NYT Oped Trying To Carry Econonomic Hope In Spring

Opinion/Editorial

 

 

 Talk about being a waterboy for the Obama regime the New York Times fits the bill to a tee.

This mornings lead OPED entitled "No Seasonal Fix for the Economy."

The water carrying begins "Some economic forecasters have pinned their hopes for an improvement in the economy on this year’s early Easter to boost consumer spending after a brutal winter.

That outlook has a dispiritingly familiar ring to it. In recent years, bad weather has often been blamed for weaker than expected economic performance while the prospect of Easter shopping and warmer weather has been seen as a sure catalyst for growth.

To some extent, the economy does move up and down with the seasons. But time and again in the current recovery, seasonal upswings have not heralded sustainable improvements. The economy faces tougher problems than the weather, and there are no easy or automatic fixes.

For instance, the economy was supposed to take off as unemployment fell. But unemployment is way down from its recession-era high, and there has been no big upsurge. Similarly, exports were supposed to help lead an economic revival. But the expected growth in exports has not occurred of late."

 I don't believe numbers anymore all bullshit.

 It continues "To its credit, the Federal Reserve is facing those issues. In its latest statements and projections, issued last week, it did not flinch from marking down its earlier projections for economic growth and price inflation through 2017 — signaling that the economy is weaker than was thought to be the case only a few months ago. The markdowns also reflect underlying weaknesses in the economy that will not be corrected without fundamental changes.

Accordingly, the Fed embraced a fundamental change last week when it acknowledged that unemployment can fall further than previously believed without causing inflation. That acknowledgment will allow the Fed to keep stimulating the economy, and encourage job growth, with loose monetary policy for the foreseeable future.

What the Fed cannot directly affect is how much employers pay their workers. Stagnant and low pay is a decades-long phenomenon, but in the past its negative economic effects were masked partly by the growing participation of women in the work force and by easy credit for cash-strapped households. The former has run its course, and the latter has justifiably been curtailed.Moreover, in the current recovery, rising economic growth and rising job growth have so far failed to push up pay appreciably. Without higher wages, the needs and wants of everyday life, let alone the luxuries, remain out of reach for many families, and as a result the economy remains in low gear. Changing that dynamic will require policy changes beyond the Fed’s purview, including a higher minimum wage, updated rules for overtime pay, stronger support for collective bargaining, better enforcement of wage and hour laws and tougher trade pacts."

 No shit Sherlock the economy is weaker than ever under this Obama regime. It's common sense.

Congress has thus far not moved in any of those areas, though many lawmakers appear prepared to demand provisions in upcoming trade deals that would prevent currency manipulation that disadvantages American businesses and workers. States have a mixed record, with several of them raising their minimum wages, but others working to weaken collective bargaining.

Janet Yellen, the Fed chairwoman, has made it clear that she wants to see wage growth before she declares the labor market healthy. But where is that wage growth going to come from?

 Oh when all else fails blame Congress but they are no different than Obama

 

NYT OPED On Iran Nuclear Issue Very Unclear

Opinion/Editorial

 

 It's as the old saying goes "It's better to be thought of as a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt" the only difference here is the opening of one's mouth is this fooilsh opinion piece of crap this morning from the New York Times.Entitled "Sabotaging a Deal With Iran."

 The only reason why the NYT oped board is commenting on the Iran nuclear issue is because the Prime Minister of the great nation of Israel the great Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington last week to address his concerns to our lame brained idiots in Congress both Houses at the behest of RINO House Speaker John Boehner (RINO-Oh) only to be bereated by President Barack HUSSEIN Obama and the back turning House Mniority leader Nancy "the witch" Bellalegosi Pelosi.

 The BS begins "Congressional critics of an emerging international agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program moved with uncommon speed last week to force a vote that could have blown up the negotiations, which are now at a delicate stage. Cooler heads prevailed, and action was delayed. But Congress could still sabotage the deal.Apparently hoping to capitalize on the fiery denunciation of Iran by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a speech to Congress, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, on Tuesday pressed for a vote this week on a bill that would require congressional review of any deal. But he backed down when the bill’s supporters insisted on delaying any vote until after March 24, the target set by the United States, five other major powers and Iran for reaching a framework agreement."

 Yeah negotiations that the NYT wants because they are o so diplomatic my ass they are.And of course blame congress game.Congress should be able to review any so called deal with Iran but that would involve something called transparency from the Obamaites but that isn't going to happen any time soon just the usual BS lip service.

 The rant goes on "The agreement is intended to offer Iran relief from crippling economic sanctions in return for tough restraints on its nuclear program for at least a decade. In the administration’s view, the agreement will not be a treaty requiring Senate ratification but a political commitment that is well within Mr. Obama’s authority to enter into without congressional approval. Congress’s chief power is that while Mr. Obama can waive certain sanctions on Iran on national security grounds, only Congress can permanently remove them. Congress also can enact new sanctions if Iran violates its commitments.The bill before the Senate could well scuttle any deal. Within five days of concluding an agreement, the president would have to submit the text to Congress as well as an assessment of Iran’s compliance and a certification that the deal does not jeopardize American security. That is an absurdly short timeline.More damaging, the bill would bar the president from easing sanctions on Iran for 65 days so Congress could hold hearings and decide whether to support the deal.

