and then to reduce the stress so they pay sin tax. So the next tie you get on your high horse just remember that I pay taxes on my cell phone and cable so that you rural ridicule can make its way to mainstream society -- of course that's one tax I would like to get a refund on.

"The so-called "working poor" pay no federal income taxes."
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As if you knew anything about the working poor. FICA is a "federal income tax" you cretin, and all working people pay it. Stop parroting Sean Hannity as if he weren't a ridiculous blowhard propagandist.

health care cost inflation is the real enemy of prudent fiscal policy?
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while undoubtably true, it should be noted that we're also looking at a rapidly expanding base of seniors who are eligible for Medicare. Its that triple whammy -- more people on Medicare with costs per patient skyrocketing and the "taxpayers per medicare recipient" ratio shrinking -- that is creating the crisis.
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it should be noted that there is no plan to reign in health care inflation, instead there is merely a plan to make health care delivery more efficient by computerizing records -- and Obama grossly over-estimates the cost savings that will be accrued through this greater efficiency. (The number of tests done will not be significantly reduced, for example, because as one ages, the body deteriorates at an increasing pace. There is also the problem of inaccuracies in medical records -- and relying upon records that may or may not be accurate can compromise a patient.)
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And while single payer can reduce overall medical costs, it won't do much in terms of Medicare, which already operates at high efficiency (97 cents of every dollar goes toward providing care, as opposed to only 62 cents from the "privately insured care" sector.) In other words, single payer would merely makes it possible for us to afford Medicare longer, but wouldn't significantly impact the impending fiscal disaster that Medicare represents.
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ultimately, we are talking about a shift in the way that we care for seniors, a shift away from trying to fix everything that's wrong to finding the most humane and efficient ways to allow seniors to die comfortably.

"ultimately, we are talking about a shift in the way that we care for seniors, a shift away from trying to fix everything that's wrong to finding the most humane and efficient ways to allow seniors to die comfortably."
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Ultimately, I think we are talking about the way we eat and live, a shift away from corn syrup as foodstuff and watching NASCAR as exercise. Skyrocketing obesity and co morbid disease is what is killing us, both fiscally and practically. We should be putting all that corn syrup into ethanol we can use to drive to the park.