"The air of unreality that now permeates the political discussion is truly mind-boggling."

As many people know, I'm a huge fan of Steven Pearlstein's column in The Washington Post and today's was another superb one. In talking about the agenda President Obama must follow from a practical rather than ideological perspective, he offers one very astute observation of the politics of the last two years and where the biggest share of the blame really belongs:

"Fickle voters, of course, deserve a good part of the blame for this leadership vacuum. Whatever you think of President Obama’s agenda during the past two years, it was pretty much what he had promised. Two years on, his reward was a new Republican majority determined to reverse and delegitimize everything he had done. Now six months after that, the public has decided it doesn’t like the Republican program any better."

Dollar Dollar Bills Y'All!

From Steven Pearlstein this week:

"When half of the world's currency is pegged to the dollar, the United States winds up handing over control of its currency to foreigners who have become quite clever at using it to their economic advantage. And by making it so cheap and easy to borrow money, we have been enabled and encouraged to live beyond our means, taking on so much debt that the dollar's role as reserve currency is now called into question."

"We'll make it. Just don't ask me how."

Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein wraps up his two-week sojourn to India with a wrap-up of where India has been and where she's headed. In the end, there is a sense of reserved optimism or hopeful pessimism in India, which goes hand-in-hand with the quote that I used for the title of this post, "We'll make it. Just don't ask me how."

The blurb from the article that stood out for me, for personal reasons, was:

"Cummins, the big U.S.-based engine company, has had a plant in Pune since 1962, and demand for its products are so brisk that it will open a second, bigger production campus 90 miles away."

My family comes from Pune and my father had a job offer from Cummins in 1970. He had also just gotten an immigration visa to the United States and decided to turn down the Cummins job offer and move to the United States instead. It's kind of nice to see Cummins still operating in Pune and still holding the same presence that I had always heard about.

Where are the answers Mr. Ryan?

Steven Pearlstein again with another stellar column asking some questions that really haven’t been answered yet:

“Is it fair that the market economy has directed virtually all of the benefits of economic growth to the top 10 percent of households? No answer.

Given this increasingly unequal distribution of incomes, isn’t there room to make the tax code slightly more progressive? No answer.

Given that people with low incomes rely disproportionately on government services and transfer programs, wouldn’t a deficit reduction plan based solely on domestic spending cuts require more sacrifice from the poor than the rich? And why isn’t that as much class warfare as raising taxes on millionaires? Again, no answers.”

We’re waiting Mr. Ryan. We’re still waiting…

Hobin Rood: Stealing from the poor and giving to the rich...

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post explains how credit card companies can give all those great rewards to the high-end card holders:

"Because while everyone pays the higher retail prices necessary to cover the "swipe fees," only those with rich rewards cards actually get the kickback. In effect, they are subsidized by those who pay those higher retail prices with cash, debit cards or standard-issue credit cards."

So if you were wondering who pays for all those great rewards for Platinum card members, the correct answer is YOU.

"I am rubber, you're glue" is the equally mature response here.

Steven Pearlstein writes yet another fascinating column, this time an uncharacteristically aggressive piece about the Republican Party's obsession with the term "job-killing". A few poignant quotes:

"What's so curious is that it's hard to find almost any Republican concern about employment homicide during 2008, when George W. Bush was president and the economy was shedding 4.4 million jobs. Given the lag with which economic policy works, the biggest net job loss that could credibly be assigned to Obama during his two years in office would be less than a million."

"There is an unmistakable redbaiting quality to the "job-killing" rhetoric, a throwback to the McCarthy era. It reflects the sort of economic fundamentalism better suited to Afghan politics than American. Rather than contributing to the political dialogue, it is a substitute for serious discussion. And the fact that it continues unabated suggests that Republicans are not ready to compromise or to govern."

Sadly, if any Republicans read this, they would accuse me of writing a job-killing blog post so you can't win either way except to say:

"I am rubber, you're glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you."

So what's all this bickering over taxes really about?

Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein tries to explain why Democrats and Republicans disagree on tax policy:

"There may be some truth to the Republican belief that lowering taxes overall is a good way to boost economic growth or contain the size of government. However, that would apply just as well to cuts in corporate and payroll taxes or additional income tax cuts for the middle class. Yet you don't see Republicans drawing lines in the sand over those. What's so magical about the estate tax or the top marginal income tax rate?"

Read the entire column to find out the answer to this question. My personal take on it is both the Left and the Right have gotten themselves so wired up for a fight that they have forgotten the basic difference between fact and opinion.

"The Shroud of the Dark Side has fallen"

I've stated in the past about how Steven Pearlstein's column has become a must-read for me because of its pragmatic, fact-based perspective. A couple of key passages from today's column that are right on the money (pun intended):

"Republicans like to pretend that their real concern is for job creation, citing the fact that about half of all business profits now flow through partnerships and small corporations that are taxed at personal rates. ... Very few of those businesses earn more than $250,000 in profit, and those that do tend to be very successful hedge funds and law firms that are flush with cash and unlikely to be dissuaded from hiring extra employees or make new investments because of a 4 percentage-point change in the marginal tax. Because most hiring and investment can be done with pre-tax dollars, ... the tax rate is largely irrelevant to those decisions."

"...if Republicans were truly interested in reducing the deficit while stimulating private-sector job creation, they would have jumped to embrace the idea floated last week by Sen. Mark Warner, the centrist Democrat from Virginia: let high-end tax rates return to where they were during the Clinton years and use the $65 billion in additional income over the next two years for tax breaks for businesses that increase investments or hire new employees. After that, the extra revenue would go toward deficit reduction."

{Emphasis mine in both passages}

Pearlstein concludes by saying that no Republicans have taken up Mark Warner on his compromise proposal. So much for the much bally-hooed bipartisanship.

"The Shroud of the Dark Side has fallen. Begun, the Clone War has..."

Pearlstein and Miller This Week

As I stated in a recent blog post, Steven Pearlstein and Matt Miller of The Washington Post are becoming my regular weekly must-read columns. Here are some excerpts:

From Matt Miller’s column today:

“The mother of all inconvenient truths is this: Global capitalism's ability to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in China, India and other developing countries comes partly at the expense of tens of millions of workers in wealthy nations. This awful, inexorable fact will soon pose an enormous moral and intellectual challenge for the American left.”

From Steven Pearlstein’s column yesterday:

“If you asked Americans how much of the nation's pretax income goes to the top 10 percent of households, it is unlikely they would come anywhere close to 50 percent, which is where it was just before the bubble burst in 2007… From World War II until 1976, considered by many as the "golden years" for the U.S. economy, the top 10 percent of the population took home less than a third of the income generated by the private economy.”

Please enjoy both reads and let me know what you think.

Be very careful what you wish for...

I'm adding Steven Pearlstein to my list of essential weekly reading, which currently includes Matt Miller, also of The Washington Post. My favorite line in today's column:

"Here is the hard political reality: You can't expect to support and finance political candidates who preach that government is menacing and wasteful, that public employees are incompetent and corrupt, that taxes are always too high and destroy jobs, and then turn around and expect that the government will respond to your demands to hold down the cost of health care, or fund basic research, or provide good schools, efficient courts and reliable transportation systems."

Again, be very careful what you wish for...

This is the way wealthy nations become poor.

Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein wrote a chilling column titled "So goes the center, so goes the economy" about our nation's political polarization and how the results of primaries earlier this week could be a harbinger of things to come. The part that stood out for me was:

"This is the way wealthy nations become poor. There are no vibrant economies without effective political systems, and there are no effective political systems without a vibrant center."

Something to think about if you're considering voting for a hyper-partisan candidate on the left or the right this year...