I actually think the super committee is a good idea

This HuffPo writer clearly doesn't. Considering that it may be the only way to get things done in our current political dysfunction, and it is not in fact a third house of the legislature, it may be necessary. On accountability, it's a toss-up as to whether the amendment process contributes to it or takes it away. Given that all sorts of cruft makes it into law through such amendments and no one knows where it came from, and all sorts of laws are killed by making their would-be supporters vote against them via poison pills, this might be a plus for accountability. Besides, when we're talking about accountability in the House, we're talking about accountability to Tea Party wackos that want to push the country into lasting default ("No debt ceiling increase, period!"). We'd be better off with less of that sort of accountability.

Internet Access, Negative Rights, and This Week in Law

I was watching the current live stream of This Week in Law and have to take issue with the purely negative view of human rights that guest Timothy Sandefur expressed. His argument against positive rights was that if you have a right to healthcare or food, for example, then nature violates your rights every day. That is a really bad argument, since nature will and does violate your "right to be left alone" all the time. It will even violate your right not to be killed for food if you let it (e.g., if you go into the mountains and run into a hungry mountain lion).

That said, I don't even think that the Right to Internet Access need be a positive right, at least not in the sense of the government making sure you got it. If there were true competition and if corporations didn't coordinate their sales decisions with one another, there'd be no need for government to do anything about Internet access. If one ISP kicked you off, you'd just go to another one. But if the ISP that kicks you off is the only game in town, or if they blackball you so that no other ISP will sell to you, then your negative right to procure Internet access is being violated. This is not the termination of an individual business relationship. It is essentially the removal of of the ability to get a utility essential for having a modern mode of living. As such, there's a strong argument that it should be under the purview of the courts to make sure that there's reasonable due process and your offense justifies the negative impact losing all access to the Internet will have on your life.

Scientists are worried about Planet of the Apes in real life

There's a simple solution: set the bar at which humanized apes can sue, or have suits brought on their behalf, in the courts very low. I guarantee you that will dissuade teaching people from teaching apes to talk.

Obamacare and errors by Obama lead to our current situation

If Obama had not lost the Massachusetts Senate race, largely because of Obamacare, he would have kept his filibuster-proof majority. Even failing that, he could have used the budget reconciliation process to get both an extension of the middle class tax cuts he wanted and a debt-ceiling increase if he hadn't had to quickly use up that year's reconciliation bill to get Obamacare passed. Even failing that he could have either let all the Bush tax cuts expire (taking a political hit) and made the Republicans waffle between re-enactment of a trillion dollar+ tax bill and credible deficit panic or used the renewal of the tax cuts to extort a debt-limit increase from the GOP. Failing all that, we have a political economic catastrophe on our hands.

Some of the Defaulters are changing their position

Instead of insisting on default, they've switched to making demands far more ludicrous than the House Republicans. Namely, that congress pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the constitution. Now even if it didn't include an absurdity such as an arbitrary predefined maximum size of government, it would still be a disaster. All the ones I've seen included a clause allowing you to get around the balanced budget requirement by having a supermajority of both houses (three-fifths, in the versions I read). They also had a provision for wartime, with varying definitions.

The first would effectively make the Federal Government like California used to be: a government that could only pass budgets by supermajority. California is a notoriously ungovernable mess. The filibuster as it is now used is bad enough. We don't need more power without responsibility in our government.

The second would either be meaningless, if it were strict (such as only when a formal declaration of war is in effect) or it would create perverse incentives for going to war. Invading other countries would actually make it easier to set domestic policy. And I don't think for a minute that Republicans would vote for one that didn't have a very broad wartime exception. Can you imagine the last ten years if such an amendment were in effect?

This is just another example of trying to automate government. It's a horrible idea, and fortunately does not have a snowball's chance of hell in passing. I have no doubt it polls well, but then so does going into default. This is why we do not have direct democracy.

Update: Now Boehner is making support for a Balanced Budget Amendment in a debt-ceiling increase bill a condition. This is pure insanity. Fortunately it looks like his version of the condition has no teeth: it isn't making sending it to the states a precondition for passage. Still, the idea that not only that the House Republicans are willing to use the economy and the nation's creditworthiness as a hostage, but they are prepared to use that sort of hostage-taking to try to change the constitution is very alarming.

Mitch McConnell's Debt Ceiling Plan is Hilarious

But it might just prove to be successful. Instead of cleanly upping the debt limit, it creates a series of almost completely symbolic song and dance routines for Obama to go through to enact the increase. McConnell knows he and Boehner can't screw the rich superbase of the GOP, and the rest of the country (and the world), by forcing us into default and ruining our credit, so he's proposing a Pontius Pilate routine whereby the GOP washes its hands of the debt limit. Somehow I doubt the fanatics that they've encouraged and created will buy it.

If this "procedure" doesn't come with any strings attached, i.e., it doesn't require spending cuts to be passed with it, I think the Democrats should jump on it. The time window for the first "resolution of disapproval" will have to be very short, or there will have to be a small increase in the debt limit that happens automatically, though.

