Every political campaign exaggerates and dissembles. This practice may not be admirable — it’s surely one reason so many Americans are disenchanted with politics — but it’s something we’ve all come to expect. Candidates claim the right to make any boast or accusation as long as there’s a kernel of veracity in there somewhere.

Even by this lax standard, Romney too often fails. Not to put too fine a point on it, he lies. Quite a bit.

“Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history,” Romney claims on his campaign website. This is utterly false. The truth is that spending has slowed markedly under Obama.

An analysis published last week by MarketWatch, a financial news website owned by Dow Jones & Co., compared the yearly growth of federal spending under presidents going back to Ronald Reagan. Citing figures from the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office, MarketWatch concluded that “there has been no huge increase in spending under the current president, despite what you hear.”

Quite the contrary: Spending has increased at a yearly rate of only 1.4 percent during Obama’s tenure, even if you include some stimulus spending (in the 2009 fiscal year) that technically should be attributed to George W. Bush. This is by far the smallest — I repeat, smallest — increase in spending of any recent president. (The Washington Post’s Fact Checker concluded the spending increase figure should have been 3.3 percent.)

In Bush’s first term, by contrast, federal spending increased at an annual rate of 7.3 percent; in his second term, the annual rise averaged 8.1 percent. Reagan comes next, in terms of profligacy, followed by George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and finally Obama, the thriftiest of them all.

The MarketWatch analysis was re-analyzed by the nonpartisan watchdogs at Politifact who found it “Mostly True” — adding the qualifier because some of the restraint in spending under Obama “was fueled by demands from congressional Republicans.” Duly noted, and if Romney wants to claim credit for the GOP, he’s free to do so. But he’s not free to say that “federal spending has accelerated” under Obama, because any way you look at it, that’s a lie.

Another example: “(Obama) went around the Middle East and apologized for America,” Romney said in March. “You know, instead of apologizing for America he should have stood up and said that as the president of the United States we all take credit for the greatness of this country.” That’s two lies for the price of one. Obama did not, in fact, go around the Middle East, or anywhere else, apologizing for America. And he did, on many occasions, trumpet American greatness and exceptionalism.

Romney offers few specifics, but the conservative Heritage Foundation published a list of “Barack Obama’s Top 10 Apologies” — not one of which is an apology at all.

One alleged instance is a speech Obama gave to the Turkish parliament in 2009, in which he said the United States “is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history … (and) still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans.” If the folks at Heritage and at the Romney campaign don’t know that this is a simple statement of fact, they really ought to get out more.

Romney does single out the following Obama statement from a 2009 interview: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Romney says this acknowledgement — that others might have as much national pride as we do — means Obama doesn’t really believe in American exceptionalism at all.

But in the same interview, Obama went on to say he was “enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world,” and to tout U.S. economic and military might as well as the nation’s “exceptional” democratic values. So he should be accused of chest-thumping, not groveling.

I could go on and on, from Romney’s laughable charge that Obama is guilty of “appeasement” (ask Osama bin Laden) to claims of his job-creating prowess at Bain Capital. He seems to believe voters are too dumb to discover what the facts really are — or too jaded to care.

On both counts, I disagree.

Eugene Robinson’s email address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com. (c) 2012, Washington Post Writers Group. His column is licensed to run on TMV in full

It’s pretty clear to me, however, that money isn’t the only Big M explanation for Walker’s apparent current lead in the polls. Perhaps not even the most important one. The more important M Factor at work here is Mean-spiritedness.

Why have so many people in Wisconsin bought into the Walker way of political thinking? Why have public service unions proven such a popular target? Are members of the public service unions Walker has been bashing so successfully wallowing in luxury at the public’s expense?

Of course not. These union members have simply enjoyed, through the process of collective bargaining, a traditional American standard of living no longer accessible to so many others.

A growing number of these others in Wisconsin have lost many of the rights and perks that make up our traditional standard of living. The job security. Wages that grow faster than inflation every year. Benefits like health insurance paid for by employers.

The Walker mean-spirited pitch? These union people are getting something you don’t have. I won’t make your own lives better, but you’ll at least feel better if state employers can be brought down, that the unions protecting rights and perks you no longer have protected can be undermined.

Similar billionaire underwritten mean-spirited politics is at work in other realms like with food stamps and Medicaid. Why should others get free food when you work so hard to buy food for your your own family, just because these others are so poor? Why should others get free health care with Medicaid when your own health care costs are so high, just because these others are so poor?

You can govern in difficult times by bringing people together, by appealing to their better angels. Or you can take the 50-percent-plus-1 approach to governance, turn a tad more than half the voters into a nasty-minded mini-majority conned into identifying their own interests with those of their financial betters, while also turning them hostile towards anyone less well-off than themselves.

A line from a famous poem by W.H. Auden runs: “We must love one another or die.” The State of Wisconsin has died a little since Scott Walker took office. The cruel mean-spiritedness of many Republic Party nostrums these days is driving the whole country further and further away from communion with our better angels.

It’s that time of year again: The U.S. State Department has issued its annual report on human rights around the world. And, as has become the custom, states like North Korea and China, which disapprove of America’s rendering, issue denunciations of the report.

We have posted three articles, two from China and one from North Korea, that encompass the latest counter-criticisms of the United States by the two one-party states.

First, in an article headlined America ‘Disqualified’ as Global Human Rights Judge, China’s state-run Global Times, informs that Beijing has issued its own report on human rights in the United States that highlights America’s ‘dismal human rights record,’ which renders it ineligible to judge others:

“The cases highlighted in this report are tiny but illustrative reflection of America’s dismal record on human rights … America’s tarnished human rights record renders it a morally, politically and legally feeble judge of global human rights.”

