(Daniel Ellsberg debates Bill Kristol on C-SPAN, Mar 28, 2003)

Now that all of the neocons are worked up over the possibility that former Sen. Chuck Hagel might be nominated to be our next Sec. of Defense, it seems there's a little dust up going on between documentary film maker Michael Moore and Iraq war cheerleader, Bloody Bill Kristol.

I Want to Give $1000 to Bill Kristol's Favorite Charity – If He'll Just Tell the Truth About Iraq, Oil and Chuck Hagel:

I just sent this to Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard magazine and one of the most influential advocates of our invasion of Iraq. He posted something this morning about my post where I found an old quote from Chuck Hagel about how the Iraq War is all about the oil. I'll let you know when Bill gets back to me. (If you don't know much about Bill, you can find a good introduction here about his pre-war debate with Daniel Ellsberg.)

Dear Bill,

Thanks for your post mentioning me! I didn't realize you visited my website so early on Saturday mornings. Man, I wish we had cleaned up after the party last night.

Anyway, I see you're mad that back in 2007 former Sen. Chuck Hagel said that we were obviously "fighting for oil" in Iraq. You explain this was "vulgar and disgusting" and "could be the straw that breaks the back of Hagel's chances" to be Obama's next Defense Secretary.

Since you feel so strongly about this, I wanted to make sure you heard about four other prominent people who've said the same thing. (I should have mentioned them yesterday with the Chuck Hagel stuff, I apologize.)

• "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." – Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, in his 2007 memoir. (Read about it here. Greenspan then lamely tried to walk this back, when he found out just how politically inconvenient it was…while admitting a Bush White House official told him "unfortunately, we can’t talk about oil.")

• "Of course we should go to war for oil. It's like saying, you're going to war just for oxygen, just for food. We need oil. That's a good reason to go to war." – Ann Coulter, author, April 11, 2011. (Watch her say that here at 37:30.)

• "Of course it’s about oil, it's very much about oil, and we can’t really deny that. From the standpoint of a solider who's now fought in the middle east for six years – my son-in-law's fought there for four years, my daughter's been over there, my son has served the nation – my family has been fighting for a long time." – Gen. John Abizaid, former commander of CENTCOM, October 13, 2007. (Watch Abizaid say this here.)

• "We're not in the middle east to bring sweetness and light to the whole world. That's nonsense. We're in the middle east because we and our European friends and our European non-friends depend on something that comes from the middle east, namely oil." – Midge Decter, author, May 21, 2004. (Listen here, at 35:55.)

I like to think the best about people. I know all you're looking for is an open, honest debate about Chuck Hagel's qualifications – with absolutely no smears or bullying. And because you feel that way, I'm sure you'll want to update what you wrote about Hagel with these quotes, and explain that Alan Greenspan and Ann Coulter and John Abizaid and Midge Decter are vulgar and disgusting and far-left too. Read on...

Digby has more on Moore's post and Midge Decter here: All the neocon Hippies:

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CNN's Ali Velshi continues to use his weekend program, Your Money, as one long free infomercial for the Peterson Group. This Saturday his weekly round of fearmongering over the "fiscal cliff" was with none other than Ayn Rand fan Alan Greenspan, who is apparently now the latest spokesman for the Peterson Group.

And as Stephanie Kelton at Wall Street Pit noted, he seemed to be having a bit of trouble remaining consistent with remarks he's made in the past about our debt and Social Security. I don't think it's a leap at all to assume that he's reading from the talking points of the group who wants to privatize Social Security in order to enrich Wall Street, while standing in front of a wall full of their logos.

Here's more on that from Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism -- Greenspan’s Switch to Debt Scaremongering:

Stephanie Kelton provides two video clips to underscore the point that until quite recently, Greenspan made the point that MMT types do: that the US as a currency issuer, can always pay its debts (it might incur too much inflation, but with the economy having as much slack as it does, that’s far from a pressing worry).

What I found striking was the clip of Paul Ryan pressing the man formerly known as Maestro when he was still the Fed chairman to agree that private retirement accounts would be more stable than a government sponsored program. That’s such a Big Lie I’m amazed anyone can peddle it with a straight face. [...]

