Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

David got very excited about a rather innocuous phrasing: jobs vs. 'net' jobs. It's not a profound 'gotcha.' I really doubt thoughtful people don't know the difference, even though David himself says he doesn't even know what 'net jobs' means, highlighting the concern of Republicans, who think it's a significant distinction.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Way overdue. I was beginning to worry that I'd never see this duo again.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Political scientist Larry Sabato's website, crytal ball, has all kinds of scenarios with the 2012 presidential election. How the dems and repubs have to secure certain states for a win, the ones that will lean a particular way, and the ones that are up for grabs. It's interesting material for election buffs.

One of his many scenarios was the fickle five: will the president win North Carolina, Indian, Florida, Virginia, and Ohio again? Playing with that I'd say he will lose N.C., Indiana, Virginia and am unsure about the other 2.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

I agree. These guys get some very interesting fires going, and I much prefer David Corn on Bloggingheads to David Corn on TV.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

It has been too long for this classic pairing.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

If David is unwilling to distinguish between lies and ordinary political bullshit, what about Obama's claim that green tech will create "countless jobs" (as if that were desirable), to take but one example? The overwhelming majority of government estimates of cost, revenue, job creation, or any other "measurable" quantity are either bullshit in and of themselves, or used as a pretext for bullshit by one side or another or both. David's been around Washington a while: is he bullshitting us?

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

"My wife works for Michele Bachmann."


Pinkerton deserves respect for the courage of this admission. I would be embarrassed - no, humiliated - to state this in public, and probably be consulting behind the scenes with a divorce lawyer - so he's obviously a better man than I am. Or something...

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Pinkerton is a liar just like Perry in discussing the stimulus. These are rotten people - they'll say anything. No morals. Fuck him with his "fake jobs" and "no net jobs" bullcrap. No respectable economist supports this garbage. The stimulus created jobs - period. If someone wants to point out that the number of jobs created didn't resolve total unemployment in the wake of a crisis, that's another issue and not a particularly relevant one if discussing the stimulus. Paul Krugman would say the same thing. Defending Perry's bald, utterly dishonest and/or ignorant statement is reprehensible and totally dishonest. These people in the GOP presidential electoral circus are psychos. As are their minions and defenders.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

No doubt about it. What was that price tag the White House was giving for each one, $250,000? Just imagine how many more you could have made if you just mailed $50,000 checks to people in order to melt down pens and utensils in their backyard! Five times as many "jobs"!

"If someone wants to point out that the stimulus didn't do what it was supposed to do, that's another issue and not a particularly relevant one if discussing the stimulus"

--That's how I read this.

It is an unconscionable crime that we allow another side to participate in our democracy. :( I'm as angry about it as you are.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Defend this crap. It's yours. If you want to debate the efficacy of the stimulus, fine. That's not what's at issue. What's at issue is a lie. Bald-faced, with this idiot Pinkerton trying to characterize it as something other than what it is. Perry is a liar as is Pinkerton. It's not "another side" - it's another planet.

And don't rewrite my sentences. You're as asinine in your sorry little response as Pinkerton and Perry. "That's how I read this."

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Sulla vs. Brucds: A Play in One Act.

(SULLA and BRUCDS are walking in a desert. They encounter STARVING MAN, too weak from lack of food to walk)

BRUCDS: It looks like this guy is in pretty bad shape. Let's give him something to eat.

SULLA: I dunno. We've got to keep some food for ourselves, you know. Would it be better to cure him with my JAR OF LEECHES instead?

(Sulla brandishes JAR OF LEECHES)

BRUCDS: I don't think LEECHES are what he needs; he's starving. And besides, we've only got to walk a mile and a half to reach the nearest grocery store. We can spare some food for him.

SULLA: Oh, ok. We'll try it your way. Here, give him this GRAHAM CRACKER.

BRUCDS: One GRAHAM CRACKER? That obviously won't be enough to help him. Can't we spare my SANDWICH?

(BRUCDS pulls a SANDWICH out of his pack)

SULLA: No. It's the one GRAHAM CRACKER or nothing.

BRUCDS: Well I guess it's better than nothing.

(BRUCDS feeds STARVING MAN the GRAHAM CRACKER. Time passes. STARVING MAN's condition does not substantially improve.)

SULLA: I think it was a mistake to feed him the GRAHAM CRACKER. See how he hasn't gotten better?