What balancing the budget immediately with no tax hikes would mean

While I don't share the author's point of view, this rundown is actually very useful. He seems to be under a misapprehension, though: Obama can't actually cut spending on his own. He doesn't have an ex post facto line item veto. What he can do is decide who is going to get stiffed when there isn't enough money to go around. Actually balancing the budget would require congress, so we would still be in a state of default (though not sovereign debt default, unless Obama chooses not to pay the interest on accumulated debt) if the debt ceiling isn't raised in the next three weeks.

His workup does show, though, why balancing the budget with no new revenue is politically impossible at the moment. His own proposal is absurd, and the Republicans would find it unacceptable because of the massive defense cuts. But abolishing all social spending (including food stamps and all other nutritional assistance)? Good grief. Also his abolition of the Department of Education was predicated on the notion that this was a "gift" from Jimmy Carter we can do without. Actually, believe it or not, the United States government spent money on education before Jimmy Carter. But it was handled by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Jimmy merely spun Education out into its own department (and greatly increased the spending levels).

"He did everything but address the problem he was elected to fix"

If Obama loses next year, that would be a fitting epitaph for his administration. He was elected to fix the economy yet wasted his two years of real power, with huge majorities, going after other priorities, especially futzing around with healthcare (which singlehandedly blew the better part of a year and said huge majorities, his filibuster-proof Senate majority before that, not to mention his single reconciliation bill for 2010, which could have been used to avoid the government shutdown showdown and the current debt-ceiling debacle). Now he finds himself with no ability to do anything, having to fight to keep the Republican House from blowing the brains out of the economy. This article illustrates the problem quite chillingly.

There is every probability that he will lose, unless the GOP nominates a total Tea Party nutbag like Bachmann. This is a prospect I don't relish, especially with the Republicans holding the House and in a good position to take the Senate.

I suspect Warren Buffet's view is shared by rich Republicans too

They just aren't speaking out publicly. I am sure, though, that John Boehner is well aware that he'll be in it deep if he screws them by taking this game of chicken over the cliff. That's why I firmly believe a deal will be reached. The threat is half bargaining position and half kabuki theater for the Tea Party, who really are insane. In the GOP, if it comes down to what the fanatical masses want and what the wealthy want (or when it comes down to what anyone wants and what the wealthy want), always bet on the wealthy winning the day.

Money quotes from Buffett:

"We raised the debt ceiling seven times during the Bush Administration," Buffett told CNBC on Thursday. Now, the Republican-controlled Congress is "trying to use the incentive now that we're going to blow your brains out, America, in terms of your debt worthiness over time."

and

In May, Buffett stated at a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder's meeting that if the Congress failed to raise the debt ceiling, it would constitute "the most asinine act" in the nation's history, reports Reuters.

He also explains why prioritized payments, i.e., a managed default, would be of little help economically:

Some experts, like former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, have floated the idea of the Treasury paying some obligations while not paying others. This, Buffett says, is ludicrous.

"If you don't send out social security checks, I would hate to think about the credit meeting at S&P and Moody's the next morning," Buffett told CNBC. "If you're not paying millions and millions and millions of people that range in age from 65 on up, money you promised them, you're not a AAA." A triple-A credit rating is the highest possible rating that can be received.

Prioritized payments do, however, eviscerate the little merit there is to the left-wing fantasy of Obama simply declaring the debt limit unconstitutional and ignoring it. Not that it matters: borrowing money is the sole prerogative of congress. The debt limit is merely the current term of the congressional borrowing action.

 

Those talking about ignoring the debt limit have it backwards

The debt ceiling isn't something imposed by congress on the executive. It is constitutionally the power of Congress, not the executive, to borrow money. The debt ceiling is the terms of the authorization that congress gives the Treasury to sell bonds. If you repealed all laws concerning the debt ceiling, the result would not be that the Treasury could sell as many bonds as it wanted or needed to. The result would be that it couldn't sell them at all.

The debt ceiling and the "Constitutional option"

Many on the left have developed a fantasy whereby President Obama resolves the debt-ceiling standoff, which they right see as a result of outrageous political hostage-taking by the Republicans, by decreeing it unconstitutional and issuing bonds anyway. Politically, this is impossible. Obama can't very well make an executive power-grab under a novel constitutional theory when a plurality oppose raising the debt ceiling at all (it's insane, but it's true). Besides, very well-known progressive constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe argues very persuasively that the "constitutional option" is bunk. One reason he doesn't mention is that we have enough tax revenue to finance our debts, so we won't default in the literal sense unless Tim Geithner chooses to. Not paying people will still prove to be a disaster, though.

This constitutional option is no more constitutional the Republicans' plans during the Bush administration to declare the filibuster of judges unconstitutional. In this climate, it is very likely that articles of impeachment would be drawn up if Obama were idiotic enough to do that. They might even have a non-zero chance of success.