After 20 years of demonizing government debt and pushing for government in miniature, billionaire Pete Peterson and his allies have managed to get the public fixated on their message rather than their motives, and the Ryan con job serves as a useful reminder.

One long-standing effort has been to “privatize” Social Security, so that Wall Street could charge fees for managing the money. Note that some countries, like Australia, mandate that a big chunk of wage payments be invested in superannuation accounts (I’m not current on the law, but when I lived in Australia, it was 9% of pay, and I believe it has risen since then. The ATO’s pages on this are too layered to get a quick answer). And even if they don’t get a mandated contributions regime, merely reducing Social Security payments will force people to save and invest more, and will similarly enrich the brokerage and investment management industries.

But the other rationale is more basic: the rich want taxes lower, period. They want to roll the clock back to the 1890s. [...] This is our future unless ordinary people wake up and oppose it. Not surprisingly, Greenspan, who was never on the side of little people, has officially cast his lot in with it.

Full transcript below the fold.

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From Democracy Now -- Former Financial Regulator William Black: Occupy Wall Street a Counter to White-Collar Fraud:

Broadcasting on the road from Kansas City, Missouri, we’re joined by William Black, a white-collar criminologist, former financial regulator, and author of "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One." Black teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and recently took part in Occupy Kansas City. "If you look [at the Occupy protests], not just nationwide, but worldwide, you will see some pretty consistent themes developing," Black says.

"Those themes include: we have to deal with the systemically dangerous institutions, the 20 biggest banks that the administration is saying are ticking time bombs, that as soon as one of them fails, we go back into a global crisis. We should fix that. There’s no reason to have institutions that large. That’s a theme. That accountability is a theme, that we should put these felons in prison... That we should get jobs now, and that we should deal with the foreclosure crisis. So those are four very common themes that you can see in virtually any of these protest sites... I think, over time, you won’t necessarily have some grand written agenda, but you’ll have, as I say, increasing consensus. And it’s a very broad consensus."

Full transcript at the link above.

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Well, we had one bright spot on the Sunday morning talks shows this weekend -- the fact that Rachel Maddow was a panel member on Meet the Press. The downside, she got stuck debating Republican hack, Alex Castellanos who just regurgitated one Republican lie-filled talking point after another during the entire segment.

When responding to whether his buddy Mitt Romney should have shown some leadership and weighed in on the debt-ceiling debacle before it was over with or not, Castellanos tried blaming the downgrade by S&P on government spending and too much debt. But Maddow corrected him about just who exactly they blame if you actually read their report -- Republicans playing chicken with the debt ceiling and their rigid refusal to ever allow taxes to be raised.

MADDOW: To the extent that we are taking the S&P downgrade as a serious thing, that we believe that S&P has the credibility to have done this, and this actually does levy a blow against the U.S. economic credibility. I mean, honestly, we should talk about the fact that during the financial crisis, S&P was handing out AAA ratings to any pile of junk tall enough to reach the doorbell and ask. So they do not have the most credibility on this. But if we are going to take them seriously, let's take them on their word about why they did this. They said they did this because of brinksmanship over the debt ceiling. They did not say they did this because there's too much government spending.

GREGORY: All right. Let's, let...

MADDOW: They said they did this because of Republicans holding the debt...

CASTELLANOS: Because of the debt.

MADDOW: No. The debt ceiling. Brinksmanship...

CASTELLANOS: Yeah, but the debt ceiling is the ceiling...

MADDOW: ...is their word.

Naturally Castellanos did his best to interrupt her so she couldn't make her point. Austan Goolsbee got a chance to follow up and agree with Maddow on the fact that Republicans were the ones out there actually insane enough to be pretending that default might be acceptable.

Steve Benen made some similar points in his post from today A pox on one house:

But for all the complaining I do about this, it’s only fair to note when someone gets this right. National Journal’s Edmund Andrews, for example, had a good piece yesterday that specifically rejected the notion that the downgrade is “a pox-on-both-your-houses curse at the intransigence of both Republicans and Democrats.” [...]

And who instigated this brinksmanship, refused to compromise, and delayed a resolution until literally the last day?