BRUCDS: Well of course he hasn't gotten better! One GRAHAM CRACKER is clearly not enough. Why don't we give him my SANDWICH?

SULLA: Look, we tried it your way, and it didn't work. This proves that your food-based treatment is, if anything, counterproductive. I don't trust you to take care of this STARVING MAN. It's time to pull out my LEECHES.

(SULLA removes JAR OF LEECHES from his pack, and proceeds to attach LEECHES to STARVING MAN. STARVING MAN groans.)

BRUCDS: I need a stiff drink.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Exactly how some douchebag who has spent his life on various Beltway payrolls claims that repairing school buildings is a "fake job" eludes me.

This crap is disgusting in its hubris and dishonesty.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

That is so weird; it is exactly like that.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Was the point of the stimulus to replace a great number of free market, private jobs paying around $50,000 a year with a few government sponsored jobs paying $250,000? If so, unqualified success. I don't remember that being the purpose of the stimulus though.

Wha...? I don't know where this anger comes from. The election Obama was to have ushered in an Age of Aquarius; only us Tea Party people from Mordor get angry.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

If you're willing to admit that "policy A failed to complete eliminate social problem X that is was designed to ameliorate. Therefore policy A had no beneficial effect whatsoever" is possibly the most obviously fallacious argument of the past three years, I won't stop you.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

i'm at the 14:00 minute mark, and the only thing corn has proven is that the GOP (and Fox) creates the news and liberals report it...its saaad.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

My favorite BloggingHeads duos:

McWhorter and Loury
Horgan and Johnson
Corn and Pinkerton

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

this analogy is...lacking. the implication that we "didn't really try it the liberals way" because we gave the person a graham cracker instead of a sandwich seems to ignore the (potential, I suppose) republican position of doing nothing. let's assume for the sake of argument the ideal republican position was no stimulus. the marginal difference between nothing and a graham cracker is *much* larger than the marginal difference between a graham cracker and a sandwich. you can argue it wasn't big enough until you're blue in the face, but the graham cracker was not some middle ground compromise. moreover, it's not really clear what the sandwich is supposed to be in real dollar terms. why did people like krugman have such certainty at specific dollar amounts? (I think his was around 1.1 trillion) if 780 billion dollars was obviously not enough, why is just over a trillion dollars the magic number? what if instead of a sandwich, we actually needed a whole turkey? a thanksgiving meal? the point is, the stimulus was much closer to the democratic ideal than the republican one, and endlessly complaining about how "if only it had been exactly this big, everything would be peachy!" is an annoyingly unfalsifiable claim.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Actually the point is that Policy A failed to meet its stated goals by any objective measure, making only the most marginal impact on Social Problem X. Thus it is a failure. I never said it had "no beneficial effect". I said that its effects were poor, and not worth the money. Do you know what would have been a better use for the money? To offer an hourly wage job to the unemployed to serve as historical reenactors in a national reproduction of the Wars of the Successors from antiquity.

And by the way, that wouldn't be "my" fault in your little example. I have never underestimated the ability of liberals to fool themselves with rewritten history. Obama and the Democrats had just won a historic victory. Not only was the GOP in the Senate a rump, it was a rump chock full of moderate and liberal Republicans who he could have actually leaned on. He didn't. Do you know why he didn't? Because moderate Democrats were using Specter, Snowe, and Collins as a beard to disguise their dissent from the President's stimulus levels.

Oh, and by the way, those didn't exist. When we speak of a stimulus separate from the one we got, we are speaking of Pelosi's stimulus. And why are we talking about that? Because Obama actually seemed to assume, along with Geitner, that after the TARP business we were probably looking at a normal economic recovery. He didn't want to waste political capital on a stimulus, so he let the Congress write it, hopefully modeled after his "outline". And what did the House propose that you feel would have "solved the problem"? $825 billion; that is to say, $38 billion more. Can you seriously believe, in your most partisan imagination, that this was the difference between success or failure? That is your idea of a 'sandwich to a starving man', $38 billion? Heck, even $138 billion?

Ridiculous. The whole thing was absurd. The reason why so much of the stimulus was dedicated to "state and local governments" was because the Democrats assumed we were in a cyclical recession; deeper than normal but the recovery would also be steeper. That money was supposed to tide them over until that NORMAL recovery kicked in and kept them from having to make serious budget cuts effecting Democratic interest groups like teachers and state employees.

