New York Times Subscription to Mount Misery: Cancelled

On September 12, 2011 former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that he's cancelled his subscription to the New York Times. "After reading Krugman’s repugnant piece on 9/11, I cancelled my subscription to the New York Times this AM."  That's right, there will be no more subscriptions to Mount Misery.  Rumsfeld purchased his home on the infamous Mount Misery when he was in office.  Mount Misery is a former African-American slave whipping station.  With the cancellation, Rumsfeld will no longer read columns of the New York Times in the peace and quiet of his home, relaxing in pajamas, on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon, nor over breakfast with his serene view of the yard where slaves including Fredrick Douglas suffered tremendous torture.  The Krugman piece Rumsfeld calls repugnant was posted on September 11, 2011 at 8:51 AM:

"The Years of Shame

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons."

Credibility of Budget Plans

The Labor Party's shadow chancellor of the UK, Ed Balls' blog on August 6, 2011 read, “As I said in my LSE speech in June, deficit reduction plans are only credible if they have political agreement and they deliver on what they promise." Balls questioned whether the US Congress's plans can be delivered with confidence.  

Ed Balls, British Labor MP

Watching the debt fiasco on CSPAN, it was clear that Republicans were the party facilitating the doubt - to say the least. The S&P press release singled out Republicans directly as reason for the downgrade, "Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act."  S&P had counted on the Bush tax cuts to expire and gave the Republicans stance on revenue as reason for the downgrade, whereas nowhere does the release single out Democrats.  

Republican Rep.

Tom Graves (grave digger)

There were talks of shutting down the government.  Republican representative Tom Graves said, "Let's put government in a box and shrink the box over five years."  Democrat Representative Anna Eshoo posted a message in her facebook notes on April 8, 2011 that in the event of a shutdown of the federal government, she would keep her offices in California and Washington DC open and that her staff would remain on duty without pay.  

A June 30, 2011 Bloomberg article noted, "S&P would lower its sovereign top-level AAA ranking to D, the last rung on its scale if the U.S. can’t pay its debt..." and "...Moody’s Investors Service said it will probably reduce its ranking if the government fails to increase the debt limit, leading to a default."  All the while  presidential candidate Michele Bachmann passed through media outlets vowing that she would not raise the debt ceiling.  Of  course FOX News was on board with Senate and House republicans including Republican Representative Bachmann along the way, downplaying the consequences of a downgrade to the creditworthiness of the county's debt or a US default.  When later, S&P did end up downgrading the country's rating to a AA+, even though the ceiling was raised.

Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann

Ed Balls alludes to the mirroring US budget plans of the British budget plans and how the Republicans have not learned lessons by observing the British austerity outcomes, "That is why I am fearful that Republican Congressional leaders have learned the wrong lesson from the British experience over the past twelve months."