Putting aside, at least for now, whether S&P has the credibility to make such sweeping condemnations, it’s worth emphasizing the extent to which the agency pointed the finger at congressional Republicans. It not only directly attributed blame to the GOP hostage strategy of the past few months, it lamented the very idea of allowing “the statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default” to “become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy,” before complaining that “the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues.”

Andrews added, “[I]t’s hard to read the S&P analysis as anything other than a blast at Republicans.”

Full transcript below the fold.

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As irritated as I can get with Bill Maher at times -- and tonight was no exception, with him putting on one of the embarrassments to my city on his show that rates right in there with The Gateway Pundit for making St. Louisians look like fools, namely Dana Loesch -- I'd say Maher got this one right, with reality television and the real income disparity in the United States that they're glossing over.

Maher: America's rich aren't giving you money, they're taking your money. Between the years 1980 and 2005 80% of all new income generated in this country went to the richest 1%. Let me put that in terms that even you fatass teabaggers, I'm sorry, can understand.

Say 100 Americans get together and order a 100 slice pizza. The pizza arrives and the first guy takes 80 slices. And if someone suggests, why don't you just take 79 slices, that's socialism! I know, I know. I know, I know, it's just a TV show. But it does reinforce the stupid idea people have that rich people would love us and share with us if only they got to walk a mile in our cheap plastic shoes.

But they're the reason the shoe factory moved to China. We have this fantasy that our interests and the interests of the super rich are the same. Like somehow the rich will eventually get so full that they'll explode. And the candy will rain down on the rest of us.

Like there's some kind of pinata of benevolence. But here's the thing about a pinata. It doesn't open on its own. You have to beat it with a stick.

To which teabagger Loesch gets terribly upset with the "tone" of Bill's rhetoric which he rightfully ignored because anyone who follows Maher knows he's not talking about literally beating the hell out of anyone here and it's a metaphor for forcing them to do what's right through other means like protests and the political process. That said, I'm sure him joking about dropping Greenspan in with a bunch of poor people will be something she'll be blogging about to take literally as well.

Maher: So I say, forget Secret Millionaire, I have a better idea for a show. Every week one of the men responsible for the global financial meltdown is dropped into a poor neighborhood and... and that's it. No cameras. We just leave him there. I call it I'm Alan Greenspan, get me out of here.

It's a sad state of affairs that our country has been left in by corporate greed and the fact that most of the have-mores could care less about the American worker. Thank you, Bill, for giving the working class a voice on the subject. It almost makes me want to forgive you for having Dana Loesch on as a guest. If you're running short on suggestions for who to have on your show, I could give you at least fifty or a hundred as I'm sure the readers here at C&L could as well who would make for better conversation than Loesch.

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Wow, what do you know... for the second time in a row David Gregory decided to hammer one of the Congressional Minority Leaders about the cost of extending the Bush tax cuts. Two weeks ago it was John Boehner. Now Mitch McConnell got his turn to respond to Alan Greenspan's remarks that the Republicans should not be extending them without a way to pay for them. McConnell's response after Gregory hammered on him after he refused to answer the question initially:

SEN. McCONNELL: You're talking about current tax policy. Why did all it of a sudden become something that we, quote "paid for." Look, the problem is the spending problem. If we grind down the spending, we will begin to get a handle on this mounting debt, and if you push this economy further backward, we'll get less revenue for the government, not more. Raising taxes in the middle of a recession on the major job generator in America, small business, is a very, very bad idea.

So much for that deficit they claim they're so concerned about. Not when it comes to tax cuts for the rich. David Gregory should have called him out for his lie about how many small businesses are going to be affected by the tax cuts expiring as well, but hey... it's David Gregory. It's unusual for him to even this aggressive with a Republican when they come his show so my expectations are pretty low when it comes to him getting one of these guys off of their talking points for the day.

He did ask him another good question during this segment as well though. When McConnell said the Republicans would be willing to consider going along with the recommendations from President Obama's deficit commission, Gregory asked him why they needed a Democratic president's commission to figure out what the Republican's think should be cut. McConnell punted on that one and Gregory let it go of course. McConnell claimed he didn't want the matter to become a "political football". Yeah right. Everything is a "political football" with the Republicans.