Also from the Global Times, although this and most Chinese editorials and op-eds are published almost simultaneously in all of its media, in an editorial headlined Human Rights Criticism of China a Fig Leaf for Diminishing U.S. Influence, Beijing argues that given America’s loss of financial and military influence, the human rights issue is Washington’s last remaining ‘ace in the hole.’ :

“While China’s improving human rights situation brings no benefit to the United States, discrediting China by finding fault with its rights record pays important dividends. In an age when Washington is losing its economic advantage and cannot use its military might at will, America has no ace in the hole left other than the human rights issue.”

Finally, one of Pyongyang’s state-mouthpieces, the Rodong Sinmun, quotes a commentary from another state-run media outlet, the Korean Central News Agency, which cites U.S. abuses that the Kim Jong-un regime asserts disqualifies Washington from criticizing anyone else. Say what one will about young despot Kim Jong-un, the quality of commentary coming out of Pyongyang since he came to power at least sounds more sane that its former Stalinist drivel:

“The right to food, clothing and housing – the most elementary of all human rights, are mercilessly suppressed in a society where the law of the jungle reigns and money is everything. … Furthermore, the consequences of America’s deeply-rooted racial discrimination regularly manifest in the fabric of everyday life. … The unending violence against women fully betrays how a barbaric U.S. society is facing the end of an era.”

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

WASHINGTON — Progressives have yearned for President Obama to follow Harry Truman’s strategy from the 1948 campaign by giving his Republican opponents hell. Now that Obama is doing just that, his critics say he’s not looking presidential.

As a longtime advocate of the Truman approach (and a fan of Give ‘Em Hell Harry and his way of doing politics), I think Obama is doing the right thing. Critics of the battling style miss what Obama needs to get done in this campaign and also ignore the extent to which so many of his foes refuse to treat him in a presidential way. Far better for him to be a fully engaged fighter with passion for what he’s saying than a distant, regal figure pretending that the other side is playing by a dainty set of rules.

But if 1948 is to be the model, what can we learn from Truman’s experience, and how does that election relate the one we’re having in 2012?

The similarities are important. Truman in 1946, like Obama in 2010 (and, for that matter, Bill Clinton in 1994), suffered a severe setback in midterm elections that substantially strengthened the hands of his congressional adversaries. Truman’s opponent, Thomas E. Dewey, was a Northeastern Republican governor who, like Mitt Romney, was not a favorite of the most conservative wing of his party. But unlike Romney, Dewey was a genuine moderate trying hard not be ensnared in the agenda of the GOP Congress.

For Truman, tying the “do-nothing” Republican Congress around Dewey’s neck was essential to reminding the many New Dealers in the electorate of the identity of FDR’s true heir. Dewey spent the whole campaign in a box. If he danced away from congressional Republicans, he looked unprincipled. If he embraced them, he put himself right where Truman wanted him.

To the extent that Romney can be tied to an unpopular Republican House and an obstructionist minority in the Senate, their unpopularity will rub off on him. But unlike Dewey, Romney has largely endorsed his congressional colleagues’ agenda. Obama’s task is to argue that whatever moderate sounds Romney made during his career in Massachusetts politics, these are irrelevant to how he would govern with the GOP likely to be in the congressional saddle. Obama wants to paint Romney as someone who would be a pawn of a runaway right-wing Congress, thus challenging both Romney’s strength of conviction and his ideology. As Truman did with Dewey, Obama wants to offer Romney the unpalatable choice of offending his party or offending swing voters.

There is also an advantage in Obama directly taking on Romney’s background in private equity at Bain Capital. By raising these questions himself, Obama signaled that he would not let criticisms from such Democrats as Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker force him to back down from a challenge he knows he needs to lodge against Romney’s claims as a “job creator.” By the end of last week, Booker had eased off while the Bain issue was still alive, to the point that even Rush Limbaugh was forced to acknowledge that private equity was about profit-making, not job creation.

And if Republicans wish to argue that Obama’s vigorous anti-Romney campaigning is un-presidential, they have to answer for George W. Bush’s unashamed attacks against Democrat John Kerry in 2004. Sara Fagen, an adviser to Bush in that campaign, recently told Peter Baker of The New York Times that Bush “almost never mentioned” Kerry, “certainly not this early.”

The truth of this depends on what the meaning of the word “almost” is. In February 2004, for example, Bush mocked Kerry — he referred to him as “one senator from Massachusetts” – as being “‘for tax cuts and against them. For NAFTA and against NAFTA. For the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act. In favor of liberating Iraq and opposed to it.” The next month, Bush accused Kerry by name of being “willing to gut the intelligence services” with a “deeply irresponsible” proposal to cut intelligence spending. There is no record of Republicans complaining that these political assaults were beneath a president.

Like Truman — and, for that matter, like Bush — Obama confronts a sharply divided country, the need to rally his own supporters, and the imperative of persuading undecided voters that electing his opponent would be a dangerous risk. What Truman taught is that Americans would rather see a president with the strength to fight than a politician with such sensitive sensibilities that he leaves all the tough stuff to others.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. (c) 2012, Washington Post Writers Group. This column is licensed to run on TMV in full.

UPDATE:

The Huffington Post has published a piece on the Associated Press report that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are filing for disability benefits at a historic rate.

As of this writing, there are already 618 comments (with 34 more pending).

I realize that many of our readers would not “be caught dead” visiting the HuffPost.

However, I would recommend that you take a chance this Memorial Day and venture to that site and browse through those comments.

Skip the ones that blame Bush for the Iraq disaster and that blame Obama for the continuing carnage in Afghanistan.

Skip the ones that reflect a twisted political or anti-war agenda.

And especially skip the callous and cynical comments such as “Great—-just what the USA needs—-more entitlements!!!” and ”Those are the things you need to think about before you sign up to go to foreign countries to kill the local inhabitants.”