The reason why there were "tax cuts" is so that there would be a pretext that "normal people" saw some of the stimulus, which was considered necessary when people were still grumbling about TARP. Also, Democratic pipe dreams like "green energy companies" needed to be funded or given incentives.

The money spent on actual public works was a ridiculous pittance. It was like two Transportation bills. Those public works, by the by, were how the stimulus was sold in the first place to the public. Look at it: $207 billion dollars in "contracts, loans, and grants". Meanwhile, who is going to seriously suggest that entitlements are stimulative?

Don't you believe in economics? Don't you believe in science?

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Who needs that when you have faith in government?

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Who is making that claim? The argument I, and basically every other liberal who argues about this issue, am making is that the stimulus measures that have been taken and the Fed's monetary policy have helped, but haven't been sufficient.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Sigh. Yes, Sulla, you're right. The ARRA was made up of whatever Fox News says it was made up of, Republicans had no effect upon its size or composition, and I only argue otherwise because I don't believe in science or economics. You win. Feel better now?

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Way to make a strawman escape hatch for yourself. Since you believe in economics, here's a bit of text from your hero Krugman talking about social security in 1997:

Oh, and I was waiting for you to get back to me about Krugman's quote from 2002. I provided you with the original source and everything. Looking forward to your non-reply and passive aggressive complaints to third parties.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Robert Barro - most-cited economist alive, yet not-respectable in the eyes of Democrats? No True Scotsman denies that the stimulus created jobs! Unless, of course, you mean gross jobs..

David's insistence that Perry really meant that no gross jobs were created reminded me of the 2008 SNL parody campaign commercial - "President Obama claims he wants universal health care. Health care for the entire universe? Including... Osama bin Laden??" You have to be horrendously uncharitable to seriously think the other side means this sort of thing. Maybe next time David will be attacking a Republican candidate for discussing "illegal aliens" when humanity hasn't even made first contact yet? He's just going with what these words mean, after all! It's incumbent on everyone else to remove this sort of ambiguity!

Furthermore, David's insistence on trying to find a Republican who is not merely willing to let Wall Street fail, but to characterize Wall Street as evil, is very revealing of the tribalistic prism through which he views these issues. He might as well be trying to get Republicans to criticize capitalism or greed itself - it's pure symbolism. Yes, Wall Street players are greedy. Probably more greedy than the general population. That doesn't mean that you can't believe that the way to address this issue is to have good government institutions that can't be arbitraged! That's the difference between why "Goldman-Sachs is evil!" is an applause line but "Applebees is evil!" is not.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Didn't the original stimulus include a heavy dose of tax cuts and breaks?

Wasn't that put in at the behest of Republicans?

Don't the republicans claim that tax cuts create jobs?

If
1. tax cuts create jobs
2. the stimulus, including tax cuts, created no jobs

Then
3. something does not compute.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Weren't you just chiming in, saying who needs science or economics when you have faith in government? Wasn't that kind of a strawman?

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

First of all, Barro is not a reliable source on the stimulus. That's my opinion - and that of many, many respectable economists. But it doesn't matter. Because if Barro actually claims that the stimulus didn't create any jobs, rather than that in his estimable wisdom as a student of the science of economics he's got a better government job creation plan (Tax Cuts!) that could have created more jobs, he's on drugs - as opposed to simply recycling his usual gobbledygook as a PhD using bad models and theology suited up as "science." There IS a difference and I doubt even Barro has crossed that line. (Of course, much of the stimulus WAS tax cuts, but we'll leave that alone. It was a bad use of government expenditures. But Obama gets no credit for his extensive tax cuts because he's...not part of the GOP tribe.)

No one claims that the stimulus created "gross jobs" in the sense that it created more jobs than were lost in the course of the crisis. That's just a nutty argument. It makes no sense to assume that's the baseline for any discussion of potential jobs plans and argue backward from that to align any crazy assertion with some version of "reality." But this is an example of how dishonest and desperate Republicans are to conjure lies and attempt to defend them with more BS. This is reminiscent Michele Bachmman's Big Lies (corrected from "another of Perry's Big Lies") repeated during the debate, and recycled from practically every nutbag venue that supports these creeps, that the ACA will destroy 800,000 jobs. These creeps claim that this is based on CBO statistics. Of course, the CBO says no such thing. The CBO says that the ACA will take 800,000 people out of the labor market voluntarily, primarily because they won't have to continue in a job they don't want so that they can hang on to health insurance that would otherwise be unavailable to them. This is clear, but Bachmann (corrected from "Perry") turns it into a lie to attack health care reform. Republicans are liars. And comfortable with their condition.