They do absolutely nothing if that they don't think they can use to gain a political advantage, no matter how bad it is for the country. You could say the same for a lot of them on both sides of the aisle, but the level of just sheer callousness for anything other than remaining in power and protecting their rich campaign donors from the GOP when the country is in this bad of shape is just reprehensible. They're hoping the Democrats do their dirty work for them on Medicare and Social Security so they don't take the political hit for doing what we all know they'd like to do, destroy and privatize both programs.

Transcript below the fold.

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Republicans have long said that tax cuts don't need to be paid for but House Minority Leader John Boehner refused to use the talking point Sunday.

NBC's David Gregory asked Boenher he agreed with Alan Greenspan that tax cuts do not pay for themselves. The Minority Leader sidestepped the question.

"The only way to get our economy going again and solve the budget problems is to get the economy moving, get more people back to work where they can care for their own families, and begin to expand the tax rolls to bring more revenue for the federal government," began Boehner. "What we have to do is we have to get our arms around the spending spree that's going on in washington, DC."

"You're not being responsive to a specific point, which is how can you be for cutting the deficit and also cutting taxes as well when they're not paid for?" asked Gregory.

"Listen, you can't raise taxes in the middle of a weak economy without risking the double-dip in this recession," replied Boehner, still not answering the question.

"That's not the question. Are tax cuts paid for or not?" pressed Gregory.

"You're trying to get into this Washington game and their funny accounting over there," said Boehner.

Time for your weekly Driftglass and Bluegal podcast. Enjoy everybody!

You can listen to past editions here and at http://dgbgpodcast.blogspot.com/, and the podcast is also available on i-Tunes. If you enjoy these as much as I do, donations are greatly appreciated. Please consider throwing five bucks in the hat.

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Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan believes that the US should "follow the law" and let the Bush tax cuts lapse. He disagreed Sunday with Republicans who say that tax cuts pay for themselves.

"I am very much in favor of tax cuts but not with borrowed money," Greenspan said during an appearance on NBC.

"The problem that we've gotten into in recent years is that spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous and my view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here," said Greenspan.

"You don't agree with Republican leaders who say tax cuts pay for themselves?" asked NBC's David Gregory.

"They do not," Greenspan replied firmly.

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Pete Davis at Capital Games and Gains gives his take on Alan Greenspan, of all people, now calling for the end of the Bush tax cuts.

Pardon my incredulity! Alan Greenspan just taped an interview with Judy Woodruff for broadcast tomorrow and over the weekend. This Bloomberg News story quotes him saying, "They should follow the law and let them [the Bush tax cuts] lapse." He believes it is more important at this point to cut burgeoning deficits than to funnel more money to taxpayers. In a telephone interview after the taping, Greenspan acknowledged that this "probably will" slow growth.
...
Recall also, in 2001, Fed Chair Alan Greenspan's crucial testimony in support of the Bush tax cuts. That gave Congress the high sign that the Fed wouldn't choke off that much fiscal stimulus.

This is another example of the adage that if you live long enough you'll see everything, including Alan Greenspan getting religion on the federal deficit.

Recall that in 2001 Greenspan warned that with the Government swimming in money (a then ballooning budget surplus) the Federal Debt would soon be paid off and that we wouldn't know what to do with the all the excess capital! Better to get into the private hands of the wealthy as soon as possible, lest it get wasted.

The most recent projections, granted their tentativeness, nonetheless make clear that the highly desirable goal of paying off the federal debt is in reach before the end of the decade. This is in marked contrast to the perspective of a year ago when the elimination of the debt did not appear likely until the next decade.

But continuing to run surpluses beyond the point at which we reach zero or near-zero federal debt brings to center stage the critical longer-term fiscal policy issue of whether the federal government should accumulate large quantities of private (more technically nonfederal) assets. At zero debt, the continuing unified budget surpluses currently projected imply a major accumulation of private assets by the federal government. This development should factor materially into the policies you and the Administration choose to pursue.

Recall also that when Bill Clinton office the Federal Debt was approximately $6 trillion, having quadrupled under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, it was now actually reversing.

Jump ahead to the end of George W. Bush's presidency and the debt, aided with the Bush tax cuts, had risen to over $10 trillion. So much for the end of the National Debt. Here's what happened in graphical form.