Some will say, “That doesn’t leave many.” Perhaps, but those that “are left” are the heart wrenching accounts by widows, wives, sons and daughters of our veterans from our many wars, that tell us that these wounds and injuries — physical and mental — are real, are horrendous and debilitating and must be adequately addressed by the nation and the people who sent these brave men and women into battle.

And while our readers are at it, perhaps they may also want to read an opinion piece in the New York Times, written by a former U.S. Marine who, in 2001, was part of the initial force of Marines who landed in Afghanistan and who, in 2003, took part in the heavy fighting of the first wave of the invasion of Iraq, and who writes about the hell he has been through since coming home.

==

Original Post:

As we remember and honor those who have fought and died in all our wars, let us not forget the hundreds of thousands who have been injured and continue to be injured — physically and mentally — in our two most recent wars.

This sad reality is poignantly brought home this Memorial Day weekend by an Associated Press report, published in the Stars and Stripes which tells us that an astounding “45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related.”

According to the Stars and Stripes:

That is more than double the estimated 21 percent who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told the AP.

These new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea, just two.”

In its report, the Associated Press postulates that there may be many factors that drive up these figures: “[T]he weak economy, more troops surviving wounds, and more awareness of problems such as concussions and PTSD.”

Other factors and circumstances pointed out by the Associated Press which “spent three months reviewing records and talking with doctors, government officials and former troops to take stock of the new veterans” :

More — 28 percent of those filing disability claims — are from the Reserves and National Guard rather than career military.

“More of the new veterans are women, accounting for 12 percent of those who have sought care through the VA… Some female veterans are claiming PTSD due to military sexual trauma…”

The different types of injuries incurred by the new veterans, such as those caused by improvised bombs and the fact that improved body armor and improved battlefield care has “allowed many of them to survive wounds that in past wars proved fatal.”

Please read more about these somber statistics and the horrific injuries adding up to some staggering numbers here.

Image: www.shutterstock.com

Recent Time and Newsweek covers constitute last gasps in the dying newsweekly business. Of greater concern, however, is that while these magazines are already in media’s rearview mirror, their turn toward tabloid-style sensationalism reflects what is happening all along the information highway.

You saw or heard about the covers that caused the fuss: Time with a 26-year-old mother breast feeding her unusually mature 3-year-old son; Newsweek with a rainbow halo over Barack Obama’s head and the line, “America’s first gay president.” Selling magazines and tabloid newspapers with shock and schlock isn’t new, but the fact that the techniques have gone viral — to use new media’s favorite term — is troubling.

One day’s front-page headlines on AOL: “Grandma Goes to Walmart, Vanishes” and “I Ate to Scare Classmates Away.” That same day CNN.com’s top items were flesh-eating bugs and “Horse bolts into ocean, swims 2 miles.” On the conservative Drudge Report: “Rocks Found at Beach Ignite in Woman’s Pocket.”

This is now the standard stuff of top Internet sites as well as cable-TV, broadcast TV morning shows and, of course, local TV newscasts. Even many of the most reputable news organizations, such as the Los Angeles Times, play it straight on their printed front pages but turn frisky on the Web. The flesh-eating bugs and burning rocks — plus several celebrity items — were front-page news on the Times’ site.

One major reason for this condition involves the difference between serving a stable, subscription-based audience versus non-paid, transient customers. News organizations that charge for content, especially via ongoing subscriptions, face less pressure to woo readers with the most eye-opening developments of the moment. Free media, and publications largely reliant on single-copy sales, are in a constant struggle for attention.

Time and Newsweek are goosing up covers in a desperate effort to stimulate newsstand sales and media buzz. The most popular Websites, almost all offering content for free, play the grabber game minute-to-minute, knowing that readers are just a click away from disappearing. As long as the “free model” persists in new media, the trend toward sensationalism will continue.

Another factor is the 24/7 pace of modern communication. “Breaking News” is the mantra of cable coverage — even if much of it is hardly newsworthy and is barely breaking. A truck in flames on a Midwest Interstate might qualify as breaking news on national cable — especially if there’s video — but would never appear in a summary of the day’s most important developments.

Then, too, there is the popularity of “reality” and celebrity-driven programming across the TV spectrum. These shows came along at just the right time to synergize with other media. Contestants perform at night and show up the next morning on competing networks to talk about it. Not since Charles Van Doren captivated the nation on the NBC quiz program “Twenty One” has media paid so much attention to TV-created competition — and it should be remembered that Van Doren’s appeal was his intellect and not, to cite a current NBC show, how much weight he could lose from one week to the next. The fact that “Twenty One” was rigged only made for better tabloid headlines.

Finally, and sadly, increased competition among media often brings out the worst in news judgment. Consumers are blessed to have so many digital options from which to choose, and cursed that so many of them vie for attention by seeking the lowest content denominator.

While industry observers tend to view the market as divided between “paid” and “free,” the distinction is also increasingly between “serious” and “superficial.” There are notable exceptions, but that’s the trend.

Much of what we get as news these days isn’t worth the pixels it’s displayed with.

Peter Funt is a writer and speaker and can be reached at www.CandidCamera.com. ©2012 Peter Funt. Columns distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate. His column is licensed to run on TMV in full.

Using the fiat currency reality of MMT, we know that the issuing government can, at will, create and destroy money. The most common method for creating it is by spending it into existence on goods and services (or giving it to people who are incapable of providing goods and services). The most common (possibly the only) method of destroying it is by taxes. The purpose of government spending should be to buy the goods and services it needs.

That is it.

The purpose of government taxes is to prevent out-of-control inflation. That is it. In addition to taxes, the government (from here on in I will be referring to the government as that which issues the fiat currency, please keep in mind that US states and EZ countries such as Greece are NOT issuers of fiat currency) can use lender-of-last-resort prices to help set the inflation rate. Whether we are talking about the Federal Reserve or the Treasury Department is actually, from a macroeconomic perspective, irrelevant.