The bill would also eliminate the presidential authority Mr. Obama used in 2013 to lift some sanctions against Iran under an interim agreement, thus calling into question America’s credibility and its ability to fulfill its promises under any new deal. And it would add onerous new conditions that have not been part of the negotiations so far.Congress can play a role going forward. One useful way for it to weigh in would be to support legislation introduced by, among others, Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, both California Democrats, that would require Mr. Obama to report to Congress every 90 days on Iran’s compliance with the deal and that sets up an expedited process for Congress to reimpose sanctions if Iran violates its commitments.

After more than a year of negotiations, the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany can take credit for an interim deal that has sharply limited Iran’s nuclear activities, and they are on the verge of a more permanent agreement that could further reduce the risk of Iran’s developing a nuclear weapon. Congress needs to think hard about the best way to support a verifiable nuclear deal and not play political games that could leave America isolated, the sanctions regime in tatters and Iran’s nuclear program unshackled.

 Yeah tough restraints on Iran's nuclear program if sanctions are lifted keep them in place Iran is just going to give us the middle finger.Hello NYT you actually think Iran gives a shit about commitments

but then again you guys don't think at the NYT.

NYT Waterboys for Obamney Care

Opinion/Editorial

 

 Now the New York Times lead Oped this morning is delving into the hotly and controversial debate of Health Care.The title of the crap piece is "The Phony Legal Attack on Health Care" of course if their line is a phony attack it is a legitimate attack.

 It begins "On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in one of the most anticipated cases of the term: King v. Burwell, a marvel of reverse-engineered legal absurdity that, if successful, will tear a huge hole in the Affordable Care Act and eliminate health insurance for millions of lower-income Americans — exactly the opposite of what the law was passed to do.

The central claim of the lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of four Virginians by a small group of conservative activists who have long sought to destroy Obamacare, is that the law does not allow tax-credit subsidies to be made available to anyone living in the 34 states whose health care exchanges are operated by the federal government, which stepped in when those states declined to set up their own.

This is, to put it mildly, baloney.

In the long, tangled history of the debate over the Affordable Care Act, no member of Congress ever indicated a belief that the law would work this way. To the contrary, the law explicitly provides for “quality, affordable health care for all Americans.”

And it has accomplished a good deal of this goal: More than 11 million people now have coverage under the law, and more than eight in 10 of them qualify for subsidies. In other words, broad availability of the subsidies is central to the functioning of the act. Without them, it collapses.

But because of the opponents’ purposefully blinkered reading of four words in the 900-page law the case is now before the Supreme Court.

The four words — “established by the State” — appear in a subsection of the law dealing with the calculation of tax credits. The law’s challengers say this means that credits are available only in the 16 states that have set up their own exchanges.

The challengers did not innocently happen upon these words; they went all out in search of anything that might be used to gut the law they had failed to kill off once before, on constitutional grounds, in 2012. Soon after the law passed in 2010, Michael Greve, then chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is helping to finance the current suit, said, “This bastard has to be killed as a matter of political hygiene. I do not care how this is done, whether it’s dismembered, whether we drive a stake through its heart, whether we tar and feather it and drive it out of town, whether we strangle it.”

After the challengers found the four-word “glitch,” as they initially called it, they worked backward to fabricate a story that would make it sound intentional. Congress, they claimed, sought to induce states to establish exchanges by threatening a loss of subsidies if they did not. (Not coincidentally, the challengers also traveled state to state urging officials not to set up exchanges, thus helping to create the very “crisis” they now decry.) Of course, if Congress intended to introduce a suicide clause into a major piece of federal legislation, it would have shouted it from the mountaintops and not hidden it in a short phrase deep inside a sub-sub-subsection of the law. So it is no surprise that no one involved in passing or interpreting the law — not state or federal lawmakers, not health care journalists covering it at the time, not even the four justices who dissented in the 2012 decision that upheld the Affordable Care Act — thought that the subsidies would not be available on federal exchanges.

Many legal observers were surprised that the court agreed to hear the case at all. But despite several justices’ clear dislike for the health care law, it is hard to imagine how they could disregard their longstanding approach to interpreting statutes, which, as Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a 1997 case, requires them to consider “the language itself, the specific context in which that language is used, and the broader context of the statute as a whole.”

Reading the Affordable Care Act as a whole, it’s clear that Congress meant to provide subsidies on both federal and state exchanges. For one thing, why establish a federal exchange that doesn’t actually work? As an amicus brief submitted by a group of legal scholars put it, “Congress does not write statutes to fail.”

And yet the challengers insist that their bizarre, noncontextual reading of the law is the only possible one. A majority of federal judges who have reviewed the case have thrown out this argument. So should the Supreme Court. Even if the court were to consider the law ambiguous, under its own precedent it must defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of the statute’s wording. Here, that agency is the I.R.S., which has issued a rule affirming that subsidies are available no matter who establishes the exchange.The challengers disingenuously say that Congress can go back and change the wording, knowing full well that Republicans on Capitol Hill hate the law almost as much as they do. The states that currently rely on federally operated exchanges could set up their own, but many — egged on by the challengers — have already refused to do that.

Whatever legal games the challengers play, this case has never been more than a ginned-up, baseless attack on one of the most important pieces of social legislation of the last generation. The health of millions of Americans hangs in the balance. And now it is not even clear that the four plaintiffs have legal standing to bring the lawsuit.

So how did the suit get so far? That is an excellent question, and only the Supreme Court can answer it.

 Words in pink going back to what at the time House Speaker Pelosi said about passing the bill before reading it.