Terrance Heath

  • Published Not As They Do: Conservatives and the Deficit, Pt. 3 (Blog entry)
    March 8, 2010 - 2:07pm

    Conservatives who squawk about the deficit — and Democrats who should know better, but squawk anyway — tend to do so selectively. That is, they tend to focus only on spending. But spending is only half of any deficit equation. After all, a deficit is "the amount by which expenditures or liabilities exceed income or assets." When it comes to the government "income" really means "revenue," and that means if we're going to have an honest discussion about the deficit we have to talk about about taxes.

    That half of the deficit equation — income or revenue — rarely enters the discussion, but the reality is the surest way to create a deficit is to increase spending while deliberately decreasing income or revenue. Who would do something like that? Something so obviously unsustainable?

  • Published Does Flying a Plane Into a Building Make You a Hero or a Terrorist? (Blog entry)
    February 24, 2010 - 12:29pm

    Here's a question I bet you thought didn't need to be asked in a post-9/11 America: Does flying a plane into a building make you a terrorist or a hero?

    Let's break this down.

  • Published CPAC: Sideshow and Snake Oil, Pt 1. (Blog entry)
    February 22, 2010 - 3:36pm

    The Sideshow

    Glenn Beck, in a sense, is right. CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, is not and could never be a "big tent." Neither is the brand of conservatism it tries so hard to sell. The "big tent," to borrow his circus analogy is usually reserved for acts featuring genuine talent and skill that tend to draw people into the "big tent."

    CPAC, as speaker after speaker demonstrated,  is more or less a sideshow -- relegated to a small tent, and populated with notions that  have no basis in and would never work in reality, and that just don't stand up to close inspection. Inside that small tent, where people who paid the admission price really want to believe their eyes, it works. But in the cold light of day, not so much.

  • Published On Bearing Grudges (Blog entry)
    February 18, 2010 - 3:43pm

    President Barack Obama doesn't begrudge Wall Street's banksters their bonuses.

    Wall Street Bonuses

    The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is "an extraordinary amount of money" for Main Street, "there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don't get to the World Series either, so I'm shocked by that as well."

    "I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen," Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. "I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system."

    Obama sought to combat perceptions that his administration is anti-business and trumpeted the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies. He plans to reiterate that message when he speaks to the Business Roundtable, which represents the heads of many of the biggest U.S. companies, on Feb. 24 in Washington.

    Well, maybe the president is a bigger person than I am. Where I come from, we don't just hold grudges. We nurse them and watch them grow.

    And, like a lot of Americans, I do begrudge the likes of Dimon and Blankfein their multi-billion dollar bonuses. Not because I "begrudge people success or wealth," but because I begrudge anyone their ill gotten gains — especially as others are made to support them and suffer the consequences of their actions.

    Besides, if I can hold bear a grudge against a person, why can't bear a grudge against corporations? After all, aren't they people too?

  • Shared Wall St. Helped to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis (News Headline)
    February 17, 2010 - 10:39am

    Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts. As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits.

  • Published Progressive Breakfast: Bye, Bayh. (Blog entry)
    February 16, 2010 - 10:38am

    On the menu this morning:

    • Senator Bayh Says Goodbye
    • President Obama's Approval Up
    • Job and Budgets
    • Debt and China
    • GOP Meets Tea Party
  • Shared The National Anthem -- And Why We Need Health Care Reform So Desperately (Progressive Opinion)
    February 10, 2010 - 10:28am

    Anthem Blue Cross is a microcosm of what ails our private for-profit health insurance system — the most expensive in the world, whose costs are rising faster than anywhere in the world; a system rapidly becoming unaffordable to more and more Americans, in which insurers are rapidly consolidating into behemoths that have almost no competitors. And a system in which the biggest health insurers are lobbying like mad against reform because they like things just the way they are. They can squeeze the public and the public has no alternative but to pay up. All this makes Anthem one of he best arguments for reform — which is probably why the President mentioned Anthem today when he emerged from what was billed as a "bipartisan" meeting to talk about health care and jobs.

  • Published How To Read Republican Ransom Notes (Blog entry)
    February 10, 2010 - 8:50am

    What kind of people respond to an invitation with a list of demands?

    John Boehner and Eric Cantor have responded to Barack Obama's invitation to sit down and talk health-care reform. They answered in the form of a ransom note. Here are their demands:

    1) "Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward on health care in a bipartisan way, does that mean he will agree to start over?"

    2) "Does that mean he has taken off the table the idea of relying solely on Democratic votes and jamming through health care reform by way of reconciliation?"

    Well, now we know. This goes on for another 6 items.

    While I disagree with Ezra's advice that the White House accept these terms in exchange for straight, up-or-down votes in the House and Senate, I agree that it amounts to a ransom note from a party that's holding health care reform hostage, which should read something like this:

    Republican Ransom Note 1

    If nothing else, it's much more honest and straightforward.

    Maybe that's how the GOP should have spelled out their demands. But that's not how the Democrats should read this particular ransom note.

  • Published Not As They Do: Conservatives and the Deficit, Pt. 2 (Blog entry)
    February 9, 2010 - 11:33am

    Sarah Palin's keynote speech was quite a hit at this weekend's Tea Party convention. She even took a shot at pinning responsibility for the deficit on the Obama administration.

    It's too bad Palin didn't have proper notes on hand, as she did for the Q & A after her speech. Then again, the message that it was actually the Bush administration that left us more in debt and less secure, wouldn't go over well with her audience.

  • Published Colorado Springs: Conservatism's Shining City (Blog entry)
    February 5, 2010 - 4:12pm

    If you've ever wondered where conservative economic policies like permanent tax cuts for the wealthy, slashed social services and government spending are supposed to lead us, look no further than Colorado Springs.

    David Sirota's description of what's happening to that conservative stronghold should serve as a cautionary tale.