Thus: (not all suggestions are mine, go here to read from one of its originators: http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf )

The government can (and should) offer anyone (of legal age and not 100% disabled, of course) a job at minimum wage with benefits. This should be limited only by the person’s eligibility to work in the United States (illegal immigrants can be excluded if you want). The minimum wage would, then, as a virtual guarantee, really be the minimum wage. The reason is that few, if any, people would work for less money. Thus, if they could automatically get a government job, they would take that instead of one offering less money (perhaps some would rather work for a different boss or something, but that’s small potatoes in the macro economy). This would, for the first time, establish a real minimum wage in the country.

Any business that could not offer the same wages and benefits would simply be priced out of the market by the government. The jobs being offered should include a certain amount of time to allow these transient workers to look for employment in the private sector (through job training, searching, etc.) What the government did with these people would vary over time, but could include nearly anything that would be safe (thus, one would not put such workers as prison guards, but might have them file papers or conduct data entry).

The government would no longer link expenditures to taxes. Since taxes are for the purpose of curbing inflation (the reality, not the myth), there is little to no sense in pretending that taxes must equal expenditures. After a transition period, the Treasury Department (includes the Federal Reserve, as mentioned above) would start setting an inflation rate. We need the transition period because we now have lots of people working who were unemployed before.

How do we set the inflation rate? Taxes and Overnight Lending Rates. How do we currently control inflation? To be perfectly honest, although not always through deliberate planning of such, we control inflation through taxes and the Overnight Lending Rates. The Fed rate is done with planning towards inflation. The taxes are not currently done that way.

Some of the arguments against such a policy would be epithets such as “Socialism” or “Communism” or “Government take-over of [fill in the blank]”. Let me ask you this, “Would such a system be harmful to society? If so, how?” How is it useful for us to have twenty percent of our eligible workforce either unemployed or under-employed? In addition, as was often done during the Great Depression, the government could outsource the transient labor to local officials (states, local communities, etc.) They would probably need to put into place safeguards against cheating of all kinds. They would also need to establish a minimum level of benefits for workers.

All of these things are the types of things our elected officials should be capable of doing! Why else would we elect them?

The only real problem with “creating” money to pay government expenditures is the possibility of inflation (or even hyperinflation). Thus, we need to have a flexible tax policy to deal with the items that cause such inflation. Again, after the transition period, we would have Treasury look at the real inflation rate. This would include food and energy prices (where it currently excludes them). Due to the volatility of such prices, one could use a running three-year average for these items. This would prevent one month of increase (or decrease) from disproportionately affecting the value. Next, Treasury would highlight for congress and the president which items appeared to be fueling inflation above the “acceptable” level.

Thus, we would look at why such inflation was occurring and could easily slow things down (if needed) through taxes. Remember, taxes take money out of the system. That is one of their only purposes (at least when the money is a fiat, non-exchangeable currency). The other purpose is to set value (since one needs the sovereign currency to pay one’s taxes), so all other values become related to the tax base.

Politically this could be a major problem for our elected officials. They would be under enormous pressure to allow more inflation in certain areas (whichever ones the lobbyists wanted). This would have to be prevented. Whether such prevention occurred through banning lobbyists or through threatening politicians with tar-and-feathering (or some other method), such prevention would be mandatory to a viable running of such a system. In addition, there might be enormous pressure from workers to get the minimum wage raised, however, such an action would, virtually by definition, cause either an increase in the GDP (through increased purchasing power fueling expansion) or job loss (due to workers’ pay requirements shutting down companies).

Either way, the effect would be noticeable and could be remedied if the more undesirable outcome (unemployment) occurred. It would not be too hard to convince previously-employed people that the minimum wage got too high. They would feel it in their pocket books (as the fewer goods being produced would lead, at least initially, to inflation).

I have not lain out everything here, but it gives you, the reader, some idea of what is really possible. That our politicians appear to be completely oblivious to the reality of how money is created (and destroyed), what taxes actually do, how the accounts at the Federal Reserve actually work, and what the implications of the Chinese, Japanese, German and other foreign entities holding Treasury Certificates really is (hint: we don’t need them to buy the bonds, they do it because they don’t plan on spending the money any time soon and would like to earn whatever nominal interest they can get) all lead to a great deal of unnecessary suffering, waste, loss of opportunity, and, ultimately, political nonsense.

We do not need to balance the budget in order to prevent our children from having to pay our debts. Our children will consume the goods and services they produce, just as we consume the goods and services that we produce. We should not be cutting educational funding. Educational funding is likely the only source that will allow us to retire with some semblance of financial security.

In other words, our children need to be innovative enough to produce more with less, just as we have done, as did our parents. Without innovation, this can not happen. Thus, the worst of all possible political plans is to cut educational funding (where do such politicians expect to get innovation?)

One last point: for all the Baby-Boomers out there who are worried about retirement funding: is it the amount of money that you need or how much that money can obtain for you that really counts. Financially, those shooting for retirement are (more or less) competing against each other and (to some extent) the younger generations for the goods and services that will be produced in the future (that is, when the BB generation is retired). If there are more goods and services per person available, then the cost for said items will likely be less. If there are fewer goods and services available per person then retirement is “gonna be a bitch!” Either way, the Social Security payments can be met by the government; the only problem will be how much those payments will buy.

It is not Insolvency that faces us in the future, it is Inflation, and that is the real lesson of MMT.

Robert Coutinho is a disabled pharmaceutical chemist living in Massachusetts. He has been learning about life, the universe, and everything since he was born in 1963. He has had little else to do since his disability began in 1997.

