Alan Kooi Simpson
Dear A,
I cannot locate any online video of Simpson-Bowles' recent Duke talk.
However, the following webpage provides a print summary that corresponds neatly to your own "review" - as well as to the review of friends Holly and Rich (who also attended). http://today.duke.edu/2012/01/debttalk
A few comments…
It is glib of Simpson to say: "We knew we succeeded when we pissed off everyone."
Ron Paul has proposed massive budgetary reform by radical reduction of the United States' military to a "border defense force," and, by so doing, "pisses everyone off."
Ubiquitous disgruntlement, however, does not mean Paul "succeeded."
Similarly, I object to Simpson's use of the word "entitlement" without including the entitlement of defense spending earmarked as a perennial set-aside for The Military Industrial Complex. http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
Eisenhower would second my motion.
51 years ago, Ike dedicated his entire Farewell Address to sounding the alarm over the existential threat to American Democracy presented by The Military-Industrial Complex -- a threat Ike originally denominated The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex. http://www.countercurrents.org/us-turse290404.htm). http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9219858826421983682 /// http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436971/
Today, the threat of the MIC is exponentially greater.
I admire Simpson for criticizing Republican anti-tax lunacy: "People act like raising taxes means [anti-tax advocate] Grover Norquist will come to your house and put a curse on you."
Even Harvard's Thatcherite historian, Niall Ferguson, calls Norquist's madness "a plan to wreck the country." http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/07/24/gop-antitax-dogma-endangers-the-country.html (Ferguson - a thinking conservative - begins his current Newsweek column with this passage: "There are 'two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws…THE RICH AND THE POOR.' The British novelist (and later prime minister) Benjamin Disraeli wrote those words about England in 1845. But they could equally well apply to the United States in 2012.")
Simpson also imparts the mistaken impression that Obama bears disproportionate responsibility for not backing the findings of the Simpson-Bowles Commission, despite Obama's call for 4 trillion in spending cuts versus the GOP's call for a piddling 2.5 trillion.
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-04-13/politics/obama.deficits_1_spending-cuts-deficit-reduction-tax-hikes?_s=PM:POLITICS /// http://www.usnews.com/news/washington-whispers/articles/2011/01/20/house-gop-lists-25-trillion-in-spending-cuts
Clearly there is a grown-up in the room.
It is not Eric Cantor.
Pax on both houses,
Alan
PS Reflecting on Simpson Bowles' talk, Holly and Rich mentioned the ex-Senator's comment that 'if we ever went to war with China over Taiwan (as obliged by Treaty), we would have to borrow money from China to finance war on China.'
Newt Gingrich's elite anti-elitism
Posted by Ezra Klein at 08:16 AM ET, 01/23/2012
- Newt Gingrich served in Congress from 1979 to 1999. After he resigned his seat, he settled down in McLean, VA and sought to forge a new career as one of Washington's highly paid, widely respected, wise men. He began his Center for Health Transformation and consulted for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He filmed anti-global warming commercials with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and co-authored New York Times op-eds with Sen. John Kerry. He served on the bipartisan U.S. Commission on National Security and as co-chair of a task force on UN reform. Newt Gingrich has, in other words, been a key player in Washington since Jimmy Carter was president. Yet in his victory speech in South Carolina, he blasted "the elites in Washington and New York." If Newt Gingrich is not a Washington elite, no one is.
And yet, after three decades among them, Gingrich certainly is not the candidate of Washington elites. Quite the opposite, actually. "It may be implausible that Gingrich can pose as anti-establishment," wrote the Washington Examiner's Tim Carney. "But the establishment is certainly anti-Newt." Well, the party establishment, anyway. For all Gingrich's attacks on the media, the media rather loves Gingrich, as he makes for good television, and gives good quotes.
The question is how much that actually matters. I tend to buy into the prevailing wisdom among political scientists that party elites exert enormous influence over primaries. If the party is against you, it's hard to get much in the way of money, staff or endorsements. If the party is against you, the op-ed pages fill with denunciations of your heterodoxies and ineffectualness, and the attacks on you go largely unanswered by the people with the credibility and standing to swat them away. All of this, and more, has happened to Gingrich. The Republican Party's mobilization against him has been overwhelming and, in Iowa, it appeared to work.
But as Omar said, "you come at the king, you best not miss." And the establishment missed. Gingrich wasn't finished off in Iowa. Mitt Romney hasn't been able to close the deal. Rick Santorum hasn't been able to attract real enthusiasm. And it's now broadly understood that a vote for Gingrich is a vote against the powers-that-be. That's weird, to be sure: the candidate who has been in Washington the longest, who has spent the most time on the Sunday shows, who has the deepest rolodex of New York media elites, who has been third-in-line for the presidency, is running as some kind of insurgent. But that's where we are.
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