Prognosis, Not So Good: Fitch Ratings said it was revising its outlook on the U.S. credit rating to negative from stable, while keeping its ‘AAA’ rating intact.
Barack Obama pledges support for EU leaders amidst debt crisis: At a meeting with Presidents Barroso and Rompuy, “I communicated to them that the United States stands ready to do our part to help them resolve this issue. This is of huge importance to our own economy.” Maybe this translates to, the Fed will lend the Europeans money through the IMF. He couldn’t mean that, could he?
Time to Abandon the White Working Class: Not a bad move since there’s no work, so there’s no future in coalescing with the working class. The New York Times explains that Obama’s strategists have decided to abandon the old coalition in favor of one based on aristocrats and serfs — you know, the 99%.
For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.
All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.
The NYT observes that tensions in a Big Tent consisting of the Masters and Slaves, er, the vanguard and the masses can reach a critical point. But that’s what purges and pogroms are for, unless they’ve forgotten their history. What holds coalitions like this together is the prospect of spoils and loot. Once they’ve picked the landscape clean there will be a “settling of accounts”.
One outcome could be a stronger party of the left in national and local elections. An alternate outcome could be exacerbated intra-party conflict between whites, blacks and Hispanics — populations frequently marked by diverging material interests. Black versus brown struggles are already emerging in contests over the distribution of political power, especially during a current redistricting of city council, state legislative and congressional seats in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago.
The Left knows how to settle accounts of a certain type really well, though they are not very skilled at books of accounts, which are after all a capitalist invention.
Taxes Don’t Hurt: One of the people who knows how the real economy works is NBC’s David Gregory. “But the notion that tax cuts or tax increases somehow impact economic growth, we know historically that’s simply not the case….Isn’t that one of the falsehoods that’s peddled in Washington?” Yep. It’s one of the great lies of our time, right up there with “you can’t borrow you’re way out of debt.”
Barney Frank, the Titan: CNN has commemorated Barney Franks departure with such encomiums as “titan,” “larger-than-life,” and “teacher at heart.” He was a “titan” in the financial industry. A “teacher” of gay tolerance. Frank was “always the smartest person in the room”. Not that many of the readers of the Belmont Club have been in the same room with him so they could judge. But judgments are delivered withal. It was John Kennedy who said that “a nation reveals itself by those it honors, those it pays tribute to, and those it remembers.” Kennedy was right, especially about the left, in more ways than he knew.
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $3.99, print $9.99
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
Join the conversation as a VIP Member