How confused and ‘dangerous’ has German foreign policy become? For the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, German Vice Admiral Ulrich Weisser [ret.] pulls no punches, as he lays out in detail how Germany has disappointed the United States and its NATO partners in Europe with its U.N. Security Council abstention on action in Libya, its refusal to allow its forces to face the same dangers as its coalition partners in Afghanistan, and its unhelpful attitude toward vital cooperation with Russia on missile defense.

For the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Vice Admiral Ulrich Weisser writes in part:

Germany is untrustworthy. The expectation on the part of our most important European allies and America that we would adopt a reasonable strategic role in and for Europe was bitterly disappointed when our country sidelined itself in the face of a looming humanitarian crisis in Libya. Germany’s abstention at the U.N. Security Council has far-reaching consequences.

The German position is also diametrically opposed to the future needs of European security: With the U.S. commitment to Europe diminishing, Europeans will have to handle future crises on their own. This historical failure on the part of Germany is a result of the many caveats imposed by the federal government and Bundestag, which have tied the hands of German soldiers in action – in combat against piracy and also in Afghanistan. This has prevented our soldiers from shouldering the same risks as their NATO comrades.

And so far, the federal government has not distinguished itself in furthering an improvement in relations between NATO and Russia. The Alliance has made no substantial progress on the critically-important issue of whether and how to establish a shared missile defense system. Russia has long expressed a clear willingness for genuinely equal cooperation on the project, would be a litmus test for the Alliance’s sincerity on the issue of partnership and mutual transparency on strategic issues. The lack of willingness for cooperation that became so apparent at the summit therefore represents a failure of far more than just a project.

Inexplicably, NATO still refuses to guarantee to the Russians that the missile defense system would not be directed at its strategic response capability.

Although the U.S. repeatedly asserts that Russia has no need to worry about the issue, the guarantee Moscow demands has failed to materialize. President Obama would have to have a suitable treaty approved and ratified in the Senate, which seems impossible given the domestic political confrontation between the two parties in Congress; and Republican Mitt Romney still considers Russia America’s most dangerous enemy. This view fails to recognize that our most dangerous and threatening risks – radical Islam and terrorism – are concentrated in the Middle East, and thus right at our doorstep.

READ ON IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

This is yet another bit of bad news for the tornado of bad news swirling American newspapers. New Orleans will soon be the largest American city without a daily newspaper since the company will cut part of its staff and go to three days a week.

Three days a week is better than none.

But three days a week doesn’t a daily newspaper make:

Times-Picayune publisher Ashton Phelps Jr. has confirmed that the newspaper will cease daily publication, moving to three days a week in the fall: Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. He also confirmed staff cuts, though he didn’t say how large they will be. The New York Times’ David Carr reported Wednesday night that the paper likely would cease daily publication and that the two managing editors would leave.

This would make New Orleans the largest U.S. city without a daily newspaper. The Times-Picayune, with a circulation of about 155,000 on Sundays and 134,000 weekdays, would be the largest paper in the U.S. to shift to non-daily publication. Its circulation in March 2005, before Hurricane Katrina flooded the city and shrank the city’s population: about 285,000 on Sundays and 257,000 weekdays.

In 2009 Advance Publications, which owns The Times-Picayune, shifted to twice-weekly printing for The Ann Arbor News and started to focus more on its website. It expanded that approach to other newspapers in Michigan last year.

“I think this is a big blow,” said Poynter business analyst Rick Edmonds. “Yes, it’s happened in a few places, but Saginaw and New Orleans are not the same thing. You’re talking about a major-league city.”

Newspapers have truly fallen on hard times and there are an increasingly large number of people who feel many of the currrent survivors will not survive at all. I worked overseas writing for newspapers from India, Bangladesh and Spain in the 70s, then joined the Wichita Eagle which was owned by the now dead Knight-Ridder chain. KRN killed the evening Wichita Beacon when I was there, “merging it” into the Eagle promising to all of us worried employees in the room and to the world that it would produce the best newspaper in the world, by golly, one that would keep the best of both words. Basically: KRN killed the Beacon and (in that case) did it with a minimum of layoffs. This was part of the first stage of decline for American newspapers: many evening papers died because they could not compete with the evening network newscasts. Shaun Mullen who writes for TMV is a former Knight Ridder editor; to many of us, it was the BEST chain around with the most solid newspapers, and the most content-obsessed focus (to extent that it was legend that KRN didn’t care if marriages fell apart but it’s editors would be also married to the newspaper, and guess which marriage came first?). But as time went on that commitment to content excellence waned as the market began to change along with corporation changes at the top.

I left Wichita to join the San Diego Union which was then owned by the Copley Press, which also owned a host of smaller newspapers. I left after about 8 years to do some ventures on my own and predicted the death of the Evening Tribune and some insisted it would “never” happen soon. A year after I left Copley killed the Tribune, “merging it” into the Union but in the end readers really (again) got one newspaper. The merger involved buyouts and layoffs.

And, as the market changed, there were more layoffs. Copley then sold the paper to a private equity firm which fired some 300 people shortly after taking possession. Over the years they laid more and more people off (the whole copy desk, basically…reporters…editors…security guards…some librarians) and sold it to local developer Doug Manchester, who seems gung ho about owning it. But, today, the UT, as it is called has a much smaller staff (of still talented writers and editors) — and is a shadow of what it used to be in terms of its national journalistic aspirations, size and content.

But San Diego still has an enthusiastic DAILY newspaper.

A three day a week solution must be making reporters and editors shuddering.

Because now that is a new option.

And corporations in trouble do tend to look at options.

And choose them.

You can follow more commentary on this story HERE.

How can a sitting Democratic President in 2012, who came to office with a huge electoral mandate four years earlier in the wake of a Republican-generated economic disaster, actually look like he might lose this coming November to a Republican who politically, economically and even personally so perfectly embodies virtually everything that got this Democratic president elected in 2008? The simple answer: Mr. Obama’s behavior toward Wall Street since coming into office.