OOOPS: I owe Rick Perry an apology. It was Michele Bachmann who used the 800,000 jobs killed by the ACA line in the last debate, not Perry as I asserted. Sorry Governor.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

President Obama spending his first year and a half on medical care may have been a gutsy, altrusitic endeavor but politicallly that move is turning out to not be an advantage for him. Especially, considering the extraordinary job loss problem and his administration's inability to handle it properly. Perhaps, there is not much he can do about the structural unemployment problem. At one time or another in his three years as president he had the advice and employ of some of the brightest economists in the country and their suggestions have not worked out too well. I saw Austan Goolsbee the president's former econ guy on tv last night plugging Obama's new jobs program and thinking to myself " "is he hoping it will create a large number of jobs or does he know that it will? In other words, I am beginning to question whether the professional economists of all stripes really know what they are talking about or is the American economy so complex and vast that any plan to correct it will bring only marginal improvements at best. At this point, I lean toward the latter.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

I agree with you but unfortunately this happens in election cycles. Jim can be entertaining and even wise (if you ignore his outer space cadettery) away from an election, but the closer we get, the worse he gets. Eli Lake and even Conn Carroll can appear sane in quiet times but I don't expect it for the next 13 months.

To be fair, David doesn't always shoot straight - but that's partly why I like this pairing.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Citing that off-hand Krugman interview comment, in which he was making a narrow point in an unrelated context, as defense of Perry's characterization of Social Security as - at it's core - a Ponzi Scheme that is both unconstitutional and a failure isn't particularly impressive.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Pinkerton wrote a column during the last round claiming that Obama was linked to an admirer of Satan. That, of course, would be Saul Alinsky. Jim's sage advice was that John McCain didn't appear nutty enough having chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate and needed to turn the election to his advantage by linking Obama to Satan.

I'm not kidding! Pinkerton is a nutcase. The fact that he has spent most of his life in one of these fake Beltway jobs getting paid to sit on his butt while he runs his mouth or types out copy for unmemorable screeds doesn't change that unfortunate circumstance.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

The counsellor is also taking cheap shots:
I don't think the jury is buying it.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

I won't bother to wrangle all of the nauseating anti-gay quotes, but Michele Bachmann - having at one point (2004) identified gay marriage as the issue having the biggest impact on our nation in three decades and claiming that gays are "targeting our children" - is the George Wallace of this race.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

So people who disagree with you are not reliable sources on matters where they disagree with you, because the (respectable) people who disagree with those people don't find them reliable. I could list a lot more "respectable" economists who were anti-stimulus (and probably thought the stimulus created no jobs on net), but yes you could easily say that anyone who takes an opposing stance to Krugman and DeLong is not respectable regardless of their other achievements and thus not worthy of consideration.

And the "gross jobs" argument refers to the fact that it's trivial to say that billions in spending have probably created at least one job that would otherwise not exist, even if only for a lobbyist to try to capture a share of that spending. It's so trivial that thinking that this is the crux of the "did the stimulus create jobs?" argument is stupid. The question is concerning net jobs - whether increased spending (and hence expectations of future tax increases / inflation / default) destroyed more jobs than the stimulus created. Personally I think it did, but I certainly don't see that as a trivial point and many respectable economists seem to have lined up against it.

Unless your definition of "respectable" starts with those who Paul Krugman grants credence.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

I haven't followed Jim's writings to know, but that would appear to be evidence enough! Though it is unclear that one would choose McCain with Palin as his muse over Obama with a mythical bogeyman as his. However the electorate's mileage may vary on that.

Still I like these two and David does not always occupy the intellectual high ground.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

No, that's a snide comment about liberals, in general. It's on par with the Tea Party being full of racists and the GOP being anti-science because the Rupture is coming. That was Revelations, right?

DZ's statement is specific to the issue at hand.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

If what you say is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, I find it difficult to believe that Pinkerton would be an esteemed and frequent guest on BHTV.

Let us assume, then, that Pinkerton is invited to speak because he is is a nutcase. What does that say about BHTV?

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

Heh.

Re: Starting a Panic (David Corn & James Pinkerton)
 

I'm sorry, can you please put this in the form of an inane parable that attacks strawmen substituted for my positions?