The word “cut” more or less says the same thing in both politics and medicine: it doesn’t count as surgery unless you do it right. So though Republicans have been flouting cuts for months before their takeover of the House, they’ve proposed nothing to actually fix the underlying problem — the budget deficit. They keep mentioning tax cuts and repealing health care, but these ideas have about as much acumen as a doctor swiping at a cancer patient with a scalpel.

In fact a lot of the proposed Republican cuts would have the opposite effect on the deficit. Let’s look at health care spending for instance. One tactic the Republicans might use against the Affordable Health Care Act is blocking IRS spending, so it won’t be able to enforce the new regulations. But that would make the budget deficit worse by lowering tax revenue. Other potential ideas (elaborated fully in this old Yglesias post) include scrapping the Independent Medicare Advisory Committee, a board that would control Medicare costs. But getting rid of IMAC would increase health care spending, and make the deficit worse. Call me crazy, but it’s just a little bizarre to talk about how we can’t afford Obamacare and then propose to make it more expensive. Read more…

Last Friday MSNBC suspended Keith Olbermann, the outspoken liberal commentator and host of the network’s most popular show Countdown. Olbermann, it turned out, had given $2,400 (the maximum) to three Democratic candidates, apparently violating of MSNBC policy that requires executive approval of all donations.

The whole questions how good objectivity even is anymore in TV journalism, especially as the studio exec’s motives seem to be, well, political. The political views of Keith Olbermann and other MSNBC hosts are abundantly clear, and the point of their shows isn’t news reporting so much as commentary. It even earned MSNBC a role as Fox News’ counterpart in Jon Stewart’s media-bashing thinger last week. Read more…

Andrew Shirvell, the assistant attorney general of Michigan, has been suspended.

This is uneasy news for anyone who believes that being gay is not a pretext for discrimination and violence. Shirvell has been the sole author of a blog (made “invite only” as of Friday morning) called “Chris Armstrong Watch,” whose singulary raison-d’etre is formulating bigoted assaults on Chris Armstrong, a University of Michigan student who became the school’s first openly gay student body president.

Shirvell has called Armstrong a “dangerous homosexual ‘rights’ extremist,” pasted a rainbow flag and a swastika onto Armstrong’s photo, said he was “Satan’s representative on the student assembly,” accused him of being a “racist” with a “radical homosexual agenda,” and launched pretty much every other brazenly homophobic attack conceivable short of carrying signs that read “GOD HATES FAGS.”
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Last Thursday House Republicans met up at a hardware store in Virginia, first and foremost to fix John Boehner’s broken tanning bed, but to also unveil their grandiose Pledge to America. The pledge, a nonsensical 21-page dictum of the Republican Agenda, was supposed to be a powerful rebuttal to Democratic accusations that Republicans were the Party of No and John Boehner and gang were incapable of actually creating a meaningful piece of legislation. Well, it was cute that they tried. I hope Boehner’s Sunquest Wolff was repaired at least.

The Pledge contained a lot of the usual party lines—tax cuts forever, spending cuts, no more Obamacare. No one should be surprised to learn that it is also filled with contradictions and numbers that don’t add up.

More surprising, however, was the collective dump many right-wingers took on it for typifying the political pandering of “establishment” Republicans. For example on RedState, a conservative blog, one blogger called it a “Pledge to Nowhere” while another wrote, “I’m very glad we will soon be seeing a number of these House Republicans replaced—most likely with true conservatives.” Erik Erickson said he “would like to borrow” the GOP, please. Apparently reasoning here was that Boehner and buds weren’t even using it and if he could have it just this very once he would make it so much better. Or something. (Erickson was, naturally, lampooned by Wonkette for this).
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This week the White House confirmed rumors that Larry Summers, Obama’s chief economist, will return to Harvard by the end of the year. His departure completes a troika of high-level exits from the Obama Administration’s economic side, which also include Peter Orszag, the former budget director, and Christina Romer, who was the main economic forecaster.

Summers was the, erm, fat cat of Obama’s economic policy. As director of the National Economic Council, he was the key figure in coordinating and implementing economic policy. Plus, he ran Obama’s daily briefings on the economy –which have a huge effect on policy. He helped to construct the stimulus package, not to mention financial reform. Considering that fixing the economy is still a very, very important priority for the President, whoever replaces Summers has got some shoes to fill.

In a White House statement Obama said, “While we have much work ahead to repair the damage done by the recession, we are on a better path thanks in no small measure to Larry’s wise counsel.” Summer’s resignation seems to have been in the works for a while. For one, Harvard only grants tenured faculty members up to two years of leave – and has reputation for being strict about this rule. And as of April, Joshua Green reported in the Atlantic that Summers was frustrated with his job and with the fact that he wasn’t chosen to be the next Fed chairman.

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Nearly anywhere in the country, judges will sentence convicts with no consideration of the costs to the state. Justice, apparently, is all that matters. (Though it’s been proven that’s not always the case).

Except in Missouri. These days, judges there have started taking into account how much a certain sentence will cost taxpayers. The State government just launched a website where judges can enter a suspect’s charge code and background information, and receive an array of recommended sentences, stats on recidivism, and costs.

This is the first time that judges so freely have access to such information. And it makes a lot of difference: prison costs $16,823 per year per convict, while intensive probation (seen as a comparable alternative in some cases) costs just $1,354 per year. Read more…

Remember how Rep. John Boehner, the House Minority Leader with the tan that changes according to his mood, wanted tax cuts for everyone forever and ever? Well, he still probably does but last Sunday he said on CBS that he might, maybe, possibly vote for tax cuts for everybody except the rich “if it was the only option.”

Earlier this year, Obama proposed letting the Bush tax cuts expire for everyone earning over $250,000 a year while renewing them for everyone earning less than that. That move would save the government $700 billion, compared to renewing the tax cuts for everyone. (Also, the government would actually have to borrow money to help those rich people out). Obviously the Senate Republicans don’t like this, and some propose extending all the cuts for another two years so we can have this same argument again in 2012!
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