FDR’s New Deal didn’t bring an end to the Great Depression. When he ran against Kansas Governor Alf Landon in 1936, the country was still wallowing in post-1929 economic misery. Republicans that year could say (and did say) with great honesty that FDR’s policies hadn’t brought back prosperity.

What these policies did do, however, was honor FDR’s promise to give the country a New Deal, especially as it applied to a Wall Street establishment the country distrusted and disliked for very good reasons. In the wake of his 1932 victory FDR did not dump advisers with populist notions with regard to The Street. He didn’t seek to reassure The Street that things wouldn’t change in major ways. He didn’t shy away from financial reforms that would dramatically change the way The Street operated. He didn’t stop hammering away at The Street so as not to offend big players there who might contribute big money to his campaign. He didn’t just take occasional verbal whacks to play to a voting base.

Voters in 1936 responded accordingly. Six months before that year’s election there wasn’t anyone in the country, Republican as well as Democrat, who didn’t know who would win in November. FDR cruised to the greatest electoral victory that year since 1820.

Compare what FDR did with respect to Wall Street with what Barack Obama has done since coming to office. Mr. Obama promised change and hope in 2008. He’s given little or nothing with respect to Wall Street. He traded the populist, truly reform-minded economic advisers he had during his 2008 campaign for a Wall Street friendly Tim Geithner — an adviser and Treasury Secretary whose counsel regarding Wall Street might charitably be termed protective, and less charitably, but perhaps more accurately, plain out appeasement.

Mr. Obama’s general stance toward Wall Street has been to reassure it, not rock the boat, not change things in major ways at all, or only change them in ways that can easily be undone directly via later legislation or less directly through lobbyists’ quiet efforts. When he actually deigns to say negative things about The Street, the comments are nuanced. And after one such obviously politically motivated tweaking, he went off to meet with hedge fund heavies with his hand out, bringing assurances that any nasty comments were just campaign necessities.

I will vote for Mr. Obama this November because the alternative is far worse. Many, perhaps most progressives like myself, will vote thus for the same reason.

But if Mr. Obama actually manages to lose this coming November, something that should have been as politically impossible as an FDR defeat in November 1932, I’ll know the reason why — Wall Street, and his astonishingly foolish behavior toward The Street from both the political and economic perspectives.

It started four days ago with a “Meet the Press” gaffe(?), quickly recanted, by Obama supporter Newark Mayor Corey Booker labeling the attacks(?) as “nauseating.”

The question marks are for skepticism about Booker’s motives. Those who remember Bill Clinton’s “Sister Souljah moment” in 1992, as the Mayor surely must, can testify to the selfish value of distancing oneself from ideological “extremism” on your own side.

But when and how did Romney’s Bain Capital claims become sacrosanct? How did what the President says “this campaign is all about” become so toxic to him?

His immediate answer to the Booker uproar was: “If your main argument for how to grow the economy is, ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,’ then you are missing what this job is about.

“It doesn’t mean you weren’t good at private equity. But that’s not what my job is as president. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some…Their priority is to maximize profits, and that’s not always going to be good for businesses or communities or workers.”

Joe Biden followed up about Bain in his usual unvarnished way, observing that “companies go under, everybody loses their job, the community is devastated but they make money.”

Such reasonable responses to Romney’s self-puffery have now morphed into attacks on Capitalism, Motherhood and Apple Pie, putting gun-shy Democrats on the defensive. Their reaction suggests a deeper anxiety.

MORE.

Christopher Weyant, The Hill

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Is the European “Union” too disunited to keep NATO afloat? For Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, a European Parliamentarian from Poland and an envoy to NATO, warns that unless Europeans pool their defense capabilities and start thinking and acting in a more unified fashion, the E.U. and NATO will become increasingly irrelevant – and America will no longer defend European strategic interests.

For the Gazeta Wyborcza, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski writes in small part,

To escape this impasse requires more than just a substantial increase on defense spending in national E.U. budgets. For years, their combined spending for defense has been lower than the U.S. defense budget, the market has become more fragmented, and E.U. efforts have overlapped. The twenty seven E.U. countries produce over 80 different weapons systems (the U.S. produces 27) and maintain more than 60 shipyards, while in the United States there are two. The lack of a common military market costs the E.U. €3 billion a year [$3.8 billion]. In today’s economic environment, that is money being too easily spent.

The financial crisis has further deepened the differences between the “Union” and the “North American” segment of the Alliance: over the past ten years, the U.S. and Canadian portions of the NATO budget rose by 10 percent, up from 65 percent in 2000 to 75 percent in 2011. Estimates from 2011 show defense cuts in all European NATO countries, and only two maintained defense spending at 2 percent of GDP, as is required by the Washington Treaty.

Most importantly, there has been a weakening of European countries with the most important weapons industries, namely France, Germany and Great Britain (which together contribute 65 percent to the European share of NATO’s budget and 88 percent of funds for research and development). Because of the need to finance operating deficits and service debts, the situation in the defense sector won’t improve until at least 2016. This means that no country on its own will be able to ensure the E.U.’s defense, not to mention operations beyond E.U. territory. The intervention in Libya confirmed these deficiencies. Also confirmed was the reluctance of Americans to defend European strategic interests, something that was clearly enunciated by former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his farewell speech.

Without additional efforts, it will be difficult for Europe to maintain its role in its neighborhood and the world. Without a strong military capability, E.U. diplomacy will be far less effective, and individual member states – even the larger ones – will find that they are too small to count on the international stage.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR POLISH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

They did it again, Selig. They spray painted those nine horrible words on our front entrance. You must have seen them when you came to work this morning.

No, sir. Don’t you remember? Only top earners can use the front entrance these days. You made that a rule a few years back to give the rest of us something to aspire to.

Right. I remember now. So I guess you didn’t see those spray painted words when you came to work. Our security people wash them off every day. But they keep reappearing again and again like some kind of awful warning.

What are they, sir? These nine words that fill you with such obvious foreboding?

“You have been judged, and Glass-Steagall is wanted.”

Interesting mix of Bible and economics, sir.

Interesting, Selig? Horrifying! Glass-Steagall was one of those socialist laws passed during the New Deal to prevent the kind of market meltdown that triggered the Great Depression? It took us until 1999 to get that damn law off the books. It was cramping innovation. Putting a lid on our risk taking profits. The Volcker Rule they’re trying to push down our throats these days is bad enough. But Glass-Steagall…

I don’t know about that, Mr. B.

Don’t know what, Selig? You do believe in innovation, don’t you?

Of course, sir.

And in risk taking to bring new companies and new industries on line?

Absolutely, sir, Except…

Except what, Selig?

I just don’t understand why you don’t want Glass-Steagall to come back, sir. I mean, what I’ve heard is that it just separates retail and commercial banking that’s insured by the government to protect bank depositors, separates them from risk taking ventures whose aim is to make the biggest possible profits.

That’s right, Selig.

So what’s the problem, Mr. B? If the government brings back Glass-Steagall, it wouldn’t have to regulate Wall Street so heavily because the government, the taxpayers, wouldn’t have to bail out Wall Street companies if you lose a lot of money — you wouldn’t be under the same corporate umbrella as regulated institutions whose depositors aren’t risk takers and have to be saved at all costs. It looks to me like a good deal for everyone. Separation would free the government from an obligation to bail out risk takers. Risk takers wouldn’t have to be regulated as much because they would no longer be a risk to anyone but themselves.

Selig, Selig, Selig. That’s so, so…

Commonsensical, sir? I’m sorry.

No need to apologize, Selig. Common sense is a failing one sees a lot on Main Street. Only a relatively few of us on Wall Street, in Washington, and at some think tanks are blessed with the ability to think counter-intuitively. To transcend common sense. To see beyond the obvious.

What do you see beyond the obvious, Mr. B?

What I see, Selig, is opportunities. I see a future where every American has a shot at being able to feast regularly on caviar and truffles.

Sort of like a chicken in every pot, sir?

Yes, Selig. And a BMW in every garage, too.

A garage that hasn’t been lost to bank foreclosure, sir, along with the adjoining house?

Right again, Selig, You’ve summed up my vision perfectly. Now let’s get back to more immediate matters. Do you have any suggestions about how to keep those nasty nine words from greeting me and other top earners when we come to work?

You could erect a scaffold by the front entrance, sir. To scare warn off taggers.

Good, Selig, but too extreme. At least for the time being. Other ideas?

Well, sir, if the entire front of the building were made available to graffiti artists, another tag more or less would probably get lost in the mix. And passersby might even think that what’s going on inside Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street investment banks was actually a government subsidized conceptual art project.

Selig, your chances of ever coming to work through that front entrance have just taken a steep nosedive. Is my Stall #8 ready for use?  

Ready and waiting, sir. And the only writing on its walls are Post-It notes from my wife thanking you for keeping me out of the house all day.

This writer’s new book, Fifteen Feet Beneath Manhattan, is now available on Amazon.

Like Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, Boehner is ready, willing but fortunately unable to bring America to a standstill again this year to prevent reelection of a Democratic president, but he is eager to make the threat an issue in November.

What Boehner has in common with his predecessor, absent the glibness, is no guilt about gridlocking Congress for partisan purposes. With a Tea Party class of 2010 breathing down his neck, the Speaker wants to play a shell game for voters now by getting them to follow the debt-ceiling pea rather than concentrating their attention on the urgent need to push the economy into higher gear and create jobs faster.

In the long run, the massive debt accumulated by two expensive wars and a bipartisan failure to slow it will have to be faced and resolved. But around the proverbial coffee table, it is not what Americans are worrying over this year.

MORE.

With their resources drying up like a pond in the hot sun, can NATO do what is necessary to ensure the Alliance’s continued relevance in a world that appears increasingly unstable? For Die Zeit, columnist Claudia Major writes that to survive as an institution, NATO members must achieve a far higher degree of integration and trust, and the sacrifice of a greater measure of national sovereignty, which even in Europe, is something that few if any have been willing to embrace.

For Die Zeit, Claudia Major writes in part:

up to now, when confronted with the diminished sovereignty greater security cooperation would require, NATO member states have balked. They fear a loss of control over where and how their militaries will be deployed. They also find it difficult to agree on common weapons systems, because each country has its own arms industry. They also fear that a clearer division of labor could lead to problems in time of emergency, because they may not be able to rely on their NATO partners. For how can it be ensured that an operation will be carried out if a partner nation doesn’t want to participate, even if its military capacities, for example aircraft, are needed? How can we guarantee that a country will not be left out in the cold during an operation when another suddenly withdraws its troops? How can it we ensure that a member state isn’t slacking off at the expense of the rest?

Although there are legitimate concerns [about further integration], member states have no choice if they want to halt the decay of their military alliance. If the Alliance is to continue to be relevant, its members must adjust to the new reality: If its military striking power declines, the alliance cannot afford to do very much. In other words, if it is to live up to even a diminished level of ambition, greater collaboration is essential.

The larger European “dwarves” have a particular responsibility: Germany, France and Great Britain must toughen their partners in Europe and lead the way by example.

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Rather than imposing conditions on delivering promised funds to Pakistan – such as reopening NATO’s supply route through the country, should Washington give Pakistan the money it has promised with gratitude? With the shadow of the friendly-fire incident at Salala hanging over the NATO Summit in Chicago, this angry editorial from The Frontier Post argues that Pakistan has paid a far heavier price for America’s ‘War on Terror’ than the U.S. and its NATO allies put together, so paying Islamabad – and apologizing for Salala, is simply the honorable thing to do.

The Frontier Post editorial starts off this way:

How could the hubris of the self-important people in the U.S. Congress, administration, think tanks and media be anything but maddening? How could one react any other way when, while fleecing someone with a long, sharp butcher’s knife, they pose as though they were performing an act of great generosity?

The case at issue is funding for Pakistan from the Coalition Support Fund. U.S. Congressmen, by an overwhelming majority, want to link this support to a reopening of NATO supply routes through Pakistan. But this money is no hand out, charity or alms. It is reimbursement for what a recipient has spent out of his own pocket fighting America’s spurious war on terror. And Pakistan has been deceitfully short-changed and even cheated by the Americans on this reimbursement for years.

Even now, they are sitting on bills pending payment to Pakistan worth over $3.2 billion. Yet these Congressmen have the audacity to pretend that if we succumbed to their arm-twisting, they would be doing us a great favor by releasing the money.

U.S.-led adventurism has cost Pakistan dearly and multifariously. In monetary terms, it has inflicted economic losses on Pakistan to the staggering tune of a $70 billion. Much-hyped U.S. economic aid totaling $7.5 billion over five-years, said to be at an annual rate of $1.5 billion per annum, under the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act wouldn’t even cover a respectable fraction of the colossal losses Pakistan has suffered. Even this puny amount of aid is slow in coming. The grandees in the Islamabad establishment who should be telling us the truth are too loyal to their American benefactors and treacherous to their own people. But while they remain stone silent, co-author of this law, Senator Lugar, has been more forthcoming.

Indeed, one such panjandrum, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, wants to “cut off every cent” to Pakistan “because it is being used for evil purposes.” But at the same time, this Congressman Rohrabacher has been holding open hearings and moving resolutions in Congress for the dismemberment of Pakistan and the potential secession of its Baluchistan Province. Apparently, this jester doesn’t think that working toward a sovereign state’s dissolution is evil! He presumably holds that it is a noble task.

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The back-and-forth about Bain Capital, Mitt Romney’s old company, is part of something larger. So is the inquest into the implications of multibillion-dollar trading losses at JPMorgan Chase. Capitalism can produce wonders. It is also capable of self-destruction, and it can leave a lot of wounded people behind. The trick is to get the most out of what capitalism does well, while containing or preventing the problems it can cause.

To describe this grand debate is not to deny that President Obama’s campaign has some, shall we say, narrower motives in going after Bain. Obama’s lieutenants need to undermine Romney’s claim that his experience in the private equity business makes him just the guy to get our economy back on track.

The Bain conversation has already been instructive. Romney’s friends no less than his foes have had to face the fact that Bain’s purpose was never about job-creation. Its goal was to generate large returns to Bain’s partners and investors. It did that, which is why Romney is rich.

Romney wants to focus on the positive side of his business dealings that did create jobs. He wants to brag about the companies Bain helped bring to life, among them Staples, Sports Authority and Domino’s.

That’s fair enough. But having made an issue of Bain on the plus side, he also has to answer for the pain and suffering — or, as defenders of capitalism like to call it, the “creative destruction” — that some of Bain’s deals left in their wake.

This leads naturally to the question of how creative the destruction wrought by our current brand of capitalism actually is. Since the dawn of the leveraged buyout era three decades ago, many friends of capitalism have questioned whether loading companies with debt as part of these deals is good for companies and for the economy as a whole.

Does this approach cause unnecessary suffering among the employees of the companies in question and the communities that often lose plants and jobs as a result? Sucking pension and health funds dry to aggrandize investors seems less like a creative act than a betrayal of workers who made bargains with their employers in good faith.

More generally, while some of the innovations in the financial sphere have been beneficial to growth, it’s far from clear that this is true of all or even most of them. Some of them helped cause the downturn we are still trying to escape and created incentives for the dangerous risk-taking that led to JPMorgan’s troubles. And there’s little doubt that our new financial system has transferred wealth from other sectors of the economy to the people at the top of the financial business.

Vice President Joe Biden’s speech last week in Youngstown, Ohio, drew wide attention for its criticism of Romney as someone who just doesn’t “get it.” But when Biden moved beyond Romney, he offered an energetic broadside against the new world of finance, and he picked the right venue to make his case: a noble blue-collar town that has been battered by the winds of globalization and economic change.

“You know the difference between having an economy that makes things that the rest of the world wants, and having an economy that is based on financialization of every product,” Biden told his listeners. “You know the difference between an economy … that’s built on making things rather than on collateralized debt, creative credit-default swaps, financial instruments like subprime mortgages. That’s not how you build an economy.”

Romney, by contrast, is wary of dismantling any of these nifty new Wall Street inventions, one reason why he wants to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reforms.

We need to have this great national argument. To borrow a term pioneered by Germany’s Christian Democrats, we can try to build a social market. Or we can have an anti-social market. An election is the right venue for deciding which it will be.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. (c) 2012, Washington Post Writers Group

The EU’s euro is shrinking, like a summer ice cream scoop;
Our own overspending has left us, awash in that old debt soup;
The struggling Dow and Nasdaq, can’t seem to find a floor.
And investor fears are rising, rising, rising,
Investor fears are rising,
Are rising more and more.

The days are past when investors viewed all losers as fallen gems,
And rushed to their rescue with money, like nurturing mother hens;
Now good companies, too, go begging, and cut spending to the bone,
To avoid deeper fiscal trouble,
Escape the deflated bubble,
Flee from the spreading rubble,
And worst things still unknown.

Perhaps one darkened morning soon, to panicky echoes we’ll wake;
The equity holders will tremble, the bond investors quake;
And as global economies teeter, we’d best pray there appears,
A plausible confidence mender,
A deep pocket lender spender,
Who can calm all our white knuckle fears.

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com

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